MaxChaplin t1_j3xcejf wrote
Reply to comment by Hypersensation in Philosophy has never been the detached pursuit of truth. It’s always been deeply invested in its own cultural perspective. by IAI_Admin
8.9% percent of malnourished people in the world is not a lot in a historical perspective (though I agree it should be 0%). Certainly not compared to the famous failures of central planning.
> Markets should be seen as tools
This is my point in this discussion - markets are useful tools. Even if your goal is communism, ideas that come from capitalism can be a valuable part in getting there, if only for being tested extensively in both mathematical theory and real life and their strengths and weaknesses being known. Like, even if you somehow get the smartest and most compassionate people in the country to run it, Project Cybersyn-style, they may decide that the best way to get fast feedback to their policies from experts and the public is a prediction market with play money. The amount of play money they earned could be a useful parameter to evaluate their performance (alongside holistic considerations perhaps).
Hypersensation t1_j3xphew wrote
>8.9% percent of malnourished people in the world is not a lot in a historical perspective (though I agree it should be 0%). Certainly not compared to the famous failures of central planning.
It could have been zero for decades at this point, but isn't, precisely because multinational corporations dominate the planet and drive workers and peasants into subsistence level wages.
Every single socialist country eradicated famine within decades of their establishment, whereas capitalism has perpetuated it and directly killed hundreds of million people through starvation since, despite incredible advances in technology and productivity.
This is not to mention the progress held back by a billion people currently eating less than their daily needs as well them and many more being unable to receive adequate education, which every socialist says should be universally available to the highest level without a price tag to the student.
>This is my point in this discussion - markets are useful tools. Even if your goal is communism, ideas that come from capitalism can be a valuable part in getting there, if only for being tested extensively in both mathematical theory and real life and their strengths and weaknesses being known. Like, even if you somehow get the smartest and most compassionate people in the country to run it, Project Cybersyn-style, they may decide that the best way to get fast feedback to their policies from experts and the public is a prediction market with play money. The amount of play money they earned could be a useful parameter to evaluate their performance (alongside holistic considerations perhaps).
Markets predate capitalism by several thousands years and have existed in every single socialist nation so far to varying extents. Capitalism is simply the age of privately owned capital and wage labor as the driving forces of production.
I will agree that even in a best-case scenario for computer planning the results will likely say that for some time that we need markets for some particular forms of production, but that the science of planning needs to be heavily invested in. Planning sciences are largely missing from capitalist academia because the state itself is a class-based institution which will tend to heavily reinforce education that runs along its economic-ideological basis.
As long as the economy isn't actually controlled by the working masses though, none of these measures can be even tested.
So, the reason why I reject capitalism is because workers do everything and control nothing. I was born working class and I will die working class. So will likely you and almost everyone both of us will ever know too. A few of our friends might have successful small businesses if they wish to pursue that life, but almost nobody will be an actual capitalist.
I don't seek power, but I want to democratically be able to participate in production. I want to elect my bosses and be in equal social standing with all my co-workers, whether they require extra support at work or if they are the single most productive person there.
WoodenRain2987 t1_j3ynzsf wrote
Every single socialist country has faced historically unprecedented levels of starvation. The RSFSR blew well past the Russian Empire's worst famines within 4 years of its foundation, and more than doubled that as the USSR a single decade later. Your argument not only doesn't have any factual foundation, but is based on outright lies. The rest follows.
Hypersensation t1_j3z29r2 wrote
>Every single socialist country has faced historically unprecedented levels of starvation. The RSFSR blew well past the Russian Empire's worst famines within 4 years of its foundation, and more than doubled that as the USSR a single decade later. Your argument not only doesn't have any factual foundation, but is based on outright lies. The rest follows.
The countries that made up the USSR had famines often several times a decade for centuries and hunger, illiteracy and homelessness were all but eradicated in a few decades of socialist rule. Since the collapse, hunger, homelessness and poverty has come back in droves, which I'm sure you have an explanation for?
I also don't know what type of history you've been reading if there is no famine today under capitalism (10 million yearly starvation deaths when there's a vast surplus, as opposed to in those newly formed nations straight out of civil, anti-imperial and world war) or that the feudal peasants actually starved less. This is demonstrably false, and efforts to argue otherwise are not rarely based in Nazi propaganda.
spottycow123 t1_j3xw1c5 wrote
>I don't seek power, but I want to democratically be able to participatein production. I want to elect my bosses and be in equal social standingwith all my co-workers, whether they require extra support at work orif they are the single most productive person there.
Can you explain why communists and socialists assume that democratic planning of companies would actually produce more innovation or more products for everyone? Doesn't it sound crazy that a cleaning lady who doesn't know anything about the company or the product would have equal say in how the company profits should be reinvested or who should be the head of R&D with the people who actually know something about how the business world runs? Why are they assuming that people wouldn't just make short-sighted and ultimately destructive choices? Or are the real results irrelevant, we can hinder all innovation and possibly starve to death because all that matters is that we all made that decision?
Hypersensation t1_j3y0a4i wrote
>>I don't seek power, but I want to democratically be able to participatein production. I want to elect my bosses and be in equal social standingwith all my co-workers, whether they require extra support at work orif they are the single most productive person there.
>Can you explain why communists and socialists assume that democratic planning of companies would actually produce more innovation or more products for everyone?
It's not necessarily concerned with innovation or more products for everyone, but with balanced power and working on realizing the needs of the people before the wants. If we educate 20 times more people, we will have probably have several times higher innovation, but would have to drastically reallocate the consumption of the most privileged.
>Doesn't it sound crazy that a cleaning lady who doesn't know anything about the company or the product would have equal say in how the company profits should be reinvested or who should be the head of R&D with the people who actually know something about how the business world runs?
Capitalists are very rarely talented in any of the many fields required to run a business, as opposed to the people who actually create the products and services. The cleaners may argue more equal compensation for the value they provide (sanitary workplaces are indispensable to our health) and how they need to do their job, while software engineers may argue how the code structure should look and the economics department on which area of the product needs most improvement to meet some productivity standard.
>Why are they assuming that people wouldn't just make short-sighted and ultimately destructive choices?
Because it's against their interests, as opposed to oil and weapon's lobbies starting wars and literally eradicating life on the planet, simply because it benefits only the owners of such companies.
>Or are the real results irrelevant, we can hinder all innovation and possibly starve to death because all that matters is that we all made that decision?
Innovation comes from education and application of that education, if we educate many times more people and give them power over their workplace, then innovation will 100% to up over time.
spottycow123 t1_j3y7pnr wrote
I don't believe these two "extremes" are the only possible alternatives, and the problem with both of these seem to be that the people who have the most knowledge don't get to choose the best course of action. People make choices against their own interests all the time and the actual day to day interests of a cleaning lady are most likely contrary with the best possible outcome for everyone. Innovation requires more than just education; it requires sacrifices of the immediate desires. My gripe with this democratic decision making with everything is that it is only desirable if all the actors would be experts on whatever they are deciding on. I'm fairly confident that majority of people aren't able under any circumstances to make the best decisions for the good of the whole.
I'll give a silly example off my head: Do you really believe that it would be desirable that the vote of the vain cleaning lady (who believes in energy healing) had the same weight as a doctor on what medical devices or new treatments the hospital should invest in? Many people are stupid and short-sighted on even their own simple life decisions, how could it possibly be desirable to let them have equal say in choices that have complex implications for everyone?
Isn't the whole thing a massive assumption? Shouldn't we ultimately favor the system that in reality produces most output and not because it is based on some holy tenets?
Hypersensation t1_j3z8ju7 wrote
>I don't believe these two "extremes" are the only possible alternatives, and the problem with both of these seem to be that the people who have the most knowledge don't get to choose the best course of action.
Private ownership and dictatorship of capital or common ownership and the dictatorship of the working class are actually the two only options, unless total apocalyptic collapse of all of society happens. There quite literally are no possible other options, given how class society functions and develops.
>People make choices against their own interests all the time and the actual day to day interests of a cleaning lady are most likely contrary with the best possible outcome for everyone.
Care to give any concrete examples? I don't see how letting people have democratic control over their lives could possibly be worse than letting the demonstrably genocidal and ecocidal profit motive. If people elected their bosses, they would likely choose the guy who organized the place so that you could go home earlier with more money in your pocket.
Today, workers are forced to take the jobs that exist at market rates, with anywhere from 5 to 50% unemployment with desperate workers ready to undercut your meager income just do they can eat or sleep safe another day. The goal of socialism is to guarantee everyone gainful employment, until the day that labor has been automated to such a degree that nobody needs to work anymore.
Given the inevitable thought of automation, I implore you to do a thought experiment what the Bezoses, Musks, Kochs and Rockefellers of the world would do to the working class should their labor no longer be necessary for all development.
>Innovation requires more than just education; it requires sacrifices of the immediate desires.
I'm saying the foundation is education, and there is no reason to believe people would work less hard or less innovatively if you give them more power over their working lives, as well as direct control over what to produce and when.
We have subscription-based heating in cars now, and 5 or so mega-corpotations designing the same 10 phones with minor differences, developing the same technologies multiple times for absolutely no use or reason other than locking people in their brand ecosystems.
This is not to speak of the funding of fascism, endless wars of aggression and conquest, or coups against anyone who dares seek true sovereignty for their nation.
>My gripe with this democratic decision making with everything is that it is only desirable if all the actors would be experts on whatever they are deciding on.
Workers are literally experts at their jobs. If you've ever had a job I'm sure you're aware of shitty micro-managing bosses or company-wide rules that make absolutely no sense for your particular store, but still have to be mindlessly followed because corporate said so.
>I'm fairly confident that majority of people aren't able under any circumstances to make the best decisions for the good of the whole.
The alternative we're currently working with, we know none of the decisions are taken with anyone's except the owners best in mind. All that is taken into account is profit, whether millions of people die and large swaths of the planet become uninhabitable.
>I'll give a silly example off my head: Do you really believe that it would be desirable that the vote of the vain cleaning lady (who believes in energy healing) had the same weight as a doctor on what medical devices or new treatments the hospital should invest in?
What makes you think every person would be taking every decision? Wages are an obvious example where everyone should ideally get to vote, until money can be abolished. The cleaners should have more power over cleaning, the doctors and nurses etc over the actual medical care and so on. Today we treat those who can afford it and let those who can't suffer and die, because that's what the bottom-line calculator on some insurance schmuck's PC says.
>Many people are stupid and short-sighted on even their own simple life decisions, how could it possibly be desirable to let them have equal say in choices that have complex implications for everyone?
The profit incentive is simple. The economy has to grow or it implodes, and even when it does grow it implodes every 10 years, killing millions and throwing many many more into poverty. What we produce doesn't matter, no matter how bad for the people or the environment, so long as it produced a profit.
Planned obsolescence is also a real gift, where we could make virtually indestructible products but the markets have been cornered by a few monopolists and now they intentionally break their things early to sell more of them.
Then we have the fact that millions and millions of tonnes of food is simply thrown out and has bleach poured on it or it goes into containers with police protection, to stop people from eating and paying less for the maximally marked-up goods that remain for sale. These are the type of inherent contradictions of capitalism that waste billions of working hours, millions of tonnes of food and millions of lives every year.
>Isn't the whole thing a massive assumption? Shouldn't we ultimately favor the system that in reality produces most output and not because it is based on some holy tenets?
Which again and again has been proven in real life to be socialism. China was in a similar position to India in the 1900s and today their economy is 6 times larger in merely 80 years, having eradicated the worst poverty of which a couple hundred million Indians still suffer, not to mention the brutal oppression peasants suffer, as well as the highly patriarchal and socially debilitating caste system.
Even Cuba, suffering the worst economic sanctions in modern history, has higher life expectancy, literacy and access to healthcare compared to the US, let alone nations with similarly low levels of economic development.
LatentCC t1_j3y2pah wrote
There is an idea in Marxist economics called the "anarchy of production". Capitalist production does not hold social needs as the primary motivation but private profits. How about an example?
Think of how many different kinds of shoes there are. Thousands? Tens of thousands? What if we consolidated the resources and productive power of every shoe factory to produce a few hundred different kinds of shoes total? There are fewer options for sure, but everyone gets a pair or more as needed and there's less work required to produce the shoes needed.
The shoe designs could be rotated in and out as decided by popular vote every year or two but custom orders could be made to the nearest factory. Custom orders may be given lower priority to the shoes that are needed but I think reasonable people would be willing to wait if their custom shoes are free, comfortable and high quality.
spottycow123 t1_j3y9oin wrote
I agree with the criticism of the current capitalist system, but I have a hard time seeing that democratic decision making at all levels would somehow produce the best outcome, this is the assumption I'm questioning here. To comment on your example, I would agree that that outcome would be preferable but I don't believe that it would be achieved with democratic decisions on everything. I believe it would be a lot more likely that the workers of the shoe factory would favor their individual immediate contentment, for example voting to work very little, invest majority of the income for their salaries and not better shoe making devices, thus the end result would be even less shoes for everyone and less money invested in R&D for new and better machines.
I'll admit that I haven't red that many books on Marxist economics, only what other people have written about them. Do you have any reading suggestions on the topic?
LatentCC t1_j3yprid wrote
Your questions are legitimate but get into the realm of speculation. It really depends on the form the socialist society takes. The USSR had a negative feedback loop of constantly lowering quotas as factories performed worse and worse. I think a magazine article I read talked about how restaurants in the USSR were bad on purpose so they received less business. It makes sense in a way, if the factory just fails to meet a quota, you don't want to push even more work on them. They'll just be in a constant state of never reaching the quota.
In a way, the questions you're raising are akin to a serf working the land of their lord and wondering how a system like capitalism would ever work. The reality is that we don't know. We can only examine the material conditions as they exist currently and advocate for better ones.
One solution is to break society down into smaller, self-sufficient communities as we can reasonably achieve. Shoe factory workers would be less inclined to shoddy workmanship if everyone they knew wore the terrible shoes they made and they received constant complaints.
I certainly do have some recommendations for reading! Understanding Marxism is incredibly difficult and can only be achieved by actively working towards it - like a college class. I've read numerous works for the better part of two years now and I just now feel like I'm getting my bearings.
Why Socialism? | Albert Einstein (I recommend this as the starting point for anyone interested in learning about socialism more broadly)
The Principles of Communism | Frederick Engles
Value, Price and Profit | Karl Marx
Wage-labour and Capital | Karl Marx
If you want something more advanced, you can also read the first chapter of Capital (Marx) volume 1. I'm in the middle of reading Capital myself at the moment and I have to admit it is extremely dry.
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