• andycox said on Sep 22, 2009....

  Stopmediabias, I think we’re getting into a fruitless debate over definitions here: You choose to call state involvement in economic activity ‘socialism’, I call it ‘state capitalism’ and define ‘socialism/communism’ as something else; viz a world-wide society in which the means of production are held in common, and there is free access to goods and services. The outcome of this is that we continue to argue at cross purposes, and get nowhere. You keep citing the examples of how iniquitous or inadequate countries like China and  Cuba are, and I keep reminding you that these are ‘state capitalist’ and I don’t have any quibble over some of what you say about these countries (although I do take issue with your rose-tinted views on the introduction of laissez faire style capitalism into China). This is essentially a sterile exercise. To move on, we both need to recognise that we’re using the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ in completely different ways. Now I can’t compel you to accept my definitions, but then neither can you compel me to accept yours. But at least let us RECOGNISE that we are discussing two completely different things when we engage in this discussion. Otherwise, we’ll make no progress at all in understanding each other’s points of view

   

  Thus points 1 – 3 in your post have no relevance whatsoever to the case I’m making. With regard to your comments regarding healthcare in the UK, it might interest you that a recent WHO study placed the UK as 18th and the USA as 37th in terms of ‘health system performance’ out of 191 countries. Here’s the link for you to follow up: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=554041 It should also be noted that 45 million Americans under 65 lack insurance cover; a frightening statistic if ever there was one. If you’d care to peruse my blog, I do discuss the issue of issue. In many respects, even Cuba has a superior healthcare system, as Michael Moore amply demonstrated in ‘Sicko’. Now there’s one brave admirable American – I have a lot of time for the guy.

   

  I should like to say that under socialism/communism – in the sense that I use these terms – individuality would actuality be promoted to a far greater extent than occurs in capitalism, be it state or private. You’ll need to see my blog to appreciate the detailed arguments in support of this. Suffice to say that it is capitalism that stifles real individuality, stultifies possibility, closes doors to the vast majority because they don’t have the wherewithal for the better things in life, pollutes our consciousness with incessant MacCrap – buy this, buy that, blah, blah, blah, endeavours to turn kids into industrial fodder suited to the ‘needs of industry – I’m sure you get the picture

   

  With regard to your comments on convergence theory, I really don’t understand what you’re carping on about: All I was suggesting is that there appears to be a lot of evidence that countries calling themselves ‘socialist/communist have over the post war years become more and more like the conventional  Western capitalist countries. Do you dispute this? Compare Mao Tse Tung’s China with the business-minded, billionaire’s paradise that is contemporary China. Your comments regarding social mobility are inane. In the first place, you grossly overestimate the social mobility in the USA. Check out:  http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html . A key finding in this report is that:

   

  ‘By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents’ income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States’

   

  As to the lack of social mobility in state capitalist countries, you conversely overstate this. Occupational mobility is now common in China, for example, and even in Mao’s time, the Party afforded any aspiring bourgeois a greasy pole to clamber up   

   

  Incidentally, Stopmediabias, I’m not ‘bitter’ or ‘envious’ or malicious’ towards anyone. What makes you say that? You don’t know me from Adam. What I feel is anger at this depraved SYSTEM, angry that you, me and everyone has to put up with the stress, the ugliness, the dangers, the deprivation visited upon us by this outmoded, outdated, inefficient, harmful, anarchic system. l just wish that you and others like you, could just once in a while  tone down the invective and seriously look at what is actually happening to our world. For example, along with most sane people, the thought of global warming scares the shit out of me. I dread the thought of what sort of world we will bequeath to our children. It’s the thought that capitalism; because it is driven by the PROFIT MOTIVE; will not be able to stop its relentless pillaging of the planet, and because each capitalist enterprise, whether we talking about China plc or Coca-Cola or your friendly local corner shop, will always endeavour to MINIMISE COSTS, and thus disown full responsibility for putting right the damage we inflict on the nature, because to do so would disadvantage it vis-à-vis competitors

   

  One last thing, Stopmediabias:

  Capital refers to money or goods used to generate income, i.e. profit, through investing in an enterprise. State or ‘publicly owned’ (sic) enterprises, wherever they are – China, Cuba, the USA, are fed by capital from state coffers. Let us call this ‘state capital’ No less than private enterprises, these enterprises need to realise a profit. Or they’ll become a millstone. The process of ensuring the profitability of a state enterprise is not qualitatively different from that found in private enterprises: Costs (including labour costs) need to be minimised, markets expanded, the organisation may need to be re-structured, and so on and so forth. Is this what happens in Cuba? Of course! There may be a little latitude insofar as the Cuban state may opt to stump up additional capital (at the expense of other expenditure options. But at the end of the day, the books have to balance, or the country as a whole will go into the red through having to borrow money abroad to make good deficits in the supply of capital at home.  It is essentially the fact that the state itself is involved in capitalising enterprises that warrants calling the system ‘state capitalism’.. And that is why I call Cuba a state capitalist regime

   

• stopmediabias said on Sep 22, 2009....

  There is a terrible flaw in your line of thinking and it can be confirmed by history.  Socialist countries around the world have failed and are failing and mainly because socialism does not factor in the fact the humans must compete and be rewarded.  Humans strive for something better or they are miserable.  A capitalist society is one in which people choose where they want to be in life by how badly they want it and how hard they work for it. 
   
  If you look at government spending in socialist countries around the world like France and Germany their government spending is almost 50% of GDP where the U.S. is 20 to 30% of GDP and we have less unemployment and more per capita economic output.  Free market systems around the world have taken people out of poverty and brought them a far better standard of living.  
   
  How is it fair for a government to take the money people make and give it to everyone else.  Where is the incentive to grow in a socialism?  
   
  No more, stop your comparisons of China and Cuba with United States, it makes you sound woefully ignorant.  Americans don't slaugther or torture their own people and the vast majority of people in China and Cuba would rather live no not France or Germany or Russia, but America.
   
  There are pros and cons of both Socialism and Capitalism.  The pros of Socialism are few and the cons have lead to billions of deaths because the more government control the more seductive the power.  The pros of capitalism are many and the cons are just one:  If you want it you have to go get it, which means you have to work and work hard.

• andycox said on Sep 23, 2009....

  Hi Curmudgeon.

  You wrote:

   

  ‘’Seems to me that the age old question is how to balance self-interest with the good of the community. Any system that does not hold these two in tension will not hold water.
  
  You have mapped out some process by which disputes are resolve by a third party. Of course, the two opponents will attempt to curry favor with whoever is in authority in order to secure an outcome in their favor.
  
  Here is an example - land exists by a large stream. One group wants to farm it, another wants to build a nuclear reactor. Which party gets their way pretty much boils down to whomever can persuade the democratically-chosen arbitrator.
  
  Here is another: Fisherpeople net produce from the southern delta of a large river. 100 miles to the north, a nuclear power plant uses the river water to cool its rods. Resulting water temperature increases creates algae blooms that kill off the fish. the nuclear power plant offers thousands of people the "uncoerced" opportunity to work productively, and supplies millions of people with abundant power. What right do the fisherpeople have to control what goes on 100 miles away,and impacts millions of people, even if harm does come to their way of life?
  
  You might argue that I am presenting a false sense of scarcity by limiting available land to one stream or river, but geography plainly dictates that there will be more of certain resources in certain areas, and less in others.
  
  Competition and cooperation each serve their purposes in allocating resources. By emphasizing communal interest over self-interest, I am afraid you model calls for a fundamental change in human nature - which is why communism practiced around the world has invariably failed.’’

   

  Well, this poses a number of interesting questions. Fundamentally, though, I think you are still making the error of projecting assumptions that may justifiably apply to present day society into this as yet to be realised world in which such things as money, wages, profit, and so on, no longer exist. Take your first scenario: The way you describe one group ‘wanting’ to build a nuclear reactor’ on the land, and the other group ‘wanting’ farm it seems to imply they have vested interests in their respective projects. However, vested interests in the sense that this term is used today are precisely what you would not find in communism - the term seems to imply that the parties stood to gain financially, which. Of course, would not be the case. Even if this is not what you are implying, I can’t see that you’d get a situation like this – with two groups, in some sense or other, competing for the land. Why should this occur? What would be driving them to compete over this? Do you see what I mean?

  Land use generally would be something determined by democratic decision-making and arbitration. I would not want to be prescriptive about the exact nature of the institutions addressing such issues: They might possibly look rather like present-day local county councils, with council members being elected on whatever platform, single-issue or multi-issue. Decision-making in smaller scale constituencies – equating with say, present-day parishes – might be undertaken directly by the constituents themselves. Where delegation was utilised in decision-making processes, I can imagine that far greater use would be made of referenda as a sort of ‘long stop’, to use a cricketing term. That is to say, if perhaps just 5% of constituents in larger scale constituency expressed dissent regarding a particular decision made by delegates, there would automatically be a referendum on the issue.

  In the case of decisions regarding land use, I can imagine that some of the following criteria – and others as well – might be drawn upon in coming to a decision:  

  • Would the proposals benefit the local constituency?
  • Would the proposals benefit the wider region?
  • Would the proposals benefit the world economy?
  • Would the proposals have harmful or hazardous consequences?
  • Would the proposals be in character with the area? Would they detract from the beauty of the area?
  • What would be the alternatives?
  • What would happen if nothing was done?
  • Would the proposals entail an influx of new people into the area?
  • What provision would need to be made for these newcomers?

  And so on, and so forth. But what should be noted is that conspicuously absent from this list would be any consideration of financial implications of the decision. Because, to put it simple, ‘finance’ won’t exist

  Going back to your hypothetical case, I think three more comments are in order:

  Firstly, I can’t see that disputes of this nature; were they to occur – which I doubt; would be resolved by ‘currying favour’ with those making the decisions. Any proposals would sink or float on their intrinsic merits. Because of nature of communist society, you could not, for example, have a situation where brown envelopes were being passed under the table to sway votes because financial inducements, or bribery, just could not happen. It is the proposals themselves that would carry the day.

  Secondly, in your example you talk about the second group wanting to construct a nuclear reactor. Well, in this instance, I would have thought the outcome is more than likely to result in a rejection of this proposal simply because of the safety risks involved and the problem of having to store radioactive waste for hundreds of years. That this proposals might result in ‘jobs’ is not irrelevant: People would not be compelled to engage in work in order to live as happens in present day society. Moreover, it is quite conceivable that in communist society, the notion of work might be radically different: For one thing, because  so many categories of work found in present day society would no longer exist (such as those involved in upholding property rights, banking, insurance, advertising, social security departments, charities, custom services, stock exchanges, payroll departments, insolvency agencies, pension providers, tax departments, mortgage providers, to name but a few, as well as those presently obliged to undertake lowly-paid, unfulfilling work behind cash registers, checking meters, issuing parking fines, guarding premises, working for gambling or lottery companies, selling their bodies for sex, acting as drug mules, issuing tickets, indulging in dubious home business scams, sorting out other people’s pay, running market stalls, bartering, executing bailiff duties, and so on and so forth.), and because strenuous efforts would be made to automate arduous, ‘low tech’, labour intensive work, such as labouring or dismantling ships, it is conceivable that for these and other reasons that perhaps just one or two days at most would be required of people on average. Moreover, people might (or might not) choose to dabble in a multitude of activities; thus giving them a more rounded experience of life. But there would be no ‘legal’ obligation to work. A very small minority might choose not to do much at all. But realistically, most people would yearn to work, particularly as the experience of work would be radically different from that which exists now. It would be a pleasant, convivial, and social experience. Moreover, I can foresee work becoming the basis for social esteem – unlike today, where wealth is the primary determinant of esteem. So, what I’m getting at is that if you were attempting to the sell the nuclear plant option could you could do so on the basis that would bringing hundreds of jobs to an economically depressed area, as it were, because such areas would not exist.

  Thirdly, one thing your hypothetical scenario does illustrate (perhaps unintentionally) is that there would need to be some way of reconciling potentially conflicting claims of one  geographical area with another, as well as with the larger region of which the aforesaid geographical area was a constituent part. Likewise, there would need to be some way of reconciling claims of the differing regions of the world. However, given that abundance would obtain in communist society, and that this society would run on co-operative lines, I shouldn’t think that it would be too difficult to work out an institutional framework for resolving such matters.

  Much of what I have already said applies to your second scenario as well. I would only like to add that you need to appreciate that we are talking about a world-wide society. Hence, what be a real problem on a local scale in present day society would not be a problem in a co-operative world-wide society where decisions were made on rational grounds, unencumbered by ‘financial’ considerations.

  Finally, and obviously, I dispute your claim that ‘communism practiced around the world has invariably failed.’ Communism in the sense I use the term has not been tried, and therefore has not failed. That said, however, you may also want to bear in mind that for most of mankind’s existence, people have actually lived communistically. I’m referring here to what has been termed ‘primitive communism’; such as exists with present day Bushmen society. It’s ironical too, that the one institution conservatives around the world go out of their way to extol in sugary, sanctimonious terms might, in some respects, be deemed communistic. That institution is, of course, the family, where conventionally, the cash nexus does not apply. Human nature accords very well with communism; it is capitalism that strains it to the limit: Create a dog-eat-dog world and its hardly surprising that people will bite each other.

   

   

   

• ALIENated said on Sep 23, 2009....

  Obviously, I have not read your communist / socialist manifesto, above, but ...

  Communism in the sense I use the term has not been tried, and therefore has not failed ...

  That is what every good socialist (like Ted Kennedy) thinks. It has not succeeded because I was not running it. Hmmm. Wonder whatever happened to the USSR.

• andycox said on Sep 23, 2009....

  ALIENated, the only sensible part of your comment is your observation that every good socialist thinks that communism has not been tried, and therefore has not failed. The rest is plain daft: *Ted Kennedy was no socialist . *Communism - in the sense I use the word - would be a democratic society, and not 'run' by an individual. *Your reference to the USSR has no bearing on the debate: The USSR was a state capitalist regime. I really thnk it would be more fruitful if we acknowledged the fact that we use the words 'socialism' and communism' in utterly different ways, and moved on from that. You and others keep harping on about Cuba, the USSR, China etc. Do you not understand that I'm in agreement with a lot of what you say about these state capitalist regimes (despite my taking issue with some of the facts you marshall)? This being the case, all you're doing is knocking down an aunt sally. So lets drop the semantic quibbles, and get to the meat of the matter. If it helps, propose a neutral term to denote what I understand by the terms 'socialism' or 'communism', and we'll take it from there. What do you think?

• stopmediabias said on Sep 23, 2009....

  You are completely clouding the issue with this "state capitalist regime" bullshit.  Cuba and China are Socialist/Communist countries, period.  There may be little trickles of capitalism in these countries but for the most part their governments have a savage and brutal control of their people.  Just on this alone it doesn't matter what people own or what stature they are, if at any time their government can and will break down their doors and murder their family and torture them then what teeny tiny bit of freedom they have doesn't really matter. 

  Lets get beyond definitions and get into specific issues.  Excuse our crass and sometimes vulgar responses.  Many of us believe your ideas are offending and a threat to our way of life.

  As far as we know socialists believe:

  Every member of a population should have some form of health coverage that is paid for by the government with money that is taxed from the citizens.  Do you agree with this, in less than 900 words?

  Profits and money should be distributed among the population and for the good the people so that everyone is equal and on a level playing field.  Do you agree with this? 

• andycox said on Sep 24, 2009....

  Stopmediabias, goodness; it's really hard work trying to get through to you. Either you're not actually reading my responses, or you have  some serious cognitive deficits. Let me make this simple for you:
  1. What you call 'socialism' or 'communism', I call 'state capitalism'. Period.(I've explained my grounds for doing so, and won't inflict these on you again)
  2. Do the Chinese and Cuban governments exert a 'savage and brutal control (over) their people'? YES. I've consistently attacked these brutal state capitalist regimes throughout my posts. WHY are you suggesting otherwise?
  3. You ask me if I agree with the proposition that 'Every member of a population should have some form of health coverage that is paid for by the government with money that is taxed from the citizens.' My answer is NO. I believe everything that all goods and services, including healthcare, should be FREELY available. That's one of the defining characteristics of socialism/communism.
  4. You ask me if I agree with the proposition that 'Profits and money should be distributed among the population and for the good the people so that everyone is equal and on a level playing field' My answer is NO. Profits and money would have no place in socialism/communism - that's another defing characteristic of this system. It is naive to think capitalism could operate on the basis of an equitable distribtion of profits and money. That runs counter to the whole rationale for this profit-driven monster.

  Try to understand, Stopmediabias, you cannot impute views to me on the basis of your definitions of socialism/communism. when mine are utterly different. Once this is acknowledged, we can move on.

• ALIENated said on Sep 24, 2009....

  Whatever. I think you are hiding behind semantics. You want to use a term to describe the horrible systems we call "Socialism" and "Communism" that contains the word "Capitalism". It is like wanting to call "murder" something like "Glenn Beck" or "Rush Limbaugh", somehow linking a horrible thing to a not so horrible thing, as if the name somehow changes the nature of the horrible thing. Whatever floats your boat.

  However, we do understand what you are trying to say. You are trying to talk about a perfect system of government where everyone does their part, works, pays taxes, and everyone shares in the profits, the goods produced, and the services. In your perfect system of government, no one has to be told what to do, they have every freedom to be themselves, yet they still contribute to the common good and take care of their families and neighbors. People have liquor, but they do not drink too much. They have food and share it with others. There is magically enough doctors, nurses, and hospitals to supply everyone with free healthcare.

  Hmmmmm. The problem is that most people call that perfect system either "Utopia" or "Heaven" and you want to call it "Socialism" and "Communism". I suppose we can agree that when you say "Socialism" and "Communism" we can think "Utopia" or "Heaven" and when we say "Socialism" and "Communism" we mean "disfunctioning, oppressive systems that limit our freedoms and tax us into poverty". That should be easy enough because we will only have to remember to play this word game with you. Most everyone else has a dictionary.

• stopmediabias said on Sep 24, 2009....

  No-one is going to play this game with you.  You can't take a word and just make up your own definition of it.  Socialism is socialism and communism is communism, and capitalism is capitalism.  If you have your own idea for a form of government fine but isn't kind of silly to mix it with historically terrible forms of governments when it technically has nothing to do with them?  There are Americans who believe we should have an actual socialism where we pay a majority of the money we earn in taxes so the government can wipe our asses for us.

• curmudgeon said on Sep 25, 2009....

  andy - the family is NOT a model of communism, even as you describe. Even within a household, some objects are held in common while others belong to respective members. Decisions are NOT made democratically - infants and small children are left out of key decision making processes, the extremely infirm are at best informed what will be done with them, and the main providers are also the key decision makers. In fact, once younger family members grow more or less equal in ability to decide for themselves, they split off to form their own families and live in ways they prefer. In other parts of the world where branches of families live together, there is generally a very strict hierarchy.
  
  From the films I saw in Anthropology class, I vaguely remember the Bushmen going to war with each other. In other primitive groups, meat from the hunt is distributed not equally but according to status within the group. Everyone is provided for, but the distribution was hardly equal and completely undemocratic. Our public education system here in the US practices this model, whatever platitudes about equality it preaches.
  
  And I agree with you - your form of communism has never been tried because it is complete fantasy. You cannot foresee conflict over resources ever occurring because gain and loss will mean nothing to human beings. I just do not see humans shifting in nature this way - at least in my lifetime.
  
  The great thing about capitalism is that as one acquires capital, one is free to choose what to do with one's resources. One can leverage these resources to gain more resources, or one can use acquired capital to provide materials and opportunities for others. Clearly, this form of production has its negative consequences, but I tend to see the great and good that has come of it along with the bad, and would much rather spend my time trying to find ways to get the system we have to benefit an even greater number of people than to place my hope in global transformation of human nature.
  
  The more I read your stuff, the more intriguing it becomes, I will give you that!
  

• andycox said on Sep 26, 2009....

  Stopmedias & ALIENated.

  Hi guys, sorry for the delay in responding - I’ve had a lot of work on. Anyhow, back to the argument:

  Basically, there are two issues here:

  1.          The labels

  2.          The concepts to which the labels apply

   

  Believe it or not, I am not overly hung up about the labels, and, yes, I’ll concede that in the US the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ are generally used in the way you use them (I say in the US, because there seems to be a shame-faced reticence on the part of mainstream parties in other Western countries who may have previously claimed ‘socialist credentials’ to apply either of these terms to themselves – for example, the Labour Party in the UK, which, since Blair, has back-pedalled furiously to rid itself of any hint of ‘socialism’. The more liberal use of the term ‘socialism’ in the US probably reflects the fact no government in the US has ever claimed to be ‘socialist’)

  However, I am still loath to use the labels ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ to refer to anything other than  a democratic world-wide society in which the means of production are commonly owned, goods and services are freely available, and money, wages and profit don’t exist.  My reasons for saying so are as follows:

  Firstly, from an historical perspective the terms most definitely were widely used in this sense – as well as other senses, admittedly - prior to the Bolshevik revolution. The term ‘socialist’ is found for the first time in the Owenite Co-operative Magazine of November 1827, where it referred to a society of common ownership. Marx and Engels - who must surely count as the authoritative sources in this debate - themselves, used the words ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ interchangeably to refer to a society of common ownership. Admittedly, they gave few other details about what they thought socialism would be like beyond what I have spelt out already. But both wrote at length about what they thought socialism would not be like via a critique of ‘other socialisms’. The ‘other socialisms’, according to Hal Draper, were:

  •    Utopian Socialism. Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen gave useful criticisms of existing society and interesting possibilities for a future society, but they were politically naïve about how this was to come about.
  •  Sentimental Socialism. Not a school of socialism as such but a tendency to be found in various schools, substituting the power of love, humanity or morality for the class struggle
  •  Anarchism. Stirner, Proudhon and Bakunin were criticised for failing to see the authoritarianism inherent in the anti-democratic nature of anarchism.
  •  Reactionary Anti-capitalisms. All those who yearn for a pre-capitalist ‘golden age’ of harmony, plenty etc., as found for example in the writings of Thomas Carlyle.
  •  Boulangism. After General Georges Boulanger in France, an arch-opportunist and a forerunner of ‘National Socialism’.
  •  Bismarckian Socialism (or ‘State Socialism’). In late nineteenth century Germany, the Bismarck regime introduced nationalisation and social-welfare reforms. To a large extent this was an attempt to undermine and ‘steal the thunder’ of growing support for the reformist German Social Democratic Party.

  It is this latter Bismarckian, ‘statist’ conception of ‘socialism’ which is what you guys have in mind when referring to ‘socialism’. But the policies actually pursued by so-called ‘socialist’ regimes - nationalisation, social welfare provision, free compulsory education, etc. - have also been pursued by openly pro-capitalist governments. Witness the recent state takeover of banks in the US and Europe. Thus, there is nothing inherently anti-capitalist about such reforms, or any of the measures pursued by any Labour/Social Democratic/’Socialist’ government worldwide.

  I should also say that, insofar as I am coming mainly from a Marxist angle, I feel that this is grounds enough to claim legitimacy for the way I use the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’, given the tremendous  stature of Marx and Engels in the history of socialist/communist thought. It is not me idiosyncratically choosing to use these terms in this manner, believe me, Stopmediabias. The usage has a long pedigree, far older than the one you employ when describing variants of state capitalism.

  The word ‘communism’ originated amongst revolutionary groups in France in the 1830s, around about the same time as Owenite groups in Britain began using the word ‘socialism’. As I’ve said, Marx and Engels used both words interchangeably. In fact, in their earlier years on the Continent they usually referred to themselves and the working class movement as communist;  and later in Britain as socialist. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx made a distinction between two stages of ‘communist society’, both based on common ownership: a lower stage, with individual consumption being rationed, possibly by the use of labour-time vouchers, and a higher stage in which each person contributes to society according to ability and draws from the common stock according to needs. In both stages, however, there would be no money economy or state. (Modern socialists argue that technological progress has now rendered this lower stage unnecessary)  But the Marxian distinction contrasts greatly with that proposed by Lenin, who in his State and Revolution (1917), labelled the earlier stage ‘socialism’ and insisted that this transitional stage would be characterised by a money economy and the persistence of the state.

  This is an extremely important point: Leninist distortions of Marx (necessitated by the fact that socialism/communism was simply NOT feasible in the economically backward Russia of 1917), as well as the cynical misrepresentation of what socialism/communism stands for by a rag-tag procession of dictators from Stalin and Mao Tse Tung to Castro and Pol Pot is one of the reasons for the negative connotations attaching to, and the misunderstandings of, these terms. What all of these ‘leaders’ have in common is their cynical misuse of the terms in order to give their ruthless regimes a veneer of intellectual respectability, and garner support from naïve ‘left-wingers’ the world over. Events and circumstances basically determined what their options were, and they tried to make Marxism justify what was happening in their respective countries by distorting it out of all recognition. This brings me to the second reason for not accepting these flawed definitions of socialism/communism: Because to do so is basically to give credence to the ridiculous attempts by these ruthless leaders to gain legitimacy for their frankly heinous regimes, and in so doing, you are intellectually complicit in bolstering similar regimes today, which likewise resort to such falsification. If you want to challenge them the best way to do so is to question their credentials, scrutinise their core values, and strip away their pretence. And I would submit that this means not according them the labels ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’

  My third reason for not referring to state capitalism as ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’, and that is the term ‘state capitalism’ is a pretty accurate and adequate description of what exists in  ‘state capitalist’ countries. Refer to my earlier justifications for using this term to describe the likes of Soviet Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea et al.  I really don’t see the need to go over these yet again. It is ALSO a term which is employed in political commentary – it is NOT a term I’ve invented. You may find the Wikipedia article on state capitalism of interest; check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism. And here’s another link to a business site which claims to be ‘the main source of business information related to foreign assistance, including tenders, procurements, project information, and foreign aid news from World Bank, UNDP, USAID, DFID, ADB, and more.’: http://www.devex.com/articles/state-capitalism-comes-of-age. If this  ‘business site’ has no difficulty calling a spade a spade, how is that you cannot see that when the state involves itself in investing capital in enterprises with a view to realising a profit, that that justifies calling a system running along these lines ‘state capitalism’? If this hasn’t convinced you then here’s something else that might: Who said this?

   

  ‘What is state capitalism under Soviet power? To achieve state capitalism at the present time means putting into effect the accounting and control the capitalist’ classes carried out. We see a sample of state capitalism in Germany. We know that Germany has proved superior to us :.. state capitalism would-be our salvation; if we had it in Russia, the transition to full socialism would be easy, would be within our grasp, because state capitalism is something centralized, calculated, controlled and socialized, and that is exactly what we lack… Only the development of state capitalism, only the painstaking establishment of accounting and control, only the strictest organization and labour discipline, will lead us to socialism. Without this there is no socialism’

   

  Yep, I suspect you’ve guessed it – it was Lenin in 1918. QED, I would have thought!

   

  One last thing, ALIENated. You say: ‘However, we do understand what you are trying to say. You are trying to talk about a perfect system of government where everyone does their part, works, pays taxes, and everyone shares in the profits, the goods produced, and the services’ Obviously, you haven’t understood what I’ve said at all because with socialism/communism, there would be no taxes, there would be no profits. Have a look at my previous posts for a full explanation.

• ALIENated said on Sep 26, 2009....

  No taxes, no profits? Why should I get up in the morning? I might as well buy myself a boat and live on the river and fish while mankind slughters each other for food and bandages. TO ME, Socialism / Communism is a way for the weak, the lazy, and the poor to run the system. Most good liberals believe in evolution, which stongly relies on the survival of the fittest. There is a scene in the movie Dr. Zhivago that is a perfect example of S / C to me. When the Revolution is over, the good doctor returns to the house where he grew up in Moscow only to find it has been taken over by the Party. Some big lady in uniform runs the house which then houses many people. She tells Zhivago that the house was too big for one family and The Party took it over. Who wants to live in that kind of world? Where The Party determines what is too this or too that. Not me. I will take capitalism, warts and all, over S / C any day. And I am not sure you can make a long enough comment to convince me otherwise. I am simply for less government control over everything and less government involvement in my life and decisions, lower taxes, etc. I think the kind of government you are talking about goes against human nature and will never be achieved by Man.

• andycox said on Sep 26, 2009....

  I couldn’t resist it, but here’s another quote; this time from Engels, a greatly overlooked figure in the history of Socialist/Communist thought. Engels made it quite clear that the involvement of the state in the economy did amount to Socialism in his Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Allen and Unwin, 1892 ; pp. 71-2) where he pointed out that “The modern State, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the State of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers – proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.” So my point is that if Engels was thinking along these lines, then advocating state ownership is not consistent with the Marxist take on socialism/communism

• andycox said on Sep 26, 2009....

  Sorry,that should read: 'Engels made it quite clear that the involvement of the state in the economy did NOT amount to Socialism'

• andycox said on Sep 26, 2009....

  Hi Curmudgeon & ALIENated,

  A couple of things:

  Firstly, I’ve never suggested that under communism personal things would not ‘belong’ to individuals, in the sense of being reserved for their exclusive use. Think about it, if this wasn’t the case, you could end up with ridiculous situations, such as someone feeling quite entitled to barge into his neighbours’ house and help himself to the contents of their fridge. Or linen cupboard. Or whatever. (Hopefully, this addresses your Dr. Zhivago scenario, ALIENated ). Nor do I believe that there will never be disputes over some things; for example, two people might covet a rare book, and both might insist that they had come across it first. Clearly, new ways of settling such disputes will have to be fashioned. I cannot be too specific about these; they may, in any case, differ in different parts of the world, and be in part informed by pre-communist mores. Who knows? But I do firmly believe that such disputes will be extremely uncommon, and easily rectified, because:

  1.      In a world where everyone has free access to goods and services, what would be the point of coveting, say, someone else’s television set when you could obtain one yourself from a local distribution centre?

  2.      You’ve got to look at this issue in the context of the radically different ethos that would undoubtedly prevail in the event of communism being established. In today’s capitalistic world, we are constantly bombarded with inducements to buy, buy, buy. From a very young age, kids are actively encouraged to be acquisitive; with us parents bearing the brunt of their ‘pester power’. Moreover, status – particularly in the ‘upper reaches’ of society is often expressed through conspicuous consumption – through the acquisition of things; yachts, multiple flashy cars, numerous mansions, you get the picture. In other words, what we have today is materialistic culture artificially foisted on us, and affecting the way we behave – all for the reason that because capitalism is about maximising profits by encouraging people to buy more and more, even if what they buy is utter crap and deliberately designed with built-in obsolescence. Under Communism, on the other hand, there would be no such imperative to blindly consume. Why should there be? Most people’s consumption would be modest and judicious, I should imagine. And correspondingly, people’s attitudes towards the acquisition of things would be far less fraught and intense than they are today; thus making conflicts over particular things a pretty rare event.

  3.      I think it’s almost inevitable too that communism will be a far more consensual, socially minded, and, yes, moral society than capitalism is. (Capitalism, seems to encourage  the atomisation of human beings and their alienation  from the each other, as you must obviously know, ALIENated) Hence it is reasonable to suppose that infractions/disruptions of social order will be more likely to cause discomfort in those responsible; with the consequence that they will be less likely to occur.

  So, going back to your comments on the family, Curmudgeon, I still feel that the family bears comparison with communism, because, just as is the case in the family, people will hold some things in common whilst other things will be for their exclusive use. Moreover, no cash nexus will come between people in communism, just as members of a family don’t ordinarily pay/charge each other for goods and services. An important category of things that will be held in common under communism is, of course, the means of production, and the manner in which these are used will be collectively determined.

  I’m not sure that you altogether accurate in your assessment of Bushman society, by the way, Curm. I’m not an authority, let it be said, but I’ve always understood that Bushman society has been relatively speaking very egalitarian and peaceful. Here’s a link that may interest you: http://ignca.nic.in/ps_05019.htm. The author of this article states:

   

  ‘Notwithstanding the frequency of social interaction between individual members and households of the various central Kalahari band societies, and the total absence of interband warfare, no society of bands exists. The separate bands do not interact, in any organized way, in ritual, economic or other social activities. Each band considers itself to be complete in itself and autonomous in respect of other bands.’

   

  Whilst obviously, I’m not advocating a return to primitive communism, and there are, of course, important differences between primitive and advanced communism, I do believe that much can be learnt from these extremely culturally-rich primitive societies. There is, for example, quite an illuminating account on conflict resolution in the above-mentioned article, which sort of chimes with some of the things I’ve been saying about conflict resolution in advanced communism.

   

  The whole point behind my comment that human beings have for most of their existence (perhaps 95 %?) lived in primitive communistic societies was to dispel the myth that it is ‘not in our nature’ to live communistically. Present day society places constraints and restraints upon all of us to varying degrees, and capitalism’s dictum being "Every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost”, it is hardly surprising that people behave accordingly. But that’s not a reflection on human nature; rather it’s a reflection upon the society we live in. This is an issue I deal with extensively in  ‘A Point of View’ (http://andycox1953.webs.com/ ) And when you extol the benefits of capitalism, Curm, I think you do so exclusively from the standpoint of the capitalist. This totally regards the viewpoint of that 95% of us who have neither the wherewithal or opportunity to ‘leverage resources to gain more resources’. That it might nevertheless be possible to do so is purely academic.

• SeanRenaud said on Sep 26, 2009....

  I only glanced over the responses.  It seemed to be mostly the same stuff reworded slightly.  Ergo if I say something that was said please leave my head intact. 

  I'll start with my "allies".  I like that word, particularly when it is applied ot this bunch because despite our agreeing on many things we NEVER speak on those things.  Nobody (but occasionally me) talks about illegal immigration.  No matter flaunts being proud of being capitalist.  Occasionally ALIEN and I will get on a tear about Bond, James Bond, and why Daneil Craig must have been picked by someone who though he was casting Generic Spy Movie and not James Bond. 

  That said the attitude of "socialism hasn't worked because I wasn't running it" is still a valid meme.  I'm going to contradict myself to a degree but bear with me.  In the world of science there are a great many things that are thought to be impossible or were thought to be impossible that have been proven possible as time and people have advanced.  Until (don't quote me on the birthday) a little less than one hundred years ago it was impossible to fly.  Now nobody bats an eye about men going to refuel a Space Station.  Do I need to talk about how your cell phone is more powerful than all the computers combined that sent men to the moon?  They call it Political Science because the impossible can become possible.

  That said anybody who's paid attention, particularly to a democracy knows that Politics isn't a science.  Not really.  It's an art.  It's more important to be flashy and handsome (yes I'm talking to you JFK) than it is to be inteligent.  It is better to be charismatic than it is to be experienced.  It doesn't hurt if you are "royalty"  I hate quoting the Bible but God warned the Isrealites time and time again against having a king and they begged and begged and begged until he delivered.  America tried to make George Washington king and honestly we've been trying ever since.  Say what you want about how Bush beat Gore because he was the better candidate (he wasn't) but tell me that being a Kennedy doesn't automatically grant you a seat in Congress that you simply show up for.  Americans are people and people like royalty.  Anyway I'm rambling, (with a point) but rambling.  The point is that just because something hasn't worked before doesn't mean that it can't work now.  The USSR was a country that was constantly at war.  It was a country without computers and cell phones.  The world changed.

  Now onto the new guy.

  1.  It's difficult to debate your first point Andy and it almost by definition has to be your last point.  Mostly because I can't use anything currently or in the past being used to say this is what the problem is.  You've created a false front against which there can be no victory.  I would like to point out however that Capitalism.  Good old fashioned greed center Capitalism has done more than any other single system to bring people together.  Even Christianity spready by word and sword (interesting how one is only one more letter. . . .) didn't infect China or India or the Middle East in the same way that Nike and McDonalds has.  While globalism is causing problems all its own and I don't wish to discuss all of the merits and faults of say outsourcing right now there is little denying the unifying power it's had globally. 

  It actually performs the difficult task of spreading language which particularly in certain places (Africa for example) remains an issue even in relatively small geographic areas.  If ever there was a plan to unite the people of the world it is was and shall ever be Capitalism.

  2.  You're second point is awkward.  It's true, if we wanted we could most likely feed the entire world and with little difficulty.  I'm simply accepting the numbers as they are however and not questioning things such as fertility in other parts of the world, transport costs and times etc etc.  I simply don't care to debate you on that point so I'll bow down and let you have it.  Housing is rather a different issue.  For starters the majority of homeless people in the US have various mental issues and they can't be kept in shelters because they won't stay.  Even then why would you use the UK?  Why not India?  Why not China?  Why not a place with some PEOPLE.  It's the equivalent of me saying that why are there homeless people in California when there are enough vacant homes to take in all the people living in Alaska?  I challenge your numbers anyway but that's beside the point.

  Lets say for the sake of debate that we could both feed and house people for free.  Mostly because I believe that we can do this and should move in that direction.  At the very least there are enough closed military bases that I see no reason why people shouldn't be stacked 80 strong in bunkbeds and given communal showers for free if that is how they choose to live.  Just you know, don't bring your girlfriend unless you're prepared to share. 

  I even don't have a problem with feeding people for free.  Bare minimun required to remain reasonable healty. 

  Where do we draw the line though.  Do people deserve to have separate homes?  Separate rooms?  How much square footage (for the sake of argument do they deserve more room than for a bed and dresser?)  Do they deserve a private washer and dryer?  Private shower?  Parking spots?  How many?  These are important details because.

  What about food?  Again if you want to feed people cabbage and intestine stew every night I don't give a shit.  (Say something about intestines.  I"m an African American.  I eat chitlins EVERY New Years (Pig intestines for any who don't know), Chicken Feet (though they are too much work so I usually pass, like mini crab legs) pig ears, ate pig brains several times a year until they became impossible to get in California due to new health regulations, and chicken gizzards which is hearts and kidneys.  It's all quite edible and some of it is quite tasty. I've just learned not to tell white people what it is prior and sometimes ever)  I know we could afford that because we throw much of that shit away.  But do you mean they deserve steak?  Be specific.

  3. I might read your blog later.  Fact is that there is no way that a democratically decided "tier" system would last if it wasn't capitalist.  There have long been teirs (or occasionaly castes) to society.  And I'm a big fan of raising the death tax.  I believe (as opposed to all of my allies) that an important part of Capitalism is that you EARN what you have.  All of it.  Being born to wealth defeats the very purpose of Capitalism and it has other reprocusions.  To quote "Dollhouse" Men born into wealth either coast or shoot for the stars.  Neither of those are true options to the common man.  True occasionally someone comes alone does all the right things and rises from the under class to be upper class but the fact is that most men are born, live and die in the same class.

  The problem with a "democraticly" acheived system is that the losers have always out numbered the winners.  And they are bitter as a whole.  Some are stupid (the stupid ones are the poor who still vote Republican)  They would never ever grant sufficient rewards for excelling to inspire people to do that.

  4.  I really want to just laugh here. Either something is yours and you have a claim to it or anybody can use it whenever they want.  There is no inbetween.  I can't even make an inteligent response here and I suspect I've just validated non idea by not just posting a series of smilies.

  5. There are no luxury items?

  6.  I will not do what you did for your sixth point.  Instead of using a bunch of big words at once hoping to make people agree because they do not know what you mean I will say it in one word.  NO.

   

• andycox said on Sep 28, 2009....

  Hi Sean, and welcome,

  You raise a number of interesting points, so I’ll just work my way down through your response, and reply to whatever merits a reply.

  The proposition ‘socialism hasn't worked because I wasn't running it’ cannot be valid because socialism would be fundamentally democratic, and therefore run on the basis of majority rule, with built-in safeguards addressing the concerns of the dissenting minority, whatever the issue. In any case, the notion of being ‘ruled over,’ or ‘lead by’, someone is anathema to socialists. I’m not quite sure where you were going with your observations on leaders, but if you were expressing a certain disdain for the American tendency to treat certain of political figures as ‘royalty’, then I’m with you on that. ( Talking of royalty, this is am institution I particularly despise: How grown adults can feel obliged to bow and scrape in the presence of a bunch of mediocrities, who owe their privileged positions solely to the propensity of their vile murderous forebears to hack and slash their way to top of the pile, well, it’s beyond me!)

  I fully concur too with your comments on the universalising tendency within capitalism; on its proclivity for bring people together. Capitalism has an unstoppable dynamic that drives it to seek out new markets, new sources of raw material s, new trade routes etc. In the process, it is inevitable that it brings people together. In fact, looking at it historically, it’s fair comment to say that at its outset it was a socially progressive force, sweeping away many of the old mediaeval customs that thwarted the lives of individuals, facilitating the introduction of new forms of technology, and enriching the lives of those who could afford the increasingly diverse products its merchants brought to the market. Now, of course, it is the dominant economic system everywhere in the world, from Bhutan to Bolivia, from China to Canada. But my point is that this bloated all-pervasive system no longer has a progressive agenda, it is now well past its ‘sell by date’ as it increasingly finds it more and more difficult to accommodate advances in technology. This is basically what Marx was saying in his account of the developing conflict between the ‘forces’ and ‘relations’ of production. Additionally, population growth and the depletion of natural resources, are putting additional strains on capitalism, accelerating competition between players on the world market, and thus increasing the prospect of wars breaking out in all sorts of places. Frighteningly, its blind adherence to the profit motive means that it is compelled to carry on doing the very things that are exacerbating global warming – like cutting down tropical forests, because Indonesian and Brazilian logging companies make a lot of money from selling hardwoods; like encouraging car use, because car manufacturers need to boost their profit margins, and so on. The point is that the villains in these situations – the logging companies and the car manufacturers have no option but to do what they do, If they don’t they’ll go to the wall and others will step into the breach. That’s simply how capitalism operates. All it heeds is the profit margin; nothing else gets a serious look-in.

  With regard to your comment on homelessness, here’s the link to the site that claimed there are enough empty house in the US to house the entire population of the UK (60 million): http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/enough-empty-houses.php

   I’m not sure what you’re driving at when you ask why I’ve used the UK to illustrate the point. Well, I didn’t – it was the author of the article, and I guess he did so merely to illustrate the enormity of the problem. The accuracy of this figure is borne out by other sources, which state that there are currently around 18 – 19 million empty houses in the US (See, for example: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=a0IfdN5GEvcQ )

  This is not a problem unique to the US: According to The Empty Homes Agency, there are an estimated 870,000 empty homes in the UK and enough empty commercial property to create 420,000 new homes (28 September 2009)

   (See http://www.bbc.co.uk/homes/property/buying_rescueahouse1.shtml )

  I take your point about mental illness being a factor in homelessness in the US, although both of these variables could be either cause or effect. But what outrages me, and should outrage everyone is that such a thing as homelessness (there are around 744,000 homeless people in the US. See http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-10-homeless_x.htm ) should exist at all amidst a surfeit of empty houses. You have to look at the warped logic of capitalism to make sense of this. And why should cramped, decommissioned military bases should be used to resolve the problem? In socialism, houses will be built to the highest standards: environmental, aesthetic, constructional, whatever. Nothing would stand in the way of this – financial constraints would not exist. So, houses would be built to last, and afford their occupiers comfort and pleasure.

  Your comments on the provision of food beg questions too. It’s not the case that you’d have some sort of authority stipulating what food people would have to have. No. People would make their own choices, and there would be some system for flagging up requirements, and for ensuring continuity of supply. Technically, this would not to be too difficult to set up: Even today, you have computers tracking the purchasing habits of billions of people around the world. Under socialism, this technology would ensure they got what the wanted. Systems would also be devised to address shortages and unavailability.

  Sean, I don’t quite follow your comments about ‘tiers’. What I had in mind were the various levels of governance: local, regional, continental, and world-wide. There would need to be some understanding as to what sort of issues were the primarily the concern of a particular tier. For example, the construction of a road linking two local areas might have ‘region-wide’ implications, but there might be widespread reluctance to have this road in one of the local areas. How would this issue be resolved? I think you’d have to have some sort of world constitution, legitimised be a world-wide referendum, which provided guidelines on such matters. The existence of tiers of governance is not something intrinsic to capitalism: Even the Roman Empire had provinces that were in turn subdivided into local areas. I do accept your remarks about social mobility, however: Many Americans seem to have a naïve faith in the ‘land of opportunity myth’, which is that if you simply knuckle down and work hard, you’ll make good. For one or two out of hundred, I guess this does happen. But for the rest, life can be very disappointing. And as I have pointed out elsewhere, as far as ‘social mobility goes, America is way down the ranking of all countries: See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8162616.stm

  With regard to your comments on property and the notion of ownership, I think you need to bear in mind with the establishment of socialism/communism, a  wholly different legal famework would come into existence. Correspondingly, much of the language of jurisprudence would change as well. When you say, in this day and age, that you ‘own’ something, what does that mean?  Here are a few of the connotations that may apply to this concept :

  • Only you have the right to use it
  • You can sell the property in question
  • You can ‘gift’ it someone
  • You can use it to derive an income
  • You have the right to alter or destroy it
  • You can pass it on to someone in your will
  • No one else can access it without your say so.
  • You can change its usage
  • You can change its appearance
  • You can opt not to do anything with it at all
  • There exists a legal document confirming that you are the owner, that you have legal title

   

  -and so on, and so forth. So really, ‘property’ it is quite a complex concept. My point is that when socialism/communism is established, many of the aforementioned connotations could not apply; for example, houses or cars could not be sold because money would not exist. Or they might be fundamentally amended to take account of the new legal reality; for example, assuming a particular family had opted to live as a nuclear family (though I would imagine  that all sorts of other collective social arrangements might come into being with the establishment of socialism/communism) and the children wanted to live on the family house, their entitlement to do so would be based on the fact that they were living there, not anyone’s possession of a piece of paper, if you see what I mean . So, all in all, property ownership, in the sense that we use the term today would not exist, but entitlement – or, if it makes you happy, a rather more curtailed form of ownership (in which only some of the aforementioned connotations apply) – would. I should also point out that an essential feature of socialism/communism is the common ownership of the means of production. It is not about common ownership of goods and services. Such an idea doesn’t even make sense – it is individuals that consume.

  The notion of ‘luxury’ once again has to be considered in context. Why might something be considered a ‘luxury’ today? Because either it is hideously expensive, of high quality, not strictly necessary, or any combination of these. Nothing would be expensive when socialism/communism was established, because nothing would be sold. Things would be of good quality because the capitalist requirement to minimise production costs would not obtain. As to unnecessary things being produced, well, I can’t see this being a common thing: Today the consumption of ‘unnecessary’ things (think of Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection, for example) often serves an ulterior purpose; such as signifying status , or is encouraged simply because capitalism has inflicted a materialistic culture on the world driving people to manically buy things regardless of whether these are actually needed or not.

• stopmediabias said on Oct 04, 2009....

  Do you actually think if this would work that it wouldn't have been tried by now and hasn't been tried.  In this mountain of rhetoric you seemed to be leaving something out.  Who exactly coordinates all of this?  That is where the big nasty fly buzzes right into your fantasy land.  Under a Democratic/Capitalist society we have safety measures like free speech, the right to vote, and all these other things that keep our leaders from becoming dictators.  In your communist/socialist (which by definition is not communist and/or socialist) happy place, what it would take to coordinate all of that would shift power to a few instead of the whole.

• SeanRenaud said on Oct 04, 2009....

  1.        My point about socialism hasn’t worked because you weren’t running it wasn’t about who would be in charge.  It was about your claim of it’s never been done this way and it will work this way if we try.  ALIEN’s repeated stance is “if God meant for man to fly he would have given us wings.”  We proved either the attitude or God wrong about a hundred years back.

  2.       My point is that I believe Royalty is hardwired into human beings.  We are social animals and crave order.  Its part of what keeps us all from killing each other.  And of course their ancestors hacked and slashed their way to the top.  That is, and will forever be the way that we get what we want in this world.  When it stops we stop.

  3.       I’m not entirely sure even after following your links around what your point is about homelessness other than it happens.  Sure we could house them but not only would that cost money but it would also stand in the way of progress.

  4.       Where do you get the money to build these houses to the highest standards?  Where does the labor come from?  Who sets the standard?  Since the home isn’t “yours” can you modify it?  What if your modification is something everybody wants?  What happens when more people want to live in one area (say beach front) and less people want to live in another (say desert) area.  Who gets what houses and why without money to vote?  The reason to use military housing for the homeless is that it is a home, it’ll keep em dry and warm and it also isn’t the kind of place you want to say, it isn’t the kind of place you want to raise a family so you will be inspired to work harder and get out of that place.

  5.       You’re entire point on food is impossible.  I don’t even understand how you think it could work.  Rationing is the ONLY way you could even potentially make this plan work.  Setting up a computer to track eating habits isn’t going to increase the amount of King Crab in the ocean.   Not to mention we already overfish in many cases and need to seriously rethink our strategies WITHOUT us promising the entire world Swordfish for dinner 7 days a week.  Capitalism rations food as well, it’s just handled by what’s available and what you can afford.  The way you describe Socialism such a thing isn’t possible because you can’t give it to some and not to all.  That would create haves and have nots which undermines the whole system.

  6.       My point about tiers is that you do know that even with today’s technology true democracy is impossible right?  It’s too damned slow and unwieldy.   There have to be people making decisions for the masses.  You need a hierarchy *and even if you didn’t I believe human beings crave hierarchy*  When there is a sudden change in X, we’ll say a hurricane knocks out some oil rigs.  We can’t wait for a vote, we have to take action and the people who are in this positions will automatically be raised above other socially.  What else is important is that if we elect these people democratically they are basically going to be like our politicians today, just worse.  They will be hired based on the number of favors they hand out.

  7.       Ownership of the means of production is still the ownership of the object.  Socialist like to try to separate these things out into two separate things but they are not.  A car factory is in fact a good, it is a good that requires maintenense that in your plan would basically have to fall out of the sky.  The same goes with your housing plan.  I mean as far as I can tell you’re plan is basically first come first serve.  If social mobility is stunted in this country now imagine what it’s going to be like when you’ve changed the world so that only the people who’ve been there for hundreds of years can get a damned thing.  IT’s a HUGE step in the wrong direction.  What’s more is houses are kinda simple.  You live in them and put all your stuff in them and human beings are naturally predisposed to avoid other peoples dwellings.  But what about other things.  If I don’t OWN my car what’s to stop someone from taking it to Vegas and then getting a ride back with a friend.  He didn’t steal it of course, because it wasn’t mine.  Or if you want to say I owned it if we are going nuclear do four people rate four cars (one per person) do they rate two (one for each of the “heads of household”.  What about gas (or however we fuel our cars) do we rate whatever the average commute is?  All of these are vital to your plan and have no way of being worked out intelligently.  Not until we have the ability produce a great deal more than we can now.

  8.       What about simply rare items to begin with.  Even if you say no individual gets to “own” say the origincal copy of the US Constitution in what museum will we store it and why?  What about people who do jobs that require special vehicles.  God help you if you try to take my car off roading, you’d get all of ten feet and little Suzie would never get her medicine.  Course if little Suzie is sixty miles down the freeway good luck beating me in a jeep.  What about food?  Some foods take longer to create, not just prepare but longer to create.  Your plan has nothing in place to deal with this either.

  In short there may be a way to make socialism work but most of your plan is so far away from it that it would be folly to try it this way.  There is an important step towards “socialism” that we should be taking in America however and in one case we have specifically worked against socialism because it was rapidly becoming inevitable.

   

  1.        Food (by which I basically mean grains) should be free or approaching free.  We intitentionally stopped this from happening.  We literally pay farmers not to grow crops so we can artificially restrict the food supply and drive prices upward.  (and they are still acceptable where they are) but we should be aiming towards this as a goal.  You wouldn’t get to eat whatever you wanted whenever you wanted but if oatmeal and probably some other shit was what you could live off of go for it.

  2.       Water.  This planet is mostly water.  Yeah it’ll cost some money initially to get all of the desalinations plans set up and to improve our water treatment plants so on and so forth but it can and should be done. 

  3.       Electricity.  Half the reason we pay for electricity in this nation is because we have foolishly stopped creating additional plants.  This is everybody’s fault but largely a problem of the left and the environmentalist movement.  We should be building nuclear power plants.  It should basically be law that in the South western United states that buildings come with Solar Panels all over the roof.  And it’s sheer madness that we have oceans and nobody has figured out how to harness that power. 

  4.       Shelter.  I’m not talking 5 star accomadations.  I’m talking concrete barracks with bunkbeds.  Shower trees built to accommodate 30-50 people at once. 

  If we can begin divorcing these things from capitalism other things can follow.  But these, particularly the first one are relatively easy.  The important detail is that it doesn’t make us socialists, no more than we are socialist today because while we have the RIGHT to bear arms its not a requirement.  The government protects us from marauders foreign and domestic.  We aren’t socialists either because the government pays to build the roads.  We don’t pay to pave a road when we buy a new house.  Nor do we pay to have the sewers connected or to put the cables in the ground.  All of that is considered part of the system.  it just means some jobs shift around.

   

  ALIEN.  Please do not pretend that the power isn't in the hands of the few now not the whole.

• andycox said on Oct 06, 2009....

  SMB, you’re missing the point, and the reason you’re missing the point is because you continue to filter everything I say through your own conception of socialism/communism. 

  Advanced s/c (as opposed to primitive communism, which has existed for most of the time mankind has been around on this planet and still exists in many extant tribal communities) has certainly not been tried, and the reason for this is simply that the majority of human beings have not expressly voted for it, for all sorts of reasons:

  • They may not have had the opportunity to do so (I’ve never voted for an s/c candidate, for example, because the no such a candidate has ever been fielded in my local constituency)
  • They may never have come across/considered the idea (This probably applies to the majority of people).
  • They may find it hard to accept because it is indeed a radical idea that runs counter to many entrenched views on human nature and other matters.
  • Society itself conspires in many ways to make s/c seem unrealistic and unachievable; for example, the harsh competitive world  in which we live, disfigured as it is by wars and horrendous economic calamities encourages one to think uncharitably of our fellow human beings. People are often compelled (notwithstanding the abiding delusion of people being free to do as they please under capitalism) to act in accordance with economic diktats arising out of the need to realise a profit, and this only serves to reinforce the fallacy that people are hardwired to behave in this way, when really, it is the system that obliges them to act thus.
  • The continuing confusion over the meaning of the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ is also a MAJOR obstacle to acceptance of the s/c viewpoint. People like you continue to  use these terms to refer to state involvement in capitalist economies, and thus these terms have come to be associated with countries like Cuba or China, whereas s/c – in the sense I use the terms has nothing to do with state involvement in a  capitalist economy. I’m sure even you can see this. And the negativity attaching to the terms in the way you use them, obviously creates problems for genuine socialists/communists trying to argue for a democratically-run world society in which goods and services are freely available and the means of production are held in common.

   

  In my blog, however, I have this to say on the issue:

   

  ‘Over the last few pages, I have been at pains to argue that this revolutionary change in the way society was ordered would necessarily be premised on a momentous change in how people en masse regarded both human nature and the communist project. It is reasonable to suppose that support for this project would grow exponentially. In other words, the actual rate of increase would dramatically rise until a sort of runaway effect would draw in the mass of humanity, resulting in a democratic revolution. My grounds for saying this are as follows:  Firstly as I indicated some pages ago, the notion of communism that I have been promoting is rarely considered in the public domain. People reflexively associate communism with the heinous regimes of the Soviet Empire, with China, with Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and so on. Once it is generally realized that these have nothing to do with communism, once this knee-jerk reaction to the very mention of the word diminishes, people will begin to look afresh at this concept. I suspect that the interest aroused will spread on account of the sheer ‘novelty value’ of looking at this tag in a wholly different light, and the fact that people will gradually become aware of the need to redefine the term in political discourse. Secondly, as people increasingly begin to see how many current social problems may be attributable directly or indirectly to capitalism; pari passu, they will gradually begin to see that communism, to a great extent, provides a comprehensive solution to these problems. Thirdly, it is reasonable to suppose that a sort of ‘resonance effect’ will be created as the idea begins to take hold, as more and more voices begin to be raised in support. This will give the whole notion more credibility and palpably change the political climate. Today, the prevailing outlook is fatalistic, superstitious in some quarters but cynical in others, medieval in many parts of the world, pessimistic, anxious, alienated, and saturated with deep fears about terrorism, war, crime, economic collapse, global warming, and more. As increasing numbers begin to embrace communism, hope will begin to permeate as the realisation dawns that is within the gift of humanity to bring about change for the better. Fourthly, as interest in the concept of communism begins to spread, more research and academic study of the subject will be undertaken; thus further bolstering the case for communism. Finally, material support for the cause will grow, enabling increasingly more effective propaganda strategies to be developed.’

   

  One other thing, SMB: You’ve totally misunderstood how s/c would come about. Far from entailing a ‘shift in power to the few’, the establishment of s/c would amount to a DEMOCRATIC revolution in which majorities  all around the world would signal their desire to live this sort of society via the ballot box. IT COULD NOT BE OTHERWISE. Think about it: People would need to understand and agree to it for s/c to work, it cannot be imposed from above. And with this, you’ll inevitably get a change in the social ethos, the ‘zeitgeist’; as people embraced a more optimistic, kinder, and co-operative approach to their fellow human beings, and the old curmudgeonly (Sorry, Curm!) notions fell away. Far from free speech being imperilled, and the right to vote being curtailed, as you seem to imply, the very opposite would occur. Free expression would flourish, and decisions would be made on a democratic basis to a far greater extent than is the case today, where political elites, who are ultimately beholden to whichever national capitalist class they serve,  will shamelessly lie, deceive, renege on manifesto promises, as and when necessary. Your coupling of Democracy and Capitalism – as though the two could be equated in some way – does not accord with the facts. Capitalism does not intrinsically depend upon Democracy, or vice versa. Witness China, for example

                                          

• SeanRenaud said on Oct 06, 2009....

  The problem with everything you just said andy is that it can only happen the way it happened Russia.  By killing the people who have stuff now because they aren't stupid enough to give it up.

• andycox said on Oct 07, 2009....

   

  Hi Sean.

  1.  Regarding your first point, I think I see where you’re coming from. Perhaps my last response to SMB  deals     with this point.

  2.  Absolutely not, ‘Royalty’ is not hardwired into human beings. That’s a preposterous idea, Sean, where did you get this nonsense from? Whatever else might be said of modern Americans, at least their forebears had the sense to rid themselves of an overbearing monarch. Yes, we are social animals, and yes, I agree, that to some extent we do need order. But historically-speaking, it is more the case that order occurred IN SPITE OF Royalty. Kings and Queens have historically been agents of disorder, with their grandiloquent designs that could bankrupt countries, or their avarice-inspired wars on other countries. These parasites were simply egos on stilts; strutting around as if they really did have some divine right to rule. That their subjects didn’t rebel as often as they did is more a testament to the power wielded over them. You are obviously confusing (or equating) order with oppression. There’s a vast difference, believe you me. Read up on the history of, say, Henry VIII and how he butchered thousands of men, women , and children in the north of England, and you’ll get my drift. And Royals always like to make great play about the antiquity of their institution. But, as I’ve explained to SMB, there’s a far, far older institution, and that’s the tribe, to which people owed loyalty. The ‘primitive communism’ which characterised tribal life has been a fact of life for perhaps 95 % of the 130,000 years some say that Homo Sapiens has been around. So if anything is ‘hardwired’ then it has to be our propensity to live collectively in tribes, not some perverse reflex to prostrate ourselves before royal tyrants.

  3.  The links I provided on the vacant houses in the US were intended to support my argument that there are more than enough empty houses in the US (about 18 – 19 million) to house all of your homeless, and then some. You disputed the figures, saying ‘I challenge your numbers anyway but that's beside the point’. So, in response, I offered you evidence. What I intended to illustrate was the sheer irrationality of capitalism, where  along with millions of empty homes you find homelessness  - much as you find hunger alongside farmers being paid to take millions of hectares of agricultural land out  of commission. The common theme with these two issues is that the goods in questions are only produced in order to realise a profit. If someone cannot afford a house or three square meals a day, then tough, the goods won’t be provided (or at most, only charity will)

  4.  Your question: ‘Where do you get the money to build these houses to the highest standards?’ tells me that you’re not thinking this idea through, Sean. There would be no money. Nor would there be wages. Or profits, or debts. As I’ve said before, one cannot be too prescriptive about the minutiae of how a communist society would be run. But I should imagine there would be local housing agencies which people would approach in the event that they needed a house/apartment. Such bodies would presumably have some sort of remit to build new houses in the event that applications exceeded the minimum number of dwellings needed to be held in stock. But I should also imagine that everyone would also have the right to apply for a bespoke house. As is the case today – at least in the UK- there would have to be a planning process, and there would be pre-existing guidelines as to standards – be they aesthetic, ergonomic, energy, health & safety, or anything else. Standards would also apply to the modification of existing houses. Once again, I must stress that this really is not much different from the system here in the UK today, where, if you live in a ‘period house’ with a grade 1 or 2 listing you can’t even alter the exterior paint colour without applying to do so - because it may be deemed to have historical significance. The standards themselves would evolve through a process of arbitration and debate, but ultimately would be democratically sanctioned. This illustrates what I mean when I say that communism would be intrinsically democratic – to a far greater extent than is the case today. Democracy would permeate every aspect of society, and be the primary source of legitimatisation  for all political decisions (unlike today’s society, where wealth  or historical status get a look in as well) Counterbalancing that, there would be an explicit legitimisation of the rights of individuals which themselves would be far more extensive than exists today, where what one is permitted to do is often curtailed by one’s wallet. I take your point about people wanting to live in particular areas (a beach front, for example). But, I don’t think this would pose an unsolvable problem: As I’ve indicated, arbitration, mediation, and debate within a democratic context would settle the question as to how many dwellings might be allowed in a particular area. This sort of scenario might also entail an interaction between different tiers of government: local and regional; something which I discussed in an earlier posting. You also ask where the labour would come from. Good question. In the nutshell, it would come from voluntary work. Now, this is where many who are not familiar with the notion of genuine communism throw up their arms in disbelief. But to understand why this is a perfectly reasonable suggestion, you’ll need to understand the entire contextual transformation that would occur with the establishment of communism. I really haven’t the space to recapitulate all of the very powerful arguments demonstrating the feasibility of communism. But you can read them up in parts 1 and 2 of my ‘A Point of View’. Suffice to say at this point that is reasonable to imagine that an average working week of about 10 hours might be more than adequate to provision society, and that people would  exhibit a wholly different attitude to work in a communistic society; seeing it as  positive  and desirable..

  5.  What I’ve suggested in regard to housing would more or less apply to food production too. I see what you’re saying about rationing. But Sean, I’ve never suggested that literally every single whim of every single person on the planet is going to be catered for. That would indeed be a utopian notion! Communism, amongst other things, would be about the fairer distribution of those items that are actually in short supply.  Yes, you are right, there may be instances where a ‘first come, first serve’ rule applies. For example, the fruits of a rare pear tree growing only on the lower slopes of the Himalayas might suddenly become well known for some reason. How could a world-wide demand for this be satisfied? Well, it obviously couldn’t. Criteria for distribution would need to be adopted. It may well be a case of ‘first come, first serve’. But it could be something else (as well), such as giving preferential treatment to locals on the grounds that shipping this product to other parts of the world would have an adverse environmental impact. The thing you need to bear in mind is that under capitalism, there is a rationing too, and the sole criterion is MONEY. If you don’t have the old greenbacks, then you’re out of the picture. – you don’t apparently have a ‘demand’ for  product (even if its absolutely essential like food or shelter), according to the warped economics of capitalism’s apologists. But this criterion is grossly unfair to the vast majority of people. By definition! Under communism those items that might be in short supply would at least be rationed on fairer, more humane grounds. And rational efforts would be made to address these shortages. You would not end of with classes of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ because the shortage would ‘product-specific’, whereas under capitalism, not having sufficient wealth limits access to a whole range of products. The second thing you need to understand is that for most products, particularly those vital to existence, there simply wouldn’t be a shortage in a communist society. You yourself raise the possibility of grains being offered for free – even under capitalism, and, if I’ve read you right, suggest that water, electricity and housing are also things which can be produced in abundance, and should be produced for free. This suggests to me, Sean, that you have an inkling of the way in which capitalism prevents an adequate supply of these items. Well, you could go on: what about transport, what about communication, what about education, what about other foodstuffs? Why not provide these for free as well. Don’t forget too that under capitalism a huge amount of money is spent on things that would be unthinkable under communism. Have a look at http://www.costofwar.com/ for example. Also refer to part 1 and 2 of my ‘A Point of View’ for numerous other expenditures that would not apply in communism. By the way, I still cannot understand your obsession with providing ‘concrete barracks with bunkbeds’, and ‘Shower trees built to accommodate 30-50 people at once’ to resolve the problem of homelessness. Why the spartan conditions, when we could so easily be providing solid, decent, comfortable, aesthetically pleasing housing for everyone on the planet?. And your comments about   

  6.  With regard to your comments on ownership, I think you are still misconstruing some things and anticipating difficulties where there would be none. As I explained, ‘ownership’ is a complex matter. Different connotations that apply to this concept, such as :

  a.       Only you have the right to use it

  b.      You can sell the property in question

  c.       You can ‘gift’ it someone

  d.      You can use it to derive an income

  e.       You have the right to alter or destroy it

  f.        You can pass it on to someone in your will

  g.       No one else can access it without your say so.

  h.       You can change its usage

  i.         You can change its appearance

  j.        You can opt not to do anything with it at all

  k.      There exists a legal document confirming that you are the owner, that you have legal title                                                                                  

      Some of these would simply not apply in communism; eg selling something you own. Let’s take 3 items to      

  illustrate what might be the case in communism:

         A jacket:  a, c, e, f, g, h, i, and j would all apply

         A house:  a, g, i, (within limits), and j would apply. There would also some entitlement for anyone in the household to carry on living in the house hold dwelling for as long as they liked. When a house was vacated, the local housing agency would take responsibility for it)

         A factory:  None of these aspects would apply because the factory would be commonly owned, and decisions relating to production, altering the fabric of the building, etc would have to be made within a democratically forum

   

  To wind up, Sean, I don’t accept your reservations about my plan for communism being ‘so far away … that it would be folly to try it this way’ Now more than ever we have the potential, the technology, to achieve abundance, and to do so in a manner that is environmentally sustainable. It may take a couple of decades for things to be straightened out , for ‘teething problems’ to be resolved, but the society that will emerge will be a far, far better than what now have. If mankind continues to run its affairs as it has done, I fear we’re headed for barbarism, perdition, or both. Which road are you willing to take, Sean?

   

   

• andycox said on Oct 07, 2009....

  Hi Sean, I've just caught your last point about communism being established 'the way it happened Russia.  By killing the people who have stuff now because they aren't stupid enough to give it up.'

  Well, first of all, communism bears no relation to the state capitalist monstrosity that was established in Russia. Lenin himself recognised the true nature of the early twentieth century Russia when he said in 1918:

  ‘What is state capitalism under Soviet power? To achieve state capitalism at the present time means putting into effect the accounting and control the capitalist’ classes carried out. We see a sample of state capitalism in Germany. We know that Germany has proved superior to us :.. state capitalism would-be our salvation; if we had it in Russia, the transition to full socialism would be easy, would be within our grasp, because state capitalism is something centralized, calculated, controlled and socialized, and that is exactly what we lack… Only the development of state capitalism, only the painstaking establishment of accounting and control, only the strictest organization and labour discipline, will lead us to socialism. Without this there is no socialism’

  Secondly, as I've at pains to argue, communism can ONLY be brought about democratically. Not only does the end justify the means, the means INFORMS the end. Communism has to be democratic through and through, it could not be otherwise. As to people not giving up the stuff that they own, I don't see tis being an issue. Many capitalists qua human beings would throw in their lot with the rest of humanity and welcome the establishment of communism. Frederich Engels was a capitalist, for Chrissakes! And it's not as though we'd be evicting them from their mansions. If they wished to carry on living a parasitical life, what the hell, it will be their call. We might, however, draw the line at two mansions. What capitalists would be relieved of, of course, would be the means of production. How could they resist this? Members of the armed forces, the police etc - no less than us – are members of the working class, and given a democratic nature of the transformation of society, it is to be expected that most of them to will be sympathetic to the  cause. In short, the revolution would be a bloodless democratic event , and I would imagine that it would spread swiftly throughout the world in the space of a few years, as erstwhile separate capitalist countries linked up to become part of the world commonweal.

   

• ALIENated said on Oct 07, 2009....

  Sorry, I still think you are saying Socialism has never worked because they did it wrong or it was capitalism in disguise. Socialism is a bad idea and it would only work if humans were mindless automatons with no individuality.

• SeanRenaud said on Oct 07, 2009....

  Andy you've clearly given this some thought.  So I don't understand where your hiccup is.  I mean I understand that since you can call the rich parasites you either don't understand how reality functions or you're a liar but that aside how do you think that socialism could come about democratically? 

  There is no way that human beings would EVER vote for it.  We already know exactly what we are doing and we like it.  We like it a lot.  You still haven't explained how you suggest we handle things that are finite not because we "choose" (which is silly to begin with) for them to be finite but things that are simply finite like the amount of beach front property in the world or the amount of delicasy food.  You don't really need to be brilliant to figure out that if cow tongue is smallish and rest of cow is big.  What do you do if the world suddenly changes it dietary plans?

• andycox said on Oct 07, 2009....

  Hi guys

  OK, Alien, first of all, I am NOT saying ‘Socialism has never worked because they did it wrong’.  Going back to the  Russian revolution, what you had from the outset was state capitalism; it was not a case of socialism being misapplied or incorrectly implemented. Russia could never have supported  socialism/communism at this stage of its history. It was frankly, far too backward to do so. Lenin himself recognised this. Basically, capitalism needed to be introduced in order to bring the country up to par, and the Bolshevik revolution was all about doing this under the aegis of the state. It was the historical equivalent of, if you like,  England’s ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, or the French Revolution a hundred or so years later. These events paved the way for the development of capitalism: they ‘unfettered’ capitalism. Hence I’ll readily go along with the second part of your proposition – that it was capitalism in disguise. Absolutely! The Bolsheviks may have used the rhetoric of socialism, but in reality, what was going on was state capitalism, with a privileged elite – the nomenklatura - reaping the benefits. You cannot have all the appurtenances of capitalism; money, wages, profits etc and call your system ‘communism’, can you?

  You then say ‘Socialism is a bad idea’. Well, excuse me, but just saying it’s a bad idea doesn’t make it a bad idea: where’s your argument? I’ve gone to great lengths to illustrate the failings of capitalism in support of my argument that capitalism is no longer a good idea. How can you defend this system knowing the evidence stacked against it?

  Your comment that socialism ‘would only work if humans were mindless automatons with no individuality’ is ludicrous, Alien. How do you arrive at this conclusion? Funnily enough, it sits rather oddly with Sean’s remark that I’ve ‘clearly given this (matter) some thought. The very democratic nature of communism means that people would be involved in all aspects of decision-making on collective matters. This hardly squares with them being ‘mindless automatons’, does it? In fact, if anything, it is capitalism that promotes mindless automatism:

  • For most people, it offers nothing but stultifying drudgery – the necessity to make ends meet forces people to sell their labour power, and for most people that means taking up ‘mindless’, soul-destroying work.
  • The education system is basically geared towards churning out fodder for industry and business. Developing critical thought, and a love of the humanities are secondary considerations, lets be honest about it
  • Poverty, relative or otherwise, prevents people from  enjoying many of the finer things in life – travel, for example, and thus has a stultifying influence on lives
  • Culture, particularly contemporary culture, is following a ‘dumbing-down’ trajectory and this has happened primarily for commercial reasons. Capitalism, in other words, is promoting mindless automatism ( l can almost hear the canned applause)
  • The relentless advertising we are all exposed to under capitalism really epitomises its promotion of the ‘mindless automatism’ you decry.

   

  I could go on, but I think you’ll have understood my point. Communism, on the other hand, would open up horizons for individuals. Far from suppressing individuality, it would for the first time in history allow individuality to truly flourish. There are complex arguments for this thesis, and these are discussed in part 2 of my ‘A Point of View’

  Turning to you, Sean, may I say firstly, that I did not actually refer to the ‘rich’ as parasites? What I said was that ‘If they (i.e. capitalists, rather than the ‘rich’) wished to carry on living a parasitical life, what the hell, it will be their call’. The distinction might be a fine one, but the serious point behind is that capitalists qua capitalists do have a sort of parasitical role: They live off the surplus value produced by the working class, who run operations from top to bottom on their behalf. The fact that individual capitalists might put in 12 hour days  involving themselves in their businesses, or might, like Engels,  inveigh against the inequities of capitalism, does not alter this fact. And if you don’t understand this, Sean, then I’m afraid it’s you that doesn’t understand how reality works. (I won’t stoop to calling you a liar). Okay, ‘parasites’ may be a somewhat emotive word, but, hey, this is an emotive subject.

  You say that ‘there is no way that human beings would EVER vote for it.  We already know exactly what we are doing and we like it.  We like it a lot’. I’ve already dealt with the issue of why socialism /communism has not as yet been adopted in my earlier response to SMB. But I’m simply amazed at your assertion that ‘we’ (whoever ‘we’ are) like capitalism a lot. So, if that’s the case, are you fond of:

  • Mass unemployment
  • World hunger
  • Global warming
  • War
  • Stress caused by financial circumstances
  • Disease
  • Homelessness
  • Terrorism
  • Waste

   

  And more. Because in each of the foregoing, capitalism is DEEPLY implicated, wholly or in part, through acts of commission or omission, and to suggest otherwise betrays a serious naivety and, if I may say so, a lack of understanding as to ‘how reality functions’ Please refer to my Point of view blog for more on this issue. I’m also at a loss, Sean, to understand how, on the one hand, you can bemoan the fact that capitalism cannot provide food, (or is it just grains?), water, electricity, and housing for free – if I understood you right – and on the other hand, claim to love capitalism a lot. There is a lot of inconsistency in your arguments.

  Again you ask how scarcity would be handled under socialism. As I’ve already explained, there will always be some items where demand (in the literal sense – not the economic sense; since we are talking about a communist society here) will exceed supply. This is unavoidable. But I’ve also argued that a state of ‘abundance’ could easily be achieved in regard to many of the essential items, such as housing, water, many foodstuffs (you yourself mentioned grains!), communication technology, and so on.

  So how to manage those items which are not available in abundance? Here are some ideas (let us consider the issue from the perspective of a ‘local area’ in which product X is in short supply):

  • The local democratically-run council might decide to commence/step up production of product X
  • The council might decide to approach other areas to request additional supplies of product X
  • The council might approach a regional or world clearing house charged with sourcing products on behalf of local councils around the world.
  • The council might consider the feasibility of  producing similar/alternative products
  • The council might consider requesting other areas to supply it with similar/alternative products, or submit this request to a regional or world clearing house.
  • The council might decide to do nothing about increasing the supply, but allow access on a ‘first come, first serve’ basis.
  • The council might decide to do nothing about increasing the supply, but  allow access on a rationing  basis, where no one could have any more than a certain amount of product X within a given time frame
  • The council might decide to prioritise supplies in favour of certain groups where there was clearly a  pressing need for product X (For example, if there was only a limited supply of flu jabs available, then it might make sense to prioritise in favour of older people )

  These are just some of the ways in which the scarcity might be addressed. Many different factors would have to be taken into account when deciding upon a particular route; for example, the seriousness of the need in question (vital medical supplies would surely warrant a more vigorous approach than say a craving for a rare fruit), the environmental impact of importing the product in question, its availability/shortage in other areas, and so on.  So, a fairly complex array of options may be open to the council. Additional, I can’t see why individuals themselves might not ask agencies in other areas to supply them. After all, we do this all the time in this day and age with our internet purchases. So some similar system might be set up allowing individuals to obtain supplies of a product without involving the local council.

  The contrast with capitalism, which uses a single rationing device; i.e. money couldn’t be greater. And as you yourself have correctly observed, Sean, capitalism will often artificially create shortages in order to bump up prices. We’re seeing that here in Europe at the moment with farmers literally throwing milk down the drain in order to increase the wholesale price of milk. Such is the lunacy of capitalism!

  I really think that what you guys need to do in order to fully understand this notion of a democratically-run world society in which free access would be the order of the day is to view the issue in a holistic way. The arguments in favour of communism are highly complex and fit together rather like a jigsaw. I’ve been mulling over this proposition for nigh on 30 years, and, whilst I started from a sceptical position much like yours, I’m convinced now that this is really the only sane solution to the problems besetting our world

   

   

   

• SeanRenaud said on Oct 07, 2009....

  Wow, you're good at dancing around issues that you clearly have no answer for.  I'm in a bit of a rush so I'm only going to comment on your bullets.  Most of the rest of what you said is so clearly false it's laughable anyway.

• Mass unemployment:  While it's true that we would have zero unemployment under a communist nation it wouldn't do any good and would cause more problems than it solved.  We have unemployment under capitalism because we have all that we need.  Sure we could run the world the way many government plans are run with twelve guys assigned to do a job that could be done with four.  Which results in eight guys sitting around.

What's also important is that while you try to claim that capitalism forces people into soul crushing jobs do you have an explanation as to why under communism people wouldn't be performing these same soul crushing jobs?

• World hunger:  World hunger has nothing to do with capitalism.  You can make a case that hunger in the US is caused by capitalism but not world hunger.  They are unrelated.

 

• Global warming:  There is no reason to believe that capitalism would cause more Global Warming.  In fact it probably creates less because not everybody has the means to produce and consume.  In a world not only where everybody can but also where we are building this housing (which you still haven't made a case for how we would effectively deal with shortages.  Obviously voting wouldn't work.  Any idiot knows what happens if you ask eleven people to vote on how to split ten pieces of pizza.  Everybody goes hungry because instead of ten people getting pizza the voting never stops.

 

• War:  War would stop as a result of the one world government you propose.  Not because of Communism.  What's more is that as you've already admited capitalism has done a great deal to bring us closer to a One Government world and the same for language.  Given time capitalism will continue to spread and dominate.  Communism on the other hand cannot do this.  It has to start after the world has been "conquered"

 

• Stress caused by financial circumstances:  Fair enough.  Though I highly suspect that will lead to huge reduction in the birthrate that would eventually drive us to extinction.  That's however a very long term problem. 

 

• Disease:  Right.  Cus capitalism invented the flu.  Actually without capitalism to drive it there is little reason to believe that we would continue advancing medically. 

 

• Homelessness:  You made this point already.  You don't get to break the same point into stress caused by being poor and ergo at risk of homeless and then homeless.  Besides I already conceeded that we should be working towards this particular facet

. 

• Terrorism:  Again this if it happens which it very well might not it would be a result of a One World Government not a result of Communism.  Of course given the situations in many Muslim nations it is naieve to think that it would stop terrorism. 

 

• Waste:  Quite the contrary.  In order to keep up with demand real and imagined waste is required.  The same problem we already have in America with food would just be expanded to EVERYTHING.
• The local democratically-run council might decide to commence/step up production of product X
• The council might decide to approach other areas to request additional supplies of product X
• The council might approach a regional or world clearing house charged with sourcing products on behalf of local councils around the world.
• The council might consider the feasibility of  producing similar/alternative products
• The council might consider requesting other areas to supply it with similar/alternative products, or submit this request to a regional or world clearing house.
• The council might decide to do nothing about increasing the supply, but allow access on a ‘first come, first serve’ basis.
• The council might decide to do nothing about increasing the supply, but  allow access on a rationing  basis, where no one could have any more than a certain amount of product X within a given time frame
• The council might decide to prioritise supplies in favour of certain groups where there was clearly a  pressing need for product X (For example, if there was only a limited supply of flu jabs available, then it might make sense to prioritise in favour of older people )

Not a one of these is even theoritcally feesible.  For starters having a council is already stepping bcak towards your criticism of what happened in Russia with a few people very well hooked up.  But lets ignore that fact.  Lets ignore that having a council decide to prioritize supplies in favor of certain groups which is clearly discriminatory on its surface.  Why am I going to agree to this?  Why am I going to say let old people get the flu shot before me?  Sure they are more likely to die but I'm more likely to live another fifty years.

Nothing in your plan holds up at all.

• ALIENated said on Oct 07, 2009....

  Me saying Socialism is a bad idea is good enough for me because that is what I think based on everything I know, have seen, have read, and have heard. I do not plan to type all that out. It is just my opinion based on a lot of things. Frankly, I think you just like to hear yourself talk (write?), which is OK. It is your blog. In my opinion, America has about the best system around -- a representative government and capitalism. As I have said, capitalism is not perfect, but it best suits modern man. That may not always be the case, but I think it will be until Jesus comes. At that time our minds and bodies will be renewed and we will all work in harmony under God's plan, not our own. I am not so much saying that pure Socialism would not work. I am saying that due to the nature of Man it will not work. And I kind of think that is what you are saying.

• SeanRenaud said on Oct 07, 2009....

  What we have no isn't capitalism.  It's close but we do have socialist parts and by the large they seem to function admirably.  There are still things we should be striving towards namely food, water and power.  And I've already stated what food.  I don't mean filet mignon for all.  You want high quality great food you gotta pay.  But we shouldn't be paying farmers not to farm.  What that means is that there should be less farmers and more people doing other jobs if you overproduce to that extent.

  Water is a bigger problem but not insurmountable because I belive that if we put some research into it we can find a cheap way to desalinate water and then we've got a planet that is pretty much water.

  And power.  We virtually had this going already and probably would have kept it if people hadn't gotten so scared of nuclear power.  As recently as the 70's some places didn't charge electricity for anything other than HUGE energy uses like factories and sports arenas because it didn't make sense to. 

  I do believe we can make these things happen and I don't think they will cause people to become lazy and worthless. 

• ALIENated said on Oct 08, 2009....

  I am not so much questioning what Obama wants to do as I am questioning why he wants to do it. I am sure the Pied Piper's music sounded good to the rats as they ran over the cliff into the ocean. If there is so much waste in Medicare, why not cut that out for a couple of years and use that saved money to help pay for everyone else's healthcare? Because it is a big lie.

• andycox said on Oct 08, 2009....

  Sean, stating that something is false without attempting to back up your argument is risible, the mark of a sloppy thinker. As to my ‘dancing around issues’, how so?  What’s clear to me is that you have considerable difficulty following another person’s a point of view, and will fly off on a tangent for no reason at all. Okay, so let me go through your arguments one by one, and demonstrate mine in the process.

   

  Let’s start with mass unemployment.

  Marx argued that capitalism relied upon what he called a reserve army of the unemployed. This gave capitalists a bargaining chip vis-à-vis workers in regard to wages. Over and above this, the rate of unemployment is related to the cyclical nature of capitalism with its unending and inevitable booms and slumps: In the boom times, the unemployment rate drop; in slumps, it will rise. You say ‘We have unemployment under capitalism because we have all that we need.’ Think about this Sean: ‘we have all we need’ By ‘we’, I presume you have in mind the US. Well then, how is that:

  • 35.9 million people live below the poverty line in America, including 12.9 million children.( US Census Bureau)
  • In 2000, it was found that 33 million Americans lived in households that did not have an adequate supply of food. Nearly one-third of these households contained adults or children who went hungry at some point in 2000.(according to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, March 2002)

  You know me, Sean; I could go on and on producing statistics that disprove your outlandish claim that ‘we’ have all we need. Do you? Have you never had to forego things, or scrimp? If not, lucky you. But the truth of the matter is that the current high rates of unemployment have nothing to do with people ‘having all they need’: These high rates of unemployment have to do with the aforementioned factors: the systemic need for a reserve army of unemployed and the current slump or recession we are experiencing. Earlier you accused me of not understanding how reality works. Your grasp of basic economics is lamentable. And your comment that ‘we would have zero unemployment under a communist nation (but) it wouldn't do any good and would cause more problems than it solved’ betrays a complete misunderstanding of communism in the sense I have been using the term in this blog. Apart from the fact that there wouldn’t be such a thing as a ‘communist nation’, there would not ‘employment’ or ‘unemployment’ either. Work would be a voluntary activity, and not something paid for. And there would be no necessity either to artificially create employment through over-manning; a wholly wasteful strategy if ever there was one.  Okay, you and others might choose to define ‘communism’ in one way. But unless we agree on what we are REFERRING to, we’ll forever be at cross purposes because you’ll be  criticising something that bears no relation to what I’m  in favour of. Anyway, onwards!

   

  World hunger. You say ‘World hunger has nothing to do with capitalism’.  You must be joking, Sean, please tell me you’re joking. If nothing else, have you not understood that capitalism is about ‘commodity production, about producing goods and services to be sold on a market with a view to realising a profit? Today, more than ever, capitalism is a global phenomenon, and the same applies to the markets for many items; food in particular. If you ruled some oil-rich desert statelet with no agricultural sector to speak of, hunger would not be an issue, because you could import food from all over the world; given your currency reserves. On the other hand, in a poor African country like Chad or Somalia, people are overwhelmingly poverty stricken and simply don’t have the money to purchase food. From a heartless capitalist perspective they don’t present a ‘demand’, i.e. there need s are not expressed in terms of money. Because basically, the poor sods don’t have any money. So, consequently they die. It’s as simple as that.  What’s more, countries that have a large agricultural base will from time to time engage in such practices as ‘set-aside’ or in restricting exports, depending upon the market situation. Bad news either way for your poor Africans. And capitalism is further implicated in this situation insofar as it is largely responsible for the status quo in Africa, from the great carve-up of that benighted continent in the 19c to present day trade agreements compelling African countries to accept imports from powerful first world countries. All of this has led to the creation of poorly managed countries with hopelessly inadequate infrastructures, and governed by pampered corrupt elites totally out of touch with ordinary people, which only exacerbates the problem of hunger. If you don’t have adequate roads because your president has decided to spend a good proportion of the country’s GDP on a flashy plane to enable his mistresses to fly off to Paris for a spot of retail therapy, well, then its going to be difficult to get food to remote areas in times of drought.

   

  On the issue of global warming, let me just cite this extract from my Point of View blog:

  ‘Scientific opinion across the world is now practically unanimous in concluding that the relentless course of global warming is mainly attributable to one factor: man. More specifically, to his barely restrained burning of fossil fuels, his slashing down of vast tracts of rainforest, and his disembowelment of the earth in pursuit of minerals and metals. And what drives these destructive activities? In a word: money (or the lack of it). Now, it may seem unfair to bracket desperate Brazilian peasant farmers compelled to clear a patch of virgin forest in order to grow cash crops with avaricious executives of a car manufacturing company. But for both of them, their situations offer little option other than to do what they have to do: Not to take the environmentally damaging option may well have an adverse effect on their personal fortunes, perhaps even disastrously so. What’s more, there will always be less scrupulous competitors willing to step into the breach and carry out these destructive activities. Moreover, because of capitalism’s short term outlook, where planning looks no further than the next shareholder’s meeting, and it’s blinkered approach which disregards all but the need to make a profit, the longer term consequences and ramifications of economic decisions are rarely accorded the consideration they deserve. This is inherent in the system: No matter what vaunted declarations emanate from the IPCC, beneath the mantle of high-mindedness and reasonableness affected by statesmen, the economic id of capitalism will bubble away, seeking out the smallest chink through which to pour out its poisonous energy. That it might thereby threaten our lives and the lives of our children seemingly counts for nothing’.

   

  Now let’s turn to war: War’s are basically fought because of competing economic interests, however you look at it. It’s disingenuous to claim that war would not occur under communism not because of communism but because there’d be a ‘world government’.  Communism would be the basis on which a ‘world government’(I’m not too sure that this is the appropriate term as it carries ‘statist’ overtones, and communism would lead in any case to the ‘withering of the state’) With capitalism, although there are convergent forces at work breaking down barriers, you also tend to get divergent forces as well. These are usually fed by opposing interests. Thus we find rivalries over trade routes, land, or scarce resources such as water, minerals, or oil, breaking out into wars. The protagonists may like to pretend they’re fighting some noble cause, but in reality, it’s another story. Take Iraq. You can bet your bottom dollar the Bush administration knew that Saddam Hussein was not involved in 9/11 and had no WMDs. But there was another agenda here, as sure as eggs is eggs. And if you want to know what that was I suggest you subject that odious Dick Cheney with his dodgy Halliburton interests to some waterboarding  to dredge the truth out of him. Anyway, this war has been no different from any other insofar as the blather belies grubby interests in the background. With communism, on the other hand,financial interests could never be a casus belli , because there would be no ‘financial interests’, and therefore no wars.

   

  So on to disease (I’ll skip stress since you appear to acknowledge that this is a ‘by-product’ of capitalism). Sean, if you‘d bothered to actually grasp what I said, you wouldn’t be jumping to the daft conclusion that I’m arguing that capitalism causes flu. What I said was (hope you’re taking this in): ‘capitalism is DEEPLY implicated, wholly or in part, through acts of commission or omission’ in the various unpleasant phenomena I cited; one of which was disease. What this means is that the incidence of a number of diseases might be a whole lot less were it not for capitalism. How so? Well, think about it:

  • Many diseases are caused by unsanitary conditions. So why are there unsanitary conditions permitted? Usually its because there are insufficient funds to improve conditions, or its not ‘profitable’ to do so, or the potential beneficiaries are not deemed economically important by those who hold the purse strings, or because the expense would  conflict with more pressing needs like purchasing limos for high-ranking officials. etc
  • Poverty has been convincingly shown to be a major factor in all sorts of medical conditions. Want links? Here are some:                      http://www.plosntds.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pntd.0000256 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_poverty
  • Capitalism also determines how much effort goes into combating particular diseases. Diseases occurring more commonly in poorer countries tend to receive far less attention because people in these countries don’t have the money to spend on health and therefore are not deemed to constitute an adequate market. Tropical medicine is a case in point. Here’s a quote from   Philip Stevens, Director of Health Projects, International Policy Network:                                                                                                                  ‘Activists claim that only 10 per cent of global health research is devoted to conditions that account for 90 per cent of the global disease burden – the so-called ‘10/90 Gap’.1 They argue that virtually all diseases prevalent in low income countries are ‘neglected’ and that the pharmaceutical industry has invested almost nothing in research and development (R&D)for these diseases.’
  • Poverty  also has a number of other consequences, like malnourishment, which in turn predispose people to particular diseases
  • Access to healthcare may be limited if you cannot afford it ( About 15% of the US population is uninsured – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States ) Crucially too, not being able to adequately access healthcare facilities may mean that you’ll miss up on vital screening tests., and may therefore develop medical conditions when these could have been avoided.
  • You’ve conceded that capitalism is a cause of stress. But are you aware of how important a factor stress can be in the aetiology of disease? Here’s a link: http://www.successfulaging.ca/programs/stress/09.html

   

  So, just have a think about the above, Sean, and I sure you’ll come to appreciate that capitalism is deeply implicated in disease.

   

  I’ll pass on the homelessness issue, and on the terrorism issue since we seem to be in agreement on these (although, with regard to your point on Islam, I should add that with the rise in support for communism, it is to be expected that people will at last begin to see religion for what it is, a sop and a delusion to make the unbearable bearable – ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature’)

   

  Now to your contention that waste would be a feature of everything in communism. For the life of me, I cannot make head or tails of your statement ‘In order to keep up with demand real and imagined waste is required.’ What I will say is that if you think about what capitalism entails, and what communism will entail, you’ll get some idea as to how vastly more wasteful the former is by comparison with the latter. Consider the following:

  • Huge numbers of workers are tied up in work that has nothing to do with actually meeting human needs. (eg in banking, insurance, advertising, social security departments, charities, custom services, stock exchanges, payroll departments, insolvency agencies, pension providers, tax departments, mortgage companies etc) Their work only serves to maintain the functioning of the system .With communism, these occupations would no longer be required
  • Capitalism itself involves a huge amount of duplication which is wasteful. You might get dozens of companies producing a particular good or service within a specific locale, each with its own premises, workforce, management structure, and so on. Each will have a number of administrative and financial operations to execute over and above productive operations, which simply would not occur in a socialist/communist society, such as holding shareholder meetings, carrying out financial audits, running pay departments, operating security measures, and implementing marketing strategies.
  • Capitalism’s wars are grotesquely wasteful
  • Such features of capitalist production as ‘built-in obsolescence’, shoddy production shortening the life-span  of products are wasteful
  • Over consumption by the rich is wasteful Its more geared to status monger than real needs
  • ‘Cross transportation’, where, say New Zealand butter is sold in British supermarkets, and British butter is sold in New Zealand supermarkets – all in the name of free enterprise - is extremely wasteful, and has a deleterious effect upon the environment too.
  • The junking of products on simple commercial grounds, rather than the actual poor is extremely wasteful. We all know about being allowed to rot on trees because the price is too low. And in the UK, for example, 25% of the fruit and vegetables produced here are wasted in the process of production simply because these don’t look the right shape, colour or size. - i.e., for commercial reasons only. And 40 to 50 % of the fish caught in the EU goes straight back into the sea , because the Fisheries Policy – devised partly to arrest the declining in stock levels, brought about by greedy over-fishing
  • Similarly, many factories and other productive forces may be de-commissioned during Capitalism’s cyclical economic slumps. Much of what there is may be in perfectly good order but because the market has contracted, these assets are dismantled.
  • The fashion industry too is responsible for generating a lot of waste.  Think of all last yesteryears outfits that were so de rigeur not too long ago. Where are they now? In some landfill site, more than likely. According to the EPA Office of Solid Waste, Americans throw away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per person per year, and clothing and other textiles represent about 4% of the municipal solid waste. But this figure is rapidly growing

   

  This list will probably do to, Sean. But there are many more instances of waste in capitalism that I could quote if I had the space to do so. None of these would be conceivable in a communist society.

   

  One final point: You questioned the ‘theoretical feasibility’ of the various actions that could be undertaken in a communist society to address a shortage in some particular product. Well, I’m sorry, Sean, I just don’t get it: Why might any of these options be theoretically unfeasible?  You have to understand that wholly a different sort of society would exist once communism was established, and you’ve totally misunderstood how it would be if you’re equating the hypothetical council I referred to with sort of Bolshevik soviet.

• ALIENated said on Oct 08, 2009....

  Dude, you lost me at Marx. Why should I accept anything Marx says? Do you believe in evolution? No? But the Bible clearly states that God created Man. Your argument is based on others that think the way you do. Where are the successful Socialist/Communist societies? Talk is cheap. Plus, people are motivated by many things, but working and giving all your money in taxes is not a motivator. It is a demotivator.

• andycox said on Oct 08, 2009....

  Alien, if you're asking me, one should only accept what others say on the merits of what they're saying, and not because it’s them saying it. One needs to look at the evidence and the arguments, and draw one's own conclusions. You're way off the mark in suggesting that I only rehash what others think. Nothing could be further from the truth: Believe it or not, I do give a lot of thought as to how to respond to you, Sean, Java, Curm and others in this weird little universe called ‘SoulCast’. I don't accept everything Marx said. But only a simpleton could fail to recognise the profound influence that Marx has had on the modern age. The man was a prolific thinker, and stands shoulder to shoulder with Darwin, Freud, Einstein and just a few others as one of the great contributors to Western thought. It would be churlish to deny this.

  It intrigues me, however, that you should imply that I accept things simply on the basis of someone else’s say so, on the basis of ‘authority’, when, in the next breath, you go on to say ‘the Bible clearly states that God created Man’. Well, now, if ever there was a case of unquestioningly and uncritically accepting propositions on the basis of supposed ‘authority, then it is this. So let me put the question to you: On what grounds do you accept the biblical proposition that God created man? Is it just because you consider this Bronze Age text, filled as it is with contradictions and cruel admonishments to be the word of God? So where’s the evidence for this, and while you’re about it, where’s the evidence for God? Can you truly say you are even able to make sense of the notion of God? Personally, I doubt it very much. What I’m driving at, Alien, is that if anyone’s guilty of accepting things purely on the basis of what someone else has said or written then I guess its you.

  As to your question about successful Socialist/Communist societies, you must know full well my response to that. And whilst I’ll agree with you that taxation might not be a motivator, I wouldn’t say the same applies to work per se

• SeanRenaud said on Oct 08, 2009....

  ALIEN basically summed it up.  Your plan is as daft as Creationism.  It simply requires magic in order to function.  There is no point in debating it because you're points are deeply rooted in magic.

  None of your plans explain in the least where all this comes from and why.

• andycox said on Oct 09, 2009....

  Magic? Sean, all it is requires is a democratic mandate. Magic does not come into it, except in the favourable sense of the outcome being ‘magical’. I don’t understand the difficulty you have in understanding how communism would come about. It would occur when a majority of the electorate in each country voted for parties advocating the establishment of socialism/communism. In the US, for example, you have World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) (You may want to visit their website http://wspus.org/ , and that of the WSPUS’s  companion party party in the UK, the Socialist Party of Great Britain; viz: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/index.html ). Both of these parties, and other companion parties in the world socialist movement are admittedly tiny, which is not surprising given the fierce animosity attaching to anything labelled ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ in our respective countries, the gross misrepresentation of what has happened in Russia, China, and elsewhere, and the meagre resources that the WSM parties can call upon to fight their corner. Nevertheless, undaunted, we have to fight on, because there is no alternative and just too much at stake. (I for one am convinced that what Capitalism hasn’t the ability to deal effectively with global warming, and that we may well reach some sort of ecological tipping point within the next 20 to 30 years),However, with increasing acceptance of the socialist case, some sort of momentum will develop, and tables will be turned. Since you’ve asked ‘where all this comes from and why’, Sean, I hope you don’t mind me restating the scenario I’ve presented in my ‘A Point of View’ blog which I see unfolding as this idea begins to find general acceptance:

   

  • Let me conclude this demonstration of the feasibility of communism with some speculations on the subjective aspect accompanying future political developments in the direction of establishing a world-wide society in which private or state ownership and all the appurtenances thereof, such as money, wages, and profit, would be replaced by common ownership, and everyone would have free access to goods and services. Over the last few pages, I have been at pains to argue that this revolutionary change in the way society was ordered would necessarily be premised on a momentous change in how people en masse regarded both human nature and the communist project. It is reasonable to suppose that support for this project would grow exponentially. In other words, the actual rate of increase would dramatically rise until a sort of runaway effect would draw in the mass of humanity, resulting in a democratic revolution. My grounds for saying this are as follows:  Firstly as I indicated some pages ago, the notion of communism that I have been promoting is rarely considered in the public domain. People reflexively associate communism with the heinous regimes of the Soviet Empire, with China, with Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and so on. Once it is generally realized that these have nothing to do with communism, once this knee-jerk reaction to the very mention of the word diminishes, people will begin to look afresh at this concept. I suspect that the interest aroused will spread on account of the sheer ‘novelty value’ of looking at this tag in a wholly different light, and the fact that people will gradually become aware of the need to redefine the term in political discourse. Secondly, as people increasingly begin to see how many current social problems may be attributable directly or indirectly to capitalism; pari passu, they will gradually begin to see that communism, to a great extent, provides a comprehensive solution to these problems. Thirdly, it is reasonable to suppose that a sort of ‘resonance effect’ will be created as the idea begins to take hold, as more and more voices begin to be raised in support. This will give the whole notion more credibility and palpably change the political climate. Today, the prevailing outlook is fatalistic, superstitious in some quarters but cynical in others, medieval in many parts of the world, pessimistic, anxious, alienated, and saturated with deep fears about terrorism, war, crime, economic collapse, global warming, and more. As increasing numbers begin to embrace communism, hope will begin to permeate as the realisation dawns that is within the gift of humanity to bring about change for the better. Fourthly, as interest in the concept of communism begins to spread, more research and academic study of the subject will be undertaken; thus further bolstering the case for communism. Finally, material support for the cause will grow, enabling increasingly more effective propaganda strategies to be developed.

  There is something else you should know as well, Sean: The WSM certainly cannot claim to be unique in advocating a moneyless propertyless society. There are thousands of groups and movements all over the world with a fairly similar agenda. They seem to be popping up all over, in increasing numbers, and often without reference to each other. What I think is happening is that people are at last beginning to understand how capitalism operates, and are independently arriving at the same conclusion. What separates them are often issues to do with tactics, or interpretations, or exclusivity. But this whole wider outlook is now beginning to gather pace: from India to South America, from Russia to the USA, people are coming to the conclusion that capitalism has had its days. Watch this space, but in a few years, the gung-ho apologists for the ‘free market’ are going to be fighting a rearguard battle in defence of their ludicrous, dangerous ideas. I see that even you favour ‘socialising’ – do you mean providing free access? – to water, power, and subsistence food (Which prompts the question: why stop at this?). And the other day, I came across something called the ‘Zeitgeist movement’. Ever heard of them? No, I hadn’t either. But they’re big, with a quite a presence in the US, And they too are advocating a moneyless propertyless world.

  So its definitely an idea that’s beginning to make it’s mark.

  I appreciate, Sean, that you don’t always take on what I’m saying. Perhaps it’s my fault, I don’t know

  Anyway, I thought I’d provide you with the following links to help clarify some of the ideas I’ve been struggling to put across. Some of the essays to which te links refer, are a little dated. But the essential ideas still apply

   

   

  http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/eas.pdf

  http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/saapa.pdf

  http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/ee.pdf

  http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/me.pdf

  http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/alas.pdf

  http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/fcts.pdf

• SeanRenaud said on Oct 09, 2009....

  I don't take because your plan is based on magic.  It works on pixie sticks.  Let me be very very precise in my questions.

  1.  In a world where work has no intrinsic value (ie paid) who is going to take the trash to the dump and why?  If your answer is "It will be democratically decided" you must understand you are talking about slavery and you're whole premise on "soul crushing work" becomes moot.

  2.  Where are the raw materials going to come from to get everybody up to the same standard of living going to come from?  The Earth has finite resources and no amount of demoracy can make ten slices of pizza go to eleven people.  The earlier example was beach front property.

  That's it.  Just answer those two questions and in as few words as possible. 

• andycox said on Oct 10, 2009....

  I’ve already dealt with both of these issues. But what the hell, let’s have another crack at them

  Question1: Who will do all the onerous work, like rubbish (trash) collection?

  Answer: People will voluntarily undertake this and every other form of work. Labour requirements in all sorts of areas will probably be dealt with by agencies with a remit to attract and recruit suitably qualified people. So, by definition, it will not be slavery.

  How might this be possible, you’re probably saying?

  1. Firstly, the nature of the operation may well change in accordance with socially desirable and democratically sanctioned goals. Rubbish collection is an interesting example. It’s quite possible that recycling would become a major objective. It is possible too that the operation may be simplified by having neighbourhood rather household collections. So you might have a sort of neighbourhood depot where people would take their rubbish and sort it into various skips; thus making the whole operation a lot simpler. I’m not being prescriptive – it’s just a possibility. But in fact this happens in many places around the world even today. (In some Japanese municipalities, for example.)
  2. Secondly, unlike in capitalism, there would be no bar to mechanising/automating all forms of work considered onerous/dangerous, as far as possible and as rapidly as possible. Rubbish disposal may one area where mechanisation/automation could make life a lot easier. Under capitalism, any such innovation is always problematical: You have the old Luddite scenario – technological improvements may result in job losses, and may therefore meet with opposition. Or it may prove just too expensive an option. No such restraints would impede technological development under communism. Furthermore, in parts of the world where certain sorts of activity are unduly labour-intensive, the rapid adoption of state-of-the-art technology once communism is introduced will release literally millions from the burden of drudgery
  3. Thirdly, the establishment of world communism would mean that thousands of job categories would simply disappear overnight, because these only make sense within a capitalist economic framework and are in a literal sense, non-productive. I’m thinking of jobs in banking, insurance, advertising, social security departments, charities, custom services, stock exchanges, payroll departments, insolvency agencies, the pension ‘industry’, tax departments, to name but a few. Such occupations would no longer be required in a society unencumbered by the cash nexus. Nor would people be obliged to undertake lowly-paid, unfulfilling work behind cash registers, checking meters, issuing parking fines, guarding premises, working for gambling or lottery companies, selling their bodies for sex, acting as drug mules, issuing tickets, indulging in dubious home business scams, sorting out other people’s pay, running market stalls, bartering, executing bailiff duties, and so on and so forth. And the enforced idleness of unemployment; arguably, another essential feature of capitalism; would be a thing of the past too.  Next, all those jobs ultimately tied up with the institution of  property; the police (to a large extent), the legal profession, the prison services, ‘career criminals’, estate agents, and so on,  would become  redundant too. As would the huge number of military posts around the world (Perhaps something in the region of 15 – 20 million). In short, it is reasonable to assume that the majority of people around the world – particularly in the so-called developed countries where workers are predominantly employed in the tertiary sector – would find their occupations obsolete. What would be the upshot of this? It would be mean that something like an additional 3 billion people would be available to assist with the providing the goods and services we actually require: Food, houses, healthcare etc. Added to this, in countless other ways, there would be re-focusing on real needs, and this too would greatly ease the burden on those providing for the real needs of people. For example, there must be something like 100.000 scientists or more around the world engaged in military research – their talents could be usefully re-directed. So too could those involved in various sorts of economic or financial consultancies. What I’m suggesting is that, taking into account these radical changes in the nature of work that would accompany the establishment of communism, along with a host of other significant developments (such as the rapid introduction of mechanisation/automation), it is not unreasonable to conjecture that something in order of 4 or 5 hours a week might be required on average per week from everyone in order to comfortably provide for everyone’s needs. It’s a subjective figure, I know, but there is so much leeway there that the notion of relying upon ‘voluntary work’ would not be a problem. Because even if a few eccentric individuals decided that they wouldn’t contribute at all, it is reasonable to suppose that the vast majority would be more than happy to contribute 2, 3 or even 4 days a week to the good of society in general – bearing in mind that character of work would have altered radically and become far more pleasant and congenial on account of it being a purely voluntary affair in communism.
  4. Fourthly, and this is what you consistently fail to appreciate, Sean, with your nit-picking focus on specific issues, the establishment of communism would necessarily entail a wholesale change in the mindset of people generally; it would usher in a completely different ‘ethos’ Think about it - it could not be  otherwise. This incidentally is why time after time I’ve emphasised that communism would need to be democratically sanctioned – not imposed from on high by some self regarding elite.  From this, it is reasonable to suppose that people would have radically altered their outlook on a whole range of issues; from ethnic minorities in their midst to the whole issue contributing voluntarily towards the general good. It would be, if you like, a self-fulfilling prophecy: With a majority opting for communism, there would have had to have been a profound change in attitudes in regard these issues. Blinkered  scorn only tells me that you ‘ve failed to grasp the bigger picture here, Sean
  5. Fifthly, I’ve explained at length in earlier postings how capitalism is an extremely wasteful system – by comparison with communism. One upshot of this is that many of the goods and services currently produced would no longer be required in communism (and this too would lessen the burden - if one might call it this - on the workforce generally). I’m thinking of things like ATM machines, advertising material, buildings housing banks, tax offices, security equipment, fences etc etc.  Capitalism is also wasteful in that it has an inbuilt propensity to minimise costs in order to maximise profits, and will therefore often produce things shoddily and with a very short shelf-life (or what Vance Packard referred to as ‘built-in obsolescence’) What this means is that in the long run more time and man hours are expended on production as people are compelled to re-purchase the item in question far sooner than would be the case if the product was designed to last. Many of the shoddily built ‘social housing’ dwellings here in the UK are designed to last perhaps 30 years or so. If they were properly built in the first place, they wouldn’t require demolishing within the span of a single generation. Likewise, artificially stoking up demand for a product , which is a commonplace in capitalism, results in more man hours being unnecessarily expended  - viewed from a socialist/communist perspective that is

   

  Question 2: Where are the materials going to come from? Well, I would have thought that obvious: From the land, from the sea, from where ever they are currently obtained. However extraction, say in the case of metals, would be undertaken in a far more socially responsible manner and with a far greater sensitivity to the locale as no financial reckonings would inform decisions on  such matters. There would be a direct relationship between supply and demand, not one mediated by the cash nexus. Moreover, I can confidently say that far greater emphasis would be placed on renewability, recycling, and sustainability. Under capitalism, it is often not financially viable to renew or recycle a product. And given the fact that this might have been shoddily made in the first place, the option for renewing a particular item might be limited. . Much of what I stated in point 5 above also has relevance here too.  Consequently, it is probable that after an initial increase in demand for materials of all sorts, demand might settle down at a level rather lower that is the case today. With regard to your beach front scenario, I would again refer you to my explanation as to how scarcity would be handled

   

   

• ALIENated said on Oct 10, 2009....

  People will voluntarily undertake this ...

  And why are people not voluntarily doing all these bad jobs now? A job is advertised. A job so bad few would want it. However, in a capitalist society, someone calls up and says that is one dirty ass job, but I will do it for $4X (where X is the amount originally offered). After no other offers, the job is given to the guy that bids $4X.

  NO ONE would offer to do the job in a Socialist / Communist society. The dictator (or dictating party) would force someone to do it.

  In a Socialist / Communist society, the government takes over everything and dictates who will do what, how much they will make, yadda yadda yadda. The weak flourish and the able are punished.

  In a Capitalist society, government oversees the building of roads and bridges, protects our country (military and police), and helps those who cannot help themselves (old people, veterans, flood victims, etc.). Government taxes people and businesses a minimum amount, and lets them do their jobs however they see fit. The government stands back and makes sure they do not poke each others eyes out.

  I am convinced you are not talking about either of these situations. You are describing some fantasy land society where people do not act like human beings.

• SeanRenaud said on Oct 11, 2009....

  So once you cut out all the words you use to confuse the issue magic.  The way that all the current jobs get done is magic.  You really don't have an answer.  I'm exactly one post from reverting to the proper way of dealing with you but I give you one final post.

  1.  How do you intend under your plan to get people to do undesirable jobs which really is all of them

• andycox said on Oct 11, 2009....

  Guys, I've moved to What is socialism/communism, and is it a good idea? Part 2

Comment on "What is Socialism/Communism, and is it a good idea?"

Currently tagged	capitalism war environment communism china (Click to add tags below)
Tag this post	(Separate tags using commas, for example: New York, dating, vegetarian)
Your comment
	Comment Anonymously