It doesn't seem to be possible for an open internet forum to have an intellectually interesting discussion about this kind of thing. The reflexive reactions are so intense that they simply overwhelm anything reflective (
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Intellectual curiosity can't survive that level of activation.
>No capitalist would ever agree to the complete abolition of unemployment, to the abolition of the reserve army of unemployed, the purpose of which is to bring pressure on the labour market, to ensure a supply of cheap labour.
Marx and Adam Smith both highlighted this fundamental characteristic of capitalism, but it still rarely fails to blow Americans’ minds when I explain it to them.
In every system you need some slack otherwise the slightest hiccup brings everything to a halt.
Here the point is not to have an underclass of long-term, exploitable unemployed but to have some slack, ie. a minimum number of people available to ensure the system runs smoothly without shortages and hindrance to business growth and change.
Low unemployment is good and desirable but shortages are not.
I think the goal of no unemployment is a false one. The real goal has to be no poverty. Employment is only important because it provides people with an income that saves them from poverty (or at least should; too many jobs still pay poverty wages).
If a society had a basic income for everybody, the unemployed wouldn't be poor, and would still be available for work if the demand for extra labour was high enough.
Although ultimately, I do think that eventually automation should lead to less people having to work. Or perhaps preferably: people having to work less; we should also get rid of the 40+ hour work week, so we can divide the available work more equally, while also making sure everybody has enough time to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
And part-time work also provides the needed slack in the system without condemning anyone to poverty.
The slack can be heirs forgoing the size of their profits, by boosting wages where needed, as opposed to slack in the wages if the people doing all the work and creating all the wealth.
I mean, the US and other countries have reached “full employment” on several occasions - a level of unemployment where effectively everyone who wants a job had one (the unemployed who do exist are the small fraction you cant eliminate as people are in between jobs or seek other opportunities - employment “friction”).
"full employment" is a misleading term. Unemployment only counts people who have been actively looking for a job in the last 4 weeks, and so excludes many chronically unemployed. In addition underemployment is not counted at all: in today's "gig economy" many people can't find full time employment and have to work multiple part time jobs.
"Full employment" absolutely builds in the reserve army of labor power into the definition.
According to the department of labor's bureau of labor statistics, it is the opposite of what you said.
From 2000 to 2020, the labor participation for men from 20 to 44 has fallen. Labor participation for men 45 to 54 varies from flat to down. The labor participation rate for men 55 and older has risen. Working age men are less employed than they were, retirement age men are more employed than they were.
The main issue with that notion is that the statistics simply favor excluding a lot of people from being counted as employed or unemployed. There's a rather large third group of simply not working that is problematic in the sense that these people still need taking care off financially (healthcare, housing, education, etc.).
A lot of people that are not technically unemployed are also not working fall into a few groups: those that are dependent on others to work; those that are too young or too old to work; and those that have simply given up on the whole notion of working because they are no longer able to physically or mentally (or both).
And there is of course a big problem with poverty even among those that work. So unemployment figures look great. Poverty figures, not so much. IMHO basic income would be a fair and simple way to ensure we get rid of poverty that should not break capitalism.
Unemployment may bring to mind an image of someone banging on a door crying for a job to support their children, but these are the minority of cases.
Ideally, we would have a bigger safety net so that this would never happen.
There will sprays be a certain percentage of people where work is not a good option due to physical or mental disabilities. It is society’s role to help these people, and the wealthier society becomes, the easier this should be.
If you have a social safety net so that the unemployed can live somewhere and eat, under this definition do they count as unemployed?
And a second point, in my home country the government introduced rules where to have government benefits you have to work a little, painting your community, cutting grass in public places etc.
People on the left were outraged. How dare you give work to people on a government mandate, and tie unemployment benefits to it?
Yet that is precisely what Stalin just argued for there. A government can create full employment by creating jobs and forcing people to work. Why don't modern socialists support that?
If you need to work to get money, it is no more benefit, it is employment. And with employment should come all the benefits of employment, meaning vacation days, insurances, proper wage (>minimum wage), etc.
> People on the left were outraged. How dare you give work to people on a government mandate
The heirs who expropriate surplus labor time from those of us who work and create wealth are the ones who not work. Their wealth is from government mandate - the government was created by them to do this and enforce it. When are they to work?
First off, Stalin is not the be all end all of socialist thought. In fact a lot (most?) people who call themselves socialist these days don't even like Stalin. Even if he was well liked, one can support someone's broader ideas without supporting every single individual position. It's not a contradiction to say "I like [person]'s ideas, except [specific idea], which is dumb."
Secondly, tying unemployment benefits to community service is a blunt tool, that can directly hurt those trying to get unemployment. Some people need more time to find a job or improve their own skills, and spending time mowing the lawn may be counterproductive to that. Some people can work, but they may have disabilities that prevent them from doing whatever community service jobs are available. And finally, some people just can't work at all, and they shouldn't have to go through hoops to prove that to receive the benefits they need to live.
Finally, many on the left (including myself) reject the notion that living necessities should be tied to employment at all. Everyone should have access to food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare, regardless of their employment status. This includes people who can work, but choose not to. Work should not be a requirement to live a comfortable life.
> _Someone else_ will we working to give you a comfortable life.
Robots, preferably.
We're not there yet, but it would be a nice goal. And certainly a lot better than having robots do all the work but the fruits of their work going only to the rich who own them.
> In fact a lot (most?) people who call themselves socialist these days don't even like Stalin.
That could also be because he was a murderous dictator, and not necessarily have anything to do with his economic ideas. (Although some of his economic ideas, and they way they were implemented in particular, lead to lots of death too.)
... and it was illegal to not work in USSR.... The modern socialists who expect to have plenty of time for themselves in their dream regime would be so disappointed.
In the Soviet Union, which declared itself a workers' state, every adult able-bodied person was expected to work until official retirement. Thus unemployment was officially and theoretically eliminated. Those who refused to work, study or serve in another way risked being criminally charged with social parasitism
In other words, rent-seekers in the USSR were called what they are (parasites) and they received the same treatment that the US gives to it’s unemployed and homeless, except the US maintains an economic system that guarantees an unemployed and homeless population.
If you think you’re making the USSR appear less reasonable than the US, maybe think again.
In USSR you couldn't own much, thus rent-seeking was not possible.
House ownership was limited per-square-meter (varies on exact period and location). Most rooms/apartments were technically state property and you just rented them. Building „cooperative“ apartments where one would own it was a rather late development. And even then I believe limits of apartments-to-own were in place.
On the other hand, room-renting was tolerated in two cases. Resorts (no enough spots in hotels) and university towns (no enough places in dormitories). In resorts locals would move to, for example, garages to make money from renting their own apartments to holiday goers. Students renting was usually old lady business where after your kids are gone and husband dies you rent spare rooms.
I have earned a certain capital selling my labour. That capital is now working for me (some rent, bounds, etc). Why you think that someone doing these is a parasite?
Capital doesn’t “work”. People work. These are just objective English language definitions. What you’re saying is simply nonsensical. Can you try explaining again?
Wrt “earning capital,” you may have purchased capital, but you sold your labor for wages.
Compensation paid as stock options are an exception, and are a result of New Deal reforms to get more working people bought into the capitalist system, which has been successful, so far. But owning stocks is not the same as owning capital because you still do not control the capital and therefore cannot collect rents. Realize capitalists never directly trade the capital for the labor to operate that capital, unless forced. Historically, only communists have ever forced such a thing.
As strange as it may seem, the us also has a system that respects the rights of people who want to be homeless nomads.
If people want to be homeless due to mental health issues, there is no easy way out if the government is allowed to overrule someone who says ‘No! Don’t help me!’
Very difficult ethical issues all around.
In our area, we have shelter beds open and people sleeping in the cold outside of the building…
> Are you seriously suggesting that so many millions of Americans just happen to love being homeless? Is this a joke?
The person you're replying to didn't say any such things. Your replies on this post have followed a pattern of lazy swipes, and degrade the quality of discussion here.
A collectivistic society expects everyone to do their part to reach a good standard of living for everyone. 8 hours/day, as was common, to rebuild destroyed countries and economy is less than countless people in capitalist nations have to work today. The biggest difference is, is that this amount of labour is necessary for their own survival, that there is no collective sense, without authorities trying to reward them in some ways to keep them happy, or even showing any appreciation for the work they do.
Socialists don't say that socialism would suddenly lead to less work for everyone, a revolution and rebuilding after a revolution is a lot of hard work, but the work is done for the collective good, not to make a few even richer. It shall have meaning and be valued by society. And yes, eventually - even Marx talked about it already - work that is not necessary and labour that can be automated will become more free time for everyone.
> A government can create full employment by creating jobs and forcing people to work. Why don't modern socialists support that?
I am myself a politically active Marxist and we do say this, but we also understand that this isn’t going to happen. Keynesianism was not a sustainable solution. It only bought time. Ultimately states in capitalist societies are in service of capital. In the US, realize the 1970s financial overhaul, including the Bretton Woods System, was the capitalist response to the New Deal giving workers too much power. 1960s inflation hit the ruling class and they responded by brutalizing the economy. See: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com
Timely that Crimea and Ukraine are in the news again.
It was right about the time of this interview that Stalin was starving out Crimeans and Ukraineans with forced collectivization and other modern horrors.
The only implementations are basically run by dominant elites, who emerge as the ruling class, resulting in exclusive political economic systems. Daron Acemoglu's "Why nations fail" offers a great framework to discuss this, I think.
Appropriation of capital basically means that the government decides to eradicate right to private ownership, thus reducing the will for economic creative destruction.
The lack of this creative destruction leads to stagnation.
To my view, one should not harken to a communist system. Marx was a great observer and analyst, but the medicine offered under the brands of socialism and communism generally create only worse situations.
19th century workers movement was needed to create pressure to give every citizen more or less equal right regardless of the property they possessed. After this was achieved, the result was a much fairer capitalist system which was far less harsh than the soul and body destroying early factory/labour conditions Marx described.
Marx's analysis was critical in specifically pointing out what was wrong. The western societies fixed themselves without violent revolution.
The places which were touched by revolution into socialist/communist systems basically became de-facto oligarchy led autocracit governments who need to cling to power using authoritarian bullying.
I think anything that needs to be written as a summary of socialist reality was written by Orwell in Animal Farm. He was a fervent socialist - but became a quite strong critic of it's implementations as they stand.
Orwells fondness for socialism was driven by his experiences as part of the civil service of the british empire - a machine of opression to him, which he came to abhor.
He thought socialism would offer a better, fairer world - only to find out it only enabled a new band of crooks to take over.
The foundations of humane societies are not in communism or socialism.
> The only implementations are basically run by dominant elites, who emerge as the ruling class, resulting in exclusive political economic systems.
This is mighty reminiscent of basically every other system of large (super-Dunbar-scale) society control, from the ancient priest-kings, through the Roman "republic" and imperial systems, medieval feudalism, and late-stage capitalism.
When control of the political system (how society allocates resources) can be used in a self-dealing manner, and resources can be used to control the political system, the steady state will tend towards the pattern you noted above (especially when those resources tend toward power-law distributions).
Notably, the argument can be made that the situations where political power has reverted to a wider base (including the establishment of modern democracies) has come about when social or technological changes destabilized the economic distribution structure. Examples include the workers' movement you cited, the growing late medieval era's growing merchant class (whose willingness to be taxed to fund mutually-beneficial programs and corresponding demands for control over those programs helped trigger the creation of European democracy), and the western Roman Empire's decaying ability to use the funds of expansion to exert social control in its occupied territories.
Lastly, it should be noted that, as brutal, illiberal, and inegalitarian as the USSR ended up being, the society they replaced (the Tsarist Russian Empire), being an industrialized dictatorship built around an enormous serf class was probably worse on all three counts.
I disagree. The czarist state was far more lenient creature than the industrial scale slaughtermachine that was the stalinist USSR. A poignant example is the treatment of dissenters when Stalin himself was condemned for insurecctions against the czarist Russian state pre 1917. He was sent to 'exile' meaning he had to spend time in specific village, while being more or less free, being cordially observed by the guardsmen. Compare this to the well documented purges he laid upon those regarded as enemies of the state. (Ref. "Young Stalin" by Simon Sebag).
Of course USSR was more a continuation of the Russia of preceding centuries than a new political entity - hence alone cannot be used to empirically judge the quality of communism as a philosophy for state building.
"Luckily" we have many more examples around the world, especially from the eastern block countries which were prosperous modern states before they fell under the communist yoke - which in my opinion form sufficient evidence that communism does not really work as intended as a form of government that would be an obvious improvement to human condition.
And yet the only words of assurance you have in return following scrutiny of this point is "well it doesn't have to be that way, next time will be different". They never, ever, ever want to focus on this, because they have nothing.
I think communism requires society to operate in an unstable state away from its Nash equilibrium, so it needs a strong dictatorship to keep people coerced into working against their personal interests (even if that's ultimately better for them when everyone complies). If it was democratic, most individuals would see opportunities to do better for themselves one way or another if they had the opportunity, so they'd vote for more individual rights, and erode the communism. Either that, or people really like freedom of choice so much, they'll tolerate a worse quality of life in other areas (assuming communism leads to better quality of life).
With capitalism, the coercion to work is decentralized in the form of people promising to give you somebody else's work (money) if you do some work for them. Being decentralized makes a dictatorship unnecessary to sustain it.
I find this view of history very perplexing. Workers movements in the US have lead the things like a 40 hour workweek, paid sick leave, weekends, minimum wages, workplace safety standards, etc. The people standing in the way of those reforms and, and indeed who employed state violence against workers to prevent these reforms we enjoy today, were capitalists.
People like to say that America is the home of the free, but we have the world’s largest prison population. This happened under a democratic capitalist system.
> With capitalism, the coercion to work is decentralized in the form of people promising to give you somebody else's work (money)
You say the system is decentralized but 3 individuals in the US hold more wealth than 50% of the population. If money is the method of decentralized enticement, yet a handful of people control most of the money and assets, is that really decentralized control? “A handful of elites owning the nation’s wealth” sounds like most people’s perception of communism, and yet it describes reality in capitalist America.
> Being decentralized makes a dictatorship unnecessary to sustain it.
Last January a defeated President and his followers attempted to overthrow democracy and install himself as the first American dictator. This happened under a capitalist republic. If capitalism makes dictatorships unnecessary, why is an authoritarian movement growing in capitalist America?
Up until 10,000 years ago, the entire world was communist. The remaining hunter gatherer bands in the Amazon and elsewhere are communist.
Marx said "I am not a Marxist" and "I do not write recipes for cookshops of the future", so there is no Marxist society other than the one he envisioned in the far future (certainly not a nearer term socialist future) which had the banner "From each according to ability, to each according to need".
Having tribes where everyone knows and are related to everyone makes a lot of things work that doesn't work at larger scales.
> From each according to ability
This is the dystopian part, if they judge you to have high ability they will work you to the bone and punish you if they think they could grind more work out of you. There is no freedom to quit and do something else, there is just the judgement of the state and if they get something wrong you are screwed.
Reward people for work instead of punish people for not working, that is the capitalist way. Punishing people to get them to work is a bad idea, I thought most people on the left agreed with this? So why do you still think communism makes sense, when it is a system based on punishment rather than rewards?
Firstly you're describing pre-Civilization, with no bureaucracy or central agricultural system.
Secondly, tribal human society roved in bands of approx 100+ people which, by virtue that it usually had leadership, was not entirely classless, despite the fact that the groups were small enough not to require political representation or monarchs. You're dreaming if you think individuals were always free to act against a tribe leader's wishes.
I don't think countries that are ruled with communism ended up as a dictatorship because of the ruling class. Maybe it was inevitable.
What makes me say that? Because the concept of complex systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system) gave me a new approach to think about different economic and social organizations.
Economy (and society) is a complex system and it is impossible to model perfectly (at least for now). So any approach that attempts to have everything under control will (eventually) fail. Or you may need to use force to mold the reality to your hypothetical system.
Capitalism may not be the best system there is, but it certainly aligns with a complex systems point of view.
Before the staunchly communist Freda Utley left for the USSR in the 30s, Bertrand Russel, her godfather, cautioned her not to delude herself that any flaws in the society were because of poor implementation by the Russias. Whatever she saw there was socialism he said.
Russel, of course, was aligned with the left his entire life.
Since then socialism (per Marx defined as the nationalization of all but private effects) has been independently tried to the same ruinous effect. Every socialist regime is unique, because they all try to explain and fix why the others failed; uniquely brutal reaching it's zenith with Pol Pot.
Cuba is indeed a tyrannical dictatorship and has been for decades. A one-party state that regularly arrested dissidents and those who simply didn't fit its ideal narratives even if they had committed no normally defined criminal offense. I can't at all imagine how you could define the decades under castro and his brother as anything close to democratic. By definition that would require political plurality, freedom of association and freedom of expression, all of which were and still are very visibly lacking in Cuban society.
To say all of the above, by the way, is in no way to defend the also barbaric practices of the Pinochet regime. Pinochet however at least left power after a forceful referendum and peaceful transition to democracy. The ruling elite of Cuba never did and in no way ever even let things reach the point of an honest referendum.
Gorby appears to be the sole exception. Might have something to do with having close family killed in the famines, and tortured in the Gulags. Every European other regime fell under pressure from the streets.
Cuba is a tyranny. They've soften up to get European investment and tourists, but they're brutal in their indoctrination, imprisonment of dissidents, etc. They're also an important (and beloved) backstop preventing American domination in L. America.
Pinochet didn't fall, he basically handed over power peacefully. His (surprisingly liberal) constitution of 1980 established him as head of the armed forces (which he was until he died) and promised free elections. He allowed for a fair and free elections in '88 that he lost and whose result he respected paving the way for the 1990 presidential elections. Again he lost and respected the result.
He's also a murderer who slaughtered thousands of innocents, but that's peanuts compared what the commies have wrought.
Everything I wrote is a gross oversimplification. Volumes have been written for each of the three topics you glibly referenced.
Gorby is not exception. He was bad at his job, yet he still tried to do same shit. E.g. January 1991 events. Looking at the big picture it's clear that either he ordered tanks on his own civilians OR he knew about them and was too coward to come out that he lost chain-of-command.
And what would you call the Cuba of the last several decades? A democratic politically liberal state that respects personal and political freedoms? I'm honestly curious. Also, you don't need to be brainwashed, you simply need to read, observe and speak to people who live or have lived there.
- Pinochet slaughtered (tens) thousands of innocents
- Cuba is a backstop to American imperialism in the region which I clearly eluded as a good thing for those L. Americans outside of Cuba (at least until Americans drop their Monroe BS).
My parents are from Argentina and lost many friends, students and professors (luckily no family) to capitalist dictators. The battles of L. America literally run through my blood. I think I am very well aware who the Chilean equivalent of Videla is. Pinochet, however, must be recognized for having relinquished power unlike his Argentine capitalist counter parts and Cuban socialist counterparts.
Anyway, I think I have demonstrated a little more nuance in this very complicated topic than trite single line slogans. I am not a "capitalist", whatever that means. I reject the destructive "socialism" vs "capitalism" false dichotomy.
> I reject the destructive "socialism" vs "capitalism" false dichotomy.
Nothing could expose your class position as much as your suggestion that Cuba’s leaders are Pinochet’s “counterparts.”
Pinochet was lifted into power by the American capitalist empire. Castro was lifted into power by the Cuban working class. It takes a lot of nerve to equate the two in any way, and even more to suggest that the latter should step down in spite of overwhelming support from the Cuban people.
Nothing I said contradicts what you wrote. The US did assist Pinochet (bad). The Cuban people did revolt against Battista (good).
You'd be surprised, however, how popular Pinochet is particularly among working class Chileans, just as you'd obviously be surprised how much support Cuba needed from the USSR to keep the regime together. Material support and training manuals on how to buttstock resistive people.
Battista fell over 60 years ago, Cubans want something else.
Reality is complicated, it cannot be reduced to pretty slogans.
Yes, looks like it works just like any other communist state. Communism needs to be maintained through tyranny, people wouldn't vote for it if they could which is why communist states must constantly supress dissent and never allow people to vote for other parties. When people can vote they quickly vote out communism in favor of more liberal parties, communism is very short lived in free societies as when people try it they quickly learn to hate it.
Could Cubans vote away communism if they wanted? If not then it isn't free. People could vote away capitalism in USA and become communist if they wanted. Every democracy could.
Absolutely, but Cuba’s democracy is very localized and bottom up in order to prevent a wealthy ruling class from controlling dominant narratives, i.e. oligarchy like in the US. And they don’t hold ridiculous election performances every 4 years to wrangle consent from the public.
Democracy is very sensitive and the liberal democracies in Western capitalist countries are brutally anti-democratic. Most Americans realize this but will be so quick to presume any other country a dictatorship.
Cuba has never been a “dictatorship”. Castro and his successors were and still are deeply loved by the Cuban working class that put them into power. US leaders understand this and it’s why none of their attacks have penetrated. See: Bay of Pigs
This is not accurate. Cubans could not vote out the Communist Party since it is enshrined in the Cuban constitution that there is only one party, the Communist Party, and all other political parties are classed as "illegal".
"Cuba is a one-party state, with the Communist Party of Cuba being described as the "superior driving force of the society and the state" in the Constitution of Cuba, and all other political parties are illegal. Elections in Cuba are not democratic because the government does not allow free and fair voting." ~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Cuba
Call it what you want, how do you defeat the communist party in elections if it is enshrined in the Cuban constitution that there can only be one legal party, and that party is the communist party?
How does that jibe with democracy and free elections?
??? Do you even have the first idea what you’re talking about? The other “option” was Batista. And Cuba is more democratic than the US, but it doesn’t allow oligarchs to astroturf consent like in liberal democracies.
There are always a lot of options if you don't have marxists around :)
Cuba was just a Soviet Union's project to burn enough money to show that socialism
works. But it didn't. And I very unhappy that we were living so poor in soviet era while paying those "democracies" which were modeled just like our country - with literally no choice on any elections.
This is unfortunately not a joke. It blows my mind that many people today don't understand that communism can only work in a primitive society (the "pure" form that many dream about) or it inevitably leads to an authoritarian dictatorship (in more advanced societies).
(I wouldn't lump "socialism" in there because it's more vague; social-democracy can and does work).
Isn’t the issue less to do with “communism” than with concentrating too much power in too few hands? It seems to me all political systems tend toward autocracy and the only thing preventing that eventuality are robust systems in place that disperse power.
Yeah but communism as a doctrine will inevitably lead to exactly that, concentrating too much power into too few hands. Because if you want to look for the "collective interest" of the people, then people will disagree. Musk can do rockets not because he convinced everyone that it's in our collective interest (though he may believe so) - he can do them because he doesn't have to justify the collective interest. As soon as the collective interest is a matter of doctrine, some group of people will be in charge of it, and they will by necessity suppress other opinions about what "collective interest" might be.
But it is - they could because the party leadership wanted to/ decided it was important. My point isn't that communism can't achieve anything, it's that you can't have private initiative that's against the party line - and that's not an accident of one particular implementation, that is a "feature" of communism itself.
"Unanimous" agreement on the collective good/collective interests only works, at all, in small groups (primitive societies) and dictatorships. That was really my point.
A person (or persons) with sufficient power/influence decided to pursue space flight and it happened. Which example does the previous sentence refer to?
When Musk decided to pursue space (or EV for that matter) he had very little power. Wasn't even a billionaire yet. There are thousands of people with similar fortunes that you never hear about.
So you don’t know which situation I was referring to? The fact the Musk accomplished what he did with SpaceX is prima facie proof that he had sufficient power/influence to accomplish the goal.
Which is exactly what I'm talking about. Communism = "for sufficient power to influence/accomplish a goal, you must be in the party elite (tens, at most hundreds of persons)". Liberal democracy: "for sufficient power to influence/accomplish a goal, you must start at least reasonably well off" (3 to 4 orders of magnitude more people)
"power" is distributed in democracies; The centralized nature of communism is its weakest spot, and it is by design.
Another person with sufficient power/influence decided that computing is evil and USSR fell behind in (micro)computers and chips terribly.
Also, a lot of USSR space advancements were made thanks thanks to captured Nazi scientists. If they had to rely purely on homegrown science, they'd have had much harder time.
Look up Wernher Von Braun. A group of people thought Jim Crow was a great idea. A group of BP executives thought it was a great idea to not fix oil leaks in Nigeria and poison a bunch of people. I think you miss the point. People with power in any system can use that power for bad. It’s not the economic system that causes this it’s shitty humans that do.
Thing is, in democratic market economy system there're various checks & balances. Sooner or later (usually, sooner) we learn about all of those issues. If somebody just bids on a wrong evolutionary path... Well, there're many investors bidding on all possible paths. Some win, some loose.
In soviet central planning system, few people make decisions that affect many and there's was redundancy. No free press. No political opposition. No economic rivalries to challenge. Same in civic/industrial evolution. If a committee decides to pursue idea X and drop idea Y.... So be it.
There was no democratic feedback mechanism either. Public is not happy that state money is used to prop up revolutions all around the world while one's citizen are living in poor condition? Tough luck, party line is never wrong.
I think different systems work best at different levels of scale. Power needs to be accountable and visible to the people affected by it. The more local it is, the more you can safely do.
NN Taleb stated it well on Twitter, I think: "At Fed level, libertarian; state, Republican; local, Democrat; family/friends, socialist."
Democracies never end up in dictatorships? How much historical data do we have on that? I'm pretty sure at least brazil was democratic and then was ruled by military dictatorship (juntas) for a long time. 1940s Germany as well right? I just realized I've never seen the breakdown on that for any length of time, lets say going back to the first republics?
I don't know, it seems like a lot of European countries with a pluralistic party system are heavily "Christian Socialist" (pro free market, pro property ownership, pro capitalist, pro safety net) and they don't seem to be any more prone to slide into dictatorship?
I've actually have never read a compiled lists of stats of what types of government make a country impervious to dictatorial rule.
Thing is, marxist-communist-socialist countries don't even stay non-dehumanizing-regimes. Revolution happens, then terrible things kick in.. And then regime flames out over a loooong time. Usually accepting at least some parts of free market and plural democracy.
Nazi (national-socialist) Germany was totally socialist.
P.S. Your description of „socialism“ is a veeeery weird one. Apparently everything is socialist.
> Thing is, marxist-communist-socialist countries don't even stay non-dehumanizing-regimes.
There are no Marxist regimes; all “Communist” regimes are (or are derived from) Leninism which introduces vanguardism and other changes to avoid the prerequisite of developing proletarian class consciousness through mature capitalism in Marxism, and feature a (theoretically) transitional initial phase to replace development through private capitalism, which none have ever escaped from to anything that was supposed to be beyond it (though China rewrote the plan to include authoritarian quasi-private capitalism.)
There's a wide array of arguably socialist non-“Communist” regimes, but all of them are democratic/market socialism that explicitly accepts plural democracy and regulated (not “free”) markets as important elements.
> Nazi (national-socialist) Germany was totally socialist.
This is true to about the same extent as “the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is totally a democratic republic” is true.
> Wells : I remember the situation with regard to the technical intelligentsia several decades ago. At that time the technical intelligentsia was numerically small, but there was much to do and every engineer, technician and intellectual found his opportunity. That is why the technical intelligentsia was the least revolutionary class. Now, however, there is a superabundance of technical intellectuals, and their mentality has changed very sharply. The skilled man, who would formerly never listen to revolutionary talk, is now greatly interested in it. Recently I was dining with the Royal Society, our great English scientific society. The President's speech was a speech for social planning and scientific control. Thirty years ago, they would not have listened to what I say to them now. Today, the man at the head of the Royal Society holds revolutionary views and insists on the scientific reorganisation of human society. Mentality changes. Your class-war propaganda has not kept pace with these facts.
Seems to me that technical dev type people are indeed becoming abundant, and many are entertaining the notion of UBI, myself included. Not long ago, I would have thought it silly to even consider.
UBI is interesting, because it isn't really socialist. It can easily be a tool of capital to retain power. If lots of things are automated, to the point where many don't need to work, who will own the robots (the means of production)? The socialist solution would be to find a way to collectively control/own these. Maybe vote on a board to decide what is best or something like that. They would find a way to distribute the goods produced. This could be called a UBI.
But UBI would also be the capitalist way to go about things. The capitalists will own everything, and just give the masses enough UBI to keep them happy enough to not fight back.
OTOH, there's a lot of renewed advocacy for breaking off the naturally monopolistic "platforms" developed by existing tech firms, and making sure that they're run in the public interest via strong regulation. That's basically a residual argument for centralized collective "planning" in an economic context, even as part of a market-based economy. Based on the observation that, either way, a monopolized "platform" is not really subject to market discipline, so the government needs to step-in as a substitute.
UBI isn't socialist at all; socialism is about central planning – large bureaucracy making decisions. UBI mostly removes the bureaucracy and decision making power of how to spend government proceeds.
This is why in the 21st century the most prominent promoters of UBI (sometimes called negative income tax) were libertarians.
It is consistent with socialism, but not essentially socialist.
> socialism is about central planning
No, it's not. Central planning may be part of some versions of socialism, though there are serious arguments within socialism that central planning in the strong sense is incompatible with socialism, and instead a degenerate single-capitalist form of capitalism.
Socialism is about common/worker ownership and control of the institutions, means, and proceeds of economic production (each of these is a goal and a means to the others.) UBI, especially when funded from taxes on wealth, property, or income where capital income is not excluded or favored, is a mechanism for common participation in the proceeds of production.
> This is why in the 21st century the most prominent promoters of UBI (sometimes called negative income tax) were libertarians.
I think you mean the 20th Century and right-libertarians, though as you state it jt is, in fact, also true of the 21st Century (but there it is libertarian socialists at the fore, who aren't the libertarians you seem to want to refer to with your “UBI isn’t socialist” line.)
I still contend socialism is about central planning. Common ownership and participation in the means of production via democracy is central planning in practice, since people end up pooling their decision making power.
Representives then implement policies decided by the collective, which all people are subject too.
It's opposed to the libertarian vision, which would be for each person to make more of their own decisions individually, with voting less relevant.
> I still contend socialism is about central planning.
Actual socialists, for the whole history of socialism, disagree, but please, don't let that distract you.
> Common ownership and participation in the means of production via democracy is central planning in practice,
When the common ownership is done through the state which directly controls industry, sure, you get central planning. When it's done through democratic worker control of firms, it is no more central planning than when firms are jointly controlled by their capital owners. And there are lots of variations of socialism besides those two.
> It's opposed to the libertarian vision
The idea that socialism is opposed to the libertarian vision is news to libertarian socialists.
Libertarian socialism is a synonym for anarchy, which gives a clue how compatible they are.
I would call what you are describing communism, not socialism. And it's nothing like any major socialist society in existance, because it's unobtainable in practice.
Nor is "central planning" a socialist concept. The only remotely consisent throughline in the vast spectrum of socialist thought has been democratic ownership or control of one's workplace. In fact, many strains of leftism explicitly reject central planning of an economy, which they would see as a result of an unjustified hierarchy.
"Stalin : There is no, nor should there be, irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of the individual person and the interests of the collective. There should be no such contrast, because collectivism, socialism, does not deny, but combines individual interests with the interests of the collective."
There is no, nor should there be, irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the family, between the interests of the individual person and the interests of the family. There should be no such contrast, because family, does not deny, but combines individual interests with the interests of the family."
Horrifying.
Not really. In a well-functioning family individual and family interests are in tune (of course there are not well functioning families where, say, step-parents and stepchildren get into physical altercations.
Contrast to Georgia in 1860, where an individual slave had interests contrast to that of the plantation.
Odd a worker in tune with his fellow workers is horrifying. What then is a wage slave grinding it out in some Amazon warehouse to enrich Bezos and his investors?
Good luck leaving just about any country when virtually the entire world wipes bum with the UN Charter on Human Rights and restricts freedom of movement in violation of Article 13.
This is standard Marxism. For example, from the Communist Manifesto:
> From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.
> You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.
> Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.
H. G. Wells' 1934 interview with Stalin (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17054704 - May 2018 (52 comments)
H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616566 - April 2014 (137 comments)
It doesn't seem to be possible for an open internet forum to have an intellectually interesting discussion about this kind of thing. The reflexive reactions are so intense that they simply overwhelm anything reflective ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Intellectual curiosity can't survive that level of activation.