I got this message from quicksilverhg:

Could you start a new thread so that we can discuss the "post-capitalism" theory that many of you have been espousing? I see you said "It ends with an inchoate, but I think useful, exposition of how economic progress initially requires capitalism but then finds it an obstacle. The three page introduction and summary gives you a good idea of what the book is about." And I'd like to get into that, but I don't want to go off topic on the global warming thread.

Go for it quicksilverhg!

I'll throw some ideas into the mix about the day after the revolution. It's commonly said that socialism is just capitalism with communists in charge.

Which means people will go on working for money to buy things for at least some years after a successful revolution.

Large capitalists would have their capital taken away - factories, airports, machine tools - anything that is used to produce profit.

The crucial question is how would a communist regime manage the economy, once the capitalists were no longer doing it their way.

The long term goal of a socialist government is to help make communism possible. I would call communism a situation where a socialist society had created so many labour-saving machines that very little work was needed from anyone - maybe a few hours a week from most people.

So a socialist government the day after the revolution would need to take the capitalist habits of the working class seriously. Capitalism has successfully raised people's expectations, and while people will put up with material deprivation for a while if they think the cause is good, a socialist government wouldn't be able to just exhort people to be more moral. Doesn't work.

You'd have to be encouraging people to take over their workplaces, to seriously study questions of strategy and long-term planning.

Could a socialist government nationalise the top 100 companies and successfully make the same decisions that an interlocking network of powerful board members, executives and big investors do at the moment?

While the ruling class does make decisions about what should be invested where, there is not a single committee of the ruling class that dominates _all_ the others completely. They are a class, not a conspiracy.

We'd need a class, not just a government, in return. I don't think a socialist government can successfully plan any but the broadest brush strokes of a post-revolutionary economy. The  government will have to prod the working class to both take over the ecomony, and avoid fragmenting the economy by trying to clamber on top of each other.

youngmarxist wrote:

It's commonly said that socialism is just capitalism with communists in charge.

Which means people will go on working for money to buy things for at least some years after a successful revolution.

Indeed it is a period of transition. The big question is how successful will the working class be in keeping a new "communist" bourgeoisie at bay. This will depend in part on how well equipped it is for the task when it makes a fairly sudden switch from thinking the existing order is inevitable to considering it overthrowable.

youngmarxist wrote:

"The long term goal of a socialist government is to help make communism possible. I would call communism a situation where a socialist society had created so many labour-saving machines that very little work was needed from anyone - maybe a few hours a week from most people."

I certainly think that the more routine stuff can be kept down to fairly short periods and shared out equitably.

However, there are going to be a lot of people who want to throw themselves into a field of endeavour and will want to spend long hours at it. Initial and ongoing periods of training would also tend to be full on.


On the question of how we run the economy, I argue elsewhere that we can use pricing to make decentralized economic decisions without having market relations between production establishments. See "Economic Calculation" in chapter 4 of
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~dmcm/Files/Brightfuture28Nov.pdf

You guys are talking about the transition here...first wouldn't it be beneficial to define where you want to go?

Do you want a Chinese style Communism? A Soviet style communism? A Vietnamese/Cambodian style? Or something different altogether.  Will there be money...will people get paid, or are they expected to work for whatever the government feels like they should get in return?

Large capitalists would have their capital taken away - factories, airports, machine tools - anything that is used to produce profit.

How would you justify this? In order to do so it would seem that you feel that these people did not earn what they own? Is their ANY private property rights in your world? Are people allowed to own anything more than what the government says they are ALLOWED to own? Would you compensate these people in any way for what you are taking from them? Do you feel these people would be justified in opposing you for taking what they have EARNED?

I would call communism a situation where a socialist society had created so many labour-saving machines that very little work was needed from anyone - maybe a few hours a week from most people.

Where would you get the money for this huge transformation? Historically socialist economies have been so burdened with the social programs they take on (often consuming better than 60-80% of their budget) that they are unable to take on much else.  Will your socialist government magically be different, or do you have some plan for getting that money?

You'd have to be encouraging people to take over their workplaces, to seriously study questions of strategy and long-term planning.

And what of the people who just refuse? Or those who claim an injury that makes them unable to work when in fact they are quite capable? We already have many of those here in a capitalist society...and the more social entitlements are given to the population the more of them there becomes.

Could a socialist government nationalise the top 100 companies and successfully make the same decisions that an interlocking network of powerful board members, executives and big investors do at the moment?

Who would you get to run it? Why would the most successful and intelligent of the population (those that run the companies now in general) want to chair these companies? Would they receive extra money? Would they be awarded some additional privelege? Or do you think that your socialist government will be able to run it with the people on the government payroll?

The  government will have to prod the working class to both take over the ecomony, and avoid fragmenting the economy by trying to clamber on top of each other.

How would this happen? It sounds like ONE opportunistic person could easily take over and fragment the economy while making himself rich, and there's not much you can do to stop him?




Right now you guys are trying to create a utopia...the problem is you assume that things necessary for a utopia are already readily available.  You talk about some labor-saving machines...while that's a nice theory, it is not possible to even theoretically run an economy with enough machines to take over like you're talking.  Who's going to run the machines? More importantly who is going to fix them? Why would people want these jobs?

quiksilverhg said: You guys are talking about the transition here...first wouldn't it be beneficial to define where you want to go?

Well, communism. Where, as I said, humans have got so smart and so productive that little drudge work remains to be done, and people are free to concentrate on what really interests them.

The 'Communism' you talk of (Chinese, Soviet Union etc) were, even at the times when the parties were sincere, were not 'communist societies' - they were 'socialist' societies. Socialism is the transitition you get when communists take over after a revolution. It's capitalism being pushed towards communism (unless there is a counter-revolution as happened in all the countries you've spoken of) by a communist party in government.

Large capitalists would have their capital taken away - factories, airports, machine tools - anything that is used to produce profit.

How would you justify this? In order to do so it would seem that you feel that these people did not earn what they own?

It's not about them having earnt their property, its about large capitalists using the strength their property gives them to force us to work for them. Owners of slave plantations must have worked very hard for many bitter hours to earn their riches. But they were still slavers.

The only way a group talking about ideas like ours would get near real power would be an enormous shift of popular attitude. We, or people thinking like us, would only ever form a regime if people got so over capitalism that they wanted to get rid of it completely. Since we'd be saying exactly what we intended to do, we'd only get in if an enormous majority of working people thought that our way was the best one.

Are there ANY private property rights in your world?

Absolutely. I didn't define what we would take away properly. What I should have said was "we will take away any posession that the capitalist ruling class finds useful when they force us to work for them".

People will be free to chase profits for a long long time. I don't see how you can run a free modern economy without people being free to buy and sell.

And on a personal note, I'm not giving up my Playstation just because some boring party hack says its not revolutionary. I'll want to play games and buy new ones. That means people will be free to invent all sorts of interesting things. My gut instinct is to not limit personal wealth - that is a side issue.

What we want to destroy is the system that forces people to work for a living on the terms of the capitalists.

Are people allowed to own anything more than what the government says they are ALLOWED to own?

That rather depends upon how good people get at defying governments.

Would you compensate these people in any way for what you are taking from them?

Not really. A token gesture, maybe even a comfortable retirement if they are lucky, but no, we intend to take power away from them, not swap it for money.

Do you feel these people would be justified in opposing you for taking what they have EARNED?

Of course they would be. We are trying to destroy their class power - their power to make us work for them. I wouldn't insult them by expecting them to just give everything away without a fight.

I would call communism a situation where a socialist society had created so many labour-saving machines that very little work was needed from anyone - maybe a few hours a week from most people.

Where would you get the money for this huge transformation? Historically socialist economies have been so burdened with the social programs they take on (often consuming better than 60-80% of their budget) that they are unable to take on much else.  Will your socialist government magically be different, or do you have some plan for getting that money?

Well, any socialist regime that bases itself on subsidising basic necessities, instead of unleashing people's creative power to get economic jobs done, is going to get stagnant pretty quickly.

One thing that communists need to do in the decades between revolutions is encourage a culture of thinking about and discussing just how much money a government can and should spend. It would be very hard for a socialist regime if most people think that government is a grab-bag of grants and entitlements.

I'm not against large publically-funded projects - but people have to be clear that government is all about juggling many fiercely competing priorities, and that state power and class power are not the same as having unlimited credit cards.

Could a socialist government nationalise the top 100 companies and successfully make the same decisions that an interlocking network of powerful board members, executives and big investors do at the moment?

Who would you get to run it? Why would the most successful and intelligent of the population (those that run the companies now in general) want to chair these companies? Would they receive extra money? Would they be awarded some additional privelege? Or do you think that your socialist government will be able to run it with the people on the government payroll?

I don't know.

We'd probably have to bribe at least some of the current ruling class to work with us as advisors, until we could train enough people.

I certainly don't think a committee of ten or twelve can do the work that several hundred interlocking committees and people do at the high levels of the current ruling class.

Perhaps a sort of 'economic parliament' would be making large-scale strategy in public view. That would be slower, but would avoid the 'complexity' issue.

I'm going to read David Mc's article and see what he has to say.

Just throwing a couple of things (rather haphazardly) into the discussion here:

1 Historically no social system has ever been permanent.  Are there any good reasons to think of capitalism as some sort of final stage? Isn't it bound to transform into something qualitatively different as have all social/economic systems so far?  This is not an argument for communism necessarily, I'm just raising the question of what comes next and asking quicksilver(specifically) if he has any views on this.  He obviously thinks that communism is a dead-end and I'd be interested in his views of how the economy and social system is likely to transform as we advance further into modernity.

2. The only communist-led revolutions that we've ever seen have been in very backward societies and in these cases an attempt was made to modernise and transform those societies very rapidly. All those attempts failed but those places continued to call themselves "socialist/communist"  long after they had been taken over by reactionaries. As a consequence most people think that when we talk of "communism" what we are aiming for is a dreary, repressive society in which personal initiative was suppressed and the economies stagnated.

3. In advanced, dynamic capitalist societies the preconditions for people being able to take over and run things themselves are being rapidly created.  People are becoming more intelligent and more capable - as well as more frustrated.

4.  But until people have reached a level of maurity where they actually want the responsibility of running things themselves (and are prepared to shoulder that burden) the current system will continue.

5. On this point in particular I see a huge difference between us and the pseudos who generally take the patronizing attitude of seeing people as victims who need looking after by a kindly government.   Their approach to everything is to protest and complain (and look backwards to when things were smaller, more simple, more stable).  They demand more security rather than more freedom  and power.

Here are a few comments on quicksilverhg’s posting of October 11, 2006:

The countries you refer to were only called communist in the west. They called themselves socialist, a transition phase to communism. There is a whole area of political theory relating to capitalist-roaders and capitalist restoration in these countries.

These links should be a useful introduction to that:

http://www.lastsuperpower.net/docs/alcultrevdef/document_view

http://www.lastsuperpower.net/docs/ussr%20-was-capitalist/document_view

http://www.lastsuperpower.net/history/china/right-to-rebel/

http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/649112802009/forum_topic

Ultimately socially necessary labor will be performed purely for the fun of it as menial work is mostly eliminated and the average worker is better equipped to take on the more interesting stuff. However, initially, payment will still be closely linked to work performed. The size of differentials will depend on what is required to induce people to perform certain tasks and undergo training.

What should be the optimal split between present personal consumption and investment will no doubt be a topic of intense discussion among those with an interest in such matters.

Expropriating the capitalists is basically about workers deciding they don’t want to work for them anymore. Now all the means of production owned by the capitalists could be left to rust but that would be a bit of a waste, and it is not as if the capitalists had any other use for the stuff.  It may be considered expedient to provide compensation to some capitalists to encourage good behavior, e.g., not engaging in underground conspiracies against the new order. At the other end of the spectrum will be those who have committed heinous crimes in the process of resisting the revolution. They will receive different treatment.

Initially there would still be heavy reliance on those with management skills from the old order and they may need to be heavily bribed to keep them on side.

This article has some thoughts on the challenges that would face a new revolutionary regime.

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~dmcm/red_politics/unempl.htm

 

Lots of good new ideas thrown out by these last few posts, but I'm still seeing a lot of ideas that sound idealistically good, but don't seem to have any way of applying them in today's world.

I suppose I'll start with the contention that Chinese/Vietnamese/Soviet communism isn't real communism...I'm more than willing to believe that you don't consider them "real" communists...but when there are constantly celebrations here for Mao (who ruined China's economy and killed millions) and the victory in Vietnam (which ruined the economy twice as bad and killed millions) I am forced to conclude that your celebration of these regimes indicates that you think they are at the minimum better than any Western societies; and perhaps even something we should strive for.

Now as for the contention about taking away all of the "large capitalists" money:
Firstoff how do you consider who is and isn't a "large capitalist"? Are you going to base it off of a person's income? Is it going to be based off of what kind of company they own?

I'll go ahead and use the example of my father here.  My grandfather was a pastor at a Methodist (later a non-denominational) church and had four boys with my grandmother.  All of my uncles did well in high school and were able to get into the Merchant Marine Academy here; this meant that there was no burden for my grandparents to pay for college and each of my uncles earned their own way through college.  After college my father worked for several different merchant shipping companies (mostly oil tankers) and earned a good deal of money that way before going back to grad school (where he met my mom).  My dad stopped sailing shortly after I was born and bought a computer store so that he could be home more and own his own business and not have to have anyone for a boss.

He had few employees (perhaps one or two) at his computer store and sold computers to earn a living (my mom worked as well).  Later after getting a bum deal on selling the computer store (some guy ripped him off and declared bankruptcy after buying the store) my father (with advice from my uncle) bought a fast-food restauraunt in upstate New York.  There he employs about 40 people and pays them a fair wage for the work they're doing.  Slightly above minimum wage for part-timers (mostly high schoolers) and significantly more for full-time workers.  As a matter of fact I worked in that store as a normal employee from 14 to about 19.

Right now he owns two fast-food restauraunts and employs about 70 people total who probably couldn't otherwise find jobs and has many very well-paid managers who make probably more than double what I do right now.  The way I see it he has earned everything that he has, and I'd say he provides a valuable service to the community both from the product he sells and from the jobs he provides.  It sounds to me like you would judge him a "large capitalist" who ENSLAVES his workers to do his bidding and pays them barely anything in a grand scheme to become as rich as he possibly can.

I'm curious...how in the new communist world you're envisioning would you replace my father? I assume the government would run the store, but who would you staff it with? What would you pay them? Or would you merely destroy fast-food altogether since you can't staff the stores without "enslaving" people to work there? If you would keep it open, how would you pay the people? Would they make the same as doctors, or would they be paid in proportion to the work they do as in a capitalist society?

My gut instinct is to not limit personal wealth - that is a side issue.

How are people going to be allowed to earn personal wealth in your world? Today most people do it by getting an extra education allowing them to be paid more, or by owning a business, or by  saving and/or playing the stock market...
Options 2 and 3 are out in your world, so then it's up to people to go out and get educated and work harder...however in order to do so they have to have abilities above that which the average person has else why wouldn't everyone do it?
The natural tendency for the marxists would be to take away any extra money they earn in this manner since one of the central creeds is "from each according to their abilities".

Why then would anyone want to go to college or advance themselves in ANY way if they are not allowed to see any return on their extra effort?

Also since people who work harder will just have it taken away, then they are pretty much just stuck with whatever the government say they are ALLOWED to own, not what they earn.  In essence there are no property RIGHTS, only priveleges granted by the government, so you cannot truthfully say that there are any property RIGHTS in a communism.

What we want to destroy is the system that forces people to work for a living on the terms of the capitalists.

I'm rather hazy on what you mean when you say people are FORCED to work in a capitalist system...define what you mean by FORCED.  How would you get people to work in the moneyless society? It's nice that people would volunteer to do programming, but someone's gotta take out the garbage too.  Seems you have two options...pay them (and end up with just a capitalist society again, except one where the government controls the business) OR force them.

This again brings me to what I think was the most important dilemma with this moneyless society that you guys have proposed...

You'd have to be encouraging people to take over their workplaces, to seriously study questions of strategy and long-term planning.

And what of the people who just refuse? Or those who claim an injury that makes them unable to work when in fact they are quite capable? We already have many of those here in a capitalist society...and the more social entitlements are given to the population the more of them there becomes.

This in fact seems to be the reason that most socialist regimes end up dumping all of their money on social programs and having little left for anything else...

Well, any socialist regime that bases itself on subsidising basic necessities, instead of unleashing people's creative power to get economic jobs done, is going to get stagnant pretty quickly.

Specifically how would you "unleash" this creative power? How would this creative power get people's trash taken out...get people to maintain the sewers...do plumbing...contruction etc. And what would you do with the people who just don't work, as has happened in every country with large social programs in existence.

1 Historically no social system has ever been permanent.  Are there any good reasons to think of capitalism as some sort of final stage? Isn't it bound to transform into something qualitatively different as have all social/economic systems so far?  This is not an argument for communism necessarily, I'm just raising the question of what comes next and asking quicksilver(specifically) if he has any views on this.  He obviously thinks that communism is a dead-end and I'd be interested in his views of how the economy and social system is likely to transform as we advance further into modernity.

Personally I don't see why loosely-regulated capitalism can't be the final solution.  The basic premise is that the harder and smarter you work, the more you make.  Everyone in poverty in America has had many opportunities to get themselves out of it and has been unwilling to work hard enough to get out, or  (exceptions of course going to the handicapped).  In a socialist/communist system if someone refuses to work, or can just come up with a good enough excuse the government usually throws up its hands and says "fine we'll just tax the people who do work hard to pay for you to live".  The harder you work, the more the government takes away, the less you work, the more you are given.  This quickly brings about a class of people who try to get as much as they can while doing as little as they can.

Now, I am not opposed to small social programs to take care of those who CANNOT work, or to help people who started off a little disadvantaged in life; but for the second group THEY need to take responsibility for lifting themself up.  If they are unwilling to WORK to get out of their circumstances then they might as well stay there.

As a consequence most people think that when we talk of "communism" what we are aiming for is a dreary, repressive society in which personal initiative was suppressed and the economies stagnated.

This is what I'm seeing right now in most socialist states (including those within the US).

People are becoming more intelligent and more capable - as well as more frustrated.

I'm seeing the first two, and most of the time I see people intelligent, capable, and hard-working going out and USING what they have to better themselves...this would not be possible in a communist/heavily socialist system.

4.  But until people have reached a level of maurity where they actually want the responsibility of running things themselves (and are prepared to shoulder that burden) the current system will continue.

In capitalist societies those people generally tend to make money and go out and start businesses.  People who don't generally work for them.  How would people be able to "run" anything in a communist country?

Ultimately socially necessary labor will be performed purely for the fun of it as menial work is mostly eliminated and the average worker is better equipped to take on the more interesting stuff.

You guys keep mentioning this, but how do you expect to bring this about? Someone has to design, build, and repair these machines.  Right now this world you're talking about is at least 300 years in the future...what do you intend to do in the meantime?

The size of differentials will depend on what is required to induce people to perform certain tasks and undergo training.

How is this different from capitalism?

Expropriating the capitalists is basically about workers deciding they don’t want to work for them anymore.

Why would they decide that? They would prefer to work for a government who would take all the profits instead?

Initially there would still be heavy reliance on those with management skills from the old order and they may need to be heavily bribed to keep them on side.

Instead why don't you let people keep most of the profits from the businesses they run? That would give them an incentive not just to stay on, but to make sure the company DID WELL.  If you're going to pay them just to stick around well... I think you can see where I'm going.  But oh wait....that'd be almost capitalism...EVIL.....

A few comments on quicksilverhg’s two postings of 2006-10-12:

“I suppose I'll start with the contention that Chinese/Vietnamese/Soviet communism isn't real communism...I'm more than willing to believe that you don't consider them "real" communists...but when there are constantly celebrations here for Mao (who ruined China's economy and killed millions) and the victory in Vietnam (which ruined the economy twice as bad and killed millions) I am forced to conclude that your celebration of these regimes indicates that you think they are at the minimum better than any Western societies; and perhaps even something we should strive for.”

 

The enthusiasm is for Mao’s line that socialist countries are subject to capitalist restoration in the name of socialism and for his struggle against the capitalist roaders in China.

 

“I'm curious...how in the new communist world you're envisioning would you replace my father? I assume the government would run the store, but who would you staff it with? What would you pay them? Or would you merely destroy fast-food altogether since you can't staff the stores without "enslaving" people to work there? If you would keep it open, how would you pay the people? Would they make the same as doctors, or would they be paid in proportion to the work they do as in a capitalist society?”

 

Establishing and running fast food outlets is not exactly rocket science. First you assess that consumer demand would justify an extra outlet in a particular area  and then organize to have it built or an existing building refurbished. People are then appointed to work in it. What people are paid and what differentials exist is something to be determined at the time on the basis of the actual conditions. The main point is that over time income differentials will narrow. In part this will be due to the fact that differences in the quality of work performed will narrow as the old division of labor disappears – everyone takes on a more equal share of the more interesting and challenging, and the more humdrum. Then there is the ideological change – those who contribute more because of greater ability (rather than effort) will not hold back in the absence of greater remuneration, the results being their own reward.

 

“Personally I don't see why loosely-regulated capitalism can't be the final solution.  The basic premise is that the harder and smarter you work, the more you make.  Everyone in poverty in America has had many opportunities to get themselves out of it and has been unwilling to work hard enough to get out, or  (exceptions of course going to the handicapped).  In a socialist/communist system if someone refuses to work, or can just come up with a good enough excuse the government usually throws up its hands and says "fine we'll just tax the people who do work hard to pay for you to live".  The harder you work, the more the government takes away, the less you work, the more you are given.  This quickly brings about a class of people who try to get as much as they can while doing as little as they can.”

 

Capitalism relies on (and engenders) people putting limited effort into things and having limited expectations about what they can achieve. If magically everyone got out of bed tomorrow determined to throw themselves into their work, started showing initiative,  enrolled in skill enhancing courses etc, they would instantly find capitalism an obstacle.

 

Financial incentives will continue to play a role in a socialist society. And there will not be the option of refusing to work. I think you might be thinking here of  “welfare states” which are just a variant capitalism.  Financial incentives will play a decreasing role as the decline in menial work and the elimination of the old division of labor makes work increasingly rewarding for its own sake.

 

Establishing and running fast food outlets is not exactly rocket science.

Perhaps it doesn't look so from the outside, but you might be surprised.  As with many of the things described here I think what is envisioned ideologically would end up being necessarily much different (if not considered impossible) once you get some real-world experience.  Nonetheless though with some experience it may be reasonably easy to manage for you or me, have you seen how the government manages many more SIMPLER things? I rarely see a government appointed person who is able to do something better (or even as-well-as) someone in the private sector.  Probably mainly due to the manner in which people get the jobs.

In part this will be due to the fact that differences in the quality of work performed will narrow as the old division of labor disappears – everyone takes on a more equal share of the more interesting and challenging, and the more humdrum.

What is this "old division of labor" you speak of? Why would anyone take on this share of work as you say? How easy is it to get people today to take on extra work without significant incentive? Why would you think it would be different in your world? If indeed you use money as an incentive to take on more work how is that different from capitalism?

Then there is the ideological change – those who contribute more because of greater ability (rather than effort) will not hold back in the absence of greater remuneration, the results being their own reward.

For some definitely...but for all? How often are you able to convince the man off the street to do something and have only the results as his reward? How would you get someone (not the exceptionally benevolent...the average joe) to build a house for someone else with all the backbreaking labor, with only the result of giving someone else a house as a reward?

Capitalism relies on (and engenders) people putting limited effort into things and having limited expectations about what they can achieve.

Where are you getting this from? Why do you say people in capitalism put in "limited effort"? Why do you think they have "limited expectations" in contrast to those they would have in your society...how would you meet those expectations in your society? Seeing as how you expect the income differential to continually shrink, and shrink, what is someone who's desire/expectation it is to own a large boat for him and his family to use to get there?

If magically everyone got out of bed tomorrow determined to throw themselves into their work, started showing initiative,  enrolled in skill enhancing courses etc, they would instantly find capitalism an obstacle.

Well things take time...if they expect to make up for years of less effort by immediately putting more effort in they certainly won't see a difference overnight...but if they keep at it they sure will.  How is capitalism an obstacle?

And there will not be the option of refusing to work. I think you might be thinking here of  “welfare states” which are just a variant capitalism.  Financial incentives will play a decreasing role as the decline in menial work and the elimination of the old division of labor makes work increasingly rewarding for its own sake.

I am merely looking at one of the problems with welfare states and wondering how your society would fix them.  Would there still be welfare for single moms based on number of children? (I hope you can see the immediate problem with that) What about welfare for people who are hurt on the job? What would you do about people who were hurt on the job, later recovered, but used that as an excuse/faked injury to stay on welfare indefinitely (note: you have finite resources for checking up on such things)?


I'm still kind of hazy on how this "decline of menial work" you all keep talking about is supposed to happen.  Where are these magic machines going to come from? Who is going to build them?  Someone still has to build the machines...screw the screws...weld the welds...that is pretty menial, or are you going to have machines that custom build other machines? There are also many physical labor jobs which machines will not be able to efficiently do.  Also how are you going to inspire a desire in the whole of society a desire to do work for its own sake?

Let me say  right now that I don't see myself as having a clear understanding of how socialism would work.  Currently I'm far more aware of the inadequacies of capitalism than of how to build an alternative (even) more productive and dynamic system.

I see socialism as a transition phase between capitalism and communism and therefore having some things in common with capitalism (eg people would still work for wages).  I also see it as a stage in which capitalism could easily  triumph (as has already happened previously).  It would be a stage of struggle between different world outlooks. 

Quiksilver is wary of "big government" and points out that when things are managed by governments they are very often managed worse than when they are managed by the private sector. I agree with him about that.   But I don't see socialism as a system in which big government bureaucracies would be running things and just telling people what to do (and pocketing the profits themselves).  That sort of system is what can be loosely termed State capitalism and it doesn't work.  Socialism would require us to establish government bodies which were run by people with a serious connection and interest in the enterprises with which they were involved as well as with the broader success of the society overall.  (And I don't think it would be easy or simple)

In other parts of his messages Quiksilver has also raised the old "human nature" issue.  How can we get people to do things without clear incentives related to furthering their own personal interests?  Aren't we all fundamentally driven by our own selfish interests? What is the nature of altruism? Isn't it only self interest in disguise?

Well I agree with him that trying to create a society based on self-sacrifice would be ridiculous and utopian. If people didn't see it as in their own interests to contribute we wouldn't get anywhere. That's already the case under capitalism.  People tend to do the minimum because they don't see this society and their workplaces as belonging to them.

We need a system in which people treat their jobs and the society overall as they now  treat their own homes - as something which belongs to them and which they will work hard to protect and improve.  Under those circumstances full creative potential could be unleashed and we would see a massive  increase in the productive forces. 

As far as "welfare" is concerned, that is a peculiarity of capitalism and could be phased out under socialism.  Capitalism by its very nature requires a pool of unemployed and this necessitates welfare (which  in its turn creates a host of other problems such as groups who remain unemployed indefinitely and lose all motivation (and ability)  to participate in the work force. These people become passive, "lazy" and completely unproductive).  As socialism developed, unemployment due to lack of jobs would drop to zero. It's never the case that there is a shortage of productive work that could be performed. When  people (currently) talk of a "job shortage" they are talking of the  fact that  there are workers who can't find a  capitalist willing to buy their labour power.  It's certainly not the case that there are no jobs that need doing.  Capitalists won't pay for labour power if they don't stand to profit from it, regardless of whether the work performed would be socially useful. For that reason a lot of socially useful jobs are just not done.  

What about the most boring, unfullfilling work?  How could we get people to do that?  There will always be some work to be done that is less attractive than other work.  One possibility is offering higher rewards for work which is less intrinsically interesting.  People could choose to spend some of their time doing the more boring work in order to supplement their earnings from the work which they really enjoy for its own sake.

 quiksilverhg asks why do we think people under capiralism have low expectations? I think if you believe capitalism with a few changes could provide the ultimate society then it can only be because your expectations are so low. Capitalism does stifle imagination and potential. People don't realise the possibilities another society can offer nor the inefficiencies of Capitalism. The boring hum drum of Capitalism takes away poeples motivation.


Technological growth is exponential which means it won't be 300 years before labour becomes virtually redundant but rather in the next 50 at the maximum. The only way it could become 300 years is if capitalism becomes monopoly capitalism where technology is deliberately held back. This already happens but becuase of the primarily competitive nature of capitalism won't stop the increased rate of technological development. Prices will fall and so will the rate of profit. People will not be interested in paying for unnessecary bureaucracies just so capitalists can make a profit.

At the minute I would imagine that about 30% of all costs are to do with money, the collection, monitoring protection etc. It won't be a gradual change but a rather sudden one. (BTW I am not suggesting that we should or would sit back and let capitalism  collapse as that would be dangerous. I think like fuedalism Capitalism won't get the chance to implode, people will get rid of it in the same way they ditched fuedalism.)

I am also aware at the minute many poeple offer their time freely because they want things to happen. Parents committees, voluteers for the olympics firefighters in the Australian countryside are not paid but there is no shortage of them, st Johns ambulance etc. There is numerous examples of people working for things because they need to be done. Socialism would be able to expand on this as the conditions would be more conduscive for it.

I think if you believe capitalism with a few changes could provide the ultimate society then it can only be because your expectations are so low. Capitalism does stifle imagination and potential. People don't realise the possibilities another society can offer nor the inefficiencies of Capitalism. The boring hum drum of Capitalism takes away poeples motivation.

You keep saying capitalism stifles imagination and potential as if it's an established fact, but you still haven't shown how the new society you are proposing would be better.  How does Capitalism take away motivation? How would you society provide that motivation where capitalism doesn't? In the society you guys propose it sounds like you expect people to magically get their own motivation or nothing will get done.  After all these magical machines you talk about make work obsolete you guys seem to think that that will magically inspire everyone to do work while getting NOTHING in return.  Isn't it equally likely that if people have everything they need without working that a significant amount of people will simply laze around all day? We certainly have plenty of examples of that right now...how are you going to reverse that trend?

Technological growth is exponential which means it won't be 300 years before labour becomes virtually redundant but rather in the next 50 at the maximum. Prices will fall and so will the rate of profit. People will not be interested in paying for unnessecary bureaucracies just so capitalists can make a profit.

I think a lot of these things you guys propose would be a little more believable if you could come up with real-world examples of something even slightly similar to what you are talking about.  Let's go back 200 years ago.  Then most people earned their living by hunting/farming...since then the revolutions in fertilizers, farming equipment, genetic engineering etc. means that one farmer can do the equivalent work of probably 1,000 farmers back then.  If we apply the same thing you are saying to this situation then theoretically there shouldn't need to be anyone working anymore.  Instead people found new jobs and new things to do and still worked for wages despite the fact that 1,000 people could probably split a farm and work 2-3 days a year like you are proposing would happen.

Now you say that in 50 years physical labor will become virtually unnecessary; machines will replace nearly everything people do.  In the past 20 years I can't think of any jobs that have become totally obsolete, yet somehow you think that in 50 years nearly ALL jobs will be obsolete.  Even with near-unlimited technology how are you going to get machines that will custom-build a house? Shingle a roof? Pick up the garbage? Perform surgery? Look after the elderly in nursing homes? Fix a car? Even if you got machines to build everything, machines sure aren't going to be able to repair eachother what with the myriad of things that can go wrong with them.  What about law enforcement? The military? Or do you think that crime will completely stop in your new society? Given the other utopian ideals you have subscribed to it seems that you're willing to make that assumption.

Prices will fall and so will the rate of profit. People will not be interested in paying for unnessecary bureaucracies just so capitalists can make a profit.

What bureaucracies are you talking about? Prices are already falling at a near-remarkable rate in capitalism, look at the prices of tvs as they get better and better, computers, cameras etc.  I think computers may be the best example...prices were sitting stable and set to stay that way indefinitely a few years ago.  Then all of a sudden Dell came along and COMPLETELY changed the paradigms, suddenly prices went from like $1300 a computer down to like $350 in less than 5 years; and other companies followed suit.  This kind of thing wouldn't happen in a government controlled business it was COMPETITION that caused this.  It wasn't greed, or gouging or anything that was keeping computer prices so high, that's just what a computer costed and it was accepted like that.  Dell worked by mass-buying more generic parts and mass-producing computers in a way that someone entrenched in IBM or HP could; it took an outside industry coming in with a completely different business model.  I'm sure you could try and argue about different ways that this could happen in a non-competitive communal world, but the truth is that competition DOES inspire innovation and DOES lead to new ideas and new ways of thinking.

quiksilverhg Well Capitalism certainly does kill imagination!

Not sure why you think poeple can't think and understand what is good for them. I did mention some  jobs that people volunteer for because they need to be done. There are numerous others. Doing work because it needs to be done is not new. This is not a problem. I agree there are plenty of examples of people in Auto Pilot or "lazing about" this is the point, Capitalism is boring and uninspiring.


Yes I agree again machines have replaced thousands of jobs, that is not a static thing but an ongoing result of technology. You cant look at technology in such a narow light. Technology under Capitalism is about reducing costs and the only way you can do that is to reduce labour. The obvious result is less and less labour required. What we are talking about here is at what point do you decide the amount of labour required is less than poeple wanting to do it. There are breakthroughs such as nano-technology which have the potential to do away with labour as we know it. (machines already repair each other) No need for crime if things are free, or for an army for that matter.

Once again I agree that prices keep falling, but why do you think they will stop? (Dell could produce the final product in a different format, definitely not cheaper from where I sit!)

Competition drives those who get the profits to increase technology in order to lower labour costs. Some people oppose these changes as they will lose their jobs. Some people like the scientists who develop the technology do it because they are interested in the work and want to push science ahead, an example of people doing things because they need to be done and in this instance are exciting and challengeing. Competition is never as good as co-operation and that is why all successful capitalist companies were forced to go over to teamwork!

The cost of capitalist companies bureaucracies is an ever increasing percentage of the final price of a product. At some point it will obviously be the majority and nearly all the cost of the product.


It can't be Utopia because we still are not sure how it will develop but rather an extension of where things are going now. The trends if you like. WE are looking at the potential, not just using our imagination, it requires both.

Not sure why you think poeple can't think and understand what is good for them.

Because I have a strong working knowledge of history.  A person can understand what is good for him/herself, however a group of people collectively rarely manage to all act selflessly for what is advantageous for the group if they don't see an advantage for themselves.

There is an immediate examples that stand out in my mind...

The first would be the early workings of the Plymouth Pilgrims who came to America on the Mayflower.
Excerpt from the wikipedia article:

To address this issue, a brief contract, later to be known as the Mayflower Compact, was drafted promising cooperation among the settlers "for the general good of the Colony unto which we promise all due submission and obedience." It was ratified by majority rule, with 41 adult male passengers signing. At this time, John Carver was chosen as the colony's first governor.

Initially in the Plymouth settlement a communal arrangement was set up, all of the land was owned by the community and each person was required to work on the communal farms and the products were distributed evenly.  If ever there was a time when people should work for the common good this was it.  A very small community over a thousand miles away from any king of external support and all they had was eachother.  Certainly every person would be willing to sacrifice and work for the community expecting only to come out on equal grounds as everyone else.

Despite the near ideal setup for a communal system this ended up being a complete failure.  The community was rife with starvation and disease and in danger of completely dying out when the local council decided instead to divide up the communal farms into individual plots and have each person work his own land.  Only a small portion of each person's production was taken for the community.

Capitalism saved all of those people's lives, communism nearly caused their extinction.

I did mention some  jobs that people volunteer for because they need to be done.

The people in the jobs you mentioned, PTA, firefighters, ambulance drivers etc. are not in short supply because for PTA, parents do it because THEY have a vested interest in what THEIR children are learning, and doing in school, while, there is certainly an element of selflessness and volunteerism to that, I would not tout that as selfless volunteerism as your expecting will take place throughout the population.  Furthermore, of the number of parents there are in a school what percentage actually participate in PTA regularly...I would guess it's between 1 and 10%...you are talking about getting 100% participation from the entire population.

As for firemen and ambulance-drivers I would make the same point about it being a very small amount of the population.  Go ask the man on the street if he will volunteer to be a firefighter while receiving nothing in return except the satisfaction of the job.  In high school several of my friends volunteered to be firemen, but they were doing it as much because they were looking for excitement and fun, as for any selfless motivations.  You are talking about getting EVERY job to be done only through selfless motivation though.  How many people would maintain sewers for nothing? How many people would volunteer to clean out port-a-potties? How many people would be janitors?

Doing work because it needs to be done is not new.

In the context we are talking about, it is not new, but neither is it common, and I don't foresee it becoming so.

You cant look at technology in such a narow light. Technology under Capitalism is about reducing costs and the only way you can do that is to reduce labour.

If you think that is the only way to reduce costs than you don't know very much about economics, and hence may not be a good person to try and come up with a new economic system.

What we are talking about here is at what point do you decide the amount of labour required is less than poeple wanting to do it. There are breakthroughs such as nano-technology which have the potential to do away with labour as we know it. (machines already repair each other) No need for crime if things are free, or for an army for that matter.

This is all theoretical and utopian...theoretically with the breakthroughs in the last 500 years there should be nearly no labor required at all, yet people still have work to do.  Why do you think it will be different in the future?
Nano-technology is in such an infantile stage that I doubt we will see much meaningful progress from it as far as practical uses in the next 20-30 years.  As far as it being able to replace labor...I could see it putting a few chemists out of jobs, and maybe some computer assemblers, but insofar as replacing any major source of employment, I just don't see it happening.  What jobs do you think that nano-technology could replace? I am quite familiar with the field of study, and see it coming up with new things, but not really replacing any old things.

As far as machines already repairing other machines...I can think of few examples.  In order to build a machine that can repair another machine you first have to know in what ways the first machine is going to break.  Often this is something impossible to predict.  Furthermore some practical experience in the real world with the frequency and complexity of supposedly revolutionary technologies and machines breaking you might think twice about this.

If there is no need for crime if people already have what they need then why is there any white-collar crime? CEOs and corporate managers as well as execs and corrupt politicians often would be considered excessively wealthy, and having everything they need.  Yet they still feel the need to defraud people, commit crimes, and such.  Clearly want isn't the motivation for all crime.

You could look at international politics too.  The idea that want is the source of all evil was the basis for the appeasement doctrines.  Chamberlain and his French conteporary (whose name escapes me) gave Hitler EVERYTHING he wanted, yet that did not stop him from constantly demanding and taking more.  In the '90s when we tried to stop North Koreas nuclear weapons programs we traded them money, food, enriched uranium and much more in exchange for them not developing weapons.  They were given near-everything they wanted, and they responded by demanding more and going through with their weapons-development anyways.  The same can be seen with Iran.

The need for armies should be self-explanatory...look at what happened to Kuwait who had a very meager, practically non-existent army when Saddam decided to come a-knocking.  Do you think that after the revolution in your country that all belligerant aggressive nations in the world are suddenly going to decide to ignore you? Or are you going to rely on the United States to come to your rescue?

Once again I agree that prices keep falling, but why do you think they will stop? (Dell could produce the final product in a different format, definitely not cheaper from where I sit!)

I don't understand what you're saying here...

Competition is never as good as co-operation and that is why all successful capitalist companies were forced to go over to teamwork!

Generally there is both co-operation and competition in a capitalist society.  I can't off-hand think of any companies that don't use a great-deal of co-operation...competition, and co-operation are not mutually exclusive.  Yet the entire computer industry had to radically change the way it operated once Dell came around.  This was something that is unlikely to have been started by some internal force in IBM or HP.

The cost of capitalist companies bureaucracies is an ever increasing percentage of the final price of a product. At some point it will obviously be the majority and nearly all the cost of the product.

Look at any government bureaucracy and I challenge you to find any corporate one that is more clumsy, ineffective, inefficient, or a greater obstacle to progress.  The amount of oversight you have to have in a government organization will automatically trump the simple hierarchical structures in a corporation every time.  And to start with I'm not sure exactly what you are referring to when you say that capitailst companies' bureaucracies keep increasing percentage price of final product.  Could you come up with a specific example?

Can capitalism win ???????     (Please do not let it be so)

From a marxist point of view is it conceivable in advanced BD(bourgeois democracies) that capitalism can withstand all the crisis's that used to rock its foundations ?

There has not been a major economic crisis in almost eighty years .

It has withstood the Russian and Chinese revolutions and WW2.

WW1 and Ww2 did not even tip Germany over.

Even in the desperate conditions of the third world nothing seems to be forthcoming.

I am no expert in marxist economy but there does not seem to be any law of diminishing return applying .Or any mass over production happening or any destruction of capital to allow the system to regenerate itself occuring .

Massive debts of the first world do not need to be repayed.

What is going on ?????

 

 

Hi Paul,

I should start by acknowledging that I don't think I can satisfactorily answer your question "can capitalism win?". That is, I just do not know enough about economics to discuss things like the "rate of profit" etc.  So I'm not going to pretend to.

I can perhaps give a more philosophical answer - or the beginnings of one.

For a start no social system historically has been permanent - each one has created the conditions for its demise.  Is there any reason at all to think that capitalism is the "end of history"? Possibly someone could argue  that I've just produced an inductive argument (ie "since the previous pattern has been one of changing social systems therefore thet will continue".) And its widely accepted that inductive argument is not very good.

However, this historical pattern is one that makes sense - we have a theoretical explanation for why social systems don't stay the same, its not just an "empirical observation"  for which we have no explanation.  Social systems  change because they create the conditions for their own destruction. Therefore I think it is more than a simple inductive argument.

The problem for us arises because it seems that capitalism is still performing. The question is "how long can that go on?"  And I don't have an answer because I don't know enough.

Johann Norberg who is what I would call a "progressive right winger" has written a sort of ode to capitalism entitled  The wealth of generations - Capitalism and the belief in the future  which is the sort of thing we should be able to critique.  When I read it I had a lot of thoughts which I should have written down, but didn't.


However if we hope to be able to move beyond where we are nowwe need to be able to come up with a  real and empirically based analysis of why capitalism can't continue to deliver. 

Of course we can argue that it doesn't deliver, relative to what could be acheived in a system which was run by the people who actually do the work.


However while that may be a good argument , I doubt that it would be sufficient to mobilise people to overthrow a system which is still delivering quite a lot.

Another  (closely related) question is: does the sytem have to collapse and cease to deliver before people will be motivated to overthrow it and try something different? 

And if people should overthrow it because it has stopped working rather than because they are actually inspired by the idea of  radical social change (ie if they should overthrow it out of desperation, as has happened in most previous revolutions led by communists) won't this make it quite hard to institute thoroughgoing change?

Do people need to be inspired by more than a desire for economic security and wealth in order to make the effort that is required to move beyond capitalism?

The other  big question is whether we will be forced to accept capitalism as the driving force of history until such time as globalization, bourgeois democracy and economic security is the norm over the entire planet? 

Anyway I'd be interested in your reflections (and also those of others) on the Norberg article.


(I'm writing this is a big hurry, and haven't thought much about it. However I thought that even a weak response from me was better than just leaving your important remarks unsanswered while I just ponder about it and find myself too busy on other things to do much more).

Hopefully someone with a more developed understanding of the issues will jump in when they get time.

I haven't had time to look at all the data on diminishing returns but would have thought from the figures I've seen that  it applies. One needs to be careful here as the whole world is not capitalist or fully capitalist at the minute. Capitalist corporations can gain excess profit from developing countries. Dininishing returns are not raw figures but a percentage over a period of time.  Record profits don't mean that the rate of progit isn't falling (of course there is also the Enron scenario, where profits are reported that don't exist)



Opening the chinese economy has absorbed a great deal of capital and may have been the reason why capitalism has been able to avoid for time being a major crash. Factory utilisation in china is about 60-70% and we can see that china is running up against quotas and sanctions from the U.S. and Europe, so I don't think things are travelling that well. China is still growing at a fast rate but the sig