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Post #281
this is actually one of the worst things I've ever read.
John Locke was generally a very shitty philosopher frank; politically and metaphysically. His political philosophy is built on a foundation of false equivocations and generally shitty logical formation. As for Adam Smith, I have a very strong suspicion he would abhor at the state of our economic climate today and revile the idea that his works were being espoused by its supporters.
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what are you talking about?
Edited:
@conscript
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I am talking about the newspeak trend and deflection style liberals have. Rather than concluding the problem is capitalism, it's 'crony capitalism' or 'corporate socialism' (which boils down to 'the problem is my center-left/center-right liberal electoral opponent', depending on your affiliation). If it's not working, it's not capitalism apparently. Some people have to redefine words and revise history for their ideological loose ends, and that guy's post is a great example.
Hell, look at the quote robbo posted. It's not even an argument, just a deflective moral appeal. 'Our ideas may suck, but at least we let you consider alternatives!' (And then we fall back into reality when we realize it's just a state sponsored illusion).
Hope that helps.
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Seeing as this is the closest thing to discussion of personal political ideologies in this section, I'm a bit confused as to what I'd be considered.
I took that political compass test, and I'm bottom left (Libertarian Left), yet I'm in support of strong government regulation of the economy. I think it's mainly because the government shouldn't be all "No you can't have an abortion because we said so", but I'm definitely against a laissez-faire economy. Basically, government can't tell you you can't do something if it doesn't negatively affect others but with state capitalism.
Any insight?
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Libertarian socialist, maybe? Left libertarianism in general is a strange place.
Edited:
It's not "redefining" capitalism at all, it's capitalism "with" corporate whatever.
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I kind of have sympathy for people calling the current economic climate by a different name as flat out capitalism, since I think genuine laissez-faire capitalism may well be beneficial (and presumably this is the sort of thing some people call 'capitalism'). At least a genuine free market incorporates the idea that the state is detrimental, however I'd probably neglect to ever call myself any sort of capitalist as private property as such a core part of its formulation, and PP is possibly the biggest fallacy in the whole of society.
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That's not how it's referred to. Center-right liberals call it socialism/crony capitalism (since socialism means whatever the hell they want as long as it's government related), center-left liberals call it 'corporatism' because the nation's capitalists *gasp* mean a lot to the government (the confusion seems to lie in the fact their voting blocs are organized labor and minorities).
It's pretty much why I consider it a good idea to avoid, for lack of a better word, Liberal political views. They're derived from a wealth-dependent shit flinging contest and have little analytical value, as opposed to the liberalism present in Occupy Wall Street which is relatively progressive and detached from commercialized politics. As of now they're struggling on how to get america out of this economic hole without pissing off the working class, paradoxically, after getting them there. I wouldn't take their opinions of workers movements and independent working class fightback very seriously. They have vested interests in opposing these things.
Detrimental to capital in ways, perhaps, but usually to lessen capital's oppressive impact on labor, as the state in a liberal society is a mediator of interest groups, labor and capital included. The last time the state didn't give a fuck about labor it was flogged with direct working class action which harmed both it and its major constituent: capital. There was always some hawkish right-wing stooges despising it, only recently decades after empowered labor, the red scare, the beatdown of unions, and the de-industrialization of america is there a serious consideration for 'laissez-faire'.
As a worker, you should favor holding on to past working class gains, just not think of them as the be all and end all to labor's struggle. On the other hand, 'laissez faire' and its associates the libertarians, conservatives, and other numerous kinds of liberals don't care for that, and instead favor a petty-bourgeois, individualist appeal (or guise if you will, since it's mostly used to fool people into idleness). Let's not make dogmatic ideological considerations, let's look at our material interests as members of the working class. You won't find the 'genuine free market' to be in any way empowering.
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What the fuck is a "center-right" liberal? A liberal is defined as a person on the left.
Anyway, I'm not a liberal and I still call it corporatism because that's what it fucking is.
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A liberal is an adherent of enlightenment philosophy, which was only historically and entirely 'left' when the right was made up of royalists and such. As the ruling philosophy behind the modern state, it's divided up to various currents which can all trace their historical and ideological lineage back to the 18th and 19th century liberalism, which essentially founded that state.
Conservatives are liberals, the 'modern american liberals' are liberals, libertarians are liberals, social democrats are liberals, etc. How it's used in mainstream american politics isn't important.
What makes america 'corporatist'? AFAIK actual corporatism is a right-wing nationalist invention, for now in america it seems to just be employed as a center-left political pejorative. Giving big capital weight in political matters doesn't strike me as actual corporatism, just practicality in a capitalist state.
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Then stop using the damn term if it's applied to everyone.
"Practicality"? Are you fucking nuts?
If you haven't noticed, a large portion of what's fucked up the economy is because of government "regulation" that was paid for by some corporation or another.
Edited:
Also, the people who decide who gets to be featured in the presidential debates in the mainstream media are the leaders of the Republican and Democrat parties. And I'd be willing to bet you can pay a "fee" to get a specific candidate in there.
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Except it's not?
That doesn't begin to cover the state's relationship with national capital. Whether or not state intervention caused this crisis is irrelevant, capital is a huge national consideration for a government. It's not out of this world to have corporate sway over politics. Capitalist society wouldn't work very well if it ignored its biggest constituent.
What does this have to do with anything?
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And you're pretty much informing people that Communism is mostly used by Dictators.
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I'm not redefining anything. I find it hilarious that people claim that the USSR was not actually Communist, but then accuse people like me of revisionism when I we blame Crony Capitalism and Corporate Socialism for economic recessions. It's a complete double standard. In our modern world we've drifted so far from what Capitalism is suppose to be it can be hardly called Capitalism. The state has been getting progressively more involved in the economy, and that's why what we have today is not Capitalism.
As for Communism, the fact that Marxism has never been implemented as envisioned by Marx is irrelevant. Marxism it's self is inherently flawed, which is why all attempts to implement it result in bastardized versions of Communism. Communist states just get stuck in the authoritarian, transitional phase.
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Not really; he's probably saying that dictators espouse the ideals of communism while their methods are fundamentally opposed to the intended aims of communism (that is, statelessness and most importantly, freedom from the initiation of coercion).
Edited:
I was thinking this the other day actually. But then I realised names were basically a waste of time anyway and semantics is an absolute waste of time in political philosophy. If you think laissez-faire capitalism is the only real capitalism, state it in your posts otherwise you'll just keep arguing past people. I'd say the same for communism, but I think it's less of an issue since it's quite well maintained that communism is something along the lines of statelessness and not the silly paradoxical communist dictatorships of the past.
Edited:
Again this is purely splitting hairs, and I'd agree with you in as much as communists that espouse the view we ought to coercively revolt against the bourgeois, but this isn't true of all communists or even all marxists.
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You're trying to quantify it as some kind of government-o-meter. This is a recent deviation.
Because for you it stops being capitalism when investments and capital are managed poorly, when it's not formal private capitalists making investments, and other arbitrary distinctions. For us it stops being capitalism when there is an end to wage labor, commodity production, and capital is abolished. These three things were not tossed out in the USSR, the state and its theoreticians actually embraced these and tried to justify it by pointing to the backwards nature of the country it arose from. The russian revolution itself was an abnormality to orthodox marxists of the period, they didn't believe a peasant mass could build anything else but capitalism, and it surely followed that the isolated revolutionary state in the former Russian empire never amounted to anything but state capitalism.
I guess you'll find it hilarious the same people who conducted revolutions in Russia in China would agree what they were building wasn't communism.
Lenin believed it was more pragmatic to follow the german state-capitalist model until the revolution could get outside assistance from revolution in the advanced capitalist countries. His affinity for a Russian state capitalism is well noted.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...918/apr/29.htm
Mao followed a policy of 'new democracy' which entailed collaboration of all classes, peasants, bourgeoisie, and proletarians included, under a system of party-led state capitalism, which never really ended:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...5/mswv5_30.htm
http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...2/mswv2_26.htm
Both believed they were approaching their countries unique conditions from a revolutionary perspective, that they had to pick the pieces and complete the tasks involved in a transition to the capitalist stage of history. In their parts of the world, national capitalists weren't as vehemently anti-feudal and keen on struggling against the modern empires for the sake of their own, and were otherwise too complacent with the backwardsness of their country. This is contrary to the european bourgeoisie, whose revolutions were explosive and shook feudalism and its royalists down to the core.
For the 'Marxist-Leninists', the dominant school of marxism at the time, the industrial proletariat (a minority) and the peasantry (the majority) must ally to develop their country by building capitalism and defending such advances from the interference of the world imperialists at the time. In that respect they were successful, however some individuals, like Stalin, started taking to calling this system 'socialism'. That is the bureaucratic, degenerated, and anti-marxist character of 20th century socialism.
It can only appear as so to someone that understands neither communist theory nor the reality of the capitalist system.
Entirely arbitrary. That's like claiming we abandoned feudalism when nobles started distancing themselves from the pope, or the holy roman empire wasn't feudal because the emperor lacked power/smaller nobles had too much power.
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They both suck
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Indeed they do, which is why it is necessary to have a mix of Socialism (Communism) and Capitalism.
Neither system is a 'holy grail' that solves our economic problems.
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Socialism is not Communism, why did you put one in parenthesis behind the other?
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no, no, and no. you're thinking of kleptocracy.
Edited:
this is why libertarianism is popular, because it brings the state down to a level of power that is insignificant for corporations/bankers/oligarchs to use as a medium for their agenda. remember, competition is their biggest fear. what better way to eliminate it than by official law of the nation?
the USSR collapsed completely due to economic reasons. anyone that says otherwise hasn't a clue.
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I know it is not. The point I was trying to get across is we need a mixture of Socialism and Capitalism in order for an economy to work with the minimal amount of negative externalities. I merely put Communism in brackets because Communism is a type of Socialism.
Edited:
So the USSR did not collapse due to the lack of political freedoms because it was a dictatorship?
Anyway, as you state it is in a companies interest to prevent competition from emerging. But to say that low government regulation would increase competition is not valid. Companies will seek to minimise competition no matter whether they are subject to regulation or not. Without 'fair trading' regulation you can be sure that there would be a lot more monopolies in the market.
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While the companies themselves seek to minimise competition, they're only successful in doing this if the state enforces policies in such a way that enables them to. In a free market, if we feel the cost of a product doesn't reflect its worth, we simply don't buy it and competitors appear. Of course you can argue that certain people have no choice but to buy food at whatever cost they're given, but if we lived in the right environment their wages would reflect their labour because they would be involved in cooperatives and not corporations.
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How many monopolies have arisen that couldn't have without government regulation? Very few. The only example that comes to mind is US Steel, and...
How many were defeated by competitors? The rest of them, including US Steel.
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That was the main point I was trying to raise.Mythman posted:
Monopolies will exist even if there is no government regulation. The idea that the market will sort out any and all market failures itself is (in my mind) short-sighted. Consumers themselves destroy the free market model due to brand loyalty (amongst other factors).
In the UK Thatcher privatised the Rail networks and the Bus network. It was transferred from government ownership to private firms - all that has happened is that instead of the government having a monopoly, firms like Stagecoach and South West Trains have a local monopoly.
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Congratulations, you completely failed to prove your point.
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How?
I claimed monopolies will exist even if there is minimal government intervention (a free market).
This is due to companies wanting to reduce competition by placing barriers to entry to a market. Also monopolies are able to charge the price they like due to brand loyalty and lack of competition. Apple for example is a monopoly in certain markets (despite high competition, Apple has a degree of monopoly power and thus can charge what it likes for the new iphone).
The idea that increasing competition or reducing government intervention will get rid of monopolies is a fallacy.
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Apple's success is generated hugely by its exploitation of the workers and obscene amounts of patents. Something that wouldn't happen in a stateless society, provided markets were developed enough and people were more informed.
Edited:
The belief that giving an entity the monopoly of legitimate coercion will benefit the economy is a much greater fallacy.
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Only a government is able to actually able to place barriers to entering a market. Apple and Microsoft are only monopolies because they abuse patents and copyright.
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This. Without a state enforcing silly bullshit intellectual rights a great deal of their bullshit will dissolve.
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I worked hard to establish and run my business ventures and I would hate to see the state take them away and declare that I can have no part in the continued running of them as I have fulfilled my contribution.
At the same time, I hate the idea of wages. When people work with me to develop websites, they will be treated as shareholders of whatever they contribute to and be rewarded with percentage-based pay of final profits that that project generates.
I hate wages because I know for a fact that mcDonalds runs on a 1100% profit for most of their products, yet the cashiers earn £6.. even though most turn over £2000+ in sales for McDonald's every HOUR.
Underpaying that much should be fucking criminal and would be more or less abolished if pay was percentage by contribution.
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Food for thought: communism has never existed in it's true form in a modern society to this very date.
Do you want to know why?
People are greedy. People will want to get ahead. And people will want things to call their own. It's human nature.
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And I think monopoly's should be allowed to exist really.
I mean, if everyone is buying a product because it is generally amazing, what's the problem? Why must some sort of ridiculous limitation be put on how many people are allowed to buy it or not.
And don't say they 'only exist because of mistreating there workers', that's the biggest load of shit I have ever heard. If Apple raised the price of the iPad3 to £800 in favour of minimal profit margins, people would still buy it (and not just because of that sexy 2800x whatever screen it's gonna have). The mistreatment of workers is pretty much tied up with the entire existence of the electronics industry, not to mention cheap labour in china in general.
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Humans are not greedy by nature - your views of human nature vary on your ideology.
Liberalism: Human's are greedy and self interested
Socialism: Human's are communal and achieve more working together
Conservatism: Human's are imperfect and need guidance
Anarchism: Human's are moral and communal
So the common perception that all people are 'greedy' is a fallacy.
Food for thought: If all humans were greedy why do charities exist? Why do people work together to build stuff? Why do we even bother having children?
EDIT: It scares me how pervasive Liberal ideas are in our societies; a dominant ideology is by no means beneficial to debate and progress.
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I'd say your characterisations there are wrong. Or at least can be heavily contested.
Liberalism, socialism and anarchism all espouse some kind of malleability. If anything greed and self-interestedness are central to conservativism, since they need that assumption in order to justify a sovereign. As for liberalism, I don't think they're necessarily claiming humans are entirely or even predominantly egoists; merely that to some large degree we are self-interested (which is basically incontestable).
Certainly my own anarchist beliefs don't require humans to be moral or communal. Even if we're purely self-interested, from a game theory we can prove that cooperation is rational. In fact, I'd say the only assumption we need to make about human nature for anarchism to be a valid position is that we are rational >50% of the time (as there's no point cooperating with someone who does not act with respect to consequences) and that most players are more or less capable of reciprocating an effective cooperative strategy.
Also, I'd resist the temptation to say that the perception is a fallacy in virtue of there being theory X Y Z that says otherwise. Because there can be shitloads of theories that are ultimately false. If humans aren't greedy by nature, it's because theory X is true, which has to be empirically/analytically demonstrated to show it's a fallacy.
But yeah otherwise I'd agree with you; it worries me how pervasive the idea of psychological egoism is, even though I don't think its necessarily a core part of liberalism (not that it really matters; it's just splitting hairs anyway) :)
Edited:
Monopolies that exist in virtue of them being successful in the (genuine) free market are fine, but those that exist in virtue of policy are very damaging. In a free market, if there's a monopoly on product X, someone with entrepreneurial-ship will identify the niche and compete. It's only when there's policies (such as intellectual property rights) detrimental to competing business that a monopoly is bad, in theory. If there's no policies as such, then it's your own fault for not starting your own competing business.
Of course, my whole line of thought revolves on the idea that all of the inequalities in society are dissolved so don't take my apparent nonchalance to monopolies in a genuine free market to mean that I don't abhor at the existence of monopolies in current society.
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Your points on the different ideologies stand well and I can't find any reason to disagree with them.
My characterisations were deliberately simple in order to prove a point without going into a deep discussion about human nature
EDIT: An interesting little video on 'human' nature. If monkey's can do it, why can't we?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAFQ5kUHPkY
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Look, don't just state "humans are greedy" as fact. You have to provide some kind of evidence here because both sides disagree, and that's how a debate (or at least this section) is supposed to work.
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im a free market dud
that being said to the guy aboooooooooove
China tried true Communism (OR SOME BACKWARDS CHINESE KNOCKOFF OF IT) and ended up mixing it with Capitalism in order to give incentives for workers to try harder.
(User was banned for this post ("This is not how you post in Mass Debate." - Megafan))
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But then, China is probably one of the most hierarchical places you could possibly live on earth.
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China never ever tried Marxist Communism. Proper Communism has no state and complete freedom - pretty much the opposite of China.
The idea that Capitalism provides an incentive is, in my opinion, flawed. Sure it provides an incentive for companies to innovate and create new products. But if you are a Chinese worker working at Foxconn the only incentive you have for working is for staying alive. People have no choice but to work to stay alive - sure that is an incentive to work but it does not maximise someone's potential.
How do you define 'hard work' anyway?
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Not just economic reason, also due to the fact the Gorbachev tried to open the union so people could tell the leaders why people hated the union (If they told it before Gorbachev's time they would be killed) Then they learned about America and didn't want to be cut off to the whole world.
Edited:
Greedy is a personality that you either win over or lose to. It's the nemesis of Temperance.
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I define hard work as either physical strain in order to get a job done effectively OR innovative ideas to get a job done more effectively, cheaper, or better. That's not an incentive to work. That's a threat against not working. Instead of being rewarded for working, you're punished for not working.
And yeah, I agree with Marxism, I'm a pretty Anarchist person myself so I agree with many Marxist ideas.
