Is maximum economic efficiency always desirable?

Post Reply New Topic

@ AG

No, it is of the first order of relevance. If the initial claim is that socialism is not a complete theory and therefore cannot work, and you do not contradict my point that capitalism is also an incomplete theory yet has gone on to become the dominant politico-economic force the world has seen i believe it can be inferred that it being incomplete is not a fatal flaw in and of itself, but may in fact be a source of strength.



The advancement of technique is not only one of our primary goals but a great deal depends on it, this is one of the primary ways in which socialist thought argues that productvity and output can be increased.



I'm aware of the levels of wealth created. As are many of the workers who do the creating. I believe it is a massive condemnation if it is entirely possible to do astronomically more to improve the lives of all, and not just a choice few born into a priviliged position. And I note your choice of language "it has not advanced people as much as desirable"? Wow, master of the understatement!



I dare you to get beyond a cottage industry without wage labour, very difficult indeed, more so if your competitors use wage labour (which as part of a factory process represents a major growth in productivity and profitibality). And if by 'legitimately' you mean legally then there is the point that these laws were set up by those with property in the first place.



So if I quit my job and never work again can I eat freedom to associate? Will it heat my home, pay my rent and put fuel in a car? I think you're going to have to elaborate this point fo me because it borders on the non-sensical and absurd so far as i can tell. At least I can buy food with a wage.



Don't think we've asked any computers to do everything, there is a line of thought wherein there would be a high level of automation (not sure if thats the right word, never mind). Wherein supercomputers are concerned the new scientist ran an article, which i can't find now, on a company being close to mass producing quantum microchips, which is pretty cool.

I take your point on the exploratory stance but it is only a small part of a much larger text, and the formatting hurt my eyes a little too. My first aim was to make a fairly accessible counter to the 'devestating' comment.



Nope. Not that good. I point you to my response on this. And so far as concerns efficiency wages, is this the principle that by giving a worker a higher wage (paid in the short term out of profits, which are then made up by the increase in productivity) they will work harder, increase productivity and efficiency? What, I ask, will happen if instead you were today to give all workers each a full and equal share in the profits of an enterprise, factory workplace etc., and cut out the bourgeois shareholders? Something similar to the achievements of the Flaskó workers in Brazil? Is this an accurate generalisation or will you correct my error?



I don't have a problem with capital in itself. And Original Sin? How exactly do you propose to acquire capital beyond the relatively infintesimal sums accumulated (and honestly, through hardwork it is done i might add) in cottage industries etc without going onto wage labour? Try it without the worker. And how do you accumulate the capital to start a factory (i'm speaking of the first capitalist countries here) without turning to the aristocracy (who gained their wealth from the work of peasants and the proto-bougeoisie) for a loan? I suppose you could cite the American colonies but you would never have got of the ground at the time without the native americans, who, as Staphen Greenblatt quoting Hariot's Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia if i remember right, had to do the fishing and farming for the first colonisers (who were soldiers I might add and didn't lift a finger), when the natives turned hostile the colonisers turned down the path to exterminate them. Then you needed a few million African slaves to do most of your work for you after that. And then you have the gall to claim to fight a war to free these slaves, then use them after the emancipation proclamation in building the Capitol Building!! (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... l-correct/)

And i'll come to parasitism shortly....

I also know I've been coming to revolutionary violence but for now I'll say my main point here is that the bourgeoisie have developed institutions to protect the property and capital they posses, from the written law to the army, and will ultimately not give up their privilige without a fight. This said Marx did write a piece on how it would be possible to take power through parliament in England because it was more liberal and did not have the kind of army, officer caste and associated bureaucracy that the comparable economy/state of Prussia/Germany had. I can also point to the democratically elected Hugo Chavez of Venezuala, who survived one coup attempt following, i think, a general strike and being released by the soldiers holding him. Wonder who encouraged that boo-boo....

"The U.S. delegation found that the voting in Venezuela’s 2009 referendum was, overall, fair, transparent, and clean. While there were a few instances of technical problems, we were impressed by the efficiency and simplicity with which Venezuelan voters were able to express their preferences. We often found ourselves wishing that elections in the United States were conducted with such uniform professionalism and care, and that the election results could be tallied as quickly. Our observations of Venezuelan popular democracy in action stand in marked contrast with media depictions of Venezuela’s government as autocratic." (https://nacla.org/node/5741)

So no, not all revolutions need be violent. The revolution is only violent in proportion to how the coutner-revolution is violent, though I will give myself some wiggle room and qualify htis by saying 'in theory, at the very least'. True, we are yet to see what course history will take, though I watch venezuala with hope.

Last edited by TitusLucretiusCarus on 27 May 2009, 3:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I'l apologise to you on this Orwell, just realised the link doesn't actualy lead to anything like the article and it is Flaskó, not Flakho.

here it is http://www.marxist.com/brief-history-mo ... brazil.htm

i'll get round to responding to your other posts in a bit

Capitalism isn't just a theory, it is a set of institutions that have emerged over time. It is not as if it has happened in most places that somebody said "Hey, let's become capitalist!", rather there were changes over time to push this direction in many places, and the theories emerged afterwards. Heck, the term "capitalist" was created by Karl Marx.

This is not only a difference but it is a significant difference.

Now, of course, it could be countered that a society could evolve into socialism(rather than having this happen by revolution), however, it does seem intellectually legitimate to doubt this due to a lack of idea of how this could happen, and due to a lack of this happening. Certainly, I think that Marxists reject this notion of socialism's emergence.



The advancement of technique is not only one of our primary goals but a great deal depends on it, this is one of the primary ways in which socialist thought argues that productvity and output can be increased.


It has significantly improved the lives of all, so there is no understatement. I can point to the decline in hours worked, the emergence of popular entertainment and education materials, air conditioning, etc. My phrasing isn't a matter of understatement at all, but rather that I think that the empirical data shows that most people have advanced, and so your criticism is just one of the type of advancement.

In any case, a theory that is already disputed on it's ability to stand is not one that I feel threatened by a criticism in relation to. I can develop my magic pony theory, where magical ponies give everyone tons of goodies and fly around giving people rides. Utterly unrealistic, but both of our systems are atrocious in comparison to this. In any case, I would think it much more realistic to argue capitalism's flaws against another system, and it has done better than most of these other systems, which have been much more inegalitarian, created much less wealth, and involved much more hierarchy.


Using wage labor is a legitimate way to get wealthy if one has the cleverness to see this to be a good idea.

I don't have problems with property acquisition. You'll have to point out the problem other than "involves property", such as something involving much more inequality.


I don't have to elaborate unless you pose a serious question. To me, my point is self-evident. You don't have a right to food, heated homes, fuel, or anything like that, as none of these things are naturally occurring, but rather only created by the efforts of other people. Thus, in order to get these benefits, it is only rational that they must feel willing to give it to you, otherwise they are made into your slaves as they have to labor for a cause that isn't their choice.


Well, the issue is that without these computers, there would be no means to rationally organize the resources in society in an efficient manner, as it is absurd to claim that a world where we have fountains that spout out beer and free porn and candy on every corner would be efficient, so some calculations will have to be involved.

Ok.


Umm.... no, efficiency wages aren't paid out of profits and made up by the increase in productivity, but rather they are higher wages that merit themselves, that are paid to make sure that each worker does not shirk, which ultimately lowers the economic demand for labor, which can cause increased unemployment in an efficient manner though.

Your claim is different than the efficiency wage idea. You might be able to argue that such a change will deal with principal-agent problems, however, I tend to not think so, as if these shares of profits are just given for signing on then there is little reason that this problem is solved because one shirker will benefit from the gains of 20 non-shirkers, so therefore a monitoring system would be necessary given heterogeneous interests in society. This means a management team. Additional layers could then be added as is necessary for long-term growth in an industry, given that having everyone vote on everything would be too complicated to efficiently manage things.


I don't have a problem with wage labor. I don't have a problem with small scale managers and small business owners, or even bankers, who accumulate saved capital from others to pool it for socially beneficial reasons. All of these can lead to larger scale developments. Not only that, but taking advantage of a loan certainly isn't taking advantage of your own money, and it certainly has to be repaid, so I don't see it as necessarily reducing freedom.

Slavery was more of a Southern thing, factories and laboring and manufacturing were more Northern things. They still had wage labor and inequality even without as many slaves or a landed aristocracy from so many years prior.

oh wow.

I'm going to take the time to respond in full later but i think this demonstrates the hypocrisy of the (bourgeois) Kantian categorical imperative, though I will note you have not stated your adherence to the aforementioned, nor can you. It is attitudes such as this, i think it can very much be argued, which necessitate the seizing of bourgeois power, in the words of Trotsky "with blood and iron".

I forgot to say ... if the question that is the subject of this thread is taken on its own, I would say the answer is "of course not".

The economy is not an end in itself. The economy of a society is supposed to serve the people in that society, not the other way round.

An obvious point maybe, but perhaps it's worth spelling it out.

See this is the fundemantal difference in thought between a socialist and a capitalist. I note that you start off with small scale which sounds ok and then have this grow exponentially into a behemoth. TO do this necessitates the abuse of those less fortunate in their abilities. It concentrates wealth, power and influence into a small clique and keeps the majority thinking that being able to go to the movies and get take out once a week is a great leap forward.

This concentration of wealth and the demand for more and more accumulation of it, leaves a mess of human detritus in its wake. I do not believe that the raising of some of the population above the poverty line is a good enough result to justify this accumulation. We have a world where a great many people survive on the handout of a high protein biscuit and fresh water, there are wars all over the place and the planet is facing serious climatic change. Capitalism has no answers to any of this, to deal with these issues would necessitate a decline in profit and that cannot be allowed.

Well, actually, I think the fundamental difference starts before this. I start off with this scale because I don't see this as a social matter, but rather take capitalism as what emerges from individual choices, and so I side with individual choices. You end up taking this to be a social matter though, and immediately point to the social effects.

Now, I disagree with your claims on the social effects to some extent, because there are multiple centers of power and cliques within a capitalist society, from the power in being a major author, to the power of being a major intellectual figure in a certain circle(such as anarchism, socialism, postmodernism, libertarianism, etc), to the power of being a major religious figure, etc. And because I think that the majority is better off than you do, as I am mostly looking at those who I consider to be within the capitalist system(such as in America, or the rest of the 1st world) where capitalism has had the greatest effect.

I don't see as much human detritus directly as the result of capitalism as you do. As for your claim "I do not believe that the raising of some of the population above the poverty line is a good enough result to justify this accumulation." One, I do, simply because I would rather be an average person in America rather than an average person in Medieval Europe. I mean, what basis for comparison are you using for socialism? Happy-land? It seems almost unquestionable that capitalism has a better world than any past civilization.

We have a world full of wars, full of poverty, but not full of much trade in those areas full of war and poverty, so I would not just hand the blame off to capitalism, given that war and poverty existed before capitalism existed. In fact, the occurrence of violence has been decreasing for centuries as psychologist Steven Pinker points out in a TEDtalks(you might look it up as I am too lazy to find the link for you), so I would hardly blame capitalism for these problems if they have been DECREASING. The same basically holds for starvation. The only thing I can see blame being assigned for is for being too slow, but I don't think that any difference would hold in any other system. I mean, what assumptions are you going to make? That evolution magically created a saint, and that somehow capitalism and feudalism has covered this up in a mystical goo of evil? I would say that this is the reason why not as much would be done about climate change as well, because people aren't interested when they can get out of being personally responsible. So, no, I do not blame every problem in the world on capitalism, or even blame it for not answering every problem perfectly, why would I?

For purposes of clarity, what sense is socialism being used here? Is socialism defined, as it was at the turn of the century, as a alternative (and highly decentralized) society consisting of worker self-managed institutions? Or, is it defined to describe the one party oligarchies (which have governed self-described "communist" states)?

I think the sense we're using the term in has a great deal of pertinence to our discussion.

Stand firm DentArthurDent! Don't be too hasty too cede ground on the Civil War just yet

Either your degree won't be worth the paper it's printed on, or you are being deliberately selective in your presentation of history.

First of all you have the cheek to attack me for suggesting conspiracies?! I think he pushed for peace because he realised after the offensive in which the germans took Riga that they didn't stand a chance fighting with an army which was broken and retreated at the first sight of the Germans! The Keresnky offensive had pretty well demonstrated the fighting capacity of the Tsar's troops. Do you also really think it such a problem to take the money of capitalist A, use it against capitalist B in the hope of sparking a revolt against capitalist A? Can I draw a not entirely inaccurate analogy and remind you of the Vietminh/Vietcong? during WW2 they took US support to fight the Japanese, when they left they fought the French, after they left they fought the US....and won. Course you left that place a hell of a mess as well, and did a great job looking after your vets

As for the civil war! Well, first of all Kerensky sends a demoralised, broken, bloodied, poorly equipped, poorly lead army on an offensive (JUly 1917), nothing like signing a few death warrants by proxy, though they did have the courtesy to revoke the death penalty, so yay!
Following defeat then subsequent austro-german counter offensive its fair to say the war was somewhat unpopular. Then came the July days, when the Bolshevik military organisation brought up reinforcements, but certainly did not overthrow the government, all this climaxing in the Kerensky governement sending in troops to put down peaceful demonstrations on July 17th. 700 were killed or wounded. Go! bourgeois democracy, go! All of this was supported by the SR's and Mensheviks, who then set about disarming workers, the revolutionary military units, making arrests - they destroyed the offices and printing press of Pravda and the Bolshevik HQ (july 18-19).July 19 the provisional government orders Lenin's kidnap, who I believe escaped to Finland. Then there was the Kornilov affair, in which Kerensky not only released but also armed the Bolsheviks. I quote the consequence form your beloved Wikipedia:



Here's a picutre of the aftermath: (second attempt )



Are these the same left leaning moderates who supported the above, by any chance?

And on your republic, permanent revolution, the 'premature' nature of the revolution and other matters allow me to quote Slavoj Zizek (Preface to Terr and Comm):

"We leave to the canailles of cynical wisdom th edubious pleasure of dwelling on the (from the hindsight of today's perspective) all too obvious illusions of the book, starting with Trotsky's reliance on the forthcoming West European revolution. On eshould not forget that this belief was shared by all Bolsheviks, Lenin included, who saw the survival of their power not as opening up space for 'constructing socialism in one country', but as buying them a breathing space, surviving till relief arrived in the guise of the West European revolution that would release the pressure....

...there is Kautsky's defence of multiparty democracy with all its ingredients, inclusive of freedom of the press; for him the victory of socialism was effectively conceived as the parliamentary victory of the Social Democratic Party, and he even suggested that the appropriate political form of the passage from capitalism to socialism is the parliamentary coalition of progressive bourgeois and social parties. (One is tempted to bring this logic to its extreme and suggest that for Kautsky, the only acceptable revolution would havebeento have a referendum and get at least 51 per cent of voters to approve it...)

[quoting Trotsky]'The dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary because it is a case, not of partial changes, but of the very existence of the bourgeoisie. No agreement i possible on this ground. only force can be the diciding factor. The dictatorship of the proletariat does not exclude, of course, either seperate agreements, or considerable concessions...But the proletariat can only conclude these agreements after having gained possession of the apparatus of power, and having guaranteed to itself the possibility of independently deciding on which points to yield and on which to stand firm, in the interests of the general socialist task.

The true queston is such not who directly holds power, a coalition of political agents or the 'dictatorship' of one sole agent, but how th every field in which the total political process takes place is structured: is it the process of parliamentary representation with parties 'reflecting' the voters' opinions, or a more direct self-organization of the working classes, which relies on a much more active role of the participants in the political process? Trotsky's basic reproach to parliamentary democracy is not that it gives toom uch power to uneducated masses, but, paradoxically, that it passivizes the masses too much, leaving the initiative to the apparatus of state power (in contrast to the 'soviets' in which the working classes directly mobilize themselves and exert their power).
A commonsense repraoch arises here: why, then, call this 'dictatorship'? Why not 'true democracy' or even simply the 'power of the proletariat'? 'Dictatorship' does not mean here the opposite of democracy, but democracy's own underlying mode of functioning - from the very beginning, the thesis on 'dictatorship of the proletariat' involved the presupposition that it is the opposite of other form(s) of dictatorship, since the entire field of state power is that of dictatorship. When Lenin and Trotsky desigante liberal democracy as a form of bourgeois dictatorship, they did not rely on a simplistic notion of how democracy is really manipulated, a mere facade, on how some secret clique is really in power and control things, so that, if threatened with losing power in democratic elections, this clique would show its true face and assume direct power. What they meant is that the very form of the bourgeois0democratic state embodies a 'bourgeois' logic.
In other words, one should use the term 'dictatorship' in the precise sense in which democracy also is a form of dictatorship, that is a purely formal determination.....The state in its institutional aspect is a massive presence which cannot be accounted for in the terms of representation of interests - the democratic illusion is that it can....in Benjaminian terms: while democracy can more or less eliminate constituted violence, it still has to rely continuously on constitutive violence.....
What is, for Trotsky, wrong with Kautsky's worry that the Russian working class took power 'too early' is that this concern implies the positivist vision of history as an 'objective' process which predetermines the possible coordiantes of political interventions; within this horizon it is unimaginable that a radical political intervention would change these very 'objective' coordinates and thus, in a way create the conditions for its own success: [quoting] 'The argument which is presented again and again in criticism of the Soviet system in Russia...is the argument based on the 'balance of power'. The Soviet regime is utopian - 'because it does not correspnd to the balance of power'. Backward Russia cannot put objects before itself which would be appropriate to advance Germany. And for the proletariat of Germany it would be madness to take political power into own its hands, as this 'at the present moment' would disturb the balance of power.'
There is more than opportunism in this obsession with the 'balance of power' (the opportunism encapsulated by Trotsky in a wonderful observation from his earlier Viennese days: 'After a whispered conversation with the director of the police department, an Austrian Social Democratic politician in the good, and not so far off, old times always knew exactly whether the balance of power permitted a peaceful street protest in Vienna on May Day). Trotsky is here faithful to Lenin who, in his writings of 1917, saved his utmost acerbic irony for those who would engage in the endless search for some kind of 'guarantee' for the revolution....it is as if, before the revolutionary agent risks the seizure of state power, it should get permission from some figure of the big Other. With Lenin....one should assume responsibility for the revolutionary act not covered by the big Other - the fear of taking power 'prematurely'....is the fear of the abyss of the act. Therein resides the ultimate dimension of what Lenin incessantly denounces as 'opportunism', and his wager is that 'opportunism' is a postion which is in itself, inherently, false, masking the fear to accomplish the act with the protective screen of 'objective' facts, laws or norms. Lenins answer is not the reference to a different set of 'objective facts, but the repetition of the argument made a decade earlier by Rosa Luxemberg against Kautsky: those who wait for the objective conditions of the revolution to arrive will wait for ever - such a position of the objective observer (and not of an engaged agent) is itself the main obstacle to the revolution. Lenin's counterargument against the formal-democratic critics of the second step is that this 'pure democratic' option itself is utopian: in the concrete Russian circumstances, the bourgeois-democratic state has no chance of survivng - the only 'realistic' way to protect the true gains of the February revolution (freedom of organization and the press for example) is to move forward to the socialist revolution, otherwise the tsarist reaction would win."

my apologies for the length but i can't really put it more succinctly, or shorter. (sorry for spelling also)

Perhaps we, being more versed in socialist thought than those who dismiss it out of hand, are in a better position to assess what is and what is not socialism, particularly when you look at the flagrant error of associating socialism with absolute wage equality (which F. Castro also has done, though he is also not a socialist). Also I am yet to see evidence that your two semesters have done anything other than leave you with an analytical approach to history similar to peeling an onion with a crowbar.

Further to this point; if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck but opens its mouth to tell you it is a goose, do you disbelieve your eyes and echo the assertion that it is in fact a goose? More pertinent why have we not adopted the far more advanced education system of these 'geese' when even the ducks can talk!



Pretty sure you can answer that yourself. If your honest. How about, the Ku Klux Klan violence inflected on African-Americans, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Iran-Contra, Watergate, and the McCarthy witch hunts for starters? Course there is all the violence the US has externalised....



I have done, and shall be addressing this over the full course of my posts. Of course it would be arrogant of me, and massively unrealistic of you to expect a full account on this one in the format given here, though I will try and point to the relevant work.



I fail to see how this 'expediency' is so problematic for you. And i resent your use of the pejorative 'commies'. When you consider the level of education in Russia at the time and its sheer size it seems imbecilic to expect either the core Bolsheviks to micromanage every factory or that the workers and peasants will work things out fast enough to get the devestated economy up on its feet again before the next blow strikes, internally or externally. What is your problem other than 'what it strikes you as', what it strikes you as is not important, a proper consideration of the multiple factors involved will tell you it is a sound decision.



Yes. Categorically yes, put simply 'knowledge is power', so it is said, and an imbalance of knowledge is an imbalance of power.

I know its not the best source I was working off the top of my head there. I did try to distance myself from him, perhaps repeating the words on his being an obese charlatan were too subtle.



sucks when you're good enough to do something but prohibitive costs intervene, no? And i was citing the costs for the nationals of each to attend each University. Can you really claim an egalitarian College system when you fail so many in the years leading up to this thorugh poor administration and lack of funding etc?
(congrats on getting accepts by the way, v. tough admissions I must add)


That was intended as a rhetorical question.



They only have those talents because they are developed through education, which we've covered above, unequal access to and provision of education...well, you can guess. The capital accumulation of the workers you mean as I shall address in response to AG, the investors are both parasitic and shirkers.



Again. For very specific reasons. They are fairly similar cases and the reasons are also fairly similar, I can and will go into detail. if you're really impatient Trotsky's analysis in Revolution betrayed of the Soviet Union is immensely inormative and unwaveringly critical of Stalin and the Soviet Union. If you are so interested in Russian history would it honestly hurt to read what he has to say on one of the key epochs in that history? In reading it you will note that Trotsky new full well the counter productive nature and waste of human life immanent in such a Napoleonic campaign, and you have presented no evidence that he in fact would go on such an adventure.



Of mice and men.....I also refer you to the Zizek quote for some answer on why Lenin pressed ahead.

A certain level of turmoil is actually pretty normal for a civilization. I mean, none of this is anything compared to some of the relatively crazy and hated emperors that Rome had. I mean, your starters hardly say anything about US stability, as the US has handled a lot of these situations reasonably well(not ideally mind you) and none of these situations really disrupted the US political or social scheme dramatically.


What talent does education actually stimulate? How many of these can only be cultivated through formal education? I mean, old textbooks are pretty freaking cheap, the stuff learned in the classroom is rather petty(I mean Maslow's hierarchy of needs lacks empirical verification as far as I can tell), and a lot of the most basic business programming skills are for using standard software that can be purchased, and that isn't incredibly user unfriendly. I mean, business classes mostly just harp on excel for software purposes, which is not exactly the toughest program to learn.

The investors in a capitalist society are allocators of capital, a job with an important social role that would have to be fulfilled in *any* society, so I would consider an attack on the field of finance as "worthless" seems stupid on it's face. In any case, all attacks on investors basically fall down to attack on accumulators, and if there is no problem with accumulation, then there is no problem with investors using this accumulation. Without this, then basically you have to have political allocation of capital which is prone to the foibles of politicking, or institutions that determine the entire thing, which would then basically have to plan the economy, determining the value of each business and then allocating, which seems like a less efficient situation than a market given the high success of betting markets at prediction compared to experts. Also, "shirker" implies some obligation in the first place.

My point bein that you cannot dismiss socialism/marxism as irrelevant on the grounds of it being 'incomplete', which you explicitly example as being in no way fatal, and state yourself those theories you claim to completely lack can be filled in later, though I doubt this is the case. I understand there to be a good body of work on the protestant movement in Germany being the first expressions of bourgeois thought, being a deeply religious continent, they expressed themselves in religious phraseology etc to get across the 'theory', so to speak of their shared interests, of the protestant work ethic etc. So no, just because you do not recognise something as an explicit theory because it is couched in a different mode of thought or expression does not mean it is not in fact a theory. Nor does it have to be a complete theory in its singularity, but in fact the accumulation of work over time. And the bourgeoisie had to fight to maintain those institutions when threatened, I refer to Hobsbawms (sp.?) (i think) argument that the English civil war in the 1600's was one of, if not the first bourgeois revolution and the further argument that the American revolution was The Second English Civil War, so to speak, as it was technically English colonists (amongst others) fighting the encroachment of the aristocracy on the instutions etc they had developed in the Americas.

I take it your repition of my point on technique is either an error in posting or in the belief I have unthinkingly confirmed your own point. Not so, the question of technique is one of the primary subjects of socialist economic thought, though this technique is often held in check by the law of diminishing returns, or by the poor prospects of return of an initial investment. I will also point to the work underway in France and the US to test the idea of Nuclear Fission, which if I am not mistaken is the centrally planned application of the resources, staff, and capital of many different public bodies, enterprises institutions, governments etc. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4629239.stm) On which subject I quote Chomsky: What's MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]? MIT is technically a private institution, but it's publically funded through the government. What is it funded for? Well, it's funded to create the technology of the future, which private corporations can make profit on. So the main elements of the productive economy now, like computers and the Internet, were developed right here, and similar places, under Pentagon funding for decades, not short periods. The public was paying the cost for a long period. The public was taking the risks, and it finally ends up in Bill Gates's pockets. (http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20090401.htm)

I think it is simply a frank recognition of the task at hand.



Sophistry (in themodern sense, though I add the greek sense of 'one whose business is wisdom' with the deepest of irony). The empirical data will clearly not tell you this. I dare you to begin citing the research which shows this, and not just the US, you can't simply take a global economy encompassing billions and example its achievements from 250 odd million in the nation that has benefited the most above all others. Even then the majority in the US would categorically not enjoy the wealth possessed by the minority, nor the power. And I have already stated the marxist appreciation of what capitalism has done. We inted to do better, for all.



I understand that 5.6 million people joined Hugo Chavez' political party when he formed it. That's a lot of people want those magic ponies....not to mention all those who have fought and died for their 'magic ponies' as you so childishly put it.



So you freely admit it does not even begin to be a question of the morality of the thing, nor is it for 'socially beneficial' reasons; the 'cleverness' lying in overcoming all these concerns (which I shall address below on freedom to assosciate) to continue with the overall aim, which is, in your own words, "to get wealthy".

Ok. This is what I hope to convince other workers of. I'll just quote you on it, and let it go from there.



The possession of private property is massively inequitable in and of itself ( and home possesion in the US is a pathetic defence, try globally then get back to me, whats more it was because the miners were taken in by Thacher to buy there own homes [the clue is right there], by doing this they gave up social housing they couldn't be evicted from when they couldn't pay rent while striking, into mortgages where they could lose everything if they didn't pay, thus breaking the miners). This was a particualr bone of contention with the aristocracy amongst the early bourgeoisie I understand.



That is a serious question that millions face every day. Go to Darfur and ask what do they want, food or the freedom to assosciate. I know where the long queue is going to be.

Further to the point: Am I right in stating that Afro-americans performed wage labour in the south in the first half of the 20th century? When the south had Jim Crow laws denying the freedom to assosciate? If wage labour can be performed while the freedom to assosciate has been denied is it not correct to state that the two therefore have nothing whatsoever to do with each other? Hence my absolute incredulity in your resorting to that piece of ideological sophistry.

Your point is only self evident to you because you employ the kind of 'cleverness' that justifies the accumulation of wealth off the backs of others.

You say it yourself, all of these things have been created by people, that is the workers, without whom not one of the achievements of capitalism is possible.

and i sure as hell haven't finished yet AG, I'm not staying up through the night when I need to go earn my wage tomorrow just to counter your 'cleverness'.

Which is why I have on several occasions pointed out that the USSR isn't a great example against socialism, since it is disavowed by most socialists. I do, however, find it troubling that there does not seem to have ever been a socialist leader of whom other socialists approve.


How do those undermine my point? The US government has remained stable since 1789. Even through civil war, our system of government survived. We also have consistently been major players in world politics since the late 1800s, and were instrumental in determining the outcomes of both World Wars. We have not suffered famine since the Dust Bowl, and we have maintained, for over 60 years, our place as the most powerful and influential nation in the world. Most countries can not match such accomplishments, and there is really no evidence pointing to an imminent collapse of the US. We don't have any real social unrest (some people will whine a bit, but nothing serious) and our government remains stable. In contrast, most European powers have seen their governments completely fallen apart and then reconstituted in the past 200 years, some of them several times. We've got some skeletons in our closet, certainly, but to claim that we have are likely to collapse anytime soon seems questionable.


That quote is typically taken out of context. It was not referring to educational attainment.


It does. Anyways, American universities are usually quite generous to foreigners. My Kuwaiti roommate was a moron (and I mean a complete idiot, he was in math class with the football team) and he was able to get a scholarship. My sister also had a foreign roommate her first year who was on full scholarship yet failed most of her classes.


Lack of funding? The US spends more on our public school system than most other countries, and per-pupil expenditures are extremely high in inner-city districts. Anyways, I volunteer as a math tutor at my old high school, and let me assure you, there *is* difference in ability. Among students who all attended the same public school system, you can see clear differences- there are high school seniors who are cognitively at a lower level than I was as a first-grader, and I wasn't a prodigy. Our public school system sucks in a lot of ways, but if someone comes out of it lacking the basic knowledge they need for college, it's most likely because they're just stupid.


It wasn't a very good rhetorical question, it was really kind of pointless as it mostly just showed off your ignorance of the American university system.


Given his belief in "permanent revolution" I would rather have expected Trotsky to go to the aid of socialist revolutionaries in other countries. Since he believed the Soviet Union could only be a holding measure until the true socialist revolution, he would have wanted to hurry up and get that revolution going.

Sure I can if I don't believe that you are likely to ever complete it enough such that it will be viable. You haven't shown much evidence for this, but rather are more consumed by arguing the whys and wherefores about me dismissing something. I mean, you are attacking my support of capitalism, an already working system that is just insufficiently described, while you want to host a revolution that will kill millions of people(if not billions given the size and scope of the modern world) for a theory that cannot solve the problems that some people even think it are insoluble for that theory. I think I am justified to favor one over the other.

The Protestant work ethic isn't much of a social theory, and that's that given that the Puritans(whom you are likely referring to) were religious zealots. Not all people even think that capitalism first emerged with the Protestants, and even if it did, it has moved beyond the scope of a theory, beyond the point at which the Puritans could identify it, and to the point where most people think it has a life of it's own, so labeling it a "theory" is just absurd, and wrong, and not a profitable direction for your argument.

The American revolution wasn't revolutionary, as you already pointed out, so I don't see why I should call it a revolution for my intents and purposes if the idea wasn't overhauling the social structure. The English civil wars also have multiple interpretations, other than the Marxist view, the latter view being one that I would not believe for this circumstance given that "necessity" to history is often just a fault of the human brain. Not saying that all things did not necessarily happen, or that human beings have a libertarian free will, just saying I don't believe in Marxian or Hegelian or any other purposive historical explanations so much.

Ok, you mean you think I don't know about government subsidization of scientific knowledge? That wasn't the Austrian point, as seen from Hayek's use of knowledge in a free society, nor does admitting the existence of the possibility of public goods really hurt my own point. Technology can be argued as one because it has significant externalities. And it's subsidization can be supported on the basis of a market failure given the high risk in blue skies research. Proves nothing. In any case, the capitalist case isn't just straight technology, but the actual use of technology which is much more difficult than just creating it, as the science must be translated into a usable product. In any case, not all people accept the necessity of government interventions to subsidize technology, so I don't really see much point to Chomsky. If anything, Chomsky is missing the point that somebody has to actually find a technology and figure out the use of it, a task that is not just simple and easy in all cases, and that usually requires an entrepreneurial vision to attempt to bring it to use.


A "global economy"? That hasn't been my point, and I've made that explicit in the past that I do not regard undeveloped nations as a meaningful part of the economy, and thus irrelevant. Because of that, I clearly can make that point. A lot of the developing nations though are attempting to gain money, and are dealing with a baseline poverty that they are trying to overcome with large levels of labor, similar to the earlier US development.

Right, Marxism wants to do that. Good for it. It's just going to fail and kill millions of people again, but hey, everyone's gotta have dreams, right? (you can rebut that this isn't what you are planning, but you cannot write this off as a possibility either because the real desire is a literal civil war where the very fabric of society is going to be overthrown, and where the theory is lacking on a number of metrics. In any case, I don't see what else a Marxist has other than a flickering hope anyway.)


Yep, lots of people have fought and died for magic ponies. I mean, this should be obvious, as for every viewpoint, some people have essentially died for the opposing viewpoint, died for a magic pony.


What morality do you expect me to appeal to? If you are a Marxist, then where do material "oughts" come from, as the idea seems absurd, and to recharacterize the debate is utterly philosophically flawed. If I am a capitalist, then my morality would be significantly different, and see absolutely no problem with freedom to associate, perhaps even taking that as moral and the opposite immoral, as noted with Nozick's stance, and with the Objectivists.


Ok, well, capitalist ideas just follow from a set of intuitions, and these intuitions will vary amongst people in society.


If the government or society owns everything, then we are forced to serve that group no matter what it says, but if there are multiple property owners or even if one is personally a property owner, then there is more freedom to do otherwise. Capitalism clearly has multiple property owners, and sets up a manner by which they can compete.


Slavery is better than being in Darfur, which is to say that Darfur is just a sucky place to be. That is hardly a desirable point though, because slavery is worse than freedom, and one of these freedoms would be the freedom to associate, as it is hard to argue against that. It is not as if anyone argues that poor blacks should be re-enslaved for their own benefit. So, at best your argument merely shows that people prefer not to die, not that freedoms are utterly irrelevant.

Jim Crow didn't deny all freedom to associate, it only removed some of that freedom. It is not as if laws against public profanity remove all freedom of speech either.

Well, ok? It is also one of those things that is often considered necessary to know about if one is going to argue against capitalism, and one of those issues that people sometimes consider a part of freedom.

I never said that the workers created everything. For one, there are forms of wealth creation other than just brute labor, secondly, capital often already belongs to someone, and it is usually necessary for modern production which leads workers to contract themselves to use it, thirdly workers can be replaced by certain forms of capital. All my argument does is basically argue against slavery, but that does not necessarily mean "wage-slavery" at all though.

Ok, don't be finished then. I'd prefer you were, as your only real talent is just your zealous devotion to socialism and knowledge of it's catechism, but everyone's gotta have a hobby, right? To me, the issue seems pretty simple:
1) There is little reason to think that socialism will actually work, much less surpass capitalism.
2) There is little reason to commit to a bloody revolution for a system that might not even work, especially since revolutions are difficult and because the current system actually works within the confines that it is in(you can dispute the confines, but they seem pretty clear to me and I think most economists will agree on that)
3) There is little reason to think that there is a major problem with capitalism, I mean, you can overblow some little factoid, but frankly, the record on past systems is pretty clear that capitalism is better.

Based upon these 3 reasons, there is little reason for me to care much about your own point at this point in time. Disputes against 3 would have to mostly be speculative as most of them are either in a ground where I can dispute them without much concern or go into some speculation on things that might happen, and you've already ceded 1 and 2 to be unknown at this point in time.

So, really, there is very little for me to care about, as I am mostly arguing against your representations as trivial, not using any great "cleverness". Heck, you're the one who wrenched this thing off-topic to begin with. So, really, all I see here is the blabberings of a Marxian apologist, nothing really important. I mean, you haven't moved past the category of being an "outright wrong idea", much less one that should have a mild bit of attention paid to, and if my time were more valuable, I'd just ignore you. So, sure, call me clever. I really don't care, as such arrogance merely calls you out to be the dogmatist you are, and really, if I wanted one of those, I'd bother a Christian apologist, as I find those mildly more interesting.

because those aren't example of social instability? I think the civil rights movement was a hell of a lot more than whining, seeing as there was so much violence before, during and after it all, including the whitewash of the Rodney King beating. Of course city wide riots aren't an example of societal instability in your opinion, there just a few people whining and nothing serious, right? I distinctly recall a picture at the Liverpool Maritime Museum Slavery Exhibit. It's a group of about a dozen white men smiling form ear to ear over a fire. On the fire is the very identifiable corpse of an African-American man.

heres another photo form back in the day: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_adi6yj5y-Es/R ... _woman.jpg
try this: http://www-personal.arts.usyd.edu.au/st ... ngham3.jpg
and this: http://agitprop.typepad.com/agitprop/im ... nching.jpg
note the smiling girl on the left: http://dallassouthblog.com/wp-content/u ... a-1935.jpg
heres one pertinent to my point on Jim crow and freedom to associate: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mg7D3kYysfw/R ... -Front.jpg

and here's the center piece of it all: http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/afr ... ynch_3.jpg

you are full of it

The only way you could elect an African-American was to find one who has no connection to civil rights at all. Course not all african-americans fought the government. One Major Colin Powell was behind the investigation and white wash of My Lai. I know those were unbelievably difficult circumstances, but a whitewash? (http://www.newstatesman.com/north-ameri ... lger-texas) you should take the time to read a few more of those Pilger articles. You might actually learn a thing or two.



Fighting your way out from under a king who can levy taxes upon you without, as you may recall, your chance to represent yourself, isn't overhauling the social structure?



I understand freedom to associate to be a fundemental right, you either have it all or nothing:

"Logically, a fundamental human right is one that every individual possesses and can exercise in exactly the same sense at every point. If person A claims a right that, when exercised, denies exactly the same right to person B, the alleged right belongs only to A, not B. It should be called an A right, not a human right, for A and B are rivals in the exercise of the right. Genuine human rights are those which can be held and exercised nonrivalrously. The word “peaceably” in the Amendment has two meanings. The associations we choose to enter may not undertake violence to accomplish their ends, and within each association one person may not coerce another. Associations must be based on mutual consent.

That the Constitution guarantees freedom of association to each of us does not mean that we may each associate with anyone we choose. It means that we may associate with whoever also agrees to associate with us. If B is forced to accept A’s offer of association, B is not free to choose his associations. Association would be a right of A, not B. It would not be a human right. Therefore, freedom of association, correctly understood, has both a positive and a negative component. We are free to associate with those who will accept us (positive), and we are free to abstain from associations of which we do not approve (negative). " (http://www.thefreemanonline.org/feature ... sociation/)

So freedom of association seems to be a binary condition. Have it all or nothing. It is also a totalizing freedom (sorry if I wrongly take technical terms there), in that I mean everyone has it or it does not exist at all. If unemployment is a necessary feature of the market for it to function, meaning more workers than jobs, this being so it restricts who I can choose as my employer and thus who I can work with, but I must choose an employer. Otherwise I must live off unemployment benefits, which is to survive on a minimal level of expense off the work of others, thus encroaching on the freedom to associate. Furthermore, I have to perform wage labour because a) I along with many if not most workers don't know how to work the soil b) I will almost inevitability run up against the private property of large scale farmers etc who are categorically not going to take me on as a peasant to work a tract of land c) You know as well as I that food production is much higher under modern (capitalist, I add) methods, a lot of people turning back to peasant farming would lead to famine and death. Clearly not an option. Therefore to first of all feed myself I must get hold of money (in order to buy, for in order to maintain the methods of mass production in agriculture there must be someone who can buy on a large scale= the possessor of capital; who then sells it to the consumerfor a profit, which is to largely control the food supply, to counter this requires the organisation of massive numbers of the working classes. This organisational tendency to form proletarian institutions is a direct challenge to the capital possessing class, who recognising the means of their own rise willl and have gone to some lengths to restrict their power). This means either stealing or going in to the factory, thus performing wage labour. I can avoid this by possessing property and/or capital thus negating the need to labour and ensuring the freedom to associate, but this is a totalizing freedom and to deny it to one is to deny it to all. But to accumulate capital beyond the amounts held by a feudal lord or in a cottage industry I must employ wage labour, denying this freedom to others. What is more if the point of the market, as you freely offer, and the aim of using wage labour is to get wealthy, this being the accumulation of capital and property, the resources of the earth being finite thus making the amount of wealth it is possible to accumulate finite, to distribute it unequally (this possession being one way to avoid wage labour an denial of this freedom) is to encroach on the freedom to associate of others, this being an all or nothing freedom is to deny it to all, including those who possess. I am coerced to participate in the market in order to live. This is to say the market utterly negates the possibility of the freedom to associate. Taken as a whole I'm pretty sure my reasoning is sound, it primarily rests on the crux of wage labour being compulsive, which I think I've made a somewhat crude but highly valid argument to support.

This is why I ask what you mean by freedom to associate. I don't see how it has anything to do with wage labour *edit* beyond being denied by it, therefore I ask you to elaborate.



I think my above post goes some way to address this. And for capital to belong to someone there must be laws to protect it, and since most of the basics if not all the details were put in place before the removal of the property qualification (property being a form of capital), they were therefore written by those who already possessed capital. And, once again, in order to replace the worker with capital you must first of all have workers to labour to accumulate that capital.

Most importantly I know you didn't say workers. I did. I believe the source of your confusion lies in your refusal to see the workers as people as opposed to only as a means/resource for getting wealthy.



If you're going to throw around accusations of being an ideologue, then i refer you to the above offered refutation of your own invocation of the role of freedom to associate, which you do not elaborate on but instead dismiss me entirely, I believe, because it is simple ideology and has nothing to support it.

1) the current most powerful capitalist nation in the world not only has a long record of brutally slapping down any attempt to set up the institutions from which socialism might emerge, it has resorted to some of the most horrific means to do so. Those few attempts which have survived this onslaught, one being the FRETECO workers which you are utterly silent on, have a record of pioneering socialist principles and thought on economics. In so far as needing a supercomputer to run a socialist economy, well I'm sure you're aware of Cybersyn (established in Chile by Allende, destroyed by the coup) which had some qualified success. Chile's economy was a mess. Allende was elected made some initial advances, including using cybersyn to plan supply to the capital when under blockade with just 200 truck drivers. Of course the economy turned very much worse. Though I'm sure this has nothing to do with the US' frequent attempts to destabilise the country, an unstable country not being supportive of a stable economy and vice versa. Of course Pinochet was better than Allende? I doubt it, considering what went on there. What's more, weasther forecasting systems use other 10 million pieces of information to make forecasts, there is an American company which uses these same principles along with chaos theory to predict the future value of shares (I think, this is them http://www.predict.com/html/introduction.html) I belive they are still turning a considerable profit also. So if by supercomputer you mean something form science fiction, then no, given the possibilities offered by the arrival of quantum computers onto the market (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... kable.html)
2) I think we've already established that it is the government who opens fire first. It is the insistence of bourgeois institutions on eliminating proletarian ones (such as the provisional government dissolving the soviets), of which the proletariat are exercising the same protection which the bourgeoisie have exercised for their institutions which you note is key to their success and that of capitalism. And having ten people in a room, and getting nine to agree on something does not in and off itself mean that that thing is correct, it is a question of how they reach this decision, which I believe I have every right and reason to question being a part of all this. It is up to you to put forth a valid argument which stands up to critique, not simply dismiss my position as irrelevant, especially given the glaring errors made on socialism, though this is not surprising given you pay it no heed.
3) Another example of your callous attitude to the suffering of the majority. And your outright inablility to see anyone beyond the white middle class (and by white I include all those who will *edit* 'live' white: Don King, Barack Obama). I suggest you take some time to learn something reliable about african-american history upto and including today, then come back to me with your callous attitude.

And yes the US is a part of the global economy. I understand your economy to be an energy importer, with a good deal of this coming from the Gulf, which certainly does not have first world economies beyond the obscene wealth of a handful of tiny enclaves. Without this your economy would be severely handicapped, if not to a fatal extent. You certainly could not maintain anyhting approaching current living standards.

So far as the Op is concerned, it is a trap.

The question in the OP is posed in such a way that the question calls forth a predetermined answer. There are only two answers to choose from and the second is clearly absurd. Anyone choosing this option would be completely unable to defend their choice. You erroneously conflate absolute wage inequality with socialism in order, i would argue, for you to justify discrediting it on these terms. The only answer which it is possible to give is the first, which serves only to confirm Orwell's ideological position (for it is only empty ideology if it is not subject to full critique), making the pretence of 'questioning' it in order to have it validated by others. It encapsulates fairly well the way in which a bourgeois democracy can fully tolerate 'free speech' and a 'critical', 'self questioning' attitude wherein all possible answers are pre-programmed. Any attempts to challenge the basis of the questioning process, rather than providing the expected answer, are met with slander, dismissal, cheap tricks and ultimately violence. Case in point. Rather than provide the expected answer I challenge the very premise of the question. If you go back over the thread you will see I am first ignored. Pressing the point yourself and Orwell resort to attacking Marxism and Socialism as irrelevant, completely bypassing the absolutely correct point that you have made a clear error (and do not demonstrate how efficiency and equality are necessarily mutually exclusive, which is a founding assumption of the question asked), finally swinging very close to personal attacks and foul language (I quote: "BS, complete and utter BS")which only seems to confirm that you were seeking a specific answer.

I didn't play your game the way you wanted it to be played, hence your sustained attack. It was categorically not me who hijacked the thread. You tried to dismiss my opinion which I feel I have every right to both offer and have considered without having to face the attack you mounted. It wasn't a question of the relevancy or otherwise of socialism until you made it so. It was you who challenged me on those grounds, which I feel I have every right to respond to.

Anything even close to a coup or breaking away from society involved there? No. His point still stands, and calling him "full of it" only shows your own issues. It is not as if there are many civilizations that have never had riots. Even the longest lasting civilizations did not have some blemish-free regime where all people were happy at all times. Instances of unpunished crimes in the south, while definitely proving that problems within America exist, is also pretty far from proving that America is on the verge of some massive collapse, socialist revolution, or anything like that. It only shows that people are jerks, a point that is pretty accepted.


No, not at all. If you recall, England only started invoking this power before the Revolution, and before that mostly left the colonies to their own governing. Calling it revolutionary is pretty difficult, given that the problem being protested had JUST emerged and this led to opposition.



Well, I already gave my example of the freedom of speech, which is the same situation. Technically, the law cannot literally prevent people from freely associating, as people can just outright ignore the law and violate it in secret, however, for all intents and purposes, the law is an attempt to abridge this freedom, which is why you invoked it in the first place.

I don't really see how a "totalizing freedom" makes sense when we're talking partially about legal affairs. I mean, the person whose article you cited, says nothing about "totalizing" and all of his terms are basically things I could agree with, just looking at it from a glance.

Wage labor doesn't restrict freedom, it requires a contractual agreement between both parties acting in good faith. Employing wage labor also doesn't prevent other people from doing things differently than you are, I mean, if we all did the same thing, then the least capable of us(or most unlucky) would leave as it would be too costly to continue, but there doesn't seem a problem beyond that.

Money isn't limited. You are ignoring intensive growth to only look at extensive growth, when a lot of growth will fall upon making things a lot more efficient with how they work. In any case, it is not as if we are running out of a lot of resources anyway, as can be seen with the Paul Ehrlich/Julian Simon bet, where it shown that prices of many resources has actually decreased over time, rather than increased.

You would do better if you broke up your paragraph into it's various components so that way I could track your reasoning with greater clarity. As it stands, I disagree with most of the identified elements of your analysis. Then again, on the start, I disagreed with your claim on compulsion, as there is no literal force involved, there is just a pre-existent condition of lacking resources, and I do not see how it is compulsion for one person to offer and exchange that benefits both parties in this situation. The rest of it is hard for me to break apart with ease as well, but I find myself in general disagreement with your analysis.

This is not to say that we are dealing with a perfect system, but unless you are claiming that there is a right to the efforts of another person, we are stuck with arguing that wage labor is legitimate, because it is an exchange.

Well, technically, if my own stance is correct, that a lot of unemployment is frictional unemployment then there isn't technically much of a problem involved in this matter, because even if in the short-run you don't have a job, in the long-run, you will probably have a job.


Not really.

I take ownership to be a natural relationship between people and items, one that would be necessary in any large society for determining where resources should go, and that likely exists as a matter of culture to a good extent as well.

To get to this starting point of management, you would have to start with capital, and nobody would deny that. To even start off with a basic tool, you would need to have intellectual capital, that would allow this tool to be created, and it goes on and on. However, it ends up being irrelevant if we are pitting capital vs labor, as one, we can start off with capital, two, if we do not start off with capital then we must absolutely prove that an industry could not start off using a minimum of capital or a loan of some sort that can provide this capital in order to make your reduction. The issue then boils down to whether or not I think my own explanations of the matter are strained, and your arguments are strained. I would think that your arguments are strained though, likely, as there seems little reason why a Northern US craftsman couldn't get wealthy enough to hire numbers of laborers without relying upon some coerced labor(the North didn't use many slaves to do it's work compared to the south).


My refusal to see them as people? People aren't to be seen as people most of the time, and somehow I doubt the analytics of political philosophy can ever meaningfully personalize their abstract people. I mean, personhood is a phenomenal perception, not something that analysis can directly deal with. In any case, here's how people can be seen:
* Nuisances
* Suckers
* Misguided herds
* Resources
* Loved ones
* The Community
* Opportunities
* Things to be manipulated/philosophized
etc...
I don't think that most of the ways of looking at people usually reiterates that they are people. I mean, how can you reiterate the personhood of something while regarding it as an abstraction? You either remove all essence from it, or you idealize it, so I don't see the problem in my analysis. I mean, to me, the average person I see isn't seen as a person, they are seen as a role or a nuisance, and I think the average other person is pretty similar.

In any case, if these other beings were just resources, we would just be harvesting them(slavery) rather than employing them under a contract. Contracts are also pretty dehumanizing, and I will admit that, but any legal arrangement is dehumanizing, and for the most part a contract is a means of reducing problems.


You keep on harping upon that one argument, and I didn't buy it from the start. Perhaps I am missing something and you should format it in a manner so that I can see every premise and see where it all follows.

I do not elaborate on it because I don't see the point. What more do I have to say? "You can freely engage in activities with other people if both parties agree to it" End of story. No more has to be said. Even attempting to argue that wage labor disproves it seems an error, and I've already made my point clear about the baseline condition being a lack of resources, therefore trade is necessary. If your entire paragraph is an argument, then I really don't see the issue, as some of the attacks were pretty erroneous when it came down to it. Heck, your attack upon limits of the earth is still pretty pointless given that the growth of a nation's economy is larger than the growth of a nation's population in many of the countries I would refer to.


A powerful nation slaps down potential opposition to it's whims? Isn't that the story of history?

In any case, I actually think that the neoclassical argument is wrong, so rebutting it is actually sort of pointless, because I think the situation is a bit worse than that for the communist given that I actually don't think that any type of technocracy could have a meaningful impact upon human social organization other than worsening the situation by ignoring very important human factors. This would likely include any socialist effort. Not only that, but let's just be honest, economists can't predict the economy no matter what statistical measures they are using. They don't even know how, I doubt that some massive technocratic revolution will magically fix that lack of knowledge, and I would bet that the economy is more complex than the weather. So, I still don't see a major revolution happening there, particularly given that the economy will likely get more and more complex over time.


Who is this we? I don't even think that socialism will even get popular enough for a war to emerge. It isn't even on most people's radars as a threat any more.

I never said anything about correctness, nor do I really think that much has been advanced that I really feel incredibly threatened by. I mean, the last problem that you were arguing it might be possible to solve is one of whether socialism could solve an ideal economy. The issue is that economies aren't ideal, so a real economy is much worse, and have many more variables.

At this point, the socialist position seems so underdeveloped that I don't need an argument to dismiss it, and that actually is my point. It depends upon so many things that seem unlikely to happen, and your efforts to act as if things are significantly worse than they are seem so strained, that I really don't see much to even bat an eye at.

I mean, really, here's what you have to have:
1) Socialism getting really really popular
2) Capitalism really really sucking
3) Socialism overthrowing capitalism
4) Socialism then creating a system that works on the political level
5) Socialism creating a system that works on the economic level.

Now, the issue is that given these 5 points, and my incredulity to all of them, I do not think that there is anything at this point in time that would cause me to be willing to grant your case. You can argue that my incredulity is unjustified, but the issue is that I am just defending something that already is working, that already is reasonably acceptable, that has no real enemies, that works to a good extent on the political level, and that is superior than all past systems on the economic level. Either I am massively wrong on everything, or you don't have much of a case. There is almost nothing that seems to indicate that I am wrong on everything, and even if you did establish your moral argument,(which would only undercut a 6th point in favor of capitalism) you still would be pretty far from winning your case, as there are all of the consequentialist arguments to contest.


My callous attitude to the majority? They are ALSO doing much better under capitalism than under previous systems. I don't see how contesting that is very reasonable. I mean, sure, I am not going to say that African American history is great, but I am not going to blame the fullness of racism on current capitalism, particularly given that I see freer markets as mitigating some of the effects of racism. Heck, they are doing better than people are in Africa, and this is not to justify slavery or racism either, but I cannot say that they aren't beneficiaries of the current system in their own way.


Because we trade *so* much with much poorer economies(I pointed out the problem with this to Sand, if a nation is poor, it is likely that we aren't doing much trade with it). Our trade partners are mostly the 1st World and developing nations, which are still developing and improving, and there is little reason why they wouldn't reach 1st world standards at some point as nothing in what is going on seems unlike what was going on in early first world nations.


A trap? I don't think the OP cares so much about how socialism really works, as the question was egalitarianism, as he did try to push this thread away from issues of how efficient would be.


Everyone making 65,000 dollars isn't shabby, particularly if the original system had 7 out of 10 people living under the poverty line! Should Orwell really have phrased his thread without referencing socialism? Yes, he probably should have given that he was unhappy with all of the references to why socialism wouldn't work. He didn't but he did clearly express his point and had stated at many times that he did not want to debate socialism in his thread so much as egalitarianism vs net wealth. This can also explain why you were ignored at first, you were off-topic, and most posters didn't have much written in response to them, particularly not quoting them.

Attacking the basis of questions is usually just annoying. Christians do stuff like this too, they call it "presuppositional apologetics". It makes people angry, because it is annoying. It is also done under the guise of making people recognize their contradictions. I mean, Orwell's question was straight-forward, and the reason why you eventually caught attention is because you kept on making attacks and both Orwell and I disagreed with your basis for attacking, so we countered.

Most of this debate hasn't actually dealt with whether there is a necessary negative relationship of efficiency to equality because for the most part neither of us were concerned with that aspect, mostly with the fact that we've disagreed with other points, not with that issue. I've already questioned whether equality really stands in the way of efficiency with this comment here:
"Is income inequality itself a negative externality?"

Because, if the answer is yes, then a more equal society will also actually be more efficient as well.

Not only that, but I also correctly found the actual point: "So, to take the question at face value: yes, inequality is a bad, and lower net income would be better to some extent. "

Which is to say that if there is a trade-off, which is assumed, then lowering net income could be better.

So, I really don't see this crazy scheme that you do, but then again, trying to impose narratives upon people seems rather stupid to me.

As for Orwell's comments, umm.... Orwell is like that. If you look around, people will generally get mad if they think that you are playing stupid, and Orwell clearly thought you were playing stupid. This has nothing to do with seeking a specific answer, because Orwell was clearly attacking a particular position as "BS", not attacking you, and not even attacking anything that was directly on this topic, as he was attacking your claim that Marxism stands in favor of a peaceful revolution, when most people believe that Marxism involves a revolution of the proletarian to overthrow the bourgeois. So, I don't think that you are examining the issue with any great honesty.


Umm.... no. The sustained attack is because neither of us agree with your position.

Umm.... yeah, you did actually go off topic more than once. Orwell and I only started going off topic to address you. Techstepgenr8tion also went off topic to some extent as well, but mostly he was told that his point wasn't the point of the situation.

Well, of course we did. We don't see your opinion in the set of opinions that seems tenable based upon our knowledge of the situation, so you are already going on an uphill battle. I mean, Orwell already stated in his OP that he didn't even think that socialism was tenable.

The question wasn't even truly about socialism so much as political philosophy/ethics until you made it so. You already admitted that you attempted to twist his question, which he has tried to make clear was about ethics. We've mostly actually been attacking things where we feel like you are making some form of misrepresentation, and that's actually the reason why I first got involved. This thread wasn't created in order to deal with socialism the system, but rather an ethical problem. Now of course, you can claim that you were merely drawing off of the statements of other posters, and that is somewhat true, however, they were also off-topic as well.

In any case, my point that socialism doesn't seem worth considering does seem relatively valid actually, because to me it really is clear that there are ideas, that no matter how well they appear argued, really aren't worth considering at a given point in time. The reason for this being that people are natural pattern-makers, and they will see many patterns that aren't actually there, so the line has to be drawn to avoid wasting effort on false patterns. This does not mean that these patterns seen are necessarily false, but they are to be taken as too improbable to go much further to examine. Have you ever seen many extremely conservative Christians who are reasonably intelligent? Have you seen many conspiracy theorists? Individuals like that usually have a thought-process involving the world that they can argue at length, that takes facts and processes them, and usually are very very informed about their worldview, even informed beyond what the average person can/would reasonably sort through. The issue with this is that these people are also pretty much dead wrong, they have to be for other dissenting wonks to be right. So, the issue then for the intelligent person is not to engage a person like this, with an idea like this, as even though they can be right, it usually isn't worth it, they have invested too much into their worldview to be reasonably talked to and they are probably wrong, and so spending all of the time to find that out is a waste. This is one of the sorts of points I made against studying socialism. I mean, it could end up being valuable, but it probably won't be valuable, despite whatever an adherent says about the anti ID prejudice or anything like that.

That reason is why I am trying to focus on hurdle questions, because I think there are multiple questions that I do not think your system can reasonably answer, but ultimately would have to coherently answer, and because if I can deal with this, then I don't have to deal with some huge problem in trying to settle wording and phrasing issues, Marxian dogmas, etc, because Marxism creates a worldview that I know to be distinctly different than my own, and frankly, I know from talking to people, that distinctly different worldviews lead to all sorts of interpretation issues, and those are just annoying.