[Glice]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i understand that part of the refutation of capitalism has to do with debunking the notion of scarcity, which the article linked claimed it's inexistent among the !kung, and porky claims would not exist under communism. but scarcity can be very real even in non-human systems-- biological ecosystems go through boom and bust cycles-- humans didn't invent famines, plagues, and natural disasters. we can't just wish that shit away.

Part of why I said what I said on the first page (I assure you this isn't me being smug) is because there are communisms which agree entirely with the generalised principles of exchange and scarcity but endeavour to incorporate, develop or control it. I don't personally see communism as a radical eschewing of capital but a better (and therefore idealised) version; the big problem is that it implies centralised controls that inevitably share peculiar borders with bad fascism (which is why I don't endorse it as I've yet to resolve that knot). That old chestnut about 'democracy is the best form of government...'.

So essentially my position is that of an economic agnostic. I don't like the free market, and the denigration or alienation of non-free market/ neo-liberal forms of capitalism is worrying. We may be heading towards a variety of new economic eras (Adorno writes well on this in relation to Homeric myth) or we may be heading for more of the same. While I don't consider myself a commie, I think any argument which points to neo-liberalism as a teleology of exchange is dangerous. This is a problem on both sides of the argument - some communisms are proposing a radical and dramatic break; many of them (arguably Das Kapital) are not.

Problems in the dialogue, always bloody problems in the dialogue.

[knox]

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

NO MORE YEARS.

i sometimes get the impression that men talk about things as if they forget all human beings suck and women don't do it so much because they're reminded of that constantly.

[EVOLghost]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

@ suchfriends: no soy mexicano! i'm not too familiar with the ejidos, but i've spent months in an israeli kibbutz though, and the funny thing is that the socialist ethos has been replaced by a bourgeois one-- nowadays the successful kibbutz will hire "guest workers" from thailand to work the crops while the "communist" owners have it easy.

puta madre, yo pense que eras mexicano tambien.

[RanaldoNecro]

I always think that centrally controlled systems tend to not waste human effort.

For example, If we look at British Rail. If you have a tender system and two private companies that plenty of pipe that is going to be laid. A centralized project would fix that. So yeah, something like that would make sense in Greatest USSR.

[gmku]

Agree. I think coops are extremely inefficient unless they are small. The larger an organization (term used loosely), the more central control required.

[fugazifan]

i think that the whole point is to have many coops that function on a smaller level rather than try to compete on a global scale.

[gmku]

Dream on.

[RanaldoNecro]

!@#$%!

Have you looked into the corrosive effects of monetizing everything? Why don't you do a comparative study and get back to me.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Glice

Part of why I said what I said on the first page (I assure you this isn't me being smug) is because there are communisms which agree entirely with the generalised principles of exchange and scarcity but endeavour to incorporate, develop or control it. I don't personally see communism as a radical eschewing of capital but a better (and therefore idealised) version; the big problem is that it implies centralised controls that inevitably share peculiar borders with bad fascism (which is why I don't endorse it as I've yet to resolve that knot). That old chestnut about 'democracy is the best form of government...'.

So essentially my position is that of an economic agnostic. I don't like the free market, and the denigration or alienation of non-free market/ neo-liberal forms of capitalism is worrying. We may be heading towards a variety of new economic eras (Adorno writes well on this in relation to Homeric myth) or we may be heading for more of the same. While I don't consider myself a commie, I think any argument which points to neo-liberalism as a teleology of exchange is dangerous. This is a problem on both sides of the argument - some communisms are proposing a radical and dramatic break; many of them (arguably Das Kapital) are not.

Problems in the dialogue, always bloody problems in the dialogue.

it's exactly that knot-resolving i'm trying to work out here. all my life i've believed that market controls were just and necessary; now this economist comes and shows me how wrong i am, that price controls cause famines, that the minimum wage increases unemployment. it's a bit of a shock. now he's telling me that working conditions in the XX century would have improved with or without unions-- that i'm finding hard to believe, and this is his weakest argument so far, but i have to follow his reasoning to the end before passing judgment.

thanks for the followup, by the way.

Originally Posted by fugazifan

i think that the whole point is to have many coops that function on a smaller level rather than try to compete on a global scale.

that ship has sailed. i don't know what could stop global trade at this point. by the way, a lot of formerly "poor" countries are benefiting from this arrangement. china, for example, is no longer subject to famines-- they can buy food abroad (the world has a food surplus, as we speak, and trade allows its distribution).

let's take the greap leap forward, baby

Originally Posted by RanaldoNecro

!@#$%!

Have you looked into the corrosive effects of monetizing everything? Why don't you do a comparative study and get back to me.

money is just the language of exchange. exchanges would happen with or without money-- only more clumsily. you ever read the illiad? it all begins with bickering over sex slaves (aka "concubines"). the greeks had no monetary system at the time, but they knew how to split the loot-- "tripods," "oxen," "slaves," "honor," whatever. everything has always had a price, it just wasn't clearly written out on a label.

and how do i study "corrosion" outside of chemistry anyway? how "corroded" was achilles when agamemnon took briseis to compensate for having to give up chryseis? 50% corroded? 90%? reversibly or irreversibly? did the death of patroclus de-corrode him? and how corroded was agamemnon anyway? cuz he seems like the real rat fucker of the story.

i really don't understand what you mean. i suppose you believe in what you believe with great feeling, but i can't make sense of it.

edit - i must add that the only time i remember being a part of a non-monetary economy was when i was a baby. i would say to my parents "gimme" and they would. i even believed in santa claus for a while-- magic bicycles materializing from thin air! but i can't expect that out of life anymore. people have to sweat to get it made.

[RanaldoNecro]

I am going to say that your understanding of barter systems is thorough.

But now we are in the supra-era of monetization. Huge lines of credit no longer represent the necessary human people investment. By that I mean we now pull money out of thin air. At one time, there was a gold standard to back that up but now it is different. This is why I think we have lost our way especially with the financial meltdown of 2008. I still to this day don't think that absolute monetization is really the answer.

I see kids dropping out of school because they have to work. I understand that but it doesn't work in the long run because they ignorant adults.

If you look at environmental damage (a 1000 year scar on the earth) it is in an indirect result of capital flow.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by RanaldoNecro

I am going to say that your understanding of barter systems is thorough.

But now we are in the supra-era of monetization. Huge lines of credit no longer represent the necessary human people investment. By that I mean we now pull money out of thin air. At one time, there was a gold standard to back that up but now it is different. This is why I think we have lost our way especially with the financial meltdown of 2008. I still to this day don't think that absolute monetization is really the answer.

I see kids dropping out of school because they have to work. I understand that but it doesn't work in the long run because they ignorant adults.

If you look at environmental damage (a 1000 year scar on the earth) it is in an indirect result of capital flow.

ah, yes. "pulling money out of thin air" is what i'm trying to understand and what got me reading economics. it appears suspect at first glance but when you look at it, the gold standard was also arbitrary-- gold is only worth what people agree is worth. but anyway the intricacies of macroeconomics and the money supply are beyond my knowlege at the moment. jico or whatever he calls himself these days can probably discuss this.

the environment: humans have always fucked it. we are responsible for the extinction of the woolly mammoth during the hunter-gatherer era. that and a ton more species.

what capitalism facilitates, it seems to me, is the speed of economic activity. by improving economic communication via the market. a lot of transactions can happen in an instant that in the past would take months or years perhaps to be completed. and by improving communication it allows faster economic activity. so yeah it can be spooky, the pace, but we've always done this shit, it's the machines that are new (but primitive machines predated money by the way).

i'm not saying that everything should be monetized, by the way, but it does happen. there are things i would not buy or sell; other people don't mind selling/buying everything-- kim kardashian sells her snatch on the internet, for example. in a different era she would have collected differently but she would have collected anyway-- there have always been kim kardashians, and suckers willing to pay by invading countries or exploiting peasants or giving up their herds or what not.

[RanaldoNecro]

You make some good points.

Here is somthing I have been thinking about. North Korea has been 'shut-off' from the world for a long time. But really, if you look at economic progress in a strait line, they are just at a certain point. So once they 'open up' it is going to take mass human efforts to get hydro, appliances, and infrastructure in place. Which facilitates economic growth as you mentioned.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by RanaldoNecro

You make some good points.

Here is somthing I have been thinking about. North Korea has been 'shut-off' from the world for a long time. But really, if you look at economic progress in a strait line, they are just at a certain point. So once they 'open up' it is going to take mass human efforts to get hydro, appliances, and infrastructure in place. Which facilitates economic growth as you mentioned.

north korea still suffers famines. check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine

"eat two meals a day campaign"-- i'd laugh if it wasn't so horrible.

[RanaldoNecro]

Capitalism kicks ass in the supermarket department.

[jonathan]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

@ jonathan - thanks a lot for the well-thought answer; i've read the article you posted, and while i consider the paleolithic a sort of golden age of humankind, i doubt it was a paradise-- neanderthals got a raw deal out of that era, for example.

i do appreciate that economic activity is culturally relative, yes, but ultimately everyone has to deal with the problem of how to provide for the group/tribe/family/self. when food is abundant, everyone is friends, when there isn't enough to go around, cannibalism just might ensue.


solutions to the problem of providing for life vary a lot-- amazon tribes untouched by western civilization go from sharing everything with everyone to killing people for trespassing one's plot. from the look of it it would seem that private property begins with agriculture (in other places, it's herding that does it-- there is no cattle in the amazon though).

anyway, speaking of property, i purposefully did not mention beachfront property-- i said beachfront housing if i recall. it was my intention to bring up something that is of limited availability but of widespread desirability. if everyone who wanted to stay at the beach could simply show up, we'd have some sort of refugee camps in all coastal areas, and it would probably cease to be desirable, or violence would erupt.

it could be anything else-- say, cars? everyone could get a car in the old east germany, but it would take years and years on a waitlist.

i understand that part of the refutation of capitalism has to do with debunking the notion of scarcity, which the article linked claimed it's inexistent among the !kung, and porky claims would not exist under communism. but scarcity can be very real even in non-human systems-- biological ecosystems go through boom and bust cycles-- humans didn't invent famines, plagues, and natural disasters. we can't just wish that shit away.

even in the case of the noble peasant you propose-- plagues, droughts, floods, frosts, hail and other natural phenomena can kill a local agriculture very fast. trade, which allows goods to move quickly, keep people alive even when crops fail. an economy such as you propose would necessitate trade, and even if it was banned sure a black market would appear somehow. with trade you'd get division of labor-- suddenly i can get a more secure and varied food supply by making pottery than by being a peasant, trading with multiple peasants instead of eating just the local crops. maybe i work in a clay quarry that supplies potters so i can work all year without worrying about local crop failures. and everything begins again, including money when barter doesn't cut it.

we can't really put the cat back in the bag and abolish global trade. i'm looking for viable future models rather than past utopias. when hippie communes sprouted in the 60s, they sought a return to nature, to living off the land, to self-sufficiency, but that life is hard and suddenly walking to the store and buying a twinky seems more desirable than waiting 8 months for your crops to be ready for the harvest (and fingers crossed, and damn those insects).

For the most part I agree with this and I think your criticisms are mostly on-point.

I have to admit, I think you've misunderstood where I am coming from exactly, but I think that's because I could be more clear in how I worded things in the last post. One thing that I need to be clear on is that I don't ACTUALLY think that my vision of the "noble peasant" will ever come to be realized in my life time or even ever. Nor do I think that the communes of the 60s and this whole self-sufficeincy idea is where I'm coming from either. I don't necessarily not believe in a division of labor, although I think that specialization is a plague on every individual. In my initial post, I simply proposed an idea of what society OUGHT to look like, because I thought you were looking for alternative systems of thought. So, yes, all of the issues you have raised are of prime importance and aren't to be addressed as failings of capitalism, but rather things we ought to keep, while fixing its internal contradictions (the "metabolic rift" being a major one).

As such, in practice, my perspective is similar to that of Glice's.

To use your terminology, I think the ship that has sailed is the idea of a radical break with Capitalism. Like I said, Marx is a critical tool (my ideal state being a means by which I can critique).

As far as price controls causing famines, I've never read anything to support that. Most of the time, when price controls are lifted, people protest. Take the recent protests in Nigeria for example.

I would also argue that unemployment is only a problem because capitalism has shut people off from utilizing their own labor to provide for themselves. In order to do that, you need a loan or capital (for a farm or a business) and most people can't get either.

But I can't adequately criticize unless I've read the book you're talking about. What book is it?

[jonathan]

Also, anyone that supports North Korea at this juncture is completely misinformed.

[!@#$%!]

hey, thanks! the book i'm reading is 'basic economics' by thomas sowell.

he discusses precisely what you mention: when price controls are abolished people protest, yes, and politicians take every opportunity to take advantage of the situation, but famines end because the rising prices will bring food into the area, provide an incentive to local producers, mobilize the labor force, etc. if prices are kept artificially low, producers and traders lose money and get out of the game.

one semi-hilarious story he tells is about the fall of antwerp to the spaniards. the spaniards had antwerp under siege but antwerp resisted because there were smugglers willing to break the siege and bring food into the city. as the siege intensified and prices rose, there was an edict to curb "price gouging" and stabilize prices-- with harsh penalties for breaking the law (like death and shit like that). the result? the smugglers no longer had the incentive to defy the spaniards and break the siege, food supply dwindled, and antwerp fell.

it's a bit of a simplistic example i know, but he goes into more detail when discussing india-- just too long to quote and a bit hard for me to paraphrase, but basically,in the 1860s, the british colonial government prevented a famine by publishing the prices of rice in different locations so people could go buy it where it was available.

anyway, i think marxism is an important critical tool, yes, but what i'm looking for is workable economic models more than simply alternative ideas-- things that would work in practice. so far it looks like (to paraphrase professor pangloss) we live in the best of all possible worlds--- that is, a mixed economy with free markets and some government intervention. but again, this book argues that political intervention actually mucks things up and distorts the economy. e.g., politicians get elected in the short term in order to keep bus prices low, they do that, prices aren't enough to support good bus maintenance and replacement, buses break down in the next term when politician has moved on and the successor gets the blame. etc.

but still, the usual discussion is capitalism vs. socialism, or fee enterprise vs. the state, but there are alternative models like anarcho-syndicalism we don't hear enough about.

[kicksexoutthevan]

to me its very simple- communism and socialism are both systems of government that can only work sucessfully in a "utopian" situation, where no one lies and no one skims off the top but history has shown us time and time again that when you put all the power in the hands of the govt and "trust" them to do the right thing with the money, they never do. They always get greedy and keep some for themselves, leading the a larger gap between the have's and the have nots. Another problem with the communist socialist ethic is in its idea of what the role of government is. To them, the role of the government is to give things to people and to provide everything to its citizens by taxing them to pay for it. This always leads to corruption because the people who collect this money cannot keep themselves from using it in selfish ways. The only way that humans will reach a utopia is VOLUNTARILY. You cannot force a situation on anyone and expect them to love you for it, no matter how many awesome things you give them in return. We must all, as a people, work to create a beautiful, giving, environment around each other by working together and coming up with solutions to our problems, not by bending others to our will through the use of law.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by kicksexoutthevan

to me its very simple- communism and socialism are both systems of government that can only work sucessfully in a "utopian" situation, where no one lies and no one skims off the top but history has shown us time and time again that when you put all the power in the hands of the govt and "trust" them to do the right thing with the money, they never do. They always get greedy and keep some for themselves, leading the a larger gap between the have's and the have nots. Another problem with the communist socialist ethic is in its idea of what the role of government is. To them, the role of the government is to give things to people and to provide everything to its citizens by taxing them to pay for it. This always leads to corruption because the people who collect this money cannot keep themselves from using it in selfish ways. The only way that humans will reach a utopia is VOLUNTARILY. You cannot force a situation on anyone and expect them to love you for it, no matter how many awesome things you give them in return. We must all, as a people, work to create a beautiful, giving, environment around each other by working together and coming up with solutions to our problems, not by bending others to our will through the use of law.

it's not about theft or corruption, which happens everywhere, it's about the stupidity of trying to figure out how many pairs of boots and of what sizes to produce for next winter, and how much leather needs to be ordered, and kept on inventory; and instead of this being coordinated by prices in a market that includes customers, storekeepers, shoemakers, tanners, cattle farmers, hay and suppliers, and makers of laces, and makers of those eyelets where the laces go in, and the materials that go into all them, it's done by some perhaps gifted and idealistic but inevitably doomed to fail bureaucrat in the bowels of some enormous ministry.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

shoemakers

Excellent people. Never met a shoemaker I didn't like.