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Comments
Doubtful. While armed revolution is a possibility under certain circumstances, the discipline of any armed uprising has to be impeccable to retain the moral high ground. Without overtly working towards collective good -- including compassion towards capitalists that have abused the system and done other wrongs -- any kind of leftist political push is cheapened. A state formed under the context of excessive violence (as opposed to necessary violence) is bound for social dysfunction, which is the ailment that leftist policies aim to heal. If a population democratically demands changes that are not fulfilled and are resisted with force, then that justifies the application of armed force to my mind. But the application of force should not exceed what is necessary to ensure the changes that have already been decided upon democratically.
The issue with almost every discernibly leftist state, though, seems to be military coups that wipe them off the map. A more professional revolutionary army would go a long way towards preserving a socialist or anarchist state against that possibility. Professionalism -- proper professionalism -- also helps contain abuses of coercive power. It's a two-for-one deal in the event that violence is necessary. Which is another reason it'd help to have existing military bodies on board for any revolution, if possible.
Anarchist Catalonia's issue was that it didn't have the leaders, discipline or compassion to prevent murders and other abuses on a wide scale. As I've said, no revolution that indulges so heavily in its own id is going to lead anywhere good. Efficiency and sense are key. They'll set the entire context of the society that's to come. I've less doubt Catalonia may have survived under different circumstances, but the attitude of its revolutionaries implies that they may not have understood the actual objectives of leftist policy, and it's just a downward spiral from there. A socialist or anarchist system can still be corrupt (although many would argue that a corrupted system of those kinds no longer counts as being a true example) if it fails to follow through on its political and economic promises. Besides, one can tell a lot about a body of policy by how it treats its enemies.
tl;dr Catalonia's specific kind of violence isn't very forgivable and about as far from leftist ideals as might be possible. I couldn't tell you whether it would have held on, but that doesn't matter to me as it lost a lot of traction as an example of leftist success via its abuses.
I just want to write "Well, with the current attitude you have now, it's no wonder you haven't got any friends."
@InsanityAddict: I am fully aware of how far-off the current prospects for a global revolution are but, contrary from what you say, it's still what motivates me to do what I do and believe in what I believe. If I outright said that it was impossible I would simply end up spiralling into complete cynicism and apathy.
The problem with compromise with capitalism, as you say, is that the roots of the problem lie in the very existence of the class, the state and the capital. Any previous attempts at compromise have all preserved those three (which also emanate one from another), which didn't change anything fundamentally and only opened a whole new can of worms and created a mountain of inconstistencies.
@MadassAlex: The thing about the gap between civilian and military power is true, which makes the world revolution very unlikely to begin in the West. In fact, we had a discussion on which part of the world has the biggest potential to spark a hypothetical chain of socialist revolutions in the near future, and came to a consensus that it woould either be post-Arab Spring countries in the Middle East, or the Balkans, if the Greek crisis goes out of hand. Balkan militaries suck mightily, and I think that the situation in the Middle East is no different. An armed civilian uprising in these parts of the world definitely have a chance of succeeding. The West is a completely different story, though.
Any proposal which includes the words 'armed civilian uprising'- or, indeed, 'armed uprising' in general- is guaranteed to make me want absolutely nothing to do with it.
@ Tools: looks like you did it right, to me.
@ Alex: so after you gave an answer, I believe you deserve an explanation. You once posted that all these seventy years and half of the world of planned market failures is not enough to claim it fails, so I wanted to see if you are going to be consistent and tell me the same about three years and smallish regions of anarchist rule. And, truth be told, you came off quite better than I expected you to.
@ Milos: if the revolution is to start in one place and spread in face of physical and propagandist opposition, then, I presume, it does follow there will be need for a charismatic and skillful leadership - a vanguard party, if you wish - to organise the efforts of the masses?
The thing is that no planned economy leftist state has had enough time to observe those policies over a period comparable to their capitalist equivalents. Leftist states tend to be destroyed via military coup before any considerable internal failure could set in. It might be true that there are highly considerable internal failures inherent in the systems, but they have to be observed over longer periods of time before they can be confirmed. And what this comes down to is the military coups that always follow the heels of leftist states. If that problem can be solved, then we might have an opportunity to observe a socialist or anarchist state without the interference of military violence.
I'm pretty sure Laissez-Faire enthusiasts say the same about Laissez-Faire.
Would be true, if we disregarded about any "leftist state" (if I understand the phrase the right way) I can think of at the moment.
Seventy years for the biggest country on Earth, about fifty for many smaller.
Hmmm-mmmmm, I'd have to check what you mean by that, because it doesn't seem to fit most examples I can think of.
@Gacek: Hm. Yes, I believe that there should be a vanguard party, but one that would mostly provide the propagandic, ideological and intellectual spine to the revolution rather than actual control, which I believe ought to be as decentralized as possible due to the risk of too much authority vested in the vanguard party leading to a new system of class.
In fact, I believe that the role of the revolutionary vanguard should have a spiderweb-like structure - the core ideas are created in the party and spread via propaganda and politicization to a wider circle within the working class, who continue spreading them in the same fashion.
From an utilitarian doubt of view, what use is a revolution to elevate the lower classes out of their oppression... when after that revolution those lower classes, along with everybody else, have it even worse? The thing is, in my experience at least here in Germany, everybody actually has much to lose, even the majority of the lower class. There are only very few who have "nothing to lose but their chains". They would hence all suffer from the social disruptions of a revolution, and that doesn't even mention the actual violence itself. That is why any work done for the betterment of people's lives (and surely, independent of specific ideological doctrine that has to be the aim) has to happen within the system, has to preserve system continuity so as to not cause harmful disruptions.
Now, of course, this only goes if in fact most everybody stands to lose in a societal collapse (if a society is poor enough that might not be the case), and if the ruling classes do not commit to grave injustices - in that case I'd agree with "fuck prosperity, let's go get'em". And one can argue that *on the global level* the latter is what is happening. So in the European world the question becomes, for whom would the revolution actually fight? The own society, or the exploited masses in the developing world? But if the focus is on the former, then as I've argued societal continuity needs to be preserved.
Also, I don't buy *at all* the utopian nonsense about how the post-revolutionary, post-class war society would look. This is a contradiction even in Marx' own work. He builds up all of history as a history of class struggles, with different classes forming, coming to the fore, ruling or being oppressed... but this suddenly stops now, after it has gone through so many iterations? Why shouldn't the class war revolution just be another such iteration? In fact, that's arguably exactly what happened in the USSR. I would in fact say the Bolshevists weren't true communists, because the Leninist ideology of the vanguard party does in fact already contain the ideological base for the establishment of a new ruling (and hence oppressing) class... and that is what happened in reality then: Instead of a ruling class of capitalists exploiting the masses you got a ruling class of party cadres exploiting the masses even worse. Given that, why shouldn't we assume any won class war won't simply lead to the rise of new classes and new class wars? Including violence, oppression and privilege.
Now I agree 1) there is no such thing as a peaceful revolution and 2) revolutions are necessary sometimes. So, necessary revolutionary violence is a thing. But once people start talking about 'internal enemies', then that's where things turn bad. Doesn't matter if it's revolutionaries, or reactionaries speaking against revolutionaries in exactly the same terms. In both cases, it's just justification eliminate political enemies. There is no such thing as the "collective wrath of the people". While it is psychologically emboldening to think of the masses power, of them standing up as one person - they are not. In the end, every human is an island; there are only individuals. 'Wrath of the people' is instigated, led, instrumentalized. To demand that "revolutionary leaders" should keep it under control is hence redundant - in fact those "revolutionary leaders"a re the problem to begin with.
So yes, that would be a moderate leftist counter-argument to what Milos has said here
^^Right. "To a wider circle within the working class"? How would the "vanguard" be considered working class itself in the first place? Which is also a problem already present in Leninism itself. No, this vanguard idea simply leads to one class replacing the other. It's a bit like George Orwell parodied Marxist class analysis in 1984 actually... the lower class just wants equality and never gets it, the middle class promises that to win support in toppling the upper class, and then they become the new upper class and the lower class continues to be oppressed. As far as I'm concerned any vanguard ideology is just bad, bad, very bad.
I'm cherry picking this point because I think it's where some of the confusion lies. If you want to refer to the likes of Russia and China as communist or socialist, then you could, but you'd be wrong. There are different theories on what actually makes a socialist state, but after its revolution, Russia quickly went from socialist to state capitalist -- that is, rather than living under socialist policy, it lived under a form of capitalism where business was owned by the government. It's still capitalism, but the cards have been shuffled a bit. So some states that are considered, traditionally, to be socialist in pop-culture aren't necessarily considered that way by modern socialists.
In any case, I find there's a double-standard in these kinds of discussions wherein socialism is claimed not to work. Those arguments discount that capitalism is prone to economic depressions and colonialism. While capitalism "works" in the sense that it has some essential functionality, it also imposes suffering on those who aren't part of privileged classes or organisations.
Well, I'm not really an utilitarian. :P
Well, the Russian revolution wasn't exactly a successful class war, partly due to the wrongly applied role of the vanguard.
I partly agree - "revolutionary leaders", in this context, mainly represent ideological leadership rather than command leadership, and their duty is to direct the masses to withhold from any unnecessary violence. But "collective wrath" does come to existence after a sufficient spreading of individual wrath.
I subscribe to Luxemburg's theory of the vanguard rather than Lenin's, where the vanguard is merely so in the ideological sense.
re making friends
Very often, friends don't come from trying to find friends explicitly. They come from normal social interactions, during which people find that they have something in common to connect with each other over, be it a common cause, a common interest, or finding each other pleasant or interesting to interact with.
re longposts
stahp
wtf are you people even saying
Neither am I, fully. But then, if the purpose isn't actually the betterment of people's life, what point is there in a revolution to begin with? I can very well see the argument for pure justice, and to hell with other factors. But at what cost? Well, okay, then again, you have said in fact that revolutionary thought is primarily a motivator for you, and in that context... well, Fiat Iustitia Ruat Caelum does have a nice sound in my own ears. It's things like that why I can't honestly describe myself as a full utilitarian, heh.
So, actually starting a revolution would be counter-productive, but revolutionary sentiment, yes, I can understand that and it can be a very good and justified thing.
But it isn't inherently organized. 'The masses' don't exist as actor. The masses are thousands of individuals who somehow need to find a common action. And that's a process that consists of thousands if not millions interpersonal actions. I don't say there's a demagogue behind every mob manipulating everybody, that isn't what I mean, just that in those interpersonal actions there will always be more who'll be listened more to than others. The masses are no monolith, and hence there can be no true "wrath of the masses" really coherently aimed at anything. IMO, at least. Which is actually rather sad, because, as I've said, it does make for an awesome image at least
But what does ideological leadership mean? In the end, it still means saying "We should do these and those things"... maybe not exactly the how in detail, but still the what. Unless what they say is ignored, but then they're not the ideological vanguard anyway
Always good to see a doctor. Unless it costs truckloads of cash. Then I understand the dilemma.
I'm fine with cherry picking, but please finally do explain what the Hell socialism is. Just so we won't have to forever waddle in a murky stream of no true Scotsmen. I hate that thing. Once something's bad enough, people of all sides flip the shit around to make it seem the fault of the other guys.
But you know what? Actually, it's not socialism that is the problem here. Socialism is that worker ownership stuff, right? Then, how about worker-owned factories competing on a free market? My point here is that these two are separate things, and planned market is not inseparable from worker ownership. Soviet economy was planned. Everything had to run like one or another Five Year Plan said. That's planned market for me, no matter how you call the system USSR ran on.
Moreover, to plan the entire market, I'd expect I'd need quite a lot of organisation - state control, if you wish - like USSR and other "socialist" (quote marks for your leisure) countries had going on, but you seem to believe it's unnecessary. Essentially, you seem to be telling me that planned market needs no planning.
Well, I'm not going to defend Soviet Russia far beyond the initial revolution or concepts here because it doesn't reflect what I see as effective socialism, no true Scotsman or not. Similarly, I'm not going to defend other places that implemented socialism or similar political ideologies without much effect or to negative effect -- thus there being no defense of Catalonia from me, for instance. I wouldn't necessarily expect a supporter of capitalism to support contemporary Republican economic policy, to take an example from the other side. Socialism isn't just one monolithic ideology, but a set of similar social and economic policies grouped under a common name, so using Soviet Russia or China or Cuba or whoever as an argument against it may or may not be relevant depending on the particular policies one supports.
It doesn't need to be a case of one absolute or another when it comes to planned economy, anyway. The state can make provisions via planned economy (with some surplus to control for error) in terms of basic human requirement -- food, drink, shelter, medication and so on. What to do with the less necessary aspects of production is up in the air. But the point is that the state ought to be making provision for its population with surplus in mind, which simplifies the task to some degree. Even with the surplus, there'd be much less waste than under the current system wherein some products exist not to provide for consumers, but to compete with other products. Still a large task, mind, but the industrial power is there with the "dead weight" stripped away. Getting rid of the same dead weight from industry also has a variety of other benefits, such as severely reducing the amount of pollution imposed upon the environment and other hippie concerns. This may be important in regards to the survival of the species.
In any case, other products can be produced as demand dictates. Right now, there are no strict rules because not all socialists agree on the same things -- some are in support of keeping a form of fiscal capital, others aren't and so on. But the essence is this: we decide on such policies democratically and the state provides the essential living necessities for its population.
Hmm-mhmm, the thing is, this sounds as if you were saying I am wrong, but refusing to explain why, even if you explain it at some other point in the post.
I believe a free market enthusiast would say that free markets do just that, except instead of cards, we vote with tokens called "money".
As to the rest - in the most basic case, it's hardly any planned market at all, just a couple of stipends, and stuff like public healthcare and state-funded construction. Yet, you argue in favour of planned market, so I feel justified to pull this argument further. What are those essential living necessities? Bread? Milk? Cheese? Meat? (People stood for hours in queues in front of shops, back in the day, whenever "they threw meat in".) Tropical fruits? Are olives a necessity? Clothes, beyond Maoist-style uniforms (a ball-gown is hardly "essential necessity")? Books? And what about industrial production, because back in the day, you had the news kindly telling you the local foundry just cast its 5*10^5th ton of raw steel while meat was a delicacy, which doesn't sound like it should happen, if this kind of planned economy you speak of is supposed to work better.
The other matter: how it is supposed to work, I vote for a microwave oven and the state builds a microwave factory to build microwaves for me and the rest of my voting block, am I right? How often are the plebiscites organised, or conversely, who is doing the planning? And you know what - can you make sure it will not be "dead weight"? (Well, I guess it won't be, from your point of view. If you see producing more of the same stuff as "dead weight"...)
Not to mention that best-known cases of planned economy have also had a horrifying ecological record, which among other things has been attributed to the lack of competition providing no incentive for raising efficiency.
Minor nitpick: you're Australian, I'm not American either, but we refer to American politics as the default?
You tend to treat socialism as a singular, monolithic entity rather than as a collection of similar philosophies on economics, politics and social factors, though. So it's impossible to support or refute anything you say in relation to socialism because it may apply or may not apply to any given sect. It's like feminism; there are absolute crazies in some sectors of the movement, but there's a much greater diversity of perspective than merely that.
The state doesn't provide the necessities, though, ergo phenomena such as malnourishment, homelessness, and illnesses that go undiagnosed and unmedicated. If the necessities were actually and truly provided by the state, freely, then those things wouldn't be a concern or of lesser concern.
Ideally, diet experts should be the ones to provide answers concerning nourishment. I can't tell you what the average human being needs to remain healthily nourished, but I would expect that a reasonable diversity of different types of food and drink would be provided given modern means of production. When it comes to shortages, that's where cooperation between multiple socialist states is supposed to come in, which is the most glaring flaw in socialist economic theory. There must be different kinds of regional economies working in cooperation to ensure that the dietary needs of the people are not only met, but exceeded to an extent that there is a safe margin of error.
As for necessities in a more general sense, I would include the following:
Damned if I know, exactly. Opinions about how things ought to be organised are split and subject to much variance. Appliances like microwaves would probably fall under the jurisdiction of a particular place of production within a region and then exported to where they're needed as demand dictates, rather than building a factory for them every time X out of Y people say they need them. There will always be an amount of dead weight, at the very least due to the need of a surplus to control for error, but that sure as hell beats out products existing not to sell, but to compete.
As above. Standard, modern capitalistic business notions encourage making products that don't exist to perform a task as much as they exist to compete. If a company can break even on the sales or make up losses from another area, they can deny sales of a similar product to other companies. Here's an example close to home (at least on IJBM); Microsoft loses money on the Xbox and Xbox 360. They exist solely to prevent Sony from becoming more powerful in software and hardware sales than they currently are, not to be unique or excellent gaming consoles. That's a lot of plastic, wiring and labour dedicated to a product that's not honestly meant to be useful as much as it's meant to counter another.
On top of that, modern production methods create products that are designed to fail after a certain amount of time. Even if a planned economy's production methods are less efficient at first glance (and there's no real reason they have to be), they might have a smaller ecological impact because of the two factors reducing the need for production; no competition for competition's sake, and products that are built to last rather than be thrown out and repurchased after a certain amount of time.
I don't know the names of different political parties in Poland. For what it's worth, the Australian equivalent of the Republicans are referred to as "Liberals", whereas our equivalent of US Liberals are referred to as "Labour". But everyone knows at least a little about US politics, so it's a safe point of reference for everyone involved.
So, the state now tells us what to eat, eh? Heh heh. I bet it will also ration electricity, so we won't waste time on silly Internet discussions. Okay, let's put the jokes aside. This might be a nitpick, as in the most basic form this is nothing I'd feel compelled to protest, I might even agree. However, I'm unsure if you'd be satisfied with the basics.
Roughly the same with the list. I feel I might find something to complain if I tried hard enough, but this does not seem needed at the moment. At this point I'd also add that when I don't discuss one or another point, it's usually because I don't see the need to comment, for example because I don't have strong feelings about the issue or lack good arguments.
Ah, but what does it mean? If Sony wants to stay on top, it has to produce better or cheaper than Microsoft, and if Microsoft can afford dumping prices, then it means Sony's products must be good enough that enough people will be willing to pay the difference. So it's not like production of Ecksboxes is removed from anything.
As for the resource consumption, it does not seem to me that there'd be a difference in the consumption of resources between a society where 100% of gamers own SovKonsol, and a society where 50% has Ycube and 50% Gamestation. If you're going to argue that the second case doesn't include owners of both at once, I point out that neither the first does owners of multiple. I'd wager these demographic groups are neglectable. I know little of console market, though; I get more Luddite the older I am.
I am also tempted to post snide remarks towards console users, as a PC user. Heh heh.
This is where I agree thoroughly. However, as a Devil's advocate, I might ask what makes you so sure that planned economy would be free from it. For example, the Planners might decide it's better if things break after a couple of years, as it keeps the industry running, and the workers employed.
Well, only if lack of enforcement (here in form of competition) is not real in this sense. Keep in mind that when I say planned economies have a horrible ecological record, I'm not making the examples up.
I'm inclined to say that it is consistent.
I was just struck by the assumption that both of us will recognize a generic reference, no further clarification, as referring specifically to the US.
I know this comment was a joke, but you bring up something pretty important, actually. The thing is, we're coming closer and closer to renewable energy. This can mean one of two things:
If we consider that a combination of demand and scarcity drive the price of any resource, then the price of truly renewable energy ought to be nothing, given that its scarcity would be represented by a null value. With energy reduced to such a value, then the cost of producing just about anything is going to plummet as well, reducing the scarcity of other products by approximation. Basically, renewable energy means that at the very least, standard capitalism as we know it is going to have to undergo very significant changes or die a natural death.
However, some companies (such as BP) are currently investing in renewable energy ownership, which implies that they intend to enforce artificial scarcity. And I'm sure that we both agree that enforcing artificial scarcity is both a violation of capitalist theory and downright unethical.
Sony is already competing in other fields, though, with Microsoft among other companies. The previous two generations have seen consoles compete with DVD players and even, to a certain extent, standard PCs. The PS4 is said to have inbuilt Facebook functionality, which seems like a tiny thing until you take into account the online social context of Japan. Facebook has only recently become a big deal in Japan, and Sony is a Japanese company, so their adoption of Facebook as a standard feature is very timely indeed. This means they're competing with, say, smart phones to a certain extent via their console.
Agreed concerning the PC Master Race, however.
Well, technology isn't going to just stagnate, and more and more jobs are being made redundant as it progresses. Unskilled and skilled jobs alike. The likely outcome is that the overall workload on the human race is going to decrease drastically over time, be it a socialist or capitalist future. In the case of capitalism, however, this is going to cause some major class division as fewer and fewer specific skillsets are required, with fewer and fewer positions for them. So we're looking at a work deficit either way. I'm not sure if there's any way to really fix this, but at least socialist policy prevents an underclass from existing.
Holy hell, that's one big wall of text you've built there.
Anyways, I can't help but find it strange how much image-leeching there is going on around here. Hasn't this caused any trouble yet? If not, I'm sure it will eventually.
Where is this happening? Are people not using imgur or something along those lines?
With that said, we haven't really gotten into trouble for anything like that yet.
It's all over the place from what I've seen. Hell, you just recently did it with that Something Awful emote in the Bookclub thread.
As for trouble, it has at least led to some images disappearing because the site being leeched from has removed them, if nothing else. That alone seems reason enough to justify using an image host.
Hmm. I forgot that that sort of thing counts. I don't really know what, exactly, counts in each case. I've fixed the SA emote that I posted there.
True.
I try not to image-leech mainly because I never know if the site that hosts the image blocks hotlinking, and usually it's just faster to throw it on imgur than to check if I can hotlink it.
I do it mainly out of a sense of common courtesy, honestly. Don't wanna sap bandwidth from a site that hasn't consented to me doing so. Especially if it's a smaller site that might be seriously affected by such misuse of their assets.
Sorry for replying so late, I had classes to go to.
The problem with utilitarianism is that no one can determine what exactly is good for the biggest amount of people, solely due to subjectivity and the humongous amount of factors that come into play. Maybe the poor would be more "prosperous" under capitalism than communism, but there's also a fuckton of negative factors that may override it. Economic prosperity doesn't mean anything in itself.
It still sounds much better than "synchronised individual wrath of a mass of individuals". :P
Forming and spreading the revolutionary doctrine and propaganda, although the party still doesn't have any real authority in the revolution, which should lie in the hands of worker councils, educated and politicized by the party.
Anyone knows the efficiency of aeolipile?
(@ Alex - I was going to just let it slide, but as I post anyway, I might offer a final word: I find some details arguable, but beyond that, I'm fine with it, so I guess we're done for now.)
IJBM: As much as I hate writing essays, I would much rather workshop bad essays than bad short stories.