Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

Anything that doesn't quite fit in elsewhere...
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wjfox
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Re: Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

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R8Z
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Re: Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

Post by R8Z »

wjfox wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 12:41 pm
I wonder what you personally attribute this for.

As a libertarian, my blame goes towards the obviously insane money printing scheme that almost every single country has gone into with the pandemic excuse; what's your take?
And, as always, bye bye.
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Re: Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

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Why Socialism?
by Albert Einstein
May 1949

https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

Introduction:
Albert Einstein is the world-famous physicist. This article was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949).
—THE EDITORS (OF MONTHLY REVIEW)

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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Re: Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

Post by erowind »

R8Z wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 1:18 pm
wjfox wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 12:41 pm
I wonder what you personally attribute this for.

As a libertarian, my blame goes towards the obviously insane money printing scheme that almost every single country has gone into with the pandemic excuse; what's your take?
As an anarchist, I agree with you lol. It's two things. The first is the monetary policy you point out, the second is the tendency for the rate of profit to fall which, itself is the driving factor that forced capitalists to adopt neoliberal montary policy.

I could be wrong, but I imagine it's irking to hear me use such a general term for all capitalists, as if "all" capitalists support neoliberalism. It's not that all capitalists do literally support neoliberalism and its monetary policy, they don't. Rather, the economic mode of production that is capitalism was always going to head in the direction of neoliberalism due to the economic law of capital accumulation, which causes monopoly, and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.

As capitalists compete in a truly or near-free market, in what we would call an ideal state of competition. The capitalists that win through their own merit and fitness on the market gain wealth, which is part of the process of capital accumulation. Where capital has a tendency to accumulate in capitalist economies. As capital accumulates it causes two primary phenomena.

The first is that this accumulation gives those capitalists who have control over the accumulated capital unfair advantage in the market. Where before they had to compete fairly to provide the best service or product, overtime as they become richer they can employ a variety of market fixing practices. These practices include such things as running a loss on a product to starve out the competition, buying the competition out to monopolize the market, corrupting politicians and getting the market "regulated" in a favorable way, corrupted politicians and using the state to enforce eminent domain to one's benefit, forming cartels with other monopolies, printing money and giving yourself the money through "grants." All these tactics and more are employed. The common characteristic is that the winner in each situation is not the capitalist who competes the best by making the best product at the most competitive and thereby providing the most value to the economy, but rather, the one who is necessarily the least fit, and who through brute force dominates the competition.

Now of course we can find examples of ideal competition and disruptive capitalists that win against all the odds even today. But that's why it's a tendency towards monopolization and capital accumulation, it's that all competition is dead, but rather it has been in a long gradual decline since at least sometime in the 1800s when the industrial revolution began. The only time this process has been interrupted has been by war and state policy that has attempted to break up monopolies, which as we now know didn't work, the monopolies still won in the end and control many economic sectors through the state today.

(I hope this explains why leftists criticize capitalism itself and not just the state. The functions of the state in advanced capitalists economy are symptoms of the economic system itself, if the state where prevented from regulating the market it would either reform later at the beck and call of capitalist policy makers or form informally through the control of cartels.)

The second phenomena is that as capital accumulates it becomes less productive within the economy. Hoarded capital is idle capital, abstract financial capital is idle capital. Where before the capital was circulating in a material sense between competing capitalists, spurring the production of railroads, factories, hospitals, etc; increasingly, as capital accumulates it has less and less real world impact on the material economy.

Take the money printing policy. We are now in a situation where it takes 4$ in debt to create 2$ of GDP growth in the economy. What does that tell us? That the other 2$ worth of debt in the equation are unproductive, they are what Marx would refer to as "vulgar capital." It is vulgar because it doesn't do anything really but sit there.

I don't have the energy to explain why the cost of production rises right now. But capital accumulation and rising cost of production in the market both form the basis of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Where monopolization is part of capital accumulation. As the rate of profit falls capitalists are forced to use increasingly intense tactics to generate profit, hence, runaway money printing among other things.

That's my read on the situation as a leftist. I expect stagflation to set in soon in the economy, likely followed by hyperinflation later in the century. Perhaps soon, but perhaps in 30 years all the same.
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Re: Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

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I don't have the energy to explain why the cost of production rises right now.
I can think of at least three reasons.
  • 1. The success, when and where it occurs, of workers in raising the rate of compensation for their work
  • 2. Where workers fail to raise their rate of compensation in concert with the growth of capital, prices drop as fewer and fewer workers can afford the old prices. This is the reason for the "declining rate of profit" in orthodox Marxist terms, at least as I understand and remember it. In that case, accumulated capital produces fewer and fewer goods due to declining demand.
  • 3. The decline in return of investment in research and development, especially in the aging sectors of the economy.
At any rate, what I came here to post:

Cuba and the United States
Che Guevara interviewed by Leo Huberman
September 1961

https://janataweekly.org/cuba-and-the-united-states/

Introduction:
(Janata Weekly) (Note: This exchange appeared in the September 1961 issue of Monthly Review. The questions were submitted, in writing, to Comandante Guevara by Leo Huberman during the week of the Bay of Pigs invasion; the answers were received at the end of June.)

Leo Huberman: Have relations with the United States gone “over the brink” or is it still possible to work out a modus vivendi?

Che Guevara: This question has two answers: one, which we might term “philosophical,” and the other, “political.” The philosophical answer is that the aggressive state of North American monopoly capitalism and the accelerated transition toward fascism make any kind of agreement impossible; and relations will necessarily remain tense or even worse until the final destruction of imperialism. The other, political, answer asserts that these relations are not our fault and that, as we have many times demonstrated, the most recent time being after the defeat of the Girón Beach landing [the Bay of Pigs invasion], we are ready for any kind of agreement on terms of equality with the government of the United States.

LH: The United States holds Cuba responsible for the rupture in relations while Cuba blames the United States. What part of the blame, in your opinion, can be correctly attributed to your country? In short, what mistakes have you made in your dealings with the United States?

CG: Very few, we believe; perhaps some in matters of form. But we hold the firm conviction that we have acted for our part in accord with the right, and that we have responded to the interests of the people in each of our acts. The trouble is that our interests, that is, those of the people, and the interests of the North American monopolies are at variance.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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Re: Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

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Re: Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

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Socialism will only work when there is a device which predicts the necessary supply production and outperforms the free market. This can only be done by a well programed all-seeing AI that with its almost limitless sensors everywhere calculates and estimates the future demand and orders the production of the respective supply. Of course there will be a discussion on free will and liberty of the citizens within the socialist nation but that's a side note.

Once we arrive there Socialist authoritarian nations will quickly crush free market ones if they choose to optimize for domination and economic growth.

And, as always, bye bye.
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Re: Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

Post by erowind »

The housing market is a monopolistic racket rife with price fixing. Even so, any crash will be temporary in nature in the context of highly inflationary markets. Houses are real goods, as the dollar devalues they will continue to trend upwards over this decade and beyond likely until the system ends. There will be relative price falls during the normal crisis cycles of capitalist markets but prices aren't returning to the 2000s ever. They aren't even likely to return to the 2008 inflated prices in the hottest markets! We've blown well past that excess already, the 2008 highs are our new floor! (Not for stocks though, that's a different story entirely, many stocks truly could go to zero.)

And don't even get me started on rent prices. Rent prices are completely divorced from capitalist markets and supply and demand. Don't let them fool you! Rent operates on a feudalist economic model. The price of rent trends higher throughout the market cycle during both times of growth and times of crisis. Why? Because the price of rent is strategically set at the best approximation of a price that is high enough to steal as much value as possible from the serf without causing the serf to default on their payments. Meaning, that as long as a serf has income, as much as possible will be stolen. The price has nothing to do with the value of the property or whatever maintenance services or other amenities the feudalist claims brings the arrangement value. (At least the economic strata of working class people, higher stratas get into investment schemes and other such dynamics.)

It doesn't matter if the property itself is only worth say, 100K USD. If the income in that region is high enough to support a 1,000$ monthly rent that rent will be extracted by the feudal land holder even when the serf could get a loan for that same property for 400-500$ per month. Which gets into credit score being a classist tool of discrimination, investment firms having unequal access to capital, and the working class overall being systemically disadvantaged and forced into financial bondage. Many people through no fault of their own simply have no other choice but to accept the ransom handed to them or face homelessness.

People would call all the things I've mentioned "crony" capitalism. This isn't the case, capitalism trends in the direction of monopoly, fixed markets, and parasitic rent seeking as initially merited competition allows the most merited to accumulate capital which they can then use to fix markets to their advantage unfairly. The ideal state of competition has never existed, and when some approximation of it has existed throughout history, it has always degraded towards monopoly as explained. Not that the approximation was ever desirable either. The frontier age of America's history is the closest approximation that comes to mind for many heterodox economists, and not only did it lead to the gilded age, it also came with genocide, child labor, and more overt wage slavery through company towns and other such mechanisms of financial bondage.
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Re: Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

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So many people don't see things for what they are. Do you think that Biden administration will make things better?
Global economy doubles in product every 15-20 years. Computer performance at a constant price doubles nowadays every 4 years on average. Livestock-as-food will globally stop being a thing by ~2050 (precision fermentation and more). Human stupidity, pride and depravity are the biggest problems of our world.
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Re: Socialism vs Capitalism containment thread

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Tadasuke wrote: Wed Apr 27, 2022 9:30 am So many people don't see things for what they are. Do you think that Biden administration will make things better?
No.
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