Communism

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

I might as well open the subject as an official topic, so we can debate it in one place instead of waiting for Adams to bring the subject up, on dozens of topics. (lol)

These are the most moderate list of rules for Communism that I could find. Feel free to make suggestions:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to the public.
2. Heavy progressive income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralizing of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with a state capital.
6. Centralizing of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state.
7. Factories and production owned by the state and cultivation of wastelands.
8. Equal liability of all labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combining agriculture and manufacturing industries; abolition of distinction between town and country by a more equal distribution of the population.
10. Free education for all children in public schools.

Now the prevailing concepts of labor are those of capitalism and socialism. I suppose I will stick to the form of using socailism economicly and Communism in ideology. Socialism judges the value of labor as being worth the amount of effort put into it, regardless of the usefulness of the product. Capitalism allows the market to set the value of labor, what the group is willing to work for determines the pay for the individual in that field of labor. While leaving the price of the item up to what the consumer is willing to pay.

In an ideal society were everyone was honest, and demanded to pay what a product was worth to them, either system would work, or even no system at all. So it really comes do to which system has the grossest failures. I will try to exaggerate the problems with both systems in equal measure. (lol)

Industry and Economics:

Capitalist problems tend to be higher level problems. Companies pretending to have a shortage so they can jack up a price and then flood the market at that high selling price, setting up phoney companies that attract investors and then running away with the money, and that sort of thing.

Socialism has the opposite problem. Labor is subjective, unless you pay a second person to keep track of the first worker and a third to watch him... Therefore it is easy for the worker to simply sit around and do nothing and simply claim he is an idiot, since being totally incompetent does not affect your pay. Then, of course, there are many things that people will simply stop making because the labor required to make them is not worth the price, and researching another process is not something that socialism does...

Enough to start with I hope...

[Sodfather]

Is the idea of doing away with the family system part of Communism also or is it just an unrelated Marxist view? All I know is that his reasoning was that it'd even out the playing field by eliminating wealth gained by inheritance...But...That contradicts the idea of Communism so I guess it's not a Communistic ideal?

[G. Adams]

Ahh, you read my mind. But I'll have to leave it till morning, my heads hurting. But while I'm here...

You can't tax people under communism because their is no money or income to tax. People produce goods, it goes to central bank, they collect whatever they need. Thats putting it simply mind.

There is no confiscation of property from emigrants and rebels, its from everybody. We make no bones of who we're taking it from. It then goes to the workers who work it. More too it of course, but as I say its late.

Nope, the state doesn't own anything, the state no longer exists, if we're talking communism.

(the middle bit is definately fresh as a daisy morning work)


The solution to socialisms problem as you put it is that under communism the workers own the workplace, democratically. If they see someone is not pulling their weight, they can then vote to fire him. As I said before, Communism is democratic through and through.

[G. Adams]

Originally posted by Sodfather@Sep 3 2003, 08:57 PM Is the idea of doing away with the family system part of Communism also or is it just an unrelated Marxist view? All I know is that his reasoning was that it'd even out the playing field by eliminating wealth gained by inheritance...But...That contradicts the idea of Communism so I guess it's not a Communistic ideal?

Somewhere in Marx's writings he said (paraphrasing of course) that all that family and education bullshit will leave under communism.

This is when its important to remember what time he was writing in. Families were not places to grow and develop, they were wealth producing or consuming units. Working class people had families just to support themselves, sending all the kids to work. Rich people married richer people to get even richer. Thats as simple as I can put it.

There is also a hippier type view to this, and thats that kids can also be raised communaly, as everyone will have so much free time...

[Geoff332]

Have you ever read either Das Capital -- or at least a decent commentary on it or the Communist Manifesto? It's not entirely clear which species of communism you are talking about.

Irrespective of the details, the core concepts of Marx's critique of capitalism are missing (ie alienation, class, and exploitation) and most of the key points of communism are poorly represented. For example, you've described the characteristics in captialistic terms (tax requires income which implies waged labour, which is the defining characteristic of the capitalist production system, but not of genuine Marxist systems). In short, what you've decribed is a balance between capitalism and communism that adopts a different balance point to that which is common in most western countries today. More-over, the basic concepts of capitalism are not defined, so a comparison becomes meaningless (comparing A and B requires that A and B be defined).

I'm not sure whether you're talking about communism as an analtical type, a practical political/economic system or something else. Do you want us to analyse your presentation of communism and the weaknesses of capitalism or something else entirely?

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

Feel free to treat it as you wish. I admit I am not an expert on Communism, I posted for the reasons mentioned, and because I would not mind knowing more on the subject. I also delibrately read about ten differents sites definitions on the subject and then posted the middle view (IMO). I would like to see and participate in the debate, but as I said, I admit I am not an authority on the subject.

[G. Adams]

Originally posted by GreatWyrm of Babylon@Sep 3 2003, 08:44 PM Capitalism allows the market to set the value of labor, what the group is willing to work for determines the pay for the individual in that field of labor. While leaving the price of the item up to what the consumer is willing to pay.

Thats an idealised view.

Humans are enslaved to resources, resources that are in the hands of others. Therefore we MUST work for those people, regardless of wages, in order to live a little bit longer. Those owners of course have the wages as low as possible, just enough so people can come back to work the day after.

But even that is idealised. Because there is a huge pool of unemployed people, it is not neccesary to pay enough wages for people to live properly, to get enough food, medicine or decent place to live. If somebody gets ill and dies, or suffers malnutrition, no problem, just fire them and hire someone else.

The reason there is such a great problem for the working class under capitalism is that we are nothing but an economic unit, and are treated as such. If the market is flooded with grain, for instance, the cost of grain goes down. Same for people. There is so many people, the wages go down.

But the odds are stacked against the workers. Goods can be freely transferred around the world. Workers can't. So an owner can fire all the people in Guatamala and move his base to Bolivia if the wages are lower. However, if the wages are higher in the US, the workers can't move there.

Globalisation has been built up to allow capitalist owners get richer and richer, while workers just have to hope for the best. And the best is, without being melodramatic, a quick death.

[Pooeypants]

I was wondering, would ppl still disagree with communism if it was run like the federation in Star Trek. Or do you still prefer capitalism over that?

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

Adams

Thats an idealised view

I thought I posted the idealized view on both of them.

Socialism judges the value of labor as being worth the amount of effort put into it, regardless of the usefulness of the product. Capitalism allows the market to set the value of labor, what the group is willing to work for determines the pay for the individual in that field of labor. While leaving the price of the item up to what the consumer is willing to pay.

Since neither is capable of living up to there ideal what is your point?

[Geoff332]

OK. I've got a bit of time. I'll start with capitalism. Capitalism is generally traced back to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in the late 18th century. At the time, we were seeing the end of the feudal system and the start of the industrial revolution (around the same time as he published this book, the Woolen Workers in the North of England were complaining about machinary entering the work-place). At the same time, the british financial system was getting well established. They had copied the system off the Dutch in the 16th or 17th century and it really formed the basis of economic face of the British empire.

Smith considered himself to be a moral philosopher -- heavily influenced by another of the mad Scottsmen: Hume. He was concerned with how to make a just and fair society, while he was witnessing a major powershift from the aristocractic land owners to factory owners. Central to his moral philosophy was the acquisition and distribution of resources.

The core of his thesis rests on one basic principle. If everyone is free to act in accordance with their own self-interest (within the law), then the overall effect on society will be optimised. It should be noted that Smith was a great proponent of justice. Probably the best statement of his thesis was:

Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.

If everyone acts out of their self-interest, then we arrive at this optimal point. In modern economic theory, this is known as "paereto optimisation". At that point, no one person can be made better off without making one or more other people worse off by a greater total amount.

What really defines capitalism are the mechnisms through which self-interest is enacted and bought to life. An economic system is concerned with the production and distribution (or allocation) of goods and services.

The first, and most obvious, is capital. Capital is the physical means of production -- usually meaning land, machinary and cash. For the accountants amoung you, it basically means assets (intangiable assets such as goodwill and intellectual property are fairly new things, and do muddy the waters a little). Under Adam Smith's ideology, capital should be privately owned by individuals. These individual is free to use this capital as they wish, within the bounds of justice.

The second component is labour -- an individual's industry. This is the effort of individual person in the production process. What the technology of the industrial revolution enabled was the twin concepts of division of labour and specialisation. A work process (such as making a pin) could be split into several parts, each of which was relatively simple. Each person could specialise in a part of the process and aspects of the process could be more easily mechanised due to the division. This led to vast improvements in the efficiency of labour, the defining characteristic of the industrial revolution is the application of capital to increase the productivity of labour.

Because of the division of labour, labour was generally considered to be flexible and substitutable. This means that for a given job, there was more than one person who could fill that job. Once you have relatively simple and specialised jobs, you can easily shift a new person into that job and get them working up to speed.

Labour and capital combined to give us the means of production (processing raw materials into output). Production is them a function of capital and labour. Because of the substitutability of labour, the power rested in the hands of the capitalist. This was a major power shift away from labour (the artisan who held specialised knowledge) to the capitalist (the owner of the means of production). They capitalist own the production, and is expected to pay the labour.

That's half the story; the other half is distribution. The core of capitalism's distribution mechanism is the market. A market is a place where buyers and sellers come to exchange goods and services. In most cases, the exchange involves cash -- although cash is not conceptually essential for capitalism (cash is an important part of capitalism, but it's role is functional. It allows certain capitalist mechanisms to function efficiently enough to make the system viable. Most importantly, it makes capital fluid, providing the capitalist with greater flexibility ion how they use their capital).

In a perfect market (economists call this perfect competition), you have many buyers and sellers with equal power. The buyers want to get more for less; the sellers want to sell more for more. Each seller's goods are identical to one another and everyone knows everything they need to know to make a good purchase decision. In this situation, the market settles at the optimal point, where the sellers make a fair profit and the buyers get sufficient quantity of what they want.

The assumptions of perfect competition are really important. The buyers and sellers must all be of equal power, and there must be enough of them that the actions of any single buyer or seller won't effect the total market position. The goods must be completely substitutable (each will satisfy identical needs and wants of the buyers). Both buyers and sellers must have complete (and free) information on the value of the goods. If all of these conditions are met and everyone acts from their own self-interest, then we reach a fair (paereto optimal) price point. Of course, these assumptions rarely, if ever, apply. As they get relaxed, we end up moving off that optimal point and the market becomes less efficient (and we have work to keep economists employed all year round).

The seller is the owner of the production -- the capitalist. The buyer is anyone who wants to buy something. Labour is sold in an identical process. The capitalist 'buys' the industry of an individual to make their capital productive. Individuals offer their labour and expect to get paid for it.

The role of Government in a capitalist system is to ensure justice. This, more than anything else, is the point of contention between left and right in western societies. Both sides generally agree on the basic ideas of capitalism (most western countries operate on the basis of private ownership of capital, on labour, and on market exchange of goods and services). The core difference is what consitutes justice. One argument is that justice revolves around rights -- primarily the right to life, freedom and property (where have I heard that before). As long as these rights are protected, the market will take care of everything else. The second revolves around ensuring fairness in market exchanges (economic justice). Economic justice includes the basic human rights, but argues that some important facets of justice are not adequately protected and ensured by the market (such as health-care) and should be protected by the state. Note that this position is neither socialist nor communist. It is a reflection of justice within (and part of) the original formulation of capitalism. The critics of this perspective argue that interferring with these things makes them less efficient.

[G. Adams]

Originally posted by GreatWyrm of Babylon@Sep 4 2003, 08:28 PM Adams I thought I posted the idealized view on both of them. Socialism judges the value of labor as being worth the amount of effort put into it, regardless of the usefulness of the product. Capitalism allows the market to set the value of labor, what the group is willing to work for determines the pay for the individual in that field of labor. While leaving the price of the item up to what the consumer is willing to pay. Since neither is capable of living up to there ideal what is your point?

The socialist point you made would not be an idealised view, it would be a neccesary view. If a system did not meet that criteria, it would not be socialism. However your capitalist point is idealised, in that to achieve what you state all possibilities would have to be the most optimal ones. If they fail to be optimal, capitalism doesn't fail, it just mean workers are screwed. And workers being screwed is an inherent part of todays capitalism.

[G. Adams]

And both views are capable of happening. Socialism, and eventually communism is achievable, but not only that it will be achieved, for the following reason.

Civilisations began on the extreme right. A single individual held total power, typically in the form of absolutist monarchies. These were then reigned in by lords and aristocrats, limiting the power of kings. This (i'll use english history for my own ease) is shown in the Magna Carta of 1215. Now power is now in the hands of the aristocratic class. This in turn is pulled back, with power put in the hands of 'free' individuals. This comes up in the Civil War, and completed in the Glorious Revolution. This is usually highlighted in some sort of rights for individuals laid out, the Bill of Rights of 16...something something. These rights affectively allow anyone to become as powerful as a king, but only economically, not politically. (of course they can corrupt the political process with their wealth, and often do).

This is really as far as we are now. History has reached the middle of the political spectrum on its leftward journey.

Now is where we throw in todays technology. Where once the economies of one country really only affected it, gloabalisation means that we are all interconnected through great big multinational corporations and their subcontractors. This also means that, where once a baron could only sap the wealth of his surrounding serfs, CEO's can sap the wealth of workers from around the world. However, the relationship between serf/baron is different to the worker/ceo. Population sizes meant that if a baron lost his serfs, he couldn't replace them, and he would lose out. So he had to look after them to some extent. Today however, there is a vast pool of workers. If your worker dies from no food, get a new one.

This global economy means that an ever decreasing minority controls an ever increasing amount of wealth. This will eventually drive enough people into desperation that they rebel. They have to rebel, its either that or starve. They will form militant unions and create socialist/communist parties. This in turn scares those with wealth. They will vote for right wing hardliners who will use draconian measures to control the rioting masses. The lefties will have to now use violence or else be totally oppressed. Finally, the revolution begins.

Think back to 1929 in Germany. The Wall Street Crash drove many back into poverty. Communist groups began to take hold again. Middle class money went into Nazi party coffers. They took power, crushed the unions and arrested, murdered political dissidents. Imagine this on a world wide scale.

If the left wants to win, it will have to fight on a world wide scale, irrespective of countries. When one country is 'captured', revolutionaries MUST move on to fight in the next war. Otherwise they get to comfortable in power. Outside powers try to invade, meaning they have to become dictatorships or they will be ineffective, and then we have another USSR on our hands.

If right wing hardliners did take power, the lefties would still be able to fight back, because they are the (world wide at least) the vast majority. However once the left wins, the right will at least temporarily be destroyed. In the mean time, democratic mechanisms and decent education for all people will mean that nobody will see the need to vote for right wingers (why would a majority vote for a group that suppresses majorities in favour of minorities?). If this much is achieved, humanity can then begin to work together, now without borders or divisions. Black people have fought with white people, Portugese with Chinese, Hutu's with Tutsi's.

And if done on a world wide scale, there will be no foreign powers threatening invasion. This means proper democracies can be built, instead of dictatorships 'on behalf of people' as happened before. As the majority have been involved in a revolution, either on the front lines or in support, they will not give up their newly found rights, and any government oppression will be opposed, if not ended they can take up arms again.

[Geoff332]

There seems to be a conflation of left and right with communism and capitalism. They are not the same thing. As I mentioned, most people today are capitalist. Left and right tend to differ in terms of their view of what constitutes justice, rather than in the essential basis of capitalism. It is important to distinguish between the system of economics and the system of governance. There is usually a relationship between the two, but it's neither causal nor exclusive.

It's also difficult for me to grasp how the world can be adequately described in terms of one simple dimension.

[RebelWithanAK]

If the conservative right can be considered in the defense of the status quo, and the liberal left in favor of progressive policies, then it's definitely split along those lines for capitalism/communism.

The status quo is a system where a small elite are profiting by the fact that the vast majority is more busy fighting amongst itself to notice that it's being manipulated and used. Even now American workers are blaming the undervalued Chinese Yuan for our recession - why? Because it serves the very people who benefit from cheap Chinese labor: The contributors and candidates of the Republican party. Distraction is good. Anything that allows for them to keep their wealth is a good thing, even if it means voting in a tax cut favoring the wealthy, starting a war on spurious means, and blaming immigration for domestic woes during a considerable economic downturn in this country. It's no surprise that we're heading towards another class war.

Progressive policies mostly involve a redistribution of the ever-increasing disparity of wealth, under a host of different titles - 'Welfare State' being one of them. It is not far from the truth to say that Communism is a culmination from radical left policies, and capitalism is now what is considered the right wing, since dictatorships and the monarchy is definitely out of favor in most post-industrial countries.

The problem is the public view of communism - that of an enclosed, repressive regime that is paranoid about reprisals and military encounters. Nobody ever cares to note that this may be because of all the nuclear-tipped ICBMs that America loves to point at countries the instant they become communist; not to mention America's lack of reasoning that a lot of communist revolutions are in many ways nationalist revolutions in search of self-determination. If nations were people, then it should be obvious that hitting a child constantly during his infancy and childhood will make him a nervous, emotional wreck for a great deal of his life - a danger to himself and a burden for others.

[Geoff332]

Time for communism. Communism is usually associated with Karl Marx -- largely because he co-wrote the Communist Manifesto. His more substantial work was Das Capital. This book represents the best external critique of capitalism. In fact, Marx provides the basis for the only systematic external critique of capitalism.

As with Adam Smith, it's important to understand the context Marx was writing in. He was about 100 years after Adam Smith. At this stage, the industrial revolution was well under way. The control over the means of production had moved out of the hands of the aristocracy and into the hands of the capitalists. He studied jurisprudence, but was really interested in philosophy. Philosophically, he was really reacting against Hegel against a backdrop of fairly widespread political instability (although he does like and use Hegel's dialectic fgramework). Basically, this was the end of the old-order of Governance, and the emergence of new political systems. He shifted around Europe quite a bit (for several different reasons: he was expelled from a couple of countries; he had to leave Germany to study political economy; he returned to organise workers in Germany).

Marx's critique of capitalism rests on three major parts: class, alientation, and exploitation. These are understood in the framework of the labour process.

The labour process is the process by which labour and capital combine to manipulate objects. A labour process creates surplus value (the excess after the value of the labour and other inputs is deducted).

Class is a standard sociological analytical devise. Marx suggested there were two classes in capitalist society: the bougoise and the proletariate. The bougoise were owners of capital; the proletariate were the suppliers of labour. It's important to note that Adam Smith didn't really seperate capitalists from labour -- he talked about a man bringing his "industry and capital" to a labour process. Marx observed that the people with the capital were seperated from the people with the labour.

Alienation is a slightly more complex idea -- and one that has many forms. In simple terms, alienation is the separation of value. In particular, the separation of the effort from the value of the labour. If I work for (supply labour to) an employer, they are the ones that receive the intrinsic value for my work. Payment for this effort (extrinsic value) was not a sufficient substitute. Marx basically talked about four types of alienation with respect to work: alienation from the object produced, from the process of production, from himself and from his community. This is an inevitable consequence of the division of labour and the ownership of production by the capitalist. Part of this is the separation of work from the individual. When one labours for another, your work becomes externalised. In his later writing, Marx refers less explicitly to alientation, but the the concept is still present, in things like the fetishism of commodities.

Exploitation occurs where surplus value is created in the labour process and then appropriated by non-labour. The labour has contribued to producing this surplus, but does not share in it. Exploitation does not mean that 1. all wage labour is exploitative; 2. only wage labour is exploitative; or 3. exploitation can only occur with respect to wage labour. In simple terms, not all labour processes produce surplus value. Exploitation only occurs when it does. It should also be noted that Marx did not particularly single out capitalism here. For him, all economic systems were exploitative to some extent.

Because of exploitation, there was a process of capital accumulation. Basically, the surplus value that was exploited from the workers by the capitalist was converted to become more capital. This was the process that produced the class structure in the society. The modern term is that "the rich get rich and the poor get poorer." The capitalist system will create class bariers, so that the proletariate are less able to take control of the means of production.

As a consequence of this, the capitalist society contained the seeds for its own destabilisation. The proletariate would, eventually get sick of being exploited and would take control of the means of production (capital) by force.

[fedfem]

Originally posted by G. Adams@Sep 4 2003, 10:19 PM Civilisations began on the extreme right. A single individual held total power, typically in the form of absolutist monarchies. These were then reigned in by lords and aristocrats, limiting the power of kings.

I would argue that civilization began with communism. Evidence suggests that patriarchal tribes using violence and genocide prevailed, thus history as we know it. The next 25 yrs will shed more light on whether communism is a viable model. Although Marx and Engel's model of communism essentially erradicates religion, I believe that is one of the factors that has caused modern attempts to fail. That would probably be better for another thread.

[Black Fox]

Geoff332,

Thanks very much for your post on capitalism. I have a few questions on the last part of your post relating to economic justice. It seems that this concept is a bit vague... there aren't enough criteria to decide what should be classified as a human right deserving of protection by the government. Have you given this some thought yoruself?

[Geoff332]

It is complicated, and this is the problem. One principle of economic justice is that economics should not determine access to certain services (health, education, police, and so on). As such, these services should be determined provided by the state (or at least a guaranteed minimum level). There are all sorts of debates about equality of opportunity, especially in the face of the very high correlation between your socio-economic status and your parent's socioeconomic status (the less your parents earn, the less you are likely to earn). Some see this is a lack of equality of opportunity (and some do not). There are debates around economic baselines (minimum wage, minimum income through welfare, minimum 'public' service levels) that ties into notions of justice. Pure libertarianism is the position that all facets of justices are best dealt with by the mechanism of the market. State intervention shifts the market off it's equilbrium and therefore harms the society as a whole. The State's role is then to protect basic rights (life, property and freedom) including providing security. There are a bunch of counter arguments (which form the basis of the internal critique of capitalism), that I will get into when I have more time.

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

I see no problems with the logic so far, save one. You recognize the area where capitalism breaks down and cannot continue, but you fail to see the area where communism breaks down.

You also have this odd idea that people are capable of acting in other than their best interest, and be sane. As well as a tendancy to judge self interest, by the self interest of the short-term thinker rather than the long term one. While long term thinkers are rare, they do exist, and they tend to be the ones that make 90% of the change in this world. For the good changes anyway, runs more like 60/40 for the bad ones. (lol)

[RebelWithanAK]

Greatwyrm, the reason we don't have a model for the failure of communism is because we've never seen a model communist state work. It's an experimental system. However, one thing is for sure, and that is that capitalist systems are deeply flawed in their ideology.

There's been plenty of chance to study capitalist systems, and the results are well written. Capitalist systems, as it would appear, only continue to exist through the usage of socialist safety valves - ie: federally controlled bank reserves, government-regulated utility companies, social security, bankruptcy laws, etc. Otherwise, the entire system is doomed to collapse from overconsumption: overconsumption of resources, labor, land and capital, and underproduction due to saturated markets and the lack of space with which to expand. And so we see the obvious results over and over again: Labor strikes, market bubbles, recessions, depressions.