How My Generation Sees Socialism

[Kulindahr]

Nothing more in today's reading scares the spit out of me more than these lines:





Do you not see the potential for disaster of a country embracing ideas such as these? It should be glaringly obvious how the disaster that was the soviet union arose out the failed attempt of Lenin to 'create' a communist state.

Scary, huh?

Just in those three you have the seeds of a totalitarian state with no human rights and total thoughts control.

 

[Stardreamer]

Money is essential. I've tried to figure out a way to convey information in a medium that isn't subject to being manipulated for its own sake, but haven't come up with one. So long as there are certificates, even electronically, that represent "want" -- which is what money does; it tells the worker just how much the employer wants that work done, etc. -- those certificates will be regarded as having worth for their own sake. The only possible way to address the situation that I can see is with vast computing power, but that just puts the symbol of want a step removed.

But Kris is onto something with the point about energy: until energy is essentially free, none of the rest of the system will change, but if energy could be free (and clean), there would be a chance at a societal shift. Yet that's just one part of what's needed; another is that computing power to handle the symbols of want, which double as certificates of cost. Yet so long as power over manipulation of those symbols is in human hands, the system will still be subject to corruption -- so not only do we need essentially unlimited free energy, we need essentially unlimited computing power free of human interference.

I know I keep bringing it up and its probably because I'm a Trekkie are heart but this brings to mind ST:TNG and Picard's money free society. The gimic in that world was the replicator technology that allowed easy replication of items but they never bring up that the replicator requires energy to operate. But then its a deux ex mechina gimic anyway.

I saw a program on one of the learning/educational channels that looked at the impact of vast solar arrays. There's actually a project out in some stretch of the American Southwest where they're tracking changes in temperature, humidity, flora and fauna, and all. One team actually thinks that once they learn how the whole environment interacts with such arrays, we may be able to use solar projects as elements in fighting the spread of deserts, because they can serve to lower the average ambient temperature.

BTW, the environmental footprint is part of the cost, a strand of economics humans have ignored too long, to our peril.

There is a great book on the necessity of balancing the equations when looking at environmental solutions. The author is British so he looks at the UK in the examples. He notes that there simply is not enough land and sea space in all of the UK to produce the amount of solar/wind/tidal energy needed to replace even the current UK energy needs. He said that if you built two solar power arrays the size of a medium sized US state in the Sahara that would about do it and that is just for the UK. I'll try and find the site and post it, its a very good read, the bottom line is how you go about putting together a replacement energy plan doesn't matter if you don't have the numbers balance out on both sides of the equation.

 

[Stardreamer]

Scary, huh?

Just in those three you have the seeds of a totalitarian state with no human rights and total thoughts control.

Yep that why it scares the crap out of me reading this. Add the attitude I was reading between the lines "We are smarter than everyone else which is why we will lead them to the promised land". I don't think I have to read much farther to know I want nothing to do with Marx's vision. Capitalism with reasonable regulation and a social safety net that helps people recover seems good enough for me till something better comes along.

 

[KrisHawkXXX]

Nothing more in today's reading scares the spit out of me more than these lines:

The fact that you think the abolition of private property shows you do not understand the manifesto for people's personal belongings, homes, and other personal property are not "taken away." The private property being abolished are the resources privately owned by the capitalists. Meaning our needs and resources wouldn't be privately owned therefore would not be sold.

Stardreamer I want to ask you which 10 actions followed by the USSR do you believe had anything to do with Marx's philosophy of social evolution?

 

[Stardreamer]

The fact that you think the abolition of private property shows you do not understand the manifesto for people's personal belongings, homes, and other personal property are not "taken away." The private property being abolished are the resources privately owned by the capitalists. Meaning our needs and resources wouldn't be privately owned therefore would not be sold.

I understood that perfectly well thank you, I still don't like it but I noticed you did not address the other two far scarier points.

Stardreamer I want to ask you which 10 actions followed by the USSR do you believe had anything to do with Marx's philosophy of social evolution?

As I followed it Marx says that the transition will be different in each country and then lays out a template if you will of common state capitalist steps many countries will take in the process. The Soviets tried to follow that template along with forming a new leadership class with the promise it would go away once true communism was achieved. ALL OF THIS is in the manifesto yet you denied that the soviets actions were based on Marx.

You said communists do not want to form their own party because its "hypocritical". That is not what Marx said in this section, he said they do not need to form a party because it was unnecessary, that the communists would be part of the various workers parties and lead them from within.

And his tone in saying this is another thing that scares me, communists should lead the workers from within because they are "the most advanced and resolute section" of the proletariat and only they understand the line of march. Why not just come out and say the communists should lead the workers because we are smarter than they are? Arrogance, the kind that leads to a disastrous fall only they wouldn't be taking down just themselves.

You still don't get it, gearing up to lecture me on how I'm misinterpreting Marx's philosophy. I'm not misinterpreting it, I'm looking between the lines and seeing the all the potential for it come off the rails in spectacularly bad ways and its far easier to happen than it is to stay on course. But you don't see it, you only see the line of march.

You look at the Soviets and dismiss them as misguided, I look at them and see an example of what can go wrong and I fear that example is the more likely scenario. Tell me how gathering all non-private property, all communications, and all transportation into the hands of the state while promoting a message that all opposing viewpoints are meaningless is NOT a recipe for a totalitarian nightmare?

But we are supposed to ignore that because they are only temporary steps in the unalterable social evolution that only we see. Nothing can go wrong, trust us we're the communists.

Even that wording 'social evolution' is so wrong! It based on the most common of falsities about evolution, that evolution means things only get better and improve. Any serious evolutionary scientist will tell you that is false. Evolution is about change be it good or bad.

I suggest you take a good look at history at the Nazis, the Soviets and all the others who thought only they understood the march of history and social evolution, its not a pretty picture. But we should ignore this, because the communists are smarter than we are.

 

[Michiko]

I live in a welfare state, which implements capitalism with a human face (paraphrasing Alexander Dubček) -- in my opinion, this is the ideal form of government, used by some of the most successful countries in the world, such as Denmark and Sweden. A welfare state is supposed to guarantee the well-being of the population, with services such as education, medical attention and social security being provided for free.

Yep, that's it. In Uruguay, healthcare is FREE, as in totally free -- the state will pay for even the most expensive treatment available in the country if you can't afford it. Education up to and including university level is free, too. (Of course, there are private hospitals and universities, but that's your choice. They're better looking that the public ones, but not necessarily better.)

Essential services such as utilities and landline communications are state-owned as well. The state is allowed to associate with private partners to provide service; there's an exception for the case of water supply, which must be state-owned and operated, according to the constitution (popular vote again, in 2004).

Uruguay's very limited experience with US-style raw capitalism in the early 90s was disastrous; thankfully it was stopped by 80% of popular vote in 1992, the welfare state being slowly reinstated after that. Nowadays, not even the most economically liberal parties in the country seriously propose raw capitalism -- actually, when President Lacalle began implementing it in 1990, even his own party turned its back on him...

Back to socialism -- true socialism or communism is an utopia. Human beings are ambitious, therefore a completely classless society is impossible. In the USA, money means power and classes are determined by that. In the USSR, party position meant power and classes were determined by that. In a primitive society, brute force means power... and so on. It's impossible.

True capitalism is not impossible; the USA are very close to it. However it's fundamentally incompatible with democracy; it would be (in my opinion) a true plutocracy, where power would be directly and exclusively determined by wealth (countries would be ruled by groups of bankers in both name and truth); there would be no social welfare at all, no protections of any class to workers, etc. It would be a society where absolutely everything would have to be paid for -- including security. Capitalism so extreme that police and firefighters would charge you for coming, and if you couldn't pay they'd allow your house to burn or be emptied... If you needed medical attention and had no money they'd let you die (I think that is possible in the USA now)

 

[Kulindahr]

Meaning our needs and resources wouldn't be privately owned therefore would not be sold.

So who would pay the cost?

 

[KrisHawkXXX]

So who would pay the cost?

Kuli, some people develop a sense of philosophy that they live by because they feel those ideals presented make some sense to them based on how we perceive the actions of others. Perhaps you comprehend the world in your own way that simply works for you, and you know what that's ok.

As for selfishness, yes that is true when it comes down to a survival aspect. When we struggle to compete with each other for survival I think greedy qualities present themselves due to lack of security. If 3 random people were placed in a room to live for a week and each had their own limited resource, (one were to have a few bottles of water, one would have food, and one would have a cell phone) each might eventually attack each other for what the other has. If those three each had their own set of plentiful food, their own cell phone with 2 spare batteries, and each 10 bottles of water, the result may be different. If I were one of the three, I might suggest we all turn off our cell phones and live off of one battery at a time. I would also point out its wiser to ration our food and water more reasonably rather then be wasteful for not doing so would be reckless.

 

[KrisHawkXXX]

The concept of having to "pay" for everything strips away our human dignity and worth when it comes to the fundamental right to survive without needing to worry where our next meal is coming from, where to get water, how to stay warm or cool, will not always exist in the future. Who would pay the cost? Everyone together as goods and services would be produced by each individual. The potential to produce goods to meet the needs of society as a whole exists, but because money is limited money can not afford to do so. Money must be budgeted by the hands of human beings wisely because money will never go far enough for everyone as a whole. If enough resources exist by MORE then enough, then why does money not distribute the capabilities possible? The goods produced are limited in quality and efficiency because money must be budgeted to begin with because cost is so high in order for the capitalist class to produce its own profit.

Why are most people without adequate needs globally?

 

[Kulindahr]

Those are interesting posts, but they're nothing but words. You failed to answer the question: who pays the cost?

Saying "everyone" doesn't cut it. "Everyone" isn't going to go to the mine and dig the ore, then go to the refinery, forge, etc. Specific individuals do that. It's a matter of human dignity: those who do the labor have paid the cost; if they have to give it up without payment to them, they're slaves. And if the payment is proportionate to their energy expended, they're still slaves.

The cost doesn't go away just because you take capitalists out of the equation -- in fact, it probably goes up, but that's another issue.

"Why are most people without adequate needs globally?" Because as a race we lack the resources to make it otherwise. If it were possible to have sufficient factories to produce all the goods required, the factories would have been built -- there's no motive quite like the prospect of a profit to get such things done.

Again, this leads to something Marx failed to see (and today's economists aren't much better, with their need for an ever-increasing population for a healthy economy, meaning that resources have to stretch ever farther just to keep in place): economics is not just a matter of raw materials, labor, and capital, but of technology and energy. Until we have the energy and the technology that we can get past depending primarily on the labor of human beings to provide goods, we will never have enough.

Somewhere in there, given a virtually free and unlimited energy supply, and sufficient technology, the profit motive will shatter anyway: increased automation will mean decreased customers, because people won't get paid -- and some new system will have to be found.

I think it exists in the book I've recommended several times (if you don't mind philosophy in the form of a novel).

 

[pat grimshaw]

.... Most teachers in this country have never read the manifesto themselves....

That's because his prose is unreadable; prolix, convoluted, longwinded, tedious, unending.

 

[Kulindahr]

That's because his prose is unreadable; prolix, convoluted, longwinded, tedious, unending.

He makes Dickens seem brief and concise.

Of course Dickens is a lot more fun!

 

[allthatjazz]

Stop them?

No force will have to -- they'll stop themselves. The first thing they'll do is cause widespread poverty, followed by starvation and other deprivation, followed by war, followed by the sensible decision to go back to having money because so far no other system for conveying economic information has been devised.

If the rest of the race is fortunate, the John Galt phenomenon will occur, and all the truly capable people will just stop playing slave to the rest, bringing the "socialist" experiment to a crashing collapse hopefully before they've caused much more human misery than the twentieth century brought the world.

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All mere assertion .The market is anarchy in the negative sense.The concomitant of it arising out of its intense competition between humans for wage-slavery,capitalists for profit, are war ,poverty,, unemployment.

It will break workers heads who attempt to ameliorate their conditions in any way which ultimately threatens its profit.

It will either nationally or globally in alliance with other capitalists state,s go to war to steal or /and protect its routes and supplies of raw material,energy and markets.

It will wrap its vicious banditry in national rags and expect workers to shed their life blood for it, having indoctrinated them in school and church as to their dutiful response.

Even in work, workers are, in relative terms to their production, exploited.They are compelled to seek wage slavery.Any attempts to regulate capitalism or reform it are ultimately doomed to failure, as it will not be tamed and breaks out of regulatory confinement.

Money is a mere means of exchange and when there is no market it will be unnecessary.

Unlike capitalism with its profit-driven economy, a socialist system of production for use would operate in direct response to needs.

Monetary calculation would be replaced by calculation in kind - that is, calculation in real quantities - and the market could be replaced by a self-regulating system of stock-control, a system initially built up by supermarkets and other retail outlets in capitalism.

This system could work in the following way without the need for a price mechanism.

Real social - rather than monetary - demand would arise through individual consumers exercising their right of free access to consumer goods and services according to their self-defined needs, constrained only by what could
be made available. Such needs would be expressed to units of production as required quantities such as grammes, kilos, cubic metres, tonnes, etc, of various materials and quantities of goods requiring productive activity from the different scales of social production.

There would be no need for a bureaucratic pre-determined allocative plan.

This system would be self-regulating as each element of production would be self-adjusting to the communication of these material requirements. Each part of production would know its position. If requirements were low in relation to a build-up of stock, then this would be an automatic signal to a production unit that production should be reduced.

Conversely, if requirements were high in relation to stock then this would be an automatic indication that production should be increased.

This system would apply to producer goods also, that is, those goods not intended for consumption but for the production of other goods. The demand for producer goods would arise via the network of consumption outlets signalling their needs to units of consumer production that through the stock control
mechanism would in turn provide the appropriate signals for the suppliers of production goods.

Where particular factors of production were scarce or difficult to obtain for some reason, this would constitute a signal to economize on the use of that factor and to turn instead to more readily available substitutes.

Any overproduction of goods, should it occur, would be in relation to real needs and not market demand and could be adjusted without the threat of slump.

Clearly, planning and co-ordination of production in real socialism would be nothing like the type of planning that existed in the former state capitalist dictatorships such as Russia.

It is so simple.

The economic information money in circulation contains, is that there is a a marketable opportunity.

.It does not convey needs.Production is choked off before real demand can be met as it only recognizes economic demand.

One can and does therefore, have famine in the midst of plenty.

One can and does have people dying from preventable diseases.

Now,people are often skeptical. What about the lazy person? Or the greedy person? What
will be the incentive to work? These are objections socialists hear time and time again.

These are perhaps understandable reactions to what seems, to those who have never thought about it, a startling proposition. As a matter of fact, behind these objections is a carefully cultivated popular prejudice as to what human nature is.

Let us deal with this prejudice ,suffice it to say here that biological and social science and anthropological research conclusively show that so-called human nature is not a barrier to the establishment of a co-operative society like socialism.

Work, or the expenditure of energy, is both a biological and social must for human beings. They must work to use up the energy generated by eating food. They must work also to provide the food, clothing and housing they need in order to live.

So in any society, be it feudal, capitalist or socialist, men and women must work. The point at issue is how that work should be organized.

A very strong argument against capitalism is that it reduces so central a human activity as work to the drudgery it is for most people, instead of allowing it to provide the pleasure it could, and would, in a socialist society.

When a politically conscious majority lay hold of this idea of socialism/communism nothing will stop it.

It will be an unstoppable change from private ownership of the means and instruments for making and distributing wealth,presently owned by a minority class individually and collectively. But this system is run from top to bottom by the working class,some deluded presently into thinking they constitute a middle strata, or class.

The collective conscious action of a majority will end this state of affairs at a stroke by changing private ownership into common ownership.

Why settle for crumbs when we can have the whole bakery.

A real revolution is an idea whose time has arrived.It is a complete break with previous methods and creates its own dynamism.

Just as capitalism did, albeit with a bloody entry into the fray,so too ,will the social revolution which replaces it.

The positive of capitalism will be the productive capacity it has built up,workers created this and the idea of an admtitedly flawed democracy,'the best money can buy' of course, so not worth having in its eminently marketable capitalist state .

But hey! Lest we forget it is a bloody system which can throw a few atom bombs out for an experiment and the mutually assured destruction option, is definitely all capitalism.

it has outlived its usefulness however we define that.

The workers have a world to win.

THE MUTED MOCKERY OF POPPY (COCK) DAY

The ribbons arrayed the honours displayed
The medals jingling on parade
Echo of battles long ago
But they're picking sides for another go.

The martial air, the vacant stare
The oft-repeated pointless prayer
"Peace oh' Lord on earth below"
Yet they're picking sides for another go.

The clasped hands, the pious stance
The hackneyed phrase "Somewhere in France"
The eyes downcast as bugles blow
Still they're picking sides for another go.

Symbol of death the cross-shaped wreath
The sword is restless in the sheath
As children pluck where poppies grow
They're picking sides for another go.

Have not the slain but died in vain?
The hoardings point, "Prepare again"
The former friend a future foe?
They're picking sides for another go.

I hear Mars laugh at the cenotaph
Says he, as statesmen blow the gaff
"Let the Unknown Warriors flame still glow"
For they're picking sides for another go.

A socialist plan the world would span
Then man would live in peace with man
Then wealth to all would freely flow
And want and war we would never know.

(J. Boyle 1971)