Captialism and Communism

[Hobbes]

I'm going to go over here, this is my land and what i produce is mine, there is no socialism without forcing me to comply.

You do realize, of course, that for you to have any sort of private property you need oppressive mechanisms with which you can hold on to it and legitimize it, right?

I see rhetoric, yet I've yet to hear an explanation of how one implements socialism or communism in an entire country while disavowing a strong central authority.

You missed the part where dogukan does not endorse SioC.

Is there free trade?

Is there ever?

[ABH2]

You do realize, of course, that for you to have any sort of private property you need oppressive mechanisms with which you can hold on to it and legitimize it, right?

Oppressive is a loaded term to use. Private property requires defensive force, but not initiatory in contrast to socialism and communism. This is the basis of libertarianism - the non-aggression principle. And why I have described a free market as the absence of a system or order. A libertarian society can accommodate socialists and communists where as a socialist or communist society leaves no room for someone who does not wish to give up what is theirs whether it is the product of their labor or land they have invested into.

Libertarianism can do this because it is not based in end results. There are no objective goals in a libertarian society and it allows for actual experimentation. Throughout this thread I have asked someone, anyone to explain to me how this is even theoretically possible in a socialist or communist society and no one has provided an answer.

You missed the part where dogukan does not endorse SioC.

No, I've argued his claim is disingenuous at best:

"Not irrational in the sense that there can be an amazing efficient machine since you'll most likely think thats what I meant.
Irrational as in it imprisons itself to its own past and goes along with destruction of nature and humanity its path to enforce its dynamics. Defining freedom, as the ability to screw things over.

I do not believe in greater causes that one needs to waste their lives on. The only cause in life is the one we make for ourselves. And I believe that we need freedom from the market to make us what we want to become rather than be enrolled in an ever-growing blackhole that destroys everything in its path forcing billions globally into slave-like labour in meaningless lives, conditions in concrete jungles.

And yes, I am not exactly proleterian. I am actually unemployed, and market makes sure that I cannot do what I want in life. Because the realities of life requires me to make money to chase what I want to be....whereas by the time I have enough money to what I want, its going to be too late. Fortunately, I was lucky to study in a good school and I can potentially make a lot of money because I have the right relatives.
Even them, I am struggling greatly."

He has avoided actually stating what he believes in (which, as he's admitted, is not because he does not have strong ideas on the subject matter), but this is as close as he's come. He's opposed to money, he compares wage labor to slavery, and he wants some sort of society where he would be free to live however it is he pleases. He refused to answer or explain any of this in more detail.

Here's what he said later:

"They do not have a platonic, ideal society that they want to implement like Marxist-Leninists or "socialists". Rather, they want to experiment, in the light of the existing critique. They are definetly anti-capitalists for instance, but they don't go ahead and say "we need to get rid of private property", until they can bring something else on the table."

So 'they' don't reject private property because they have nothing better at this point, but presumably that means if they did, they would reject private property. They leave room for experimentation because they don't have an answer, but they are anti-capitalist. What are the implications of these statements?

They reject the notion of a nation-state, but he doesn't explain what happens when one community or individuals in communities amass wealth, and hire people to do labor. How does this work in a stratified society with differentiated labor? A market is going to form. And he just bemoaned the oppressive nature of markets in an earlier post. He's also thrown out words like hegemony in capitalism and mocked the idea of free will.

I'll be happy to argue with him when he presents his actual beliefs in detail. Until then, everything he's described is an aspect of some flavor of socialism.

Is there ever?

I don't much care for the approach to argumentation that consists of vague, empty questions. Why is it so hard for the leftists here to make actual arguments and state their point?

Free exchange or trade has been occurring well before there was recorded history. Since man first existed. It's I have x, and you have y, so let's trade. You aren't forced to buy anything from a corporation if you choose not to. You do decide to, however. It's voluntary no matter what pedantic arguments or excuses for yourself you put forward. You aren't forced to provide labor to another in exchange for money. You choose to do so. Leftists claim they are trapped in a system they can't escape from, but nothing stops you from going to start a commune.

The only thing the modern leftist lacks to live the way they want even in the modern crony capitalist state of the Western world is the ability to force everyone else to go along. They don't get to 'redistribute' all the wealth and property of the wealthy and take what they want. So, you lack the ability to plunder your neighbors even more than you already do at the ballot boxes.

[numerosdecimus]

There is this notion many have that employers are some cabal working together not just in the same industry, but across the board. As if employers never have to compete for labor, especially the skilled variety, and that we didn't see wages increase in the 19th and into the 20th century without minimum wage laws. Many health and safety measures had little to do with government intervention or were accepted by some industries because it improved their business model.

Capitalism also says nothing about collective bargaining. Many on the right today are rabidly anti-union, yet libertarianism has no objections to labor organizing itself to bargain for better benefits. Libertarianism would merely oppose government intervention in this process, and the use of force by either side to get its way.

As for income inequality being revived as a leftist red herring, they typically ignore that many industries with limited competition are the product of government erecting barriers of entry with its regulatory power. Not to mention that government often times prefers regulated industries to consist of only a few small players because they are easier to control (at least in the theory of central planners). Monopolies and limited marketplaces are almost always if not entirely the result of government restricting competition that is beneficial to consumers and often times even employees. The standard natural occurring monopoly canard usually has a reference to Standard Oil or some such, and it never holds up to scrutiny.

Critics of capitalism very often point to highly regulated and distorted markets in which politicians/central planners have intervened countless times, point to its failures, and then cry market failure. See the housing bubble where politicians spent a decade and a half trumpeting up house ownership, only to run away as soon as reality hit. Or big agriculture in the US which is almost entirely the product of deliberate government strategy.

Your argument also talks about wealth as if it belongs to society and not individuals. You never actually explain why its ok for a group of people to get together and vote themselves the property that belongs to someone else. If I as an individual go up to a rich man and demand money, I'm a thief. If a large number of people get together and call themselves a government, and then vote on this, it somehow becomes legitimate to many.

At least the communists start with the notion that people who amassed wealth did so immorally.



You are trying to point out the problems with a free market utopia, and then point to bank bailouts as an example of how utopianism can't work. You ignore the cozy relationship bankers have with the state, both politicians and bureaucratic regulators. You ignore the fact that the large centralized banks are in fact often the instruments by which politicians carry out their economic 'policies' (really market manipulations). This is your example of unfettered capitalism. This is a perfect example of what I was just talking about above. Manipulate the market, create a bubble, watch bubble crash, and then cry market failure.



Well, at least here there is recognition that markets allocate resources better than central planners.



Only, it's not just greed. And you point this out yourself. Greed is a big part of it, but it's not the entirety of it.

Amazingly, government planners cannot accurately make qualitative preferences for hundreds of millions of people. Strangely enough, different people value different things in life.

The reason communist revolutions devolve into totalitarianism is because in order for the idea to even try to work, it needs everyone to agree and perform as directed.



There is no coherent form of libertarian socialism. Libertarianism is based on the idea of voluntary arrangements. I mean, in an ideal libertarian society, a group of people could band together and form a commune and live a communistic lifestyle, but the second they force others to participate, they have violated the NAP which is the basis of libertarianism.

Coercion is a necessary ingredient to communism.

(edited)

The economic calculation problem is one of, if not the main reason, why centralized planning can't allocate resources efficiently.

Basically, it all comes down to Voluntary association <> Coercion. These two fundamental concepts are mutually exclusive.

Marshall plan.

Oh. So, capitalist money.

I recomend reading Ludwig Erhard's book "Prosperity through Competition". Post WW2 Germany flourished all thanks to free market policies. In fact, the author gives a special emphasis to the sectors of the German economy who were lagging hard behind others because of the strong unionized power in those sectors (mining sector for instance) that originated as a result of Nazi Germany's regime.

The author also points out that flooding a country with money, a reference to the Marshal Plan, won't do much, in fact they had to fight it. Money reflects the output products/capital of a society, it is supposed to be a medium of exchange. If a country depended on the falacy that money itself is "wealth" then the only thing that will result from it is a constant increase in prices and a dilution of the purshasing power of the individual.

[dogukan]

You mean like I've been saying throughout this thread? You are dishonest and claim you use Marxism as a means to analyze the world around you.

I've met a lot of people who try to distinguish between philosophical Marxism as a worldview and means of analysis, and those who are just communists. Inevitably they are both, even if they will downplay the latter when they feel it is beneficial to themselves. As to which comes first, it's typically the ideology with the analytical method coming later. You've basically admitted in your most recent posts here that this is in fact an apt way to explain your coming to Marxism.

I don't see how I am dishonest. I do use Marxism as a way to look at the world. And based on that, I work with various groups. This is what is important to me. I don't think what you feel like what I think about my political views is an important issue. I simply explained it to you, how I see it and based on what and who you wrongly describe it which leads you to make arguments based on incorrect information.
What does my coming into Marxism has anything to do with anything? Everyone gets into something somehow. We are not born with innate ideas.

I see rhetoric, yet I've yet to hear an explanation of how one implements socialism or communism in an entire country while disavowing a strong central authority. A focus on the local means what, exactly? Is there free trade? Donald Trump says he's going to make America great again. He doesn't say how. You say its possible to create a socialist state with local, communal efforts and without a larger federal structure forcing that down the chain. You never explain how you are going to get there.

You have done a lot of dancing around saying what you are while making a point to say you aren't anything that has failed.

First of all, there won't be a country with central authority, in the case of Kurds.
Free trade is a deeper issue, and there is no last decision on it. They'll see how things go. They are not anti-free trade, radical left is not against free-trade.
The issues start when you get into political-economy of free trade, and when you dig whether it is really free or free for whom.
The general targeted issue for the radical left is private ownership on the means of production rather than free trade.

In Rojava, they are building a communal and collective economy. You can read up on various reports on the internet. It is an experimental project.

Everything you just said here? You are, in every sense of the world, collectivizing society. You are implicitly arguing that a society as a whole has some normative cultural background, and that it is ok for groups to force those views onto those who do not comply. What you don't get is that my entire worldview is based on the individual. Your means for analysis will never produce useful results because you fundamentally have to ignore the individual as a unit of study. Any worldview that results from your analysis, whatever it is, is going to try to force individuals to comply. You leave no room for individual qualitative preferences which will always exist.

Oh but you are wrong. My whole movement point is individual freedom and independence. The problem for you is that, as a person that has not delved deep into social sciences(as it sounds to me), you take your social order for granted. You cannot see that this system is also in many ways enforced and we are forced to comply. Just because we are born into it, and it was there when we were born, does not mean that it is a natural product. Everything in history, every social contract, everything man makes is something forced. Including private property and free trade. Man in its natural state does not necessarily do free trade(that is not to say trade is bad). It is a created culture.
You'd easily realize how free you are when you try to change the system or live outside of it without being marginalized. You can be part of a mass movement that would be smashed by armed forces.

You'd argue some relativist nonsense that holds no appeal to the average person. Only, you miss the fact that free trade and individual rights do not force anyone or any group to live in any particular way. But beyond that, there is no contradiction between unfettered, minarchist or stateless capitalism and local experimentation as exists in every Marxist state that has ever been formed. If some group of hippies wants to go form a commune and try communism on a small scale, they are free to do so.

Yeah but it is meaningless for we want to change the world by winning the masses that suffer the most. We are no hippies for sure. Hippies only reproduce the system.
But you sound like you have not even read the most basic debates in political economy.
Free trade is not free because the word "free" is in it. Free trade, or hwat you mean requires a very specific set of social and economic relations with a certain political realm that protects and legitimizes it.

Meaning, yea, capitalism is better at producing the means by which people meet the basic necessities in life. So those are objective results. But nothing about capitalism forces any group of people to comply. If some group of people voluntarily wants to band together and organize their resources a certain way, they are free to do so. Meaning, it doesn't matter what different values exist. People in libertopia are free to do as they please.

I love how you try to come from the liberty and freedom point of view. But thats the whole point of Marxism. It is to solve the contradictins in society to find true freedom for the individual. However, in its task, it goes beyond the ideologicaly produced idea of freedom in our society. Certainly freedom will mean very different things for many people.
The fact that you appear to be free does not mean you are free to live the life you want. Depending on where and when you are born, a very specific social order awaits you that can be extremely difficult to get over. And billions in this world live a life they don't want, do a job they don't want. Surely, this is not as much as visible in the western world. But western economic orders directly relate to the rest of the world and effects them deeply. Contradictions of capitalism become more visible in the non-western world.

Despite your arguments (which always lack specifics), you refuse to answer the simple question of how the reverse would be true in any society dominated by any flavor of Marxism. If I as an individual say I don't want to share my wealth, I'm going to go over here, this is my land and what i produce is mine, there is no socialism without forcing me to comply. It doesn't matter if that force is coming from the top of a federalist state or the local community. It is a necessary ingredient.

You are entitled to your wealth. The issue is how that wealth is produced. Not that things you earn belong to someone else.
This requires a deep understanding of how global economics work. An IT guy making thousands of dollars in Silicon valley is directly related to a massive electronics production network....the other end of this production cycle works longer hours in worse conditions and makes less money. And he does not really have the option to be chasing girls in California. He'd have a different opinion regarding what freedom is. However, what makes sure the IT guy makes extra money, is tens of other people, including children that live in misery. For the profit system tries to maximize profits, and somebody has to be cut from what he deserves. By making sure its the uneducated poor in indonesia, you make sure IT guy is okay with his life in US or Europe, making mods for a game in his free time.
But the whole world is connected. Marxism is about seeing that connection.

First, the idea that dogukan has no normative worldview is a lie. He has very clear goals for his ideal society. He simply refuses to state them clearly and be pegged down in this discussion. He started giving his 'critiques' of capitalism and they were ridiculous and childish. He quickly ceased any discussion of them.

But beyond that, what I just said above applies here. By viewing society as a construct you are doing nothing but collectivizing. And any theory that is formed from a collectivist worldview invariably runs into the real world issue that there are individuals who completely defy being lumped neatly into any category. These people will not comply unless force is brought down upon them.

Then there are real world problems such as scarcity. I'd be real curious to see how any worldview developed out of a Marxist 'critique' could actually handle resource allocation in a world with scarcity. But that's a discussion that can't be had here because dogukan prefers to simply spout out philosophical mumbo jumbo without tying it to any specifics.

Buddy, I told you I wanted to clarify what Marxism is to you first.
I did not escape the other side of the debate. I did it for the sake of quality of the discussion. You are not the first person on the internet who believes in the invisibile hand, free trade liberal rhetoric that suddenly has the power the solve all the problems of the world...Its being pumped into this society for decades. Thats the first thing you learn when you study economics.

I just tried to explain to you what Marxism is for what it is.
Discussing practical issues is a deeper thing in itself. And I never claim to have static ideas. We will not have a healthy discussion for the simple fact that you are here to destroy a Marxism you have in your mind. Whereas dealing with practical issues should be about identifying problems and solving them.
After all these years, I am too experienced to get bogged down in an online debate about socialism-capitalism debates. I got too academic to make absolute claims too.
You want the absolute. I want the science.

[ABH2]

The author also points out that flooding a country with money, a reference to the Marshal Plan, won't do much, in fact they had to fight it. Money reflects the output products/capital of a society, it is supposed to be a medium of exchange. If a country depended on the falacy that money itself is "wealth" then the only thing that will result from it is a constant increase in prices and a dilution of the purshasing power of the individual.

There are numerous examples within the United States and outside it to show that throwing money at a broken system doesn't work. I've made this argument in other threads.

Dogukan
Please, explain to me how:

First of all, there won't be a country with central authority, in the case of Kurds.

Meshes with:

Free trade is a deeper issue, and there is no last decision on it. They'll see how things go. They are not anti-free trade, radical left is not against free-trade.

And further with this:

The general targeted issue for the radical left is private ownership on the means of production rather than free trade.

So if a group of laborers decides they would rather trade their labor for, say, a currency, what happens? You have done nothing throughout this thread but ignore every pointed question asking for specifics of what you think while droning on about what true Marxism isn't.

You cannot on one hand ensure ownership of the means of production stays in the hands of, well, the communities, and not have some overarching central authority to ensure that. You can't on one hand ensure the means of production stays dispersed and not be opposed to free trade.

he problem for you is that, as a person that has not delved deep into social sciences(as it sounds to me), you take your social order for granted. You cannot see that this system is also in many ways enforced and we are forced to comply. Just because we are born into it, and it was there when we were born, does not mean that it is a natural product. Everything in history, every social contract, everything man makes is something forced. Including private property and free trade. Man in its natural state does not necessarily do free trade(that is not to say trade is bad). It is a created culture..

I like how you dodged my response to this very same point above. You used the word 'forced' here, when the reality is that private property and free, voluntary exchange require only protective force. Meaning, someone cannot come and take from me what I have worked for, what I have developed, or what I have arranged with another through voluntary exchange. I have the right to self-defense. Only by twisting the meaning of a right and what constitutes force or aggression can your argument even begin to make sense. Me having something that you do not, but want or even need, is not a form of aggression.

A negative right requires no initiatory force. This is the difference between the force needed to protect property rights and what you believe in which is the right of a group of people to take from another based on some arbitrary definition of fairness. You believe in positive rights that are, by definition, infringements and impediments on those of individuals or those weaker.

What you believe in are equal outcomes even without equal inputs.

Man in its natural state does not necessarily do free trade(that is not to say trade is bad). It is a created culture.
You'd easily realize how free you are when you try to change the system or live outside of it without being marginalized. You can be part of a mass movement that would be smashed by armed forces.

I don't think you know what free trade even is for it is nothing more than voluntary exchange of goods or labor. It is unrestricted. Meaning, if a group of people want to group together and share alike, they are free to do so. But you do not have the right to take from someone else. Meaning, once again, in my ideal society you would be free to live as you like with like minded individuals, but not free to enforce your will on another. Nor is the natural state argument one I have made here, or would make because it's ridiculous and irrational.

Yeah but it is meaningless for we want to change the world by winning the masses that suffer the most. We are no hippies for sure. Hippies only reproduce the system.

You peddle in lies to the desperate.

But you sound like you have not even read the most basic debates in political economy.
Free trade is not free because the word "free" is in it. Free trade, or hwat you mean requires a very specific set of social and economic relations with a certain political realm that protects and legitimizes it.

Actually, no. I've been very clear on my opposition to statism unlike yourself.

I love how you try to come from the liberty and freedom point of view. But thats the whole point of Marxism. It is to solve the contradictins in society to find true freedom for the individual. However, in its task, it goes beyond the ideologicaly produced idea of freedom in our society. Certainly freedom will mean very different things for many people.

You are right. Freedom will mean very different things for many people. Which is why everything you are peddling is doomed to fail repeatedly. Beyond pretending that scarcity doesn't exist, your system does not free the individual. A number of individuals will be forced to produce to make-up for those who don't, or the entire project fails. You propagate poverty. You mistake dealing with reality that people will always have to do things they simply don't want to do in order to survive with them being forced to do so by another. It's childish, and highly hypocritical if not deluded. The real world issue of scarcity exists regardless of whether there is capitalism, free trade, socialism, communalism, or anything else you want to point out.

You remove choice all choice for the individual, and call that freedom because you are promising him...what? Equal results no matter how hard he works? And this doesn't even touch the issue of wealth to include basic necessities like food and clean water. You know, things that my unfettered capitalism has been far better at producing. The reality is that capitalism has been far better at freeing people of subsistence level living while you would keep them perpetually locked into it.

The fact that you appear to be free does not mean you are free to live the life you want.

I do not advocate for equal outcomes because that is a childish, unrealistic, and dishonest position for anyone to take. Anyone promising that is a liar and a fool. Nor would I deny that people have burdens and responsibilities as well as basic needs that must be met that influence their decisions. None of this is the same as saying that someone is FORCED to do something. Being faced with a bad set of options doesn't change the fact that you do in fact have options and that someone is not, through the threat of violence, forcing you to do something you don't want. I would never deny that any person or society is a product of what came before them to some degree. You, on the other hand, use this to in some way to hand wave away basic logic. You then avoid making an argument while appealing to the authority of vaguely defined, uncited social science theory.

Contradictions of capitalism become more visible in the non-western world.

Here we have a blanket statement with no explanation provided. It's a perfect example of what I just referenced.

This requires a deep understanding of how global economics work. An IT guy making thousands of dollars in Silicon valley is directly related to a massive electronics production network....the other end of this production cycle works longer hours in worse conditions and makes less money. And he does not really have the option to be chasing girls in California. He'd have a different opinion regarding what freedom is. However, what makes sure the IT guy makes extra money, is tens of other people, including children that live in misery. For the profit system tries to maximize profits, and somebody has to be cut from what he deserves. By making sure its the uneducated poor in indonesia, you make sure IT guy is okay with his life in US or Europe, making mods for a game in his free time.

One might ask the crazy question of what the child working in this make-believe factory was doing before capitalism in a small scale, communal style subsistence level economy. Surely not, say, working on a farm because their family needed extra labor in order to survive, and that's the only life they would have known otherwise. And how do the poor laborers end up in these factories? Is someone holding a gun to them and forcing them to work there? If so, that is categorically wrong in every sense of the word. Only, that's not typically how it happens. A large number of poor laborers in those factories CHOOSE to be there over living an even more miserable life based on subsistence level living.

But what constitutes an argument here? Here you appeal to your own deep sense of understanding of global economics before you then proceed to lay out absolute drivel. But here you repeat almost the same argument put forth by Karl Marx when he predicted the fall of capitalism. Your economic argument is the exact same as his only you left out the revolution part and the gaining of social conscience.

At the least you recognized scarcity to some extent, even if you are making an economically illiterate argument based on the notion that wealth is a zero sum game where there are haves and have nots. Wealth in the West was not and is not based on exploitation, but on the very real fact that the West has grown its own wealth over the last few centuries at unprecedented rates. Let's repeat that - the world's wealth has grown exponentially.

EDIT - I would also like to add that just by admitting that the there is some low level tech employee in California making far more than your low level slave labor shows that employers do not simply dictate salaries to employees and that your notion of the profit motive is highly simplistic. Employers have to compete for labor, and labor can organize itself to collectively bargain in a free society. Wealth does not simply trickle up with the employee seeing his cut slashed to maximize profits. All of this without before we even get into the issue of productivity and skill as opposed to just working hard at a task that almost anyone can do.

Over the last few centuries, more people have been pulled out of poverty than ever before, and that is with a world system dominated by capitalism and something that is at least closer to my 'free trade' than whatever it is you believe in. There is far less hunger than at any point in history because food is produced on a scale unthinkable before. Literacy has gone up. Basically, whatever metric you use to judge the quality of life for the poor, its generally gotten better where something resembling free trade and capitalism has been embraced.

The problem once you stop hiding behind theory and make real world arguments is that all of the data is against you on this. You have in your own posts admitted that you have goals for society, end results that you wish to achieve for the poor. At least, that's what you are peddling here. Only, capitalism, time and time again, has proven more effective at achieving these things than everything you claim to believe in. The empirical data disproves the entire argument you just put forth about profits and wealth.

I want the science.

Then let's both stack up data and compare results. Only, you don't want that. You have purposely avoided data, and dismissed that earlier in this thread. You claim that measuring success is all based on what you are trying to achieve without actually stating what it is you wanted to achieve until these last few posts. Which is where I come off saying you were and are being dishonest. There is nothing scientific about your approach. The second we introduce hard facts or data here, the evidence is going to pretty overwhelmingly show that your ideas don't work to achieve the things you say you want to achieve.

[Cope]

Wealth in the West was not and is not based on exploitation, but on the very real fact that the West has grown its own wealth over the last few centuries at unprecedented rates.

I agree with parts of what you've said, but the historical wealth of the West was, and to a lesser extent still is based on exploitation. Colonialism, slavery, aristocratic privilege and industrialization (all of which contributed significantly to the West's fiscal growth and provided the backdrop to Marx's writings) relied upon exploitative economic models in order to prosper.

Colonialism and slavery are fairly self-explanatory; both relied upon the direct and persistent use of force for success. The exploitation invoked by the industrial revolution is also fairly apparent, despite the fact that it was more indirect in most cases. As I assume you're aware, the lack of state regulation in the industrial sector enabled the horrific widespread abuse and exploitation of workers who had been "forced" out of the market and their rural professions due to being unable to compete with steam powered production.

[Sir Adrian]

Lets not forget that industrialization in the west (and I am including Russia here as well) was based almost entirely on the exploitation of raw resources from the colonies and to a certain degree the world still runs that way: third world countries produce raw resources which are bought for cheap by first world countries and turned into good and services to be resold to said third world countries.

[dogukan]

Dogukan
Please, explain to me how:
Meshes with:
And further with this:
So if a group of laborers decides they would rather trade their labor for, say, a currency, what happens? You have done nothing throughout this thread but ignore every pointed question asking for specifics of what you think while droning on about what true Marxism isn't.

You cannot on one hand ensure ownership of the means of production stays in the hands of, well, the communities, and not have some overarching central authority to ensure that. You can't on one hand ensure the means of production stays dispersed and not be opposed to free trade.

Okay lets clarify something here, we are specifically talking about the Kurdish case. Because I am not talking of a universal model. A Marxist's movement point is critique of what exists. Practice is something else.

Rojava and Kurdish movement follows this paradigm called democratic confederalism. They do have an authority, but it is not really central. Each area is a canton with its own communes, that have their own parliement that unite and the confederal parliement. So it is as direct democracy as possible.
Decisions are taken by the people in their communes(which are linked to neighbourhoods).

But yes, for all of this to happen, there was an armed group that has forcibly changed the existing constitution. Which is how revolution works. In anycase, if you are interested in Rojava and the Kurdish paradigm:

http://www.biehlonbookchin.com/rojav...efold-economy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava#Rojava_Revolution
http://www.geo.coop/blog/revolution-...-%E2%80%93-now
http://roarmag.org/2014/12/janet-biehl-report-rojava/
for some more theoretical background, you can look into his articles:
http://new-compass.net/contributors/murray-bookchin
http://new-compass.net/articles/towa...alist-approach
http://new-compass.net/articles/comm...ership-economy
http://new-compass.net/articles/comm...s-and-problems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_municipalism

these would give some insights. So Kurdish agenda is anti-capitalist, but they do not exactly have a platonic alternative. Since the real deal in being a society critique is freedom of individual, they look for things that cause the contradictions in society and try to solve them from alternative ways.
In that sense for instance, instead of banning private property, they ban wage labour, instead of banning private entrepeneurship, they open all issues to decision apparatuses of the locals and see how it works, experimenting.

I like how you dodged my response to this very same point above. You used the word 'forced' here, when the reality is that private property and free, voluntary exchange require only protective force. Meaning, someone cannot come and take from me what I have worked for, what I have developed, or what I have arranged with another through voluntary exchange. I have the right to self-defense. Only by twisting the meaning of a right and what constitutes force or aggression can your argument even begin to make sense. Me having something that you do not, but want or even need, is not a form of aggression.

A negative right requires no initiatory force. This is the difference between the force needed to protect property rights and what you believe in which is the right of a group of people to take from another based on some arbitrary definition of fairness. You believe in positive rights that are, by definition, infringements and impediments on those of individuals or those weaker.

What you believe in are equal outcomes even without equal inputs.

Foremost, I do not believe in equality.
But what you say is a special kind of historical insight lacking. So tell me, who the hell turned into everything that is around into private property and put a price tag on it?
Certainly warlords of classical era or Romans had a different understanding of private property...like, at what point in history, did men say "alright, this piece of land is mine beucase it belongs to no one"....can you do the same thing now?
Because I certainly can't....and it seems to me like the men who suddenly had the power to own the land(which was the most important mean of production until recently in human history, which is also crucial in the rise of capitalism) had a say in everything. I am merely born into this society the landowner(using the word as a substitute to the hegemonic class) has greatly shaped.

I can tell you that back when humans lived in communal societies, it took physical force and slavery to enforce "private property". Which is the whole basis of classed society we have today. Just because it happened more than 6000 years ago, does not change the fact whole system were built by the hegemons to legitimize their ownership.

Obviously, a lord of the house Capet owned some land somewhere in France. But I highly doubt he bought it in free-trade. And certainly his son and grandsons and grandsons of his grandsons, while inheriting the most important mean of production that gives you great power over others, did not trade any labour for it.
You see, Marxism sees history as a whole. It does not seperate a modern constitution, a nation state and private ownership over a Joint-Stock company as seperate eras, but rather continuations of a set of relations that transform radically.
In that sense, everything we live in is enforced, because we do not choose the world and system we live in. We are shaped into it, force shaped into it. We go to schools that tells us how normal society works and how bad others are.
Thats what I mean by "not taking the social order that exists for granted"...it is an historicist perspective. And when you look at it like this, you can also see the constitution and police-military as a form of oppression in the form of the new kind of hegemony that exists.
Nobody asks me anything when they are buying massive chunks of land around my city which suddenly have a price-tag, and then they build more concrete jungles on it. When you go to protest, when you see how police handles you, then you know whether the system is enforced or it is there naturally....

Think of all the inheritance, the power and influence people who born into a certain social class inhabit all of a sudden. All the corruption and deal they make. And the laws they pass to make "business easier" at the cost of labor power...and then when you go there they smash you with tools of the state and media.

There are many ways of looking at "enforcement" and "protective" power.
Marxism is about going outside of existing values to see the society in its historical totality.
Thats why everything, including capitalism has to be actively enforced.
It is obvious to masses in Latin America since the IMF SAPs in the 80s...ask them about Washington Consensus. For instance, neo-liberal paradigm is the ultimate warrior of free market economy, massive privatizations, deregulations, cutting spending feeding from the Austrian School dogma. But for some reason, it requires constant, active state intervention to make sure this "deregulation" works. And by then, all the deals happen between the upper classes.

The issue of proleterianization(meaning, taking property away from public or large portions of the population, and turning them into private property owned by the few) is real. And depending on how you relate to the world you live in, it is not difficult to see things as "enforced". Look around you, everything is a commodity now. At what point in history did everything become a commodity?
I am not saying this is bad or wrong btw, this is just how the world works. People make things normal or un-normal. What is taken for granted today, is a ridicolous thing in a different time and place.

Capitalism in that sense, is a product of very specific conditions in history that took over later on feudalism in Europe and other forms of relations elsewhere. But it is a whole other debate to look for roots of capitalism. There are various debates and positions over it. One way of looking at it is that once it became a thing, it did force itself.
First with military conquests, proleterianization, later with ideological apparatuses and socially created consensuses through mass media.

I don't think you know what free trade even is for it is nothing more than voluntary exchange of goods or labor. It is unrestricted. Meaning, if a group of people want to group together and share alike, they are free to do so. But you do not have the right to take from someone else. Meaning, once again, in my ideal society you would be free to live as you like with like minded individuals, but not free to enforce your will on another. Nor is the natural state argument one I have made here, or would make because it's ridiculous and irrational.

Thats great and all mate, but unfortunately world does not function like that.
Think of organized crime. It is obviously some form of free trade. But the functioning of capitalism becomes more pure in its "free trade" and how it enforces itself.
So was slave trade...who decides what is a commodity, the means of exchange, the means of trade?
Each system creates its apparatuses for forcing its functioning.

Actually, no. I've been very clear on my opposition to statism unlike yourself.

Hah, I am no statist buddy. State is a tool of oppression, it is a tool for a class to oppress another one. Or in a different look, depending on what kind of a social order it rests on(nation state, feudal kingdom, direct democratic city state?) it creates its means to make sure status quo is preserved. No superstructure allows radical changes, for each system radical changes are a threat that should be destroyed. Whether through physical force or ideological hostilities.

You are right. Freedom will mean very different things for many people. Which is why everything you are peddling is doomed to fail repeatedly. Beyond pretending that scarcity doesn't exist, your system does not free the individual. A number of individuals will be forced to produce to make-up for those who don't, or the entire project fails. You propagate poverty. You mistake dealing with reality that people will always have to do things they simply don't want to do in order to survive with them being forced to do so by another. It's childish, and highly hypocritical if not deluded. The real world issue of scarcity exists regardless of whether there is capitalism, free trade, socialism, communalism, or anything else you want to point out.

You remove choice all choice for the individual, and call that freedom because you are promising him...what? Equal results no matter how hard he works? And this doesn't even touch the issue of wealth to include basic necessities like food and clean water. You know, things that my unfettered capitalism has been far better at producing. The reality is that capitalism has been far better at freeing people of subsistence level living while you would keep them perpetually locked into it.

You still do not get my approach. It is all about comparing whatever real socialism experience there is in your mind to something ideal to you. I live in a capitalist society, crisis Greece and Spain are in a capitalist societies, Africa is mostly a capitalist society, most of Latin America are also capitalist societies, Eastern Europe is capitalist too....so is Middle East. And East and South Asia.

Something tells me that the problems are things that are deeper than capitalism vs communism you are trying to do...did the war in Middle East end with capitalism?
Does child labour and slavery end in South Asia? Does extreme poverty go away in Africa and Asia or Americas?
Is Eastern Europe a better place today? Is corruption out of question now? Where does the massive organized crime come from?
You think the landless peasants and millions of unemployed in Latin America are doing well with capitalism's dealing with "basic needs"?
How does capitalism fare for 40-50% youth unemployment rates in Spain or Greece?
Surely capitalism had trouble maintaining the social welfare systems that it was so proud of until 1970s?
How about the USA? What pushes those hundreds of thousands black people to streets all of a sudden? It seems like there are problems everywhere.
You think mortgage crisis are over?

I am not denying scarcity's existance. But capitalism feeds on scarcity, it commodifies everything, turns life into a consumption race and always tries to create an artificial demand for its over-production...for it needs to expand and expand. Or monopolize...if not monopolized, it is doomed to a competition that will bring the whole economy down(along with people's lives globally at its global network connections today, and the nature to find more places to expand)

I do not advocate for equal outcomes because that is a childish, unrealistic, and dishonest position for anyone to take. Anyone promising that is a liar and a fool. Nor would I deny that people have burdens and responsibilities as well as basic needs that must be met that influence their decisions. None of this is the same as saying that someone is FORCED to do something. Being faced with a bad set of options doesn't change the fact that you do in fact have options and that someone is not, through the threat of violence, forcing you to do something you don't want. I would never deny that any person or society is a product of what came before them to some degree. You, on the other hand, use this to in some way to hand wave away basic logic. You then avoid making an argument while appealing to the authority of vaguely defined, uncited social science theory.

Thats not my intention. My point is to go beyond taking things for granted. There does not have to be equal outcomes. But the fact of the matter is, most of us are born to pre-screwed lives in this world compared to a minority. And we all live in one big global capitalist economy that is connected everywhere.

One might ask the crazy question of what the child working in this make-believe factory was doing before capitalism in a small scale, communal style subsistence level economy. Surely not, say, working on a farm because their family needed extra labor in order to survive, and that's the only life they would have known otherwise. And how do the poor laborers end up in these factories? Is someone holding a gun to them and forcing them to work there? If so, that is categorically wrong in every sense of the word. Only, that's not typically how it happens. A large number of poor laborers in those factories CHOOSE to be there over living an even more miserable life based on subsistence level living.

Of course they choose it. But its not like they have a lot of alternatives. You see, its all about making the means for reproduction of life. And when reproduction of life means change at a global level, you cannot live outside of it without being a marginal hippie.
We make our world in social relations and social relations makes us. If I had the opition to make a massive investment and not really do physical labour all day, I would. Whats forced and not is defined by the existing social contract. However, it is possible that there is an objective situation that would be defined differently outside of the existing value-world.

But what constitutes an argument here? Here you appeal to your own deep sense of understanding of global economics before you then proceed to lay out absolute drivel. But here you repeat almost the same argument put forth by Karl Marx when he predicted the fall of capitalism. Your economic argument is the exact same as his only you left out the revolution part and the gaining of social conscience.

I do not deny my lack of alternative suggestions. I am for working them and pushing alternative agendas, such as Zapatistas or the decoloniality movement or the Kurdish movement.

At the least you recognized scarcity to some extent, even if you are making an economically illiterate argument based on the notion that wealth is a zero sum game where there are haves and have nots. Wealth in the West was not and is not based on exploitation, but on the very real fact that the West has grown its own wealth over the last few centuries at unprecedented rates. Let's repeat that - the world's wealth has grown exponentially.

Economics can be a zero-sum game depending on how you look at it. Whenever capitalist hits its limits it needs a new expansion zone(Neo-liberalism started off lucky, because it could expand into deregulatiion in west, and decreased labour rights, it could expand into ex-Soviet World in the 90s, and Chinese/Vietnamese reformation gave an extreme amount of area to move in).But nowi we are far too above our world's capacity for there to be a meaningful scarcity for there to be proper profit-margins. Thats why there is so much unnecessary stuff coming out all the time that are fed with credit expansion for people who cannot really pay anything back.

Yes wealth has always grown. Thats what Marx says. Since people started interacting with nature creating new production relations(nature being our surrounding), they created better means for reproducing their lives. Production capacity, has almost always grown historically. And with capitalism in 19th century it went crazy giving us completely new tools.
But with capitalism becoming stagnant as there are not many more expansion areas, it is crumbling on its own now due to its contradictionary logic. Capitalism functions best when there is no capitalism at all. But once it fills the area, it starts pushing itself.
I am not an anti-capitalist, I just think capitalism is done for. It is not as productive and useful anymore. In fact, it is becoming more and more harmful.
Neo-liberalism is the greatest example of all. It got to such a ridicolous point since the 80s that they are trying to make everything a business.
Consumerism went nuts. And it is unsustainable, politically, ecologically and it really does create so much misery.
In this IMF product Mexico, why are there hundreds of thousands of cartel members?
Look at ISIS ffs, why would you leave Europe to join ISIS? People all over the world are using more and more anti-depressants. Urban society started to lose its natural-ness if you know what I mean. We are imprisoning ourselves to our history.
Nothing explains the capacity for food production and existance of hunger in the world better than capitalism. Such a basic need, not matched because what? Invisible hand? Free trade? Market mechanics? Need for scarcity because how else can profit exist?
But if you go the other way around, over-production, Say's law obviously don't seem to touch reality. Credit expansions and obvious consumer ideology production, the need for this mentality proves this.

Surely, means of our life reproduction can still be improved. The driving force there is technological growth rather than capitalism. Though you can make a strong link between the two of course, but technology is surely not "dependent" on capitalism.

EDIT - I would also like to add that just by admitting that the there is some low level tech employee in California making far more than your low level slave labor shows that employers do not simply dictate salaries to employees and that your notion of the profit motive is highly simplistic. Employers have to compete for labor, and labor can organize itself to collectively bargain in a free society.

Yeah, depending on how laws allow. Surely, in the west, labour has higher bargaining power. Because the global production networks makes sure when laborer here go out on the street, police kicks their ass and prison the leaders. The surplus extracted here makes sure western capitalism can tolerate "social welfare" to an extend. But nowadays, with growth of capitalism all over the world(especially East Asia), even west has to remove all its support for its citizens. There are already many mass movements in EU and USA.

Wealth does not simply trickle up with the employee seeing his cut slashed to maximize profits. All of this without before we even get into the issue of productivity and skill as opposed to just working hard at a task that almost anyone can do.

Over the last few centuries, more people have been pulled out of poverty than ever before, and that is with a world system dominated by capitalism and something that is at least closer to my 'free trade' than whatever it is you believe in. There is far less hunger than at any point in history because food is produced on a scale unthinkable before. Literacy has gone up. Basically, whatever metric you use to judge the quality of life for the poor, its generally gotten better where something resembling free trade and capitalism has been embraced.

I don't deny these man. But they are more related to production capacity and technological development(and medicine). And like I said, if we get into tech-capitalism relation, its another debate.

The problem once you stop hiding behind theory and make real world arguments is that all of the data is against you on this. You have in your own posts admitted that you have goals for society, end results that you wish to achieve for the poor. At least, that's what you are peddling here. Only, capitalism, time and time again, has proven more effective at achieving these things than everything you claim to believe in. The empirical data disproves the entire argument you just put forth about profits and wealth.

I live in a developing country and I work especially for developing country contexts. But it is pretty obvious that the wealth in west is directly related to global networks, which involves everyone.
If the price of the electronical gear was higher because the worker that made it got a wage closer to its selling price, than the wage of the IT guy in California would be less...because profit margin. Because how else will this company compete with others?

Then let's both stack up data and compare results. Only, you don't want that. You have purposely avoided data, and dismissed that earlier in this thread. You claim that measuring success is all based on what you are trying to achieve without actually stating what it is you wanted to achieve until these last few posts. Which is where I come off saying you were and are being dishonest. There is nothing scientific about your approach. The second we introduce hard facts or data here, the evidence is going to pretty overwhelmingly show that your ideas don't work to achieve the things you say you want to achieve.

GDP growth does not equal better life, quality life or a sustainable world.
Economics is not a hard-science, it is a political-ideological tool.
I am for solving problems the world faces today, you are for comparing the statistics...my argument is that capitalism needs constant expansion, but it does not have the means for demand anymore. Economic crises are becoming more and more common and intense. And there is a lot of misery. As young person, I know youth from all over the world. And the common theme eveywhere is that nobody can get a job, or they don't really see a good future.
Nobody has secure jobs, people do stuff they don't want to make by in their lives. To get an intern you need to have intern experience, and you get a job when you are closing to your 30s. This is very obvious in "developing countries", but it is getting more common in the developed world too.

So, I work for alternative paradigms. Thats it.

[norse]

The problem here is what we often think of as Western society being capitalism is actually enlightenment or liberalism. Capitalism seems to have originally been a disparaging term originally and was eventually taken up businessmen as a sign of pride or something.

Regardless capitalism is about the endless accumulation of capital thus the root of the word capitalism. And it ultimately has nothing to do with government or public or private organizations or enterprise as is all about exploitation and profits through whatever means possible.

[Cope]

Lets not forget that industrialization in the west (and I am including Russia here as well) was based almost entirely on the exploitation of raw resources from the colonies and to a certain degree the world still runs that way: third world countries produce raw resources which are bought for cheap by first world countries and turned into good and services to be resold to said third world countries.

Absolutely.

Colonialism, slavery, industrialization, the consumer society and capitalism as we understand it today are all inextricably linked. On a very basic level, Marxism was just a reaction to exploitation and inequity, both of which, being seemingly constants within human history, render Marxism relevant in the 21st century. As far as I can tell, the fundamental difference between Libertarians and Marxists is that the former accept monetary inequality as both an inevitable and necessary whilst Marxists do not.

[Platon]

..Only, capitalism, time and time again, has proven more effective at achieving these things than everything you claim to believe in. The empirical data disproves the entire argument you just put forth about profits and wealth..

I would like a short comment here..

What capitalism are we talking about? The 1848 one, or the one we live in today in the most advanced states? Because, I can assure you things have changed a bit since then.

According to Marx, capitalism was doomed to self-destruct because of the system of capital accumulation in to fewer hands. Capitalism tends to have one crisis after another leading to high unemployment, collapsing demand, stock market crashes, currency wars, trade wars and real wars. And this is what actually happened over and over again until the big crash in the 30:s that eventually lead to the carnage of ww2. Hardly a success story!
So far, Marx predictions were pretty accurate.
But since then, capitalism seem to overcome the problems and had a more stable and successful development, at least in the in the core western countries. How did they do that?

Well, going back to Marx, he predicted that the proletariat should take matters in to their own hands and strive to build the communist society. And that should be gradually done through socialism. So begins the socialist movements, parties and unions to make the conditions better for the working classes. Did they succeed?

Back in 1848, when Marx wrote the communist manifest, the conditions for the working classes were miserable. Average life expectancy in an industrial city like Manchester could be like 27 years, eight year olds working in mines, extreme infant mortality rates, and so on..

What happened since then? One of the first things the socialist wanted to abolish was child labor - fiercely opposed by the ruling capitalist classes. They succeeded.
8 hour working day - done
5 day working week - done
Having the right to organize to strive for better conditions in the working place - done
The right to be compensated in case you have an accident at the work place - done
Pension for elderly to take away the burden from the children - done
and much more

And here in Sweden for example, one of the most advanced western economies we now have
Unemployment benefits in case you don't have a job
Social benefits for people unable to take care of themselves
5 weeks paid vacation
Free healthcare
Free education
18 months paid parent leave
Kinder garden all parents can afford
Child and youth centers with lots of activities, free of charge
And a lot of other welfare benefits...

All those reforms were done thanks to socialist political parties, organizations and unions and was - again, fiercely opposed by the elites and their political representatives. And all this was paid for by those surpluses that the capitalist classes generated through taxation.
The result was of course enormously improved living standards for the working classes.
Who should we thank for that? The capitalist system or the socialist movements..?

I argue that the 20:th century had 2 different socialist experiments. One was the Soviet one - the other was what we had/have in the western countries.

But since the 70:s we started to reverse course and neoliberal policies start to dominate. More free market, less regulation and taxation - and voila - the crashes comes more frequently. The capital accumulates again in the hands of the elites, placed in financial institutions and then lend to the lower classes to keep up the demand. But the debt levels are so high now that it's completely unsustainable. The next crash will be really really ugly..

So who won Capitalism or Communism?

History is not quite over yet

[ABH2]

Sorry for the late reply. Throwing out mountains of text can get tiresome.

Platon

And this is what actually happened over and over again until the big crash in the 30:s that eventually lead to the carnage of ww2. Hardly a success story!

So capitalism is to blame for Europeans killing one another when they had been killing one another going back into ancient history? The century prior to WW1 was one of the most peaceful eras in European history after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and it corresponded with the rise of capitalism. WW1 and WW2 have more complex origins than there was an economic depression. A large part of WW2 - the growth of radical ideologies in Europe. Maybe, just maybe Europeans have to look at their own failings rather than capitalism.

But since then, capitalism seem to overcome the problems and had a more stable and successful development, at least in the in the core western countries. How did they do that?

1. You talk in these ridiculous vague generalities. This short version of history you are putting forth lacks any sort of nuance.
2. How about we talk specific economic downturns and their causes? Because parroting Marx on the boom bust cycle isn't much of an argument.
3. Capitalism has recessions (very often just as much because of failings of central planners) while socialist countries are just constantly mired in poverty.

Back in 1848, when Marx wrote the communist manifest, the conditions for the working classes were miserable. Average life expectancy in an industrial city like Manchester could be like 27 years, eight year olds working in mines, extreme infant mortality rates, and so on..

And prior to the industrial revolution, children were working on family farms, people didn't have access to clean water and still had short life expectancy. But let's pretend that those social issues were caused purely by capitalism.

What happened since then? One of the first things the socialist wanted to abolish was child labor - fiercely opposed by the ruling capitalist classes. They succeeded.
8 hour working day - done
5 day working week - done
Having the right to organize to strive for better conditions in the working place - done
The right to be compensated in case you have an accident at the work place - done
Pension for elderly to take away the burden from the children - done
and much more

And here we get half-truths if not outright lies. Capitalists are not some overarching class who all have the same beliefs and backgrounds despite Marxism collectivizing people into classes.

Who gave us the 8 hour work day, and weekends off? The first person to do that was Henry Ford, and it had nothing to do with unions.

Wages were rising throughout the 19th century without government regulation. Let's take a look at wages pre-capitalism, and then through the 19th century:



Hm...If Marx were right, wages should have been stagnant if not reduced further throughout the 19th century, not steadily rising at rates unseen before in all of human history.

Amazingly, capitalists are not a homogeneous group. Nor are they able to just dictate prices to their employees. Let's talk about education. You do realize a ton of wealthy capitalists supported public education, right? You argue that this change occurs solely because of government enforcing laws. No, what happens over time with industrialization is a more skilled workforce becomes necessary. it's not an option. A more skilled and educated workforce has to be transitioned in and to get that, employers (capitalists) need a steady supply of educated labor. The government became the main instrument of that. It's the same process we are seeing right now in developing countries throughout the world. Public schools also existed throughout the 19th century even before Marx in both Europe and America.

One who thinks about this for a few seconds may realize that capitalism and the move away from subsistence level living allowed all children to be educated rather than government top men mandating it.

And here in Sweden for example, one of the most advanced western economies we now have

Advance in what way? Maybe you can point out all of this breakneck innovating that comes from Sweden. Here's another idea for you Swedes - open the borders and allow some immigration in large numbers. Go ahead. We'll see how long your welfare state lasts. And I mean in terms of non-Nordic immigrants.

the crashes comes more frequently.

Citation needed.

The capital accumulates again in the hands of the elites, placed in financial institutions and then lend to the lower classes to keep up the demand.

Beyond this notion that capital alone = wealth, maybe the complete dominance of labor by unions has something to do with that. Maybe, just maybe when you jack up the compensation of employees in a way complete detached from the profits pulled in and demand unsustainable benefit packages negotiated with government applying pressure on the employers, you will end up with them shipping jobs elsewhere where they don't have to deal with those things. Hm...Nah, the employees have nothing to do with it, and globalization in no way benefits Western consumers, either, who are now able to buy cheaper goods that would have been thought impossible a generation ago.

ep1c_fail, Doctor Shuu

Colonialism, slavery, industrialization, the consumer society and capitalism as we understand it today are all inextricably linked. On a very basic level, Marxism was just a reaction to exploitation and inequity, both of which, being seemingly constants within human history, render Marxism relevant in the 21st century. As far as I can tell, the fundamental difference between Libertarians and Marxists is that the former accept monetary inequality as both an inevitable and necessary whilst Marxists do not.

Let me first start off by saying that slavery has existed for as long as their has been written history, and nothing even remotely resembling the transformation that occurred with the advent of capitalism had ever occurred before it. Slavery was an outdated form of labor completely unnecessary for the rise of capitalism. Where was all the slavery building those factories in Britain? Etracting economic resources from empire was not new, either.

There is a difference between arguing that industrialization benefited from slavery and exploitation and arguing that it required those things. You might also want to look at the historical circumstances out of which capitalism developed. Economic protectionism in Europe by guilds and the elite limited the ability to create competitive and profitable ventures within Europe. So, one advantage to cotton pulled from colonies had was the absence of economic protectionism in those forms. You also have to compare living standards pre-industrialization. You can't just look at the conditions of the urban areas in a vacuum. Socialists, wittingly or not, would basically take us back to older forms of economic protectionism that limit innovation.

Now, you have to talk about specific resources. In the terms of cotton and American chattel slavery, industry showed entirely capable of adjusting to the absence of slave produced cotton. In fact, Britain was pushing abolitionism at the same time as industrialization. The end of slavery in America hardly slowed industrialization.



It is very odd that people who argue that slavery and exploitation were necessary components of industrialization ignore the fact that Europe essentially rid itself of slavery at the same time as capitalism took off. That is a very odd correlation, if you ask me. Anti-colonial attitudes also rose during that time. Colonies were never as profitable as people like to think, so it actually does make sense when you examine the data.

In terms of how profitable colonies were:

Thomas & McCloskey, which was collected in Floud & McCloskey, has got a nice overview of the research from the Jurassic age of cliometrics on the importance of the West Indies in the late 18th century. The social rates of return on the British capital invested in the Caribbean sugar colonies were deliberately overestimated, but were still considerably lower than the returns from putting the same amount of money in gilts (British bonds). This was because the prices of imports from the British West Indies were higher for the British consumer than world market prices of the same goods, on account of the preferential access given to BWI producers by mercantilist policies. (Only ginger was cheaper !) Moreover, the British Exchequer doled out considerable sums to protect those islands from rival colonial powers. “…British national income would have been considerably higher ‘if the West Indian colonies had been given away'”.

http://pseudoerasmus.com/2014/11/10/...industrialism/

In terms of colonization, there is no way to prove or disprove what would have happened if Britain did not colonize India. It was not the only source of cotton. Non-formal colonies also provided quite a bit such as Egypt and China. The author of that article sums this up nicely:

But what ever the case be, industrialisation still would not have been prevented. By ~1820 or 1830 Britain was producing surplus textile for export and that surplus required cheap and abundant cotton. But the function of the surplus was primarily to enable Britain to import its deficit in food production. If it had to grow more of its own food it might have slowed down industrialisation but not prevented it. I think. It might have developed more like northern France, for example.

It's the difference between something being necessary and beneficial. Capitalism did not require those things.

dogukan

So it is as direct democracy as possible.

No, it isn't. That is readily apparent in what you wrote there explaining it. Democracy also does not equate to individual choice which is what I was talking about in the part you quoted. Individual choices are in fact still restricted by democracy even if someone nominally has a small ability to influence an outcome. You didn't answer my question at all.

So Kurdish agenda is anti-capitalist, but they do not exactly have a platonic alternative. Since the real deal in being a society critique is freedom of individual, they look for things that cause the contradictions in society and try to solve them from alternative ways.

And how are you defining freedom of the individual? It seems to be free from want rather than free from restrictions. Free from want inherently implies restrictions being placed on other individuals and their ability to make choices that do not directly harm another.

In that sense for instance, instead of banning private property, they ban wage labour, instead of banning private entrepeneurship, they open all issues to decision apparatuses of the locals and see how it works, experimenting.

And this right here - you are saying if an individual wants to sell their labor, they can't. You are saying that if two people decide a relationship is mutually beneficial, they cannot pursue it. Which is what I pointed out a very long time back and which you danced around admitting. You then come up with this post which equates local representational democracy first with pure democracy and then equate that to individual freedom. A majority of people making a decision that restricts an individuals choices such as to sell his labor is no different from a monarch imposing his will along the same lines.

Foremost, I do not believe in equality.
But what you say is a special kind of historical insight lacking. So tell me, who the hell turned into everything that is around into private property and put a price tag on it?
Certainly warlords of classical era or Romans had a different understanding of private property...like, at what point in history, did men say "alright, this piece of land is mine beucase it belongs to no one"....can you do the same thing now?
Because I certainly can't....and it seems to me like the men who suddenly had the power to own the land(which was the most important mean of production until recently in human history, which is also crucial in the rise of capitalism) had a say in everything. I am merely born into this society the landowner(using the word as a substitute to the hegemonic class) has greatly shaped.

Yea, it's ignorance on my part, not an example of your childish impulses and pipe dream of removing a society from everything that came before it historically...

Where does private property come from? Maybe whatever education you had should have included Locke. Tell me - what right to you have to dispose someone of land they invested their labor into developing? It's amazing to me that you ask this question as if you are stumbling upon some great insight when Aristotle was writing about it thousands of years ago. Meanwhile, you use ad hominems accusing me of ignorance of unspecified sociological theory and try to pass that off as an argument.

Your argument that all private property comes from the initiation of force and taking it from another is baseless. No libertarian would argue that a strong man has the right to come and take a piece of land another has occupied and developed. That's initiatory force. Nor can anyone go back in time and change the wrongs people have committed throughout history. But apparently you think something that happened perhaps centuries ago or longer justifies the initiation of force on the part of others. You are arguing entirely in terms of a collective.

You also act as if everything is a zero sum game. Person x has land and they own it forever. Individual y is thus some sort of helpless victim with no alternative, so they must take from another whose wealth must be the result of ill-gotten gains...The fallacies abound and the real world limitations on redistribution have been shown time and time again.

I'm also just going to mention the real world problem of scarcity which you've still never addressed or even dared to speak of once in any of your posts.

I can tell you that back when humans lived in communal societies, it took physical force and slavery to enforce "private property". Which is the whole basis of classed society we have today. Just because it happened more than 6000 years ago, does not change the fact whole system were built by the hegemons to legitimize their ownership.

Why did private property require slavery? I guess truth of this statement is just supposed to be self-evident. Now let me point out that the people who make up classes are fluid within a generation, but particularly so across generations. So, no, that is not the basis of our current social order. Private property has changed hands, and not just because of revolution or force. In a number of instances, it was in fact voluntary exchange.

You can't actually prove the fundamental basis of your assertions here, and scarily enough, you think it justifies mass violence today...

But I highly doubt he bought it in free-trade. And certainly his son and grandsons and grandsons of his grandsons, while inheriting the most important mean of production that gives you great power over others, did not trade any labour for it.

People in the past used force, allegedly, so that justifies the use of force today against people who had nothing to do with that force - particularly in the West. This is the sort of insanity that results from collectivization. You are basically talking about original sin here, yet you laugh when I call you a religious zealot.

In that sense, everything we live in is enforced, because we do not choose the world and system we live in. We are shaped into it, force shaped into it. We go to schools that tells us how normal society works and how bad others are.

And this is utter nonsense for reasons I pointed out pages ago. Explain all of the people who reject the normative narrative of the hegemonic classes if people are forced to go along. Those people are clearly demonstrating something you that are inherently denying exists - individual preferences. They aren't forced to do anything. Society has an influence on the individual, but the individual still clearly exists. You then reduce society into a ridciulous zero sum game, and imply, despite all reality, that you can fairly and justly separate people from the past. Because blood today somehow avenges wrongs committed centuries ago or some such nonsense.

What sort of arrogance does it take to think that you or any group of people have the ability to sort out the injustices of history through more injustice that differs in no way from what you are condemning? Instead of breaking the cycle, your ideology perpetuates it. Your ideas are about revenge, and even then not revenge against individuals who wronged you but collective groups of people you assign guilt to based on the actions of their ancestors.

Think of all the inheritance, the power and influence people who born into a certain social class inhabit all of a sudden. All the corruption and deal they make. And the laws they pass to make "business easier" at the cost of labor power...and then when you go there they smash you with tools of the state and media.

Yes, and instead of having a government that is pro-business, why, you would turn around and just use the instruments of power to do the opposite. Then you claim to be differnet in kind, and somehow lecture and prattle on to someone like me who simply advocates for voluntary exchange and non-coercion.

Your concept of hegemony is a joke contradicted by your own arguments. And I went into this pages ago in arguments that you did not respond to. You simply glossed over those inconvenient data points.

The issue of proleterianization(meaning, taking property away from public or large portions of the population, and turning them into private property owned by the few) is real.

I'll go back to the start of my response to you at the start. You deny that people can willingly decide for themselves on this matter. So you ban wage labor and capital and call this freedom. You remove the ability of the individual to make choices and pass it off as freedom. What your entire ideology and outlook boils down to is you don't like that individuals make certain choices and you want to restrict them. You cannot believe that many people in the West are content or even happy with their existance. You - instead of making a better life for yourself, instead believe that you have some right to overthrow the order that you believe has brainwashed everyone else.

everything is a commodity now. At what point in history did everything become a commodity?

This, despite your continued ranting, has nothing to do with individual choice. An individual is not forced to do something just because he does not get to make it in a vacuum free of influencing factors. That is not freedom, nor is it possible.

I am not saying this is bad or wrong btw

Yea, dude. You totally aren't saying it's wrong or anything, but you are perfectly in support of people willing to enforce your ideas at the barrel of a gun. I mean, totally. How could I not see it?

Think of organized crime. It is obviously some form of free trade. But the functioning of capitalism becomes more pure in its "free trade" and how it enforces itself.

No, organized crime is not free trade. A black market can be a form of free trade, but tends to be prone to violence. Organized crime tends to mimic the behavior of a government in which they establish a monopoly on force in a given area or sphere.

Hah, I am no statist buddy. State is a tool of oppression, it is a tool for a class to oppress another one. Or in a different look, depending on what kind of a social order it rests on(nation state, feudal kingdom, direct democratic city state?) it creates its means to make sure status quo is preserved. No superstructure allows radical changes, for each system radical changes are a threat that should be destroyed. Whether through physical force or ideological hostilities.

I'll just point people back up to the start of your post. I frankly don't care how you classify yourself at this point. Whether you recognize what you are or not doesn't change the implications of your ideas. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's a duck.

And I'm done. I don't care to go through the rest of your post.

[fkizz]

I don't subscribe to the evolutionist or economist interpretations of Marxism

Considering this is the average young marxist, this explains much more than it should. You do realize marx biggest work, Das Kapital, is about Economy, and that Marx himself was an Economist?

And that Marx critique on Capitalism is based on what he deems as flaws in the distribution of its economies? And that pushing for equality and many other things have a lot in common with Marx?

Do you realize that even people who prefer Capitalism (or Democratic Capitalism) know about Marx, and that amends to errors in the Capitalism system that Marx had pointed out in XIX century have in the meanwhile been fixed by Capitalism itself? (we're in XXI century now, many things have changed)

To deny Economic interpretations of Marxism is going beyond doublethink. This is a first for me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:C..._1979-1983.png

You've had almost a one third of world land turned into communist attempt, and which one of them turned out good in the end?

Even China today is slowly but surely getting more Nationalistic/Patriotic and Flirting with Capitalism.

[Hobbes]

Yes I do, person who does not know what the economist interpretation means.

[ABH2]

If everyone else is defining it wrong, how about you respond with what you think it is and why you don't think its right? You know, have an actual discussion. It's almost as if the leftists are scared to have their ideas scrutinized with the way they avoid answering questions and stating their views.

[Hobbes]

An economist interpretation would be one that over-emphasizes the results of Marxism's analysis of economy and how they relate to the development of the superstructure. Of course I can see how someone who supports the faux-science of economics in an almost religious way could never grasp how one can be a Marxist while disagreeing with some of his findings.

[Platon]

@ABH2
If I say that the crisis of capitalism was the root cause of the world wars for example, it's my opinion. You can say it's all bollocks - thats your opinion. None of us can prove anything

What I can disprove is some of your comments:

Who gave us the 8 hour work day, and weekends off? The first person to do that was Henry Ford, and it had nothing to do with unions.
The International Workingmen's Association took up the demand for an eight-hour day at its convention in Geneva in August 1866, declaring The legal limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvements and emancipation of the working class must prove abortive, and The Congress proposes eight hours as the legal limit of the working day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
It's pretty obvious that most countries introduced the 8 hour work day after the russian revolution 1917 and it had everything to do with unions


Hm...If Marx were right, wages should have been stagnant if not reduced further throughout the 19th century, not steadily rising at rates unseen before in all of human history.
Why You stop at 1900?

Theres your Marx stagnation..



Advance in what way? Maybe you can point out all of this breakneck innovating that comes from Sweden.
http://www.economywatch.com/companie...st/sweden.html
I'm sure you can find some countries of Swedens size (9 million people) that have more successful companies than Sweden - but not many

[ABH2]

If I say that the crisis of capitalism was the root cause of the world wars for example, it's my opinion. You can say it's all bollocks - thats your opinion. None of us can prove anything

You can say it, you can hold your opinion, but if you don't defend it with actual exposition and facts, it has no basis.

It's pretty obvious that most countries introduced the 8 hour work day after the russian revolution 1917 and it had everything to do with unions

Hm. So, Ford was the first to do it, he actually doubled worker's pay while doing so all on his own, and doubled profits at the same time before the Russian Revolution ever took place in 1914...and you think it had NOTHING to do with it spreading? Ford was the most influential 'capitalist' of the early 21st century. He literally doubled his profits before the Russian Revolution ever took place implementing these changes. The funny thing is you could pick out any number of reforms forced upon businesses by governments. You just happened to describe one that the evil capitalists did all on their own with no prodding.

The fact that Ford willingly upped pay while cutting hours believing it would increase worker productivity runs completely counter to everything Marx preached.

Why You stop at 1900?

The discussion was over 19th century wages when Marx was writing. They were steadily rising despite his predictions. You didn't even actually respond to the chart itself. You instead simply cherry pick some bogus metric from later essentially moving the goalposts. But let's talk about the second half of the twentieth century.

First off, I'll start by pointing out that Marx did not predict stagnant wages, but declining wages as capitalists squeezed every last penny out of the working class in order to fuel profits.

But in terms of wealth and even purchasing power, the idea that the average person has less of it is absurd.



So, from the time of your chart and the 1970's, in the United States at least, the amount of income spent on food has declined by a third. This is because of the rapid production gains produced by industrial agriculture.



Home ownership in the US in 1900 was 46.5%. Today even after the collapse of the housing bubble it sits at over 66% and above where it was in 1970 (about 60%).

Car ownership:


I mean, we can go on, but from 1970 to today, people have only continued to get wealthier by most metrics. We haven't talked about TV's where someone may have to spend their whole month's salary in the 1960's compared to today when it's a fraction relative to what it was. Or entirely new technologies that didn't even exist in the 1960's. The American middle class is not poorer than the middle class of the 1980's, 1990's. People have the ability to eat out more (I can post yet another chart to show that), have more to spend on entertainment and luxury goods. Prices have dropped on most goods from the 1970's to today.

It is mendacious to claim you are poorer than someone in he 1970's when you have access to technologies that didn't even exist then, and there has been constant improvement in those technologies over time that have improved quality while still seeing prices decline.

It is odd that people on the left tend to equate wealth purely with income. But even then, world wealth continues to grow, and poverty continues to decline globally.



The hunger rate continues to drop globally:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.as...8#.VfED9Je3qXc

All of this despite rising population and the spread of that evil capitalism. Maybe the two are linked...

In terms of wages, globalization has increased competition and the supply of skilled workers. It's also led to sharp cuts in the cost of production. It plays a part in pulling people in developing countries out of poverty and hunger. You have still been given smart phones, computers, have no fear of going hungry, and free time...and yet you complain about how much poorer you are.

Basically, by every metric you would want to look at, humanity has progressed more since the advent of capitalism than all the rest of human history combined. And alls you can do is lament the loss of good union jobs in the West.

I'm sure you can find some countries of Swedens size (9 million people) that have more successful companies than Sweden - but not many

What I'd really like to see is Sweden open its doors to mass immigration. Funny how you didn't address that fact. Can you tell me what poverty rates are for Swedes/Nordic folk in America are? But I actually asked what innovation Sweden does. Innovation does not mean there are large publicly traded corporations.

Beyond that, you really should educate yourself on where the wealth you vote to carve up comes from. The fact that you point to publicly traded companies to show how 'advanced' Sweden's economy is should tell you that it is, in fact, capitalism that creates the wealth that your welfare state than takes its cut from. Without capitalism, your welfare state could not exist. You ignore trends that are inconvenient to your worldview which lacks any sort of nuance to it at all let alone the facts to support it.

Hobbes

An economist interpretation would be one that over-emphasizes the results of Marxism's analysis of economy and how they relate to the development of the superstructure. Of course I can see how someone who supports the faux-science of economics in an almost religious way could never grasp how one can be a Marxist while disagreeing with some of his findings.

Scarcity and supply and demand aren't exactly voodoo. Nor do you actually seem to understand what it is I believe in because it has nothing to do with faith in economic theory. The things I just mentioned are far closer to laws despite what you believe. That's irrelevant, though. I simply believe in non-coercion and allowing individuals to make their own choices, whatever they may be, as long as they don't cause direct harm to another.

The end results of individual liberty don't matter to my beliefs. They are just something I can point to as tangible benefits. They are nice to have, but beside the point of whether you or anyone else has the legitimate authority to control another human being and make qualitative preferences for them.

Communism/socialism are not good at producing wealth. They have not worked to pull people out of poverty. Maybe if you respected even basic economic laws like supply and demand, you would figure out why those experiments all failed.

[Hobbes]

Your entire theory is based on the premise that humans are rational economic actors. This has been proven to be completely false.

[fkizz]

Yes I do, person who does not know what the economist interpretation means.

Well good luck, "marxist".