Okay, I'm going to build on this reply as I go along, because I'm a bit scattered right now.
Karl wrote:Hey Hayze thanks for your thoughtful reply. You raise an interesting point about extreme exploitation namely, how far is it justifiable in helping us reach a stage of industrialisation whereby we can fre ourselves from the tyranny of Nature. Here is my response to a few of the issues you have raised raised:
You're right in a sense that the development of the technical basis of production is a pre-condition for a socialist society - i.e. we must have the ability to produce sufficient wealth to be able to move beyond a primitive relation to nature - but I don't see why this is specifically linked to computers. What do you mean by 'efficiency'? You seems to have some conception of socialism as state capitalism that would simply compete against capitalism on its own terms - i.e. the pursuit of ever-greater profits. That is not the purpose of the society I want to see...
But even on these terms, how efficient is a system that sub-ordinates everything to the creation of profit? - so we have 'deepwater horizon' that for want of a safety valve is pouring 9.5million litres of oil into the sea. Or a system that is so efficient as to produce millions of cars that are stockpiled on lots and never used, in the name of competition. Or that ploughs trillions into weapons production to satisfy the demands of inter-imperialist rivalry.
Okay, now, first of all, these are all different things. Regarding the cars - this is a side effect of an efficient system - and a very minor one at that. The same could be said about stockpiles of bumper crops which are held back. (To take your own metaphorical style) - just as the cancer treatment that will save your life has very potent negative side-effect, so does the economy. This is a small price to pay for an efficient system which has given even the lowest earning bracket (in developed countries) fridges, cars, beds, televisions, and much more than the bare minimum for a comfortable life. We forget that before fordism came along the poor had a massive child mortality rate, were sleeping on straw beds, contracting leprosy, and usually would send their children to factories. The belief that the poor are not living vastly superior lives is one only reserved for the extreme consumer, who sees a non-widescreen tv as peasantry. Furthermore, taking a scientific approach, one needs to understand that no systems are perfect; or we'd have a perpetual motion machine built. Just as thermodynamic energy is lost in nearly all energy exchanges, so is some value in the market. This will never be fixed.
Regarding the oil valve - when capitalist society threatens them to prepare these safeties, levying them with massive fines and taxes, why do you think they would do it in a socialist society, where they're simply nudged, and told it's the right thing to do?
Weapons - well, again, that has nothing to do with capitalism. Weapons are purely political. The pure market has no use for weapons unless they are demanded by certain individuals.
This is a little simplistic I'm afraid. I do not deny that supply and demand play an important role in the mechanism of competition. But supply and demand cannot explain the value around which a price flucuates. How can this be explained?
Well, in a perfect market with perfect information, supply and demand would, in fact be the sole determinant of prices. However, due to the problems which I outlined as being massive brickwalls for socialism, information is extremely limited. With a homogenous item like wheat, where pretty much all information is given to everyone (anyone can grow and sell wheat; it doesn't require much info), due to competition, prices will always settle with demand. If anyone puts prices higher than those demanded, the wheat simply won't be bought. Any lower, and everyone will follow suit. The problem, is when information is vastly limited, such as in monopolies. Microsoft can do this because no other company has the information to simply create a doppelganger and undercut prices. They can therefore choose their own prices. This company structure is the equivalent to socialism, and it's what makes our market imperfect.
Was someone arguing this to be the case? Not Marx. Commodity production has existed at least as far back as ancient Greece. However there is a big difference between a society in which commodities are produced (i.e. many pre-capitalist societies) and capitalism where generalised commodity production is the organising principle of the entire process of production.
I understand there is a difference, but it is humungous; so what part of the difference, specifically, are you referring to here?
Do you mean an individual human or that human beings as a collective group can't understand how to allocate resources?
Let's look at the options:
If it's as an individual, then you are attacking an enemy that doesn't exist (i.e. not socialism as I understand it). Perhaps you are thinking of Stalinism, in which case I agree! A dictator won't know how to allocate resources other than by his own authoritarian plan, but that's not the only way to plan an economy.
Incidentally the market is also a result of human actions, not a force of nature as you seem to be implying. In fact capitalism is full of planning within each production process (the capitalist is a dictator of his own operations) - the anarchy of production in the market place is simply the result of the competition between these autocrats.
Thankfully the job of allocating resources doesn't have to be done by an individual - it is perfectly possible to have an economy based on democratic control from below - unless you have any plausible reasons why this is not the case?
I'm afraid this is one point where I have to completely disagree with you. I was talking about any quantity of human beings allocating resources; definately not one human being. As I stated earlier, information is not equal. Again, to use microsoft as an example, how would people understand, democratically, how to price their products? They simply wouldn't have enough information. Furthermore, a priori information is distorted between individuals, leading to unequal information. Some people would value products differently to others. Lastly, it is my opinion, that the general population are rather uninformed Even if you're talking about all the best economists in the world gathering together to set prices, it would not be efficient, the general public would be an absolute disaster. Regardless, how would one go about doing this? I feel I may have understood your point here, so please fill me in on anything I may have missed.
Regarding capitalism as a conscious development of human beings, again, I simply don't agree; still riding on the information problem. Again, I'm citing Hayek's theory of spontaneous orders. It argues that markets are a holistic system - the parts put together form a whole greater than those individual parts - it thus cannot be even close to being understood by any individuals. The same applies to language and law - no one man can understand them in their entirety, and no collection of people specifically led to their development. It was just the law of rising entropy turning simple systems into extremely complex systems.
The key sentence being "Parties are taxed and subsidised accordingly in order to correct this market failure." - who does this taxing and subsiding? The state? And who controls the state? In whose interests does it act? And when different states favour different interests.... you get Inter-state rivalry, imperialism and War.
Again, what is the alternative? The paradox of people not acting socially when threatened with massive fines, but then, in a socialistic system acting socially simply because 'it's the right thing to do' still holds here.
Well it certainly can't be put down to socialism, because we don't live in a socialist society
This still doesn't explain your stance. There's also no proof that it can put down to capitalism. Extreme poverty has existed since the dawn of civilization.
hayze99 wrote:non-monetary politics
Well, I'm mainly referring to the extreme corruption of politicians in many developing countries.
For the vast majority of us the resources are very limited - At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. Whilst just in this country alone the richest 1000 people increased their wealth by 30% this year, during an economic crisis...
This is true, but first of all, citing currencies is meaningless. $10 in some countries will buy you an unbelievable amount of goods. Read below for my answer to this.
tl;dr: My main problem with the socialist ideas is that they flat out attack capitalism as a system. The problem is not capitalism - capitalism has brought us an incredible amount of wonderful developments and continues to do so. Capitalism does not favour anybody. Capitalism does not provide a system which automatically favours the bourgeoisie. It simply creates a system. A completely neutral system, with a certain amount of manipulability. This is where the problem comes. The greedy, evil humans manipulate this system, by an unbelievably tiny amount, and due to it's complexity, this creates a massive amount of negative effects (from our perspective in both respects). This has been going on for a long time, and is becoming increasingly worse. Again, this is not due to capitalism, it is due to human greed.
All that socialism serves to do is to
increase the amount of manipulability in the system by putting it in further control of humans, who inherently are self-interested. What truly needs to be done is for socialists to stop thinking of capitalism as the enemy (firstly because it will never go away, and secondly because, ultimately, in their pure forms they strive for the exact same things) - and to work together, to close this gap of manipulation, rather than rip it wider. Capitalism, by definition, is not evil. It is simply a neutral spontaneous system. The people who attempt to manipulate it are evil, and need to be focused on.
So stop wasting your energy, socialists, trying to incriminate the wrong theories and people. Capitalism is not the idea that the rich should triumph over evil, it is simply the idea that this market is complex, beautiful, and inimitable - just like language and morals, and we need to fix it, not tear it down and attempt to rebuild it consciously. Would you argue to tear apart language? Law? Morals?
