I know most of you are too far gone, but for others I ask that you please, please read this in full

I know most of you are too far gone, but for others I ask that you please, please read this in full.

Communism is an ideal, in the sense that communists see the unprecedented rise in wealth and standards of living in democracies, and nevertheless assume that they individually can order the world better than can competition.

That is an extraordinarily arrogant claim, as it implies omnipotence.

Mode of production and Mode of management cannot be practically separated, to claim otherwise is a weak semantic game that will only win you points among believers.

You recognise that ownership of the means of production is compatible with capitalism as all the desirable percieved ends of socialist ideology are actually slowly manifest of the emergent order of a free market.

(Remember, "Free Market" means free from designated ends, not regulation. The point of a free market is to establish competition, the maintenance of competition requires certain regulation.

A topical example of this would be Net Neutrality, which is a regulation which protects competition).

Ideology is absolutely a factor behind Revolution, folk need their emotional intuition to righteous indignation backed by some attempt at reasoning. Socialist ideology is that attempt at post hoc reasoning.

How does one convince anyone to do anything if there is no value placed on merit? Without some form of exchange how does one punish laziness or incompetence whilst rewarding hard work and efficacy?

The socialist answer thus far has been corporeal, that is brutal physical punishment, rather than dispassionate monetary incentive.

Do you truly not see how incompetent and ultimately violent such an ordering of society necessarily becomes?

And I know you guys always respond indignantly that economists always just use religious, moral etc justifications for capitalism, but this isn't true at all. For a hint at the economic sphere in leiu of actually reading economic philosophy or research, I recommend Russ Roberts' world renowned podcast "Econtalk". Read Hayek's "Road to Serfdom", it is a world renowned evisceration of socialism.

A free-market works because like a biological system, it uses a few simple rules to produce a self-correcting and ever progressing order which no one individual or group could ever be capable of dictating.

Every "Marxist" appears a hack - despite many of them being quite intelligent - because communism is a defunct activist ideology founded on 17th century scientific ignorance, the notion that we are a blank Slate, capable of being perfectly molded by culture.

(I think this ignorance ought not be to readily attributed to great fault of Marx' capacity as a thinker, he was undoubtedly a genius).

His legacy ought be modern taxation policy, fair working hours and labour unions.

Don't ask for it be more deaths, and join liberals in fighting the fights that truly matter instead

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=u52Oz-54VYw
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch27.htm
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/03/12.htm
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Oops sorry put subject in name field, excuse my newfriendness

bit gay mate

no but nice pic

no to what? if you have a specific contention let me know

Excellent pasta.

What Adam Smith actually meant was a market free from the relics of feudalism, a market free of economic rent and usurious debt.

nope

What does feudalism have to do with anything?

early classical economics was responding to mercantalism

Not really, it's way too dry and earnest

wow I get to actually tell someone to read marx

sorry to say this, but you're right

Lol nice pasta democrip

Care to point out where I'm wrong?

Free Market Capitalism and Centrally Planned Socialism are both incredible bad ideas for economics, based on what I've read.

Productive Capitalism (manufacturing, farming, tech and tool innovation) arguably is a good thing. Unfortunately it comes with finance capitalism (Usury, Speculation, Stock Buybacks, etc.) which adds numbers to the GDP, makes people rich, but doesn't add anything to the productive capacity of the economy, and consolidates wealth and capital. That happens due to the property and capital ownership theory of capitalism.

Free Market Capitalism rules for property and capital ownership separates use from ownership. Which allows absentee landlords, and absentee shareholders.

Natural Capital (land, air, water, minerals and metals, etc) are a relatively finite resource, the rules of capitalism create a situation like the game of monopoly. Because you don't need to directly use the capital, land or resources that you own, you can rent them or collect dividends. Which means that the more you own, the more wealth and capital you'll accumulate. That inevitably leads to the consolidation of wealth and capital (an oligarchy).

Another problem is that Free Market Capitalism would create even more corporate control than lobbying under state capitalism does. Lobby groups often are doing so on behalf of a group of companies, or an entire industry. That shows that companies will engaged in mutual aid to protect their market interests, they aren't in perpetual competition like free market capitalists portray. They realize that a they need to help one another, if something threatens the profits of their entire industry.

Under Free Market Capitalism, companies could (and would) pool resources to buy land to ensure their products would be able to be legally sold there. (Eg. Pharmaceutical companies buying land, to sell addictive drugs to children, teens and adults.)

Marketing is also a powerful agent for shaping peoples values and behaviour. If you believe the myth 'marketing doesn't shape desires, it just informs them' then you are ignorant of the effectiveness of marketing.

Edward Bernays created the modern advertising industry, by fusing together Freudian theory and group therapy (he created focus groups), in order to sell products. Empirically his methods worked, and gave birth to the modern advertising industry, which is even more sophisticated.

Individually adverts say; "Buy this thing to make your life better".

Collectively adverts say; "Buy things to make your life better."

Capitalism and marketing creates a culture of materialism and consumerism.

This can be seen in every society that has gone from traditionalism to capitalist in the 20th century… South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Qatar, and the UAE. They are all renowned for their consumerism and materialism.

Under Free Market Capitalism, those with the most capital and wealth would have the most power. ('Vote with your dollars'.) Their money would direct resources, and shape the culture of society.

That is the world that you want under free market capitalism.

There are alternatives.

Some book recommendations, that will debunk the notion that Free Market Capitalism is the best economic system;

1) Drive By Daniel Pink

2) Bad Samaritans By Ha Joon Chang

3) Free Trade Doesn't Work By Ian Fletcher

4) The Entrepreneurial State By Marianna Mazzucator

5) The Corporation By Joel Bakan

6) Life Inc By Douglas Rushkoff

I would literally bet money that you will abandon a belief in Free Market Capitalism after reading those books.

I challenge you to read those books and walk away with a belief in Free Market Capitalism. I genuinely don't think you will, I am that confident that by the 3 book in the list you will see why it's not backed by Economic history, nor behavioural science.)

(For the record, I have read: Ayn Rand, Peter Schiff, and Fredrich Hayek books.)

Stopped reading here. Sure, no one is "pro-competition" in the sense you're using, but we certainly don't believe in some singular god-like central planner. We believe in giving the workers the means of production to what they, and society in general, can produce.

You need to understand things you're criticizing. Your strawman us as Bolsheviks, and because the rest of your argument follows this premise, it is invalid.

I talked about "means of production" in the part right after and how it has nothing to do with striving for socialism since things like coops can exist perfectly well within capitalism

Baseless claim.
wat
The main desirable perceived end is the capability to reproduce your own existence without resorting to sell your labour power for money 40 hours a week, how does it manifest at the moment?
inb4 welfare, the welfare states have peaked decades ago and now they're rotting away in every country other than third world shithole where things can hardly get worse like USA
This argument would make more sense if working for money a voluntary thing rather than something you have to do not to fucking die or lead miserable existence.
Quite on the contrary OP, if we could completely get molded into the certain form, then nobody ever would suffer from middle-age crisis, die from overwork or go to the uni just to hold off the inevitable fate of becoming a wagie, in fact revolution would be impossible since nobody would find being a wagie shit.
Only the second one holds out nowadays and it's also arguable in eg. my country where being forced to stay overtime is common. It's not like we could've stopped it anyways.

...

Coops aren’t socialism. Socialism cannot exist within capitalism. Even a Commune is forced to recognize private property rights and participate in the free market, meaning that they can’t separate themselves from capitalism.

Market Socialist, Mutualists, and Collective Anarchists consider coops socialist. However they don't want them existing alongside corporations like OP does.

I understand that most Marxists generally don't consider coops socialist, but Marxist socialist theory is not the only form of socialist theory. Prodhon preceded Marx.

I know coops aren't socialism, but they are arguably worker ownership. I'm using them as an example of why you don't need socialism to get what you need.

Except you do. Capitalism has shown that it doesn’t lead to our goals. It doesn’t lead to the maximization of personal agency, it doesn’t lead to general prosperity, and it doesn’t lead to a sustainable economic model. A few isolated cases of the workers owning the MoP don’t make up for environmental catastrophe, mass inequality, oligarchic governance, or 4 billion people living in poverty.

I need the abolition of commodity production so that kinda does necessitate socialism.

Yes and they’re wrong. I still like market socialism and would like to see it implemented, but I don’t consider it actual socialism.

Why was this post anchored? I'm not being belligerent and quite a few leftists have given thoughtful responses ITT even if I don't necessarily agree

BO strikes again!

Guy you're being nice but we get this like every week, most of them aren't nice like you but it gets pretty tiring after awhile

this is not communism, nay even marxism, you may point to a bolshevik style government as ruled by individuals, and for the sake of argument we'll say it was, then you'd have to prove why an individual cannot operate a market at a greater efficiency then a competition, there is no claim of omnipotence, only that those who have the universal statistics and measurements across a community may be the best to adjust production, rather then too simply let an over-production of all goods ensuring there is never a shortage as it is under a competitive market.

hardly, i hate to be that guy but read or at least watch some short video on marx's labor theroy of value and then look at the falling rate of profits, capitalism is inherently unsustainable, that's not a marxist conspiracy that's just the very nature of the system. if workers owned the means of production then they would simply exploit themselves under a capitalist system, the end goal of communism/socialism is to eliminate that exploitation entirely.

prove this

this implies the sole motivator of man is too be richer then his neighbor, i have no doubt that greed plays some kind of role under capitalism as a motivator, but that cannot be described as a universal motivator, otherwise you'd have to explain things like wikipedia and linux, to designs which seemingly have zero benefit to their creator. I propose that greed is a desire inherenetly place upon us as a capitalist consumers by the ideology, and would ultimatly be none existent in communism. I understand that this claims holds no real validity, there is no evidence to suggest it should, but my point is that neither is the claim that greedy is inherent and furthermore must be satisfied to motivate people.

the work or you starve policy has been in place all of humanities existence, it's inherent in our natural values

yes, because the system itself is inherently unstable and unsustainable, the only justifications for it have to be moral, economists trying to disprove socialism as an alternative are rarely ever trying to say the capitalism is perfection, they simply dismiss it's main rival as unfeasible.

terrific a Chicago school graduate and a chimpanzee left at a typewriter.

appeal to nature, but beyond that you have to explain why something works simply because it has "simple rules" which prevent it from being dictated by a single group or individual

literally completely untrue, this i'm afraid you have to read marx for

he was a retard, he had to work day in and day out to see simple patterns, i have no doubt that everything he wrote is true and hold merits particularly in today's society, but he was not smart, he just worked for hours on end proving a theory every other thinker laughed at in the time

he would rolling around in the grave at the mere thought

Go in the moderation feedback thread claiming this thread since you were rude and baiting, if a volunteer without PMS happens to be around, then you might be unanchored

fuck

actually zero reason to be anchored, would of generated far more discussion then more then half the threads on this board right now

Is this what you think Socialism is? When everybody gets free shit?
You could have saved me the trouble of reading your worthless essay. You know nothing.

Of course not, that's why I said people need to be forced to work using corporeal/physical punishment

Legit just read stirner

is that how you think the soviet union was ran

the Soviet Union had unequal, hourly pay just like the United States so I don't know what the fuck you're on about.

OP is arguing in good faith and generating discussion, aside from a dumb, snarky opening statement. People are allowed to debate here, I take it that the thread was anchored by mistake.

Thank you. We're better than this.

Why'd you delete the Steve Jobs topic? I had a reply written up. I'll paste it here anyway

How did you even mess up that badly last time? I saw your name but w/e it's straight, I'm not a polack piece of shit who's gonna use it. Anyways, you're completely misunderstanding, socialism isn't just some employee focussed form of capitalism, its the abolition of class and bosses. The question is irrelevant because there would be no CEO. It's possible there would be some great scientist or planner that needed a nurse to help them at work (if it's just a wheelchair they could just have an automatic one but say they're more disabled) but they'd be treated the same by society and paid just about the same.

Dunno if this topic will stay up so I'll just post this then the next bit

I think Fidel did a pretty good job.

I didn't know that reddit had infested this place. Stop making 20 lines look like a novel.

I agree, here in Holla Forums, we only write in solid blocks of text.

Here's OP in a more Holla Forums friendly format.

I know most of you are too far gone, but for others I ask that you please, please read this in full. Communism is an ideal, in the sense that communists see the unprecedented rise in wealth and standards of living in democracies, and nevertheless assume that they individually can order the world better than can competition. That is an extraordinarily arrogant claim, as it implies omnipotence. Mode of production and Mode of management cannot be practically separated, to claim otherwise is a weak semantic game that will only win you points among believers. You recognise that ownership of the means of production is compatible with capitalism as all the desirable percieved ends of socialist ideology are actually slowly manifest of the emergent order of a free market (Remember, "Free Market" means free from designated ends, not regulation. The point of a free market is to establish competition, the maintenance of competition requires certain regulation. A topical example of this would be Net Neutrality, which is a regulation which protects competition). Ideology is absolutely a factor behind Revolution, folk need their emotional intuition to righteous indignation backed by some attempt at reasoning. Socialist ideology is that attempt at post hoc reasoning. How does one convince anyone to do anything if there is no value placed on merit? Without some form of exchange how does one punish laziness or incompetence whilst rewarding hard work and efficacy? The socialist answer thus far has been corporeal, that is brutal physical punishment, rather than dispassionate monetary incentive. Do you truly not see how incompetent and ultimately violent such an ordering of society necessarily becomes? And I know you guys always respond indignantly that economists always just use religious, moral etc justifications for capitalism, but this isn't true at all. For a hint at the economic sphere in leiu of actually reading economic philosophy or research, I recommend Russ Roberts' world renowned podcast "Econtalk". Read Hayek's "Road to Serfdom", it is a world renowned evisceration of socialism. A free-market works because like a biological system, it uses a few simple rules to produce a self-correcting and ever progressing order which no one individual or group could ever be capable of dictating. Every "Marxist" appears a hack - despite many of them being quite intelligent - because communism is a defunct activist ideology founded on 17th century scientific ignorance, the notion that we are a blank Slate, capable of being perfectly molded by culture. (I think this ignorance ought not be to readily attributed to great fault of Marx' capacity as a thinker, he was undoubtedly a genius). His legacy ought be modern taxation policy, fair working hours and labour unions. Don't ask for it be more deaths, and join liberals in fighting the fights that truly matter instead

My mind glazes over when I see blocks of text. I'm used to reading book, and other forums where people uses spacing to break apart paragraphs.

I'll continue to write with spacing.

This unprecedented rise of wealth and living standards in 1st world "democracies" is a direct function of the unprecedented impoverishment of Global South countries under sellout comprador regimes.

This is the implicit claim, mate

In practice, you cannot separate production from management. The two are intrinsically related.

Because you sell 40 hours of labour for more than 80 hours would earn you without our economic structures. The efficiency of our systems produce excess which buffers from disaster and results in steadily improving living standards. If no-one works, who feeds them? Who houses them? Who performs all the complex and varied labour which maintains our modern lifestyles? Surely if you wanted to go live off the land you could go off and try it for yourself before demanding it for everyone else?

I'm Australian, so not intimately familiar with American welfare structures. As such I will refrain from comment. In my country however, welfare (I was on it through my first degree) affords the recipient rent and food with enough left over for the classic cheap party lifestyle. Welfare ought be like this, enough to get by on a budget.

We always need to work, food doesnt miraculously appear before us. See my above comment on surplus. Human Behavioural Biology, a lecture series from Neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky at Stanford University is great for this. For more I recommend anything from neuroscience or the field of evolutionary psychology. Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt are two world renowned psychologists whose work I recommend on this.

Read: "The Blank Slate" (Pinker) and "The Righteous Mind" (Haidt).

I'm a biologist, I have a lot of time and ammunition for argument against social constructionism.

(You should also read Keynes and Hayek, all the memes about austerity and top down are invariably from people who understand neither.
Both sides of politics are Keynesian in practice.
Remember all that news a while back about how top down doesn't work in the long term? That was about Keynesian "stimulus", which is top down, not equivalent to welfare, and often spent toward establishing corporate security in stark violation of free market competition).

sorry meant this as a response to

I'm curious why you didn't respond to my initial post in this thread.

A fair response to your post would include a familiarity/engagement with the reading list you provided. As I haven't engaged with the cited material and don't already know it I figured it would be a disservice to you and myself to argue the points prematurely.

nice pic, this thread :
youtube.com/watch?v=u52Oz-54VYw

Read Marx, this is nowhere close to what communism means to marxists.
No, it only appears so because of your liberal ideology you aren't aware of.
Contradicted by real-world evidence. Productivity goes up but working hours don't go down.
Read Marx. Seriously, if you want to make quality arguments against socialism you should understand it first.
This is a legitimate criticism of stalinist and maoist idealism, you can't purge the material conditions away, except maybe by going full Year Zero which is undesirable for other reasons
no matter how many Bukharins or Liu Shaoqis you purge, no matter how intense your propaganda campaign, the 'revision' comes around anyway
It's an evisceration of socialism for liberal idealists to rally around. Market Stalinism is not freedom.
Only if you accept that profit = good in every and all cases
READ MARX
that's nowhere close to what he claims
You want to play the body count game? Tell me, how many people has communism killed again? Then use the same criteria and tell me how many capitalism has killed?

Obviously you can. If every firm in the market is a co-op it is still capitalism.

It doesn't require a familiarity to be honest. I just laid out Libertarian property and capital ownership theory (the separation of use and ownership) and it's consequences.

Wow you converted me with this 10/10 argument all this time reading marx and i never realized there is some value to working and geez how would management work if there wasn't an absentee owner assigning managers?

Literally every word you write is based on strawman assumptions from not knowing what the fuck you're talking about.

gr8 b8 m8

Then do that instead of spacing every line.

Stop fucking replying. Mods, anchor this thread instead of banning good faith questions.

S A G E
A
G
E

Why do you people insist upon not reading any socialist literature? There are literally hundreds of books explaining from first principle so skme of the most BASIC ideas of socialism, yet you consistently refuse to read them, instead continuing to argue against poorly constructed strawmen (and even then you don't manage to defeat these vulgarisations, falsifications, and distortions of leftist positions) instead of fucking engaging with the literature like an intellectually honest person would do.

If you're serious about learning, and not just posturing, I can give you book recommendations.

No, this thread is RIGHTFULLY anchored.

There's no use giving those who can't be bothered to read even the most rudimentary leftist text thoughtful and considered replies. We don't have time to explain basic concepts to the lazy and indoctrinated.

I say, link "Family, Private Property, and the State", Capital Vol. 1, and TaNS, and then leave it at that. You cannot convince somebody who is unwilling to invest any time in understanding your position.

And they aren't Communist

No thank

Lad
The Mode of Production of capitalism is literally too produce for exchange
And the market is the mode of management which handles that

And Ideology may be a factor in Revolution but it isn't a key factor
The French, German and Russian Revolutions were caused by economic crisis which forced the people to revolt or else they would die
And the Free Market is like a decaying system
The rate of profit is falling and economic crisis are everywhere

And the richest nation on earth has settlements that are found in LEDCs.

Oh yes, the book where Hayek starts by saying fascism in America and Britain would have been better because anglos are superior. Yeah nah.

I Haven't Read Marx But You Should Definitely Read Hayek: The Post

huge surprise

They don't. I think that Dan Pink's video on motivation explains that people have personal motivating factors, and aren't wholly motivated by profit or threat of loss of limb or any such thing.

Post more black women.

Austrian economics are more retarded than even the least defensible Marxist dogma.

Apologizing for antisocial corporate behavior and circlejerking over wedge issues?

...

btfo