Convert a Holla Forums lurker

I take it you are the boss and have employees, correct?

Yes

Well, would you say you pay your employees the full value of their labour? Also, would you say they think their income is worth the full value of their labour?

I apologize. I have a meeting to go to. I'm not even trolling. This is going to take 2hrs. I'm sure there is some irony here for you guys somewhere.

If you are talking about the billions lifted out of poverty meme, that's a lie. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01436597.2015.1109439

I mean, most likely.
There's a handful of bourgs that have been sympathetic to communism throughout history, but I honestly don't know how to convince you that workers seizing the means of the production and the abolition of private property is a project worth having. Don't get me wrong, I'd be thrilled if you went against your class interest and joined us, but I don't know what benefit it would be to you.

Holla Forums is for left wingers pretending to be conservatives, this one is for right wingers pretending to be commies. If you're pissy about the quality of left-wing discourse the local wingnuts produce, don't ask to be converted, just bitch about it for a while. They'll do their best to model you.

Wew lad

I do apologize for the failure to launch and shitting up the catalog. I'll get back on in 2-3 hours.

People with ADHD can focus on things they like.

Underated post.
Mark Fisher was a fucking saint and he manages to distill our current ideological malaise perfectly in a pamphlet.

I would say we do pay them the full value of their labor.

I think they should have a higher income though.

Just personal observation. I would prefer to live in a capitalist country than a socialist one. I don't trust governments making my decisions.

I see the allure of workers seizing the means, but a couple of assholes always get in power and then everyone gets screwed and millions die. The theory is nice, the reality is horrible.

National Socialism is antithetical to the values they support.

Thank you guys. Be back later if you care

How can the firm both profit and pay people the full value of their labor?

That's highly questionable. You're probably comparing socialist countries to modern capitalist hegemons in Western Europe, and that is definitely an unfair and loaded comparison.

However if you compare socialist states to capitalist ones that are similar geographically and historically, you'd see that socialist states were frequently better or very close (while maintaining greater social securities). Burkina-Faso vs. the rest of Africa, early DPRK vs. South Korea, GDR vs. FRG etc.

The biggest example of a socialist country is of course the USSR, which emerged from a horrifyingly poor and backwards despoty and survived a bloody civil war as well as the most devastating conflict known to mankind. And despite all that it had very high quality of life, great education, strong social securities, second economy in the world. Ask yourself what the USA'd be like if it was dealt the same hand as Soviet Russia.

Ok I'm back. The roads were blocked by Antifa. Just kidding, the meeting was moved.

I believe they are paid full value, I just wish they could be paid more. I would say it's altruism. They are able to buy nutella cheaper than in the EU.

So then you have DPRK, it's doing good, then dictators come into power. Now you have people wasting away walking past those dying on the streets. Communism always ends in dictatorship and death.

Would you say their work is very labour-intensive?

I guess you count the foreign aggresion against potential communist countries as a part of communism?

You cannot pay a worker the full value of their labour and still profit from it.

Imagine I agree to work, say, eight hours for you, during which I produce a value of $10 an hour for a total of $80 - if you pay me $80 for that day's work you make nothing. The extraction of surplus value - i.e. paying me $8 for each $10 of value I produce, and thus making a profit of $16 - is the root of how profit is made from labour.

Not much. We are service providers. So computer work, guiding patrons.

I do believe the USA has done much to destabilize areas as well. I love what the idea of USA idea is to me, not what neocons and boomers let it be turned into.

Ok, I see. But I work as well, I provide a service. Wouldn't my work be managing the facility and having them rent time at an area to work. So if they produce $10 of work, I give them $10 and have them pay me $2 for the facility and production the company makes as a whole.

Whoah, a Holla Forumsyp wanting genuine discussion.
Anyway as pointed out, any kind of authentic cultural environment is rendered impossible by capital as our rituals become represented to us by unreachable figures instead of participated in as part of our way of life. All aspects of life must be forced into compatibility with the form of a marketable good. Even during times of prosperity, capitalism does not equip the people living in it with the tools to build meaningful lives and instead imposes incredible restriction and conformity through the world it allows to appear.
It subsists and expands through vampire-like parasitism on the life energy of the human beings subject to it. We go to work, and our labour is used to breathe life into a good or service using the equipment we're provided with by our employer. The value of our finished products are obviously higher than the amount we're payed for our ability to work, so the reproduction of capitalism through profit literally depends on theft. Workers make the world work using tools made by other workers, but the process can only take place when capital has bought the tools and rented the people. Who the people are in this process is totally irrelevant, as the formation of relations of production take place through the things people bring to the market and not the people themselves. Capital buys means of production and hires worker's labour power to use it, the relations of production in capitalism are formed on the basis of the things in the marketplace and not through social coordination. Links between people take the form of fleeting trades and contracts, their place in society defined by what they possess.
tl:dr - capitalism's bad because it's antihuman as fuck, and you should read Mark Fisher. OR you might be interested in Nick Land, who basically accepts Mark Fisher's diagnosis but thinks its a good thing and can't wait until Capital completely cannibalises humanity and allows us to transcend into post-human cyber merchants in a libertarian nightmare/paradise depending on your outlook.

I look at Russia as a nation that had opportunity, art, beauty, and intelligence. It seemed stifled under the USSR. Pre-revolution Russia in literature seemed on par with agrarian America at the time. The intelligence was astonishing. Then suddenly existentialism and darkness.

Unfortunately the way you look at the USSR is, well, frankly, inaccurate.

The USSR did a lot to preserve and promote Russian culture, while making it available to the masses. You are wrong here.

Also you're moving the goal posts. Tsarist Russia had good literature, maybe, but the living standards were hellish for most of the population of illiterate starving peasants. There's a reason why many Russian classics were anti-Tsarist or just depressing and nihilistic.

I am talking about material conditions here not aesthetics and feelings

I am far from a DPRK apologist but let's be honest here, any non-socialist country would have reverted to barbarism under the sort of isolation and economic pressure it is experiencing. Also I'd probably prefer living in the DPRK than in some sweatshop shithole like Cambodia

So why don't you guys view management as a good? Some person might be great at making hammers. What if that person doesn't know how to get the hammers to the store. His logistics are poor, his accounting is terrible, his foresight fails fore expansion.

If he can do all these things, then he has the means for production. If he doesn't, why cant he work with someone who can.

A big idea on Holla Forums is the order of nature. Anti-human would be anti-nature, I would assume. A population of deer increases with the amount of food and decreases with a rise in predators. No man controls the either. It's unnatural. It's the law of nature. It happens. Wouldn't capitalism follow natural law closer than communism?

This video shows a graph displaying surplus value extracted by companies. Hopefully you'll find more use with that video.m.youtube.com/channel/UCVBfIU1_zO-P_R9keEGdDHQ
The graph explains that most companies gets a surplus value of 50% and that those that get 0% typically break even on their expenses anything lower than that is a failing business.

The transition of Tsarist Russia and it's history before and after are not something I am truly familiar with. Though, through the progression with 20 million dead, I cannot say that those lives are worth whatever success USSR did with promoting culture and preserving it.

You linked a channel, not a video.

The video called why the labour theory of value is right or something like that. I'm on a phone so sorry about that.

Just a side note. This may slide the thread like a bitch….

I clicked on that channel. He sounds astute, like a professor. If I may make a generalization, it seems like Holla Forums types love intellectual phonetics. I think this is why there is such a gut reaction with Trump.

Forgot the name field.

When I was young, learning about government, I really liked communism. If someone has an interest in society, it is easy to get ideological. The theory sounds good.

but I don't know where or when I would want to be transported that is socialist or communist, that I would be happy with.

I want to know if I sent you to the right video when you came back. Did he reference Laws of Chaos: A Probabilistic Approach to Political Economy by Emmanuel Farjoun and Moshé Machover and it showed their predicted value of the median of Surplus value extracted along with the experimental values that are collected later on?

I watched the video. Which states why the labour theory of value is right. There is so much to break down here it is mind blowing.

Stupid complex universe, you didn't follow my parameters. There are more unknowns in a graph of supply/demand that therefore it is useless. Ad hominem, but almost necessary.

I agree, I can see how a good is tied to it's labor value. I don't see how this nullifies supply/demand, although he jumps some mental hoops and establishes it as fact.

I just watched the Labour Theory is Right which showed history and IO tables.

Keep in mind, my intention is not to berate or belittle. I wish to convey respect.

Sorry I actually meant to link you to youtube.com/watch?v=8WBdKZddeOk&t=2s
around the 12 minute mark.

You completely misunderstood him. I'll use Newtons flaming laser sword and say that if what you claim that supply and demand can't be tested or validated because there is too many variables and unknowns for anyone to observe than it is completely useless for any scientific inquiry.

It might be a good idea to jump back to the start as it might seem a bit irritating just hearing conclusions.

There are other forms of management aside from the capitalist form. You could elect those people, for instance.

From the perspective of productive labour, managerial labour certainly counts towards the value of the product as without direction the production process wouldn't work. Most managers aren't holders of capital though.
A cursory glance at anthropology and history tells us that human societies have not always been based around the same principles, and that 'natural' hunter-gatherer societies were much more egalitarian than present society. The very fact that our way of life has changed as we have better learned to interact with the world and each other indicates that we aren't like other animals who pretty much just do the same things every day. We aren't as constrained by 'natural law', and through our combined work on the world to transform it to our needs we reproduce and expand society not just materially but in a certain form with determined types of relations between types of people. The form of society we had in the 'state of nature' before we got greater capabilities of environmental manipulation was antithetical to the so called 'natural' society of capitalism.

some of you alright.

Gonna sound like a proper cop out here OP, but honestly if you want to understand theory on more that a very basic level your gonna have to do a little reading around
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq

thanks

That's why we have computers. Try reading this attached pdf, it's only 20 pages long.

You're already living in a managed economy. There is no such thing as a free market. Corporations already spend millions if not billions on advertising, market research, and supply chain analysis to predict and influence markets. Government subsidizes the biggest corporations and now refuses to break up monopolies because they are bought by those same industries. The free market is a lie and the idea that the economy is some organic expression of free human competition is absurd.

Watch Europe The Last Battle. It's a long documentary that really shows the evils of the right and of capitalism.

That's the point Mr. Cockshott is saying. Unfortunately his inability to grasp the analog aspects of our universe blind him from the most useful observation of economics. It's like calculating the atoms of gas and their trajectory. Just because we don't know they are all moving fast, doesn't mean we can't know the container is hot. The known unknown. He easily casts out the complex system of supply/demand and capitalism along with it. Whoever said we have to play by Newton's laser sword anyway?

Just the labor theory videos? Which is better? That or the PDF at the top?

Do you guys like who's elected and who's managing now?

I think in societies of 10-100 egalitarianism works well. A human mind can make decisions looking over 100. Each can police themselves, and a society can thrive. 100,000 people, dollars a day, pounds of hamburger, trucks of gas, that is too much for a man or men to organize. It's just not natural. Does everyone like central planning here?

Ok, I've got three PDFs and a youtube link. Maybe I'll read one. I'll pick one a random. I hope it's a good one.

I hate to say it…

I think we both win. I got to learn about Newton's flaming laser sword and labor theory, and you guys get me to read one of those PDFs. From listening to Mr. Cockshott I know a lot more how Holla Forums thinks.

One person controlling the whole economy is ridiculous and I don't think anyone here would represent that view.

This but unironically

Learn more and come back.

Georgist-Mutualist here.

Most current taxation is based on earned income. I suggest a single tax based on land values. Thus, the amount of land owned and the value (before improvement by human labor) of that land is what should be taxed. This would discourage (if not abolish) land speculation, a profession which involves buying up land and simply holding it (rather than using or selling it) until the price goes up, and thusly inflating the price of land, natural resources, and basic necessities.

I hold that the resources and land of a nation belongs to everyone.

Otherwise, property will be determined by use. IE, if you're renting (ie, paying taxes on) a piece of land but you never use it (somehow, even after this tax system), then the law will not support you if you want others to kick squatters off it for you.

Right-wing politics are usually based more in an emotion reaction to the world around them. It has a tendency to scapegoat other groups rather than put blame on the power structures that created their situation.

I come here to lurk often just to try and understand you commies and I think I've come to the realization that I never will.

I will never be able to look at you other than freeloaders. As a self made man I understand there is no better feeling than succeeding financially while making my own path. The reward is both material and psychioogical.

What happened in the lives of commies living in the west? Did all of you just have a traumatic event that made you feel this way? It has to be somewhat psychological

my nan got stabbed by a toothbrush when I was a kid so now I want to take them all away

I'm just here for Daddy Stalin

Really activates my almonds

Get the fuck out of here, boomer

Wish you were here last year when I was one too

Not sure how you mean, I was raised well
Nope, just studied mostly

You may be one of the like 2-3 other Georgist-Mutualists who were ever here that converted me. Actually, I think this is the only place I've ever seen Georgist-Mutualists. I get the impression that most Georgists are statist or at least indifferent to the state (and thus statist implicitly).

How how do you feel this way? How can you feel successful by being high then others? How can it feel successful to work for anyone but your self? I worked at a co-op for a while and it was great. I felt like I was actually doing something productive and actually liked working. We where forced to shut down due to unrelated reasons and i've never had that same feeling while working under or for anyone. I feel when people work they should enjoy it and i don't see how that can happen under capitalism.

You most likely had no form of competitiveness in you from a young age. You probably didn't perform very well in school or in sports and this is why you feel this way. You want everyone to have the same payoff due to your own weak drive and fear of failure.

I'm 26 dumbass

Of the people who express this sort of "rugged individual" rhetoric about 2% are the actual plumbers and contractors who crawl up out of the fucking dirt by gumption and hard work. The rest, like I suspect that poster is, are clueless boomers, in soul or body, who benefit from nepotism, family assistance, or state funding that they're ignorant of or don't want to acknowledge.

Brainlet, read a book. Or how about this very short letter by Lenin. You should have the attention span for this.
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/11.htm

this
I think having more of a direct democracy would be possible.

correct
incorrect although there's more of them here than on /leftpol/

I can rationally assume this is a "shit was so cash" type deal, but I'm going to be irrational and assume we're being honest here - so I'd appreciate to know what exactly it is you do, and how you attained it. Perhaps I could even benefit!

I can't speak for the commies, as I'm not a commie, but for me there were a few factors over time. Chronologically, we can start with the Bush admin - watching draconian bullshit like the Patriot Act put out was pretty unsettling. Meanwhile, I was 12 and reading the progressive populist literature - I was telling everyone around me about how the they had given themselves legal authorization to wiretap anyone they wanted. I think people sort of dismissed it when I said it - I was 12 and for what I got right, I got a lot wrong - but of course several months later the New York Times published their famous article on it. And didn't cover the half of it, but that's beside the point. Obviously, the insane surveillance put into place by that administration (and continuing to this day) is kind of the tip of the iceberg with regards to the stuff they did, but it didn't endear me.

Then, the recession. As it happened, I was just coming to the early end of working age in 2007/'08. People were losing jobs. Over time, houses. It was when I started applying for work, thinking I'd get a summer job. No one called me back until 2013, when I started applying again after giving up for a year.

When I turned 18 and graduated high school, my white collar folks proposed something - job, college, or out. When I was 17, I'd read about how college could be a bad investment if you weren't ready, and could leave you with a lot of debts. I was reluctant.
I ended up in art school, which was somehow a compromise because in spite of the ridiculous expense it was at least something I thought I would be good at since I was interested in it. I made sure to pick advertising, since that was a profitable field. When people say art school is hard, they aren't joking - it's an extraordinarily exact discipline. With no previous art education, no friends to help me with projects, I dropped out in less than a year to prevent being kicked out.

After moving out, and living rent-free off my pretty face for about a year, I finally got a job, paid entirely in tips. It turned out what the place was doing was actually illegal wage theft. If I'm not mistaken, they're still doing it. But it was still better, more honest work than when I went into retail.

By this point I was disappointed in Obama (but mainly for continuation of Bush's policies - an aspect which I would still probably apologize for to this day if pressed, which is actually part of the problem), but had previously stopped calling myself a socialist - rightfully, since my early flirtation with socialism was when I knew next to nothing about it and was just mostly anti-consumerist. Anyway, I eventually left my first job, because I thought I had a lead. I didn't. Another year of the runaround, before I got a retail job in 2015.
Eager to please, I stupidly didn't even take the breaks. I think for the first month they just assumed I wasn't marking them down. I was working 10 hour shifts, non-stop - and the total time taken after preparation and commute would have been close to 12. For $8.00 an hour - the 2015 equivalent to roughly $2.75 in 1980. A few bucks above min. wage in 2015 - but 35 cents below the minimum wage in 1980 after inflation.
After a few months of this job, during which I saw numerous people come and go due to the fire-happy boss and hostile work environment, I was eventually fired because the boss tried to call me after closing thinking I'd left early and my phone was dead. I came in the next day, not even knowing.

I got a much nicer retail job later that year, but it was seasonal. The manager was sympathetic, but most people I'd applied with wouldn't consider me - I either had a nearly-empty resume or I had one job that I was fired from. They were impressed with overachieving skills I'd picked up working under psychopaths, and perhaps I could still be doing retail today had I endeavored to join their parent company.

…

but alas, I did not. And my basic needs are covered, because late in my first job one of my folks got sick and asked me to come take care of them. I was worried about it - I mean, I was living in a weird situation in a trailer, but I didn't wanna be one of those folks who lives with their parents into their mid 20s. I'd seen too many people I knew doing that - it looked miserable. But it's what happened, nevertheless. At no point in all of this was I making enough to get a place, and I didn't want to go back to living off of boyfriends.

So, I'm faced with a dilemma. My first retail job left me with a massive catch 22-sort-of hole in my prospects. And before the end of it, my folks were suggesting I pay rent. So what benefit is there for me?

In this city, I can crawl from doorstep to doorstep marking down every opening and asking every manager, and presenting them all my resume, just to get a part-time job and then have my folks scrape off from my savings if I don't have time to perform whatever errands they ask. At the end, they can fire me for whatever bullshit they want, and I'm no closer to affording a place of my own (or even rent), nor have I necessarily even gained something to put on a resume. At one time, I wanted to work - work was fun, it felt good to finally have the dignity of laboring and being paid, it felt good to work next to others to complete a task. But I'm taking all the risk for a low-level job and it won't even pay for a low-level life - I'd be working to live at home with my folks, who are still borderline on-call into their 60s. They never even had to beat the pavement to find work, and still the respectable, secure jobs they somehow found nevertheless look less appealing with every passing day.

Now, I think about all this, and then I think about how many others there are like me, and then I think about how many others there are who don't even have the choice.

Why is it easier for me to not work a conventional job than to work one? For starters, because wages are stagnant, bargaining is dead, outsourcing is rampant, and the labor surplus is kept high. These dead-end jobs won't make housing or necessities any cheaper for others who work them - we all know that many who work are homeless, too. And yet there are houses. There are apartments - more all the time in this city, in fact, growing like trees. But they sit marked up to prices the people who live and work here can't afford, unused until someone is willing to pay for them. A massive industry of housing, which makes its profits not from housing anyone but rather denying housing to everyone for extended periods of time as the market adjusts to this artificial scarcity and the price of everything goes up accordingly, inducing further scarcity in a land of plenty. And those who employ the people who need these resources frequently spend part of the profits paying off politicians - which in turn supports policy which further screws their employees.

Corruption and the unproductive 'labor' of land speculation are molding a society where parasitism is rewarded and hard work is punished.

You know what, fuck it. I wrote all of that, I'm giving this piece-of-shit thread a bump. Just patting myself on the back here.

Here, have a comradely (You). Good job.

whyaminotsuprised

???
Are you implying europe is socialist in any sense of the word?
Also nutella is cheaper in europe.
walmart.com/ip/Nutella-Hazelnut-Spread-13-oz-Jar/10451273 (368 grams, 2.81 euros)
ah.nl/producten/product/wi2406/nutella-hazelnootpasta (400 grams, 2.65 euros)

That's just one country in Europe though. In other countries you'll see it will be more costly. And if you where to import from The Netherlands to America you'll still pay a shitton.

Shit forgot, you also show one state in America. Price differ per state as well.

economy of violence is intolerable, in hierarchy everyone suffers, therefore equality must be achieved and old culture destroyed.

retard alert

That is one of the issues I have never understood. I'd feel the only way it would work would not be current computing, but near smart AI. Then you have AI which is creating new solutions anyway and capitalism and communism would be obsolete. It'd be really good, or AI would make us really dead. I don't think it would work well now though.

Are you saying a flat tax? If land is owned how does land belong to everyone? Or is it owned, but symbolically it is all the citizens? Flat tax on land ownage seems interesting.

First statement is ad hominem. Would you rather me be high class?

I still believe this. I assume you are talking about the irony of a US managed economy as well. I see that and dislike it.

I think the stereotype of the southern voter is what many view right-wingers as. I'm not sure if I can change your stereotype. Give me a second. I need to reassemble my AR.

One of the most liberating things I have learned in the last six months is that nature has a hierarchy. I will never be the best at anything, but I will never be the worst at anything. When I talk to people, they interrupt to repeat mundane conversation. Repetitive stories I've heard, infatuation with cars, talks of status. They listen intently to nonverbal behavior and image. You can't remove this from life. Once you embrace the animals we all are in the universe, you will realize there are no rooms, no buildings, nothing you can step in that is soley human. Everything is nature. Once you see that, you will realize there will never be equality, you can start helping provide equal opportunity, and if a person wastes it, then they are lesser. You move on and don't think about it. I think communism is synthetic. It should work in theory, but something in nature always prevents it.

Interesting. Equality of rights, I agree. I think Equality of class and heirarchy is trying to change the unchangeable.

being poor, yeah

" To me it seems citizens in capitalist countries prosper more than socialist and communist citizens."

Wrong. "Really-existing socialist" societies had/have better quality of life for the equivalent GDP. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf

Why, when what the borgs base class on is so arbitrary?

No one here has a problem with being self-sufficient, it's the conflation of self-sufficiency with be a capitalist that I have a problem with.

Funny you mention that. He went into representing finance capital into a phase space plane, characteristic of gas particles in a space. If you can go and observe these variables that you claim are just not taken into account then go ahead and show it to us. It's more like your claim that we can't observe the temperature or volume or mass of the gas is what you are claiming.

Of course they do, because as soon as they fail it is not real socialism/communism.

The Soviet tell the farmers the food belong to everyone and millions die: Not real socialism.
The Soviet manage the fastest industrialisation in history: Real socialism.
The Great Purges start: not real socialism.
The winter war is the biggest military humiliation in modern history: not real socialism.
The great patriotic war is won: real socialism
Millions of POW are reduced to slavery: not real socialism.
USSR win the space race: real socialism.

So let's say I agree with you, how do you successfully do that? If society naturally tends towards heirarchy, once it is removed, won't it progress back toward a heirarchy anyway? Isn't that how communism fails. Hierarchal government where the few rule the many. A unequal class of government and citizens.

I don't think I understand what you mean. Arbitrary or not, no one organizes bourgey and proletariats, it just happens. Less government means more opportunity for the proletariat to climb the heirarchy.

I can't observe those variables, but that doesn't mean we should cast out the real effect of complexity just because it is complex.

that jump from, we can't understand it in total to we can't understand therefore it doesn't exist makes no sense to me.

It will take me a little bit to read this. Hmm… 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧Waitzkin🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
I'm sorry. I'm just teasing you.

I'd have replied to this last night but my internet shat out.
The place could just as easily be owned and administrated by the workers, no? Cooperatives absolutely are not socialism, but they do perform the important task of showing that it is entirely possible for the people that work at a given firm to administrate it too, and have been for decades if not centuries - hell, even in Capital vol. 1 Marx makes a humorous remark about a liberal publication saying something along the lines of "cooperatives show that workers are capable of administrating their own workplace; however, this leaves no clear place for leadership" i.e. the owner.
It's the other way around - they are not renting the privilege of working with your tools; you are renting their labour power, their capability to work, with the condition that they, in effect, perform extra, unpaid work to produce surplus value. Even Smith and Ricardo understood the dynamic as being a sale of the worker's labour power, not the sale of the owner's tools and premises.

Name field screw up again.

My previous posts.

I agree with you. I think Co-ops can work. I think once you grow beyond 100 or so citizens, then it falls apart.

In our situation, the owners do provide the bulk of the services. But I guess if I look at a situation like Walmart, I can see your explanation. It's like looking at a glass of water. Is it the worker's labor power or is it the owner's managing power.

I skimmed through the article. It seems to make the point that socialist citizens can survive just as well as capitalist. Their description of physical quality of life seems baseline for a first world country. So let's say I agree with you, the PQL is similar in socialist/captialist. Socialism allows persons to survive. But can they thrive? I went to Iceland months ago. Very few own houses. The country is a co-op. No one can own land, it's the citizen's land. You borrow land. They are educated, they have low infant mortality, but they can't grow individually because they are limited by the equality of ownership. I would not choose to live there because they can't thrive. There are very little grocery stores, the shops are empty, not many own cars. They like that life. It doesn't seem like thriving to me.

What fucking do you live in nigger. ☭TANKIE☭s will retardedly own up to everything without a second thought, or will otherwise have an explanation or an excuse for it. The last thing USSRtards would do is disown anything muh not resl sozhilism

Here's something positive.

This board seems very intelligent and well read. You all know your literature, theories, and graphs very well. You are all very polite. With so much statistical and numbers intelligence, I can't be the only one who sees the predictable behavior of humans and nature.

Money is just a river man, succcess are just clouds. It happens, we can't control it.

Still I am impressed with how much you all have read.

Insofar as this even exists it is entirely superfluous and functions as some nebulous justification for the exploitation of the many by the few. Instead of the administration being done by a privileged owner who profits from the labour of others, why can't it be done by an elected member of the workforce? Surely they too have "managing power".
Is not socialist.
What does "thriving" mean to you? I'd consider a person's guaranteed healthcare, employment, and housing more important than their ability to exploit another.
"That's just how things are". The eternal last recourse of the liberal; things can never change, they've just, like, always been like this. Sorry, serfs, feudalism is just how things are. Slaves, don't dream of a better world, don't rebel against your masters - it just has to be like this, you see. And workers - well, there just needs to be someone at the top who gets a bit extra, doesn't there? It's just natural after all.

You're clearly ideologically and historically illiterate.
Pls go back to wherever your from.

Read my post again. It's clear you lack reading comprehension.
We can find and measure the temperature of a volume of gas without knowing all of the individual trajectories of each of the particles of gas.

Yet we make canals and we release silver iodide, potassium iodide, and dry ice to increase rainfall.

can we at least answer on point fellas? We got an openminded Holla Forumstard here, rare enough in itself. Way to chase him away by not replying to the arguments.

It's hard to respond to this because you're not claiming anything concrete. Just that you didn't dig the vibe of whatever segment of Iceland you visited.
For the record it's generally seen as a paradise (besides the weather) so maybe you just have odd taste.

Co-ops as a business model work far beyond the sum you just gave. The Mondragon corporation is a famous example which employs over 70,000 people.

lol no it doesn't.
Years of bloodshed was required to make them a class. Their status is fairly new in the span of human history.
And killing or getting rid of all the bourgeois means the proles take the reigns of history for themselves. Why would I care about maintaining that relationship with them?

When has this ever been true? The era of largely deregulated capitalism was the industrial revolution. Massive economic growth and increase in production but also famously one of the single worst periods to be an average worker. You know when things started getting bearable for the proletariat and we started being able to enjoy things like free time, liveable wages, and a chance at increasing one's station? The union movements, largely spearheaded by anarchists and communists. Now that we've neutered unions in much of the western world we're starting to backslide into the inhuman working conditions of the past. The countries that have retained their strong union hold are consequentially the most livable, such as Scandinavia.
Deregulation only helps those who own capital. We're all fucking sick of deregulation.

Socialists have no problem with organically emerging hierarchies (i.e. a representative elected, an athlete rewarded and upheld by the community, an organizational leader chosen, an individual who works harder and recieves more labour voucher wise, etc.). The only thing we care about and should care about is that every individual is given the opportunity of work and the ability to make themselves self-sufficent. Nothing you said necessarily disqualifies you from being a socialist. So, congrats?

what a fucking idiot. you clearly never managed a fucking business.

they have all read retarded shit

Then explain how you can pay someone the full value of their labour and still make a profit from that labour.

...

Why did then all fail and trailed more and more behind capitalist economies as the time went by?

I see it's possible. It just seems people are corrupt, government is more so. This makes me hesitant to embrace it.

I understand. That is not what Mr. Cockshott is saying. He is saying that supply/demand is untestable correct? That it fails as a theory and scientific analysis because it has unknowns. That it as a theory is limited because it doesn't fit in a function. I'm saying it does fit a function, but one of complexity that we are not capable of understanding, and the irony is, is that is why planned economies don't seem to succeed. The irony is involuting.

I am not trying to play gotcha, I'm just trying to explain my point of view and understand yours.

But what about alteration of natural ecology. The seeding of silver in soil, the loss of wetlands by altered rainfall. If that's applied economically, unintended consequences occur. I guess economically is my biggest sticking point.

If you immerse them in a system that rewards corruption, is that any surprise? Why is the owner seen as less susceptible to this corruption than the worker?

I'm not offended. The other post was another comrade. This is better discussion than I have in real life. Everyone talks about netflix for some reason.

The water's taste was fantastic, and the landscape's green on black was beautiful.

That's interesting. I'll have to look into them. Where does the break occur from "peaceful co-op doing well" towards "shit build a wall so our citizens don't run away"? How come that happens often?

So what if the all bourgeois were killed. I would expect a new class to form in it's place. How is an upstanding people's manager and the gov official not a new bourgeois?

What if someone is incapable of owning capital? In communism where is the protection that prevents them from wasting capital. It doesn't seem good if government regulations put capital toward those that are inefficient with it. Maybe the person has no capital because they wasted it to begin with. I do think the opportunity should be there, but it should not be unnaturally forced.

That user probably used the wrong terminology. The point is to abolish the bourgeoisie by dealing with the conditions which allow them to exist, that being surplus extraction from wage labour and reinvestment into commodity production. The difference between a government offical and an elected manager in a socialist mode of production and a bourgeoisie is that a bourgeoisie can hold economic power over you through control of production and rent extraction while an elected union representative can be called back by the union members and he himself cannot stop the member or other individuals themselves from running production. He himself will also not be under the influence of bourgeoisie lobbying and profit interest. For this reason as well, its of the utmost importance that the workers remain armed to the absolute most they can and their right to defend themselves remains defended by any means.

I've always got the impression that communism rewards corruption more. Is this my capitalist brainwashing?

Thanks for clarifying for me.

The fact that no one individual owns capital to dispose of as they wish in the first place. What exactly did you think the abolition of private property entailed?
Because socialism has not historically existed in a vacuum. Peaceful development would be great - except that peaceful development is made exceedingly hard by the fact that there are a fuckload of other countries that would love to see you crash and burn, and will in fact go to great lengths ("hey, that fascist coup just came out of nowhere we swear!") to do so. This focus on the perceived "nastiness" of socialist states blatantly ignores the very real external pressure that has faced and still faces every single example of existing socialism.
Because they do not privately own the means of production, nor do they purchase the labour of others in order to exploit their surplus value. "Bourgeois" has a meaning, it's not just what communists call things they don't like.

Existing socialism - what you're calling communism - absolutely had its own flaws and contradictions that led to corruption, yes. Even Parenti mentions this in Blackshirts and Reds (.pdf related; chapter 4 is the most relevant, or alternatively this talk follows the lines of the book: youtube.com/watch?v=BYVes44hcJg). However, compare the effects of what corruption may have existed - mostly at relatively low levels - to the effects of the "democratization" of the country and the assorted flavours of corruption, cronyism and plain disregard for human life that it invited in along with the free market.

The difference is that capitalism doesn't actually enable self-sufficiency or provide merit based compensation. In capitalism compensation is determined by how far an employer can drive it down to within the confines of the market, while in socialism he is compensated a non-transferrable labour voucher equal to the work done and the product produced. The worker is also completely dependent on a bourgeoisie to allow him to work on his property and his means of production, in this system a worker cannot obtain self-sufficency. The hierarchies which emerge from capitalism are not strictly individually merit based or determined by work performed but are instead determined by profit maximization and ownership of property or production as well as surplus extraction and reinvestment. Hierarchy and even "offensive" attitudes outside that of the economic matters very little as that hierarchy has no economic force which can be used against you, your always in control of your own labour while in capitalism even your ability and means to perform your labour can be denied from you.
Sorry if replies are slow, I'll be out for a few hours responding to things

No it didn't.

Is this the new trend in corporate-friendly Buddhism…?

Ability isn’t equitably distributed. Why would profits be?

You sound fake. None of the thread’s replies so far indicate a desire to project any kind of well-read intellectualism whatsoever. Honestly, you’re probably not even from Holla Forums. It sounds like you’re a common poster here looking to circlejerk the board for some reason. (?)

be nice.
This is a nice bois thread.
We're going to be nice because the polyp is being nice.
pls respect

I assume you are a Holla Forumsack? I'm not here to argue with them, or project anything. I only lurk Holla Forums and I don't sperg out trying to win every internet argument. I'd say I'm a little bit concern trolling with a lot of genuine interest. Sun Tzu shit, but in a polite way.

What about capital in bolts? Ivan's got 10,000 bolts. In a new building, Ivan uses 8,000 bolts, and leaves 2,000 on the ground. He's alotted 10,000 anyway, so it only helps his bolt making comrades to have them make more. Over the country bolts become scarce, other constructors hoard bolts, even when they are not using them. The government decides to make more bolts, even though there is enough in storage. Soon more bolts than nuts and everything's all messed up.

This I agree with. Most socialist democratizations end up forming a kleptocracy with the name of capitalism. It seems to happen because the governing leaders just disperse wealth to themselves and their friends, meaning they are corrupt, meaning they were corrupt under the previous socialist structure.

Isn't the goal of socialism that the sufficiency is more important to the collective than the self? So if capitalism doesn't provide self-sufficiency, then socialism can't be any better. Right?

What if that worker has a genius idea for the next spoon? He casts bolts, but he has a 2 million ruble idea. Would he have any incentive to share his idea, and if he does, how does he convince others of his crazy scheme. What if it's a good idea but can fail? What if it's entertainment driven, but may not catch on? I don't see him moving that idea from his mind into the real world, and if he does, I don't see the party members allowing him capital.

Aside from ownership of property, wouldn't profit maximization be a good thing? What if the surplus isn't fully extracted or efficient to give back to the workers. The manager's thought process of, "leave a little on the table, it's hours of extra work, and i'm getting paid the same anyway" It seems the incentive is less.

It's just an explanation that humans are smart. There are many things that we can positively affect. Sometimes when we try to fight nature, we instead end up screwing it up. Our system is much bigger than us, and we aren't smart enough to control it all.

You need to despook yourself on muh entrepreneurial innovators. This book does a good job of showing where all the tech that went into the iphone came from (hint: the majority came from the fruits of public funding). youtube.com/watch?v=4ZnHwc6TfB0

Here's a question for you all. If there was a country that was free from US capitalistic influence, and that country had true socialism, would you still try to spread communism/socialism to the US or any other capitalist country?

sure, but you're asking about an impossibility. capitalists will never leave socialists alone. they cant. capital does not abide limits

A country that was free from US capitalistic influence would have to exist in some alternate dimension and thus wouldn't be able to influence the US towards socialism

kek

...

No.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

A flat tax sets a static percentage for anyone who meets the criteria to be taxed (generally from their income) regardless of income level. Land value tax is on the unimproved value of land - which doesn't mean that all land would cost the same (for instance, natural resources improve the prospective value of a piece of land), and also operates under the premise that amount of land owned (or rented, under this tax system) reflects the ability of someone to pay for that land.

I admit, I misspoke when I said 'owned.' It's more symbolically owned - it would effectively be a system like public rent, but as tax revenue. You don't really own the land, but no one could kick you off as long as you're paying for and using it. But it would still be public, and taxed as public land - so one couldn't buy it up and hold it for years to benefit from the inflation of land prices. All tax revenue would be coming from land, and so it would be vastly harder to make a profit buying or selling it this way - or privately leasing it out, for that matter, since doing so requires the ability to make a profit by being able to hold that land long enough to have the advantage in bargaining.

Fucking kill me

The fact that most leftists aren't willing to admit, is that capitalism has been great at developing the economy for the last 200 years. It will continue doing so for the time being, though at a less rapid pace than we are accostumed to. What we are seeing now, though, are the consequences of this growth; the degredation of culture, society, and the reeminance of inequality.
As it stands, there is a limit to human consumption on an individual level. I am content with what I have; I can have what I want with relative ease, and I have little to fear. Why would I want to exit the system of Capital, then?
Because of the negative aspects of it. Capital transforms the basic unit of society. It makes us subject to how it organizes us, it restitches the social fabric according to its own growth. It is the virus that we have ridden to this point, but now it is time to get off, to go with something better. Capitalism has served its purpose; it has delivered us to the next stage, where information is free and want is accomplished easily. The goal now should be to make contention automatic for all while being sustainable, which seems possible within the next ~20 years within an entirely different framework.

Sorry, played sports from a young age
Excelled in both
I just want certain people to collect their value in death, such as yourself, sooner than others

Your trotting out Marxism 101 as if it's something most socialists aren't willing to admit?

hahahaha

What makes you think leftists deny this?

??? what part of "capital will not be owned individually" doesn't make sense here? Building materials would be owned collectively in socialism and held in common in communism.
To say nothing of the fact that foreign interests inevitably descended upon and dismembered, privatised and parasitised the state-owned institutions of socialist countries after the implementation of capitalism. Did you take a look at the book? It's very short. Chapter seven gives a pretty good look at the effects that the overthrow of socialism had on the USSR.

This

that's godawful logic and you know it. why is someone who does next to no work entitled to nearly all the profits whereas the ones who produce the actual value and do the labour get next to nothing.

Bump, this is a fairly interesting thread actually.

Hi, OP. I know I'm late to this thread. But even if you're a hardcore capitalist, you have to acknowledge that the whole idea of an "Invisible Hand" of the market is a fuckin' lie, right? Like, the government is controlled by corporatists, so the same assholes will get all the goodies in the end. This whole idea of competition is sort of a fucking myth, and everyone knows it deep down. That's why we need a planned economy to some extent. Now, whether that means socialist safeguards against monopolies, or full on bread lines and syndicalist commune networks, it's up to the individual country's situation.
I think it's always best to work towards an educated, egalitarian society, though. Wouldn't you agree?

Production for profit is part of the capitalist system. There are no profits in socialism, your work is rewarded by the rest of society with the work they do to make your life possible, which in turn is partially rewarde by the products of your work. If society democratically decides some form of work is more valuable, then good for the people with that job, they can get a bigger house for them to clean or whattever.

I only see capitalism ending when and if a smart AI is formed. Then you can centrally plan economics through technology, but capitalism and socialism will be obsolete because AI will create a new form of political and economic structure. New solutions and new problems we cannot even foresee. The problems of waste, class, fun, and labor restitution will be solved, but by something completely different. I agree in 20 years capitalism will be gone.

That's exactly what I see as a problem. Someone doesn't own the bolts, so waste is not as large a concern. He'd be more likely to save the extra bolts for the next project if it affected his paycheck. If not he'd leave them on the site and just get more.

I actually do believe in an invisible hand. I'd say that is another sticking point. I see an incompatibility between a planned economy and the placement of goods. No man can be that quick and good at organizing. Maybe computers, but I don't think we are there yet.

I agree. Definitely educated. I think an egalitarian, equal opportunity society is what we should work toward. I think eradicating the hierarchal nature of humans is impossible. Agree on the safeguard of monopolies.

A talking point against capitalism, is the waste of resources in scientific development. The argument that we need one research facility on cancer so we don't have hundreds working on the same problem. Wouldn't that be a monopoly of research? What if the administration is shit, but there is only one state sanctioned cancer research center?

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??? You'd still be responsible for the materials you used while working. Collective ownership doesn't mean you get to waste a bunch of shit scot-free - there were even wage reforms in the '50s/'60s intended, in part, to reduce waste and over-fulfillment of quotas specifically by using financial incentives.

+ it goes without saying that this is in a planned system, so it's not as if you'd show up with a massive surplus of materials (hell, people don't even do that now) that you could just leave lying about. You seem to have an image of socialist production as being some massive anarchistic orgy of individual producers just doing whatever.

I guess I'm asking the capitalist question of socialist incentive. If an individual doesn't own the company, where is his incentive to add more than the 9 to 5. It seems that he would do the bare minimum because there is no benefit in doing more. A little waste does not hurt his bottom line because he has none. It seems that the repercussions are

Is this correct?

Submit to Islam and you will be liberated from this conflict capitalism vs communism.

Leftists don't just blindly hate Capitalism. Marx certainly didn't hate Capitalism, he just criticized parts of it that he saw as unsustainable and self-destructive. He didn't "invent" Socialism because he wanted to destroy Capitalism, he merely thought it was the obvious next step in history.

I disagree. Look around you. Look at any advertisment. You are constantly being bombarded with false "needs" that need to be met by x product. Consumption can be effectively infinite.

The kind of people that neoliberal capitalism generates

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I let my cats outside and they like the murder all the local rodents.

If you have outside cats, you don't need to ever get an exterminator. That's why people fucking hace cats.

I feel like the modern world has forgotten that we keep cats around to kill shit.

What we actually need is the research to not be behind paywalls, and for the data and null results to be published and available to all

Hope that helped

there's literally nothing wrong with that human

The only error is the date: 2070 pfff, we are already there.

Underrated posts. Have a (You) comrade (and a bump for this shit thread)

i love poc but only when i am drunk

is the solution to racism to have white men to be drunk all of the time? gimme some of dat puerto rican hoochie