I seem to have misspelled “Epistemology”.
On the other hand, it was freaking “epistemology” that I misspelled. I’m not going to lose sleep over it. Unless I really screwed up and meant “Ontology”. Which I might have. In which case I’ll rather wish that I could do a search-and-replace for all my posts at the same time. And I think I did. Dammit.
(What a fun word. Epistemology! Epistemology! 
)
Not at all, it’s a perfectly fair comparison. First, as ** Demosthenesian** points out, Marxism touts itself as, essentially, a scientific theory. Second, we’re not talking about an academic inquiry into the nature of truth. You want to go out an apply communism. Moreover, you believe that in doing so, you will generate a particular economic effect. In other words, communism/Marxism purports to be both descriptive and predictive. The problem is that it is actually neither.
I find your suggestion that we shouldn’t give up on communism because it has been given “only” fifty chances astonishing. How many more economies need to be wrecked and lives ruined before you’re willing to start looking elsewhere for solutions? Let me re-iterate. Communism does not work. Communism has never worked. There is no evidence whatsoever that communism ever would work. Frankly, I just don’t see the attraction.
Since you didn’t like my ether analogy, how about this one. People who want to impose communism are like barber surgeons. “Well, yeah, I did kill my last fifty patients by bleeding them to death. But I’ve adjusted my technique and I’m sure my fifty-first patient will be a complete success!”
**
I assume that this is intentional irony. Yes, capitalism sucks. People have to work hard. Not everyone is able to do everything they want to do, financially speaking. The problem is that, as much as capitalism sucks, it sucks an order of magnitude less than its closest competitor.
Do you have any conception of how the average person in a communist country lived? Do you think they did everything they wanted to “financially speaking?” They didn’t. The economies were uniformly disfunctional. It didn’t matter how much “money” you had because there was nothing to buy with it. The joke in the Soviet Union was, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”
Another thing you don’t get is the mind-boggling amount of wealth the capitalist system has generated over time in terms of what I call “background” wealth. This is improvement in living standards that arises from better, cheaper consumer goods, better infrastructure, etc. rather than an increase in personal income. The fact is that, because of background wealth, the average middle class person in the West has a better quality of life than the very wealthy did 100 years ago.
There is great inequality under capitalism. Nonetheless, the vast majority of the poor in the West live in housing with heating and indoor plumbing. They own a television set. They have a telephone. They probably own a car. If they don’t own a computer to access the Internet, they probably have access to one at the public library. Getting sufficient calories to keep body and soul together costs almost nothing in real terms compared to what it cost 100 years ago, etc., etc. No communist country that I know of could make these claims on its best day.
So, once again, what’s the attraction in communism? Why should we continue to mess about with it? Why not move onto other things? For my money, there are far more interesting things going on in the world in terms of new pardigms of social, economic and political interaction. A few hundred years from now, I have no doubt that the Internet will have had a much more profound impact on society than Marxism did.
**
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Hello Again *
I’m intrigued to see that you list “chained to a job you don’t enjoy” as one of the problems of capitalism. In the communism you propose (in which each person would somehow be a self-reliant master of all skills and knowledge) potentially everyone would be forced to do a job they don’t enjoy, for the good of all. And, everyone would be forced to use inexpertly made goods and sub-par services. At best this is a “misery loves company” compromise.
[QUOTE]
Hello for the first time Hello Again! Since Demosthenesian has completely lost me (not your fault Demo… it is mine; I can barely pronounce your name let alone figure out what it means), I guess I can take the easy route and pick apart your “ignorant ramblings” as you so accurately called them.
First off all, point me to where it says that in communism everyone “would be a self-reliant master of all skills and knowledge.” I’m very interested. I never said that, in any case, and have never read a communist saying that. I think that people should be more self-sufficient, but that is quite far from what you suggest. There is a whole lot to be said for specialization of skills, and I don’t see why you’d think that doesn’t fit with communism.
I’d like everybody to be able to do what they want to do for a living, granted that they are able to fulfill a needed service in doing so. Doctors, for example. If you really want to be a doctor, go for it! Communism would deter people from being doctors strictly b/c it pays well (not that there aren’t plenty of doctors in capitalism who love what they do, but there are also plenty that are only in it for the money)
To me, that is what communism is all about. Having the freedom to pursue what you want to pursue. And I think that ensures that quality will be upheld. Do you think the best doctors are the ones who are in it for the money, or the ones who have always known that this is their calling, and they love doing it? Sure, everyone would have to pitch in and do some “dirty work” for the good of the community, but that is the extent of doing what you might not like to do. And there are some catches. Not everybody could be a guitar player for a living, for example. But, hopefully, I’d think that there would be plenty of free time for those who are interested in music but not good enough to do it professionally to have their fun perfecting their art…
**
[QUOTE]
By the way, you are aware that someone else before you had had the idea of eliminating cities and returning to the Agrarian communist state. His name was Pol Pot, and he killed almost 3 million of his own people to achieve this goal (including all intellectuals, suspected intellectuals, and people with glasses). How would you propose to break up the city of Chicago, and send its people out to work in collective farms, except by force?**
[QUOTE]
Where do I begin? First off, I never said I wanted to eliminate cities and return to an agrarian state. I just said communism works better that way. In fact, if you take the time to actually read what I said, you’ll see that I started this whole thread b/c I was wondering how communism could be implemented in an industrial state.
Now to Pol Pot. He wasn’t a communist. In fact, the US had quite a bit to do with Pol Pot taking power in Cambodia. The US aided dictators in coup after coup in Cambodia (much like in S. Vietnam) because they didn’t want the popular communist parties to take power. The US didn’t put Pol Pot into power, per se, but they did pave the way. Blame those deaths on the communists? No way. Blame it on the US? Also no way. But, if you wanted to blame someone, you’d have a much easier time blaming the US than blaming communists.
Of course you want to create something of value. Commodities that make life more enriching and more useful, as well as necessities and the realization that nobody in your country is starving, or without medical care. Communism doesn’t do away with money, or with technology. (One of the many huge problems of the USSR is that it wasted its technological efforts on missles and space missions instead of things that actually help the people).
I’m all about quality of life, that is why I’m communist. Oh, and I’m glad you could cite a columnist for Rolling Stone in your argument. Now I know where you get your facts. Tell me, who is the next big boy band?
colin
You are free to move onto other things whenever you want. I’m afraid that in terms of this thread, I will have to as well. It has been intellectualized too far. You speak of the suffering of the millions in America way too flippantly. It makes me sick.
I do “get” background wealth. What I do not “get” is why this must be unique to capitalism. Surpluses are reinvested, or invested into technological research. If a country is run well, there should be a surplus. Only difference is, the government has the surplus, and is mandated to put the surplus into the people. Like a much earlier poster said, capitalism provides the framework for communism. How the money is redistributed is one of the major differences in the switch.
You speak of communism and the lives ruined without any regard for the lives that capitalism has ruined. You speak of the luxuries that we have now without any regard to the fact that many of our luxuries come from communist and socialist thought. Weekends. 8 hour work days. Health benefits. Public libraries. Holidays. Minimum wage. Safe working conditions. It is in this way capitalism has diffused communist and socialist movements in this country. Sure, it has made capitalism a lot nicer. Has it done enough? No.
100 years ago a huge reason why things were so bad is that corporations had free reign on how they treat their workers. They were slaves to the corporations. Hundreds of thousands starved to death. Children were mangled by the machinery. There was nothing to life for these workers except for work. Free time? Yeah fucking right. Sufficient calories? Any talk of nutrition is perversely hilarious considering the malnourished state the workers were in. Government troops slaughtered those who were brave enough to stand up to this tyrrany of capitalism.
You wonder why Marx was so adamant in his stance? He was poor like the rest. He knew what it was like. I’m afraid you have no idea in this respect. We have never lived in something so horrible, only difference is I can understand it and care about it. Yes, Marx was wrong about quite a few things, and I think a lot of it came out of how hardened he became in the face of all the suffering he saw. He was too extreme. He insisted on bloody revolutions. I, in my stance, having seen the progress we’ve made, am able to concede, and draw elements of capitalism that I see as good into communism, which I see as wholly better. That is why by attacking Marx you cannot attack me or my beliefs. Time has gone on. I am able to see 150 years that Marx hasn’t.
You disregard communism as a whole based on its few applications, and continue to ignore the fact (that I have brought up repeatedly) that many movements never got off the ground because some imperialist pig dog country slaughtered its peasants and bloodied their rivers.
I don’t think we will be able to go anywhere from here. You fail to attempt to see my perspective. You fail to try to understand it. You intellectualize all the lives lost in capitalism, and then attack communism for all the lives lost. I think you have been too influenced by popular American ideology, and the “red scare” that still exists in the country. It no longer is a fear of America being taken over and women raped and Legion Halls turned into cadres (intentional irony here). It is now a skepticism of communism that is so closed minded that it fails to see all that communism has done for the country, and all the more that it could do. Maybe the communism that works is yet to come. Maybe time will refine the theory, as it refines almost all other theories.
But you want nothing to do with that, right?
There is one thing you haven’t answered. For you to implement communism you’re going to have to remove many of the property rights we currently enjoy. If I don’t want to give up my farm land to the great people’s collective then what will the communist government do?
Marc
** Demosthenesian**:
Generally, having read through your last post, I’m not sure I understand what you’re on about. On the one hand, my understanding of Marxism seems quite different from yours; on the other, I’m no expert, so maybe you have a better handle on this stuff than I do. Let’s see.
** Ummm, yes, that’s part of Marx’s original reasoning, as I understand it.
My take on this is that Marx failed to account for the sheer flexibility inherent in capitalism. To express myself somewhat sloppily, Marx and Engels, analyzing the development of early industrial capitalism in England, did not understand that the gradual concentration of wealth in the coffers of the “owners of the means of production” could (and would) be counter-balanced by redistributive mechanisms such as governmental regulation of wealth (i.e., the welfare state), as well as organized labor.
A minor digression: I remember reading a short article by a Marxist development economist who’s recommendations for 3rd world development policies would have made the IMF’s Board of Directors blush; after all, according to Marx, the revolution would only occur after “the perfection of capitalism” had been achieved. Thus, a real Marxist ought to support neo-liberal economic policies, under the assumption that this would “trigger the dialectic,” so to speak, and lead to revolution.
Anyway, none of this excludes the possibility for later theorists to modify Marx’s original claims. The question of whether one places such theorists inside or outside the Marxist paradigm seems, to me, to be one of semantics, really.
** Kind of a strange thing to write. I suppose you could be correct, but anyway, social democracy is a product of Marxism, historically speaking, and broke out of the Marxist “movement” after one of the Internationals, I believe… maybe the 4th. Up here in the Great White (and extremely Social Democratic) North we still celebrate the 1st of May as “International Workers Day,” with parades and speeches. It’s an official holiday.
I suppose that you could derive a theory of social democracy from the basis of a different economic analysis as well, but I don’t really understand your point here.
I agree that Marxism is not a philosophy; I expressed myself rather sloppily there. It’s a social theory, or, if you like, a paradigm. Like any other paradigm (such as World-Systems Theory, Dependency Theory, Neo-Liberalism, Weber, Polanyi, et. al.), it has its strengths and its weaknesses.
See, that’s where I disagree with you. I don’t think these two “versions” of economic history are quite so incommensurable, myself (although I could be convinced otherwise). Could you develop this point in a little more detail for me?
**There are a number of ways we can go with this. Certainly, if we focus on “class,” we discover quite quickly that it a problematic concept, sociologically. It is difficult to identify a “class,” especially when one considers that culture is not tied to “class” (especially in the US), and that individuals can move from class to class. (I would wager that class differences were much more obvious [ and classes themselves much less porous] in Marx’s era than they are in ours). Anyway, there have been some interesting attempts to reconstruct a concept of class in a postmodern context.
Your critique of Marxism seems “stuck,” as it were, on Marx. You seem to feel that if you successfully “disprove” the dialectic, for example, you can thereby throw the entire paradigm into the trash bin. This strikes me as being akin to the idea that if you can disprove some idea originally promulgated by Darwin, you can thereby dismiss evolutionary theory – or that with the advent of Special Relativity, one can reject wholesale Newton’s laws of planetary motion.
Classical Marxism, with its absolute concepts, its claims of objectivity, and its pretensions as a science, have long been abandoned by most serious scholars. There nevertheless exists a core of interesting theoretical constructs that I also believe can be usefully employed in understanding a given society. However, if you wish to argue that the only possible understanding of Marx is the classical one, and that this understanding is also logically (and empirically) incoherent, then by all means, don’t let me stop you.
**This last has me really stumped. First, as I mentioned above, even “class” as a social position is a fairly problematic concept.
I’ve always taken a short cut regarding the labor theory of value and simply understood it to be the “wholesale” cost of an item – quite simply, what the item cost the factory owner to produce, before taking it to market and selling it. The difference between that price and the market price is “the surplus,” which goes into pocket of the owner. Surpluses in the form of profits accrue to the owners, who strive to keep costs down, in part by exerting pressure on labor. This seems quite obvious to me, but maybe I’m missing something.
Anyway, “class” is the result of the way capitalism structures society, as far as I can tell. Can you explicate your disagreement with this statement in a little more detail?
This is gonna end up long… ick. Oh well.
Partly true: this is why Marx (or Lenin, one of the two) was in favour of colonialism despite its injustices, due to the necessity of this “perfection of capitalism”. Which a Marxist might support neo-liberal economic policies for that reason, they do not support neo-classical economics; there’s a difference there. I’ll get to this in a sec.
I see a paradigm as a tree; no matter how expansive, it needs to be built on some basic philisophical assumptions. Without those assumptions, it cannot stand, because it needs to use new philisophical assumptions or it risks begging the question every time it attempts to argue something. Marxism does have those basic aspects, but I’ll get to that in a second too.
And here we go. The difference between Marxist political economy and neo-classical economics comes down, basically, to which unit you are talking about, how they interact, and what they interact with. Neo-classical economics, the kind called “economics” nowadays, is based on trading between individuals. All of these individuals are (generally) rational self-maximizers, in that they know what they want as individuals (as opposed to a society), and rationally attempt to get as much of it as possible. This gets into all the stuff about supply and demand curves, marginal utility, etc. that econ majors spend rather a lot of time memorizing, but the chief concept is this: the value of something is whatever people decide it to be; there is no “intrinsic value”. Prices rise, prices fall, and even the value of the good that determines prices (which we call money) rises and falls relative to everything else, thus prompting the ridiculous amount of math that floats around economics nowadays. There are other aspects as well, such as the idea of cause and effect, and the idea that politics and economics are linked but seperate. (Which is why you can study economics and politics seperately). In addition, there is no such thing as classes, at least not as Marxists understand it. Nobody is exploiting anybody else; people are just trading different things around.
Marxian Political Economy starts from a completely different set of basic concepts. For starters, it’s not based on trade, but on production; the key question is what the “mode of production” is in a society. It looks at economy on a societal level and argues that there is no difference between politics and economics; they’re all part of the same set of forces. The basic unit is not the individual (whose consciousness is determined by the outside world, who doesn’t act as any kind of a “self-maximizing individual” and who is intrinsically linked to society) but classes. There are generally two classes for each stage: one which produces, and one which exploits. It isn’t just limited to capitalism; it’s everybody. Exactly how this works and who exploits who depends on the particular society, but the most important part of one’s identity is not as an individual, but as a member of a class. In addition, there is the adoption of dialectics, which isn’t exactly the kind of cause-and-effect chain that you’d see in neoclassical economics considering that the effects can go back and futz with the cause.
Most important is that the labour theory of value argues that there is an intrinsic value to all produced things, which is the amount of labour that was put into them. This includes both consumable commodities and the means of production. Value is not whatever one says it is, nor is it your “skimmed price” (although that’s the mechanism by which one determines how much surplus there is in capitalism, it does not determine surplus in the first place; that’s based on the time involved in production) that’s price, and they aren’t the same thing. It has to argue this, otherwise the whole concept of exploitation gets shot straight to hell, because how can a capitalist be “exploiting” and stealing value that simply doesn’t exist up until that point? Without this theory the neo-classicals can simply argue that it’s an additive process: that the labourer produces something of a certain subjective value using a means of production that adds more subjective value and hands it off to someone else who adds more subjective value in a chain of increasingly valuable trades.
Come to think of it, this is exactly what they do argue, at least so far as I know.
Are you beginning to see the problem here? One is based on trade, the other on production. One operates at the level of the individual, the other at the level of the class. One uses dialectics, the other cause-and-effect. One says that people are rational self-maximizers, the other that their consciousness (and everything else) is determined by their class identity; the way it was described to me was using the Aristotlean concept of man:polis:
man, except using class. One argues that there is an absolute value in production of goods that is being stolen by one class from another, one argues that class does not exist and that there is no such thing as absolute value, just a chain of subjective prices that goes up as more value is added to whatever we’re talking about through trade, refinement, application of wealth, whatever.
I may have missed a few things here and there, but that’s the jist of it. Kill the labour theory of value, and you kill one of the foundations of Marxism, the key one: the idea of stolen production. Remove the stolen production, and you remove the moral basis of Marxism. In addition, if you kill the labour theory of value, you undercut rather a lot of Marx’s criticism of capitalism and throw a lot of his conclusions into doubt.
(Which we’ve seen empirically in the continued success of capitalism and the abject failure of communism, but anyway…)
Ok, I think I’ve addressed most of your question bass-ackwardly, but one still stands out:
Not quite, although you’re sort of right about the trashbin thing. Keep in mind that a lot of what Darwin says has been thrown out, as new paradigms take its place, and we don’t quite use Newtonian physics anymore. The key question is whether parts of the old paradigm can be fit into the new without resting on the concepts of knowledge and existence (epistemology and ontology) or any of the other concepts that have been disproven. In the case of Newtonian mechanics, they quite easily fit into Einstein’s new paradigm, with certain exceptions and caveats. Hell, scientists right now are beavering away at trying to find their grand theory that envelops Einstein and Quantum mechanics etc. etc. On the other hand, the “fire/wind/water/air” elemental construction has been tossed out quite handily because it didn’t fit the new elemental framework. As has astrology, ether, phlogiston, and all manner of other historically interesting but scientifically ludicrous concepts.
Since neoclassical economics and Marxist political economics can’t fit together, though, and since Marxist criticism is based on Marxian political economy…
well, I think you can follow the logic now. Marxism:Neoclassical Econ::Fire-as-Element:elemental table. An interesting historical concept, but I wouldn’t build a career on it.
(Incidentally, I’m no expert on Marxian vs. Neoclassical economics, but I just finished doing a fair bit of research on the subject due to my own confusion about the subject. The main book I got the distinction from was “Economics : Marxian versus neoclassical”. If you have any biting critiques of that book that you can bring to bear, then maybe you can bring me to my knees, but I think I’ve basically summed it up without getting into weird neoclassical “utility” stuff. Anybody else who wants to take a whack at this can go ahead.)
Marc, you own land. That makes you the bourgeosie exploiter of the people that made your tools, that work on your land, that prepare your food.
If this is a real honest-to-Marx revolution, Marc, you either gave it up because you realized that private property was inefficient and wrong, or you’re already dead. It’s not like the Lockean framework of property rights applies in a Marxist society. You have no right to that property, never did have right to that property, and will not have right to that property. And that’s the end of it.
Demosthenesian:
I’m unfortunately a bit pressed for time here, and won’t be able to give a detailed response to your post – even though you raise many interesting and insightful points. Please accept the following as just some random reflections regarding what you wrote above.
I’m not an expert on Marxism or economics by any means, but I do know a bit about “paradigms.” So…yes, of course, a paradigm is built on a set of axiomatic presuppositions. However, with a research program as broad as Marxism, some elements of the paradigm can be “chopped off” without damaging the paradigm as a whole. Using your tree analogy, it would be the equivalent of hacking off a couple of troublesome branches – the tree nevertheless survives.
Example: does the fact that human psychology is not completely determined by social forces (i.e., class membership) disprove the historical dialectic of Marxism?
Naturally, different paradigms focus on different phenomena, ask different questions, and produce different “world pictures.” The question of the “incommensurability” between Marxism and neo-liberalism is more problematic. As I stated above, I don’t think that these two theories are as incommensurable as you claim. They can also act as compliments to each other. On the one hand, I wouldn’t use a Marxist economic model to predict how well my business will do this quarter; on the other, I would be wary of a neo-liberal social model that claims to provide an accurate picture of labor relations in Brazil. But the issue is more complex than that, and I agree that you have an important point as well.
Exploitation is a thorny concept, no matter how one approaches it. But it seems to me that one must either buy into the idea that a) exploitation exists, or b) exploitation does not exist, before you chose your paradigm. If you buy a), you chose Marxism; if you buy b) you chose neo-liberalism. I buy a), myself. As I said earlier, one can understand the labor theory of value without all the extra technical baggage. In fact, we do this implicitly, sometimes: when, for example, we claim that a stock is “overpriced.” It means that the market has chosen a price for the stock that is not consistent with its real value; and what is that value? Anyway, if you yoke the concept of “exploitation” to the “labor theory of value,” and then argue that by rejecting/disproving the latter you’ve successfully debunked the former, I can do little else than applaud you for your unusually shrewd, ideological sleigh of hand. How would you ever go about conceptualizing the idea of economic exploitation? Or do you suggest that we simply pretend there is no such thing?
This was precisely my point. A lot of what Darwin wrote has been subsequently modified. We have not rejected evolution theory just because we came to the conclusion that man did not roam the savanna in “primal hordes,” as Darwin thought. So I still can’t understand why you think we should dismiss Marxism (as an analytical tool), just because ole Karl had some weird ideas about the practical applications of Hegelian dialectics. If you aren’t careful, you might lose the baby with the bathwater.
I have to bump this, because for some reason my last reply (made last night) doesn’t show up on the main page. Sorry.
To make a short reply, the question, in essense, is whether something is part of a “branch” (which I would argue that, say, Gramsci’s theories about cultural imperialism are) and whether something is part of the “trunk” (which I have argued the labour theory of value is).
The technical stuff about the LToV seems unimportant, but the key question, the one I highlighted, is the question of whether something has real value or merely subjective value. While people in common discourse somewhat use the former, economics and business use the latter, because those are the fields that have to deal with the repercussions of the answer to that question. In some respects you’re inverting the chain of reasoning here… that whole question of whether “exploitation exists” or not depends on whether anything has real value or not, not the other way around.
And as for your example of union relations being explained by neoclassical economics? Sure! It can be done. It has been done, by any economist who studied the issue from a neo-classical perspective. I’ve read a few myself. You don’t need Marxian economics to explain labour relations or even to justify them (even if “justification” was an issue in economics, which I don’t believe it is). Remember, neo-classical economics does not mean a neo-liberal social policy. They aren’t the same thing. Keynes worked within the neo-classical paradigm, and he was not only contemptuous of Marx but of neo-liberal “laissez faire” economics, especially that of the “Austrian school”.
Anyway, why not throw out the baby with the bathwater if the baby is a) dead and b) turned out to actually be a small lump of green putty? You can then use the sink for something more useful than putty storage. 
To make a short reply, the question, in essense, is whether something is part of a “branch” (which I would argue that, say, Gramsci’s theories about cultural imperialism are) and whether something is part of the “trunk” (which I have argued the labour theory of value is).
The technical stuff about the LToV seems unimportant, but the key question, the one I highlighted, is the question of whether something has real value or merely subjective value. While people in common discourse somewhat use the former, economics and business use the latter, because those are the fields that have to deal with the repercussions of the answer to that question. In some respects you’re inverting the chain of reasoning here… that whole question of whether “exploitation exists” or not depends on whether anything has real value or not, not the other way around.
And as for your example of union relations being explained by neoclassical economics? Sure! It can be done. It has been done, by any economist who studied the issue from a neo-classical perspective. I’ve read a few myself. You don’t need Marxian economics to explain labour relations or even to justify them (even if “justification” was an issue in economics, which I don’t believe it is). Remember, neo-classical economics does not mean a neo-liberal social policy. They aren’t the same thing. Keynes worked within the neo-classical paradigm, and he was not only contemptuous of Marx but of neo-liberal “laissez faire” economics, especially that of the “Austrian school”.
Anyway, why not throw out the baby with the bathwater if the baby is a) dead and b) turned out to actually be a small lump of green putty? You can then use the sink for something more useful than putty storage.
One thing:
I didn’t build that yoke, Marx did: I’m just pointing it out. As to your questions? By using neo-classical economics if possible, or… yes, we say that there is no such thing. There is such a thing as bad, deceptive, and ignorant economic practices, and there’s certainly many instances of perverted or failed markets (especially in labour). There’s also certainly such a thing as political power of one kind or another perverting trade. What I’m arguing disappears is not specific cases of exploitation (which could be explained as examples of abject market failure or political interference of one kind or another), but the idea that capitalism itself is inherently exploitative; that one class exploits another and that’s how capitalism works.
Gad. Mods, nuke the first response, huh? Dunno what happened there.
** Demosthenesian**:
Well, at the risk of allowing you to continue making mincemeat of my arguments….
Yes, that’s what I was saying. Really, neo-liberal economics is a method of analyzing how a capitalist economy behaves, economically. From this perspective, one also tries to draw some conclusions about the best sort of policies socially. But does neo-liberalism, as an analytic tool, perform better than Marxism in analyzing the interface between economy and society? I vote no, but then again, you know me – I’m such a webel.
Personally, I cannot see how a thing can have “real” value. I think Marx fucked up with this idea. But here’s what I can see: every economy produces surpluses. Any goods or wealth produced by a society above and beyond the subsistence needs of its population can be considered surplus. It is the purpose of the economy to decide what gets produced, who produces it, and who receives it. Capitalism is unparalleled at answering the first two questions, and lousy at answering the third. Sound Marxist?
**Sez you. I say that anybody with eyes in his face can find examples of exploitative employment practices, especially in the Third World. Ford builds a car factory in Mexico, just south of the border. The employees there are paid less than subsistence wages, with no insurance, no medical, no nothing. Why? So that Ford stockholders can receive higher dividends on their shares. One uses a neo-liberal economics model to justify this state of affairs, but it sure looks like exploitation to me.
Yeah, so have I. My point is that I just don’t trust ‘em. (Sorry if that wasn’t clear in my last post.)
Or, of course, I could just stick it into my armpit and write an ode in its honor – Vogon style.
How do you explain class structure, then?
Look, there are ways around the problem – like, for example, workers who are also stockholders in their own company, and who thus share the profits. Marxism does not imply that society under capitalism is totally inflexible. But at the risk of sounding obstinate, it seems clear to me: Man A, who owns a deli, employs people to work for him. In order to make a profit, he must pay them less than the market value of their work. If they are smart, they will organize and demand that he give them an ever increasing share of his profits, which are essentially generated by their work. They demand better wages, medical coverage, and so forth. The surplus is shared, they come as well to enjoy the fruits of the system and become “burgoeisified.” (Not to mention extremely poor spellers.)
Or, if they’re Marxists, they line him up against the wall, and then they take over. (That’s where I start to draw the line, by the way.)
I guess we’re still stuck over which is root, and which is branch.
And this is where Marxian and neo-classical economics part ways. He does pay them the market value of their work, or, more precisely, they trade their time and skills for money. He, in turn, combines this traded work with the capital that he possesses into the process (the Deli itself, the funds to keep it running, etc) and his own managerial work. This increases the value of what they have traded. Where trade makes things interesting is that it isn’t a zero-sum game: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The combination of labour, capital and mangement is traded to the customers for a cost that is higher than the three put together. This is the fundamental aspect of trade: you don’t want what you have, I don’t want what I have, you want what I have, and I want what you have. So we trade, and not only is each of us better off, but we are TOGETHER better off.
In other words, the customers want sandwiches. They don’t want labour. They don’t want the store. They don’t want the management. They also don’t value their money, at least as much as they value the sandwiches that they buy. So they trade their money for your sandwich, and everybody (worker, owner, manager, and whoever makes delis) is better off.
Clear enough? This doesn’t say that markets can’t get screwed up, that you can’t get bad trade, or people trading their labour for amounts of money that are lower than what they need to survive and prosper. What it says is that exploitation is not intrinsic to capitalism. Which is where neo-classical economics parts ways, irreversably, with marxist economics.
And how do I explain class structure? As a social position: some people are richer, some are middle class, some are poorer, and some are desperately poor. There is “stickiness” there, but it doesn’t have to be explained by Marxism. Marxism explains class as a social relation (as I said earlier)… one class exploits another. Well, according to neo-classical economics, exploitation can’t exist. (Although raw deals certainly do). Therefore that particular definition of class is impossible.
Again, I’m not arguing whether Marxist economics is right or wrong. What I’m arguing is that they are fundamentally incompatible with neo-classical economics and that the labour theory of value (and exploitation) is intrinsic to it.
Oh, one more thing, and I’m going to bold it. ** NEO-CLASSICAL. NOT NEO-LIBERAL. **. There is a difference. Neo-classical economics is broad; it allows for both redistribution and keynesian stimuli. The Neo-Liberal school within that form of economics is a fairly radical form that says that markets are inevitably right, that market failure is impossible or at least rare, and keynesian measures (or even monetary ones) to deal with problems with the market are unnecessary and counter-productive. It’s like a ship and a boat: you can put a boat on a ship, but you can’t put a ship on a boat. You can trust neo-classical economists as much as Marxist economists, because neo-classical economics is not a moral or normative framework, but an empirical one: it describes how the world works, it doesn’t say what one should do. Many in the neo-classical tradition (including strident IMF critics like Joseph Stiglitz and critics of neo-liberalism like Paul Krugman) argue that the problems you cited are indeed problems, and can be dealt with. Hell, there’s your difference. Marxists say “you can’t fix it”, throw up their hands, and wait for the revolution. Non-neo-liberal Neo-classicals, such as Keynesians, actually try to do something about it.
Without shooting the guy who owns the deli.
**
Well, If I had a rocket launcher, some son of a bitch would die! Happy now? Honestly, I don’t know what you were expecting on this board, especially in GD. Did you think everyone would call you “brother” and post revolutionary slogans?
**
Public Libraries? Yes, indeed, that noted Trotskyite, Benjamin “Che” Franklin, was way ahead of his time, wasn’t he? You’re falling victim to your own class dialectic. You seem to be reasoning that “capitalists” exploit workers while “communists” defend workers. Ergo, anything that benefits workers must be communist.
This is just silly. Nothing in the idea of libraries or shorter work weeks or better working conditions, trade unions etc. is inherently communist. You don’t seem to fully comprehend exactly what communism is. It’s not a bundle of worker friendly reforms, it’s a rigorous economic, social and political system. The reforms you cite are simply a result of social and democratic pressure. Neo-classical economics is perfectly able to accomodate all of them.
**
Colinito67, I asked you for one example of a succesful communist country. One. Now you want to blame the uniform failure of communist economies on “imperialist pig dog countries.” Quite.
Let’s see, there was Germany, which was split in half. Half tried communism, half tried capitalism. This is as close to a controlled experiment as you’re likely to find. There was China, which tried a similar Taiwan/Mainland split. Taiwan prospered. The Mainland wallowed until it decided to jettison its communist principles and went captialist with a vengeance, thereby generating tremendous gains in growth and productivity.
As I said, I’m a pragmatist. When I see something that hasn’t worked and doesn’t work, my inclination is to try something else. At the very least, the onus is on you to produce evidence that it will work in future. You have utterly failed to carry your burden of proof. You can attack capitalism and neo-classical economics until the pig dogs come home. But unless you demonstrate that communism works better than capitalism, you’re wasting your breath.
Note the the goals of communism are completely irrelevant. Promises are cheap. I’m not interested in what communism wants to accomplish. I’m interested in what communism can accomplish. You should be, too. Equality, justice and economic security are laudable goals. Unfortunately communism has shown no sign whatsover of being able to achieve them.
** Mr. Svinlesha **
I think Demosthenesian’s point regarding the superstructure of communism is that communism is not a particularly adaptable system. To analogize with Darwin, Darwinism is still viable because, despite getting many details wrong, his central theme, that life evolves over time, survives intact.
Communism is different. It purports to be a sort of unified field theory for history, political theory and economics. Things like class and intrinsic value are central themes. If you remove them, it just isn’t communism anymore, whatever you may call it. Communist China, for example, isn’t. Nor are most of the “communist” parties in Eastern Europe.
**
Not a bit. In fact, this is one of neo-classical economic theory’s greatest strengths. How to spend the surplus is simply a policy decision. The voters or the benevolent dictator or the Counsel of 12 or whoever decide. A capitalist economy is like a car. It’s a tool for taking you where you want to go. Who’s driving is a separate question. Like a car, it will break down if it isn’t properly maintained.
There is another point here that is oft overlooked. The answer to “who gets it” is often “nobody.” Bill Gates has tens of thousands of times more capital than I have. However, he is not tens of thousands of times “richer.” While Bill Gates, no doubt, has a someone higher rate of consumption than you or I, he can never consume more than the tiniest fraction of his fortune. The fact the Bill Gates has 30 billion (US) dollars merely means that he has authority to manage that much capital. In a sense, capitalism has co-opted Mr. Gates and forced him to help efficiently manage the economy. The wealthy are not, therefore, “parasites.” They are, effectively, economic stewards (ostensibly) chosen for their financial acumen.
FREE MUMIA!!!
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Marc
Well, more precisely, somebody manages that capital for him. Truth Seeker is essentially right on one key point, though: most of the money of these evil corporate plutocrats own is not consumed, but reinvested into other things. Hell, a lot of it isn’t really “money” at all, because it’s not held as cash but as assets of various sorts whose monetary worth rises and dips on a regular basis. (Which is why Bill Gates “lost” a lot of money when that big stock collapse hit after the dot.bomb… it wasn’t that he lost money, but that the subjective monetary value of his shares simply evaporated).
This is the fundamental key point behind that old saw about the “rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer” and “it takes money to make money”. Lots of extra money has to go somewhere, and those who have it can afford to invest it and to hire someone who will invest it properly. That’s also why redistribution isn’t necessarily socialist or debilitating to those that have the money redistributed… because they already possess the means to make much more than they ever lost, whereas those that are redistributed to are given a much greater economy and contribute to much greater social and political stability and strength. Hence the reason that many (if not most) economists favour a graduated income tax. Within, you’ll note, a neo-classical paradigm.
(Granted, this is a controversial point, but it does reinforce the idea that you don’t need Marxism to suggest that capitalism can do with some political tweaking).
“are given a much greater economy”?
I have got to get used to the “no-edit” thing here, this is just getting silly.
It should have read “given a much greater economic opportunity”.
**
Well, yes and no. Bill Gates is an extreme example but the principle is the same even with small scale “capitalists” who manage their own investment portfolios. Even Bill Gates is personally “managing” his fortune by finding competent people to delegate to.
On a side note, this is one of the things I just love about stock markets. The stock market is derided as the symbol of runaway capitalism. However, apart from initial public offerings the stock market is a zero sum game. In other words, if you net out all transactions, no money has ever been made or lost in the stock market. It has simply changed pockets. This is a great thing because (assuming no market manipulation) it constantly re-allocates capital from foolish or lazy investors to smart ones. This goes a long way to ensuring that concentrations of capital are managed efficiently.
**
Once again, yes and no. It depends very much on what you are doing with it. “Redistribution” in the form of infrastructure is almost always a good thing. For example, collecting a graduated income tax in order to build a transportation system or even an educational system. However, redistributing wealth and income is almost always a bad thing. For example, if you took 30 billion dollars away from Bill Gates and re-distributed it evenly throughout the U.S., everybody would get about $100 each. In other words, you would effectively convert a productive mass of capital into consumption. This would be roughly equivalent to liquidating several Fortune 500 companies and distributing the assets.
The point here is that concentrations of capital are economically valuable in their own right. When efficiently managed, they create synergisms that benefit the economy as a whole in terms of jobs, productivity, etc., to a much greater extent than does simply distributing small amounts of cash. Breaking up these concentrations and redistributing them is often good politics and bad economics.
This is not to say that it is “bad” to provide a societal safety net to protect the poorest in society. However, we do so because we have decided as a society that it is a good thing to do and that it is worth the various costs such a scheme imposes. This is a very different proposition than high marginal tax rates designed to inhibit the concentration of wealth and minimize economic inequality.