Communism vs Capitalism does anyone actually think we'd be better off in a Communist society?

[felice]

11 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

No it isn't. If you want to be taken seriously, then you really need to explain how you would address these past problems. Just saying "it wasn't the real communism" isn't enough. It doesn't cut it.

Oh, come on, you can't demand a complete detailed solution to all the problems of East Germany in order to discuss a completely different system on a fantasy book forum.

11 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Whether to government provides health care, it is still insurance. It just that the government provides it. Its public insurance. For the record, I'm not against the government providing this insurance, at least for people that don't have the ability to pay.

You're assuming there is a distinct bill to pay for each interaction with the health system, that is at least nominally the responsibility of the person getting treatment, even if the government picks up the tab. It doesn't have to be that way! If you've got publicly funded hospitals and doctors and so forth, there is no need to ever calculate what fraction of the total running costs should be allocated to a specific patient. You wouldn't say public roads are funded by needing-to-get-somewhere insurance; it's just general government expenditure funded by tax.

11 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

It may be possible. But, no theorist has made convincing case how it would work. Explain how you would avoid the problems that have haunted past communist regimes.

Can you be a bit more specific than "all the problems"?

11 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

And does, the government in this case control all production and investment decisions? It would seem that we would be back to the same informational problems that alluded to in my previous post.

No, stick with the current market-based system; businesses can keep operating just the way they do now. Establish a government department for allocating capital for investment, whose staff have plenty of discretion in considering applications. All that changes is the government has vastly more income to spend on public services, and the new shareholders prioritise the public good over profit.

11 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Even if you passed a whole bunch conservations laws (many of which I'm not against by the way), the only way you would probably shut down economic growth is by shutting down knowledge production.

Ending growth doesn't mean ending change. You can make new, better stuff, but make less of it because it lasts longer. If we invent cheap everlasting light bulbs, production of light bulbs will drop way down once all the existing shorter-lived bulbs burn out and are replaced.

[felice]

19 minutes ago, Alarich II said:

Those who are lucky enough to live in countries where you can vote your government out of office, will probably have made at some point in their lives the experience of living under governments that do not aling with their social and political preferences; and that, too, will have to be accounted for. What happens if this new all powerful, all possessing and directing state is taken by the political opposition, how is this going to affect the new socialist state?

I'm assuming overwhelming popular support for the change; it's not going to happen in the first place without that. So there is no possibility of a pro-capitalism party taking over. But there's plenty of room for political differences on spending priorities, international relations, social issues, etc. Ideally there should be a multi-party system with proportional representation, but even if you stick with the US's current nightmare of a system, you could still have Republicans advocating for lower taxes and banning abortion, and Democrats advocating for better public services etc. But wealthy donors would no longer be a factor.

[Alarich II]

42 minutes ago, felice said:

I'm assuming overwhelming popular support for the change; it's not going to happen in the first place without that. So there is no possibility of a pro-capitalism party taking over.

So the assumption is that although you have a democratic system, a pro-capitalism party cannot ever take over from you, whereas you can take over from pro-capitalist parties and hang on to power for ever. But of course there will be different parties, they'll just never disagree with your system.

And businesses will operate like before, "marked-based". But, since they are government-owned, they "just" need to have their investments approved. By goverment people, of course - who else to speak for the people? -, with plenty of discretion when considering their application. Who will - of course - prioritise the public good over profit.

And it will absolutely not be East Germany with the bloc parties and government owned companies, it's going to to be very different. Although I must admit that the assumptions do sound very similar.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, felice said:

I'm assuming overwhelming popular support for the change; it's not going to happen in the first place without that. So there is no possibility of a pro-capitalism party taking over. But there's plenty of room for political differences on spending priorities, international relations, social issues, etc. Ideally there should be a multi-party system with proportional representation, but even if you stick with the US's current nightmare of a system, you could still have Republicans advocating for lower taxes and banning abortion, and Democrats advocating for better public services etc. But wealthy donors would no longer be a factor.

In your ideal society are people going to be allowed to advocate for a move back to a Mixed or even a Capitalist economy?  

How do you plan to guard against political fiefdoms and control for politics sake we saw in the Soviet Union and it’s satellites?

[sologdin]

Quote

So the assumption is that although you have a democratic system, a pro-capitalism party cannot ever take over from you, whereas you can take over from pro-capitalist parties and hang on to power for ever. But of course there will be different parties, they'll just never disagree with your system.

if there is de facto majority support for socialism, then despite the de jure possibility of capitalist restoration, it would remain a de facto impossibility while the majority was present, surely? the assumption may or may not reflect the real, but once assumed, there's no need for imputations of stalinism.

[OldGimletEye]

6 hours ago, felice said:

Oh, come on, you can't demand a complete detailed solution to all the problems of East Germany in order to discuss a completely different system on a fantasy book forum.

Actually I can demand how your going to avoid all the problems that a place like East Germany had. If your going to try to convince people to give communisms another try, I think its fair to ask you how you would avoid its past problems.

6 hours ago, felice said:

You're assuming there is a distinct bill to pay for each interaction with the health system, that is at least nominally the responsibility of the person getting treatment, even if the government picks up the tab. It doesn't have to be that way! If you've got publicly funded hospitals and doctors and so forth, there is no need to ever calculate what fraction of the total running costs should be allocated to a specific patient. You wouldn't say public roads are funded by needing-to-get-somewhere insurance; it's just general government expenditure funded by tax.

One good thing about the British healthcare system is that its costs are low. Somebody is keeping track of the costs. Anyway, I have never been that opposed to the government being heavily involved in providing healthcare. The UK is one way. Other countries have found different ways. Anyway, I think the US healthcare system stinks and would prefer another system based one on the systems in Europe.

6 hours ago, felice said:

Can you be a bit more specific than "all the problems"?

Oh I don't know, things like the horrible authoritarianism, low economic  growth, shortages, and the cronyism?

6 hours ago, felice said:

No, stick with the current market-based system; businesses can keep operating just the way they do now. Establish a government department for allocating capital for investment, whose staff have plenty of discretion in considering applications. All that changes is the government has vastly more income to spend on public services, and the new shareholders prioritise the public good over profit.

Paul Romer recently won a nobel prize for his work on the economics of knowledge. One of the the themes that comes out is that economics of knowledge is not like that of commodities. It turns out that the private market can underproduce knowledge production. There is a role for government to play here. Currently, the US finances a lot of its knowledge production through the patent system. Personally, I ditch most of the patent system and fund basic  research.

However, I totally oppose the government deciding what products or ideas are worthy for investment. That is likely to be a complete cluster. The fact is that no government committee is going to be able to determine which ideas are good and which ones are bad. Put it this way: Suppose there is one committee deciding one which investment projects are worthy. And then suppose there are 1000 little committees deciding on investment projects. Lets say 95% of the ideas fail. Who do you think is going to produce more good ideas, the one committee or the 1000 little committees?

6 hours ago, felice said:

Ending growth doesn't mean ending change. You can make new, better stuff, but make less of it because it lasts longer. If we invent cheap everlasting light bulbs, production of light bulbs will drop way down once all the existing shorter-lived bulbs burn out and are replaced.

Nonsense. Figuring out more productive ways to produce items or inventing new items all drive growth, which is desirable, and which communist countries, historically, were horrible at.

[Alarich II]

46 minutes ago, sologdin said:

if there is de facto majority support for socialism, then despite the de jure possibility of capitalist restoration, it would remain a de facto impossibility while the majority was present, surely? the assumption may or may not reflect the real, but once assumed, there's no need for imputations of stalinism.

Correct! At the momemt of conception, the assumtion stands and everything is in a fine balance. no need for stalinism. But this is a very limited view, akin to the mythical point where the curve of demand and supply meet - solid in theory, ephemeral in practice. This is my contention: nobody wants Stalinism - it develops as a necessity to "protect" the revolution, i.e. the underlying assumtions as necessary preconditions must be protected at all costs, even if it turns out that majorities change.

[Rippounet]

It seems the recurring argument against utopia is that people might not want it, and should thus be allowed to reject it.

There's something funny and sad about that argument, as it shows a kind of collective traumatism from past experiments. And yet, surely we must eventually try something else, as the current socio-economic order is an obvious dead end.

To sum up, the argument is self-defeating in as much as it ends up favoring a status quo that is itself untenable.

On 10/5/2020 at 4:39 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

You would need to have broad consensus as to what does and does not qualify as “the common good”.  I find that people who believe too hard in a given ideal, right or left, can get quite... disenchanted... when they discover many people disagree with their view of “common good”.  

Then they decide it’s just and proper to compel those who disagree.  

I won't deny the existence of the "temptation to compel" that, quite honestly, is independent of any specific ideology. However, the assumption that humans can not agree on a definition of a "common good" strikes me as odd.

This seems like a "glass half-empty or half-full" situation. Certainly, idealists tend to underestimate the disagreements between different factions. Imho however, conversely, people who claim the mantle of "pragmatist" overestimate the disagreements about the fundamentals.

Point is, this is essentially a question of time-scale. No common ground is going to emerge tomorrow. OTOH you said "ever," and that's what prompted me to sharply reject such a position. Given the progress our species has experienced in the past centuries alone, it seems pointlessly pessimistic to assume we will "never" come to a collective agreement on even the most basic principles, and thus that our species will never manage to reach what we would describe today as "utopian."

3 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

However, I totally oppose the government deciding what products or ideas are worthy for investment. That is likely to be a complete cluster. The fact is that no government committee is going to be able to determine which ideas are good and which ones are bad. Put it this way: Suppose there is one committee deciding one which investment projects are worthy. And then suppose there are 1000 little committees deciding on investment projects. Lets say 95% of the ideas fail. Who do you think is going to produce more good ideas, the one committee or the 1000 little committees?

There are several mistakes here that I find surprising from you.

For starters, historically speaking, governments or bureaucracies aren't particularly bad at choosing investment. At any rate, the idea that the private sector is better seems rather dubious. I've got some Stiglitz on hand about this;

Quote

And the evidence in the case of government research ventures is unambiguously and overwhelmingly that the returns from government investments in technology on average have been very, very high – just think about the Internet, the Human Genome Project, jet airplanes, the browser, the telegraph, the increase in productivity in agriculture in the nineteenth century, that provided the basis for the United States' moving from farming to manufacturing. When I was chariman of the Council fo Economic Advisers, we assessed the average social returns on government R&D, and it turned out to be well in excess of 50 percent, far higher in other areas of investment (including private sector R&D).

I understand the source for this would be:

Quote

Stiglitz and Wallsten, « Supporting Research and Development to Promote Economic Growth : The Federal Government's Role, » Council of Economic Advisers, October 1995.

The second mistake I see is your assumption that government investment would be centralized while private investment is decentralized. I am not certain I believe this is true, and even it it is (on some level), this is hardly difficult to change.

In a nutshell, you can easily have decentralized/local government being at least as efficient as the private sector.
I personally tend to believe this would turn out to be far more efficient.

On 10/5/2020 at 6:13 AM, OldGimletEye said:

Capitalism may be a "social construction" in the same way that driving on on the right side of the road is a social construction. Both are solutions to real social problems that are based in the material world. In the case of road, driving, imagine the chaos that would result if there wasn't a social convention about which side of the road to drive one. The convention about which side of the road to drive on might be completely arbitrary (we could decide to drive on the left side of the road), but it does solve an actual problem.

In the case of the production of goods, there is a serious issue about what to produce and in what quantities to produce them in. I suppose you could theoretically build a super computer where everyone entered their consumption preferences and work preferences and have it solve the problem of what gets produced and who works what job. Of course, early societies didn't have that option. The informational requirements are enormous. Not even in the era of super computers and "big data" is the problem easy to solve. The only solution that early societies could come up with is basically decentralize the whole system.

"Decentralization" is an interesting choice of words.

It seems to me that our current management of resources (i.e. production) is based on accepting information deficits. By that I mean that the existence of markets dominating our lives (not just in purely economic terms, but also in social and politican ones) derives from information asymmetry. And, ironically, that's in spite of the fact that we have experienced (and are still experiencing) an information revolution.

I have Hayek high on my reading lists precisely because several of his key assumptions are debunked by technological progress. We now have the means to rationalize production without using markets. We are in fact already collecting massive amounts of data. And there's no reason to assume this data cannot be shared - the fact that it isn't is a reflection of power structures.

In other words, we already have the means to move far beyond our current system. The reason we're not is because "capitalism" isn't a purely economic organisation structure but the reflection of power struggles. Technology can only be used if there is the political will to do so, which in this case means, a popular desire for democratic empowerment.
 

On 10/5/2020 at 6:13 AM, OldGimletEye said:

People who wish to completely replace capitalism with something else, need to seriously contend with the issue of how we decide what gets made and who works what job etc. This is no small task and requires serious thought and not wishful thinking.

I know of at least three detailed alternatives, and possibly as much of four or five. And my knowledge of such things is hardly good.

Point is, at any point in time we have many alternative structures to the established one. The real problem is that people are fearful of change and comfortable with the status quo (the devil you know), both of which (fear & comfort) being fueled by careful information management at the highest levels.
That is changing however, since people are realizing that change is becoming inevitable - for our ways of life to survive, they have to evolve and adapt to material realities. At some point the number of people accepting the fact that there is no alternative to change will outweigh the number of people who fear taking the next step. In other words, the fact that socio-economic conservatism is rooted in fear, fallacies, and delusions will be so obvious that no functioning human will be able to defend it.
And let's be honest, to some extent, we're already there. Perhaps the question we're now faced with is how to compel without coercing, i.e. how to effect meaningful change while preserving the conservatives' sense of agency, and how to do this quickly. However, even assuming immediate failure (we're not succeeding as of now), I find it difficult to believe that this is an immutable state, an unsolvable problem.
I would assume, on the contrary, that humanity is quite capable of making the right choices in the long-run. At worst we need time to learn from our mistakes. But how dark and pessimistic it would be do to assume we are uncapable of doing so, eventually.

 

[OldGimletEye]

23 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

.For starters, historically speaking, governments or bureaucracies aren't particularly bad at choosing investment. At any rate, the idea that the private sector is better seems rather dubious. I've got some Stiglitz on hand about this;

No there is not several mistakes here. I have never denied the government can do some good things and fund some worthy research projects. In fact I cited Romer in support of some government funded research. But there is no way that a single government committee can decide on every single investment project.  There are more investment decisions that have to made than potentially worthy infrastructure projects. There are thousands of investment decisions that have to be made at any point in time.

 

23 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

The second mistake I see is your assumption that government investment would be centralized while private investment is decentralized. I am not certain I believe this is true, and even it it is (on some level), this is hardly difficult to change.

 Why wouldn't you believe that private investment is decentralized. Does Ford ask GM what to do before it invest in a project? Does the guy that runs the local pizzeria call up Washington before deciding to buy a new oven?

23 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I have Hayek high on my reading lists precisely because several of his key assumptions are debunked by technological progress. We now have the means to rationalize production without using markets. We are in fact already collecting massive amounts of data. And there's no reason to assume this data cannot be shared - the fact that it isn't is a reflection of power structures.

I doubt we can analyze all this data to determine what we should produce. And the data likely has missing information, with regard to consumer preferences and technological capabilities.

23 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

In other words, we already have the means to move far beyond our current system. The reason we're not is because "capitalism" isn't a purely economic organisation structure but the reflection of power struggles.

And all communist managed to do was replace capitalists with their own set of assholes, plus horrid authoritarianism and terrible economic growth. 

[Rippounet]

1 minute ago, OldGimletEye said:

I doubt we can analyze all this data to determine what we should produce.

I see no reason to assume we can't.

1 minute ago, OldGimletEye said:

But there is no way that a single government committee can decide on every single investment project.

But this is a strawman, as I don't believe anyone has argued for "a single" government committee.

1 minute ago, OldGimletEye said:

Why wouldn't you believe that private investment is decentralized. Does Ford ask GM what to do before it invest in a project?

It seems to me that corporate concentration achieves the very type of centralised decision-making that you oppose.

Of course, this depends on the sector you're looking at, but I don't see any functional difference between a global corporation and a state when it comes to investment. The major difference I see is that government is far easier to democratize and significantly less likely to put profits ahead of the common good.

1 minute ago, OldGimletEye said:

And all communist managed to do was replace capitalists with their own set of assholes, plus horrid authoritarianism and terrible economic growth. 

"Horrid authoritarianism and terrible economic growth" is precisely what the current system is producing though.

It seems to me that the problem of past experiments was the absence (and to some extent, impossibility) of transparency. The information revolution has changed that however: it is now perfectly possible to democratize decision-making, including investment (in the broad sense of the word), especially since productivity increases (mainly through technology) have drastically reduced our labor needs.

I've no idea why anyone would think the private sector is more trustworthy than a democratic government.

[OldGimletEye]

32 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I see no reason to assume we can't.

Do you understand the scope of decisions that have to me made? Every day people have to make millions of economic decisions. And they may not be willing to reveal there intentions to some government agency for analysis. However, when people buy something, they do reveal their intentions.

32 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

But this is a strawman, as I don't believe anyone has argued for "a single" government committee.

Then they are arguing for what exactly. Explain.

32 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

It seems to me that corporate concentration achieves the very type of centralised decision-making that you oppose.

At what point have I ever said that monopolies are good things?

32 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

"Horrid authoritarianism and terrible economic growth" is precisely what the current system is producing though.

Compared to past communist regimes? No. And its not even close.

32 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

It seems to me that the problem of past experiments was the absence (and to some extent, impossibility) of transparency. The information revolution has changed that however: it is now perfectly possible to democratize decision-making, including investment (in the broad sense of the word), especially since productivity increases (mainly through technology) have drastically reduced our labor needs.

I doubt this information revolution is sufficient to make all the decisions that have to be made. Every day thousands if not millions of decisions have to be made. And, again, I'm skeptical that firms and people will reveal all their needs and intentions. There is likely to be missing information. And who in the hell wants some centralized authority collecting all this information about us?

[Alarich II]

14 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

It seems the recurring argument against utopia is that people might not want it, and should thus be allowed to reject it.

There's something funny and sad about that argument, as it shows a kind of collective traumatism from past experiments. And yet, surely we must eventually try something else, as the current socio-economic order is an obvious dead end.

The argument is that the utopias conceived in the 19th century, be they nationalist or socialist or both, turned out to be dystopias by the middle of the 20th century. The question then is - if we must try something else, why go back to those utopias that didn't work out? Primo Levi once wrote: It happened once, therefore it can happen again. I am wary of a state that accumulates too much power, the optimistic idea that this will not be abused is IMO not grounded in reality.

Quote

I have Hayek high on my reading lists precisely because several of his key assumptions are debunked by technological progress. We now have the means to rationalize production without using markets. We are in fact already collecting massive amounts of data. And there's no reason to assume this data cannot be shared - the fact that it isn't is a reflection of power structures.

Markets are not a means to rationalize production, rationalized production is one factor to determine supply on a given market. The idea that we can somehow assume what people will want and then optimize production output accordingly should have been put to rest a long time ago. What you are arguing for, is basically that at a given moment we will optimize our future production using only data; The necessary assumption being that, if we have all available data, then this is all we need to know. This is basically the end of innovation.  You cannot optimize beyond the data you have, so at one given moment, your VHS records will be produced at an optimal rate. But you'll never get to Netflix. Because that necessitates something else, something very human, and that is taking a risk and creating something new, that people did not know they wanted until it was there. Putting it out on the market and see if there is demand for it and not analyze existing demand and optimize accordingly.

It really is a shame that so many read Marx and so few read Schumpeter.

And to expand on the data-reliance to make utopia work: The idea that we will use data to predict future desires, attitudes and consequently choices is of course a great theme of science fiction. But regardless how much data we have and analyze, it never seems to be quite enough. What we do know, is that data can and is already used to discriminate against minorities and that the horrid authoritarian regimes of today like for example China are actively using data against their citizens. Your assumption that the state will be a benevolent actor beyond power structures and power struggles is quite generous.

19 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

"Horrid authoritarianism and terrible economic growth" is precisely what the current system is producing though.

This is of course a wild exaggeration which at the same time downplays the real crimes of the authoritarian socialist states. Maybe you should visit the memorial sites in the former Stasi-prisons Bautzen or Hohenschönhausen to get an idea what these socialist states did to people. Just to get a bit of an idea how horrid authoritarianism really looks like. And if even half of what we hear from the Chinese "reeducation" camps is true, then we are already far beyond the horrors of the old socialist regimes.

[OldGimletEye]

1 minute ago, Alarich II said:

What you are arguing for, is basically that at a given moment we will optimize our future production using only data; The necessary assumption being that, if we have all available data, then this is all we need to know. 

I'm in my 40s. My needs and consumption plans are likely to be different than somebody in their 20s. Where somebody in their 20s might plan to spend the weekend hanging out with their friends and drinking beer, my plans are watching re-runs of Matlock while popping Geritol.

Of course even within my own age group, I might have different needs and preferences. I might decide, that I'm getting up there in age and need to start exercising. So  I go and get a gym membership because that works for me. Another person, in my age group, who decides they need to exercise to combat aging too, might decide that investing in some gym equipment might work best for them.

The point is that there are many different needs and preferences.

I suppose theoretically we all could go to some computer every week and input our intended consumption and work plans and have an algorithm spit out a vector of quantities of commodities that need to be produced and the hours everyone needs to work. But, you know, in the real world that is not going to happen. I am not going to dutifully go to my computer every week and input my intended plans.

However, when I buy something, I do reveal information about my intended plans.

[Conflicting Thought]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Compared to past communist regimes? No. And its not even close.

What? All of latin america would like a word with you, and africa, what about asia?. 

[Alarich II]

2 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

However, when I buy something, I do reveal information about my intended plans.

I would say, you reveal information about your current desires and needs. I mean, when you go out shopping, it just might happen that you come across a new shiny something, that you didn't even know you want when you left the house, but is now all you need to live a happy life ever after.

I'm 39 but I have heard that his happens to men in their 40s all the time.

[sologdin]

develops as a necessity to "protect" the revolution

the leninists talked like that, sure--and there was a need, considering the civil war, interventions by the west post-WWI, the general invasion in WWII.  it's not like the revolution did not need protecting.  but it's a bit of a stretch to get from there to full metal stalin.  that is, there's no need to assume that socialist economics is doomed to become stalinist, considering that stalinism is a set of deviations from doctrine.

a state that accumulates too much power, the optimistic idea that this will not be abused is IMO not grounded in reality.

i suspect many lefties would stipulate to this, provided also that we stipulate that private accumulations of power are similar--primo levi was held at auschwitz, which was operated and expanded by a private party organ and provided forced labor for the benefit of private capitalist enterprise. one way to look at it was that the weimar state was too weak, insofar as it was unable to prevent a private organization from dominating civil society.  the point is that state power can be controlled democratically, whereas private power is almost always dictatorial in its exercise--aristotelian despotism is literally the oikos' authority over its slaves. the polis by contrast can be subject to deliberative discpline.

[OldGimletEye]

3 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

What? All of latin america would like a word with you, and africa, what about asia?. 

You mean countries like North Korea? Yeah, what a wonderful place.

[Zorral]

Still conceptualizing within out-of-date boxes.  This is from May, and things have changed even since then, financially, politically and medically.  But this remains relevant, particularly the financial side of it. Nevertheless, Kaplan himself seems stuck inside the boxes in which he was born, raised and has worked all his life, particularly when it comes to anything outside of Eurpe and the USA.

“Historians love chapter breaks.” Robert Kaplan, an American foreign-policy expert and former member of the U.S. Defense Policy Board, who this month briefed officials at 10 Downing Street on the potential second-order effects of the coronavirus crisis. “COVID-19 will come to be seen as a chapter break.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/05/coronavirus-pandemic-second-wave-geopolitics-instability/611668/

Quote

 

....More than anything, though, for Western governments there is a simple underlying reality to the geopolitical second wave: cash, or a lack of it. “You’ve got more problems but less money to deal with them,” one senior adviser to the British government, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly about internal deliberations, told me.

After more than a decade of public-spending cuts, for example, Britain’s military—capable of helping the United States invade both Iraq and Afghanistan less than 20 years ago—has morphed into a “one shot” force that is unable to sustain itself for longer than six months outside Europe, according to Clarke. What will its capacity look like after another set of cuts? Britain and France required American support to intervene in Libya in 2011. Could a joint European force do so again anywhere along its exposed underbelly on the North African shore? Could it even be used in a purely medical capacity, as it was during the Ebola outbreak in 2014?

A major British government review of the country’s foreign-affairs, defense, and intelligence strategy was due to be published this year, but it has since been pushed back indefinitely because of the pandemic.The immediate consequence is that the review, when it happens, will be less strategic and more tactical—driven by financial considerations rather than any grand vision the government wanted to set out for post-Brexit Britain. Officials in London will have to focus more on “What can we afford?” and less on “What do we want to do?,” an approach that is short-term, ad hoc, and defensive....

 

 

[Alarich II]

35 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

What? All of latin america would like a word with you, and africa, what about asia?. 

Latin America, like Venezuela, you mean? Or China? Or the Peoples Republic of Congo? Yes, the argument can be made that these and other countries deserve better governance. But surely we would wish for them to be as free and prosperous as western democracies and not the other way round?

34 minutes ago, sologdin said:

that is, there's no need to assume that socialist economics is doomed to become stalinist, considering that stalinism is a set of deviations from doctrine.

No, of course there is no need to assume that, it is a priviledge of utopias to leave aside the assumptions that lead to failure, just as dystopias leave aside the assumptions that lead to success. But the fact that it happened, and not only in Russia and the Eastern Bloc, but also in China and other countries makes me wonder why you would think that it will not happen again.

 

34 minutes ago, sologdin said:

i suspect many lefties would stipulate to this, provided also that we stipulate that private accumulations of power are similar--primo levi was held at auschwitz, which was operated and expanded by a private party organ and provided forced labor for the benefit of private capitalist enterprise. one way to look at it was that the weimar state was too weak, insofar as it was unable to prevent a private organization from dominating civil society.  the point is that state power can be controlled democratically, whereas private power is almost always dictatorial in its exercise--aristotelian despotism is literally the oikos' authority over its slaves. the polis by contrast can be subject to deliberative discpline.

Auschwitz was run by the SS, an organization of the Nazi party and integral part of the Nazi state. It was not a private capitalist enterprise that organized this (although different private enterprises have benefited from forced labour), the death camps were organized by the state bureaucracy and the execution was done by the armed forces of the state; Auschwitz was the states raison d'état.

And of course, the weakness of Weimar was the weakness of its democratic institutions, but the radical anti-democratic parties (mainly NSDAP and KPD) were not "private" organizations in a capitalist sense; they were political parties first and foremost. The opportunistic nature of capitalism provided the basis for cooperation with the Nazi, and profit from Arianisation and forced labour; and afterwards it adaped to the new rules just as well. What crashed Weimar was not capitalism, in fact, after the first crises (hyperinflation), Weimar and capitalism got along just fine. What crashed Weimar was a crisis in democratic institutions that could not withstand the onslaught of authoritarian, anti-democratic parties. The point is, democratic control over the state is not enough - the protection of the individual against the state is just as important. And this protection will in some form always include the protection of private property - even beyond the mere personal necessities. So if you raze those protections to bring about the new utopia, and all you leave is the democratic control of the state, then you will see this happening again and again.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

At what point have I ever said that monopolies are good things?

Right. No one here is arguing for undemocratic centralized decision-making.

The point is, there is no reason to believe that government power is inherently more dangerous than corporate power (in the current system, this is in fact a false dichotomy since government power is inextricably tied to corporate interests). The problem is the concentration of power itself, which is a potential weakness of any human organization.

The question remaining then is whether, as a framework, "capitalism" or "communism" is best (among other things) to implement a form of distributed (democratic) power.
In the long-run, I believe the future framework will be communist in nature.
This doesn't mean that I'm advocating a "communist" revolution today. As far as implementation goes, I'd advocate localism, decentralisation, and democratisation.
I'd also defend information-sharing and transparency as core principles.

A different way of putting it is that "my" form of communism would entail preventing concentration of power to begin with.

1 hour ago, Alarich II said:

The argument is that the utopias conceived in the 19th century, be they nationalist or socialist or both, turned out to be dystopias by the middle of the 20th century.

Pretty much everything in this sentence is false.

Both nationalism and socialism offered considerable human progress ; nefarious versions of both were developed.

Of course, if you overly simplify the past you lose the ability to think about the future. We cannot and should not reject nationalism or socialism as failed experiments but see them instead as ongoing movements in the wider historical picture.

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Do you understand the scope of decisions that have to me made? Every day people have to make millions of economic decisions. And they may not be willing to reveal there intentions to some government agency for analysis. However, when people buy something, they do reveal their intentions.

52 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I suppose theoretically we all could go to some computer every week and input our intended consumption and work plans and have an algorithm spit out a vector of quantities of commodities that need to be produced and the hours everyone needs to work. But, you know, in the real world that is not going to happen. I am not going to dutifully go to my computer every week and input my intended plans.

However, when I buy something, I do reveal information about my intended plans.

I'm afraid I do not understand what your objection is.

On the one hand, human needs are much simpler and easier to compute than you seem to suggest. On the other hand, the consumption that's harder to predict is generally non-essential, and should either be constrained by the fight against climate change in the next decades anyway (with or without radical socio-economic evolutions), or on the contrary become almost limitless once we remove the straightjacket of the current order (and its dramatic undervaluation of some economic sectors).

It seems to me you're basically arguing for the preservation of individual agency through the specific act of consumption... While I'm arguing for agency through increasingly democratic processes (that, to be fair, do not exactly exist yet).
The two are not even absolutely mutually exclusive... By that I mean that adopting a democratic-communist perspective/framework overall does not totally exclude the possibility of preserving some highly-regulated markets, as long as they are limited in scope.

Ironically, I'm thus arguing for limited markets.
The very opposite of the US ideology that tends to advocate limited government.

1 hour ago, Alarich II said:

Your assumption that the state will be a benevolent actor beyond power structures and power struggles is quite generous.

The assumption is actually that it's easier to improve upon government, which by definition is supposed to work for the people, than it is to improve upon corporations, whose main purpose by definition is profit.

Conversely I do not see what distrust of the state/government brings to the table, except as a reminder of the power of American propaganda.