Socialism, Anarchism, Communism, the Future of Online Leftism

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Which, again, is placing a moral philosophy on an amoral system.

Not exactly.  It's saying the empirical impact of capitalism has been, rather objectively, immoral.  I suppose you could argue nothing can be objectively immoral or moral, but I disagree with that.  So in that regard I suppose it's employing a "moral philosophy."

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Just now, DMC said:

Not exactly.  It's saying the empirical impact of capitalism has been, rather objectively, immoral.  I suppose you could argue nothing can be objectively immoral or moral, but I disagree with that.  So in that regard I suppose it's employing a "moral philosophy."

Okay.  Arguably socialism is amoral to.  Economics isn’t a moral philosophy.

[Liffguard]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Economics isn’t a moral philosophy.

Hard disagree. I'm not sure how questions of how resources get allocated can possibly be divorced from moral judgements.

[DMC]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Economics isn’t a moral philosophy.

I don't know about that (it definitely depends on what exactly you mean), but what we can say is that just as the impact of the "communist" regimes of the 20th century were empirically immoral, so too are the effects of capitalism as the dominant system of the western world.  That's not about philosophy, it's about observing outcomes.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

Hard disagree. I'm not sure how questions of how resources get allocated can possibly be divorced from moral judgements.

Okay.  

[Rippounet]

5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Economics isn’t a moral philosophy.

Of course it is. The original name of economics is "political economy" and it was never meant to be neutral. The assertion that it is is relatively recent, and of course, complete bullshit.
That's one of the first things any "unorthodox economist" mentions in their introduction. I've seen this reminder at least half-a-dozen times in books by Piketty, Varoufakis, Chang, Mazzucato, or Stiglitz.

Basically, economics is not a science. All the supposedly "neutral" models rest on underlying assumptions that are themselves ideological or political in nature. And those we use today are particularly ideological in nature.

[OldGimletEye]

8 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

Hard disagree. I'm not sure how questions of how resources get allocated can possibly be divorced from moral judgements.

Which is fine as long as you understand the policy options.

Getting back to the 1930s and the AA, and trying to feed people. Policy 1 is price controls. Policy 2 is giving them cash grants. Policy 2 is likely better because in the long run it won't lead to a decrease in the number of food producers, which is probably what you don't want. Plus it will help to combat deflation and boost aggregate demand, which is the main source of trouble.

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Of course it is. The original name of economics is "political economy" and it was never meant to be neutral. The assertion that it is is relatively recent, and of course, complete bullshit.
That's one of the first things any "unorthodox economist" mentions in their introduction. I've seen this reminder at least half-a-dozen times in books by Piketty, Varoufakis, Chang, Mazzucato, or Stiglitz.

Basically, economics is not a science. All the supposedly "neutral" models rest on underlying assumptions that are themselves ideological or political in nature. And those we use today are particularly ideological in nature.

Of course conservatives can turn this around and just say everything liberal economist say is bullshit. Be careful with this line of reasoning.

Its true of course, that economic opinions can be influenced by politics. Part of the problem is that arriving at empirical conclusions in economics is difficult. Its difficult to do randomized control trials. So economist are basically left with doing regressions (for the most part), which is an attempt to do apples to apples comparisons. But that can be difficult, as getting correct model specifications is difficult.

But not everything is just a matter of perspective or politics, unless you want to argue that the Reagan tax cuts drove the recovery in the 1980s, instead of monetary policy, which the evidence seems to favor, or that Hayek made a good call in the early 1930s when he was calling for deflation.

[Altherion]

18 minutes ago, DMC said:

It's saying the empirical impact of capitalism has been, rather objectively, immoral.

Do you think feudalism would have done better? Or mercantilism? Or the corporatism of the 1930s? Or communism as practiced by the Soviet Union? There is no doubt that capitalism has done a lot of harm, but it has also done a lot of good. It only makes sense to call it immoral once there is another approach that is clearly better (as capitalism has proven to be relative to all of the economic policies in my questions above).

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Do you think feudalism would have done better? Or mercantilism? Or the corporatism of the 1930s? Or communism as practiced by the Soviet Union? There is no doubt that capitalism has done a lot of harm, but it has also done a lot of good. It only makes sense to call it immoral once there is another approach that is clearly better (as capitalism has proven to be relative to all of the economic policies in my questions above).

No, I think mixed systems - and particularly mixed systems that employ much more socialistic policies than the US - have clearly done better, as demonstrated by empirical outcomes.

[Rippounet]

6 minutes ago, Altherion said:

There is no doubt that capitalism has done a lot of harm, but it has also done a lot of good.

Funnily enough, I agreed with this statement just a few weeks ago, until I stumbled on what appears to be decent maths showing that most of the recent "good" coming from capitalism, i.e. the end of extreme poverty, is really due to the development of China, which of course can hardly be ascribed to capitalism itself, or at least not capitalism alone.
Since Mazzucato has adressed the idea that capitalism is responsible for innovation, that the rise of the middle-class has more to do with Marxism and Keynesianism than anything else, and that we now know for a fact that capitalism and democracy are not interdependent, one has to wonder where the "lot of good" coming from capitalism is exactly. Because it really seems to me that capitalism only does "good" when it is is mixed with something else...

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Rippounet said:

Funnily enough, I agreed with this statement just a few weeks ago, until I stumbled on what appears to be decent maths showing that most of the recent "good" coming from capitalism, i.e. the end of extreme poverty, is really due to the development of China, which of course can hardly be ascribed to capitalism itself, or at least not capitalism alone.

It would appear a lot of China's growth did come after experimenting with market liberalization. That said, its interesting, that in some ways a "communist" country could use a few extra safety nets, primarily in the form retirement and healthcare.

[OldGimletEye]

11 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Since Mazzucato has adressed the idea that capitalism is responsible for innovation, that the rise of the middle-class has more to do with Marxism and Keynesianism than anything else, and that we now know for a fact that capitalism and democracy are not interdependent, one has to wonder where the "lot of good" coming from capitalism is exactly. Because it really seems to me that capitalism only does "good" when it is is mixed with something else...

Decentralized markets (which I will include capitalism as a subset) seem pretty good and at disseminating information and innovation. However, left to its own devices they may or can generate a sub-optimal level idea generation, meaning there is a role for the state to play. This largely based on the work of Paul Romer who won a Nobel Prize recently. Be careful in just declaring that everything in economics is "just politics".

Keynes contribution was to show that a "free market" system may not achieve an optimal outcome, refuting the idea that the "invisible hand" will always lead to the best possible situation. There are two ways to interpret Keynes. There is the "sticky price" version of Keynes, and the multiple equilibrium version of Keynes. I believe the multiple equilibrium version of Keynes is likely closer to the spirit of his argument. And I think, there are strong reasons to believe that the economy can at times hit "bad equilibrium" and the government can help it to achieve "good equilibrium" as shown by people like Cass and Shell (Sunspot theory) and others. Again, be careful just declaring all of it is "just politics".

[Rippounet]

38 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

These are just some basic issues, and there are probably many others I haven't thought about. I'm not saying a socialist system may never work. But, I am saying its good to be skeptical to make sure that any future plans have been well thought out.

To be candid, I'm not an expert on alternatives to the current system. I try to read as much as I can, and I know of some recent detailed plans, like those of Friot or Bookchin, but I would be incapable of describing them back to you.

I'm more than willing to engage on a number of questions I have knowledge of, but I'm not the next Karl Marx.

If you're genuinely interested, maybe we can exchange reading lists and bibliographies.

In fact, damn, that's exactly what we should be doing. Now, that would be constructive. I'll think about this a bit and possibly open a thread for that purpose in the coming weeks.

10 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Having the ability to borrow large of sums of money, when needed is nice to have. 

In the case of the United States, we will probably have to pay for a number of expenditures to fight global climate change. That includes things like investment in research, replacing old carbon based capital stock, infrastructure investments, and transfer payments to those individuals affected by carbon reduction and who don't have the means to bear the cost. It will probably run several trillion dollars over several years.

And most likely you probably won't be able to pay for all this stuff by increasing taxes, and even if you could it probably wouldn't be popular, and no you're probably not going to just soak the rich (though higher tax rates on them are certainly needed) to pay for it all. 

So being able to borrow these sums to pay for this stuff is hugely convenient. At some point, though, after you have borrowed all this money, you do need to get your debt/GDP ratio down (it doesn't have to be 0), which isn't really done by "paying it back", but basically by having the size of the economy grow faster than the debt, which in turn doesn't necessarily require deficits to be 0, so long as G > R. Hopefully, we won't listen to the de-growth nutters.

This is all very orthodox.

For staters, most of the time money isn't "borrowed," it is created. Big difference. What this means is that the orthodox mechanisms you are talking about (the debt/GDP ratio or G > R) have no inherent raison d'être. Their only point is to preserve the value of money, that is to prevent inflation and depreciation. In a nutshell, what you want to avoid is Soviet-style inflation, which combines corruption, finlation, and depreciation.

It's useful to bear in mind that many of our governments are creating a lot of money right now, and the end of the world hasn't happened just yet.

This being said, how des one prevent Soviet-style inflation? One lead might be Cuba, with its two currencies. Much could be said about that system, of course, but from a purely economic perspective it kinda works. So since I myself do not favor strong state controls, I might pick a leaf out of the anarchist playbook and wonder whether a multiplication of local currencies, i.e. communities having their own local currency (possibly relying on local governments), might not be a truly interesting lead.
And there's a lot of empirical data to analyse since experiments have already been multiplying this past decade or so.

A simpler plan is to change the debt/GDP ratio with a "green bank," an idea put forward by... Macron of all people. The source makes me sceptical, but in itself, the creation of a public green bank separate from other institutions, that would have the power to create money for the transition alone, and whose monetary creation would more or less be ignored for the debt/GDP ratio, has the beauty of simplicity.

Of course, the true solution is a mix of everything. We need a green bank, and local currencies, and... every decent idea we can get. Use data where it is available, and experiment where it is not.

10 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

The data isn't great, but its the data we got to work with. If Soviet domination is the main reason, then I think communists advocates should acknowledge that and expound on it and explain in their view what went wrong and how they will stop it in the future. Though I think some leftist are loathe to admit that some leftist can be authoritarian, seeing it as mainly as a sin of the right, which certainly is true, but when it comes to busting skulls, some leftist have proven they can hold their own.

Authoritarianism is a temptation for any ideology, however lofty it may originally be.

With communism you get at least three huge problems: 1) overthrow of the previous system, 2) resistance to collectivism, and 3) free riders/corruption.
Authoritarianism is the "easy" way to solve these three problems.
2) is the point that's particularly sticky for communism imho: assuming a majority of people are believers, the others may well end up trying to sabotage the system, especially those who end up losing power or influence under communism. So even if communism "wins," chances are there'll be an active minority trying to bring about its failure or its collapse. And of course, in the 20th century, such active minorities were supported by the US.

It's the irony of any collective ideology that it can't easily deal with people who are not themselves in favor of collectivism. But it's also part of the reason we aren't addresing climate change right now: precisely because most of the people in charge have too much to lose with the transition.

[OldGimletEye]

14 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

This is all very orthodox.

For staters, most of the time money isn't "borrowed," it is created. Big difference. What this means is that the orthodox mechanisms you are talking about (the debt/GDP ratio or G > R) have no inherent raison d'être. Their only point is to preserve the value of money, that is to prevent inflation and depreciation. In a nutshell, what you want to avoid is Soviet-style inflation, which combines corruption, finlation, and depreciation.

It's useful to bear in mind that many of our governments are creating a lot of money right now, and the end of the world hasn't happened just yet.

This being said, how des one prevent Soviet-style inflation? One lead might be Cuba, with its two currencies. Much could be said about that system, of course, but from a purely economic perspective it kinda works. So since I myself do not favor strong state controls, I might pick a leaf out of the anarchist playbook and wonder whether a multiplication of local currencies, i.e. communities having their own local currency (possibly relying on local governments), might not be a truly interesting lead.
And there's a lot of empirical data to analyse since experiments have already been multiplying this past decade or so.

A simpler plan is to change the debt/GDP ratio with a "green bank," an idea put forward by... Macron of all people. The source makes me sceptical, but in itself, the creation of a public green bank separate from other institutions, that would have the power to create money for the transition alone, and whose monetary creation would more or less be ignored for the debt/GDP ratio, has the beauty of simplicity.

Ultimately this sounds like a bunch of MMT nonsense.

And believe me, I don't believe in the neutrality of money at least in the short run. Just because you increase the monetary base by X amount doesn't mean you will get inflation by X amount as a whole bunch of general equilibrium effects happen. But if you put enough base money into the economy you will generate inflation.

And if you think that you are going to finance all this stuff by creating money, that is a whole lot of wishful thinking.

If I keep pumping base money into an economy, eventually inflation will happen, after all the general equilibrium effects work themselves out, which will force me to raise taxes to take some it out. Bond finance allows me to defer those taxes until later.

[OldGimletEye]

29 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

If you're genuinely interested, maybe we can exchange reading lists and bibliographies.

I'll message you. But, I suggest, when we get time to read the history of Yugoslavia, whom I understand did try to implement market socialism and had some success. But, I'm not familiar with all the details.

[Rippounet]

5 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Ultimately this sounds like a bunch of MMT nonsense.

Totally. I'll even own Krugman's description of MMT as "calvinball," except I personally believe economics as a whole has been politically-driven "calvinball" for the past hundred years or so - at the very least.
If you take the entire marginalist approach, it's basically saying that prices are based on perceived needs ("utility"), that is, perceived rather than actual.
As a description it's not entirely wrong, but adopting this as the dominant perspective is insane. It's like seeing lemmings jump over a cliff ,and from that observation, deducing that all lemmings will eventually jump over a cliff, and the only real question to be answered is when.
A different way to put it is that we've left value become arbitrary, because humans are not rational beings and are completely incapable of correctly ascribing value to anything. And this shows.
This explains a great deal about our world, including our inability to manage our environmental footprint. But it also explains why so many people feel that our world is absurd and makes no sense. Fundamentally, they are correct and our world is rife with absurdities. Because we adopted the economic theories that were most likely to protect the socio-economic status quo, our societies as a whole have become increasingly void of meaning. That is also why, imho, so many of us turn to reactionary ideologies, because they offer the meaning that is lacking from the system as it is.

Anyway. Everything I've read about economics, and I mean everything, from Adam Smith to Thomas Piketty, has convinced me that economics is really just politics under another name.
Yes, it's possible to objectively describe some economic mechanisms, but ultimately, no mechanism is inherently "natural." So even if some economic works are objective (kinda "scientific") they don't really say whether a mechanism is desirable or not.
The desirability of a given mechanism is a political question. One that orthodox economists pretend doesn't exist, and yet the one we have to ask ourselves if we want our civilization to survive.

[Rippounet]

A few points I missed...

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Decentralized markets (which I will include capitalism as a subset)

This is something I've been wondering about. Doesn't capitalism, almost by definition, hurt the decentralization of markets?

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

If I keep pumping base money into an economy, eventually inflation will happen, after all the general equilibrium effects work themselves out, which will force me to raise taxes to take some it out.

Uh, yes. And... ? I can't see the problem here.

[OldGimletEye]

2 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Totally. I'll even own Krugman's description of MMT as "calvinball," except I personally believe economics as a whole has been politically-driven "calvinball" for the past hundred years or so - at the very least.

The effects of expanding the supply of money is one of those situations in which an economics sort of person, needs to know when it is appropriate to use a partial equilibrium model and when to use a general equilibrium model. In certain applications, a partial equilibrium model is an okay approximation. Understanding how money works its way through the economy isn't one of them. The reason is that the supply curve for money isn't independent, usually often, from the demand curve. In certain states of the economy, if  supply of money increases  the demand curve will likely will shift up and to the right. So you just can't say, in all situations, that increasing the money supply will increase the price level.

But, obviously there are capacity constraints. There is at any point in time a certain amount of labor and capital. Once you hit those constraints, then increasing the money supply will increase inflation.

 

8 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

If you take the entire marginalist approach, it's basically saying that prices are based on perceived needs ("utility"), that is, perceived rather than actual.

,Sure, the marginalist approach doesn't purport to explain what people "need", only what they want and how much they will give up to get what they want. People don't need Vanilla Ice records, though some people will pay for them (I have no idea why though).

11 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

.Anyway. Everything I've read about economics, and I mean everything, from Adam Smith to Thomas Piketty, has convinced me that economics is really just politics under another name.

Maybe Hayek was right during the 1930s. And so was Mises. And maybe Stephen Moore's ideas are just as good as anybody else's. Though, I'm not inclined to think so.

[OldGimletEye]

2 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Uh, yes. And... ? I can't see the problem here.

See above.