Socialism, Anarchism, Communism, the Future of Online Leftism

[All Cats Are Bad]

IMO libertarianism and socialism are more compatible with each other than either are with the neo-liberalisms represented by Democrats and Republicans.

That being said I'm talking about real libertarianism, not this shit Rand Paul-Republicans pull where they yap and croak about Democrat bailouts and then de-regulate corporations that crush small businesses and poison the environment while shoveling money with both hands towards private arms manufacturers. That's not maximizing liberty, that's just the same money venerating death-cult behavior the GOP has always dragged out, but they use the words "freedom" and "taxes" instead of "Jesus".

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

14 minutes ago, SaltyGnosis said:

IMO libertarianism and socialism are more compatible with each other than either are with the neo-liberalisms represented by Democrats and Republicans.

That being said I'm talking about real libertarianism, not this shit Rand Paul-Republicans pull where they yap and croak about Democrat bailouts and then de-regulate corporations that crush small businesses and poison the environment while shoveling money with both hands towards private arms manufacturers. That's not maximizing liberty, that's just the same money venerating death-cult behavior the GOP has always dragged out, but they use the words "freedom" and "taxes" instead of "Jesus".

Oh, people tend to forget there is an anti-Authoritarian left too that resists statism and large government.

I simply wonder how that gels with the idea of a “collective” that encompasses every person on the planet and not smaller competing “sub-collectives”.

[A wilding]

13 hours ago, Altherion said:

Collective is open to interpretation, but the problems such a system runs into occur at any scale. In principle, it is possible to start an employee-owned business even within a capitalist system. The reason it has not been done is that within such a system, it's generally not competitive. There are some exceptions (e.g. the kibbutzim in Israel), but for the most part, such businesses don't last.

Not true. There are several successful long standing ones in the UK, e.g. John Lewis/Waitrose, Nationwide, the Co-op. 

The main risk to them is that they get somehow taken over by stealth by capitalists who want to asset strip them to make a quick buck. This happened to multiple UK building societies in a wave of carpet bagging about 25 years back. There have also been attempts to do it to John Lewis and the Co-op, but so far they have been spotted and blocked in time.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

17 minutes ago, A wilding said:

Not true. There are several successful long standing ones in the UK, e.g. John Lewis/Waitrose, Nationwide, the Co-op. 

The main risk to them is that they get somehow taken over by stealth by capitalists who want to asset strip them to make a quick buck. This happened to multiple UK building societies in a wave of carpet bagging about 25 years back. There have also been attempts to do it to John Lewis and the Co-op, but so far they have been spotted and blocked in time.

 

I love co-op’s I’d be just as bothered by a State take over of co-ops as buy a “stealth takeover” by capitalists.

[Martell Spy]

3 hours ago, SaltyGnosis said:

IMO libertarianism and socialism are more compatible with each other than either are with the neo-liberalisms represented by Democrats and Republicans.

That being said I'm talking about real libertarianism, not this shit Rand Paul-Republicans pull where they yap and croak about Democrat bailouts and then de-regulate corporations that crush small businesses and poison the environment while shoveling money with both hands towards private arms manufacturers. That's not maximizing liberty, that's just the same money venerating death-cult behavior the GOP has always dragged out, but they use the words "freedom" and "taxes" instead of "Jesus".

They're doing libertarianism wrong. That's the same justification people give for communism, it wasn't done properly. The Koch brothers purchased America's politics and the libertarianism is working perfectly. What's important is not the details, but that they get to dump whatever waste products they wish and fuck everyone else. That's libertarianism. The Kansas experiment? Huge tax cuts and public schools funding cut? Libertarianism.

[All Cats Are Bad]

44 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

That's the same justification people give for communism, it wasn't done properly. 

Even the USSR didn't have the temerity to claim it was actually Communist. They believed (ostensibly at least) that they were the middle step on the way to Communism.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Jo498 said:

Most countries (except some East Asian, NZ and Australia) are obviously overtaxed by Covid (both by coming up with rational measures and by enforcing them). It's pure fantasy that current administrations could enforce measures reducing the standard of living for most people by 30-50% without creating riots and anarchy. And obviously they wouldn't get democratic majorities for such measures either.

I think you have it backwards and that on the contrary the Covid crisis demonstrates that people are perfectly able to drastically reduce their personal comforts for good reasons. I'm experiencing my second lockdown as I type this, and I haven't seen a single riot yet.
It's almost as if humans aren't as selfish and self-centered as many econ books say.

At present global warming just isn't scary enough yet. Give it a few years and a few catastrophes and you'll see public opinion shift dramatically in favor of real action. Public opinion has been moving in that direction for a while now, and at some point you will run the risk of getting riots and eco-terrorism if governments don't act.

A different way to put it is that our "standard of living" will have to evolve, whether we want it to or not. The fantasy is believing we can carry on as usual, that global warming will not have massive political consequences. The fantasy is thinking that defending the status quo is "rational."
Considering the predictions made by our scientists, anyone not pushing for the end of the current socio-economic system is delusional. Obviously we do have to re-imagine economics.

1 hour ago, Jo498 said:

In fact, Rippounet seems to avoid a crucial point above: "Democratic" control of energy etc. by the majority of the populace in some European country would almost certainly not result in a vote for austerity and a drastically less comfortable lifestyle (which would be necessary for reducing global footprints etc). This could only be achieved by "benevolent" dictators.

Again, backwards. My position is that we should be working to prevent dictatorships, i.e. that we should move toward democracy while we can, because once shit hits the fan, people will indeed turn to some form of eco-fascism ("benevolent" dictators, or some twisted version of our current system).

To be clear: our way of life is over. Either we do nothing, and everything collapses in the next thirty years, or we start being serious about reducing our environmental footprint. Either way, the Western lifestyle ends. It's time people actually dealt with this reality because what's at stake is the way we manage the crisis. If we act soon enough we should be able to limit reductions in our standard of living, but most importantly, if we act soon enough, we, the people, might have a voice in what these reductions will be and how they will be implemented.

That doesn't mean that democracy will necessarily work. It's just the worst form of government, except for all the others.

[Altherion]

4 hours ago, A wilding said:

Not true. There are several successful long standing ones in the UK, e.g. John Lewis/Waitrose, Nationwide, the Co-op. 

The main risk to them is that they get somehow taken over by stealth by capitalists who want to asset strip them to make a quick buck. This happened to multiple UK building societies in a wave of carpet bagging about 25 years back. There have also been attempts to do it to John Lewis and the Co-op, but so far they have been spotted and blocked in time.

As I said, there are some exceptions. However, how does the number of these compare to the number of shareholder-owned corporations? They are relatively few.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

I think you have it backwards and that on the contrary the Covid crisis demonstrates that people are perfectly able to drastically reduce their personal comforts for good reasons.

The reasons are radically different though. With the virus, it's a non-trivial chance of hospitalization and possibly even death for almost everyone and a human-scale chance of killing an elderly person one interacts with on a daily basis -- and not in some nebulous future, but in a week or two. And even then, the US only managed to partially lock down for a few months before widespread opposition to the whole endeavor arose.

Also, drastic as the anti-covid measures appear to be, they're nowhere near enough to turn the carbon dioxide situation around.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

At present global warming just isn't scary enough yet. Give it a few years and a few catastrophes and you'll see public opinion shift dramatically in favor of real action.

By the time it's obvious, it'll be too late. The left is trying really, really hard to blame every natural disaster on climate change, but there have always been hurricanes, forest fires, heat waves and practically every other phenomenon that the rising temperatures will result in. The actual effects are obvious near the poles (where practically nobody lives), but in habitable regions, you need a statistical analysis to see them.

Furthermore, even if you manage to convince people that climate change is really causing an increase in natural disasters, climate change will still not get you to socialism -- or not for long, at any rate. The reason is that for this problem, the lag time between action and results is decades so even if drastic measures are implemented, for at least a quarter century, the natural disasters will continue to get worse and worse. A socialist government that drastically decreases the living standards of most of its citizens will not last that long.

[OldGimletEye]

14 minutes ago, Altherion said:

A socialist government that drastically decreases the living standards of most of its citizens will not last that long.

I agree that we need to do something about climate change. But, I don't think there is any good reason that all the pain needs to be borne by current generations. Some of it should probably be spread out over future generations, who will likely be wealthier. That means we should borrow some of the money ( a lot actually) to pay for replacing much of our capital stock.

I'm not very familiar with the borrowing history of places like the Soviet Union or East Germany, but I doubt they had the ability to borrow funds in the same manner as the United States or other countries with mixed economies. My understanding of the Soviet Union is they mainly had to borrow mostly from Western banks and weren't able to raise funds by issuing bonds on securities markets.

[Rippounet]

17 minutes ago, Altherion said:

By the time it's obvious, it'll be too late. The left is trying really, really hard to blame every natural disaster on climate change, but there have always been hurricanes, forest fires, heat waves and practically every other phenomenon that the rising temperatures will result in. The actual effects are obvious near the poles (where practically nobody lives), but in habitable regions, you need a statistical analysis to see them.

Not everywhere, you don't. I see the effects of climate change on a regular basis already in the regions where I live.

17 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Furthermore, even if you manage to convince people that climate change is really causing an increase in natural disasters, climate change will still not get you to socialism -- or not for long, at any rate. The reason is that for this problem, the lag time between action and results is decades so even if drastic measures are implemented, for at least a quarter century, the natural disasters will continue to get worse and worse. A socialist government that drastically decreases the living standards of most of its citizens will not last that long.

You may very well be correct. But I'm tempted to say: so what?

If humans can't act collectively, humans will suffer. And maybe we are facing the true "great filter," and won't make it.
We should still try.

[Altherion]

51 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I agree that we need to do something about climate change. But, I don't think there is any good reason that all the pain needs to be borne by current generations. Some of it should probably be spread out over future generations, who will likely be wealthier. That means we should borrow some of the money ( a lot actually) to pay for replacing much of our capital stock.

I'm not very familiar with the borrowing history of places like the Soviet Union or East Germany, but I doubt they had the ability to borrow funds in the same manner as the United States or other countries with mixed economies. My understanding of the Soviet Union is they mainly had to borrow mostly from Western banks and weren't able to raise funds by issuing bonds on securities markets.

I'm pretty sure nobody has ever had the kind of borrowing ability currently possessed by the US and EU. Our debts are in our own currencies and are not backed by gold or any other limitation. Furthermore, the tacit assumption in most security trading is that if the US and/or EU default, the world is so messed up that the other securities are, if not completely worthless, then of completely unpredictable value. So yes, as far as anyone can tell, our governments can borrow very large amounts of money at extremely low interest rates.

45 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

You may very well be correct. But I'm tempted to say: so what?

If humans can't act collectively, humans will suffer. And maybe we are facing the true "great filter," and won't make it.
We should still try.

We should still try, but we should do it in a way that maximizes the chance of success. Lowering living standards is almost certainly not the way to go.

[Rippounet]

3 minutes ago, Altherion said:

We should still try, but we should do it in a way that maximizes the chance of success. Lowering living standards is almost certainly not the way to go.

I really don't see any serious alternative given the information (predictions) we have.
I personally don't think our living standards need to be lowered that much, however the longer we wait and the worse it will be.

It's the supreme irony I see in these discussions. We could have started to address climate change rather painlessly decades ago (all the way back to the 1970s). Because we didn't, our way of life is now unsustainable and we need to start asking ourselves some really difficult questions.
If we keep waiting though, we'll be risking a lot more than a few material comforts.

I guess what I'm saying is that if the governments of the world (whether they be local or national, democratic or not) can't take some unpleasant decisions in the next decades, we're screwed. So in a way the issue of popularity is moot for me.

[felice]

21 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I wouldn’t be opposed to a marginal tax rate that makes that degree of wealth accumulation... difficult, if not impossible.

A great deal of wealth has already been accumulated, though. What happens to the economy when it's no longer profitable for the owners of that wealth to invest it productively?

16 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

we have never had to, in our history, post guards around the border to keep people from leaving.

In general, people want to leave poor countries and get into rich countries. Funny thing about the starting point of most countries that have attempted any kind of communism. And yes, people also want to get from repressive states to ones with more personal freedom. But US history isn't entirely lacking in armed forces stopping people who desperately want to get out of one state and into another, you know...

11 hours ago, Jo498 said:

One point against the broadly social democrat welfare states is that they are not very stable. Not in the sense of collapsing altogether but they have been gradually yielding to corporations

Yes, that's a major problem with mixed economies; if you've still got a billionaire elite, they're never going to stop using their incredible wealth and power to shift the mix in their favour.

11 hours ago, Jo498 said:

It's pure fantasy that current administrations could enforce measures reducing the standard of living for most people by 30-50% without creating riots and anarchy. And obviously they wouldn't get democratic majorities for such measures either.

I'm not convinced it's impossible. It's the government's job to sell the seriousness of the problem and why extreme measures are needed. So far, people have mostly had to choose between the "the iceberg is a hoax!" party and the "we should consider rearranging the deck chairs" party. And it should be possible to actually improve the standard of living for a substantial fraction of the population at the same time as curtailing the excesses of the better off. Eg massively expand public transport and banning private cars (with any necessary exceptions).

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, felice said:

 But US history isn't entirely lacking in armed forces stopping people who desperately want to get out of one state and into another, you know...

Like which cases are you referring too? If you are talking about slavery, then sure, that is correct. But, other than that, then no.

 

1 hour ago, felice said:

In general, people want to leave poor countries and get into rich countries.

Sure, but most poor countries didn't go to the lengths that communist states went to keep people in. 

Quote

 Funny thing about the starting point of most countries that have attempted any kind of communism. 

And it seems to me that North Korea and South Korea started off about the same, South Korea is well off, but North Korea remains poor. That seems to be as close to a "natural expirement" as we are going to get.

What you say has a grain of truth to it, as we don't really have any kind of apples to apples comparisons as doing a randomized controlled experiment isn't possible. Still history suggest the results of communism don't generally turn out well.

 

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, felice said:

A great deal of wealth has already been accumulated, though. What happens to the economy when it's no longer profitable for the owners of that wealth to invest it productively?

Fix population to some number. Also assume technology doesn't change. Capital accumulates until the interest rate equals people's time preference plus depreciation. Savings and investment reach a steady state. Its not clear to me why things collapse.

Of course, technological change is not likely to stay stagnant. So there is that too.

[OldGimletEye]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

It's the supreme irony I see in these discussions. We could have started to address climate change rather painlessly decades ago (all the way back to the 1970s). Because we didn't, our way of life is now unsustainable and we need to start asking ourselves some really difficult questions.
If we keep waiting though, we'll be risking a lot more than a few material comforts.

I do agree that had we started to deal with climate change 30 or 40 years ago, things would have turned out to be a lot less of a pain in the ass for everyone. Instead, we have pretty much back loaded all the hassle, rather than spreading it out. Conservatives are going to have realize that their foot dragging and sandbagging on this issue is going to require a lot more state intervention than what might have been necessary had we got started early.

At this point, we will probably have to do something on the scale of something like WW2. We have to replace our carbon based capital stock, reduced our carbon consumption, and invest in new technologies. There is a ton of stuff that is going to have to be done. Of course WW2, required a lot of government intervention, and was a burden on the civilian population. Fortunately, after it was over, the government was able to scale back.

 

[OldGimletEye]

2 hours ago, felice said:

Yes, that's a major problem with mixed economies; if you've still got a billionaire elite, they're never going to stop using their incredible wealth and power to shift the mix in their favour.

You know, I think its the case that most billionaires are insufferable assholes.

Interestingly enough, however, I'm quite comfortable stating on a public forum that most billionaires are assholes, as I don't have to worry about billionaires or their minions visiting me and busting my skull with a baton.

In a communist country, I'd be extremely nervous about criticizing communist leaders, as most likely I would have to worry about having my skull busted wide open with a baton.

I dislike billionaires. But, I'm terrified of communist.

[Fury Resurrected]

3 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

You know, I think its the case that most billionaires are assholes.

Interestingly enough, however, I'm quite comfortable stating on a public forum that most billionaires are assholes, as I don't have to worry about billionaires or their minions visiting me and busting my skull with a baton.

In a communist country, I'd be extremely nervous about criticizing communist leaders, as most likely I would have to worry about having my skull busted wide open with a baton.

I dislike billionaires. But, I'm terrified of communist.

Those are authoritarian countries though. I feel like white Americans and even Europeans just decide that Native American nations don’t exist and are not largely communist. The White Earth Nation tribal council wouldn’t be out cracking your skull, dude.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

You know, I think its the case that most billionaires are insufferable assholes.

Interestingly enough, however, I'm quite comfortable stating on a public forum that most billionaires are assholes, as I don't have to worry about billionaires or their minions visiting me and busting my skull with a baton.

In a communist country, I'd be extremely nervous about criticizing communist leaders, as most likely I would have to worry about having my skull busted wide open with a baton.

I dislike billionaires. But, I'm terrified of communist.

You're speaking in extremes, and your fear is more of authoritarianism than communism. The former can show up in all kinds of forms.

ETA: Damn you, @Fury Resurrected! 

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Fury Resurrected said:

Those are authoritarian countries though. I feel like white Americans and even Europeans just decide that Native American nations don’t exist and are not largely communist and are not at all authoritarian. The White Earth Nation tribal council wouldn’t be out cracking your skull, dude.

But, seemingly enough, Marxist countries, whether they are in Europe, Latin America, or Asia do that. Maybe you need to explain the reason why?