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Billy_TParticipantI’ve finally found an integrity in the Progressive movement that I feel comfortable with.
Which probably means as I vote for Jill Stein that Trump will win by 1 vote in Florida and it will be traced to me not voting the Dem ticket (stupid closed primaries).
Oh well…
Folks use different words, political labels, etc. etc. and that’s to be expected. But, to me, “progressive” is the same thing as “liberal,” so in my journey further to the left, I’ve left that in the rear-view mirror, too. I identify as socialist, with strong left-anarchist leanings and very Green-oriented. A mix, to be sure, and I include Marxian in with that mix too. Ecosocialism as well, but primarily “libertarian socialist.”
Ironically, the predominant strain of socialism (from my reading) means a much, much smaller government than any minarchist ever dreamed of, and from the bottom up, not top down. But it would happen via the complete democratization of the economy, direct public ownership of the means of production, and not through “the state.” Minarchists, OTOH, going in the opposite direction, want their “small government” via the privatization of the economy.
We’d work toward no state apparatus at all over time and the elimination of all classes. A non-hierarchical society to the degree possible, etc.
But, to your point, Mac. To me, not that I’m the Word Mayor, or anything, it doesn’t make any sense to say one is a “progressive” who thinks “liberals” are weak. It’s kind of like saying you think Faulk was a great running back but a terrible ball-carrier.
Hope all is well —
Billy_TParticipantWV,
I see that. And perhaps I’m being too “literal” about definitions. But from where I sit, even if we get to the point where you want to see things go, and I’m with you all the way, it’s not “capitalism” any longer. It’s something else. Not sure what the word would be, but it’s not “capitalism.”
Along with that, yes, you’re right. We aren’t in any position at the moment to replace the current system. But the tragedy is, we’re not even in the position to “tame” it. We don’t have the political will — or access, or resources, or power — to stop it from moving further to the right, becoming more and more “neoliberal” in country after country. So, personally, it’s even pie in the sky to talk about “reform” in this point in time. Which then leads me to think, since pretty much all discussions regarding system change are massive longshots, why not talk about (and aspire to) something that would really improve the lives of billions, give everyone dignity and autonomy over their economic life and prevent ecological catastrophe? As in, if it’s all a pipe dream, why not go big?
I’m pretty eclectic in my thinking, but if I had to choose just one “school” right now, I’d take libertarian socialist. Your favorite, Noam Chomsky, is perhaps the leading representative of that currently. But he’s coming from, as you know, a long line of left-libertarians, like William Morris, Elisee Reclus and Petr Kropotkin, who also sometimes called themselves anarchist-socialists, anarchist-communists, or just socialists. To me, none of their dreams can be realized under the capitalist system, and we can’t “tame” our way there, either. It really does need to be replaced. Because, fundamentally, capitalism is all about controlling the work of others and profiting from that work. It’s all about, at its core, ownership — of humans, goods and services, resources, the earth. From where I sit, I just can’t conceive of any kind of human emancipation that includes people having that ability — to own the production of others, their time, their bodies, their autonomy, even if it’s just eight hours a day. And I can’t see how private ownership of the means of production, which necessarily includes resources and the earth, could ever lead to any liberation for humans, and it’s just not environmentally sustainable.
Anyway, hope all is well, and thanks again for introducing me to those other writers.
Billy_TParticipantYes, i like him too. I bin skimming his book. Got it for a penny at amazon. I came across him in an Adolph Reed article. He influenced Reed, apparently.
(Reed is in this thread:w
vI didn’t know about Reed, either, so thanks for that as well. Have bumped into Ben Norton before, over at Salon. But it seems like his writings elsewhere are more “radical,” which I like.
On a slightly different subject, but still relevant. It used to be, on most political forums, race, gender and sexuality discussions were “liberal/progressive” against “conservatives.” And I’d sometimes add my two cents, after letting people know, if necessary, that I’m not a Dem and am waaaay to their left. But with the Sanders/Clinton food fight, I’m seeing something new. I’m seeing a lot of liberals/progressives instantly, automatically attack folks to their left if they say even anything slightly positive about Sanders, and then launch into accusations of misogyny or even racism — which is even weirder, considering Hillary is very “white.”
The whole “Bernie bro” meme and the “Berniesplaing” meme, which once seemed to fit in some cases, now is on autopilot for all too many. Just say anything critical about Clinton and it’s automatically because you’re sexist, even though you have always been an equal opportunity critic on said issues, like neoliberalism. Makes no difference to me if it’s a male neoliberal or a female one, I’m against it, etc. etc.
Anyway . . . . again, good video. I really do think America is a hot mess right now, and I become more and more depressed each time I even think about our politics.
Billy_TParticipantCan’t do it with a population of 7 billion and growing. Technology is needed more than ever. Best hope is a new energy technology that will allow the expansion of public works and the better allocation of natural resources and manufactured products to elevate standard of living across the globe. Or a global pandemic that drastically culls the human population threatening a return to the Dark Age.
Yes, we can do without the vast majority of what capitalism produces. And we must. It’s the most inefficient and wasteful system yet devised, primarily because it’s privately owned, based upon future sales and marketing success, promotes Grow or Die, endless market competition, the battle for survival of various businesses, which are forever collapsing, obscene levels of duplication, etc.
And even with your example of food production it has failed utterly. Tens of millions of humans starve to death now, and the richest 20% consume 85% of all resources. The bottom 80% of the world gets to choose from the remaining 15%. This obviously can never work, but it’s the norm for any system based on private control of the means of production, with a profit motive attached.
Capitalism has never worked to allocate sufficient resources to the many, because it’s controlled by the few, who seek to maximize profits for themselves. This will forever prevent sufficient distribution of goods and services, especially those we depend upon to live. When you concentrate power, wealth and access at the top, the vast majority will always lose out. The only antidote to this is disperse that power, radically. Teach self-provisioning. Go back to local economies, federated with one another. Go back to local production to the degree possible. Democratize the economy, so people have a direct, vested interest in, and control over, their economic lives.
We won’t survive unless we do.
Billy_TParticipantWV,
Thanks. Have never heard of the author.
He was speaking my language, and echoed my thoughts so well.
The issue is class. Massive class differences create the power needed to implement, support and even extend any kind of apartheid. Economic apartheid, which is what capitalism is, is the engine for all the others. Get rid of economic apartheid, and you make the others all but impossible.
And, yes, I agree with him that, in America especially, liberal elites have often used the issues of race, gender and sexuality to forestall any discussion of economic inequality and class, which means they are essentially “conservatives” with smiling faces. Conservatives are more upfront about their not caring at all about class divisions, but mainstream liberals, at the very least, are complicit with the conservative agenda, which has always been to protect and enhance the ruling class, its power, wealth and privilege.
I think the real difference between them is with the vehicles used to achieve further stratification. For political conservatives, it’s generally business ownership — at least aspirationally. For most liberal Dems, it’s professionalization and education. They strive for elite positions, working for others, in general. Conservative Republicans strive for elite positions, managing or owning companies. In effect, one “side” seeks the 1%; the other the 10-2%. Neither pays any real regard to the vast majority of the nation and has no intention of ending class divisions. They seek various elite levels themselves, and don’t want those to disappear.
Again, the only real way to help racial, gender, sexuality divides in concrete terms is to do away with the class system itself — or, at the very least, radically flatten it. I prefer the former. The left (in general) needs to put class divisions front and center, and end its reliance on, for lack of a better term, “identity politics.” That’s not to say we shouldn’t do everything we can to fight against discrimination in all forms. But we need to do with along with an assertion of alternatives to class structures.
Billy_TParticipantCapitalism itself sparked a revolution in division of labor, which was perhaps THE single biggest reason for this skyrocketing hierarchy. Never before in human history were we separated so much simply due to our jobs, and never before in human history were those jobs broken up into hyper-specialization. Again, this is all quite recent in human history. Capitalism is the aberration, not communal groups with fairly flat hierarchical structures.
Well we’re now in the 21st century. Machines and technology replace human labor at an ever increasing rate. There is no return to the pre industrial society given a world population of 7 billion to feed, clothe, shelter, educate etc.
If we don’t radically downsize this, we won’t survive. We’re killing the planet because of our industrial expansion, pollution, waste, all of which are endemic to the capitalist system. In fact, as long as we have that system, which is “Grow or Die” and rabidly imperialistic by design, we will continue to head toward the cliff of our destruction.
Yes, the earth will go on without us. But it won’t be habitable by humans and a great deal of nature any more. We’ve already destroyed half of all wildlife just in the last forty years, for instance, and 90% of our fish stocks. Capitalism is pure poison.
Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years, says WWF
Billy_TParticipantWV,
I agree with you a ton on these issues, but I think — just guessing — I’m even more opposed to capitalism than you are. If I understand you correctly, you’re opposed to a certain kind of capitalism — corporate. To me, it’s just a natural evolution already contained within the system itself. Capitalism itself, IMO, leads to globalization and corporatization globally and can’t really avoid it.
It is fundamentally set up to take autonomy away from human beings, to destroy freedom for everyone but the wealthy, primarily because it’s based on slavery. It’s an outgrowth from it, and helped sustain chattel slavery in America beyond its “practical” due date. It is fundamentally all about appropriating the work of others for oneself, and then giving them back a fraction of a fraction of the value they produce, and the lowest amount they can possibly get away with. And when no one is looking — like right now in Malaysia, Burma, Thailand, China — it reverts back to actual slavery. Its internal mechanics, its inherent drive, the reason for its being, is to maximize profits for ownership only, which necessarily means paying the very least for labor — or nothing at all — possible. It means doing away with anything that stands in the way of those profits. It means extending legal protections, political protections, often by any means necessary, in order to expand market share, power, control, etc. etc.
The great Ellen Meiksins Wood, in her seminal The Origin of Capitalism, talks about this process in Britain and beyond, the way capitalism acted (often violently) to unify once disparate markets, which had the effect of destroying those previous autonomous, local markets, forcing them to join the new cancer or be consumed by it. David Harvey talks about the geography of this process, how capitalism spreads, and with it, crisis after crisis, always pushing the day of reckoning, risk, obligation, responsibility, off somewhere else.
Along with it being based on unpaid labor, it is also a classic ponzi scheme. Betting on the future. Betting on payoffs from somewhere else down the line. Making others pay the piper when bets fail — usually taxpayers.
To make a long story short, I see it has profoundly immoral, unsustainable, dangerously wasteful and ecologically destructive — “evil” in short. The “corporate” aspect of it is basically a sympton, IMO, not the cause of this. It’s just the natural extension of its already existing internal mechanics.
Billy_TParticipantMac,
Hope all is well —
The “altruism” thing is really a distraction, and it’s not at all necessary to the success of this alternative. IMO, it’s one of those throwaway arguments so many people bring up when alternatives to capitalism are discussed. The alternative doesn’t rely on “altruism” any more than any other system. It also doesn’t rely on people being angels or “good” or anything else. “Self-interest” is just as much a part of it as in the current system — actually, much moreso, and it’s genuine self-interest, as opposed to the illusions generated by our current system.
The real change is who decides the allocation of resources and compensation; who owns the means of production; who has access to the fruits of society. Who is included in the decision-making process. The real difference here is who actually has control over things like “self-interest” enough to matter. In capitalism, it’s an illusion and delusion that most people even get a chance to truly act upon their “self-interest.” That is generally limited to those at the very top. It’s capitalist propaganda — and very successful propaganda — that makes us think we’re all playing “voluntary” roles in this “voluntary” system, as workers and consumers, where “self-interest” supposedly applies to all and sundry. In reality, the rich own the concept and even this is distributed according to their desires. The vast majority of us are incredibly limited in our choices, and we receive them from the financial elite.
As for “hard-wiring.” Humans lived communally for our first 200,000 years on the planet, and in many parts of the globe, up until the 20th century. If anything is “hard-wired,” it’s communal living, with pretty flat hierarchies of power — usually one or two additional levels, tops. It’s only been in the last two centuries that the pyramid skyrocketed upward to neck-breaking heights, and this primarily in Europe at first, starting with Britain, and even there, it wasn’t widespread until the 20th century. Capitalism did not become the dominant economic system of the globe until after WWII.
Capitalism itself sparked a revolution in division of labor, which was perhaps THE single biggest reason for this skyrocketing hierarchy. Never before in human history were we separated so much simply due to our jobs, and never before in human history were those jobs broken up into hyper-specialization. Again, this is all quite recent in human history. Capitalism is the aberration, not communal groups with fairly flat hierarchical structures.
More on the way the alternative would actually work in the next post . . . .
Billy_TParticipantThanks, ER.
Hope all is well with you and yours.
Billy_TParticipantZooey,
Good questions, and points. And a key thing about Single Payer: It would radically reduce costs for Americans “consumers” and taxpayers. Our present system, as has been noted repeatedly, is twice as expensive as those other systems, the single-payer systems in other nations, like ZN’s example of Canada, and most of Europe. They pay half or less than we do, and they get far better coverage, have far less — or no — out of pocket costs, and everyone is covered. To me, it’s absolute madness that we don’t do this.
I’ve been told, for instance, by people from Canada, and in Europe when I was there, that cancer treatments are paid for. Virtually everything. Here, in America, the out of pocket costs for a typical patient with insurance can run at least into the thousands per treatment, and if a prolonged hospital stay is ever required, it can be tens of thousands out of pocket. That does not happen in Canada, Europe and anywhere with Single Payer.
No country on earth has a higher rate of medical bankruptcy than the US, and no other country pays anywhere close to what we pay for prescriptions drugs. There isn’t any reason to keep our system beyond making corporate America fat and happy, and the politicians who work to prevent Single Payer do so on their behalf.
Also: Not sure if this has already been posted here, by I think it’s a really good article (from Naked Capitalism) on Clinton/Sanders and the so-called pragmatism versus idealism debate:
The Crackpot Realism of Clintonian Politics
The most bizarre thing about these desperate calls to realism is our modern context. In what possible way is it “realistic” to continue voting for the lesser evil when we have an ongoing climate catastrophe no mainstream Democrat or Republican is willing to discuss, let alone actually do something significant about? During Obama’s first term he even pressured environmental groups to stop or tone down their discussions of climate change. Each lesser evil candidate just happens to be a greater evil than the last one. Each of their politics are unimaginable even as one is in the throes of the attacks on basic human decency engendered by the last one. The slogan of the Democratic party is “it could always be worse” while the promise is “it will always be worse”. When your realism involves supporting a trend that could quite realistically mean the end of human civilization forgive me for holding you in contempt.
In crackpot realism, a high-flying moral rhetoric is joined with an opportunist crawling among a great scatter of unfocused fears and demands. In fact, the main content of “politics” is now a struggle among men equally expert in practical next steps — which, in summary, make up the thrust toward war — and in great, round, hortatory principles.
Charles Wright Mills writing nearly sixty years ago captures this dynamic perfectly. Whereas then the steps towards war could be apocalyptic because of nuclear annihilation now the steps towards war seem more like a distraction while we sink into greater economic doldrums and come closer to social death. But not only does all this ignore the existential threats, it completely misses how American politics has evolved for over four decades. To the liberal commentariat the status quo is irrevocably right wing and politicians like Obama and Clinton are simply “grappling” with this reality. As Klein said “Clinton’s theory of change is probably analytically correct”.
Billy_TParticipantAlso: when you ask “how would they decide this or that?” The same can be asked of any new system, including capitalism, or any new business trying to establish itself under capitalism. There are always going to be initial issues and problems as far as organization, delegating, establishing who does what, when, where, why and how — at first. That’s a given with any new system.
There is absolutely nothing inherently more problematic about a left-anarchist system in that case. It, too, would have growing pains, initial confusion about roles and duties, etc. etc. But, just like capitalist forms, it would soon get to the point where these things are ironed out and things fall into place. The worst part is the start up time. Once that’s been tackled, roles, duties, allocation of labor and resources, etc. etc. . . . become the new norm.
I think you’re viewing this as something uniquely problematic for alternatives to capitalism, and forgetting how chaotic, volatile, disruptive and confusing capitalism once was to people who had known different systems. And it would appear you’re not remembering its history of violent suppression of previous economic forms, its forced removal of people from their lands, its enclosure acts, its outright theft of land and resources, etc. In no case was capitalism introduced anywhere on earth “voluntarily,” even in Britain, where it originated.
Two excellent books on its origins:
The Invention of Capitalism, by Michael Perelman
and
The Origin of Capitalism, by Ellen Meiksins Wood.
Both are essential, seminal works, and the latter is perhaps the single best book on what makes capitalism unique, how to define it, etc.
Billy_TParticipantAll through history there have been arguments on a gazillion issues, between the “lets just do whats right” folks and the “slow down, lets do this incrementally” folks.
Personally, I’m on the side of John Brown
PS — there’s this political DNC-meme, that Clinton is more ‘qualified’ and Bernie’s ideas are too simplistic. Personally, i think a trained monkey could be President (or a lawyer). I dont think things are nearly as complicated as the powers-that-be like to pretend.
The Times supports Hillary for all the usual reasons every
other mega-corporation supports a DNC-Democrat.At any rate, Hillary will be the next CEO of Amerika
and things will roll on as per usual, and the Corporations
will continue to destroy the biosphere and the real, live, living,
actual, poor human beings, with names and lives, will continue to be ground into dust.w
vAgreed. It’s pretty easy for people who are doing well to call for more “incrementalism” — or for non-slaves, in the situation you note.
Interesting connection with last night’s Game of Thrones episode. It’s as if the writers had read your comment. Tyrion, the temporary ruler of Mereen, cuts a deal with slavers to abolish slavery over a seven-year period. Two of his chief advisors were former slaves, rescued by Daenarys, who had previously abolished it territories she once conquered. Understandably, they aren’t happy about the change.
Really good book on Lincoln’s desire for an incrementalist approach, prewar: Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial. Like the Game of Thrones situation, the dilemma was between two great evils, war and slavery. Lincoln (and Tyrion) wanted to avoid the former, and were willing to extend the life of the latter to do that.
Also: Weird that someone thinks “Single Payer,” Medicare for All would be the same as the British System. I’m no expert on the latter, but from what I know of it, it’s a socialized health care delivery system, whereas Medicare for All would be a socialized insurance system. Totally different. One deals with the provision of health care itself; the other with paying for it. In Medicare for all, health care itself is still virtually all private. IMO, we definitely need Single Payer, and should radically increase access to publicly-owned health care delivery as well.
(Personally, I’d rather see everything “publicly owned” with no private sector at all, but that’s another issue altogether.)
Billy_TParticipantbnw,
I’m guessing WV has posted this before, but I think it’s one of the best (and very short) answers to the error so many people make — especially Americans.
Russia never established socialism, and according to Marxist theory, communism comes after socialism has become second nature, internalized, naturalized to the point where no state apparatus is necessary to maintain it. Communism is the absence of the state, so you can’t have a “communist state.” It’s impossible, by definition.
(Left-anarchists, or libertarian socialists, broke with Marx over this idea of stages. They saw no reason to establish a state in order to have it whither away later. They thought it best to skip that stage entirely. My own alternative is basically left-anarchist, but not all left-anarchists think a constitution is necessary, or that it is necessary to outlaw capitalist forms. I do.)
Chomsky is spot on to note how wildly different the Soviet system was, in reality, from what the vast majority of socialists actually wanted or believed was best. And from what socialists had actually practiced on a small scale, the Paris Commune, and later in 1930s Spain. For roughly two centuries, leftist theory talked about alternative societies that would be based upon principles completely absent from Russia under the new party czars. The key tenets of socialism being:
Full on democracy, including the economy
The people — not political parties, juntas or dictators — own the means of production
Local controls, bottom up organization, based on democratic principles, never top down, state control.The key is to scale up from the local, and never lose local autonomy. Link these autonomous towns to one another, federate them, which maintains their equality with each other . . . rather than making them subservient to some higher power/state. They have no masters. They do have to follow basic laws and the constitution. But they are not subservient to more powerful humans.
Democratic, egalitarian, small is beautiful, sustainable and steady state. The framework also seeks the closest possible harmony with nature.
Billy_TParticipantCommunism tried it for society as a whole and it failed. Failed because it wasn’t responsive to real world conditions of weather and natural resource production and individual human want and need.
The rules of Risk are sacrosanct. Chess is a battle. Risk is war.
bnw,
You’re getting hung up on your own (false) view of how farming works in a left-anarchist setting. In reality, no one on earth makes it work better. That’s where left-anarchists started, going back two centuries, at least, if we stick to just that label (socialist, anarchist-socialist, anarchist-communist, etc) . . . and thousands of years if we don’t bother with it. Food co-ops, sustainable, small-scale farming — no one does this better than leftists. It’s just not going to be a problem.
Moving on to the rest. There is no “management.” There are no permanent hierarchies. It’s all worker/citizen managed, owned, controlled. Check out the link to the Wolff video for a good idea of what I’m talking about, though he’s mostly thinking of how WSDEs would work without it being the sole legal framework. I’m saying the entire society would be this way. No bosses. No slaves. No gods, no masters. Everyone is a co-owner. There are no employer/employee social relations. They don’t exist. So everyone is “labor” and everyone is “management.”
Workers cycle through leadership roles, via lottery, then cycle back out. The very short hierarchies are all on a rotational basis, and all subject to democratic processes. No one can establish a permanent home at “the top” and the top is barely above the bottom.
As for who decides? Again, everyone. From the town on up. Local decisions, democratically made, under general frameworks set forth in a constitution, also democratically decided.
Capitalism has the few decide for the many, and they do this for their own, extremely narrow interests, which always run counter to the vast majority’s. I think that’s insane. In this alternative, the many decide for themselves. In this alternative, there is no ownership by the few, for the few. Nothing is done to make an elite fat, happy and rich. It’s all done to provide a high standard of living for everyone. Literally everyone. No one left behind.
Free cradle to grave education, skills training, self-provisioning training (including farming), medical care, access to parks and rec, gyms, the arts, cultural venues, etc. etc. We can make it all free because there is no funding issue. No worries about deficits and debt. No taxation. Towns, regions, the nation vote on what they want and allocate unlimited digits for these projects once the votes are in.
Oh, and Russia never implemented communism or socialism. Not even close. They were stuck in the State Capitalist mode. Lenin said he needed to start there in order to drag Russia into the 20th century, and they never made it out of that mode.
(More on that later)
Billy_TParticipantThanks, ZN.
Will definitely take a look at that short story. Recently finally got around to another very famous work on alternative economic forms, Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. Really good. Based on some of the left-anarchist ideas of Murray Botchin.
Dak . . . sorry for the loss to St. Louis and the move. It must have been rough. But as someone who grew up a Rams fan while living on the opposite coast, I can’t honestly say I know what you’re going through. The closer I got to that is when the Washington Senators left town, and I was really young and a SF Giants fan at the time.
Anyway . . . on the hope front, hope all is well with you and yours.
WV: Yep. Wolff is excellent, I have one of his books, and enjoy his website and videos. Very smart guy with a big heart. I agree with so much of what he talks about. Just makes sense to me.
Billy_TParticipantThere is no “produce to order”. You try to maximize the yield of the crop you planted. Everyone does the same. Sometimes crops don’t meet expectations or outright fail.
Yes, there is a produce to order here. When the sole purpose is to fulfill need, to produce use value, not make a profit, you can do just that. You’re still thinking within the context of capitalism.
Capitalism is dead and buried in this context, and absolutely none of its rules apply. It’s as if it never existed. There is no more M-C-M and exchange value. There are no more employers. There are no more employees. No one appropriates surplus value for him or herself. No one steals the production of workers for themselves, or gets rich off the backs of others. It’s all publicly owned, managed, controlled, distributed and conceived of — by the public. There is no one unified market, much less a globalized market. Local markets are autonomous, cooperative, democratic, and federated with other local, autonomous, cooperative, democratic markets.
You can’t critique this alternative accurately until you get out of the capitalist mindset. It’s like bashing a move in Chess based on your understanding of the game of Risk. The rules of Risk are absolutely, 110% irrelevant.
Billy_TParticipantHere’s a great voice, a scholar/professor with similar ideas . . . . I’ve gotten a great deal from him. Worth a look:
Billy_TParticipantAlso, the key to making this “produce to order” work is the size. Small enough to make this happen. We order locally, for local production. Data is produced and collected for that purpose, and shared with regions and nationally. Analysts work on honing the match between production and use — use value is key here, not exchange value. We seek to tighten the connection through time. That’s one of the goals for the assemblies. Take the data and close the gap between ordering and production to the degree possible.
Local outlets “sell” the goods produced by the various production facilities, and there are no employer/employee dynamics at work. Workers self-manage. Citizens self-govern. Everyone is a co-owner. No one is subservient to anyone else. It would be the first systemic attempt to scale up left-anarchist forms to a national level, taking it beyond what occurred in Spain in the 1930s, before Franco and Hitler destroyed it.
Those left-anarchist forms derived a great deal from the Paris Commune of 1871, scaling up from that experiment, which would have been successful if not for the French state crushing it on behalf of business and military interests.
Again, this would scale from the local to the national.
Billy_TParticipantWith food you can’t “produce to order” because of all the variables that can go wrong in bringing a crop to market. You still don’t answer how disparate items can be obtained for each other. There are always centers of power.
Yes, you certainly can produce food to order. It’s how humans did things for thousands and thousands of years prior to capitalism. Now we produce for profits, not for need, efficiency, health. The alternative system would change all of that.
And, yes, I did answer your question. We’d establish what communities need, set up production accordingly, and if anything falls through the cracks, we work cooperatively with our neighbors to fill in those gaps. That would include the production of antibiotics and so on. Again, health providers would order what they needed from local facilities set up to meet those orders, and their accounts would be debited per order. Prices and wages would all be established before hand, democratically. We’d ensure that wages and prices match well enough to provide a healthy, comfortable standard of living for everyone. Funding comes from the public banks. It would be steady state. No recessions, depressions and so on, because there is no profit involved, no “futures” to deal with, no speculation, no Wall Street. No private businesses or business ventures of any kind.
And, no, in this system, there are no centers of power. It’s set up to prevent them. Power is literally dispersed into the hands of every citizen, and every citizen holds the same degree of that power, voice, share in the fruits of society.
Billy_TParticipantOK so my community has a surplus of sweet corn and all the surrounding communities have a surplus of sweet corn with only 5 days before its no longer sweet and no one wants it. My community really needs antibiotics and oil filters. How does your system make it happen?
Every community would have access to doctors, hospitals, etc. etc. We’d make sure everyone had access close enough to them to maintain the highest quality of health, safety, welfare, etc. Those doctors and hospitals would be ordering for need, just like individual citizens. They’d base that on their own community first, plus, again, enough surplus for emergencies and exchange. It’s highly unlikely they’d run out of these things, but if they did, they’d work cooperatively with neighboring doctors, hospitals, etc. etc. to get what they need.
As for that food? Unlike with our current system, where we produce in hopes of future sales (and marketing successes), and then trash roughly half of all of our food production, this alternative would focus solely on need, and would produce to order, as mentioned above. There would be the least possible amount of waste because of that. It would be all about the needs of citizens, instead of the desire for a few to make a killing. It would be citizen-centric, consumer-centric, health-centric, not profit-centric or business-owner-centric. All publicly owned and managed, democratically.
And people can “buy” stuff too. It’s not a barter-only system. They can own a home. They get digits in their accounts for work done, and those are debited when they purchase things at outlets, which are all publicly owned and operated. Schools, hospitals, science labs, parks, arts, recreation, utilities, etc. — they all would have budgets, funded publicly, derived democratically according to need. Communities would vote on what kind of production they want in their towns, and local production would be geared to meeting those needs. Their funding would come straight from those publicly owned and operated banks, so no tax collection is ever needed, and there is no debt.
The towns, regions and national assemblies would make sure this fits, works together, is updated, organized for efficiency, according to democratic goals, methods and processes. Constant chances to refine all of this as we go, with new leadership always rotating in. Since it’s set up cooperatively, and never competitively, the exchange of information is far more efficient, complete and beneficial than capitalism will ever be able to muster . . . . because “trade secrets” and “competitive advantage” force tremendous inefficiencies and the jamming up of knowledge.
This is completely different. We’d all be in it together. Like one big family, or team, but with plenty of room for dissent and disagreement, etc. And no centers of power, anywhere.
Billy_TParticipantNo system can last long under such circumstance.
Btw, this is true of capitalism. It’s only survived this long because it is constantly being bailed out by governments. More than 100 times, just since 1970, to the tune of trillions. See David Harvey’s The Enigma of Capital for the play by play of that, plus a great deal more.
Capitalism’s own internal contradictions, especially the inevitable killing of its own consumer base, over and over and over again, would have destroyed it utterly a century ago, if not for the massive support of governments around the world, led by ours. It’s permanently dependent upon government, to a degree the world has never seen for any economic system, and this is a global now — also something unprecedented for economic systems.
What I suggest above would end this endless pattern of crisis, recession, depression, bailout, rinse and repeat, and it would end the massive waste, inefficiency, world-altering pollution endemic with capitalism . . . all of which are truly unsustainable, even with government protection and support.
Etc.
Billy_TParticipantThat is nothing new. That has been done before in communes and Co-ops. It can work reasonably well at a small scale for some time. Given your example lets say you and I contribute our work and bumper crop while our neighbors plan to do less or nothing at all? What then? Peoples wants and needs. You will never get past it. Reality isn’t people with identical work ethic and no systems remain static so bumper crops are not the norm. No system can last long under such circumstance.
The new thing about the above would be its legal status as system for the entire nation. Via the constitution. Via the chosen system for society. It would be the way we did things, and the capitalist way would be illegal. There would be no legal structure any more for it — and it can’t function without that. There would be no legal tender that could be used for capitalism, either. No trade agreements. No treaties. No currency valuations, etc. No stock market. No support in any way, shape or form for the old system.
With the help of previous experiments, and some current ones, like Parecon, I’ve come up with a way to do away with debt, deficits and funding problems. For the first time in history, an entire nation, an entire society, an entire econo-system would divorce all funding mechanisms from gross sales/surplus. Sales would no longer be linked in any way, shape or form to pay, or taxes, or community/societal funding. There would be no need for taxes any longer.
The revenue stream for all funding would, instead, come from external, publicly owned “banks,” with virtually limitless resources, because numbers are limitless, and digits, not dollars, would be assigned — per community, region, nationally and individually (for work done). Every individual would have their own account, built up from work done. Communities, regions and the nation overall would have their accounts, too.
Again, more later on this . . .
Billy_TParticipantSupplying peoples wants and needs. How is that done in your ideas of better systems?
Community-based economies. Cooperative. Democratized. The people own the means of production, directly. Not through proxies. Not through parties or any other power center. But literally “the people,” directly. Every single citizen, with equal say, share, voice. No private ownership of that. Capitalism does not exist.
The communal, cooperative economies are federated to one another. Linked. Work cooperatively with each other. Small is beautiful, linked to small is beautiful. There are local, regional and national assemblies. No elections or political parties. Citizens do their civil stint via lottery, in a peace-corp-like scenario. No permanent power centers/bases, anywhere. No permanent hierarchies, and the temporary ones are as close to flat as possible, and they don’t involve the valuation of our time. They’re for facilitation of production, not “creating wealth.”
We produce for need and to order, not for exchange and future returns. We would do away with capitalism’s M-C-M plus exchange value. As in, Money used to buy labor (as a commodity) in order to produce Commodities in exchange or Money for the capitalist. That’s gone. We now produce to order, only, for need. We make only what we need, what people have decided they need, democratically, plus rainy-day, and trade surplus for commodity exchange with other communities.
We gather that info via those assemblies, modernize this process to include software databases for totals, trends, predictions, etc. etc. Ongoing updates, with human, manual decisions always taking precedence over the database. Database as helper/tool/assistant only. Real democracy, including the economy, always at the forefront.
Will talk about money replacement later. It’s a key part of this.
Billy_TParticipantI said over at the Herd, when asked if we were okay with Goff over Wentz, that this wasn’t ever my concern. The issue for me wasn’t making sure we got one QB or the other. I thought and still think they’re both close enough that it really doesn’t matter, though I leaned toward Wentz as the better of the two.
My problem was with the trade itself. I’m likely in a minority among Rams fans — perhaps even football fans in general — but I think trading away the future for one player is generally a mistake, unless and until the team in question is just that one player away from being a great team. The Rams are far from there. Even where they excel the most — on defense — they have some holes and some places in need of upgrades. They aren’t “dominant.” And on offense? Yes, they have dealt with poor QB play for years and years, and it needs to end. But they also have major needs at WR, TE, center, a backup option at running back, and trading away so many picks made it very difficult to tackle one or two of those, and impossible to deal with both over the next two years or so.
This was my thinking pre-draft. Post-draft, I think they scored at TE, at least if Higbee can stay out of trouble. At wideout, I think Cooper and Thomas provide solid depth, but are not upgrades to the starting unit, even if we’re talking about the slot. That’s basically where Tavon Austin fits best. They still don’t have a legit #1 who scares any defense, and the same goes for #2. Austin, however, has grown into an excellent slot guy, with multiple formation skills.
They did nothing to help their D in the draft. They have serious needs at corner, still, and at DE, with aging starters and backups in Hayes and Sims. They need another DT — drafting Billings may well have solved that, but oh well. Who plays free safety?
To make a long story short, I wish they had kept all of their picks, even traded down a bit in Round One, selected Cook or Hackenberg, and addressed their weaknesses beyond QB. Just my take. I know it’s not a popular one.
🙂
Billy_TParticipantbnw,
The “pursuit of happiness” is not a requirement at all. It’s an option, one that should be available to all, as long as you don’t harm others. But it’s not a requirement. The real key is to put aside all of our preconceptions, the ones we’ve been indoctrinated in for centuries, and those that are more recent.
All of them are fictional. The concept of money, markets, capitalism, religion, nation-states — all of these are imagined orders, imaginery orders that we’ve accepted as the norm, or natural, and they’re not. They don’t exist in nature. We invented them. Which means we can invent something quite different, and imagine quite different fictions and implement them. It’s up to us.
Yuval Harari, in his fantastic TED talk, talks about this, though indirectly.
So, let’s start there. Let’s start with a blank slate. There is actually no reason, whatsoever, that we ever had to burden ourselves with a lifetime of endless work, and with massive inequalities based on more absurd fictions of wildly different valuation of our time. There is absolutely no sane reason why we accept the system of capitalism, which is based on slavery, and guarantees massive inequality. There is no legitimate, rational, logical or sane reason why we willingly accept a system which is based on the theft of our personal production, in order to radically inflate the wealth of the few. There is actually no rational, valid, legitimate reason why (for instance) a hedge fund manager makes billions and teachers, nurses, social workers or poets make a fraction of a fraction as much.
Who decides that pay? A tiny, tiny fraction of the population, all of whom benefit ginormously from that decision/delusion, at massive cost to the majority. Why does the majority accept this? Why did it ever accept this?
There is no “natural” support for any of it, and there are thousands of better ways to organize society than the one we have now. I have several ideas for far better systems . . . .
Billy_TParticipantHey, Nittany and PA.
Hope all is well in the Keystone state.
Speaking of witches. Recently read a fascinating history of the the Salem witch trials, by Stacy Schiff. It takes a little bit to get used to her style — I’ve read two other bios from her, and this is quite different — but it’s worth it. Goes into great detail and depth about context, regional history, background, etc. etc. Tries to tell the story as if from the point of view of the accusers and the accused, and really presents a sense of the mass hysteria and crackup, without being judgmental. Schiff pretty much leaves that up to the reader.
Billy_TParticipantI just read that article today. I had never heard of jacobinmag before.
I thought about posting it here myself, and asking wv’s thoughts since West Virginia gets a healthy mention in the article.
I’m still mulling over the argument put forward. I do think there is a pretty condescending attitude to minimum wage workers in society. I read a lot of disrespectful stuff a month or two ago when the minimum wage increase was announced in California. Honestly, a lot of the opposition to increasing the minimum wage was not based in economics, but in contempt for the job and the people who do it.
Hey, Zooey, Jacobin has been one of my go-to zines for awhile now. Young, fresh. Great leftist perspective. It gives me hope that there may well be a true left in America, even after the last of the old “new left” floats away on that ancient iceberg.
As for the argument. From my viewpoint, today’s “liberal” is closer to yesterday’s conservative. Corey Robin has written some great stuff about how the right has “disciplined” liberals from at least Reagan on, and that, whether they know it or not — usually they don’t — they’ve embraced most of the conservative agenda by osmosis. About the only thing that really differentiates them now are the cultural issues, views on race, gender, sexuality, etc. etc. They’re so close on matters of war, the surveillance state, the economy, capitalism, there’s not really a dime’s worth of difference. It’s on matters of race and so on that there is still a significant gap.
So, to make a long story short: Liberals fall waaay short of being any kind of real alternative to conservatism because they refuse to deal with massive class divisions, and they support capitalism just as much as conservatives. I reject liberalism primarily because of this. I side with them on racial, ethnic, gender, sexuality issues . . . but I think they’re absolutely wrong on the best way to close those gaps. Rather than making it easier for the 1% to look more like America, rather than making it easier for women and minorities to climb proverbial ladders of success . . . . I think we need to get rid of the climb itself. True egalitarianism and society based on full democracy, including the economy, where all hierarchies are shattered, all pyramids pulled down, also takes care of the ginormous racial, gender and sexual gaps. By definition.
However, if we leave capitalism in place, those gaps will only grow bigger — even if we do have more minorities and women in power. Cuz we still have neck-breaking hierarchies in place.
The key is the flatten the pyramids. Let people actually live their lives in the pursuit of happiness, not the pursuit of staying out of the poor house.
Billy_TParticipantHey, Dak, Zooey, Nittany and company. Hope all is well.
Billy_TParticipantI’ll probably vote for Stein, but it will be more of a protest vote than an endorsement of her beliefs.
I understand being pissed about the Wall Street bailout in ’08, but that’s not a reason to continue hemorrhaging money. At some point, doesn’t this country have to deal with its deficit? The debt and a failure to have any money to respond to future problems scares me almost as much as climate change. In both cases, we’re making quite a mess for the next generations.
Cal, I agree we should reduce the deficit and the debt. But the way to do that is not to cut spending. That kills jobs. That hurts millions of people, immediately. The way to balance the budget and start to pay off the debt is to raise taxes on the rich — and just the rich. Just the 1%. They’ve seen the overwhelming lion’s share of tax cuts since 1964 and Johnson, and the rich utilize far and away the most public resources. It’s not close.
And for those who say we could tax the 1% at 100% and there wouldn’t be enough money, consider this: Americans had total income of 14 trillion — that we know about — in 2014. The richest 1% now bring in roughly 25% of all income, though some estimates say it’s as low as 20%. If we use the latter, just the 1% alone bring in roughly 2.8 trillion a year in income. If we raised taxes back up to where they were from FDR through Kennedy, their effective rate would be roughly 55% on a 91% marginal top rate. They currently pay in the neighborhood of 25% effectively, on a top rate of 39.6%. So you’re talking an additional revenue flow of well over 700 billion a year — and this is just personal income we know about. The infamous Panama Papers have confirmed what most of us already knew: Trillions are untaxed and hidden.
IMO, Sanders goes wrong on the tax issue, because he’s not willing to only raise taxes on the rich. He does want to raise their rates, and corporate rates, but he also is talking about small increases for the working class, too. Wrong way to go, in my view. With inequality at obscenely immoral levels, it’s time to use one of the few tools we have to try to at least slightly mitigate for capitalism’s despicable, destructive, unsustainable internal dynamics. It’s the least we can do, etc.
Billy_TParticipantVoted for her in 2012. I like her even more than Bernie.
Of course, she doesn’t have a chance. But I’ll likely vote for her this time, too, if Sanders can’t pull off a miracle and win the nom.
To me, neither major party is legitimate. They’ve formed a pretty destructive, terrible monopoly on power, and until it’s broken, the most powerful nation on earth will continue to be the most dangerous, the most likely to start a war, the most reactionary on an huge range of issues, etc. etc.
I wish we had a real socialist alternative. Big time Green. Unafraid to be anticapitalist. Preferably with a very strong libertarian socialist core in the lead. One focused on an updated vision set forth by people like William Morris, Elisee Reclus, Petr Kropotkin, among others. The Paris Commune of 1871, updated, adapted to 2016 and beyond. Small is beautiful. Cooperative economies, locally autonomous, federated. All democratic. The entire economy democratized.
Good book on the Paris Commune, btw: Communal Luxury, Kristin Ross.
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