Other than war or complete societal upheaval, what can actually be done to solve the problem?
e: Oh shit I just realized who I'm replying to. Serious answer time. Socialism will be a disruptive new paradigm for start-ups and other businesses where (following the idea of a meritocracy) workers, and not stuffy old capitalists, each own an equal number of shares at their place of work. And even more innovative in structure than Zappos and Valve, it allows for capital investment decisions to be voted on by individual contributors, throwing away traditional management structures you see at crufty old firms. Pretty cool stuff! According to some dusty old theories it's the "Exit Strategy" for our largest firms.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90223130/how-elizabeth-warrens-a...
dang is the HN admin, lead moderator, or whatever the official title is.
> If you are banned, I'd take it as a badge of honor.
Some people would rather continue to participate then accumulate honor badges.
And let's not even talk about whatever rebranding of Marx is used as a strawman these days, like this "cultural marxism" dog whistle I hear 10 times a day and I can't be bothered to figure out what that's even supposed to mean anymore. Actually I just tried to search the term and the first result was an entry on "urban dictionary" which goes like:
>An umbrella term for identity politics, affirmative action, feminism, radical LGBT activism, Islam apologetics, white privilege, political correctness... Basically the SJW ideology.
I think I missed that part in Das Kapital...
So there -- not only the phrase makes perfect sense if you do read Gramsci like I have, it's been uttered by Marxist professors somewhere in the world sometime this century.
He contributed a great challenge to economics with his ideas, having to work towards rebuttal and debunking of his simple, yet appealing models.
It seems to be standing academic scrutiny today, at least, it is debated to be. Kliman's[0] Temporal Single System Interpretation of Marx, upheld by Alan Freeman, David Laibman and Guglielmo Carchedi is one example which also attempts to solve for the transformation problem. On the other hand, Paul Cockshott has written on the empirical validity from the opposite pole[4] (note, one which Kliman rejects). Anwar Shaikh takes up what (I believe to be, my memory is rusty) a neo-Ricardian approach to the empirical strength of Marx's theory of value[8]. With regard to Marx's falling rate of profit, Okishio's Fundamental Marxian Theorem is currently upheld by Dong-Min Rieu (in several interpretations)[10]. Recent work has also been done on the empirical validity of the TRPF using actual econometric data[9]. Marx's theory of exploitation is currently upheld by John Roemer, Roberto Veneziani and Naoki Yoshihara[1]. Marx's "third thing" proof is currently upheld by James Furner[2]. The interpretation of the labour theory of value in the causal-explanatory mode is discussed since Steven Fleetwood[3]. The Sraffian criticism of Marx is also very much discussed[5][6][7]. There is also, of course, the Neue Marx-Lektur school which takes the sociological and cultural approach to the theory of value, the relatively new idea of the "value theory of labour", and the philosophical reading of capital such that price and value are different levels of abstraction and thus irreconcilable.
My point is that to say Marx was "wrong, really wrong" does not do justice to the fact that he was wrong on some counts and right on other counts, and your dismissal is much too heavy handed to dismiss much of the work and debate done in political economy.
[0] "Two Concepts of Value, Two Rates of Profit, Two Laws of Motion," Research in Political Economy 18, 243–67
[1] http://www.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/~yosihara/Reexamination_of_the_Ma...
[2] Furner, James (2004) 'Marx's critique of Samuel Bailey', Historical Materialism 12(2)
[3] Fleetwood, S. (2001) 'What kind of theory is Marx's labour theory of value? A critical realist inquiry', Capital & Class 73
[4] http://users.wfu.edu/cottrell/eea97.pdf
[5] Freeman, Alan, (2002), Marx After Marx After Sraffa, MPRA Paper, University Library of Munich, Germany.
[6] http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/ecn265/value.pdf
[7] Bowles, S., and Gintis, H. (1981): “Structure and ractice in the Labor Theory of Value,” Review of Radical Political Economics 12,pp.1-26.
[8] "The Empirical Strength of the Labor Theory of Value" in Conference Proceedings of Marxian Economics: A Centenary Appraisal, Riccardo Bellofiore (ed.), Macmillan, London.
[9] Basu, Deepankar and Manolakos, Panayiotis T., "Is There a Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall? Econometric Evidence for the U.S. Economy, 1948-2007" (2010). Economics Department Working Paper Series. 99.
[10] Rieu, D.-M. (2009). Interpretations of Marxian Value Theory in Terms of the Fundamental Marxian Theorem. Review of Radical Political Economics, 41(2), 216–226.
Nowadays, it's sort of a generic derogatory epithet by the right for anything that they disagree with that can't be ascribed directly (even in a very loose view) to actual economic Marxism, because everything bad must have “Marxism” stamped on it somewhere.
Marx isn't responsible for cultural Marxists, Nietzsche isn't responsible for Nazis and Darwin isn't responsible for social Darwinists.
I think we ignore him and his work (in favor of sound bites from supporters and detractors) at our peril. There is enough to be critical of in what he said, we don't need to rub out his name over what Badiou called the 20th c. experiments.
Implementations of Leninism did, sure, but (deliberate mislabeling aside), I'm not sure what that has to do with Marc, since Leninism rejected the preconditions Marx laid out and altered the approach to address the changed preconditions.
Leninism is farther from Marxism than the near-universal abandonment of the system Marx named “capitalism” for modern mixed economies (which, to be sure, is still pretty far from Marxism), so if you are going to blame Marx at all for the failure of the former, you have to credit him at least as much for the success of the latter.
At this point, the burden of proof is on the theory to show merit. It's a bit like Extreme Programming in that regard---looks great on paper, but how many times does it get to fall short of its promises before people stop blaming the implementers for "holding it wrong" and start talking seriously about the flaws in the originating theory?
Perhaps also like XP, however, pieces of it do seem worthwhile and are bearing fruit in the nations that have adopted them.
The question of Marx's meaning and intentions, what does or does not flow from his critique, the idea of revolution, the issue of Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Mao are all very much actively discussed today. At the same time, there is a distinct, perhaps irreconcilable, difference of opinion between the liberals who treat property as part of an individual, or an extension of him, and the tradition since Marx which does not take this for granted at all.
As for the two attempts to implement Marxism (assuming you're speaking of Russia and China here)... in Russia, you can't separate it from Leninism and Stalinism. Is Marxism the problem, or the authoritarian government?
China is more interesting. China is still ostensibly a Marxist nation, right? Per World Bank data I just looked up, China's per capita GDP (in constant US dollars) was lowest in 1962, at $71.91. That's per year. In 2017, it's $8826.99. Constant dollars, mind you. That's 123 times more.
I have a hard time calling that a failure of any sort.
There hasn't been large-scale political violence in China since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. That ten-year period killed 5-10 million on the high end. Which is, of course, quite bad, but in comparison to the 50-80M that died in ostensibly capitalist Europe during WWII, it doesn't seem that outsized.
So for burden of proof, I think you need to argue that an alternative model would have resulted in less political violence and more economic prosperity than that for China. Good luck.
> So for burden of proof, I think you need to argue that an alternative model would have resulted in less political violence and more economic prosperity than that for China. Good luck.
The Communist China's Great Famine[0] is said to have caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, as much as 30-40M, depending on who is guesstimating.
I am not sure I would call that a triumph of economic prosperity for China.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2012/11/10/164732497/a-grim-chronicle-of...
So blaming it on communism seems a little off to me. Matter of fact, one could easily argue that communist revolution is a consequence of capitalist failure, not a cause of failure on its own.
I meant to instead do what you seem to be doing - pointing out a bit of economic turmoil that lead to great loss of life. Mine just happened to be accounting for on the side of the ledger labeled "Communism".
Does it make the Great Famine any less an economic blow to Communist China that there are also historical examples of large famines in capitalist societies?
I'm not sure it does.
For example, Bertrand Russell only 3 years after the revolution (thus 1920):
In a capitalist state, the Government and the capitalists on the whole hang together, and form one class; in Soviet Russia, the Government has absorbed the capitalist mentality together with the governmental, and the fusion has given increased strength to the upper class. But I see no reason whatever to expect equality or freedom to result from such a system, except reasons derived from a false psychology and a mistaken analysis of the sources of political power.
I am compelled to reject Bolshevism for two reasons: First, because the price mankind must pay to achieve Communism by Bolshevik methods is too terrible; and secondly because, even after paying the price, I do not believe the result would be what the Bolsheviks profess to desire.
A wealth (not income) tax.
So you're taxing the act of becoming richer, rather than just owning stuff. I suppose you could still have a wealth tax, if you set the threshold high enough that it only affects the top 10%.
What a lot of discussions on economics miss out on is that for every order of magnitude less people you are talking about out of the whole (10%, 1%, .1%, .01%) you are talking about people who then also have orders of magnitude more wealth than the previous categorization.
Your .001% is billionaires, your .01% is hundred millionaires, the .1% is tens millionaires, the 1% millionaires, the 10% is hundred thousandaires (of readily accessible capital, at least - a lot of people in the 10% push themselves into the millions on their consumable assets like their house). Beyond .01% it exponentiates up to Bezos levels of wealth.
When talking about wealth taxes we shouldn't even be thinking about anyone but the 300,000 who have as much wealth as the bottom 292,000,000 - the .1% - at most.
The font is terrible, but this is the shortest explanation of it that I could find easily:
http://faculty.seattlecentral.edu/jhubert/wiltchamberlainarg...
I also think this example may be valid for some discussions but in the modern world where the acquisition of wealth is denied from a large portion of the population this example fails to provide value.
I think on balance I'll take our current system. It isn't perfect, but all systems have downsides (if you think otherwise you don't know much about your preferred system): so far nobody has suggested something better.
"Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece etc etc etc"
Or something like that anyway. That was Goering, or Goebels. Don't really remember which, but the point is war and societal upheaval are not tools to solve problems that the common man has with élites. War and societal upheaval are tools to solve the problems that one group of élites has with some other group of élites. The only thing a common guy would get out of it is to "come back to his farm in one piece", so to speak. (And a lot of us might not even get that.)
I mean, frankly, we can live on our farms in one piece without going to war at all. Sure, there are some rare exceptions, usually involving being a minority, where you truly are fighting for your life. In those instances the enemy's stated purpose is not to allow you to live on your farm. But even then, you don't gain equality with the élites if you win, you just get to stay alive.
https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1675
Taxing rents generally would be beneficial.
After all that we could regroup and discuss how to ensure people in need get an appropriate amount of vital services.
* I'm not expressing an opinion on what this future more effective organization method would look like, just I'm pretty sure it wouldn't create incentives to keep masses of people less effective than they'd otherwise be.
Self-interested authoritarians always have incentive to keep the population controlled, ignorant, and subdued, to preserve their status. The trouble is that in order to establish something like communism, the populace must cede all powers to an extremely authoritatian government, in which case it becomes inevitable that bad actors will co-opt the system for personal gain, which the "proletariat" will be powerless to legally resist, because of the restriction of rights necessary for centrally planned collectivist society.
See USSR, DPRK, China, Venuezuala, etc.
In becoming absolute arbiters of resource distribution, communism, and extreme socialism, can only exist by removing most of the freedoms that allow citizens to keep governments from being overly tyrannical. This is a sort of emergent progression, and it is a consequence of collective human nature.
Just a disclaimer, I'm not arguing that democratic capitalism is perfect either, especially because similar bad, selfish actors can take advantage of this system as well, especially with regulatory capture. However, at least under this system we theoretically have the ability to vote both by ballot and by wallet.
I suspect what happens is that nations climb out of the steady-state of poverty, and into the steady-state of fully modern economies, and the growth rate ceases. At that point, the powers in control of the flow of money become ever more sophisticated at directing any growth to themselves, until we see roughly 100% of all post-inflation growth going to a tiny minority at the top.
I don't know how to fix this, but I think it's a reasonable observation of the source of the problem.
The middle class is not asking for progressive taxation of the rich for altruistic reasons either: they want the benefit of that taxation: access to housing, health, government jobs, college education, etc.
Its a much more morally and factually confusing narrative to say that the middle 50% wants to take fro mthe top 25% and bottom 25%, than the top 50% is taking from the bottom 50%. Particularly because in the utilitarian view, taking from the middle and giving to the bottom is still redistribution of wealth the 'right direction'.
The case in the united states is a lot simpler than people think tho. I believe the single most important reversal of real wages stagnation is to fix healthcare. If insurance cost half of what it costs today (or even less), then real wages would get a massive bump, specially at the lower echelons, where insurance costs disproportionately more than at the top.
This needs a change of perspective. The workers are the ones that needs to sell their labour to the rich. It's their work that's the base of the rich's gains. The rich are unable to get rich without them. The benefits funded by taxes are capitalist societies fundamental palliative to prevent a Bastille day - especially when livable wages are seemingly also up for discussion. It's interesting to see how they're undermining themselves.
Furthermore it's in general a terrible argument since it can be more or less claimed by every despotic regime in history.
The issue is it has to be in place before money command structures have a chance to develop, so it's not something you can really implement now.
Realistically, it may not be fixable without fixing capitalism, which no one has figured out how to do.
Mark Zuckerburg has very little of what I'd call "capital" that actually produces stuff, yet he makes tons of money.
I would disgree. Advertising is more important because stuff is less valuable. Therefore the data (which enables effective advertising/selling) is more valuable than the means of production.
They certainly aren't the same thing. You can produce tons of stuff without data. You would just have no idea what to produce or how to sell it.
No, I was thinking about the infrastructure (servers). I am saying that Facebook has the infrastructure (rackspace) to produce (or subsidize the production) content and the money actually goes to Facebook. I don't know if the reasoning is sound though: would a newspaper own the means of production if they owned the printing machines ?
People down vote, but where am I wrong? The West's biggest problem right now is having TOO MUCH FOOD! Think about that. We are so fat that we're dying. Not starving. FAT!
But is it also working as advertised ?
What we can do is spread our own ideas about what privileged people can do to actively counteract the work of selfish privileged people who want more for themselves.
Personally I really dislike that my day job only serves to grow the income divide, and I’m working hard on finding a new job where my work will be open source. In that way, my work will not just be for a select few, but for anyone with the means to take advantage of it.
That is still a select group, but I also advocate for selfless giving of our labor to others. I want to do more than just commit my work to open source, but also to seek out those with less privilege, learn more about what they need, and direct my efforts towards work that is more clearly beneficial to these broader groups.
In short, those of us with privilege can practice selflessness, and use our privilege to help the disadvantaged even if that does not pay as much. I believe I will be happier in the future if I am helping others than if I had a big bank account but only worked to grow the divide.
Oh and a big part is education - I work in robotics and am passionate about mitigating inequality and so I see that building high quality cheap and free robotics educational resources can help avoid a privileged class taking advantage of those who would otherwise not be able to participate in growth due to automation.
What do you think of this?