Hello, my name is Reginald and I am a Socialist
raganwald.posterous.com
raganwald.posterous.com
But that's not socialism. Socialism has a definition - it was coined and defined by Marx as an intermediate stage on the way to Communism after the proles have seized the means of production by violence. Marx postulated that after heavy social control and violence against the exploiters, all class and social barriers would melt away into paradise.
Turns out, he's wrong. People are different.
You're not a socialist as Marx defined it. If you want to redefine socialism and say you're this redefined thing, okay, sure. But it sounds to me like you're more into free action than socialism. That's a healthy place to be. Marxist-brand socialism is not a healthy place to be, or at least, everything that's remotely tried to be it has gone very wrong.
Exactly. There's a big difference between 'Socialism', 'socialism', and 'libertarian socialism.' He's a libertarian socialist. Marx advocated Socialism.
Most people - like 90% of people - don't know the difference. Reginald wrote, "I don't like the idea of anyone forcing me to accept socialism" - that's good and healthy. Socialism, unfortunately, now has strong connotations of control involved. If he's for people being able to choose their own life and destiny, I think he'd be best off picking a word or phrase that says that. "Free action" is the closest I know.
Why lock 90%+ of people out of the discussion because they don't know the terminology?
Most people - like 90% of people - don't know the difference.
socialism -> bad
capitalism -> good
So any kind of social behaviour is labeled socialism, whether it is a health care plan (how could universal health care ever be construed as a bad thing?) or pensions are leftwing and socialist, therefore bad.
You are asking people to pause and think, good luck with that, even here on HN where the level is way above the rest of the net as soon as politics are mentioned the various polarizing arguments get polished up and recycled as though they were somehow new.
I think it is as much a remnant of the cold war as it is a lack of information and education.
Not to mention what happens when someone says "Python is better than Ruby" or vice versa... :)
I beg to differ. I'm not going to make claims of a vast media conspiracy, but it is most certainly not the case that the media casts socialism as bad and capitalism as good.
For example, I submit that one of the most hackneyed themes of movies is the greedy capitalist exploiting others or preventing needed initiatives.
As far as I can see, the media consistently mis-frames the economic issues such that today's corporatism (corporate welfare, rent seeking, regulatory capture, etc.) are cast as problems of capitalism, when in fact they are antithetical to that system.
And on the other hand, major facets of our society (e.g., public education, labor unions) that clearly are socialist, are never referenced as such.
In short, I think that the media is just messed up, and anybody on either side of the philosophical divide that accepts media input unfiltered, is going to be horribly confused.
EDIT: I reversed the sense of good/bad in 1st paragraph. It doesn't really matter, since my thesis is that they're completely confused.
Don't forget the military. Universal health care, pensions, subsidized housing, job security, etc are all socialist; except somehow when applied to the military.
Universal healthcare construes long waits and inadequate care to me. The universal health care slogan should be: "The efficiency of the DMV, the compassion of the IRS".
The current state of health care in the US is definitely sub-optimal, but it is better than one run by the government.
I'm not aware of any other country where lobbyists have that much influence.
Shocking, really the amount of money that goes in to that:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/health-care-reform/2009/07/...
The healthcare continues to be provided by current providers.
But when someone tries to articulate it, you first (incorrectly) attribute the idea to Karl Marx, and then try to dissuade him from even using the word. 'Free action' is a useless term in this context, because it captures nothing of the cooperative or mutual elements that Raganwald is discussing.
And of course there's "glenn beck" socialism, which is mostly an ad hom accusation.
Glenn Beck is an entertainer, and should not be confused in any way with someone with knowledge of social and economic systems. If you take his commentary seriously, you're almost certain to be barking up the wrong tree.
If people are free to pursue their economic goals by voluntary cooperation, it presumes a recognition of underlying property rights. In the absence of external control, many would exercise their rights by monetizing their participation in the economy in order to earn a profit. Many others would adopt a broad "open source" ethos. Most would probably engage in a mix of both, in varying circumstances, and at all levels of formalization.
Freedom and openness lead to healthy variation. It's the philosophies that pursue the universal adoption of a single doctrine that are unnatural and destructive, no matter whether they go by the name of "socialism", "capitalism", or otherwise.
There's your difference. Libertarian Socialists don't believe in private property.
This distinction, and the claim that government is hat creates the property seems to come from not thinking e notion of personal property thru.
Basically, at some point, you're advocating taking property away from people ewho have up earned it by creating it or by trading their labor for it.
You need a gang, a mafia, or a government to do that, especially when it's 10,0000 acres somewhere that a collective, or corporation, has put together.
The only difference between a collective owning property and a corporation is that a corporation is allowed to make agreements amongst the members for how the corporation is run.
The existence of a government is not necessary for the existence of corporations.
These are not made up properties created by government, but collections of property made up of possibly thousands of individual explicit agreements between people.
To end that have to stick your nose in as third party and break those agreements that people voluntarily entered into before came around.
This is overly simplistic. Locke was a cool guy and all, but not everyone subscribes to his worldview.
> Basically, at some point, you're advocating taking property away from people ewho have up earned it by creating it or by trading their labor for it.
No, I'm not.
Thank you for the discussion. I'm not going to respond to you any more.
Put differently, property as a way of formalizing personal possession relationships is less objectionable to most anarchists (though many are skeptical of actually formalizing it) than property as a way of creating new kinds of ownership. You can see ownership of your house as just a formal ratification of "I live in this house", but ownership of 10,000 acres of land you've never visited is a pure creation of property-deed databases, and is hard to imagine existing without them.
(Whether that's good or bad, or what to do about it, is another story. I consider myself sympathetic to anarchist critiques and ideals, but putting forth workable concrete proposals is hard.)
But how can you have an economy based on voluntary cooperation without the understanding that the voluntary aspect depends on the disposition of property at the discretion of its owners?
If some external authority can overrule you as to how your computer or your farm equipment or your land is used, your choice is between complying with their demands or surrendering your means to participate in the economy altogether; in this scenario, voluntarism is undermined.
Without a concept of private property, a voluntary economy cannot exist.
In a Libertarian Socialist society, there would be no external authority. The state doesn't exist. You couldn't own land, but your computer and your farm equipment are possessions, which they make distinct from 'private property.'
Maybe then I'd be able to talk about economic systems outside of small groups of smart friends, without some guy butting in about how Obama is a communist or how the bank bailouts demonstrate capitalism is broken or how Marx said [insert one of many popular misinterpretations of Marx here]. Maybe we could have intelligent discourse in the media on this subject without the risk of some Tea party douchebag accusing everyone of communism, and people believing it..
The irony of this, of course, is that there is no communist history. The USSR etc. were socialist states[1] (in name if not in practice.)
[1] Socialism as defined by Marx is the transition period after the revolution, before communism is achieved.
The various flavors of socialism, from anarcho-syndicalism to Marxism to Scandinavian-style social democracy, represent different answers to the question of “OK, granted that labor creates the wealth, but in a country with one iron mine, five steel plants, and twenty steel-consuming factories, who decides how resources get distributed from the mines to the steel plants to the factories?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#The_birth...
There's no socialism involved in accepting some version of this theory. Yes, most if not all socialists believe in it, but the converse is not true.
Seriously, economics is a science and it is easy to demonstrate that a unit of labor time, like and hour worked, does not create the same amount of value.
Specifically, ignoring the power of capital, the labor theory of value would say a carpenter can create as many cars in an hour as a laborer working with a factory of robots.
The reality is, the capital to build the factory changes the value of the labor, thus disproving the labor theory of value.
No, it wouldn't, at all, not even kind of.
Depending on the version you took, it would either say that the "real" price of the car coming off the factory floor would be set by the value of all the labor put into producing it (including the cost of the labor of building the factory itself, all the way on back), or that the price would simply be the value of the labor it would save the purchaser.
It may be more economically sound for socialists to make a moral argument that profit morally belongs to laborers more than it belongs to the capitalists (in the sense of "people who provide capital"). The economic argument seems to fall down.
If the new wealth created is the difference between the value of the inputs and the value of the outputs, then the key factors that determine whether or not wealth is created are the definition of the output, the definition of process by which the inputs are transformed into outputs, and the allocation of resources (including the assumption of risk) necessary to initiate that process. These functions are undertaken by "capitalists" rather than "laborers".
Labor is an essential input, but in your model, it is not at all responsible for the creation of wealth.
It's funny how you imply that the socialist concepts are neither old not distinguished.
I can expend enormous amounts of energy engaging in the labor of banging pots and pans together. At the end of the day, I am left only with dented pots and pans. No wealth has been created; in fact, some total wealth may have been lost, as the value of the cutlery has been diminished by damage.
Wealth is created by the transformation of inputs - whether material or not - into an more useful set of outputs. Human labor may or may not be the means by which this transformation is accomplished. But the nature of the transformation can only be defined by human intelligence, and the evolution of technology seems to be shifting the weight of importance even further away from labor and further toward ideas.
And thanks for letting the oppressed and exploited know what is morally right for them to do.
You claim he is not a Marxist, yet if you read Capital you get this: "Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the amount of labour one contributes to society. They generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power andwealth within a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system ofexploitation. They argue that this creates an unequal society that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential."
I am a Marxist. And I am not a pacifist.
All those countries you list are not Marxist. Especially not Sweden, Singapore, Canada or Hong Kong. USSR I give you from 1917 to 1920s it was but it was also under constant seige. Cuba made its own form of "socialism" after their revolution. Che grew fed up with the bureaucracy there and left.
That's right - they're prosperous and relatively free places (with Singapore a bit of an exception) that also manage to spend more or less money taking care of their citizens. They all have various problems and imperfections of different kinds, but generally fall along the continuum of "what works", whereas the USSR and Cuba, which are the closest to your ideals, are failures.
I can see how someone would be attracted to the Nordic system, or a more free-market type of individual would find things to like about, say, Hong Kong. Those countries, with their mixed systems, work in the real world. Marxism didn't and doesn't.
Coming from one of the Nordic countries, I would say that I have accepted a social contract that says I pay more in taxes than in other countries, and for those taxes I get "free" healthcare and "free" university education. The contract is that people get something at the beginning and the end of their lives and aren't screwed when they are faced with injury or illness, and pay more than they get during their working years. As someone said on on /., taxes buy me (this particular type of) civilization.
I'd keep that separate from the economic (e.g. private ownership and allocation of resources via somewhat free markets) and legal (e.g. governmental decision making based on majority and strong individual rights) aspects.
Unfortunately, most people confound these different aspects for historical reasons, so they have come to mean "good choices in those factors" and "bad choices in those factors" depending on your POV.
Socialism has a definition - it was coined and defined by Marx
This is not a conventional definition of socialism or capitalism. I don't have a problem with that per se, since the terms have long since become so fuzzy as to be useless without definition within an essay, but it is a little odd to see you proudly labeling what would more conventionally be called libertarianism or capitalism as "socialism". In this context, I'm not sure this makes any sense.
Well then it wouldn't be capitalism all the way down? It would only be capitalism on the outside, socialism on the inside.
Capitalism is a system in which individuals are rewarded according to what the market will give them. If you don't do that you simply don't have capitalism.
The best definition (in my ever humble opinion) is that capitalism is a society where the means of production live in a free market, which is completely consistent with what the GP said.
This is not capitalism, though. What people are experiencing and objecting to is corporatism [1].
I believe that if people would give real capitalism a chance, the result would be positive. But as it stands now, the economics are too intertwined with the politics. In order to successfully implement real capitalism, the power that the state wields to erect regulations that can be subverted would have to be stripped: we'd have to neuter the government. Clearly the government would never allow that to happen.
[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Corporatism
Just as attempts at establishing communism end up with coercion and purges of dissent, theoretical capitalism ends up with powerful interest groups in practice.
From the point of view of the 95% who have no Capital, the 95% who only have their ability to exchange labor for currency, life is fundamentally the same. >40 hours a week traded to somebody else for the currency I need to pay for food, shelter, and entertainment. The value I create in that 40 hours is always greater than I was paid, and the difference is always accumulated by a better connected and more socially powerful minority. Markets and State Planning are superfluous details in this equation.
If your organization is, say, an automobile company, you can’t just get together with your friends and say “hey, let’s make cars and sell them”. You need a factory building, you need tools, etc., etc., long before you see any cars. The difference between capitalism and socialism, broadly speaking, is the difference between depending on private or public money to finance that initial investment.
Secondly, while capitalism is efficient on paper, it often isn't in the real world. There's no such thing as a free market, and nepotism, politicking, and incompetence still run rampant. Every societal system has its share of problems.
I'm just not 100% sure what the best way to get there is. I don't think that just because the system kind of works okay now means that it will forever.
Yeah, me too. And I think you're still making the same mistake I used to, in a different sense--you're picking nice-sounding, moralistic idealism over pragmatism.
Of the systems so far tested, some sort of Stateful mixed economy seems the best.[1] Of the parameters you can adjust in that system, we have observed various effects. The way to find whatever political truths we can is the same as the way to find other truths--empiricism. Empiricism is hard, especially with political systems, but it's better than moralistic or idealistic handwaving of any variety. It's not terribly convincing to philosophize about a political ideal. Why not take what we've got and find evidence-based ways of improving it?
[1] Of the systems so far untested, we have no data. They might turn out to be complete disasters, impossible to implement, or so strange almost no one outside a few logically-minded dogmatists would possibly agree to them. I would actually support voluntary social experiments in setting up different political systems, but you would have to make them compatible in some way with the status quo without hurting the validity of the experiment. Large scale nature preserves with small numbers of primitivists, protected by an existing State from redevelopment of the land or hostile violence from anti-primitivists, would be one example of this. Another is similar to something interestingly adopted by China: the "special economic zone".
How do you measure merit and the amount of labour one contributes to society? The only fair way I know of is capitalism where people get to vote with their money on whether or not you are providing value or not.
I would posit that merit is the amount of value you give to another. Minus marketing and any government interference, capitalism rewards individuals for the value they contribute to society.
It is also necessary to separate capitalism from corporatism. The latter is what most people are against when they say that capitalism is evil. There is no such thing as a corporation in terms of capitalism.
There is one flaw in capitalism that I am aware of but I still think it is the best system. That flaw is that it tends to reward those with capital. To have capital is to have an advantage over someone of equal ability. Over time power tends to consolidate into a few select organizations / individuals.
Many would, but a libertarian socialist would reject capitalism outright as being hierarchical.
> Over time power tends to consolidate into a few select organizations / individuals.
Spot on.
I suppose I don't buy this as an a priori equality. One problem is that when there are very large flows of capital, one can often make more money by skimming very small amounts off the top, than by creating new things. That's one reason finance is a better route to wealth than tech startups, even though tech startups create a lot more value for society: because when hundreds of billions of dollars are moving around, you only need to find a way to pocket a very small amount of it to get fabulously wealthy. More generally, rent-seeking, i.e. maneuvering yourself into a position where you can be sort of a private-sector version of the taxman, is a viable way to make money.
Plus, "minus marketing" is a pretty big caveat. It's quite possible to be successful in a "black-hat capitalist" sort of way, by not creating products that contribute to society, but instead by swindling society out of its money by getting people to buy your crap (even in tech, there's a whole affiliate-marketing underworld of tricking people into buying shitty ebooks). And, to pick a third problem, the economy is a rather complex dynamical system, and like many dynamical systems, is not driven purely by fundamentals (real supply/demand), but also by feedback loops and attractors within the system. So sometimes you get some really weird ways of making money that have nothing to do with anyone providing value to anyone else, but have more to do with asset bubbles and debt spirals and other such market patterns.
Not that markets don't often work, and might work even better without the government propping up the corporate form. But I certainly don't think we can a priori say that money transfers are a direct measure of value. I mean, we'd live in a pretty coincidentally amazing universe if it just happened that the economy, this very complex dynamical system that does not care about human concerns like "value" or "society" or "ethics", happened to end up 100% aligning with them. I think instead it's an open question when they align and when they don't, and if there's anything we can do to make markets align with value-to-society better.
2)The bad is that "everybody love their children, family and friends". That means those near those highly successful people get unfair advantage(nepotism).
Given that no political system has been able to improve (2)(who were those that had the privileges to cruise the Volga, feed-educate better their children in SU but communist party members? who has the power and the companies in P.R.C today but comunist party members?) I prefer capitalism.
Hypothesis:
A group of workers jointly shouldering the risk and rewards of a venture
is more efficient than a "traditional" company.
Having a state, by definition is incompatible with anarchism.
The whole "libertarians were orginally socialist" idea is just the latest in the strign of socialists attempting to coopt every movement.
That someone thinks you can have anarchism and socialism at the same time boggles the mind. Anarchism means no government while socialism is a form of government incompatible with allowing free will.
Unless you consider 1840 the 'latest,' you're wrong. (EDIT: Sorry, 1840 was 'anarchist,' 1890 was 'libertarian.' The American version of 'libertarian' didn't come into use until 1950: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Etymology)
You're thinking only of state socialism, stateless socialism is totally different. And the basic definition of socialism says nothing about denying anyone anything:
> Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.
Libertarianism predates the 1840s. I've been hearing this argument for the past 20 years, and it is nonsense. Socialists seem to recognize no property rings even in the terms they use, but that is just dishonesty at some point.
> The use of the word 'libertarian' to describe a set of political positions can be tracked to the French cognate, "Libertaire", which was coined in 1857 by French anarchist communist Joseph Déjacque who used the term to distinguish his libertarian communist approach from the mutualism advocated by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Etymology
> The only way to have "common" ownership is for the thugs who decide they represent the people to steal the property, generally at gunpoint.
What do you think about cooperatives? Who's the man with the gun there?
Bottom line is, you want to use violence to make ores subsidize your lifestyle, and that makes you scum. Arguing with your rationalizations of this ideology is pointless because you don't have any arguments, just propaganda. It really is pathetic.
You have heard of this open source thing, right? I don't think that you can argue that the open source ethos has anything to do with capitalism. In fact, I would say that Stallman's views on software are pretty overtly communist, as they contest the very concept of private ownership of a piece of software.
If stall man really believes nobody can own software, then stallman believes that all programmers should be slaves, unable to profit from their own labor.
As Stallman deemed it impractical in the short term to eliminate current copyright law and the wrongs he perceived it perpetuated, he decided to work within the framework of existing law; he created his own copyright license, the Emacs General Public License,[8] the first copyleft license.
There is nothing that keeps an open source developer from profiting from their labor. Some are employed by a company explicitly to work on OSS, or contract with a company to implement a desired feature. In fact, an open source developer can _only_ profit from their labor, and not at all from their "capital".
The philosophical difference between socialism and capitalism, is the willingness to accept violence and coercion as a means to mold society to a specific vision.
I am fairly certain violence and coercion is orthogonal to socialism v capitalism.
Libertarian socialists and other anarchists would say that private property is violent; it requires that there be societal hierarchy to work, and for few to hold power over many. (oh, and don't forget that their definition of 'private property' is different than yours, because it's more narrow. They separate 'possession' and 'private property' into two different things.)
Captialists could describe the state control of hardcore statist socialism to be violent, as it's also few holding power over the free association of the general public.
Violence is embedded in the assumption that society can be organized in a socialist manner.
In the end, arguing Capitalism vs. Socialism tends to devolve into the No True Scotsman fallacy: "Socialism sucks because you die of old age before getting an MRI." "Oh, I got one for my knee." "Well, Ontario isn't a TRUE Socialist society."
And: "Capitalism sucks because if a corporation succeeds in exploiting people, it makes money. But if it fails, they go to congress and rob the people through taxes of their money, e.g. the Wall Street bail-out." "That was not TRUE capitalism at work, that doesn't count!"
I am just glad that we currently can organize rather freely (even if we are forced to give over nearly half of our labor to war, health and retirement ponzi schemes, subsidizing heterosexual marriage, or whatever it is that you disagree with personally), and think that everyone should spend energy on making that more possible, and more neutral within our current framework(s) rather than trying to decide how people should organize themselves in the end.
Which of those two philosophies do you think accepts "violence and coercion as a means to mold society to a specific version"? From the context, I'm guessing that you're referring to socialism, and thereby claiming that capitalism rejects violence and coercion- my apologies if I'm misunderstanding you.
Assuming that I am interpreting your comment correctly, though, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you don't know much about the history of the twentieth-century US foreign policy, especially regarding Latin America. We have a long history of using violence and coercion, either directly or via proxies, in order to promote our capitalist philosophies. "Interestingly," we seem to choose to do so primarily in situations where we have significant financial interests... anyway, here's some reading you might find educational:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#History_in... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_U.S._regime_change_actio...
Note that I'm most definitely not saying that socialism, as a philosophy, has cleaner hands than capitalism. Speaking in terms of political ideologies, the take-home lesson of the abattoir that was the 20th century is that putting one's faith in a political ideology of any kind is asking for trouble.
Secondly, many people have different understandings of capitalism, and pop culture has continued to remove meaning from the word, which is probably why you are having a hard time understanding my comment.
The examples you cite are perfect examples of the opposite of capitalism: socialized institutions (or the government directly) using violence as a means to an end, either political or economic in nature.
For reference here is the jist from Wikipedia, which leaves a little to be desired but is still pretty decent:
"Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately owned and operated for profit; decisions regarding supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are not made by the government; Profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses."
If you want to say something political, say it, don't stick a label on your forehead.
Libertarian means you do not believe in the initiation of force. This is incompatible with socialism which, it's core, requires the use of force to make people live a certain way.
The term libertarian has clear meaning, and all of the others will, so long as we do not tolerate their misuse and call it out when they are misused.
You can't really slip that in like everyone agrees it's a fact. Where does it say that Socialism requires force? The last few anarchists I spoke to describe capitalism as requiring force, because you need to enforce the notion of the ownership of things.
For example, what force is required to copy a movie? The force is all on the side of lawyers and policemen arresting people to compel them to treat a very, very long number as property.
Socialists generally seem to feel that this is unfair because the people who put up capital are rewarded. But at any rate, if you do Not have an external force dictating, at the point of gun, how people are to be organized, they can organize as I described above, and historically have.
Since this organization is a capitalist one, socialists must use violence to stop it.
There are two ways violence can be imposed. In one, you are denuding yourself or your partner or property. In the other you are attempting to steal the life or property of another.
I draw a moral distinction between shooting the guy who is raping my wife, and you coming along and redistributing the profits of my company, which you didn't help create, along the lines of your ideals.
You want to form a company that under different ideals, then that's fine by me... So long as everyone involved consents.
There is nothing in a capitalist society to stop you from having such a collective.
However, socialism is based on the idea that capital has no value and only labor does, and thus you must use guns to prevent anyone from accumulating too much.
Nowhere in my essay did I say anything about the use of guns. I am not an expert on socialism, but I don't recall anyone I have met who identifies as a socialist telling me to grab a gun and use violence.
Therefore, I am going to leave you to argue with yourself since you are spending all of your words telling ME what socialism means and then explaining why YOUR definition of socialism is bad.
Have fun.
Strawman. Libertarianism does not defend the idea of IP.
GIVEN: Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism, and sometimes left libertarianism) is a group of political philosophies which promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production.
RESOLVED: Belief in the abolition of software patents and the use of FOSS software to create start-ups is a Libertarian Socialist view.
Your system would end the Knute two people decided to organize a venture for profit, or to keep a stick they found on the beach.
You need an all seeing state to take that stick from them and keep them destitute.
I personally identify with something very close to libertarian socialism myself, so you're not the only one.
But seriously, this thread has already devolved into criticisms of state socialism, which are legitimate. State socialism sucks. You and I are talking about something else, but will inevitably get drowned out by 'the s-word.'
(Full disclosure: my sympathies are on the market wing of mainstream European liberalism.)
Socialism as used in Europe means social democracy, means free enterprise with regulation and a robust welfare system, and includes the cooperative movement – and you'd be hard pressed to call the third largest private company in the UK (the John Lewis Partnership: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership) some kind of entryist plot.
Obama a socialist? Don't make us laugh: he's barely a liberal. In Britain he'd be a Tory...
This is a truth that, unfortunately, seems to elude people.
Also, Americans often confuse socialism for communism, and don't realize that more moderate non-tyrannical centre left forms of socialism are possible, with plenty of examples existing in Europe.
If you're interested in the notion of putting the means of production in the hands of the workers, you might be interested in some of the works of G. K. Chesterton and Hilair Belloc when they discuss what they called 'Distributism.' They're not full of much practical advice but they do provide an ideological alternative to the all or nothing ideologies of Socialism and Free-Market Capitalism.
How are workers being "exploited" just based on the fact that they working for someone else? We all have choices in this world. If you feel you aren't getting paid enough, leave.
"They argue that this creates an unequal society that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential."
If I have more money than you, it instantly makes our opportunities "unequal". This is the problem with socialism. It creates "equality" by limiting everyone's success. This works well for people that aren't interested in succeeding. I think of it like those group projects in school where 2 people of 5 would get stuck doing all the work, while the rest took the same amount of credit.
"I have no idea if the folks laid off from auto-makers want to do that, but I do know that I and many of the programmers I know seem happy with the idea of working in small teams in a collaborative and egalitarian manner"
I see people talking about this every couple of years. If you really want to start something like this, don't talk about it, do it. Many people in history have tried exactly what you are proposing and this crazy thing called human nature gets in the way every time.
The idea of a group owned collaborative sounds great on paper, until you actually attempt to do it. Who decides how much each person gets paid? If it's based on performance, what kind of performance? How many widgets or made?
You mentioned a "co-operative workers' councils". How is this any different than a president/ceo of the company? These "councils" will have more power over the regular workers, so it doesn't really make everyone "equal".
I've worked at a few companies that were run by committee. Even small decisions were very painful to make.
I will respond to one thing you wrote, That does not mean I agree with or even understand anything else in your comment.
How are workers being "exploited" just based on the fact that they working for someone else? We all have choices in this world. If you feel you aren't getting paid enough, leave.
Is exploitation incompatible with freedom? You seem to be saying that exploitation does not exist since people appear to have choices.
That isn't my understanding of what the word "exploitation" means. If I'm wrong, please suggest the word that describes what I am thinking, and I'll update the essay.
You seem to like to add other people's words in your article as to convey a certain message. When I argue against that message, you tell me that you are confused.
If you don't want anything to do with the thoughts you quoted, why put them there at all? You should stand by your opinions.
"Is exploitation incompatible with freedom? You seem to be saying that exploitation does not exist since people appear to have choices."
No. Some people are truly exploited. You laid it out there as a blanked statement. As if everyone is exploited in the current system.
Now as to "standing by my opinions," ask your friends in the neighborhood about me. They will tell you I have no problem standing by my opinions, even when they are unpopular. But I should make something perfectly clear: This essay describes what I like. At no time do I claim that you or anybody else will be better off if things go this way or that way, just that I will like it.
So really, there is very little value to your trying to persuade me that the world will be worse off if Health Care is nationalized or what-not. I am not writing an essay about how to make the world a better place, just about how to make my world a better place.
I believe the best you can do to oppose my views is to convince me that I personally wouldn't like working on small, self-organizing software teams. Have at it.
Communism <> capitalism. Democracy <> oligarchy. Freedom <> oppression.
I see you ended up getting people to argue definitions when they don't understand them anyway :).
Like lionhearted, "means of production by violence". Violence is only necessary when those with the real rights to the means of production (the wealth they created) are attacked... So no, that is not part of Marx's theory.
Marxist brand socialism is the healthiest place to be if you are for freedom and the end of oppression!
It is sad how little people care to learn of Marxism, instead happily believe the lies they are told.
These are sincere questions-- what effect would your socialist system have on our little voluntary startup? If the answer is none, how is it different from capitalism? What if we got big?
If you want to force us to hire certain people, pay them a certain amount, or prevent us from getting big-- all policies advocated by various socialist organizations-- how is this not an end of freedom and oppression?
Meanwhile I don't care if you form a collective, and you have whatever socialist policies in your collective, so long as all the participants are voluntary.
I've yet to meet a socialist or a socialist organization that would extend the same courtesy.
Because letting people be free from oppression means letting them pool capital, which is generally a problem for socialists, isn't it?
There will be no 'startups' in the sense you think of, meaning dealing with capital. Decisions of production will be done democratically in communities.
If you want to think of yourself as an artisan that could be argued that you could still have your "startup". But you will not be collecting capital from investors and enslaving workers to a wage.
It is a very different way of thinking and living and can be hard to grasp. But so was capitalism and capitalism was a very progressive movement in its beginning. But it runs its course as it destroys the planet and human interaction and continues to concentrate more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
Well at least your no longer pretending to advocate for freedom from oppression.
Fwiw, every capitalist would happily pay for the services they used, they do it all the time by going to other companiesvand hiring them or buying products.
The whole taxation racket is awoke, tax first then justify it because the services-- which would be provided cheaper and more efficiently by a free market, of course-- are used because were forced to use them.
Post hoc, ergo proctor hoc.
Reality is, this is all rationalizations. You wantbot use vioelence to comp ell others to live according to your dictates, and this is why all socialist system save turned into tyrannies.
The thing is, this makes no sense at all, especially not here on HN, where one of our core assumptions is that people should be compensated on how productive they are, not the hours they put in. Why should anyone care about the amount of labour, as opposed to the value of the end product?
I must have missed that in the FAQ. Where is the list of things we swear we believe when we decide to hang around here?
But where's your (or Raganwald's) collection of essays on how people should be paid a standard hourly rate regardless of their actual output?
Since I don't advocate that practice, there is no need for an essay on the subject.
I cannot read your mind, but are you making certain assumptions about what I believe based on the fact that I quoted certain sections of the wikipedia article about Socialism?
Please keep in mind that my words in this essay are quite explicit in stating that my beliefs are not Big S Socialism. I state that at the top and the bottom.
FWIW reading the rest of the comments on this page I guess you'd be more like a syndicalist than a socialist.
;)
To go back to your previous argument though, I don't view agreeing with pg (or even having read pg) as a pre-requisite to fitting in on HN. Quite the opposite in fact. I think someone who blindly accepts everything that pg writes is likely to not fit in to HN. Perhaps I jumped the gun in assuming that you feel otherwise. In fact, I hope that's the case!
So when it comes to PG's beliefs, I'm sure you can appreciate that I might admire Paul The Man and admire one of Paul's essays to the point of forwarding it around, even though I might disagree with it in part or even in whole.
Being specific, I see compensation as being one of many different ways we try to game people into doing good things. Some people respond to this carrot, some ignore it and are motivated by other things, and some game the system by lying or cheating their way into getting more carrots, like Mark Hurd slashing HP's R&D budget then pocketing millions for raising their profits.
A word like "should" is ambiguous. Does it mean "Should because that is Right with a capital R?" Or does it mean "Should because it is the best way to achieve some larger social goal?"
All that being said, may I offer these two statements and ask you if it is possible for someone to be an S-ist and an H-ist?
S-ists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit
H-ists believe people should be compensated on how productive they are
So, you're saying that the currency of upmods should be distributed based on the value of what was produced, rather than the time and effort (or, "amount of labour") it took to produce it? ;)
Who comprises this 'our' that you so easily reference, and what matter is their assumptions to the actual truth of the OP's thesis?
Cringe-inducing groupthink, in excelsis. Careful you don't lose yourself in pursuit of community.
That doesn't necessarily mean I reject those arguments; but it doesn't mean I accept them either. Given the state of the world, it makes sense that the ideology here reflects the capitalist, masculine perspectives in the Californian software industry.
I sense a strong belief in Progress and the power of logic to uncover immutable Truth.
Haha, so you are not socialist at all!!
Socialist is forcing others to accept socialist, in fact is forcing (other)individuals to give money to their "social causes", that could be different from those individuals have.
Is not asking politely: would you mind giving part of your money to this poor people so they can study?
No, it is taking by force his money if he doesn't want to, and consider it "a right". As my grandpa who lived in soviet rusia said when I asked what is socialism, he said: It is being generous with other people's money.
If you accept individual freedoms to choose, you are not socialist, not more that anybody else here.
A private socialism is not a socialism at all, because you need a society to comply.
Maybe you could give me a better definition.
Nowhere does this say "take my money and give it to other people." For example, anarchism is a socialist political philosophy, but abhors the state, and all forms of hierarchical control.
I don't dispute that there are socialist liars whovcall themselves anarchists, just as there are liars who call themselves libertarian, like yourself. Linking to such liars proves nothing, but that you would be so presumptuous as to lecture me and back it up with a link shows that you are incapable of critical thought or debate, and thus a waste of time.
Statistically, Genghis Khan will eventually be born somewhere outside your society and eventually show up at your doorstep with hordes of horseback archers, and you can either surrender, join his empire, and pay taxes (ending your experiment in anarchism) or have your entire society destroyed almost to the last man, leaving a few survivors to warn other societies of the tale (ending your experiment in anarchism).
If you had the only anarchist society in a world of states, you could probably freeload on those states to stop any full-scale Genghis Khan from getting too powerful. Let's hope your experiment in anarchism is landlocked between several states who will leave you alone. You could allow for voluntary defense, and theoretically handwave away defensive violence against people outside your society as "doesn't count". But on some level you have to realize your society depends upon some violence to survive.
Jack the Ripper will show up inside your society and fuck up your voluntary social contract all on his own, when he goes around killing disreputable women (luckily, many forms of anarcho-socialism lack money and thus would have no prostitution per se). In that case you would need some sort of violence (possibly voluntary on the part of the violent people) to either kill Jack the Ripper, or lock him up in a cage, or kick him out of your society. If you do that, you have violence within your society--if you don't, you have violence within your society in the form of Jack the Ripper.
It turns out all of human history has been an extended experiment in solving these very problems, and the only steady state, as discovered in parallel by nearly every culture on earth, is in fact the State[1]. At best you can have voluntarism within the State, but you cannot sustain anarchism without the State.
[1] Existing primitivists, such as the bushmen of Africa, have largely been forced out of their traditional lifestyle by the State. If there are primitivists who do, in fact, maintain their traditional lifestyle, they only do so under the explicit protection of the State, as discussed in the freeloading example above. In other words, it's still an anarchism that requires the State to function, which is a contradiction in terms.
Hunter-gatherers are not necessarily anarchists. Many of the greatest empires in world history were built by hunter-gatherers, who on account of their hunting and gathering made much better soldiers than people living in civilizations. They ate a more balanced diet, got more exercise, knew how to kill things, and knew how to kill things as a team. Horseback archery isn't a skill you get to hone much as a farmer. If you have that basic skillset, civilizations make pretty good targets once you run low on animals.
It's true. We need to look no further than the Spanish Revolution to find a great example in history of this.
Then again, the Most Powerful Military In The World is still playing in the sand, almost a decade later. A ragtag band of individuals is still fending them off.
As far as Jack the Ripper goes, I also agree with you. This is why I'm only sympathetic to anarchism, and not a full-blown anarchist. I have my own questions about how these kinds of situations would be resolved.