Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)
marxists.org
marxists.org
H. G. Wells' 1934 interview with Stalin (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17054704 - May 2018 (52 comments)
H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616566 - April 2014 (137 comments)
It doesn't seem to be possible for an open internet forum to have an intellectually interesting discussion about this kind of thing. The reflexive reactions are so intense that they simply overwhelm anything reflective ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Intellectual curiosity can't survive that level of activation.
Marx and Adam Smith both highlighted this fundamental characteristic of capitalism, but it still rarely fails to blow Americans’ minds when I explain it to them.
A lot of people that are not technically unemployed are also not working fall into a few groups: those that are dependent on others to work; those that are too young or too old to work; and those that have simply given up on the whole notion of working because they are no longer able to physically or mentally (or both).
And there is of course a big problem with poverty even among those that work. So unemployment figures look great. Poverty figures, not so much. IMHO basic income would be a fair and simple way to ensure we get rid of poverty that should not break capitalism.
"Full employment" absolutely builds in the reserve army of labor power into the definition.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001
Was 86% or above before 1950, never above 70% over the past 5 years. The trend has been downward the whole time.
From 2000 to 2020, the labor participation for men from 20 to 44 has fallen. Labor participation for men 45 to 54 varies from flat to down. The labor participation rate for men 55 and older has risen. Working age men are less employed than they were, retirement age men are more employed than they were.
https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-particip...
And a second point, in my home country the government introduced rules where to have government benefits you have to work a little, painting your community, cutting grass in public places etc.
People on the left were outraged. How dare you give work to people on a government mandate, and tie unemployment benefits to it?
Yet that is precisely what Stalin just argued for there. A government can create full employment by creating jobs and forcing people to work. Why don't modern socialists support that?
It can easily be benefit for example if you work 1/8 time for 1/2 of pay.
In the Soviet Union, which declared itself a workers' state, every adult able-bodied person was expected to work until official retirement. Thus unemployment was officially and theoretically eliminated. Those who refused to work, study or serve in another way risked being criminally charged with social parasitism
If you think you’re making the USSR appear less reasonable than the US, maybe think again.
So, if I plan to live from rents that i earn from my past work i am a parasite?
Wages are attained by selling your labor to someone else.
Which is it?
Wrt “earning capital,” you may have purchased capital, but you sold your labor for wages.
Compensation paid as stock options are an exception, and are a result of New Deal reforms to get more working people bought into the capitalist system, which has been successful, so far. But owning stocks is not the same as owning capital because you still do not control the capital and therefore cannot collect rents. Realize capitalists never directly trade the capital for the labor to operate that capital, unless forced. Historically, only communists have ever forced such a thing.
If people want to be homeless due to mental health issues, there is no easy way out if the government is allowed to overrule someone who says ‘No! Don’t help me!’
Very difficult ethical issues all around.
In our area, we have shelter beds open and people sleeping in the cold outside of the building…
Are you seriously suggesting that so many millions of Americans just happen to love being homeless? Is this a joke?
The person you're replying to didn't say any such things. Your replies on this post have followed a pattern of lazy swipes, and degrade the quality of discussion here.
House ownership was limited per-square-meter (varies on exact period and location). Most rooms/apartments were technically state property and you just rented them. Building „cooperative“ apartments where one would own it was a rather late development. And even then I believe limits of apartments-to-own were in place.
On the other hand, room-renting was tolerated in two cases. Resorts (no enough spots in hotels) and university towns (no enough places in dormitories). In resorts locals would move to, for example, garages to make money from renting their own apartments to holiday goers. Students renting was usually old lady business where after your kids are gone and husband dies you rent spare rooms.
Regardless, the USSR was heavy on the “you don’t carry the water, you don’t drink”.
Socialists don't say that socialism would suddenly lead to less work for everyone, a revolution and rebuilding after a revolution is a lot of hard work, but the work is done for the collective good, not to make a few even richer. It shall have meaning and be valued by society. And yes, eventually - even Marx talked about it already - work that is not necessary and labour that can be automated will become more free time for everyone.
Does this ever happen in reality though?
Even the American Revolution was essentially a tax evasion scheme by the wealthy merchant class.
Secondly, tying unemployment benefits to community service is a blunt tool, that can directly hurt those trying to get unemployment. Some people need more time to find a job or improve their own skills, and spending time mowing the lawn may be counterproductive to that. Some people can work, but they may have disabilities that prevent them from doing whatever community service jobs are available. And finally, some people just can't work at all, and they shouldn't have to go through hoops to prove that to receive the benefits they need to live.
Finally, many on the left (including myself) reject the notion that living necessities should be tied to employment at all. Everyone should have access to food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare, regardless of their employment status. This includes people who can work, but choose not to. Work should not be a requirement to live a comfortable life.
_Someone else_ will we working to give you a comfortable life.
Robots, preferably.
We're not there yet, but it would be a nice goal. And certainly a lot better than having robots do all the work but the fruits of their work going only to the rich who own them.
Maybe read your sentence again. Carefully...
Bad actors start using ai to do bad things. Good actors use ai to counter bad actors.
Or is that not what you meant?
That could also be because he was a murderous dictator, and not necessarily have anything to do with his economic ideas. (Although some of his economic ideas, and they way they were implemented in particular, lead to lots of death too.)
I am myself a politically active Marxist and we do say this, but we also understand that this isn’t going to happen. Keynesianism was not a sustainable solution. It only bought time. Ultimately states in capitalist societies are in service of capital. In the US, realize the 1970s financial overhaul, including the Bretton Woods System, was the capitalist response to the New Deal giving workers too much power. 1960s inflation hit the ruling class and they responded by brutalizing the economy. See: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com
The heirs who expropriate surplus labor time from those of us who work and create wealth are the ones who not work. Their wealth is from government mandate - the government was created by them to do this and enforce it. When are they to work?
Here the point is not to have an underclass of long-term, exploitable unemployed but to have some slack, ie. a minimum number of people available to ensure the system runs smoothly without shortages and hindrance to business growth and change.
Low unemployment is good and desirable but shortages are not.
The slack can be heirs forgoing the size of their profits, by boosting wages where needed, as opposed to slack in the wages if the people doing all the work and creating all the wealth.
If a society had a basic income for everybody, the unemployed wouldn't be poor, and would still be available for work if the demand for extra labour was high enough.
Although ultimately, I do think that eventually automation should lead to less people having to work. Or perhaps preferably: people having to work less; we should also get rid of the 40+ hour work week, so we can divide the available work more equally, while also making sure everybody has enough time to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
And part-time work also provides the needed slack in the system without condemning anyone to poverty.
Ideally, we would have a bigger safety net so that this would never happen.
There will sprays be a certain percentage of people where work is not a good option due to physical or mental disabilities. It is society’s role to help these people, and the wealthier society becomes, the easier this should be.
In what part of his works does Adam Smith says something like that?
It was right about the time of this interview that Stalin was starving out Crimeans and Ukraineans with forced collectivization and other modern horrors.
(I wouldn't lump "socialism" in there because it's more vague; social-democracy can and does work).
"Unanimous" agreement on the collective good/collective interests only works, at all, in small groups (primitive societies) and dictatorships. That was really my point.
Also, a lot of USSR space advancements were made thanks thanks to captured Nazi scientists. If they had to rely purely on homegrown science, they'd have had much harder time.
In soviet central planning system, few people make decisions that affect many and there's was redundancy. No free press. No political opposition. No economic rivalries to challenge. Same in civic/industrial evolution. If a committee decides to pursue idea X and drop idea Y.... So be it.
There was no democratic feedback mechanism either. Public is not happy that state money is used to prop up revolutions all around the world while one's citizen are living in poor condition? Tough luck, party line is never wrong.
"power" is distributed in democracies; The centralized nature of communism is its weakest spot, and it is by design.
NN Taleb stated it well on Twitter, I think: "At Fed level, libertarian; state, Republican; local, Democrat; family/friends, socialist."
Is Cuba a “tyrannical dictatorship”?
How did Pinochet fall?
Cuba is a tyranny. They've soften up to get European investment and tourists, but they're brutal in their indoctrination, imprisonment of dissidents, etc. They're also an important (and beloved) backstop preventing American domination in L. America.
Pinochet didn't fall, he basically handed over power peacefully. His (surprisingly liberal) constitution of 1980 established him as head of the armed forces (which he was until he died) and promised free elections. He allowed for a fair and free elections in '88 that he lost and whose result he respected paving the way for the 1990 presidential elections. Again he lost and respected the result.
He's also a murderer who slaughtered thousands of innocents, but that's peanuts compared what the commies have wrought.
Everything I wrote is a gross oversimplification. Volumes have been written for each of the three topics you glibly referenced.
And you have to be absolutely brainwashed to believe Cuba is a “tyrannical dictatorship.”
If you read my comment carefully I clearly state:
- Pinochet slaughtered (tens) thousands of innocents
- Cuba is a backstop to American imperialism in the region which I clearly eluded as a good thing for those L. Americans outside of Cuba (at least until Americans drop their Monroe BS).
My parents are from Argentina and lost many friends, students and professors (luckily no family) to capitalist dictators. The battles of L. America literally run through my blood. I think I am very well aware who the Chilean equivalent of Videla is. Pinochet, however, must be recognized for having relinquished power unlike his Argentine capitalist counter parts and Cuban socialist counterparts.
Anyway, I think I have demonstrated a little more nuance in this very complicated topic than trite single line slogans. I am not a "capitalist", whatever that means. I reject the destructive "socialism" vs "capitalism" false dichotomy.
Nothing could expose your class position as much as your suggestion that Cuba’s leaders are Pinochet’s “counterparts.”
Pinochet was lifted into power by the American capitalist empire. Castro was lifted into power by the Cuban working class. It takes a lot of nerve to equate the two in any way, and even more to suggest that the latter should step down in spite of overwhelming support from the Cuban people.
You'd be surprised, however, how popular Pinochet is particularly among working class Chileans, just as you'd obviously be surprised how much support Cuba needed from the USSR to keep the regime together. Material support and training manuals on how to buttstock resistive people.
Battista fell over 60 years ago, Cubans want something else.
Reality is complicated, it cannot be reduced to pretty slogans.
To say all of the above, by the way, is in no way to defend the also barbaric practices of the Pinochet regime. Pinochet however at least left power after a forceful referendum and peaceful transition to democracy. The ruling elite of Cuba never did and in no way ever even let things reach the point of an honest referendum.
Yes, looks like it works just like any other communist state. Communism needs to be maintained through tyranny, people wouldn't vote for it if they could which is why communist states must constantly supress dissent and never allow people to vote for other parties. When people can vote they quickly vote out communism in favor of more liberal parties, communism is very short lived in free societies as when people try it they quickly learn to hate it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/world/americas/cuba-judge...
Democracy is very sensitive and the liberal democracies in Western capitalist countries are brutally anti-democratic. Most Americans realize this but will be so quick to presume any other country a dictatorship.
Cuba has never been a “dictatorship”. Castro and his successors were and still are deeply loved by the Cuban working class that put them into power. US leaders understand this and it’s why none of their attacks have penetrated. See: Bay of Pigs
Cuba was just a Soviet Union's project to burn enough money to show that socialism works. But it didn't. And I very unhappy that we were living so poor in soviet era while paying those "democracies" which were modeled just like our country - with literally no choice on any elections.
And being rich is not a sin, btw.
"Cuba is a one-party state, with the Communist Party of Cuba being described as the "superior driving force of the society and the state" in the Constitution of Cuba, and all other political parties are illegal. Elections in Cuba are not democratic because the government does not allow free and fair voting." ~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Cuba
So how would that work?
How does that jibe with democracy and free elections?
People aren't dying on makeshift rafts trying to get there, they're dying on makeshift rafts trying to escape.
I don't know, it seems like a lot of European countries with a pluralistic party system are heavily "Christian Socialist" (pro free market, pro property ownership, pro capitalist, pro safety net) and they don't seem to be any more prone to slide into dictatorship?
I've actually have never read a compiled lists of stats of what types of government make a country impervious to dictatorial rule.
Nazi (national-socialist) Germany was totally socialist.
P.S. Your description of „socialism“ is a veeeery weird one. Apparently everything is socialist.
There are no Marxist regimes; all “Communist” regimes are (or are derived from) Leninism which introduces vanguardism and other changes to avoid the prerequisite of developing proletarian class consciousness through mature capitalism in Marxism, and feature a (theoretically) transitional initial phase to replace development through private capitalism, which none have ever escaped from to anything that was supposed to be beyond it (though China rewrote the plan to include authoritarian quasi-private capitalism.)
There's a wide array of arguably socialist non-“Communist” regimes, but all of them are democratic/market socialism that explicitly accepts plural democracy and regulated (not “free”) markets as important elements.
> Nazi (national-socialist) Germany was totally socialist.
This is true to about the same extent as “the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is totally a democratic republic” is true.
Appropriation of capital basically means that the government decides to eradicate right to private ownership, thus reducing the will for economic creative destruction.
The lack of this creative destruction leads to stagnation.
To my view, one should not harken to a communist system. Marx was a great observer and analyst, but the medicine offered under the brands of socialism and communism generally create only worse situations.
19th century workers movement was needed to create pressure to give every citizen more or less equal right regardless of the property they possessed. After this was achieved, the result was a much fairer capitalist system which was far less harsh than the soul and body destroying early factory/labour conditions Marx described.
Marx's analysis was critical in specifically pointing out what was wrong. The western societies fixed themselves without violent revolution.
The places which were touched by revolution into socialist/communist systems basically became de-facto oligarchy led autocracit governments who need to cling to power using authoritarian bullying.
I think anything that needs to be written as a summary of socialist reality was written by Orwell in Animal Farm. He was a fervent socialist - but became a quite strong critic of it's implementations as they stand.
Orwells fondness for socialism was driven by his experiences as part of the civil service of the british empire - a machine of opression to him, which he came to abhor.
He thought socialism would offer a better, fairer world - only to find out it only enabled a new band of crooks to take over.
The foundations of humane societies are not in communism or socialism.
This is mighty reminiscent of basically every other system of large (super-Dunbar-scale) society control, from the ancient priest-kings, through the Roman "republic" and imperial systems, medieval feudalism, and late-stage capitalism.
When control of the political system (how society allocates resources) can be used in a self-dealing manner, and resources can be used to control the political system, the steady state will tend towards the pattern you noted above (especially when those resources tend toward power-law distributions).
Notably, the argument can be made that the situations where political power has reverted to a wider base (including the establishment of modern democracies) has come about when social or technological changes destabilized the economic distribution structure. Examples include the workers' movement you cited, the growing late medieval era's growing merchant class (whose willingness to be taxed to fund mutually-beneficial programs and corresponding demands for control over those programs helped trigger the creation of European democracy), and the western Roman Empire's decaying ability to use the funds of expansion to exert social control in its occupied territories.
Lastly, it should be noted that, as brutal, illiberal, and inegalitarian as the USSR ended up being, the society they replaced (the Tsarist Russian Empire), being an industrialized dictatorship built around an enormous serf class was probably worse on all three counts.
I disagree. The czarist state was far more lenient creature than the industrial scale slaughtermachine that was the stalinist USSR. A poignant example is the treatment of dissenters when Stalin himself was condemned for insurecctions against the czarist Russian state pre 1917. He was sent to 'exile' meaning he had to spend time in specific village, while being more or less free, being cordially observed by the guardsmen. Compare this to the well documented purges he laid upon those regarded as enemies of the state. (Ref. "Young Stalin" by Simon Sebag).
Of course USSR was more a continuation of the Russia of preceding centuries than a new political entity - hence alone cannot be used to empirically judge the quality of communism as a philosophy for state building.
"Luckily" we have many more examples around the world, especially from the eastern block countries which were prosperous modern states before they fell under the communist yoke - which in my opinion form sufficient evidence that communism does not really work as intended as a form of government that would be an obvious improvement to human condition.
Russel, of course, was aligned with the left his entire life.
Since then socialism (per Marx defined as the nationalization of all but private effects) has been independently tried to the same ruinous effect. Every socialist regime is unique, because they all try to explain and fix why the others failed; uniquely brutal reaching it's zenith with Pol Pot.
Marx said "I am not a Marxist" and "I do not write recipes for cookshops of the future", so there is no Marxist society other than the one he envisioned in the far future (certainly not a nearer term socialist future) which had the banner "From each according to ability, to each according to need".
> From each according to ability
This is the dystopian part, if they judge you to have high ability they will work you to the bone and punish you if they think they could grind more work out of you. There is no freedom to quit and do something else, there is just the judgement of the state and if they get something wrong you are screwed.
Reward people for work instead of punish people for not working, that is the capitalist way. Punishing people to get them to work is a bad idea, I thought most people on the left agreed with this? So why do you still think communism makes sense, when it is a system based on punishment rather than rewards?
Secondly, tribal human society roved in bands of approx 100+ people which, by virtue that it usually had leadership, was not entirely classless, despite the fact that the groups were small enough not to require political representation or monarchs. You're dreaming if you think individuals were always free to act against a tribe leader's wishes.
With capitalism, the coercion to work is decentralized in the form of people promising to give you somebody else's work (money) if you do some work for them. Being decentralized makes a dictatorship unnecessary to sustain it.
People like to say that America is the home of the free, but we have the world’s largest prison population. This happened under a democratic capitalist system.
> With capitalism, the coercion to work is decentralized in the form of people promising to give you somebody else's work (money)
You say the system is decentralized but 3 individuals in the US hold more wealth than 50% of the population. If money is the method of decentralized enticement, yet a handful of people control most of the money and assets, is that really decentralized control? “A handful of elites owning the nation’s wealth” sounds like most people’s perception of communism, and yet it describes reality in capitalist America.
> Being decentralized makes a dictatorship unnecessary to sustain it.
Last January a defeated President and his followers attempted to overthrow democracy and install himself as the first American dictator. This happened under a capitalist republic. If capitalism makes dictatorships unnecessary, why is an authoritarian movement growing in capitalist America?
What makes me say that? Because the concept of complex systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system) gave me a new approach to think about different economic and social organizations.
Economy (and society) is a complex system and it is impossible to model perfectly (at least for now). So any approach that attempts to have everything under control will (eventually) fail. Or you may need to use force to mold the reality to your hypothetical system.
Capitalism may not be the best system there is, but it certainly aligns with a complex systems point of view.
> Wells : I remember the situation with regard to the technical intelligentsia several decades ago. At that time the technical intelligentsia was numerically small, but there was much to do and every engineer, technician and intellectual found his opportunity. That is why the technical intelligentsia was the least revolutionary class. Now, however, there is a superabundance of technical intellectuals, and their mentality has changed very sharply. The skilled man, who would formerly never listen to revolutionary talk, is now greatly interested in it. Recently I was dining with the Royal Society, our great English scientific society. The President's speech was a speech for social planning and scientific control. Thirty years ago, they would not have listened to what I say to them now. Today, the man at the head of the Royal Society holds revolutionary views and insists on the scientific reorganisation of human society. Mentality changes. Your class-war propaganda has not kept pace with these facts.
Seems to me that technical dev type people are indeed becoming abundant, and many are entertaining the notion of UBI, myself included. Not long ago, I would have thought it silly to even consider.
But UBI would also be the capitalist way to go about things. The capitalists will own everything, and just give the masses enough UBI to keep them happy enough to not fight back.
This is why in the 21st century the most prominent promoters of UBI (sometimes called negative income tax) were libertarians.
The hierarchy is unavoidable at scale.
It is consistent with socialism, but not essentially socialist.
> socialism is about central planning
No, it's not. Central planning may be part of some versions of socialism, though there are serious arguments within socialism that central planning in the strong sense is incompatible with socialism, and instead a degenerate single-capitalist form of capitalism.
Socialism is about common/worker ownership and control of the institutions, means, and proceeds of economic production (each of these is a goal and a means to the others.) UBI, especially when funded from taxes on wealth, property, or income where capital income is not excluded or favored, is a mechanism for common participation in the proceeds of production.
> This is why in the 21st century the most prominent promoters of UBI (sometimes called negative income tax) were libertarians.
I think you mean the 20th Century and right-libertarians, though as you state it jt is, in fact, also true of the 21st Century (but there it is libertarian socialists at the fore, who aren't the libertarians you seem to want to refer to with your “UBI isn’t socialist” line.)
I still contend socialism is about central planning. Common ownership and participation in the means of production via democracy is central planning in practice, since people end up pooling their decision making power.
Representives then implement policies decided by the collective, which all people are subject too.
It's opposed to the libertarian vision, which would be for each person to make more of their own decisions individually, with voting less relevant.
Actual socialists, for the whole history of socialism, disagree, but please, don't let that distract you.
> Common ownership and participation in the means of production via democracy is central planning in practice,
When the common ownership is done through the state which directly controls industry, sure, you get central planning. When it's done through democratic worker control of firms, it is no more central planning than when firms are jointly controlled by their capital owners. And there are lots of variations of socialism besides those two.
> It's opposed to the libertarian vision
The idea that socialism is opposed to the libertarian vision is news to libertarian socialists.
I would call what you are describing communism, not socialism. And it's nothing like any major socialist society in existance, because it's unobtainable in practice.
Horrifying.
> From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.
> You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.
> Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.
Horrifying.
Not really. In a well-functioning family individual and family interests are in tune (of course there are not well functioning families where, say, step-parents and stepchildren get into physical altercations.
Contrast to Georgia in 1860, where an individual slave had interests contrast to that of the plantation.
Odd a worker in tune with his fellow workers is horrifying. What then is a wage slave grinding it out in some Amazon warehouse to enrich Bezos and his investors?
In a family, yes, it is possible. With millions of individiuals? Hardly.
Also, you can leave your family. Good look leaving a proletarian dictatorship.