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Comment by ef4 | Hacker News Reader

When you attack capitalism by attacking Ayn Rand, you are attacking a terrible straw man.

You'll notice that people rarely start by attacking the works of von Mises or Hayek or Rothbard, because those guys were actual serious academics who knew what they were talking about.

Much easier to poke holes in the eccentric philosophy of one novelist.

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Ayn Rand represents a growing philosophical movement in America. Attacking Ayn Rand is attacking Ayn Rand... and that is good enough for me.

I doubt the point was attacking capitalism.

Capitalism and socialism are not mutually exclusive in a society.

They are. Socialism is an economy where production is owned and run by the workers for the benefit of the working class, which would be the ruling class at that time.

Simply having a welfare state or some nationalized industries is not socialism. The source of power and ownership of production is still in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Mises as serious? Hah. But yes, he and the others are attacked less but only because they are less famous. Their ideas are as worthless.

"Socialism is an economy where production is owned and run by the workers for the benefit of the working class"

Isn't that communism?

No. There's a reason why they are two different words. Socialism is after capitalism but before communism in terms of Marxist theory. From my understanding the big difference is there is still competition in socialism and things are privately owned by the workers, where as everything is publicly owned in communism. Remember that during Marx's time it was unusual to have the boss down on the production line working with his employees. Now a days people have become what Seth Godin like to call linchpins. It's not rare to have your boss coding or designing with you if you work at a start-up.

>Simply having a welfare state or some nationalized industries is not socialism.

Yes it is. It is a matter of degree. When you have an income tax, you have socialized income. If you have a "workers factory", you have socialized the means of production.

Your first paragraph seemed like you had the right insights, yet you contradicted yourself by the second.

No, I didn't. Even co-ops that exist today must sell on the capitalist market.

There is no use-value based economic planning today.

Could they not exchange goods with other co-ops?

Well, yes. But that could only provide for a tiny amount of goods - at least if theco-op doesn't want to live in a primitivist hell.

There could be coops around the world that trade with each other to get everything they need?

Yes, if we agree on a primitivist definition of "everything they need", which most likely includes food, shelter entertainment and some artwork - perhaps even basic medicine. But no electric energy, electronics, cars, farm machinery, refrigerators, antibiotics and so on. Building this stuff requires massive amounts of capital.

>Their ideas are as worthless.

Just like Socialism which ruined India.

Socialism and capitalism can be occurring at the same time in the same city. If one company was worker controlled and one company was hierarchically controlled then it would be fine. As long as nobody is forcing somebody into a different system both could work together.

Socialism is more than the worker's ownership of the means of production.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch06.ht...

Depends on whose definition of socialism you are using.

I think the current wisdom is that neither is perfect, they have different strengths and weaknesses. Some aspects of the economy are better managed using open markets with some regulation and others are better managed centrally by the government. A more current debate is to find the best mix.

It would be very hard to argue in favor of pure capitalism or socialism.

Apart from supporting Fascism, didn't von Mises miss the rather fundamental question of economy of scale and resultant monopoly domination?

Supported Fascism? Mises personally had to flee the Nazis. He also wrote a whole book about why fascism in general is bad ("Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War").

I'm sure there are shades of gray here, but he was an adviser to the Austrofascists and wrote in support of Mussolini. He certainly actively supported fascism in his lifetime.

Mises: "It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history."

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