I finally got around to reading a little bit of Murray Bookchin

[rotting bones]

Except they don't deduce cures from scholarship and first principles alone. They test and experiment and refine the theory.

You first need some reason to think the cure will work. That's what I've supplied. I'm too poor to conduct experiments myself.

To push the metaphor a bit further, Marxism is a theory and treatment based on a 19th century doctor's ideas on cancer; also the treatment has been tried and killed every patient so far.

The reason this can't possibly be true is that unlike me, Marx never proposed a solution to the problem. I have been told by Marxists that I'm a utopian socialist, not a Marxist, because I'm actually proposing a solution.

This is what I mean when I say 21st century humans are fundamentally confused about politics.

Marx is important and more than fair for his day. I still feel trying to shoehorn everyone into 'bourgeois', 'capitalist' and 'proletarian' labels is trying to make sense of the 21st century using Victorian society as a model. It's not going to work because more than 150 years have elapsed and almost everything changed since then.

The only thing that has changed is the slang. The model is fine.

[Raphael]

You are inferring from previous failed cures that no cure is possible.

I am not. Stop making stuff up.

If you are not wrong, you should be able to explain what's wrong with my cure. In the past, I have answered every objection at a technical level.

I have done so.

A problem I've noticed is that 21st century humans are commonly unable to distinguish between assumptions and arguments. Very often, the things they say are assumptions are actually arguments and vice-versa.

No disagreement on that point.

[rotting bones]

I am not. Stop making stuff up.

You said:

"Cancer causes a lot of problems. These are the problems that my miracle cure for cancer is trying to solve. Therefore, people should not oppose my miracle cure for cancer!"

Without context:

You are inferring from previous failed cures that no cure is possible.

If you have some other meaning in mind, you would specify the condition that makes you think the cure wouldn't work. Without conditions, the only possible meaning any reader would think of is that you're vaguely gesturing at history.

I have done so.

What's wrong with it, then? I have diagnosed and removed the authoritarianism that's one of the root downfalls of Leninism. (Edit: among other things.)

[Ares Land]

Marx is important and more than fair for his day. I still feel trying to shoehorn everyone into 'bourgeois', 'capitalist' and 'proletarian' labels is trying to make sense of the 21st century using Victorian society as a model. It's not going to work because more than 150 years have elapsed and almost everything changed since then.

The only thing that has changed is the slang. The model is fine.

I'm sorry, but that's simply wrong. There are enormous differences, from standard of living (whatever proletariat would mean now, it's a completely different reality from 1870s East End workers) to the globalized economy.

Also, the point of a model is its predictive value. This was already sketchy in Marx's time.
Applying the model to the present day, OK, we can fit people in the categories, but does it predict anything about the economy, or the way people vote, or the likelihood of a future revolution?

[rotting bones]

I'm sorry, but that's simply wrong. There are enormous differences, from standard of living (whatever proletariat would mean now, it's a completely different reality from 1870s East End workers) to the globalized economy.

This is not important. There are still the bourgeois, petit-bourgeois and proletarians. This is especially true in a global context, where sweat shop labor was exported to third world countries.

Also, the point of a model is its predictive value. This was already sketchy in Marx's time.
Applying the model to the present day, OK, we can fit people in the categories, but does it predict anything about the economy, or the way people vote, or the likelihood of a future revolution?

The model predicts what those in a certain economic category are incentivized to do, and therefore will do over time in large numbers if they are to survive as members of that category. For example, Marxism predicts that a society that tries to turn large numbers of people into small business owners will see a gradual resurgence of fascism. That is what we in fact observe. These are the kinds of observations that made me think Marx had valuable insights into political economy.

I would add that game theory can provide a better analysis of such phenomena than the dialectical reasoning Marx tried to use. The issue is that mainstream economists (whom large numbers of PhD economists complain about) erase class incentives from their game theoretic analyses. The usual practice is to model one abstract individual without information about that person's social context. Game theory is a field of math. Like a computer, garbage in, garbage out. Marx provides a corrective regarding the kind of input that would give meaningful results once you plug them into game theory.

[Raphael]

I am not. Stop making stuff up.

You said:

"Cancer causes a lot of problems. These are the problems that my miracle cure for cancer is trying to solve. Therefore, people should not oppose my miracle cure for cancer!"

Without context:

You are inferring from previous failed cures that no cure is possible.

If you have some other meaning in mind, you would specify the condition that makes you think the cure wouldn't work. Without conditions, the only possible meaning any reader would think of is that you're vaguely gesturing at history.

I was using an analogy. The existence of a problem doesn't imply that a specific proposed solution to it is a good idea. And neither does criticism of a specific proposed solution imply a belief that no solution is possible.

[Raphael]

For example, Marxism predicts that a society that tries to turn large numbers of people into small business owners will see a gradual resurgence of fascism. That is what we in fact observe. These are the kinds of observations that made me think Marx had valuable insights into political economy.

Wut? Where do the writings of Marx predict anything about fascism?

[rotting bones]

I am not. Stop making stuff up.

You said:

"Cancer causes a lot of problems. These are the problems that my miracle cure for cancer is trying to solve. Therefore, people should not oppose my miracle cure for cancer!"

Without context:

You are inferring from previous failed cures that no cure is possible.

If you have some other meaning in mind, you would specify the condition that makes you think the cure wouldn't work. Without conditions, the only possible meaning any reader would think of is that you're vaguely gesturing at history.

I was using an analogy. The existence of a problem doesn't imply that a specific proposed solution to it is a good idea. And neither does criticism of a specific proposed solution imply a belief that no solution is possible.

Even you have to admit that your language was kind of strong given that you still haven't clarified what's wrong with my cure.

[rotting bones]

For example, Marxism predicts that a society that tries to turn large numbers of people into small business owners will see a gradual resurgence of fascism. That is what we in fact observe. These are the kinds of observations that made me think Marx had valuable insights into political economy.

Wut? Where do the writings of Marx predict anything about fascism?

His writings about the petit-bourgeois are mainly in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Their politics wasn't called fascism at the time.

Note that I said "Marxism", not "Marx". Marx himself thought petit-bourgeois politics had no future because he didn't predict how large numbers of the proletariat would be working for the capitalists from other countries. There were no indications of globalism at the time he was writing, only old school imperial colonialism.

Here's the Marxist video about the petit-bourgeois I always link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqESHNvmP20

[Raphael]

Even you have to admit that your language was kind of strong given that you still haven't clarified what's wrong with my cure.

I was directly responding to you talking about Marxism. My problems with Marxism, in the traditional sense, are a lot bigger than my problems with your specific proposal for an ideal society, although I've got all kinds of quibbles with that, too.

[rotting bones]

Even you have to admit that your language was kind of strong given that you still haven't clarified what's wrong with my cure.

I was directly responding to you talking about Marxism. My problems with Marxism, in the traditional sense, are a lot bigger than my problems with your specific proposal for an ideal society, although I've got all kinds of quibbles with that, too.

Marx doesn't propose a cure. In the original quote, I was using Marxism to identify which practices are exploitative.

[Ares Land]

I'm sorry, but that's simply wrong. There are enormous differences, from standard of living (whatever proletariat would mean now, it's a completely different reality from 1870s East End workers) to the globalized economy.

This is not important. There are still the bourgeois, petit-bourgeois and proletarians. This is especially true in a global context, where sweat shop labor was exported to third world countries.

Surely you'd agree that being a sweat shop worker is fundamentally different than being a worker in a developed country? I'm not trading places, in any case.

Speaking of which, a lot of our industrial worked is outsourced to China, supposedly 'communist'; in practice a capitalist system though it really deserves a label of its own.

Or for instance, my status as a 'proletarian worker' (since I don't have an investment portfolio, I guess that's where I fit) involves higher income and greater privileges than say, a Senegalese businessman (a petit-bourgeois). We could sort of make do by separating class and country, except Senegal's economy is closely tied to France (and other countries).

Petit-bourgeois is 'interesting' in the sense that it's more or less where the edge cases were tossed; I've read serious analyses to the effect that ignoring these classes is more or less where the USSR economic policy started to go wrong.
.

The model predicts what those in a certain economic category are incentivized to do, and therefore will do over time in large numbers if they are to survive as members of that category. For example, Marxism predicts that a society that tries to turn large numbers of people into small business owners will see a gradual resurgence of fascism. That is what we in fact observe. These are the kinds of observations that made me think Marx had valuable insights into political economy.

I would add that game theory can provide a better analysis of such phenomena than the dialectical reasoning Marx tried to use. The issue is that mainstream economists (whom large numbers of PhD economists complain about) erase class incentives from their game theoretic analyses. The usual practice is to model one abstract individual without information about that person's social context. Game theory is a field of math. Like a computer, garbage in, garbage out. Marx provides a corrective regarding the kind of input that would give meaningful results once you plug them into game theory.

That's a very interesting perspective. But I'd argue that you'd get even better results by using finer, more accurate categories.

[Travis B.]

That's a very interesting perspective. But I'd argue that you'd get even better results by using finer, more accurate categories.

The problem with using finer categories is that one risks arguing that, say, First-World educated white-collar workers with investment portfolios should not seek to have solidarity with Third-World coltan miners on the basis of their being First-Worlders, being educated and white-collar, and having investment portfolios, when in fact they are both oppressed by the bourgeoisie, who they should both see as being their real oppressors rather than each other.

This is why I reject Nort's and jcb's insistence that First-World educated white-collar workers are basically different from, say, First-World blue-collar workers without investment portfolios, much the less coltan miners, because it implies that they ought to conflict with each other rather than with their common oppressors.

[alice]

For some reason the sentence "Any discussion of Marxism will inevitably turn into a parody of Marxism" is refusing to leave my brain, so I'll try to get rid of it here.

[Nortaneous]

Is your position that a software engineer, a schoolteacher whose pension will come from a managed fund, the owner of a local dry-cleaning business, and the owner of a taco truck have a similar enough relation to capital that they go in the same class?

Not to answer for Travis, but why not? Yes, they're miscellaneous, but so are a British marquis, a business owner who created a large firm from nothing, someone whose family has lived on investments for generations, and Paul McCartney.

The odd one out is the dry cleaner business. From some quick research, it looks like a terrible business to get into.

The software engineer has an investment portfolio and direct exposure to market health and knows it, but doesn't own a business. The schoolteacher has an investment portfolio and highly indirect exposure to market health but may not know it, and doesn't own a business. The other two own a business and may not have an investment portfolio.

That's a very interesting perspective. But I'd argue that you'd get even better results by using finer, more accurate categories.

The problem with using finer categories is that one risks arguing that, say, First-World educated white-collar workers with investment portfolios should not seek to have solidarity with Third-World coltan miners on the basis of their being First-Worlders, being educated and white-collar, and having investment portfolios, when in fact they are both oppressed by the bourgeoisie, who they should both see as being their real oppressors rather than each other.

The American commitment to a broad middle class has many design goals.

[zompist]

I have deduced a cure from scholarship and first principles. Consider the possibility that you are wrong about whether it can work.

From this and other arguments, it seems like the thing you hate more than people disagreeing with you, is people agreeing with you. You seem to see yourself as an isolated prophet who has The Truth, and you bristle at having allies.

Everyone in this discussion (except the one person you're not arguing with, Nort) is at least left-wing, and open to socialist solutions. That is, they are your natural allies. Yet you treat them like enemies or lecture them as wayward would-be disciples. Why you think this is effective PR is mysterious.

Everyone's got a cure. FWIW, to the extent you've explained yours, it doesn't seem evil. If you can get a small country to implement it, we'll see how the experiment works; till then declaring that everyone must adhere to it, and is some kind of idiot if they don't, just makes you look like a crank. Every utopia works great in the creator's head.

Plus, it's like conlangs: if you really want your work appreciated, try to appreciate others' work. You could learn something from Travis and Raphael and Ares Land.

Finally, even if you are the Only Rational Person Ever, you are not approaching your own proposals as a scientist, but as a prophet. A scientist attacks their own ideas, because that is how science advances. Working from "scholarship and first principles" is no guarantee of the truth: it's also what is behind crank science and failed ideologies. At the very least you should look critically at your own ideas and ask: what are the weak points? why would people do as I think they should? how would bad people try to subvert this? what mechanisms ensure that people making decisions get good information?

[Ares Land]

The software engineer has an investment portfolio and direct exposure to market health and knows it, but doesn't own a business. The schoolteacher has an investment portfolio and highly indirect exposure to market health but may not know it, and doesn't own a business. The other two own a business and may not have an investment portfolio.

In the US, yes. In many (though not all) European countries it's not typical for the middle class to have an investment portfolio. Pensions may or may not rely on pension funds.

Pension funds are an interesting case by the way. They can be a scourge for businesses - very demanding with no interest in what the company actually does as long as it's profitable; about the worst kind of shareholders. They bear a share of responsability in European desindustrialization. (I don't oppose these entirely and think they can be made less evil, but that's besides the point.)
Now, the thing is... they're purely disembodied corporate evil -- the 'capitalists' they're maximizing profit for are pensioners or future pensioners who for the most part can't be called 'bourgeois' in any kind of meaningful sense -- American schoolteachers, for instance.

[Nortaneous]

The software engineer has an investment portfolio and direct exposure to market health and knows it, but doesn't own a business. The schoolteacher has an investment portfolio and highly indirect exposure to market health but may not know it, and doesn't own a business. The other two own a business and may not have an investment portfolio.

In the US, yes. In many (though not all) European countries it's not typical for the middle class to have an investment portfolio. Pensions may or may not rely on pension funds.

As far as I can tell, "middle-class" in the UK is the British English translation for the American word "rich". I've yet to see a reason not to take this at face value.

[Lērisama]

As far as I can tell, "middle-class" in the UK is the British English translation for the American word "rich". I've yet to see a reason not to take this at face value.

Slight correction, it means rich but to so many generations that you¹ either a) are distantly related to someone with a noble title, b) consider any kind of paid employment except something symbolic run by your family to be beneath you, or c) went to something you'd call a public school². But basically yes.

¹ Some exaggeration may have occurred here. It's very difficult to actually translate class terms.
² I.e. the upper crust of private schools.

Edit: also, you're usually middle class if you work the kind of profession you had to take a specific degree in³, even if you don't make as much money as a prototypical middle class person. I think this is the older meaning, and the extension is through understatement. There was certainly a time when it could be synonymous with “the professions,” but that isn't now. Also, your class is largely based on your family's station. For most people you'd actually encounter it's about a mixture of their parents' jobs and wealth while they were growing up, and their own now. In this context, all it means is that you could be middle class and quite poor, so long as you grew up in a middle class household.

I think that's enough not to actively mislead anyone?

³ Prototypically doctor/teacher/lawyer

[Travis B.]

The problem with the American usage of "middle class" is that then you get an artificial separation between working people on the basis of that either they have a college degree* or their parents have college degrees* or they're married to someone with a college degree*, with little being actually said about the position and interests of the people in question.

This results in things such as educated people such as software engineers that have to sell their labor to survive being "middle class" while paradoxically tradespeople who own their own businesses and employ others may very well be "working class", even though the interests of the former (401k's aside) are aligned with the working class** while the interests of the latter are aligned with the petit-bourgeoisie.

* 4-year implied
** in the socialist sense of the term