Capitalism: the cause of and solution to all life's problems

[rotting bones]

Moose-tache: How will state capitalism avoid reproducing the dynamics of artificial scarcity?

mèþru: I support the use of experts. But the experts should be chosen by the people.

bradrn: Again, the USSR got and kept power by force. They didn't care very much about legitimacy. It was a perfectly pragmatic endeavor to take and hold power. At the same time, the people who did this were often sincere leftists. This confluence was made possible by their bizarre, pseudoscientific ideas about how the world works.

The thing is, capitalism fails all the time, but capitalism's failures continue to define what "success" looks like. The people are starving? Not enough medicine? No jobs? Education regressing to the middle ages? Welcome to the future! Blame races, cultures, civilizations, anything but the system that has assumed responsibility for getting resources to the people.

I suppose I am "Marxist" to the extent that it has become a synonym for "truthful" in contemporary political discourse. Basically, whenever anyone today accuses his opponents of being "Marxist", I would bet my life that the truth is the logical negation of whatever is being said at the moment. I suppose this means I ought to make a few more posts here.

You know, the older I get, the more leftist I become. Years ago, I didn't have well-defined political beliefs, but I was inclined towards Tolkien's anarcho-monarchism. I remember the government of Thailand being my personal favorite, a democracy under a strong monarch. The economy was good, sexual identities were not rigid and Thailand didn't seek to conquer its neighbors. Then the political right kept on doing the horrible things it has always done, Thailand overturned its democracy, etc. These days, I can no longer in good conscience endorse right-wing politics. However, I also think most people are naturally right-wing. A thorough education is the only way to make them see the error of their ways.

[Travis B.]

I pretty much agree with the above. I arrived at democratic socialism from the opposite direction. In the past I was a communist anarchist, but came to the conclusion that the communist anarchists' workers' councils in practice constituted a state anyways, that enterprises needed regulation by such a state (and that a purely voluntary society would not work, for reasons similar to why unregulated stateless capitalism would not work), and that communist and collectivist anarchist economic ideas are probably not feasible while worker co-ops in a democratically regulated market economy probably are.

[Raphael]

I'm not entirely sure in which way Tolkien was "anarcho-monarchist". II get the "monarchist" part, but where's the "anarcho-" part?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I pretty much agree with the above. I arrived at democratic socialism from the opposite direction. In the past I was a communist anarchist, but came to the conclusion that the communist anarchists' workers' councils in practice constituted a state anyways, that enterprises needed regulation by such a state (and that a purely voluntary society would not work, for reasons similar to why unregulated stateless capitalism would not work), and that communist and collectivist anarchist economic ideas are probably not feasible while worker co-ops in a democratically regulated market economy probably are.

I more-or-less arrived at this same conclusion by working under Capitalism and thinking it, as the kids say, sucked to be labour. I also at least theoretically like some aspects of distributism — spreading the wealth of society as broadly as is practical — which would look a great deal like a form of socialism with a free market, except where free markets don't work (healthcare, public safety, I would argue also insurance of any sort); unregulated stateless Capitalism would essentially be Feudalism with different words for things, I imagine: the owners of the means of production would become a state unto themselves, able to enforce whatever rules they chose, and in whatever unequal fashion they chose.

[rotting bones]

I'm not entirely sure in which way Tolkien was "anarcho-monarchist". II get the "monarchist" part, but where's the "anarcho-" part?

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anarcho-monarchism

[Raphael]

Ah, thank you!

[Richard W]

I remember the government of Thailand being my personal favorite, a democracy under a strong monarch. The economy was good, sexual identities were not rigid and Thailand didn't seek to conquer its neighbors. Then the political right kept on doing the horrible things it has always done, Thailand overturned its democracy, etc.

Democratic government has always been under military sufferance in Thailand. The job of the Thai military is to suppress internal dissent - separatism has been their main worry. Their last significant victory over foreign enemies (whence the Victory Monument) was when their British-built tanks trounced old French tanks. (They later lost a territorial dispute with independent Laos.) In the same war, the French navy trounced the Thai navy. Blatant royal interference in politics was very limited - political capital to be expended very cautiously.

Oh, and when when Rama IX effectively dismissed Gen. Suchinda, Gen. Chavalit Yongchaiyudh on the other side (the 'side of the angels') had an army of irregulars who were starting to go on the rampage.

[Travis B.]

I would have to say that the norm in modern Thailand has been military government under nominal monarchical rule, with democratic constitutional monarchy being the exception rather than the rule, with it being readily overturned by the military when it sees fit.

[rotting bones]

I agree about Thailand being nowhere close to an anarcho-monarchist utopia. For an idea of how naive I was, before my anarcho-monarchist phase, I was a pious Muslim. Back in school, I once argued that women are not inferior in Islam, they just have different social responsibilities. ("Separate but equal"!) I was one of the most conservative people in my extended family. The late patriarch of the family supported AITC. My late father voted CPI (M). My mother used to vote CPI (M), but now votes INC. My brother has always been a white-collar progressive. The only one who is still arguably more to the "left" of me is my Maoist cousin.

[Travis B.]

To me at least going from Islamism (or less extremely, being a pious Muslim) to being a leftist is less strange than it may seem, because in both cases one sees problems in society and is looking for a solution to them. Yes, the solutions differ, but it is easier to switch from one solution to another than to switch from supporting the status quo to seeking a solution to some problem with it (after all, if one had unquestioningly supported the status quo, one wouldn't see any issues with it needing fixing).

[Rounin Ryuuji]

That's a very interesting idea; I hadn't considered it before, but it makes a great deal of sense.

[Ares Land]

Since you're talking co-ops now, here's a possible future scenario that sometimes wanders into my mind:

Capitalist businesspeople are always looking to maximize their profits and ideally get thousands of percentage points of Return on Investment. But more and more, the only way to get the fantastic ROIs more and more businesspeople are dreaming of is through trading increasingly obscure financial instruments. Meanwhile, providing and selling actual tangible goods and services is usually a lot less profitable, often forcing people in those businesses to make do with razor-thin profit margins.

So it's not that difficult to imagine a future in which capitalist businesspeople focus more and more on chasing ever-more-complicated financial instruments, while the trade in tangible goods and services, with its comparatively slim profits, gets increasingly taken over by co-ops. Eventually, more and more of those people who don't have a lot of money lying around to engage in obscure financial transaction get what they need from co-ops. And in the end, people start to wonder why, exactly, they're keeping the remaining capitalist business firms around...

Unfortunately, that wouldn't work. Financial instruments still rest on tangible goods and services. If you're trading, I don't know, oil futures, sure, what you're selling and buying and making profit off is an abstraction; but at some point someone is still going to buy that oil.
If no one does, well, trading abstractions with no obvious tangible value is a typical bubble scenario.

This is, for instance, what happened in 2008. Bank loans got traded as part of complex financial instruments, it turned out people were going to default on these loans, panic ensued.

Investors like to have good, bland, stable and reliable addition to a portfolio alongside more risky assets so they like these businesses with low profit margins a lot!

[Travis B.]

I more-or-less arrived at this same conclusion by working under Capitalism and thinking it, as the kids say, sucked to be labour. I also at least theoretically like some aspects of distributism — spreading the wealth of society as broadly as is practical — which would look a great deal like a form of socialism with a free market, except where free markets don't work (healthcare, public safety, I would argue also insurance of any sort); unregulated stateless Capitalism would essentially be Feudalism with different words for things, I imagine: the owners of the means of production would become a state unto themselves, able to enforce whatever rules they chose, and in whatever unequal fashion they chose.

I also came to the conclusion that law is necessary, because without law how can one have due process, which means that the sort of justice anarchists are for, which is essentially based on whatever any given group of people may decide democratically amongst themselves, may very well be less liberal than those of liberal democracy. Law can formalize and provide enforcement for ideas like protected classes' rights which would not exist in the world envisioned by anarchists. (Somehow anarchists think that people will be consistently fair and just in such a fashion that concepts such as protected classes are not needed.) Law is also necessary to provide regulation in a fair fashion, rather than making regulatory decisions arbitrarily, something that I suspect would happen far too often without it.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I also came to the conclusion that law is necessary, because without law how can one have due process, which means that the sort of justice anarchists are for, which is essentially based on whatever any given group of people may decide democratically amongst themselves, may very well be less liberal than those of liberal democracy. Law can formalize and provide enforcement for ideas like protected classes' rights which would not exist in the world envisioned by anarchists. (Somehow anarchists think that people will be consistently fair and just in such a fashion that concepts such as protected classes are not needed.) Law is also necessary to provide regulation in a fair fashion, rather than making regulatory decisions arbitrarily, something that I suspect would happen far too often without it.

I've never been an anarchist, for this very reason. I like things like uniform due process, which treat everybody equally. While everybody deserves a say in how things are done, those who are good at manipulating emotions don't deserve to be more equal than others.

[Travis B.]

When I was an anarchist I believed in free association, with the key corollary that free association also means the right to not associate, and that justice, beyond self-defense, would be carried out by voluntarily refusing to associate with people. There are some problems with this: first, punishing someone worthy of punishment effectively would require many people to voluntarily agree on this; second, conversely, individuals could arbitrarily ostracize anyone for any reason, even if they have done nothing worthy of this. Someone could get off scot-free on doing anything if many people support them, no matter how wrong what they have done is, and conversely people could be punished for things such as having the wrong race or beliefs or simply because they are unpopular.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I think those are sensible conclusions to draw. I've always found anarchism either too nihilistic or too quixotic in its idealism. Granted, I grew up with some very right-wing ideas, so anarchism was not something I had ever considered seriously until I was perhaps past the idealistic phase that would have enabled me (personally) to pursue that route. I once had some very paradoxical views, favouring helping people, but being conditioned by a fairly conservative upbringing — I'm actually an ex-evangelical, but my deconversion on that front was many, many years ago — to believe Capitalism was good, and overreliance on "government" was bad, and the usual attendant things. As Chaucer once said through the Wife of Bath, "Experience, though noon auctoritee/Were in this world, were right ynogh to me"; it was experience (and empathy) that ended up changing my mind on a lot of things, but seeing the things of which people were capable when they thought they would face no punishment, or that they were right in the heat of the moment, probably also stopped me from considering anarchism as anything other than something that might be nice if it were practicable.

[Travis B.]

I was originally attracted to anarchism (back when I was in high school) because I saw the problems with capitalist society and that liberalism was not solving them (I grew up in a liberal family, and conservatism was anathema to me), but at the same time I disliked both big-C Communism (I associated it with the Soviet Union and Communist China, especially Stalinism and Maoism, and everything associated with them) and democratic socialism (I saw it as a route back to capitalism, through devolving into social democracy and then liberal capitalism, and I thought of it as still subjecting the people to the political class, just like in liberal democracy), and anarchism was attractive to me as an alternative to both big-C Communism and democratic socialism that would truly liberate the people from both the capitalist class and the political class.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Given context, it does make sense. During that period, I was still in the midst of religiosity (though the cracks were beginning to show, I was not a rebellious teenager, though I think I was very likely insufferably smarmy) and in trusting in authority, &c.; I was surprisingly compliant, I suppose. I did know a guy who was a Christian anarchist, however, which is an interesting thought (also unusual for the town where I lived). I remember thinking he was very nice, but, being an evangelical, I was sure I was right in thinking the world would end soon (the whole premillennial apocalyptic thing, very disturbing in retrospect).

It's interesting how such different routes would bring us to roughly the same conclusion — humans will create a State regardless (and it is some measure necessary for society), but neither authoritarian communism (such a thing as "libertarian communism" does hypothetically exist, and looks quite similar to what I think both of us would want, though we would describe it, I think, with different words), nor capitalism in most any form, is what's best for either humans as a group — or, in my case, the planet as a whole (I consider myself very green-leaning — ideology in other fields isn't much use if we're dead, or society is too disrupted for it to matter, after all).

[Travis B.]

(such a thing as "libertarian communism" does hypothetically exist, and looks quite similar to what I think both of us would want, though we would describe it, I think, with different words)

The term libertarian communism is actually used, and is an umbrella term to cover both communist anarchism and forms of libertarian Marxism such as council communism.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Oh, I wasn't actually aware of council communism, or the term being actually used by anybody. Good to know. Thanks.

Now that I look into them, however, that isn't quite what I had in mind. I find too much revolutionary fervour leaves not enough room for critical thought, and I'm not at all keen on the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat.