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

[rotting bones]

This is literally what I just said: "there is definitely a tension between workplace democracy, and wider economic control". And so far as I recall I've said so throughout the thread.

You hadn't posted this when I wrote the things you quoted.

It's the advocates for central planning, in my view, who either pretend the conflict doesn't exist, or throw out worker control entirely.

Just to be clear, I don't know who you are referring to here.

Now, you say you support workplace democracy.

I've said it before too. However, I still have reservations.

May I remind you that some socialist theorists have recognized that "there could be conflicts of interest between For Profit co-ops and a democratic government"?

The government industries are not For Profit.

You think workers should control their workplaces... until a vote comes along which overrides and replaces worker control. Then the central organization forces people to do what it wants. That's what "tomatoes ought to be grown" means: the central government gets to force its way on people. If there is no forcing, then your statement about tomatoes means nothing.

I've discussed this in more detail before, but here's a recent brief comment:

For a government industry, the crucial factor is that its employees are paid a government salary, whoever makes internal decisions is not allowed to lower the number of jobs in defiance of the popular vote, and the raw materials and the tools to work them are government property. (Compare how worker co-ops create fewer jobs than private companies.) However, everything else could be decided by worker vote.

---

That amounts to a subsidy for tomato farming. And I don't object to that, but it's not the same as claiming that "tomatoes are democratically voted for" automatically creates a supply of tomatoes. You can't have coercion and also non-coercion.

Look, no society is 100% coercive or 100% free. I'm suggesting a specific plan that mixes coercion and non-coercion in a way that I've tried to justify.

Subsidies and government jobs can work! But if you're not forcing people at gunpoint into the fields, you are also not guaranteeing compliance. Maybe your subsidies aren't enough; maybe not enough people want those crappy jobs.

How can people both be starving and not want a job as a tomato farmer?

I think we went over this at length before: that the voters demand something does not mean that their demands can be realistically met.

I'm not saying the demand is guaranteed to be met. I'm saying if the people want food, the government should try to meet the demand instead of spinning propaganda about every other type of government in existence.

My argument is that the government is more likely to meet demands for food than For Profit corporations because it's literally going to take the resources and organize the production.

Look, the problem we've both identified is tough. I don't expect you to solve it in a few board posts. But I do think you're waving the problem away, supporting contradictory positions because they both sound good, and not working out the contradictions.

Have you tried Googling the effectiveness of central planning on food production? The USSR was notorious for not producing enough food, and it sure wasn't because it was "unprofitable". China under Mao didn't do much better; Mao's solution was to hold forced meetings and make people melt down their pots and pans to make backyard iron foundries. And let 20 to 40 million people die, the biggest famine in the 20th century.

I'm pretty sure Mao was trying to boost steel production, not feed people by making steel. His backyard furnaces are precisely an example of decentralized production by central command, etc.

But none of that matters. Why should I have to argue about what China's population pressures were at the time, the relations of the rest of the world with the early Soviet Union, and so on, when what I'm proposing is not a rigid five year plan. Those aren't systems I even support. As people vote for certain goods, jobs to produce them become available.

I've argued in great detail why my system is good news for consumers, what the potential pitfalls are (they have nothing to do with "centralization" and everything to do with incentive structures), and why I have reason to think it will work regardless. I don't feel like it would be productive to rehash all of it, but it's unfair to accuse me of ignoring problems.

The problem with this thread is that every argument against the profit motive is answered with charges of genocide. I hope you realize that if the left shoots down every proposal to build socialism, then poor people will turn, as they repeatedly have, to the nationalists.

I agree with you that food production is basic, and highly skewed. It's also closer to being solved than at any time in history. First World nations have gotten themselves into all sorts of trouble, but if you look at the entire planet, the last century is the story of an amazing success in feeding people. China and India alone— more than 2 billion people, far more than live in the First World—were once miserable basket cases where famines routinely killed millions of people. They are not at First World levels (and that's a good thing, because preserving the ecosphere is also important), but they're not starving poor any more.

This progress was because of science, not politics. No matter how far science advances, everyone can't be fed as long as the motive behind food production remains profit. The people who are still starving are extremely poor.

Global famine deaths have been cut in half since the 1990s. In the last 40 years, famines have been restricted to Africa—

This is a problem with definitions. Malnutrition deaths are common from Latin America to Indonesia. Mainstream definitions only count a disaster as a real famine if it cuts into profit margins.

Housing and medicine are even more problematic all over the world. But people are only real if their lives make money.

with one exception, that notorious hotbed of market capitalism, North Korea.

Well, if you must answer an appeal for democracy by comparing my system to North Korea...

North Korea may be a fascist dictatorship, but there's a reason why their food production suffered. Their dictator saw America invading other dictatorships around the world, heard that America's diplomatic language towards North Korea was extremely negative, and feared that they must be America's next target. To save himself, the dictator diverted resources for food production into producing things like mustard gas.

It's structurally impossible for a democratic state to have followed the same path.

Of course, agriculture was terrible over there even before that. North Korea has very limited agricultural resources to begin with, some of which, apparently, were disrupted during the war by defoliant sprays.

I asked you to clarify your idea of decentralized socialism where production is arranged by worker co-ops. You got mad at me and refused.

I don't recall that, but I'm not the one claiming to have solved all the problems of a socialist society.

Right, because the person trying to move beyond true and false socialism is the one who's gatekeeping.

Yep. The discussion about what's "true socialism" hasn't ever been interesting, and has usually been a cover-up for authoritarianism.

???

[rotting bones]

Somehow tomatoes are grown just fine in capitalist countries without having explicit central planning mandating the growing of tomatoes from on high.

No, they aren't. Tomatoes are grown in rich countries just fine. People in poor countries just starve.

For all their faults, I bet that people in Western capitalist countries had a much easier time getting tomatoes than in big-C Communist countries.

The fall of Communism triggered a famine in Russia that lasted until the rise of Putin. And then, there were still food shortages in Russia. Putin has been trying to take anti-capitalist measures against them.

[rotting bones]

On the other hand, I am an Indian, and the Indian constitution says that the country is a democratic socialist (among other things) republic. The CPI(M) Marxist party contends in elections, has a distinguished history, once almost gave us a prime minister, and is often supported by academics.

My ideas might feel out there for people from other countries. I'm not suggesting that everyone must accept my ideas or pay the price. My position is a more humble one: if your society is suffering from the problems I mention, here's the kind of thing that might help.

[zompist]

This is literally what I just said: "there is definitely a tension between workplace democracy, and wider economic control". And so far as I recall I've said so throughout the thread.

You hadn't posted this when I wrote the things you quoted.

You are making that up. It is literally in the post you responded to; go look. You actually cite these words in the very post where you accuse me of saying nothing of the sort.

For a government industry, the crucial factor is that its employees are paid a government salary, whoever makes internal decisions is not allowed to lower the number of jobs in defiance of the popular vote, and the raw materials and the tools to work them are government property. (Compare how worker co-ops create fewer jobs than private companies.) However, everything else could be decided by worker vote.

The root disagreement here is that you want to throw out workplace democracy when it conflicts with centralized decisionmaking (though you want that to be democratic somehow). I don't think workplace democracy is paramount, or solves all problems, but I give it a much higher priority.

What you've just said is that the workers don't own the means of production. I'm not a doctrinaire Marxist, but I think he was on to something, and I find it troubling that people like to parrot this slogan and then create systems where it's completely denied.

Subsidies and government jobs can work! But if you're not forcing people at gunpoint into the fields, you are also not guaranteeing compliance. Maybe your subsidies aren't enough; maybe not enough people want those crappy jobs.

How can people both be starving and not want a job as a tomato farmer?

Why are people starving in your socialist utopia?

So far as I know, the world produces enough food for everyone. The problems are a) distribution, and b) a disastrous set of priorities. E.g. half of US grain production is used to feed cattle.

You skipped right over my point about globalism, so I'll repeat it: this is a global problem. If India puts you in charge, it does not make the US change its production. If the US puts you in charge, the US voters have no reason to produce more grain: they like beef and they have plenty of bread.

But none of that matters. Why should I have to argue about what China's population pressures were at the time, the relations of the rest of the world with the early Soviet Union, and so on, when what I'm proposing is not a rigid five year plan.

China Mieville (who's a Trotskyite) in his Russian Revolution book makes a comment that leftists normally completely deny that they ever make mistakes, until decades have passed, when they admit that mistakes were made, but say that they're in the past so they shouldn't be discussed.

Yeah, it's sad that to argue for socialism you have to address the failures of socialism historically. You can rightly feel that they're not your mistakes. But I'm not interested in USSR Model 2.0. The whole attitude of denial that Mieville points out is immature and tiresome. The way out is to analyze those mistakes and do better. You want central planning, I do expect you to know why central planning failed, the many times it was tried.

Maybe we won't agree on why it failed. One reason, it seems to me, is that actual worker control was abandoned, and actual workers were oppressed, all while pretending the system was theirs.

The problem with this thread is that every argument against the profit motive is answered with charges of genocide.

No, the problem is that you yourself resort to charges of genocide whenever someone expresses any disagreement. Because I distrust your central planning, you try to make me responsible for global starvation. Apparently you can use that tactic but no one else can?

I hope you realize that if the left shoots down every proposal to build socialism, then poor people will turn, as they repeatedly have, to the nationalists.

Jeez. No, stop strawmanning, stop over-rhetoricizing, stop pretending that your way is the only way yet must never be criticized.

Well, if you must answer an appeal for democracy by comparing my system to North Korea...

North Korea may be a fascist dictatorship, but there's a reason why their food production suffered. Their dictator saw America invading other dictatorships around the world, heard that America's diplomatic language towards North Korea was extremely negative, and feared that they must be America's next target. To save himself, the dictator diverted resources for food production into producing things like mustard gas.

It's structurally impossible for a democratic state to have followed the same path.

Of course, agriculture was terrible over there even before that. North Korea has very limited agricultural resources to begin with, some of which, apparently, were disrupted during the war by defoliant sprays.

If your system has nothing in common with Stalinism, why do you feel a need to defend a Stalinist state? Why is it you're all for democracy until a dictatorship you like is brought up, and you have to shore it up?

And really, the war in the 1950s caused a famine in the 1990s?

[zompist]

On the other hand, I am an Indian, and the Indian constitution says that the country is a democratic socialist (among other things) republic. The CPI(M) Marxist party contends in elections, has a distinguished history, once almost gave us a prime minister, and is often supported by academics.

To quibble just a bit, Nehru's socialism held India back, and a more open system created a much higher growth rate, and that has benefited people of all social levels.

But I like Nehru a lot. While Mao was killing off his people with centralized planning, Nehru was doing his best for the Indian people as a whole, steadily though slowly improved the economy, and ended the famines that characterized British misrule. And the communists did pretty well in India as well-- my understanding is that Kerala in particular had one of the most effective land reform programs in the country. If you like Indian socialism, I'm all for it.

[Travis B.]

The key thing to me is that state ownership of the means of production is state capitalism, and has been no better than private capitalism, and in many (but not necessarily all) cases historically was worse. If a state can require you to grow tomatoes, as opposed to provide you money to subsidize your growing of tomatoes (and thus encourage you to grow tomatoes even if it is, say, un-economical otherwise), it is state capitalism. Both private capitalism and state capitalism are oppressive for workers, as they both alienate workers from their work and its products. Only workplace democracy, i.e. socialism, does not, but if there is a state planning commission ordering workers to make this and not that from on high, it is not workplace democracy. It does not make much of a difference to the worker whether the boss is a private capitalist or a government appointee - they're still their boss, and in the end it is much of the same.

[rotting bones]

You are making that up. It is literally in the post you responded to; go look. You actually cite these words in the very post where you accuse me of saying nothing of the sort.

I have a feeling the disagreement boils down to fundamental principles of logic. For example, I am trying to justify why I wrote the posts you quoted. I have no idea what you're talking about. The statement you're opposing is tautologically true. For it to be false, your post p would have to quote my posts q, and my posts q would have to be written after your post p. That's not how time works.

The root disagreement here is that you want to throw out workplace democracy when it conflicts with centralized decisionmaking (though you want that to be democratic somehow). I don't think workplace democracy is paramount, or solves all problems, but I give it a much higher priority.

Capitalist co-ops are free to do what they like:

Well, my suggestion is that only some essential industries need to be socialist so that everyone who wants a job can find one and people can just vote more materials into core industries if they need more food, housing or medicine. Everything else can work with Bitcoin for all I care.

To be clear:

1. There must be some socialist essential industries. When the people need essential products, they vote materials into those essential industries.

2. There can be capitalist essential industries as long as they are comfortable with the idea that their raw materials could be confiscated by popular vote. This seems totally reasonable to me. Food should be grown primarily to feed people, not primarily to make money.

3. There can be socialist non-essential industries as long as they are comfortable with the fact that their raw materials cannot be confiscated by popular vote. This seems totally reasonable to me. Non-essential industries make products for fun, and the people don't have the right to demand that the market be distorted just to produce more fidget spinners or whatever.

4. There can be capitalist non-essential industries. Bartending is best left to Quark.

The government pseudo co-ops exist for the purpose of making up for the deficiency of the profit motive.

What you've just said is that the workers don't own the means of production. I'm not a doctrinaire Marxist, but I think he was on to something, and I find it troubling that people like to parrot this slogan and then create systems where it's completely denied.

Once again, I am not a Marxist. I don't know if I have ever promoted worker's ownership of the means of production on this forum or in my life. What interests me about co-ops is the potential for a democratic workplace. I don't believe in the existence of ownership.

Why are people starving in your socialist utopia?

Because 50% of the socialist utopia is a capitalist dystopia.

So far as I know, the world produces enough food for everyone. The problems are a) distribution, and b) a disastrous set of priorities. E.g. half of US grain production is used to feed cattle.

You skipped right over my point about globalism, so I'll repeat it: this is a global problem. If India puts you in charge, it does not make the US change its production. If the US puts you in charge, the US voters have no reason to produce more grain: they like beef and they have plenty of bread.

The use case for my system is a small union of poor countries trying to make up for each other's deficiencies.

China Mieville (who's a Trotskyite) in his Russian Revolution book makes a comment that leftists normally completely deny that they ever make mistakes, until decades have passed, when they admit that mistakes were made, but say that they're in the past so they shouldn't be discussed.

Yeah, it's sad that to argue for socialism you have to address the failures of socialism historically. You can rightly feel that they're not your mistakes. But I'm not interested in USSR Model 2.0. The whole attitude of denial that Mieville points out is immature and tiresome. The way out is to analyze those mistakes and do better. You want central planning, I do expect you to know why central planning failed, the many times it was tried.

Maybe we won't agree on why it failed. One reason, it seems to me, is that actual worker control was abandoned, and actual workers were oppressed, all while pretending the system was theirs.

I'm a democrat, not a Trotskyite. I am proposing X, and you insist that I have to justify completely different systems Y and Z just because you've decided to verbally label them all "socialism".

I have discussed the Soviet system in great detail previously in this thread, concluding that their problems don't apply to me because the voters are the consumers.

No, the problem is that you yourself resort to charges of genocide whenever someone expresses any disagreement. Because I distrust your central planning, you try to make me responsible for global starvation. Apparently you can use that tactic but no one else can?

Really? Only if you support global capitalism. Do you?

If your system has nothing in common with Stalinism, why do you feel a need to defend a Stalinist state? Why is it you're all for democracy until a dictatorship you like is brought up, and you have to shore it up?

Yes, because you call something a "fascist dictatorship" when you're shoring it up. You can't even tell the difference between defending something and recounting history to explain the differences from my system WHEN YOU BROUGHT UP THE COMPARISON.

Are your objections traps? If I don't answer them, I'm evading the questions, and if I do, then I'm revealing my secret genocidal tendencies? If I were playing your game, I'd have to ask you to justify Hitler every time you objected to something I said.

Also, North Korea is not even a Stalinist state. Read up on Juche. It's a fascist dictatorship justified by "humanity" or something that sounds suspiciously similar to Confucian principles.

And really, the war in the 1950s caused a famine in the 1990s?

Refer to the first sentence in that paragraph.

[rotting bones]

To quibble just a bit, Nehru's socialism held India back, and a more open system created a much higher growth rate, and that has benefited people of all social levels.

If development is all you're looking at, then China did better than us. But for me, freedom is more important than wealth. I think the government should safeguard essential industries because there's no freedom without them.

But I like Nehru a lot. While Mao was killing off his people with centralized planning, Nehru was doing his best for the Indian people as a whole, steadily though slowly improved the economy, and ended the famines that characterized British misrule.

Some of Mao's innovations were to introduce tremendous decentralization into the Soviet system, like his backyard furnaces. Soviets would have laughed those off because they were laughable. I don't support either Stalin or Mao.

And the communists did pretty well in India as well-- my understanding is that Kerala in particular had one of the most effective land reform programs in the country.

Kerala has a massive tourism industry. It's called God's Own Country. How could Bengal compete?

If you like Indian socialism, I'm all for it.

But now we're a national socialist country. My plan is intended to keep what was good about Indian socialism and make it last.

[Ares Land]

The key thing to me is that state ownership of the means of production is state capitalism, and has been no better than private capitalism, and in many (but not necessarily all) cases historically was worse. If a state can require you to grow tomatoes, as opposed to provide you money to subsidize your growing of tomatoes (and thus encourage you to grow tomatoes even if it is, say, un-economical otherwise), it is state capitalism. Both private capitalism and state capitalism are oppressive for workers, as they both alienate workers from their work and its products. Only workplace democracy, i.e. socialism, does not, but if there is a state planning commission ordering workers to make this and not that from on high, it is not workplace democracy. It does not make much of a difference to the worker whether the boss is a private capitalist or a government appointee - they're still their boss, and in the end it is much of the same.

I'd like to offer a few counterpoints based on personal experience. i've worked both in the public and the private sector. Working for the state is generally a lot more pleasant. The place I work is ultimately run by a bunch of technocrats and we have more than our share of issues (I think I complained a few times here about having a few obviously crazy coworkers) but on the alienation front I got a lot more input (I can, in fact, run my projects more or less as I see fit.)
I may change jobs in the future, but it's likely I won't get back to the private sector (even though it pays a lot more.)

On a national level, state capitalism got us high speed train, great telecom infrastructure and (if you're into that sort of thing) a top-notch civil nuclear program.

I'm not government ownership's biggest fan, but it has its strong points. Generally, I think there's room for several different approaches.

[rotting bones]

The key thing to me is that state ownership of the means of production is state capitalism, and has been no better than private capitalism, and in many (but not necessarily all) cases historically was worse. If a state can require you to grow tomatoes, as opposed to provide you money to subsidize your growing of tomatoes (and thus encourage you to grow tomatoes even if it is, say, un-economical otherwise), it is state capitalism. Both private capitalism and state capitalism are oppressive for workers, as they both alienate workers from their work and its products. Only workplace democracy, i.e. socialism, does not, but if there is a state planning commission ordering workers to make this and not that from on high, it is not workplace democracy. It does not make much of a difference to the worker whether the boss is a private capitalist or a government appointee - they're still their boss, and in the end it is much of the same.

I suggested that the state will create a government job for growing tomatoes, not force anyone to grow them. Subsidizing people who are already growing tomatoes sounds nice until you realize that it's structurally similar to Mao's backyard furnaces. One reason those backfired, aside from being altogether moronic, is because they lacked standardization.

There are no leaders in my system. Most things are decided by a vote of the citizens like in Athens.

This is not state capitalism because production organized by vote is not motivated by profit.

I support worker control of the enterprise to an extent, but how can that be justified when people are starving to death in Latin America? I feel like some worker control should be diminished to make workers responsible to the consumers, the people. This argument is purely structural, not moral or ideological.

[Travis B.]

The key thing to me is that state ownership of the means of production is state capitalism, and has been no better than private capitalism, and in many (but not necessarily all) cases historically was worse. If a state can require you to grow tomatoes, as opposed to provide you money to subsidize your growing of tomatoes (and thus encourage you to grow tomatoes even if it is, say, un-economical otherwise), it is state capitalism. Both private capitalism and state capitalism are oppressive for workers, as they both alienate workers from their work and its products. Only workplace democracy, i.e. socialism, does not, but if there is a state planning commission ordering workers to make this and not that from on high, it is not workplace democracy. It does not make much of a difference to the worker whether the boss is a private capitalist or a government appointee - they're still their boss, and in the end it is much of the same.

I'd like to offer a few counterpoints based on personal experience. i've worked both in the public and the private sector. Working for the state is generally a lot more pleasant. The place I work is ultimately run by a bunch of technocrats and we have more than our share of issues (I think I complained a few times here about having a few obviously crazy coworkers) but on the alienation front I got a lot more input (I can, in fact, run my projects more or less as I see fit.)
I may change jobs in the future, but it's likely I won't get back to the private sector (even though it pays a lot more.)

On a national level, state capitalism got us high speed train, great telecom infrastructure and (if you're into that sort of thing) a top-notch civil nuclear program.

I'm not government ownership's biggest fan, but it has its strong points. Generally, I think there's room for several different approaches.

State capitalism as practiced in Western countries, like in France, does tend to be more pleasant than Soviet-style state capitalism, that is true. I do admit that I tend to be biased by Soviet-style state capitalism and its many flaws. However, contrasting Western-style, as opposed to Soviet-style, state capitalism with private capitalism and finding the former to be better than the latter still does not mean that the former is better than worker co-ops.

[rotting bones]

(I've assumed you're talking about subsidizing small growers. Subsidizing megacorps... Trump tried subsidizing GM, and what happened is what always happens.)

[Travis B.]

The key thing to me is that state ownership of the means of production is state capitalism, and has been no better than private capitalism, and in many (but not necessarily all) cases historically was worse. If a state can require you to grow tomatoes, as opposed to provide you money to subsidize your growing of tomatoes (and thus encourage you to grow tomatoes even if it is, say, un-economical otherwise), it is state capitalism. Both private capitalism and state capitalism are oppressive for workers, as they both alienate workers from their work and its products. Only workplace democracy, i.e. socialism, does not, but if there is a state planning commission ordering workers to make this and not that from on high, it is not workplace democracy. It does not make much of a difference to the worker whether the boss is a private capitalist or a government appointee - they're still their boss, and in the end it is much of the same.

I suggested that the state will create a government job for growing tomatoes, not force anyone to grow them. Subsidizing people who are already growing tomatoes sounds nice until you realize that it's structurally similar to Mao's backyard furnaces. One reason those backfired, aside from being altogether moronic, is because they lacked standardization.

Of course the gov't wouldn't subsidize people who have no clue as to how to grow tomatoes to grow tomatoes. It would be nonsensical for the gov't to pay me to grow tomatoes, when I have never grown a tomato in my life. Rather, they would subsidize people who already grow tomatoes to grow more tomatoes than they already do, e.g. pay them to hire and train more people and buy more land so they can expand and grow more tomatoes.

There are no leaders in my system. Most things are decided by a vote of the citizens like in Athens.

The problem with referenda is that it gets us stuff like Brexit and California cancer warnings (and, conversely, part of Switzerland not having women's suffrage as late as the 1990's), yet at the same time traditional representative government can be awfully unrepresentative. In practice I have come to the conclusion that a mixed government based on workers' councils from below and parliamentary government with proportional representative from above, with constitutional changes being approved both by parliament, with supermajorities, and by referenda simultaneously.

This is not state capitalism because production organized by vote is not motivated by profit.

My issue with this is that it rules out many states typically defined as "state capitalist", because in most cases government is not really openly a for-profit affair ("openly" because in effect it may be due to graft and like).

I support worker control of the enterprise to an extent, but how can that be justified when people are starving to death in Latin America? I feel like some worker control should be diminished to make workers responsible to the consumers, the people. This argument is purely structural, not moral or ideological.

To me making workers responsible to the people is done through providing economic incentives (e.g. subsidizing) and disincentives (e.g. taxation) to steer the economy while providing regulatory oversight for things where closer control is needed (e.g. how natural resources are utilized, to prevent pollution, etc.).

[Travis B.]

(I've assumed you're talking about subsidizing small growers. Subsidizing megacorps... Trump tried subsidizing GM, and what happened is what always happens.)

When you say "small growers", there is quite a difference between being "not a megacorporation" and "not knowing a thing about growing tomatoes". I picture the economy of a socialist nation as being formed of federations of workplaces, where each workplace is relatively small, so they can operate democratically internally in an effective fashion, but federations of them can be quite large (and controlled from the bottom up by delegates elected by the individual workplaces that comprise them).

[zompist]

To quibble just a bit, Nehru's socialism held India back, and a more open system created a much higher growth rate, and that has benefited people of all social levels.

If development is all you're looking at, then China did better than us.

Well, that's complicated. If we look at the 1950s, China did better, but in the 1960s, India did better. Basically: China did well when Zhou was in charge, and terrible when Mao was in direct control.

Some of Mao's innovations were to introduce tremendous decentralization into the Soviet system, like his backyard furnaces. Soviets would have laughed those off because they were laughable.

Mao was very good at peasant revolution, and to achieve that he had to reject Soviet ideas and fixations. Unfortunately that gave Mao an inflated sense of his own capacities.

But now we're a national socialist country. My plan is intended to keep what was good about Indian socialism and make it last.

I was talking about Nehru. So far as I can see Modi has rejected everything good about Nehru.

I wrote a long reply to your other post, but I'm not going to bother with most of it. I really wish you'd lose the extreme rhetoric. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they are suddenly advocates of starvation, or "setting traps" for you. But two specific points:

1. It's just not true that no one has addressed the possible conflict between local and national democratic socialism. I've been making that point all along, including back on page two: viewtopic.php?p=38210#p38210

2. You seem to think it's unfair, when you propose a self-proclaimed socialist system with centralized planning, that people bring up historical problems with self-proclaimed socialist system with centralized planning. Maybe you don't realize that this makes you sound like a crank? No one asked you to "justify different systems". What I wanted was that you explain what precisely was the failure in these systems. They were created by idealists like yourself, with ideals like yourself, often from structures that started out democratic. You don't win by refusing to learn from history; you just make it probable that you'll make the same mistakes.

[Torco]

wait, so you don't have B2B transfers of material, or of specific services, like at all? you might as well just have an input product matrix at that point. like, I'm not against input product matrixes, but it's unclear what is the role of money. indeed, calling it investment seems superfluous: what it is is a system for allocating capital and products, no? as in who gets how much iron ore, who gets how much coal, and who do you have to send the steel to afterwards. this isn't bad, but I fail to see how it's different from a decentralized and directly-voted-upon gosplan.

then again, I think a direct-democracy gosplan would be kind of pretty damned cool

Well, my suggestion is that only some essential industries need to be socialist so that everyone who wants a job can find one and people can just vote more materials into core industries if they need more food, housing or medicine. Everything else can work with Bitcoin for all I care.

To be clear:(...)

1. sure, and I do like public businesses. it's not socialism but it's a start
2 sure, i agree. normal countries do this often
3 here we come to the problem, though.

essential and non essential industries kind of overlap very very very much: a chemical factory might one day produce some additive to put in racecar fuel and the next day fill out an order of some unheard of reagent that permits making fertilizer cheaply. you could depend on the private sector to supply with fertilizer, and vaccines, your socialist chicken farms but what happens when they refuse? alternatively, you could socialize everything in the economy which is somehow essential, but that would quickly just leave in everything but diamondcutters and game devs.

Mondragon is just Capitalism with Rage Against the Machine stickers on it.

mmmm... no? it's not a fully democratic, post-capitalist system either but there's no class divide here, which is important: if you have a capitalism of only mondragons, you basically don't have a capitalist class anymore: in this situtation, it's difficult to say you're still in capitalism, but rather in a sort of postcapitalist cooperativist market economy. sure, you still have the profit motive, and you may even have a different class system if, say, rich coops took up all the nice jobs and poor coops were stuck with the shit jobs, and so you have a rich-coop-class and a poor-coop-class. you could also have coops subcontract a whole lot, and there you have... what... coops of burgeois or something? but mondragon is no such thing.

All that said, there is definitely a tension between workplace democracy, and wider economic control. I don't expect to convince you (or Torco) in one post, but I don't think central planning works, or in any way represents "worker control". It's been called "state capitalism", and it's a matter of historical observation that in practice, it's just a new group of managers controlling and oppressing the workers. It's made worse and not better by the pretense that they're acting "for" the workers: the pretense excuses any amount of violence and corruption.

But it has worked, though, at some times and at some places, and under extremely unfavourable conditions too! we're better at the hard parts of it these days, too.

I agree that there's a tension between central planning and workplace democracy, and this would probably be the fundamental political issue in a mature and healthy worker's democracy. on the one hand, we all want clean streets but, on the other, everyone else would probably prefer to do something else. this is a subject of valid political controversy: how do we get people to clean streets? maybe we need to give them benefits for engaging in the harsh work of cleanup, training, good trucks with mobile infirmaries if someone gets cut with something dirty, PPE: these things are political issues under capitalism and they really needn't not be afterwards. sure, the first tries at socialism have been tyrannical, but so were the first attempts at capitalism.

But I don't think planning, or more broadly social systems that direct work towards human need, are inherently bad either: we do need tomatoes, after all. work, at least to some degree, means doing something that is useful and needed by others -or oneself. there's some kernel of truth in saying that it's not work to dig a ditch and then fill it up. (unless you're putting in a cable or something, but you get my drift). when we think of work, we tend to think about activities which are directed towards some goal that is, at least ostensibly, useful to somebody: this is why we can say that there exist bullshit jobs, cause some forms of employment are in a way not what we think of when we say work.

You can't have coercion and also non-coercion.

sure, except the whole doctrine of liberalism depends on that you can, in a way: no one is forcing you to farm tomatoes, but if you don't work you'll get evicted and become homeless and then be chased away by cops if they find you and look you should really get a job. look! farmer joe needs tillers. socialism can have similar, if hopefully less mean methods: you can get more money, or more buying-points, or a truck if you want one, or, hey, land, do you want land? here, just give us a ton of tomato every season please, do whatever else you want with it.

[Torco]

wait, so you don't have B2B transfers of material, or of specific services, like at all? you might as well just have an input product matrix at that point. like, I'm not against input product matrixes, but it's unclear what is the role of money. indeed, calling it investment seems superfluous: what it is is a system for allocating capital and products, no? as in who gets how much iron ore, who gets how much coal, and who do you have to send the steel to afterwards. this isn't bad, but I fail to see how it's different from a decentralized and directly-voted-upon gosplan.

then again, I think a direct-democracy gosplan would be kind of pretty damned cool

Well, my suggestion is that only some essential industries need to be socialist so that everyone who wants a job can find one and people can just vote more materials into core industries if they need more food, housing or medicine. Everything else can work with Bitcoin for all I care.

To be clear:(...)

1. sure, and I do like public businesses. it's not socialism but it's a start
2 sure, i agree. normal countries do this often
3 here we come to the problem, though.

essential and non essential industries kind of overlap very very very much: a chemical factory might one day produce some additive to put in racecar fuel and the next day fill out an order of some unheard of reagent that permits making fertilizer cheaply. you could depend on the private sector to supply with fertilizer, and vaccines, your socialist chicken farms but what happens when they refuse? alternatively, you could socialize everything in the economy which is somehow essential, but that would quickly just leave in everything but diamondcutters and game devs.

Mondragon is just Capitalism with Rage Against the Machine stickers on it.

mmmm... no? it's not a fully democratic, post-capitalist system either but there's no class divide here, which is important: if you have a capitalism of only mondragons, you basically don't have a capitalist class anymore: in this situtation, it's difficult to say you're still in capitalism, but rather in a sort of postcapitalist cooperativist market economy. sure, you still have the profit motive, and you may even have a different class system if, say, rich coops took up all the nice jobs and poor coops were stuck with the shit jobs, and so you have a rich-coop-class and a poor-coop-class. you could also have coops subcontract a whole lot, and there you have... what... coops of burgeois or something? but mondragon is no such thing.

All that said, there is definitely a tension between workplace democracy, and wider economic control. I don't expect to convince you (or Torco) in one post, but I don't think central planning works, or in any way represents "worker control". It's been called "state capitalism", and it's a matter of historical observation that in practice, it's just a new group of managers controlling and oppressing the workers. It's made worse and not better by the pretense that they're acting "for" the workers: the pretense excuses any amount of violence and corruption.

But it has worked, though, at some times and at some places, and under extremely unfavourable conditions too! we're better at the hard parts of it these days, too.

I agree that there's a tension between central planning and workplace democracy, and this would probably be the fundamental political issue in a mature and healthy worker's democracy. on the one hand, we all want clean streets but, on the other, everyone else would probably prefer to do something else. this is a subject of valid political controversy: how do we get people to clean streets? maybe we need to give them benefits for engaging in the harsh work of cleanup, training, good trucks with mobile infirmaries if someone gets cut with something dirty, PPE: these things are political issues under capitalism and they really needn't not be afterwards. sure, the first tries at socialism have been tyrannical, but so were the first attempts at capitalism.

But I don't think planning, or more broadly social systems that direct work towards human need, are inherently bad either: we do need tomatoes, after all. work, at least to some degree, means doing something that is useful and needed by others -or oneself. there's some kernel of truth in saying that it's not work to dig a ditch and then fill it up. (unless you're putting in a cable or something, but you get my drift). when we think of work, we tend to think about activities which are directed towards some goal that is, at least ostensibly, useful to somebody: this is why we can say that there exist bullshit jobs, cause some forms of employment are in a way not what we think of when we say work.

You can't have coercion and also non-coercion.

sure, except the whole doctrine of liberalism depends on that you can, in a way: no one is forcing you to farm tomatoes, but if you don't work you'll get evicted and become homeless and then be chased away by cops if they find you and look you should really get a job. look! farmer joe needs tillers. socialism can have similar, if hopefully less mean methods: you can get more money, or more buying-points, or a truck if you want one, or, hey, land, do you want land? here, just give us a ton of tomato every season please, do whatever else you want with it.

The key thing to me is that state ownership of the means of production is state capitalism, and has been no better than private capitalism, and in many (but not necessarily all) cases historically was worse.

I have to push back against this. two of the quickest and biggest processes of alleviation of poverty in the wold have happened under the red flag, china and the soviet union: sure, the soviet union is often associated with famine in western discourse, and yes it did have famines at first, but state capitalism took them both from feudal backwaters to modern superpowers with decent standard of living in very short times: state capitalism has also worked very well for capitalist countries, for japan which at the time wasn't capitalism, it functioned adequately in europe at many times and places, and even the us under ww2 and after worked very state capitalist ish.

[bradrn]

wait, so you don't have B2B transfers of material, or of specific services, like at all? you might as well just have an input product matrix at that point. like, I'm not against input product matrixes, but it's unclear what is the role of money. indeed, calling it investment seems superfluous: what it is is a system for allocating capital and products, no? as in who gets how much iron ore, who gets how much coal, and who do you have to send the steel to afterwards. this isn't bad, but I fail to see how it's different from a decentralized and directly-voted-upon gosplan.

then again, I think a direct-democracy gosplan would be kind of pretty damned cool

Well, my suggestion is that only some essential industries need to be socialist so that everyone who wants a job can find one and people can just vote more materials into core industries if they need more food, housing or medicine. Everything else can work with Bitcoin for all I care.

To be clear:(...)

1. sure, and I do like public businesses. it's not socialism but it's a start
2 sure, i agree. normal countries do this often
3 here we come to the problem, though.

essential and non essential industries kind of overlap very very very much: a chemical factory might one day produce some additive to put in racecar fuel and the next day fill out an order of some unheard of reagent that permits making fertilizer cheaply. you could depend on the private sector to supply with fertilizer, and vaccines, your socialist chicken farms but what happens when they refuse? alternatively, you could socialize everything in the economy which is somehow essential, but that would quickly just leave in everything but diamondcutters and game devs.

My own theory on this is that industries go through three phases:

1. Research of various interesting ideas regardless of practicality
2. Development of a useful idea to a viable and practical industry
3. Expansion of an industry to become important to much of the population

Each of these stages is best run by a different level:

1. Undirected research with little knowledge of the eventual goal is best run by government, as there’s no possible way of getting a profit from it
2. Development to practicality is best run by industry, as the profit motive provides an excellent incentive to expand to as many people as possible
3. Essential industries are best run by government, as the profit motive often provides an incentive to do unethical things, which is bad at scale

That is to say: government (or anything else without a profit motive) is very very good at (1) and (3), but hopeless at (2). Private industry with a profit motive is excellent at (2), but can’t easily manage (1) or (3). This is why neither pure capitalism nor pure socialism work well: pure capitalism has difficulties with essential industries (due to incentives to unethical behaviour) and research (as it doesn’t turn a profit), while pure socialism has difficulties with developing industries in the first place (there’s no incentive to do so).

The tricky part here is the act of moving from one stage to another. We’re a predominantly capitalist society, so starting a private company is relatively easy. Accordingly, we have no shortage of companies supplying various products. However, the transition from (2)→(3) is more difficult — we’re not nearly as good at nationalising big essential companies. (I include Facebook et al. here — they do enough shady things and are used by enough of the population that we should seriously consider whether or not they should be private.) Currently we compensate for this by using regulation, but how well this works is arguable. Certainly it doesn’t work nearly well enough for big companies.

The root cause of all this is the double-sided nature of the profit motive. A company can increase profit by expanding and improving its services, but it can also increase profit by cutting corners. With a new company the former predominates, but at scale the easiest way to increase profit is to cut corners. Ideally, we could find a different incentive which supports the former but not the latter, but I’m not sure that’s possible.

[Travis B.]

To me the big thing is that state ownership shares many of the disadvantages of private ownership, e.g. it is ultimately undemocratic as the workers are concerned. In many cases where state ownership may seem favorable, there is another alternative, which I have mentioned here - worker ownership and self-management but selective state funding. Such is democratic from the workers' perspective, yet is answerable to the state (and through it to the people) because funding is beholden to the purposes of a democratic government. It also does not require activities to be profitable, as many things, such as the R&D mentioned here, are not basically profitable but at the same time are necessary. This also has an advantage over plain nationalization because, as such bodies are not nationalized, future governments cannot decide to privatize them either as they are already owned solely by their workers.

[Torco]

governments are kind of shite at research. universities are better, and they often have alliances with industry in order to research things. but no, this idea that basic, unmotivated research often leads to useful results is not really true. people didn't discover the internal combustion engine as an accident while musing about the expansion of gases as a general phenomenon, it was working people, engineers and chemists and physicists trying to come up with something useful that went "what if we could do this thing", and tried, and managed it. a key problem with market coops is that you need to have copyright and patent systems in order to make sure people actually keep doing this under your socialism, and those tend to discourage innnovation strongly.