RED DAVE

From moon:

Here is the crux of it: "Simple control over the functions of capital does not make one an owner."

Under capitalism, true. However, in the absence of ownership in the capitalism sense, control takes the place of ownership. If all property is nationalized, as it was in the Soviet Union, and under the control of the state, the crucial question becomes: who controls the state?

This seems to me elementary. The notion that because property was nationlized under the Soviet Union it was in some sense socialist is mysticism: the deification of an idea, the idea that nationalized property=socialism or a workers state, not a material reality that nationalized property is compatible with the rule of other social classes besides the proletariat, specifically, a state bureaucracy.

This is why believers in the "degenerated workers state" theory have to resort to nonsense like the notion of the "deformed workers state." Given that disgusting societies like Romania were structurally identical to the Soviet Union, i.e., the same bureaucracy controlled the state, which owned and cotrolled all property, you then have the problem that these societies were instituted in the absence of any action by the proletariat. They were imposed from the outside by the Russian bureaucracy.

Whew!

Another point. You can point to so-called "social gains" in Russia which were liquidated by the restoration of private capitalism: health care, free education, etc. This is so. But the Soviet Union represented a "liberal" form of state capitalism, just like, say, Sweden, represents liberal capitalism and had free health care, free eduction, etc. In a "conservative" state capitalist country, like Romania, these gains sscarcely existed: they were parallel to the miserable social gains of a backward capitalist country.


I'll continue this later on.

RED DAVE

Vorkosigan

4. "If you really want the workers to have the means of production in their control, then they have to OWN those means of production, not have some state in between."

I guess that means that a capitalist is telling the workers how to own the means of production. Does this mean we should all become stock holders or through retirement funds or something like that? This has nothing to do with socialism and is merely a piece of Libertarian dogma.


There are any number of worker ownership schemes under which workers own and operate the means of production. These are compatible with different types of economic organization. Stock sharing is only one.

Vorkosigan

RED DAVE

From Vorkosigan:

I understand this. There have been movements for workers control under capitalism for nearly 200 years: communes, cooperatives, etc. But these so-called worker ownship schemes are either utopian or trivial. None of them has made a dent, steadily and linearly or radically and suddenly nor will they.

These schemes are compatible with capitalism and are, in fact, ways that capitalism covers for itself while maintaiingn the undisturbed rule of the bourgeoisie. (Sorry if that last seems dogamtic. It's late, and I'm tired.)

RED DAVE

David M. Payne

I'm back from another task, time to have a little fun.

Well RD, if you are unaware of the advances that have been made in capitalism over two hundred years, then that says a lot about where you are coming from, which would seem to be from the land of Marxist Dogma, and damn the reality of today. There is a HUGE middle class today in the industrial capitalist west. Even many of the poor in these countries have cars, TV's VCR's and a host of other goods that would have been restricted to the wealthy just a couple of decades before then. They have adequate (not good or great) access to quality medical care, education, food and shelter etc. Is capitalism perfect? No, but it is much better today than during the time of the wage slaves that Marx was so concerned about in his day. Capitalism is an evolutionary system that evolves to meet the needs of the majority of its people most of the time. It isn't perfect, but it's around and functioning, which is more than can be said about the workers paradise of Marxism, isn't it? What is utopian or trivial is Marxist dogma, which as hal pointed out Has been a FAILURE every time its been tried. But they never tried true Marxism will come the retort. And that says something too, doesn't it? It says that it is something that isn't robust enough to even make it to the trial stage, or strong enough to evolve out of what WAS tried in the name of Marxism.

Hal you OP stands, the record of Marxist philosophy is one of failure, even though those on the left here wish to change the subject, or deny reality, the reality of the failure of Marxist dogma.

David

"God, Marx, and religion, the oldest scam(s) in history, and they still suck them in today. So free your mind, and your body will follow!

hal9000

Hal you OP stands, the record of Marxist philosophy is one of failure, even though those on the left here wish to change the subject, or deny reality, the reality of the failure of Marxist dogma.

Thanks DP for pointing this out. I think it gets lost in the shuffle here.

Danish

First of all, there is good reason why a true communist state has never existed. As Marx said, communism can't exist within a single state. An individual state lack the means of production to support its population. Communism must exist on a larger scale.

Your view of the world isn't very accurate. While it's true that the west is more or less well off, one can't say the same about other places in the world. People in third-world countries die of starvation and diseases long extinct in the industrialized world. They have a tiny fraction of the property we westerners do. And you know know who is responsible for the plight of the third-world people? That's right capitalists. While we live in comfort and luxury where we can buy socks at the local Wal-mart, the poor in many nations are forced to work 14-hour days in sweatshops making those socks for pennies a week with no rights. But of course capitalism is working great! Most everyone I see is happy and well off and I dont have to look at those poor African people, so I don't care!

I can and will never never understand how someone can believe that a system based on exploitation, greed, and ignorance is the best we, as compassionate and intelligent beings, can do.

echidna

Red, sorry I've neglected this thread today. Are you at all familiar with Ricardo Semler's book "Maverick" ? Somewhat idealised I imagine, but it seems closer to the socialist ideal than Nike for instance.

echidna

But how can this be ? Our friends from the Enlightened Left insist that communism is a non-expansionist, friendly system, forever persecuted by imperialistic capitalists. Personally I was suspecting the Soviets to be slightly expansionist themselves though.

David M. Payne

At one time Communism had all of the USSR and China, as well as part of Western Europe, which dwarfed the US. So this argument is pretty weak. Who is the second biggest producer of oil in the world? Russia. It had more resources than the US did, and still it failed. The US is an individual state, and it has produced the means of production to support its people, as have other states in the world, so your argument fails here to. Marxism/communism failed because it doesn�t work, not because it couldn�t match the strength of the US.

You forget a few things Danish, like the problem of overpopulation in the third world and the catastrophic effect that has had. Is capitalism responsible for how many children are born there? No, but religion has a big hand in this problem. I don't think present day capitalism is anything near where it should be either, as I made clear here a few years ago. So your point about all capitalists being involved in the effort to keep the people of the third world down is false as far as I'm concerned. Capitalism is an evolutionary system that changes in relation to change in the world and the marketplace. Marxism/communism, like religion, was inflexible, and doomed to land in the dustbin of history.

David

"God, Marx, and religion, the oldest scam(s) in history, and they still suck them in today. So free your mind, and your body will follow!

beyelzu

I guess you misunderstood echidna,

communism is non expansionist as long as the whole world is communist,

duh, its so obvious.