Rage against the Machine - Communism Vs. Capitalism (again!)

[Velociryx]

Indeed....but consider that the numbers can be misleading, and in fact, ANY TIME you look at such a large, diverse population as we have in the US (to say nothing of even more populous nations) looking at the whole never really tells the full story.

For example: The cost of living in NYC or most parts of California is DRAMATICALLY higher than where I live, in Columbia SC.

A friend of mine took a job in NYC that paid nearly 100k a year, and he could barely afford to live (the deposit on his Manhattan apartment was $9600....I saw the lease!), and his rent was several thousand a month. Contrast that with the $500 I pay here for my roomy townhouse, and it becomes clear that aggregate numbers do not tell the full story.

A significant portion of SC's population are technically living "below the poverty line" and yet, most folks here get along quite well (because the "poverty line" is just that....an arbitrary line drawn in the sand, whose point is chosen by some government yahoo. Again, since the cost of living is approximately half of what it is in California, for example, it makes the arbitrary "national poverty level" a bit silly (most of the southern states follow in this same pattern....they are among the poorest states in the union, in terms of absolute dollars earned, but then, the cost of living is significantly lower here).

So...do not read too much into the "poverty line" argument. I'm not saying that it is all smoke and mirrors (obviously, it isn't), but there are large areas of this country where living "below the poverty line" still means living quite comfortably!

-=Vel=-
(who was, until VERY recently, technically one of "the poor")

[Imran Siddiqui]

32 Million is way too high. It's 32 Million too high.

Seeing that it is only 11% of the population in 'poverty', I'd say it is pretty good. You will always have winners and losers in society (you give the losers enough to eat and have shelter, but aside from that they don't deserve anything else).... 11% seems like a very small number of losers to me. 32 million is pretty low to me.

Lets be generous, lets say each of these poor families is a single parent with one child. That's 44M people in poverty (and that's not even counting impoverished single people). This represents approx. 15% of the population. My guess is treating 'family' as three people is more accurate, in which case 22% of the country is poor.

Check the numbers. It says 31M is in poverty and 22M families. It gives percentages for each. 11.3% of people in poverty and 9.6% of families in poverty.

[Jack_www]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Indeed....but consider that the numbers can be misleading, and in fact, ANY TIME you look at such a large, diverse population as we have in the US (to say nothing of even more populous nations) looking at the whole never really tells the full story.

For example: The cost of living in NYC or most parts of California is DRAMATICALLY higher than where I live, in Columbia SC.

A friend of mine took a job in NYC that paid nearly 100k a year, and he could barely afford to live (the deposit on his Manhattan apartment was $9600....I saw the lease!), and his rent was several thousand a month. Contrast that with the $500 I pay here for my roomy townhouse, and it becomes clear that aggregate numbers do not tell the full story.

A significant portion of SC's population are technically living "below the poverty line" and yet, most folks here get along quite well (because the "poverty line" is just that....an arbitrary line drawn in the sand, whose point is chosen by some government yahoo. Again, since the cost of living is approximately half of what it is in California, for example, it makes the arbitrary "national poverty level" a bit silly (most of the southern states follow in this same pattern....they are among the poorest states in the union, in terms of absolute dollars earned, but then, the cost of living is significantly lower here).

So...do not read too much into the "poverty line" argument. I'm not saying that it is all smoke and mirrors (obviously, it isn't), but there are large areas of this country where living "below the poverty line" still means living quite comfortably!

-=Vel=-
(who was, until VERY recently, technically one of "the poor")

That is one of the reason by the way that I am most likely going to move out of California when I finish going to collage.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So you tell me why people should not recieve an income for their worth to society.

Because 'worth to society' is entirely subjective. Some people believe J.K. Rowling has IMMENSE worth to society, others think the opposite. You can't measure it, so you can't recieve an income for it.

[Velociryx]

I've got some friends who were house hunting in California.

As a comparitive example of how staggering the differences are, here are the results of our intra-state house hunting contest:

They (EDIT: Whoops....they were looking in Souther Cal, not the Bay area) found a nice, clean, 12 year old house, 1500 square feet, 3 bedrooms, garage (one-car), 1.5 bath home listing at just a shade over $300,000.

The house I bid on is 1896 Square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths (no garage....not terribly common 'round here), listing at 108k.

As housing prices go, so goes the rest of the local economy, so do the math.... I can live "in poverty" in this state just fine!

-=Vel=-

[Berzerker]

Kid -

I think that most people would be satisfied with around 30k.

Not if I lived in NYC. But aside from how you define "satisfaction" for most people, we thought you were talking about families. Would that include children (so a family of 4 get $120,000)? Also, you decry capitalism for not providing this $30,000 to each person, but you're looking at income numbers in a mixed economy, not a true capitalistic system. And because of that mixed economy, taxes are much higher than they would be under capitalism. So you have to add in all the money we lose from our incomes because of an ever growing assortment of taxes and regulations.

Btw, since it's more expensive to live in NYC than where I live, I don't need as much money. Will you take from my $30,000 and give to the New Yorker? On a sidenote (of sorts), the lower wages paid in "sweatshops" are paid in a place with a much lower cost of living just as I can live on less than a New Yorker. Besides, "capitalism" is just getting into SE Asia ( a land given to traditional living, i.e., farming and fishing) which has been dominated by an assortment of dictatorships. What were SE Asians getting paid before the sweatshops arrived? Just like the west, SE Asia will develop thanks to the introduction of "capitalism".

No, because there is a smaller percentage of families that recieve the mean income than that don't. The median income is right in the middle. 50% of the families get more and 50% get less.

And the median was above $30k, so what is the actual percentages of families below your goal? Also, why cite a stat about families when you were talking about individual income? Maybe that's why we got sidetracked...

[Berzerker]

Imran -

Because 'worth to society' is entirely subjective. Some people believe J.K. Rowling has IMMENSE worth to society, others think the opposite. You can't measure it, so you can't recieve an income for it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

To add on to that quote, Berz, in a market, people can vote on her product's worth, by buying her book. She gets paid for her economic worth. It doesn't matter if she's a very nice person (which she is), you can't measure that, so how would you decide what to pay for that?

[alva]

The house I bid on is 1896 Square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths (no garage....not terribly common 'round here), listing at 108k.

Wow, that's even cheap compared with 'old' europe prices.
(yeah, just has to sneak that one in somewhere, couldn't resist )

My rent is around 400$ for 2 people appartment (1 bedroom, but more then big enough, not a studio by any means).
Average pay here is around 1000$/ month net (we don't do the year thingy, but take this x15 and you should have an idea on an average netto income.)
(The one thing different is that people earn the same wages no matter where they live, which has it pros and cons)

[Velociryx]

I'm a nice guy too! I want a cut! Me! Me!

-=Vel=-
(who dearly wishes that his books were anything NEARLY as close to hers in popularity)

[Velociryx]

Alva...yep...that's what I mean...so being "below the poverty line" in SC is not nearly the same thing as being below that same line and living in NYC. It would be crushing there, and it means that you only have one car, instead of two here, so again, take that 32 Million number with a grain of salt. I'd not be surprised if nearly half that number lived in southern states.

-=Vel=-
(and it should be noted that, having had dinner at friends' homes who live in state-subsidized housing, they eat better, and drive a fancier car than I do!)--of course, I'm Mr. Practical....Hunter Green Ford Ranger for me...nothing fancy here!

[cinch]

Velocyrix:

I daresay that Marx would scarcely recognize capitalism as it exists today in the most successful countries that make use of it. It is a far cry from the brutality he saw in its earliest days of widespread use.

True, Marx would probably marvel at the wonderful standard of living we have in USA/Canada/Europe, but once he saw the sweatshops and factories of East Asia that fuel our economy, he'd recognize capitalism in an instant.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Among them are: The rise of labor unions, innumerable laws protecting the workers, vacation time, and a strong-and-growing socialization of some (not all, but some) sectors of the economy, most notably in welfare programs and health care.

Do not act as though these things arose without feirce resistence upon the part of the ruling class. It took over one hundred years for labor unions to become legally accepted in the US, and even now, most companies fight like hell to keep unions out. The sucess of the union movement is heavily reliant upon the existence of the Marxist movement, both in that Marxists invariably built and led the unions, and two, that the capitalists were so frigntened of the possibility of revolution, as exemplified by the existence of the USSR, that they gave in more readily once workers actually took power somewhere. All of these benefits were forced from the capitalists by threat of revolution, and now, with the collapse of the Communist alternative, these benefits are ever more under threat, even in the social democracies of Western Europe and Canada.

Given this, is it not possible that the revolution will not be a "revolution" at all, but an "evolution," and that it is already well underway, with the end result being a synthesis of the best aspects of both systems?

There are socialists who argue that. My argument is that as long as capitalists exist, they will try and undermine the social gains of the working classes. We have seen it everywhere in the world in the last two decades. Socialism and capitalism cannot exist in equalibrium.

The crux of your definition of exploitation seems to center around this phrase: Human labor-power is a unnique commodity, in that it is the only commodity that can create wealth. IIRC, it is a Marxian phrase, and IMO, it is incorrect. I would put forth that humans are not unique in their ability to create wealth, but that they are unique in their ability to put wealth to any sort of use.

Our own history is rife with examples that bear this out, and some of them are: (examples deleted for space)

Animals do not create wealth. At best, they are tools, used by humans. It is the humans who create the wealth, because on their own, monkeys would not throw paint on canvas, oxen would not pull plows, and chickens would not sort pills. A man can create more wealth with a tool than without. A man can break more rock with a jackhammer than with a sledgehammer, but we wouldn't say that the jackhammer creates wealth.

If you add up the wealth generated by the average worker (ie -- the value of the stuff he makes), subtract the cost of the raw materials used in production, and the wages necessary to keep the worker and his family alive, what you end up with is product sitting in a shop floor, because that equation does not take into account any of the following:

Most of the examples you listed are examples of further labor. Can the value of a commodity be realized while it sits in a factory? No. It requires the labor of others to move it, to sell it.

Interests:

Interest is definately taken from the surplus value of a product. While it may be considered a cost in terms of accounting, it plays no part in either creating value or realizing the value of a commodity. It is simply rent upon capital.

The definition also does not take into account willing workers.

It certainly does. Serfs willingly worked for their lords and bishops (mostly). This didn't mean they were not exploited. Willingness has nothing to do with exploitation. The fact that in capitalism, this exploitation is entered into more or less willingly doesn't mean there is no exploitation. Bosses only rarely employ those off of whose labor they cannot profit. As long as the capitalist ends up with more money afterwards, exploitation takes place.

Berzker, what we are talking about is socially-necessary wages. The "needs" for recouperation and reproduction very from age to age and grow. The average worker "needs" more to get by today than he did 100 years ago. We have certain social expectations as to what we need: a clean place to live, a tv, a car, helathy food, etc.

And yes, it is possible for the workers themselves to appropriate part of the surplus value they create. The whole point of the class struggle is the fight over the surplus value. Each class wants as big a part of the pie as they can get. Ultimately, we hope to abolish the unnecessary class, so that for the first time in history, those that do the work will get all of the surplus value they create.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Indeed....but consider that the numbers can be misleading, and in fact, ANY TIME you look at such a large, diverse population as we have in the US (to say nothing of even more populous nations) looking at the whole never really tells the full story.

For example: The cost of living in NYC or most parts of California is DRAMATICALLY higher than where I live, in Columbia SC.

A friend of mine took a job in NYC that paid nearly 100k a year, and he could barely afford to live (the deposit on his Manhattan apartment was $9600....I saw the lease!), and his rent was several thousand a month. Contrast that with the $500 I pay here for my roomy townhouse, and it becomes clear that aggregate numbers do not tell the full story.

A significant portion of SC's population are technically living "below the poverty line" and yet, most folks here get along quite well (because the "poverty line" is just that....an arbitrary line drawn in the sand, whose point is chosen by some government yahoo. Again, since the cost of living is approximately half of what it is in California, for example, it makes the arbitrary "national poverty level" a bit silly (most of the southern states follow in this same pattern....they are among the poorest states in the union, in terms of absolute dollars earned, but then, the cost of living is significantly lower here).

So...do not read too much into the "poverty line" argument. I'm not saying that it is all smoke and mirrors (obviously, it isn't), but there are large areas of this country where living "below the poverty line" still means living quite comfortably!

-=Vel=-
(who was, until VERY recently, technically one of "the poor")

That's true, but your friend paying $9600/month could be close to poverty too. Kidding of course, but a lot of people who have to pay high rent don't really have high salaries.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

So you tell me why people should not recieve an income for their worth to society.

Because 'worth to society' is entirely subjective. Some people believe J.K. Rowling has IMMENSE worth to society, others think the opposite. You can't measure it, so you can't recieve an income for it.

So tell me why objective worth should be compensated and not subjective worth.