new capitalism vs communism thread

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Well when you have many owners, then he will be worried. Looting from a company can get you in hot water in most Western states.

If only. In France, we have such occurences nearly daily. It's not one shareholder going to the factory to steal some computers away mind you. It is a deliberate wreckage because the profitable company is under the fabled line of 10% return on investment.
The owner (most often, another company, that takes the decision alone, but it can also be the majority of several shareholders) decide to liquidate the company for immediate money.

This is what I call "pillage" because you deprive all employees from the production means they live from (from the janitor to the manager). But you'd call it "perfectly fine decision" because the owner gets his money

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by The Andy-Man
but isn't it inevitable that all sucesful mono-buissness will become larger and larger until a 6person board effectivley runs the 600man workforce? And isn't participation of suc ha large workforce, who may no f- all about runnig the whole operation, almost impossible?

Well, the first thing is that successful mono-businesses are very likely to give an immense legitimacy to the company founder, at least as long as he's successful. Unless he turns up to be a real pain in the ass, or a real exploiter, the founder has little chance to fear strong opposition.

As for the workers knowing crap about how to run the operation: a "democratic company" would be about making the management accountable to its employees (including the managers themselves, btw), NOT getting rid of a managerial team. It's not like strategic decisions are taken in a Soviet where the louder speaker wins

Yes, many people will not participate in the company's democracy, just like there are many people who don't participate in today's democracy, especially local democracy. But you can expect those who participate to know fairly well about the issues. Not like a manager whose job is to keep informed at full time, but enough to know what he wants.

[Ned]

Originally posted by curtsibling
Not need to get upset.

I know you are of a more pragmatic communist type than Mr tripledoc.

But calling my opinion nonsense is not going to get the best of me.

I disagree with communism, but I don't think any less of posters for that.

And you are free to compare me to Ned, whoever he is...?

I am a poster who has agreed with virtually everything you have said here. My compliments.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Odin
Now if Neddy and a few others would quit sticking thier head in the sand we could have a much better discussion!

Sky, like some of your ideas, even though I don't agree with a lot of them. I wish Ned and Fez among others would quit giving you good capitalist guys a bad name.

My apologies, Odin, for interrupting you with observations about communism that seem true to most fair people.

[Ned]

Originally posted by JohnT

Referencing Skywalker's claim that a patent system promotes innovation in the West.

... Ned?

It does look like I made at least one convert.

[Ned]

Che, Spiffor, et al., you and many other Communists have repeatedly stated that Stalin's USSR was not true communism. From a casual comparison between the Communist Manifesto and the structure of the USSR, one sees many parallels, if not congruency. Could you tell me, and the rest of Apolyton, why Stalin's USSR was not true communism?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Ned
Could you tell me, and the rest of Apolyton, why Stalin's USSR was not true communism?

1. There's a State. That alone goes completely at the opposite of Marx's description of a capitalist society.

2. There was no "dictatorship of the proletariat", but the dictatorship of a brutal bureaucracy. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" means that the proletariat rule over the bourgeoisie during the transtion, at the opposite of capitalism (such rule is not doomed to be always brutal - it is just defined by being undisputed by the bourgeoisie).

Maybe the most brutal commies could argue the massacre of Kulaks (wealthy peasants) was true to Marx's communism. That was about the last time Stalin's cruelty slaughtered people based on their class. After that, he slaughtered people for his personal political gain.

But even the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is supposed to disappear when the society becomes perfectly communist -in Marx's description- as classes don't exist anymore.

In this regard, Stalin wasn't communist, nor did it serve the transition towards communism.

3. Stalin was creating a class of wealthy priviledged ones, serving the bureaucracy. These people were not exactly a new Bourgeoisie, as they weren't running companies for their own profit, but they strayed away from the working class as well. The dominance of any class other than the Proletariat is unmarxist.

[Ned]

Skywalker asked earlier why people who make a "means of production" cannot own it. I think you, Spiffor, gave a very deceptive answer to that question. Let me flesh out Skywalker's question just a bit.

The following example, a group of workers democratically decide to construct an ocean liner. They arrange a loan at the bank to finance their construction and work years in constructing the ocean liner. After it is launched, rather than sell the ocean liner to pay back the loan and to get paid for years of labor that went into construction, they decide to operate the ocean liner.

So they hire crew and conduct cruises. The excess income over the labor and fuel cost is used to pay back the loan and pay themselves for the years of effort.

Now from from my understanding of your socialist system, the workers would not be able to own the ocean liner. Why not?

Furher, if they do not own the boat, how can the sell it?

If they were permitted to continue to operate the ocean liner without owning it, why should they give their hired crew any say in the wages the crew makes, because the crew could take all money from tickets for themselves leaving nothing for the construction workers to pay back the bank or to pay their own wages for the period of time for construction.

Now let's assume that society forced them to sell the boat even though they don't own it, the buyers of boat, who don't own it as well, are in the same position of as the construction workers. They have to pay back the loan they took out to buy the boat. If they allow their crew any say in their wages, the crew again could take all money from the tickets leaving nothing for the owners to pay back their loan.

(Besides, how would a bank issue such a loan if they did not have a security interest in the boat?)

All this suggests is that such a system of worker decisions in deciding what to produce or their own wages makes no sense. Everything would have to be owned by government and all direction would have been given by government. Assuming that the state owned everything and was making the decisions, how could they tolerate contrary decisions from worker societies?

Thus, every system without ownership in the means of production inevitably leads to traditional communism as described in the Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Completely on another track,

But can some of the commies here explain to me the intherent disconnect I see in comments reagarding productivity?

Its been mentioned a number of times that for communism to be successful productivity has to be so obscenely high that goods/services are extremely cheap.

In other comments people condemn Capitalism for wasteful use of natural resources and the consumption rate of the same.

How does communism expect to achieve these high rates of productivity while not consuming natural resources at or exceeding levels of capitalism?

Further, what inherent controls are there to efficiently use natural resources within communism? At least in capitalism one can argue that cost control (i.e. efficient use of resources) is a natural outgrowth of competition and hence the need for enhanced efficiency with respect to consumption of resources.

[Spiffor]

Ned: this is actually a well thought-out critique.

One of the main point of Spifforism is that comapnies have no owners (except general interest companies that are owned by the State). Just like you, Ned, aren't owned by anybody.
The company is a "moral person" (as opposed to a "physical person") that is born and dies, that is managed by its employees, and that owns its capital (in your exemple, the ocean liner).

In your example, in a Spifforist frame, the workers haven't directly bought a boat themselves, but they created a company, managed it democratically, and the company owns the boat. Each worker is associated with the company, but doesn't own it, nor do they own the boat.

If "they want to sell the boat", well, since the boat is company property, they'll have to agree in having the company let the boat go. And they'll then have to decide how to share the money.

Of course, for such a system to work, investment should be made considerably easy. I overlooked it in my description of Spifforism, but I have long advocated a public service investment bank, with very little interest (and only to attract excess capital in the bank - of course, there would be no competition in this domain).

Basically, to make an analogy, a spifforist company is comparable more to an association than to a capitalist company. Only that it is an association about production and money. Nobody owns associations but themselves.

Now from from my understanding of your socialist system, the workers would not be able to own the ocean liner. Why not?

The reason is that as soon as you own the production means, the door to exploitation, abusive profits, and in general abusive leadership is open.

If they were permitted to continue to operate the ocean liner without owning it, why should they give their hired crew any say in the wages the crew makes, because the crew could take all money from tickets for themselves leaving nothing for the construction workers to pay back the bank or to pay their own wages for the period of time for construction.

The company is liable, not the original construction workers. Hence, the new staff will sink just like the original workers if they are irresponsible with money. Lastly, if such abuses are commonplace, we can imagine a law forcing some part of the income to go to investment's reimbursement, much like the existing depreciation laws (when a capitalist company is legally bound to keep money to prepare the replacement of soon-to-be obsolete machines).

Such a law wouldn't be the "direct control" you fear. It would be a frame limiting a company's leeway, like any other law: that the government forbids you to kill doesn't mean you're a drone of the gov't

[Ned]

Spiffor, here is a bit from the Manifesto. I see nothing in this that requires the IMMEDIATE cessation of government. The USSR appears to be the very empitome of the what Marx described as communism (in its intermediate form) in the Manifesto.

"We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

[Tripledoc]

Originally posted by Spiffor

1. There's a State. That alone goes completely at the opposite of Marx's description of a capitalist society.

Marx and Lenin envisaged a global collapse of capitalism which would engulf all the developed capitalist states. What they did not envisage was the rise of Fascism and anti-communist propaganda. Nor that in the latter stages of capitalism the masses could be deployed to support the most brutal forms of imperialism. The First World War was a true defeat to the international labour organistations. Labour leaders were assasinated, and ultimately the vast investmnets in educating school childeren in nationalism paid off in spades when they were marched off to the front to be machine gunned or blown to pieces.

In this environment Stalin adopted the policy of 'Communism in one Country'. Unlike Trotsky he feared that any internationalist pretensions would give the Democracies and excuse to attack Russia.

The state was neccesary to secure the very existince of the USSR. It was almost destroyed, but ultimaletly it was the communists who won the Second World War.

2. There was no "dictatorship of the proletariat", but the dictatorship of a brutal bureaucracy. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" means that the proletariat rule over the bourgeoisie during the transtion, at the opposite of capitalism (such rule is not doomed to be always brutal - it is just defined by being undisputed by the bourgeoisie).

The main problem was that Russia after the First World War, and the Subsequent Western Intervention on behalf of the Whites (the Czarists), Russia was devestated. The whole industry had been mobilized to produce armaments, and since the peasants could not buy consumer goods, because there were none, they were unwilling to hand over agricultuarl produce to the Cities. Also agricutlure had sufferd from the mass conscriptions.

In such an environment in order to secure basic food supply for all, armed bands were sent from the cities and into the country side to confiscate food. In many instances the peasants choose to destroy their crops and animals in stead of handing it over.

Also, 'a dictatorship of the proletariat' was not possible, because Russia was then largely a peaseant society, which owned their own plot of land. The Czar had in a last ditch effort to save himself and the aristocracy agreed to reforms which gave peasants land and revoked their seerf status. Naturally they were then unwilling to subsequently give the land to the state.

Maybe the most brutal commies could argue the massacre of Kulaks (wealthy peasants) was true to Marx's communism. That was about the last time Stalin's cruelty slaughtered people based on their class. After that, he slaughtered people for his personal political gain.

The Kulak is largely an invention. In reality the wealth disoparity between Russian peasants was insignificant. Thus saying that Stalin 'slaughtered' people based on class is hardly true. And I would like to add that the scientific basis for making an historical claim that Stalin deliberately slaughtered people rests on little or no evidence. If you have evidence I would like to see it.

Regarding the fact that Stalin ordered purges of the Communist Party and the red Army, there is considerably more evidence for that. The filmed show trials do suggest that there was great dissent within the party. Whether these trials had the same judicial standard as in the bourgouis system, I will leave that to jurists.

However remember that the first indication that the West got of extent of Stalins purges was when Kruchev's soclaled 'secret speech', from, I believe 1961, was published in the West. Here Kruchev accuses Stalin of being responsible for the execution of 6000 people. That number has since through increments reached the fantastical number of 30 million.

Now would Kruchev have an interets in portraying Stalin in a ad light? That is possible.

But even the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is supposed to disappear when the society becomes perfectly communist -in Marx's description- as classes don't exist anymore.

Again the USSR was almost destroyed by the Nazis. the reason the state could not be disolved after the Second World War was that now the United States in collusion with ex-nazis began their anti-communist crusade. The US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, proven facts, naturally led Stalin to believ that he was dealing with an ignomious enemy that was insiting on Global Dominance.

Subsequently everytime the Communist slackend off the United States turned the screw once again. I think you know the story.

In this regard, Stalin wasn't communist, nor did it serve the transition towards communism.

Stalin never had the chance of imposing true communism, beacuse the capitalist Imperialist powers would not let him.

3. Stalin was creating a class of wealthy priviledged ones, serving the bureaucracy. These people were not exactly a new Bourgeoisie, as they weren't running companies for their own profit, but they strayed away from the working class as well. The dominance of any class other than the Proletariat is unmarxist.

And were did you see that 'wealthy priveledged class'. It was non-exsistent. Even if there had been such a privelegded class it would have been significantly less decadent than in the West.

The fabrication that the Soviet Union resembled Orwille's Animal farm is of course difficult to disprove.

In fact anything which is said of Soviet Russia and Stalin is difficult to disprove. This is in large part due to the fact that there is no real evidence underpinning the anti-communist propaganda.

People seem to be under the delusion that Western Historians are paragons of truth. They are not. In fact it is often the case that anti-communist 'historians' move in neo-fascist circles. And in many cases their 'work' has been disproved.

In fact the anti-communist are now so desperate that seek to prevent communist from participating in the European Parliament.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Tripledoc
And were did you see that 'wealthy priveledged class'. It was non-exsistent.

I didn't see it with my own eyes, but my mother did, before leaving the stalinist Romania in 1960. She even had a friend from the Nomenklatura. Even today, one of her most vivid childhood memories is the mindboggling amount of butter this nomenklaturist friend put on her bread, whereas butter was a rare commdity for the common folk.

And I'm not even mentioning datchas (summer houses), and the fact that almost any non-essential consumer good was destined to the nomenklatura alone.

Damn, your denial of stalinist horrors and treason is truly beyond me

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Ned
Spiffor, here is a bit from the Manifesto. I see nothing in this that requires the IMMEDIATE cessation of government. The USSR appears to be the very empitome of the what Marx described as communism (in its intermediate form) in the Manifesto.

Indeed, Marx considers the road to true communism requires a transition (called socialism IIUC).

So, one can argue that Stalinism is in the transtion phase (making it automatically not "true commuinsm").

But even in that regard, the fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat was replaced by the dictatorship of a bureaucracy over the proletariat, is completely un-socialist.
Socialism is about freeing the Proles, not about changing the despots from which they suffer. The fact that Stalin created a power structure where the proletariat wasn't on top makes it clear he never intended to make a communist society. Hence, he didn't achieve communism, nor did he participate in the transtion.

[Ned]

Spiffor, what Stalin created was a dictatorship of the Communist Party. That is common in ALL communist countries, and I submit, inevitable when a revolution takes place and the Communist Party takes over.

Marx, in describing his utopia, could not have intended true democracy where the workers actually get to vote on their leaders. Besides, why would any Communist Party cede power once they have it and can live like kings?