Why I Cautiously favor Capitalism over Communism

reply to post by ANOK


I don't know how else to tell you this but you are incorrect... If I turn my house into a factory is it mine?

Originally posted by crankySamurai

I don't know how else to tell you this but you are incorrect... If I turn my house into a factory is it mine?

Incorrect about what?

Not sure quit what you mean?

You can do what you want with your house. The problems starts when you try to hire wage labour. If the means of production are owned in common why would anyone work for your wages? What good would your factory be without labour?

The only reason people work for wages is because they have no choice. See the capitalist owner needs labour, but labour doesn't need the private owner.

reply to post by ANOK


What if I decide to hire someone to cook food for me because I am no good at cooking?

Seriously is alright if I do that? I would of course supply the materials, pots, pans, steak, vegetables, but I also would want to keep the meal once prepared.

It wouldn't be something I force a person to do. But if they are willing to trade their time and knowledge of cooking for something I offer is that alright?

Originally posted by crankySamurai
What if I decide to hire someone to cook food for me because I am no good at cooking?

No one is going to stop you trying. If someone is willing to do it, then it's their choice. The big point is it would be their choice, not because they have to work for someone.

Socialism is not about stopping you from doing what you want to do, it is about allowing EVERYBODY to do what they want to do.

Do you really think people would want to work for an hourly wage when they don't have to? You made an extreme example, the reality is the millions of people around the world working many hours for little pay. Just so a few people in another country can live privileged lives.

Socialism is not about working for wages, owning property to make profit, it's about creating an economy that is self sustaining and provides for our needs. That includes taking care of our community members who cannot take care of themselves.

reply to post by ANOK


Well if you don't like "wages" or money lets say that I trade her some extra oil that I have been storing in my garage. The person values the oil more than the hour it takes to prepare the food.

The person doesn't have to do it, just like no body has to work but she values what I am offering more that what she is giving up.

Lets say that I hire several people to prepare food in exchange for oil. They all value the oil more than what they are trading me so they accept. With all these people preparing food don't I have the right to keep the food, which was made with my tools? Or do I have to pay them the oil and the food they they made with their labor?

Since the materials are mine and I paid for their labor it is clear that the food is still mine. Otherwise there would be no point in be hiring them.

Now what if I start trading or selling the food that they are preparing to my neighbors? This is now called a business. If I made it bigger and bought more equipment it would then be called a factory... It is still private property and it is still at my house. What say you?

reply to post by crankySamurai


I already explained it. No one is going to have to work for anyone, the means to produce will be owned by all.

Why would someone want to work for you if they don't have to? You would not be able to create a monopoly on ownership of the means to produce, so people would have no reason to work for you.

If you want someone to do something for you then you will have to return the help with equal value, goods or services, so as not to profit from them.

Socialism is not about your selfish wants, it's about the needs of the community.

reply to post by ANOK


Well I'm glad you cleared that up... sarcasm.

So if the needs of the community is the motivation for action... How do we decide the needs? Is it my neighbors needs? or simply a certain groups needs?

Originally posted by crankySamurai
Well I'm glad you cleared that up... sarcasm.
So if the needs of the community is the motivation for action... How do we decide the needs? Is it my neighbors needs? or simply a certain groups needs?

Decisions could be made by the community using direct democracy. But it's not up to me to tell a community how to organise itself. Once the means of production are owned in common by the workers, it would be up to the community to decide what it needs.

The only difference between Anarchism and other socialist movements such as Marxism is in their method of revolution, Marxism being a political path and Anarchism being a direct action path. The final goal was the same, the free-association of producers, worker ownership.

The social and political structure of anarchy is similar to that of the economic structure, i.e., it is based on a voluntary federation of decentralised, directly democratic policy-making bodies. These are the neighbourhood and community assemblies and their confederations. In these grassroots political units, the concept of "self-management" becomes that of "self-government", a form of municipal organisation in which people take back control of their living places from the bureaucratic state and the capitalist class whose interests it serves...

infoshop.org...

We Marxists conceive of socialism, not as an arbitrary scheme of society to be constructed from a preconceived plan, but as the next stage of social evolution...
The architects and builders of the socialist society of the future will be the socialist generations themselves. The great Marxists were quite sure of this and refrained from offering these future generations any instructions or blueprints....
Auguste Blanqui, the great French revolutionist, said: “Tomorrow does not belong to us.”....

But all these changes, which can be anticipated and predicted, will begin with and proceed from the revolutionary transformation of the system of production and the consequent augmentation and multiplication of the productivity of labour. This is the necessary material premise for a society of shared abundance. The revolutionary reorganisation of the labour process—of the manner of working and of regulating, measuring, and compensating the labour time of the individual—will take place first and should be considered first, because it will clear the way for all the other changes.

This labour will be highly organised and therefore disciplined in the interests of efficiency in production. There can be no anarchy in the cooperative labour process; but only freedom from labour, to an ever-increasing extent as science and technology advance productivity and automatically reduce the amount of labour time required from the individual.

Emerging from capitalism, the transitional society, will carry over some capitalist methods of accounting, incentives, and rewards. People first will work for wages. They will be paid in money, backed by the gold in Fort Knox, for the amount of work performed. **But after a certain period, where there is abundance and even superabundance, the absurdity of strict wage regulation will become apparent. Then the gold will be taken out of Fort Knox and put to some more useful purpose, if such can be found.

What Socialist America Will Look Like

**The main aim of all forms of socialism is to increase production in order to meet needs, as capitalism creates artificial scarcity in order to maintain high profits.

Technological capacity to produce enough to satisfy everyone's needs already exists globally and has done so for many decades. Yet needs continue to remain unmet on a massive scale. Why? Quite simply because scarcity is a functional requirement of capitalism itself.

www.worldsocialism.org...

Remember these are not my ideas, just presenting them to answer your questions. The answers you should already know btw, I mean how can you argue against something you don't understand? I have to understand capitalism in order to understand why I am against it. It just shows how conditioned people are to dismiss things without even knowing why they do.

reply to post by ANOK


So you give up your sovereignty to the community. The community has the right to decide how when and where you will work... You life is then guided solely by the decisions of other, of the majority, is this correct?

For the record I know the positions held by those social systems based on collectivist philosophy... But I want them stated clearly by the person defending such a position.

Originally posted by crankySamurai
So you give up your sovereignty to the community. The community has the right to decide how when and where you will work... You life is then guided solely by the decisions of other, of the majority, is this correct?

No again you miss the point. You and me are the community, we all live in a community. We are Human Beings and we are social creatures. It is the lack of community that is causing a lot of our social problems.

Having said that though no one is going to force you to be a part of a community. Just like you won't be able to force anyone to work for you. In the Spanish revolution those that didn't want to be part of a collective were given just enough land for them to live on. Can I opt out of capitalism please?

The reason worker owner ship is better for the community is because people don't send their own jobs overseas, they don't lay themselves off, and a thousand other reasons I'm too lazy to type.

Why employee ownership will lead to better public services

I am not ignoring you I am just tired of explaining this to you. All I did was explain what socialism is, I do not have to defend anything.

Capitalism exploits the community, it does not help the community. All communities have a common interest, and if those common interests are not met you have an unbalanced community. Socialism is about meeting those common interests, not exploiting the community for your own benefit.

I still remember when we had real communities, maybe you don't eh?

For the record I know the positions held by those social systems based on collectivist philosophy... But I want them stated clearly by the person defending such a position.

I have no idea, who or what, you are talking about. There are many different movements for socialism all with their own ideas, but those ideas are not socialism, there are the ideas of people who support socialism. Marxism is not socialism, it is a political path to socialism.

I have tried to explain this to you but you just fail to understand. To support socialism, worker ownership, you DO NOT have to buy into anyone else's ideas. That is why socialism is so diverse from Marxism to Anarchism. It is your lack of understanding of the socialist movement that causes you to fail to understand the point.

How about you actually address the original discussion we were having instead of changing tactics?

How can Anarchism be socialist? I'd still like an answer to that.

As far as debunking Chomsky, only in your imagination. Do you know what a linguist is? Seriously you think you can tell a linguist they are wrong about the meaning of words? You only have to look at the links and quotes I supply that they all say the same thing, from the 1800's until now the same thing. What do you have other than BS from right wing Americans?

Here's are some simple questions that may lead to an epiphany:

Do strangers generally act in their own best interest, or in your best interest?

Would people managing a centralized government act in their own best interests, or your best interest? What has history shown to be the case?

Who will decide what you must give up, at the point of a gun, so somebody else can have what you are forced to give up?

Originally posted by sconner755
Here's are some simple questions that may lead to an epiphany:

I assume you're asking me?

Do strangers generally act in their own best interest, or in your best interest?

It depends. Socialism does not require you to act in anyone's interest but your own. If the means of production are owned in common people can produce what they need, with NO social restrictions (from government or private owners)

Would people managing a centralized government act in their own best interests, or your best interest? What has history shown to be the case?

What centralized government? Socialism requires no government, capitalism does.

"Anarchism is stateless socialism" - Mikhail Bakunin

Who will decide what you must give up, at the point of a gun, so somebody else can have what you are forced to give up?

Who says anyone has to give anything up? The only people who will have to give anything up is the capitalist who make their living exploiting labour. The rest of us will GAIN the FREEDOM of being able to produce what we need. That is real liberty, not working for a private owners making them rich off your labour.

That is my position and this debate is pointless if you all keep insisting that socialism is centralized state control.
That confusion comes from a misunderstanding of Marxism, and so we're back to the start of the discussion again. Marxism is NOT socialism, it is a political path to socialism. The Marxist state is not permanent, and when socialism is the dominant economic system the state will be unnecessary. It is not the only path to socialism.

In the anarchist, Marxist and socialist sense, free association (also called free association of producers or, as Marx often called it, community of freely associated individuals) is a kind of relation between individuals where there is no state, social class or authority, in a society that has abolished the private property of means of production. Once private property is abolished, individuals are no longer deprived of access to means of production so they can freely associate themselves (without social constraint) to produce and reproduce their own conditions of existence and fulfill their needs and desires.

Free association (communism and anarchism)

reply to post by ANOK


It is true that we live in a community, but we are not that community nor can we be. A community is a group of individuals and has no more physical existence than a forest. You cannot go pick it up, put it down, touch it ect. It is merely a concept.

I disagree to the cause of our social problems. I attribute it to individual morality. A lack of understanding on the individual level about what is in his or her best interest, what is right or wrong.

I'm not sure what you mean by "be a part of a community". It sounds to me as if these communities are very strict in their belief systems and if you do not agree with them you are out.

Again I'm not sure what you mean by opt out of capitalism. Capitalism is founded on the principles of private property and non initiation of force. These are basic moral concepts and I'm not quite sure how you can opt out of them. If you disagree with one of these principles then this would be a subject for debate, but as far as capitalism goes these are the only requirements that must be recognized.

I believe that you somehow have made a distinction between these principles and capitalism as if capitalism is much more and much different. I hear you repeatedly speak of the private ownership of the means of production as if it is not a natural progression of private property as if the only way of attaining means of production is by force.

The reason worker owner ship is better for the community is because people don't send their own jobs overseas, they don't lay themselves off, and a thousand other reasons I'm too lazy to type.

Blaming a business for going over seas is like blaming a business for a shortage of wheat and the price of wheat goes up. Most business are forced out of this country due to government interference, heavy regulation, extreme taxes, they respond to profit and when it becomes unprofitable to work in a country you must leave, business owners do not work for free or at a loss just as you would not.

The other reason businesses move to other markets is due to the low cost of labor. Labor is a price just like any other good or service. If there is an abundance of idle people then the cost of labor will be lower. Again I know you view this as a negative thing, but it is actually business that bring wealth to areas. Idle people are willing to trade their time for money, they view it as more productive than the alternative otherwise it would not be done. It is not business who made these people idle or brought them poverty. The lack of goods was already there. It is the business that bring people out of poverty.

Capitalism exploits the community, it does not help the community. All communities have a common interest, and if those common interests are not met you have an unbalanced community. Socialism is about meeting those common interests, not exploiting the community for your own benefit.

Again you are talking about the community as if it is a real entity that moves and thinks. A community is not a thing it does not exist except as an abstract concept. A concept cannot have interests. There are individual interest such as eating, breathing, sleeping, relaxing, but these are attributes of the individual, a community has no such attributes.

If you accepted this, and I'm not sure that you would, the next statement that would seem to follow would be the claim that capitalism exploits the individual, or "worker". I argue that capitalism is in the very defense of the individual, that it is an individuals philosophy.

As Richard Overton wrote in 1646, in An arrow Against all Tyrants: “To every individuals in nature, is given an individual property by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any ; for every one as he is himself, so he hath a selfe propriety, else he not be himselfe”. And Locke, in 1690: “Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself.” ((John Locke, Second Treatise of government (1690), chap V, 27.))

Self Ownership

Self ownership is an axiom which is at the very heart of capitalism and the very core of individual freedom.

Last I did not say that Chompsky was wrong about the meaning of libertarian changing. He was wrong, but not about that... I can only imagine that you did not read my response.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


You may choose to dislike or are opposed by your nature, to Communism but don't expect to perpetuate lies of what Communism is, unanswered. You and your fellow conservatives in this thread and at large have fallen prey to or committed the act of treachery of words. If you're going to hate it, hate it in it's proper context and stop the insulting insinuations or even outright labeling, that we on the Left are liars.

We accept how you define yourselves now how bout the lot of you give us the same goddamn courtesy? That said, I personally am not a Communist though I have no dislike of it and I respect my brothers and sisters on the Left that embrace it.

Have the common sense to ask yourself; If Communists denounce Statism how can any example of labeled or nationally self defined 'Communist Countries' be truly Communist? Further does it make any kind of sense current self identified communists to denounce China and the former USSR, if they actually were Communist? As Anok tirelessly points out the most basic definition of Communism is worker ownership of the means of production, why continue to contort the word? Did the USSR have labor ownership? Does China? Nope, therefor neither were Communist.

The USSR as well as China are not Communist, they were/are State Capitalism.

Communism (from Latin communis - common, universal) is a revolutionary socialist movement to create a classless, moneyless[1][2] and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production, as well as a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of this social order.

wiki

State capitalism is usually described as an economic system in which commercial (i.e: for-profit) economic activity is undertaken by the state, with management and organization of the means of production in a capitalist manner - maintaining the conditions of wage labor arising from centralized ownership,[1] even if the state is nominally socialist.[2] State capitalism is characterized by the dominance of state-owned business enterprises in the economy. Examples of state capitalism include corporatized government agencies (agencies organized along corporate and business management practices) and states that own controlling shares of publicly listed corporations, effectively acting as a large shareholder or a capitalist.

wiki

You yourself have seen and I'm guessing there are others in this thread and definitely on ATS, the high jacking of the Tea Party movement. There are those in Congress who claim to be members of the Tea Party movement but acted in directly oppositional ways from what the movement was supposed to be about... now there are millions of people who have no idea that it did actually begin as grass roots, they assume based on what the media tells them, what the elected tell them that it was always their definition of it.

You've seen the GOP high jacked by fundamentalist Christians to the point where young people have no idea what a Republican is actually supposed to be or a Conservative for that matter, they think ALL of you that are right of center... are religious zealots.

Words mean things and high jacking the meaning of a word or illustrating it incorrectly is a massive disservice to humanity. It is insulting to our intelligence, it is saying that we can't be trusted to like or dislike something of it's own merit.

If you don't agree with or you hate labor ownership of the means of production, then yes you hate Socialism and Communism. You don't need all the rhetoric and window dressing it's been given over the years to do so. We are quite accurate when we say we have never seen a proper example of Communism, can you name a country that has ever practiced worker ownership of production as an economic system?

Thought I'd add this quote to this dead discussion.

"Politically we are anarchists, and economically, communists or socialists." Adolph Fischer, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis as Defined by Some of its Apostles (1887)

Note the date, 1887, before the right wing state appropriated and demonised left wing terms. Note he calls socialism an economic system, not a political system. Words from one of the original working-class Anarchists, not a lying power seeking state politician.

Adolph Fischer was born in Bremen, Germany in 1858. Fischer emigrated to the United States in 1873 and settled in Chicago. He became involved in trade union activities and worked as a typesetter for the anarchist journal, Arbeiter Zeitung.

Adolph Fischer

The Arbeiter-Zeitung, also known as the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, a German language radical newspaper, was started in Chicago, Illinois, in 1877 by veterans of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.[1] It continued publishing through 1931. It was the first working-class newspaper in Chicago to last for a significant period, and sustained itself primarily through reader funding; the reader-owners removed several editors over its run due to disagreements over editorial policies.[2]

Arbeiter-Zeitung (Chicago)

I'll ask this question again, how can Anarchists be Socialists if socialism means the state controls everything?

Simple question that completely debunks those who claim socialism is anything but worker ownership. Can't answer it can you? A little honesty on ATS would be nice.

Morality and responsibility to a tracendental authority is a prerequisite to a sociopolitical and economic system, without which it is doomed to failure because the lowest class will never buy into ANY moral, pragmatic, or utilitarian argument for the necessity of society, division of labor, and classes for very long, since common sense shows them "the people at the top" are people, just like them, and no one in their right mind (even severely retarded) would put up with the bull the lowest class must go through to support society for very long. They must have something higher than man to demand their belief in the justification for society (in any form that involves division of labor), or it WILL ultimately fail without mass drugging or biological intervention.

Capitalism or socialism/communism, it all involves classes of society and division of labor, as the anarchists saw (see Jacques Ellul). And most forms of organized religion (particularly monotheistic) and anti-religion support some form of cultural mandate, which merely serves to support the class system.

It does not matter which form of governance or economy you pick- they all fail as moral and good choices that will last because civilization is built on classes and division of labor, meaning some must always be crapped upon for the supposed good of all and "progress", eventhough many good arguments can be made that we have not progressed one iota beyond what we "imagine" (for instance what was once free is no longer free).. In fact, I would argue that the class society and division of labor REQUIRES keeping some down in order to work, as their can only be so many in the "leisure class", and the leisure class is what makes the division of labor and civilization work, since they run it (due to their free time to think about things).

The "technique" of modern society is its downfall - it is inhuman and wrong. The "cultural mandate" of religon is wrong. Things like central banks and corrupt governments and economic systems are mere products of the overarching problem - modern society. The whole equation is wrong - it is all wrong! Mankind will never be free so long as their are classes and specialization and the NECESSITY for division (even in labor), and such can hardly be called "progress" by those with an ounce of common sense.

Indoctrination kills rhe mind. Let go, realize the truth and what the real root of the problem is and what you were born into, what sort of matrix it truly is. The whole thing is corrupt, wrong, and misguided - there is no individual liberty in a system designed to oppress a few (actually most) individuals for the supposed benefit of the whole. How can one ever be free as a mere "cog" in a classed society whether seemingly voluntary (capitalist and democratic) or involuntary (socialist and communist)? The answer is not a change in economic system or form of governance or even both, but a reevaluation of the whole equation of civilization, its purpose and what it actually does.

reply to post by HillbillyHippie1


Socialism just means worker ownership. Someone has to own the means to produce. If it's not the workers then it would be private owners, capitalism, or as in the USSR, China etc., the state (state-capitalism).

Anarchists were socialists. Anarchism being a political system, socialism being an economic system.

It is the economic system that gives or takes away our freedom.

"Liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality." Mikhail Bakunin

Liberty being in this context meaning anarchism, libertarian socialism.

The division of labour and the class system came with capitalism. Worker ownership would break down class and the division of labour because they would be unnecessary. Division of labour is only necessary to the capitalist who's only goal is to make profit. The class system is simply an inevitable result of capitalism, the capitalists become the ruling class through their economic power, and the rest of us become working class due to the position we are forced into, working for a wage for a private owner (our labour being our only capital). A situation forced on us through changes in land laws in the 1700's.

reply to post by ANOK


Alright so worker ownership... So how do the workers become owners? Do they get together, combine their savings and invest in the capital themselves? If that's the cause well that's called capitalism...

On the other hand if they rise up and take what they did not earn then they are thieves...

There's nothing wrong with worker ownership and could be quite a profitable investment if done right. If it is done within the bounds of non-initiation of force and self ownership then there is no immorality in it and a fine goal to strive for.

Originally posted by crankySamurai
On the other hand if they rise up and take what they did not earn then they are thieves...

The thieves are the capitalist owners. They have been thieving from the people since it started.

Workers taking over the means of production would not be theft, it would be liberating themselves from exploitation. They owe us we don't owe them anything.

There's nothing wrong with worker ownership and could be quite a profitable investment if done right. If it is done within the bounds of non-initiation of force and self ownership then there is no immorality in it and a fine goal to strive for.

Worker ownership would not be profitable. Socialism is not based on making profit, it is based on meeting the needs of the community. Economies based on profit makes more people poor than it makes rich.

Even Obama, who people claim is socialist, does not support worker ownership, he supports capitalism...

Chrysler Workers Urge Obama to Support Ownership Push

Since 2007.

But having said that all I did was try to explain what socialism actually is, NOT whether it could work or not. But as usual when I post overwhelming evidence of what it actually is the argument always switches to it wouldn't work. A little research would show you it can work and has worked....

The Spanish Revolution (1936)

It's up to you and me, if you keep being negative it won't work.

But it doesn't have to be a revolution, if people new how worker ownership could solve our economic problems maybe they would start worker owned companies.

reply to post by ANOK

Profit- An advantageous gain or return; benefit.

dictionary

Every action is based on a profit motive. If you are not looking to benefit from your actions then I don't know what motive you act with.

You are condemning socialism when you say it is not profitable, not of benefit, nothing to gain from it...