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[Frumple]

Eh, you're largely just conflating capitalism+ (i.e. mixed market stuff or derivative ideologies) with capitalism. It's easy to do when you have actors on the world stage that would stab you in the eye before they admit something they're doing is socialist or whathaveyou (e.g. the U.S.). There's places where you deal with similar issues with the term capitalist, iirc, where related countries have hard fucked the local people in the name of profit.

Though it's not really a matter of short vs. long term profit, unless you're counting multi-millennial/generational stuff at which point you are way, way outside the bounds of what capitalism is and might still not be sufficient. It's a matter of profit versus non-profit, things that can produce the desired results via profit motive (regardless of scale) and things that can't. If it requires non-market intervention to achieve the desired results, you're no longer dealing with capitalism on its own, and the more intervention required the less you're dealing with capitalism at all, as its fundamental mechanics become increasingly less involved. When you hit the point of government takeover whatever you're dealing with isn't capitalism anymore, though it may still utilize aspects.

Companies that are dumping waste or undermining governments haven't necessarily failed to consider long term profit... it's entirely possible they've just considered it and the results of their calculations came up deadland or puppet state. Which is very much a potentiality, just like it's an aspect of accounting and whatnot to calculate how many people your company's product(s) can kill before the second order effects start costing you more than preventing the deaths do... and outlays into the decades or centuries can still very easily end up with a substantial number of new graves, even if you calculate the knock on economic effect of the dead (which is generally not something a business does, especially beyond whatever scope directly impacts their market or customer base). I've actually crunched numbers like that as class assignments before, heh. Long term view isn't a panacea for capitalism's issues, unfortunately, never mind that vanishingly few practitioners care about it and largely because the nature of the thing provides very strong incentives to focus on the now. Helps in some cases, but it's not enough on its own.

What it boils down to is that if your goal is not profit and the effects of profit, then capitalism is not necessarily your preferred solution for reaching that goal, if it's a solution at all. Ignoring that is... not something you want to do. Glossing over it when the issues related to it cause fairly regular disaster isn't exactly a good idea, either.

... also probably worth noting that most proponents of socialism et al are also against the expressions of excess and misuse related to their ideology. If they're not allowed to discard the nasty bits of their ideology you certainly don't get to discard yours, heh.

[Reelya]

... also probably worth noting that most proponents of socialism et al are also against the expressions of excess and misuse related to their ideology. If they're not allowed to discard the nasty bits of their ideology you certainly don't get to discard yours, heh.

Yeah, 'proper' socialists believe in worker's control of the factories / production. Basically bottom-up organization. That is: specifically, the people in the factory own the factory, run the factory, vote on what happens there, and do not owe "rent" to any landlord, boss, king or country. That is the basic "holy grail" idea. In marx's terminology that was what the basic unit of the "commune" was meant to be. if someone from outside the factory is imposing their will on you, then it defeats the very core of this idea.

Early socialists were e.g. dead against the concept of taxation, because it was viewed that taking taxes was just replacing a private exploiter with a government one. In Marx's time the socialists only grudglingly acceded that some amount of taxation would in fact be needed to pay for roads and similar shared infrastructure.

But in such a system, the market would be alive and well. If each factory is effectively democratic and autonomous, then each one will seek to maximize their share of total resources, meaning there will still be a push and shove over prices and value of exchange. Any time you have autonomous groups exchanging resources, you're going to have optimization processes going on. If you're agreeing on how many loaves of bread are worth one pair of shoes from your shoe factory, then a more efficient shoe factory will undercut you to expand their access to resources. This can totally happen, even if there are no such thing as bosses and owners, or formal markets.

It's a myth that in pure Marxism there will be no personal incentives. Basically they deliberately conflate two different ideas: the soviet-style idea of uniformity, with the marxist idea of worker's owning and running factories. In fact, those two ideas are a world apart. In a standard theory Marxist factory, each factory would have 100% of it's profits share among the employees, so paychecks will in fact be more sensitive to productivity, not less. Basically, corporations fear worker controlled ventures taking off so they conflate the idea of worker control (which boosts incentives) with state control / standardized wages (which lowers incentives). In fact, anywhere that standardizes wages will lose incentives, it won't matter if your commie or capitalist. Only an idiot busts a gut for minimum wage.

[Frumple]

... and today I learn that wanting to be able to eat on the paycheck you make makes you an idiot. Oy.

[Reelya]

My point was that working harder than the minimum when you're only being paid the minimum makes you an idiot. Is the boss going to reward you for working your colleagues out of a job? Or is he going to pocket the profits?

You've seen those videos on how easy it is to trick people with social conditioning? If one person works really hard for minimum wage the boss could exploit that to create a situation in which your level of effort is now the group norm for earning that wage. This is the reason working too hard is actually a hostile act to your co-workers. If everyone pushes an extra 10% then the boss will sack the slowest 10% of your co-workers, and now 110% is the new minimum acceptable effort.

[Helgoland]

"Social democracy" is a good enough term for the purposes. It's actually far closer to what Marx wanted than any dictatorship.

Citation needed, badly. Not only do Social Democrats not believe in the Revolution, not only are they the nemesis of the Communists - look up 'social fascism' if you're not familiar with the term -, no, they do not even pursue the goals of collectivization of the means of production and abolishment of a Capitalist, market-dominated economy!

"Post-automation society" could be another useful term, because you can use that to describe Marx's post-capitalist phase in a way that people are going to get. e.g. you can say that "in a post-automation society we're going to have to rethink how we allocate resources in a way that's fair to everyone in society, since wages for labor will be an obsolete idea".

This boils down what Marx said, but without much fear of being misunderstood as wanting to create some sort of retro worker's state.

Heh, MSH slapped me down a couple days ago for claiming precisely that.

[Amperzand]

Boy, this looks like an interesting ramble of a thread.

[Reelya]

"Social democracy" is a good enough term for the purposes. It's actually far closer to what Marx wanted than any dictatorship.

Citation needed, badly. Not only do Social Democrats not believe in the Revolution, not only are they the nemesis of the Communists - look up 'social fascism' if you're not familiar with the term -, no, they do not even pursue the goals of collectivization of the means of production and abolishment of a Capitalist, market-dominated economy!

Those arguments don't make a lick of sense.

Marx's revolution is one in the sense of "industrial revolution".

https://socialistworker.org/2010/10/14/marxs-theory-of-revolution

As Marx continued:

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or (and this is simply a legal expression of the same thing), with the property relations within which they have operated up to that time. These relations change from forms of development of the productive forces into their fetters. There then begins an epoch of social revolution.

This is Marx talking about previous shifts in social means of production. They're all revolutions too. "Revolution" in Marx's writing is in the sense of "industrial revolution" not "french revolution". What Marx is arguing here is that eventually the economic relations of capitalism will become strained as the means of production develops. Then there will be shifts in the sociopolitical order as the power of various groups in society changes.

For an example of "the material productive forces of society" coming into conflict with "the property relations within which they have operated up to that time" look at music piracy. The productive forces of society dictate that you can get any song for free, whereas the property relations within which they have operated up to that time don't like the new reality. Hence, you have social conflict over music sharing. Then, gradually a new order arises in which you can legally buy any song for a few cents. This is what a social revolution in the means of production actually looks like. People committing crimes because the laws don't make economic sense any more, then gradually what was unthinkable becomes the norm.

At the heart of Marxism is the understanding that history's Great Men--its Great Villains, too--and their Great Ideas are the product of the material conditions and social relationships that shape people's lives, not the other way around. Marx called his approach "the materialist conception of history"--"materialist" because it starts with concrete material conditions rather than ideas, "history" because it recognizes that those conditions and the social relationships that spring from them change.

Marx argued that the material development of society by necessity causes it to develop through stages and it is this that is what drives history, not big events or famous people. Which is actually counter to the idea of needing a special "revolution" in the sense of a special one-off event. The idea of a "big event" (the revolution) that changes history is actually completely at odds with Marx's "materialist conception of history", which states that it is economic relations, not events and dates that drives history.

Remember that when Marx was writing, kings, emperor and industry barons had all the power and most people couldn't even vote. Marx argued that as capitalism developed, the economic power of the working class would rise and they would gain political power. That is the stage he called "Socialism". And it's exactly what we see today, you have universal right to vote and you have near-universal welfare systems. Compare that to the time Marx was alive and Marx's predictions about working-class power.

Marx's final stage, communism, he said that in that stage, the level of productivity would rise so far as to make wage labor obsolete, which is the thing we're all talking about these days, how to provide for people when there are no job, so we'll implement universal income. Universal income free from labor is Marxist communism.

[Helgoland]

I am indeed familiar with Marx' use of dialectics - I personally wouldn't use the word 'revolution' in this context, though I guess it's possible. You do yo. But, pray tell, how do you think did Marx envision the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' coming to power if not through a revolution in the classical sense?

One of the key criticisms of Marx' thought was his insistence on revolution, as prescribed by the step-by-step structure of dialectics, and opposition to reformist thinking à la Social Democracy. Sweeping concepts like the class struggle* under the rug merely to make socialist lingo admissible in polite society is a great injustice to a great thinker.


*Klassenkampf sounds so much better.

[Reelya]

Basically because Marx was talking about class dominance, not political dominance of the state. Especially since Marx contended that the concept of nation states would be eroded. Since Marx was talking about the collapse of the concept of the state as we know it, the idea of a group gaining dominance through usurping the state mechanisms isn't in line with Marx's theories.

Because Marx's whole point was that economic dominance EQUALS political dominance. So when he talks about the rise of the proletariat he's talking about them rising to be the dominant social class, as it was when the bourgeoisie rose to dominance over the feudal lords.

But Marx is talking about whole classes being in dictatorship, not representatives. What does it mean for the entire mass of common men to be the dictators? It means for the masses to have control of who is elected to politics, i.e. democracy. Marx and Engels pointed at a concrete example of what they meant:

Both Marx and Engels argued that the short-lived Paris Commune, which ran the French capital for over two months before being repressed, was an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune#Administration_and_actions

The main element there is that the commune government is made up of elected delegates, and the workers who they represent have the power of recall at any time, if the delegates act in ways that don't conform to the wishes of their electorate. So the workers are the dictators in the sense that they dictate who is in power via voting rights.

[Helgoland]

And you really think that modern democracy is all about the proletariat imposing its will on the subjugated bourgeoisie, collectivizing the means of production in the process?

You must live in a democracy that is very different from the one I am accustomed to.

[Frumple]

I guess if you squint real hard you could sorta' make the argument? It's just that said subjugated bunch have figured out how to largely dictate what that will is despite being dependent on ground level workers for their own lifestyles, and the collectivization is managed through largely capitalist methodology. As desired by the workers. Also parts of the proletariat hates both other parts and/or themselves, so conditions for said proles are not exactly consistent.

[feelotraveller]

Not sure we should consider Marx the be all end all (Great Man or not  ).

The World is much more Hot than he could have anticipated.  I mean this is two senses: that of Marshall McLuhan where a Hot Media/Medium is one that allows little participation (democracy=vote once every four years, or whatever) and that of Global Warming - a material condition not mentioned, as far as I am aware, by Marx.  Really we need a Cool Revolution.

Peace out Peoples. 

[Reelya]

I'm not saying that, I'm saying we shouldn't characterize his arguments as something they're not. No need to assume he meant an actual dictatorship according to 20th century usage of the word, when he in fact pointed at the Paris Commune as a real example of what he actually meant by "Dictatorship of the Proletariat". If he meant some sort of proto-fascism, he would have had examples in the 19th century of that, which he could point at instead.

But whether or not Marx was right about which specific direction society is heading, his Historical Materialism argument is in fact rock solid. Economic power is political power, but on the level of groups of people with similar economic interests.

Marx was still correct in a "hot" world, as in the current world, large-scale corporations control the economy. And they have the political power, which is entirely in line with Marx.
I'm not sure where global warming contradicts Marx however, it would seem to be utterly tangential.

Marx said a few things, one of which was that large-scale organization would push out "cottage industry" types, which is what we're seeing. When you have a company with 100,000+ employees, it's definitely a collective of some type, it's not driven by personal will any more. Marx's basic thrust is that things are moving from the individual to the collective level of organization. And I'd contend that this is not necessarily false. When a company has 100000+ employees, you can claim the CEO is "in charge" but in fact the collective pressure from those 100000 people does actually heavily constrain what types of actions the CEO can take.

[Teneb]

As usual, you may need to run these past a translator.

First things firts: the president of Paraguay claims he won't be running in 2018 to be re-elected, which is significant since his initial intent to do so was what caused the whole shitstorm.

Now, everyone's favorite: Venezuela. Yesterday (18/April), Maduro announced a "Plan Zamora" which is supposed to stop a, his words, coup d'état. Furthermore, it seems that a massive protest will happen today in Caracas. The plan's activation also happened on the same day the congress asked the armed forces to cease oppression of opposition protests. Further, Maduro claims that a member of a "military conspiracy" was detained. Apparently Maduro also handed guns this week to pro-government citizen militias.

Sources:
Portuguese: G1 #1, G1 #2
English: The Guardian, BBC
Spanish: El País #1, El País #2, El País #3, El País #4, El País #5

EDIT:

Colombia plans to complain to the UN that Venezuela is getting too militarized.

[Reelya]

Whatever the internal problems, Colombia's military vastly dwarf Venezuela's.

http://nacla.org/blog/2011/10/3/colombias-military-expenditure-and-its-impact

25% of their entire budget in Colombia is on the military.

Between 2002 and 2010 Colombia spent $100 billion on defense. That is an average of $12.5 billion per year. For 2011 the amount is about $11 billion. These investments in the war machine made Colombia’s army among the largest in Latin America, on par with Brazil, and among the 15th largest in the world. Colombia's armed forces including the country's 160,000 police amounted to 463,149 personnel.

Seriously Brazil's military is frikkin huge, and Colombia, a much smaller nation has ramped up spending to match them. But no articles talks about Colombia or Brazil causing an arms race, even though those are the two big players in the region.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/venezuela/budget.htm

Venezuela slashed its defense budget by 34 percent in 2014, marking the largest decline in military spending in all of Latin America. But the dramatic cut in a country with a history of military coups did not generate audible grumbles because the top brass are bought into the socialist country’s system. Venezuela’s military spending is “erratic”, reflecting major hardware purchases. It fell under the $2.6 billion mark in 2010 and 2011, but bounced back to $4 billion in 2012 and 2013, before making a big drop in 2014.

Venezuela’s military spending was among the lowest in South America. Despite claims to the contrary, Venezuela’s military spending is not unusually high.

Lest I be accused of cherry picking, this was the top google hit for "venezuela defense spending" and the first one was the top google hit for "colombia military spending". The wording changed by accident, but I don't think switching the terms would give a different search result. Basically there aren't any reputable sources saying Venezuela is the one leading an arms race, it all comes from partisan editorials without any documentary evidence. Or on a percentage basis:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/military-expenditure-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html
Venezuela: military = 1.1% GDP
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/colombia/military-expenditure-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html
Colombia: military = 3.4% GDP
click "max" years to see the longterm trends. Venezuela has clearly trended downwards in mil% over the last few decades, Colombia has clearly trended upwards.

An in raw dollar terms, Colombia is around $11.5 billion per year, Venezeula is $3.6 billion.
http://militarybudget.org/venezuela/
http://militarybudget.org/colombia/

It's sort of the fact that it's Colombia that they're citing here as the "concerned neighbor" that Venezuela is becoming "too militarized" when in fact Colombia is by far and large the arms race leader, have goaded Venezuela fairly constantly over the years, and Venezuela has fairly steadily reduced its military spending over the last two decades. Also given the whole reputation of the Colombian army & their paramilitary allies in Colombia just since year 2000, it's a bit rich to cite them as a reputable uninvolved party.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/number-of-colombian-victi_b_6213352.html

A tragic milestone went virtually unreported in the English-speaking press last week, as Colombia’s Victims Unit released its report indicating that the number of victims of Colombia’s civil war has now surpassed 7 million. This number includes those who have been killed, disappeared or displaced since 1956. For a country of under 50 million citizens, these numbers are staggering, and certainly newsworthy, but apparently not for our mainstream media.

Of course, the violence and human rights abuses in Colombia have constituted inconvenient truths for the Western media as the U.S. has been a major sponsor of the violence and abuses in that country.

Indeed, a notable fact in the Victims Unit report is that “that the majority of victimization occurred after 2000, peaking in 2002 at 744,799 victims.” It is not coincidental that “Plan Colombia,” or “Plan Washington” as many Colombians have called it, was inaugurated by President Bill Clinton in 2000, thus escalating the conflict to new heights and new levels of barbarity. Plan Colombia is the plan pursuant to which the U.S. has given Colombia over $8 billion of mostly military and police assistance.

Let's break this down, 3.5 million+ Colombians killed, disappeared or displaced since 2000. Santos took over in 2002 as defense minister. He oversaw basically half the deaths of the entire 60+ years of civil strife. And some sources cite that about 85% of killings in the war are attributable to government-side militias.

Meanwhile, the Bolivarian National Militia in Venezuela, how many people are they accused of killing? If they were accused of any deaths or human rights abuses, you can be sure they would have been mentioned in the article you linked, Teneb.

In other words, they don't seem to have even a single death they can pin on the Bolivarian National Militia, to hype the current story up, instead they're talking to the head mass-murder-enabler from Colombia who oversaw the deaths at pro-government hands of something on the order of several million, who also oversaw the biggest arms buildup in latin america, about how he's so-fucking-concerned about the citizens of Venezuela because they're going to recruit more militia there.

It's like being concerned about an increase in British Home Guard militia, and asking Heinrich Himmler for his opinion.