Fascism Comes To Spain: This Time, We're Serious

[JollyRoger]

The courts are far too expensive and too time-consuming for ordinary people to take advantage of anyway. They exist to protect the privileged.

The why do the more powerful try to keep the ordinary out of court through arbitration clauses?

 

[civver_764]

Very touching. Let's all just sit around and sing Kumbayah.

Way better to do that than to attempt to understand how the world actually works. BTW, human civilization has indeed experimented with your little fantasy. I just gave Bill one example. It simply doesn't work. Defies both human nature and, more importantly, the laws of economics. Without property - and the price system which follows from it - there is no way to decide how to allocate resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_Catalonia

Let's say your hypothetical society has a billion tons of iron. Resources are scarce, after all. Let's say that I want to use some for my car, you want some for a plumbing pipe and so on. In the end, we discover that there are demands from three million people summing up to two billion tons of the stuff. Unfortunately, as I said, there's only a billions tons.

So how do we decide which purpose to put it to?

Incidentally, socialism has no answer to this question either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

 

[Abegweit]

The only physical limitation to how much iron we can use is, ultimately, the amount of iron in the Solar system, and humanity will not come close to that amount anytime in the near future.

Ah. The solution is to build spaceships. That'll work.

If more iron is needed than is produced, the solution in either a capitalist or socialist society would be to expand iron extraction.

Why the passive voice? Who decides whether more iron is needed? How much is enough? Socialism simply cannot answer these questions. Not even in the statist version can.

The only difference is how they ration limited resources in the meantime, where capitalism rations in order of greatest class and socialism by greatest need.

More Kumbayah. It's so sweet to hear it sung.

 

[Abegweit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_Catalonia

I was waiting for someone to bring this up. Not disappointed. Read your own damn link. It starts out with a section entitled "Anarchists enter government". Now there's a contradiction in terms. In truth, it was rapidly turning into garden variety communism even before the fascists smashed it. In a way, it would have been interesting to see the outcome, not that there's any doubt what would have happened. Good for the people of Catalonia, I suppose. Fascism has plenty of faults but it's far better than communism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

LOL. Just about the worst way imaginable to allocate resources. See, one thing about voting is that it is free. Costs nothing and you can do it over and over again. Resources, in contrast, cost real stuff. They take time and energy to extract and I'll be damned if I'm going to work to get them if they can just be voted away from me.

 

[Bill3000]

Why the passive voice?

Hi!

I suggest you stop posting now, as you just proved your aphasia in the English language. "The solution would be to expand iron" is not in the passive voice - the verbal part of the verb phrase is simply a modal verb, followed by the copula - the combination which ("would be") becomes one of the conditional forms - followed by an infinitive verb. The passive voice is a construct which promotes the agent of a transitive verb to the subject. It is constructed with the copula and the past participle of a verb - there is no past participle in the main verb ("expand") in that sentence. It has nothing to do with shifting or removing blame from something. Your posts are now intellectually irrelevant.

 

[generalstaff]

LOL. Just about the worst way imaginable to allocate resources. See, one thing about voting is that it is free. Costs nothing and you can do it over and over again. Resources, in contrast, cost real stuff. They take time and energy to extract and I'll be damned if I'm going to work to get them if they can just be voted away from me.

I have to agree, the whole California Proposition system being a great example. Voters vote for bonds to be sold to fund some project of limited benefit, then get mad when their state senator votes to raise taxes. Don't even get me started that voters voted in two contradictory Propositions: One requires a 2/3 majority to raise fees (already a 2/3 majority to raise taxes) and the second changes the budget requirement from 2/3 majority to a simple majority, while leaving the 2/3 majority required for tax increases in place.

 

[civver_764]

I was waiting for someone to bring this up. Not disappointed. Read your own damn link. It starts out with a section entitled "Anarchists enter government". Now there's a contradiction in terms.

Uhm, no.

In truth, it was rapidly turning into garden variety communism even before the fascists smashed it. In a way, it would have been interesting to see the outcome, not that there's any doubt what would have happened. Good for the people of Catalonia, I suppose. Fascism has plenty of faults but it's far better than communism.

Really because:

Much of Spain's economy was put under direct worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%, but lower in areas with heavy Socialist influence. Factories were run through worker committees, agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian communes. Even places like hotels, barber shops, and restaurants were collectivized and managed by their workers. George Orwell describes a scene in Aragon during this time period, in his book, Homage to Catalonia:[15]

I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life– snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.– had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.

The communes were run according to the basic principle of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", without any Marxist dogma attached. In some places, money was entirely eliminated. Despite the critics clamoring for maximum efficiency, anarchic communes often produced more than before the collectivization. The newly liberated zones worked on entirely egalitarian principles; decisions were made through councils of ordinary citizens without any sort of bureaucracy. It is generally held that the CNT-FAI leadership was at this time not nearly as radical as the rank and file members responsible for these sweeping changes.

In addition to the economic revolution, there was a spirit of cultural revolution. For instance, women were allowed to have abortions, and the idea of free love became popular. In many ways, this spirit of cultural liberation was similar to that of the "New Left" movements of the 1960s.

Sounds a hell of a lot better than fascism.

They take time and energy to extract and I'll be damned if I'm going to work to get them if they can just be voted away from me.

Funny, because that's exactly what capitalists do. Except they don't even vote on it.

You don't know what workplace democracy is obviously, but there are plenty examples of it working, even in the constraints of a capitalistic society.

 

[Virote_Considon]

Very touching. Let's all just sit around and sing Kumbayah.

Indeed.

Way better to do that than to attempt to understand how the world actually works. BTW, human civilization has indeed experimented with your little fantasy.

It isn't my fantasy. I don't want it. I just recognize that its a possibility. I recognize that human civilization has not experimented with many forms of distinct society. And I also recognize that out there, untouched, undiscovered and untheorized, there could be plenty of forms of society better than what we currently have. There also could not be any better than what we've got, too (so I guess a better society is a bit of a Schroedinger's Theory, for now).

I just gave Bill one example. It simply doesn't work. Defies both human nature and, more importantly, the laws of economics.

Except no, it doesn't. There was a time - a mystical time - before property rights. Hell, there are still some tribal societies out there now, who do not adhere to the idea of property rights. And they function.

Without property - and the price system which follows from it - there is no way to decide how to allocate resources.

Resources were allocated long before the concept of property and long before the concept of a price system. Property isn't inherent to resource allocation. Such things were mere concepts formed by human society, and thus by their very nature aren't necessary.

Let's say your hypothetical society has a billion tons of iron. Resources are scarce, after all. Let's say that I want to use some for my car, you want some for a plumbing pipe and so on. In the end, we discover that there are demands from three million people summing up to two billion tons of the stuff. Unfortunately, as I said, there's only a billions tons.

So how do we decide which purpose to put it to?

-Whoever gets there first gets the iron.
-The strongest person gets the iron.
-Sooth sayers allocate the resources based on readings from tea leaves.
-Each person gets a folded up piece of paper, 3 billion pieces of paper in total. 1 billion of these pieces of paper have an X on them. The other two billion have nothing. The ones with the X get one ton of iron each.
-The iron gets equally divided up and one "portion" is given to every geographic locale
-All the iron gets divided equally among people born on the first of January 1994
-A committee evaluates everyone's actual need for iron, and dishes it out to only those who really need it. If this causes problems, then only to the people who really really need it. If this causes problems, keep adding "really"s until it is no longer a problem
-The iron only gets handed out to people who live on the coast
-Each of the 3 billion people must go on a mass obstacle course. The first 1 billion of these people to complete it will get 1 ton each.
-As many of the people who need iron will be drafted into the army as is needed to reduce this demand
-Iron for some, other metals for others.
-A new decree stating only those of the upper echelons of society are allowed access to iron.

These are just some ways off the top of my head resources can be allocated without requiring a price system. They may not be effective ways, but they are proof nonetheless that the current system isn't the only possible unchangeable concrete way things can work.

Incidentally, socialism has no answer to this question either.

Never claimed it did. But socialism has, to some extent, been tried before, one of the few things which has. And thus this part of your statement agrees with my point.

 

[Abegweit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_Catalonia

The Anarcho-Statists of Spain is an excellent article by Byran Caplan on the reality of anarchist Spain. The mass murders are depressing to read about, but all too typical of what happens when fanatics possessed of nonsense theories about human governance take power. Unlike the commies and fascists, this brand of scum has gotten a pass for their evil deeds for far too long.

On the specific question of the absurdity of anarcho-socialist economics, Caplan excerpts the article and comments on it in this blog post: How the Economy of Anarchist Spain Really Worked. BTW, Caplan is himself an anarchist - a real one, that is - not some pie-in-sky believer in the oxymoron called libertarian socialism.

In brief, to the extent that Spain was truly anarchist, it was capitalist. And to the extent that it was socialist, it was statist.

 

[Abegweit]

Indeed.There was a time - a mystical time - before property rights. Hell, there are still some tribal societies out there now, who do not adhere to the idea of property rights. And they function.

No there wasn't. They didn't exist then and they don't exist now. Such societies have never existed. You can't come up with a single example because such a society is an impossibility.

These are just some ways off the top of my head resources can be allocated without requiring a price system. They may not be effective ways, but they are proof nonetheless that the current system isn't the only possible unchangeable concrete way things can work.

You certainly are right about them not being effective. The only way to allocate resources on a large scale is through the price system. There are other ways, even some which are equitable, that can be used in small groups. Primitive societies, for example, typically run on the principles of reciprocal exchange within the group and barter without (note that both methods are based on property rights). Some, however, did develop price systems. The north east US Indian wampum is one example.

But socialism has, to some extent, been tried before, one of the few things which has. And thus this part of your statement agrees with my point.

Any time they attempted to abolish the price system, the country was immediately and irrevocably seized by chaos. Lenin's War Communism and Pol Pot's mad schemes are a couple of examples.

Furthermore, the extent to which socialism - and all forms of statism for that matter - has worked is directly related to the extent to which it respects private property. In Soviet Russia, for example, a third of the agricultural production came from the tiny plots that peasants on the collective farms were allowed to own.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Thank you, Abegweit, for providing us with a prime example of why Teahadists and the "libertarian" far Right are out and out completely insane.

I highly encourage civver, TF, and the rest to ignore this person completely, lest we feed the trolls.

 

[Abegweit]

Homage to Catalonia

I had never heard of this book. Fascinating that you should quote someone who became completely disillusioned by socialism in the forties. Do you suppose that his experiences in Catalonia might have something to do with this?
From the wiki article on the book:

On 26 April 1937 when Orwell and his ILP comrades had returned to Barcelona on their leave they had been shocked to see how things had changed. The revolutionary atmosphere of four months earlier had all but evaporated, and old class divisions been reasserted. Similarly, as he had headed for the French border on the train to Port Bou Orwell noticed another symptom of the change since his arrival—the train on which classes had been abolished now had both first-class compartments and a dining car. "Orwell mused that coming into Spain the previous year, bourgeois-looking people would be turned back at the border by Anarchist guards; now looking bourgeois gave one easy passage."

Yep. Exactly what I said earlier. It was inevitable. Four months was all it took.

 

[Abegweit]

Thank you, Abegweit, for providing us with a prime example of why Teahadists and the "libertarian" far Right are out and out completely insane.

I highly encourage civver, TF, and the rest to ignore this person completely, lest we feed the trolls.

It didn't take you long to stick your fingers in your are start going NAH-NAH-NAH, did it?

It's always fun to watch a statist's mind explode when confronted with truth. Thank you for yet another example.

 

[kosiosko 1]

Any time they attempted to abolish the price system, the country was immediately and irrevocably seized by chaos. Lenin's War Communism and Pol Pot's mad schemes are a couple of examples.

Furthermore, the extent to which socialism - and all forms of statism for that matter - has worked is directly related to the extent to which it respects private property. In Soviet Russia, for example, a third of the agricultural production came from the tiny plots that peasants on the collective farms were allowed to own.

yet for most of my life(by 1 year) Australia has set prices for petrol,milk bread, health insurance,transport, eggs, even our exports of grain was done by a govt. agency that set the price for all growers , same with wool, our largest farming industries and mining projects are usually leased from the govt. on crown land and actually owned by the commonwealth of Australia... the govt. sets the price of health care/ drug prices under its UHC, by deciding rebates. heck even University was once free

the idea that there is only one idea of "price system"/"stat-ism" is a very narrow one

 

[JollyRoger]

Women are a scarce resource. Should be allocating them based on price?

 

[Abegweit]

Hi!

I suggest you stop posting now, as you just proved your aphasia in the English language. "The solution would be to expand iron" is not in the passive voice - the verbal part of the verb phrase is simply a modal verb, followed by the copula - the combination which ("would be") becomes one of the conditional forms - followed by an infinitive verb. The passive voice is a construct which promotes the agent of a transitive verb to the subject. It is constructed with the copula and the past participle of a verb - there is no past participle in the main verb ("expand") in that sentence. It has nothing to do with shifting or removing blame from something. Your posts are now intellectually irrelevant.

The full sentence is I was responding to is: "If more iron is needed than is produced, the solution would be to expand iron". Why did you cut off the first part of it? That is the part which is in the passive voice. More to point, neither clause has an actor.Who decides is more is needed? Who decides to produce more?

Socialists can never answer this question. There's just a vague waving of hands around the notion that somehow the correct decision will get made.

As for your response, instead of trying to answer my question, you chose to play grammar Nazi - and quite honestly you're not very good one at that either!

Your method of sticking your fingers in your ears involves bigger words than Cheezy's but the effect is pretty much the same - find any excuse to refuse to listen. I honestly have no clue what all this nonsense about copulas and participles might mean. I am not a grammarian and I have no interest whatsoever in becoming one. It has to be just about the most boring and irrelevant thing in the universe.

 

[Abegweit]

yet for most of my life(by 1 year) Australia has set prices for petrol,milk bread, health insurance,transport, eggs, even our exports of grain was done by a govt. agency that set the price for all growers , same with wool, our largest farming industries and mining projects are usually leased from the govt. on crown land and actually owned by the commonwealth of Australia... the govt. sets the price of health care/ drug prices under its UHC, by deciding rebates. heck even University was once free

the idea that there is only one idea of "price system"/"stat-ism" is a very narrow one

Oh, the state certainly interferes in the price system on a massive scale just like it interferes in many other parts of the market. The purpose invariably is benefit one group at the expense of the people as a whole. My purpose was not to deny such interference but to prove that the price system is essential to an economy. The loons who claim that you can simply wish stuff into existence have absolutely no clue. Furthermore, the state can't interfere too much. If they set the price of eggs too high no one will buy.

Such interference always leads to one of three possible outcomes. One is edicts limiting the amount of product that can be produced, which is how the marketing boards work in Canada. The effect is to artificially raise the price of eggs, thereby stealing from consumers to benefit producers. The other alternatives are shortages, like what happened when gas prices where fixed back in the seventies, and massive oversupply, like the EU lake of wine.

As for the idea that University was free, that's just nonsense. Someone quite obviously paid for it. Guess who.

 

[Abegweit]

Women are a scarce resource. Should be allocating them based on price?

Isn't that exactly how they are allocated right now?

 

[JollyRoger]

Isn't that exactly how they are allocated right now?

At what price are you willing to sell or rent yours?

 

[Abegweit]

At what price are you willing to sell or rent yours?

Too late. She's already been allocated.