Has the left been right all the time?!

[Hygro]

ew macrohistory

I prefer to deal with facts, thank you

Sometimes a big picture capture tells a more accurate story than one distracted by mini-narratives.

 

[Dachs]

Sometimes a big picture capture tells a more accurate story than one distracted by mini-narratives.

More accurate to what? If something doesn't match the facts, it's definitionally inaccurate.

Not that I am arguing that analysis is impossible, trends are nonexistent, and the big picture is a fairy tale - all of which seem antithetical to the concept of history - but it's pointless to construct a grand narrative that doesn't actually describe what happens on the ground to real people.

 

[REDY]

Hmm in my sight the win of right wing is now most crushing, even most socialist countries turning to be more right-wing, social state is near death and the importance of financial literacy and responsibility of individual rise. The planned economy systems except North Korea have fallen already. It will be interesting if such punch will have longterm effect.
If I see problem somewhere, its ilussion of some philosophers that western democracy and its civil rights is guaranteee of prosperity (China?)

 

[Winston Hughes]

Most of those criticisms by the left are way off base; the left is correct only in that some things are going wrong in the world today, but they're completely wrong about why things go wrong. It's all about the "why".

And the author of the article agrees that, generally, the left is wrong about why things go wrong (and about how to fix them). What he's saying is that many of his fellow rightists refuse to accept that there's anything wrong at all, let alone that their own dogma is part of the problem.

The mortgage and banking crises are not failures of capitalism, they're successes of capitalism.

And there's a perfect example of it. Defend capitalism like that, and you might as well be working for the Communist Party.

How many on the right would invite economic disaster before accepting any notion that stricter regulation might be necessary? The orthodoxy says that regulation is inherently bad, and that all problems will solve themselves if regulation is removed. Thus, regardless of facts on the ground, the absence of proper regulation cannot have been a part of the problem, since that would contradict the dogma.

In the past, I've often derided leftists for their ideological inflexibility in the face of brute facts. But in recent years the American right in particular seems to have gone off the deep end, showing so blinkered an attitude that it begins to invite comparison with the most deluded Stalinists of yesteryear.

 

[Cutlass]

The mortgage and banking crises are not failures of capitalism, they're successes of capitalism.

So the self-destruction of capitalism is the success of capitalism?

 

[Ayatollah So]

"I told that you if you ran blindfolded through a forest you'd hit a tree." "Yes, but you didn't say which tree, so it doesn't count".

"Professor X has an impressive track record. He predicted 11 of the last 5 recessions." OK so that's not directly relevant. But maybe the discussion should be broadened to cover false predictions as well as true ones.

Specificity of predictions does help a hypothesis gain credence when predictions are confirmed. In Bayesian terms, the smaller P(e), the bigger P(h|e), other things being equal.

 

[Alassius]

Well, thank you for clarifying. Since the claim that deregulation did not impoverish anyone is, as you admit, obviously wrong, I did think you meant to say that you don't think it made people worse off. I'm glad to hear that my initial question was in fact quite pertinent to your point.

That said, with regards to your claim that deregulation has, on the whole, actually made people better off than before. How does that square with your later claim that deregulation was not necessarily good? Do you mean to say that things could have been even better had some regulations been retained or improved on and not eliminated with the rest?

If you have to get into semantics, you should note that I was referring to the line "[t]he unregulated markets are impoverishing the majority", and what I said was "t hardly made anyone poorer than they were before", not "it did not make a single person poorer".

The difference is, as I tried to explain, in the implications you sought by rejecting the last statement. If the statement "it hardly made anyone poorer" is false, then it is the case that "it made many people poorer", and you will have a good argument that deregulation should be reversed.

On the other hand, if the statement "it did not make a single person poorer" is false, it could be that "it made two people poorer", and rejecting the statement cannot be used to for your implications.

So your initial question was not pertinent to the point. It was a classical case of straw man, trying to prove me wrong, by refuting something that is obviously wrong while ostensibly resembling my argument.


Personally, I don't think financial deregulation had much to do with either the slight worsen off of American middle to low income classes, or the mildness in its disruption of the recent recession. They happened at the same time but that doesn't mean they have causal relations. I'm merely saying it's harder to argue that deregulation caused something that didn't happen, ie the majority being impoverished.

The deregulation caused some problems, most importantly by creating "too big to fail" banks, making it more difficult to alleviate a recession, and to weed out badly performing banks (which is the job of recessions). As for real wage's decline, I think the main reason was the switch from industrial economy to service economy, which on balance was a good thing because it made people's lives in other countries so much better. If I'm right, you won't get much improvement by just reverting deregulations.

It looks as if a few posters here have misunderstood the article in question.

Moore is very firmly on the right of the political spectrum, being a long-time advocate of free-market capitalism and conservative values. The assumptions he starts from in this article are not his own, but those of the political left, against whom he is very much opposed. He goes on to show how those assumptions find resonance in recent world events, and then proceeds to argue that, despite being wildly off-target with its core ideology, the left has some valid criticisms of how things are done in the world today. Moore's purpose is not to support the leftist worldview, but rather to point out to his fellow rightists that they need to get their own house in order, it not being an option to simply shrug off the present circumstances (or to pin blame for them on leftist policies alone).

The article itself is not very well composed - which, I suppose, is the reason for the apparent misunderstandings of it - but I agree with its general thrust. Events are drawing attention to failures that many on the right are in total denial about. And while that state of denial persists, the right will be incapable of addressing the long-term problems our societies face. I would add that, with the left similarly hamstrung by its own ideological baggage, one of the defining features of our present situation is the stagnancy and cynicism of political dialogue. To my mind, Charles Moore deserves some credit for being rather more introspective about his political beliefs than the vast majority of commentators in the British media today.

More like the misunderstanding by Rulle_Kebab in his OP! It seems you are the first one to actually read the article. I take my hat off to you sir.

The left has always been right to point out that capitalism is not perfect. That's almost a tautology - you can find flaws in everything in the real world. The right is guilty of overselling capitalism by claiming the market would fix everything on its own. It plainly doesn't. The problem is that "market doesn't fix everything" doesn't entail "the state can fix anything the market doesn't", for example recessions, or "the state can fix this thing in this particular way", for example Gordon Brown's welfare splurge did not help the relatively poor that much. Or the Stalinist "the state can do everything better than the market".

In the past, I've often derided leftists for their ideological inflexibility in the face of brute facts. But in recent years the American right in particular seems to have gone off the deep end, showing so blinkered an attitude that it begins to invite comparison with the most deluded Stalinists of yesteryear.

Better comparison would be with Marxists, who also believed that the state (and private property imposed by it) is the root of all evil, so abolishing it would magically fix everything. Stalinists by comparison only have to say what they do is genuinely good for the people; they don't have to actually believe in it, as long as they know it's good for themselves.

IBut if the fact that the decision of single risk-heavy corporations can bring down the whole economy is how "capitalism is supposed to work", it really begs the question if we want it to continue that way.

Risk heavy corporations do not "bring down" the whole economy. You have a recession, not doomsday. Your GDP drops by a couple of percentage points, not wiped out completely. You have a bust, then you have another boom which will make up more than what you lost in the bust. That is how it's supposed to work. Either you have that, or you can get stuck in a permanent bust with no booms. What's not supposed to work is a perpetual boom.

"I told that you if you ran blindfolded through a forest you'd hit a tree." "Yes, but you didn't say which tree, so it doesn't count".

More like all of us are already blind. It's not "you didn't say which tree". It's that you are stating the obvious. But we still need to get food from the forest. I tried, I hit a tree, but I also brought back apples. Now how about you go and try if you won't hit? Or are you going to say your theories are only good for analysing why people hit trees, but useless at helping people to avoid that?

They described it as a "planned economy", yes, but they never claimed to have achieved the total abandonment of market mechanisms as the Soviets did, or at least not as far as I am aware. (The UK c.1944 was only marginally less heavily state-planned, and we'd hardly call that non-capitalistic.) The only real area of total state control was in land ownership, and that's something that you'll find being advocated by plebeian Jacobins c.1800, so it's hardly something that can be located solely within the terms of "socialist" central-planning. I mean, what, you want rhetorical coherency from Maoists?

What do you mean by "total state control"? Do People's Communes count? State-owned factories? State-run department stores? The Great Leap Forward?

In early '50s most private companies from before communist victory were reorganised into public-private joint corperations, at the same time the Three-anti/Five-anti campaigns drove a good many of old capitalists into labour camps. Those that didn't were further disposed of in the Anti-Rightist movement. The few that were left was one of the explicit targets of the Cultural Revolution, said to be "cutting the tail of capitalism". In practice it meant even farmers' markets were outlawed. By the end of '70s not a shred of private economy remained. Think about it, half of the country was waging a war against the other half, to claim the kind of intellectual purity that compelled them to lie, maim, and murder. How would anyone remotely resembling a bourgeois reactionary survive?

 

[Traitorfish]

More like all of us are already blind. It's not "you didn't say which tree". It's that you are stating the obvious. But we still need to get food from the forest. I tried, I hit a tree, but I also brought back apples. Now how about you go and try if you won't hit?

I would, but unfortunately somebody has surrounded every fruit-bearing tree with bear-traps. What's a commie to do?

What do you mean by "total state control"? Do People's Communes count? State-owned factories? State-run department stores? The Great Leap Forward?

I mean comprehensive economic planning, which has really was never the case anywhere outside of the minds of ideologues (both East and West), for the simple reason that it's not a feasible model of production, even if it were one that the Soviet, Chinese, etc. ruling classes really had any interest in pursuing. It's better described as "central administration", and even then, represents a form of organisation rather than a fundamental economic system.

In early '50s most private companies from before communist victory were reorganised into public-private joint corperations, at the same time the Three-anti/Five-anti campaigns drove a good many of old capitalists into labour camps. Those that didn't were further disposed of in the Anti-Rightist movement. The few that were left was one of the explicit targets of the Cultural Revolution, said to be "cutting the tail of capitalism". In practice it meant even farmers' markets were outlawed. By the end of '70s not a shred of private economy remained. Think about it, half of the country was waging a war against the other half, to claim the kind of intellectual purity that compelled them to lie, maim, and murder. How would anyone remotely resembling a bourgeois reactionary survive?

A non-comprehensively planned economy does not have to be private.

 

[aelf]

If you have to get into semantics, you should note that I was referring to the line "[t]he unregulated markets are impoverishing the majority", and what I said was "t hardly made anyone poorer than they were before", not "it did not make a single person poorer".

If you want to get into semantics "t hardly made anyone poorer than they were before" is not exactly a precise statement and can be taken to mean "it did not make a single person poorer".

The difference is, as I tried to explain, in the implications you sought by rejecting the last statement. If the statement "it hardly made anyone poorer" is false, then it is the case that "it made many people poorer", and you will have a good argument that deregulation should be reversed.

On the other hand, if the statement "it did not make a single person poorer" is false, it could be that "it made two people poorer", and rejecting the statement cannot be used to for your implications.

Wait, are you seriously claiming that "it did not make a single person poorer" could really mean "it made two people poorer"? When has the English language worked that way? In any case, I don't see what this has to do with the claims that you actually made.

So your initial question was not pertinent to the point. It was a classical case of straw man, trying to prove me wrong, by refuting something that is obviously wrong while ostensibly resembling my argument.

Maybe it would have helped if you had worded your claim in a more precise manner? Despite the accusations that I interpreted your claim in a deliberately uncharitable way, I actually did not believe that you were honestly making the obviously wrong claim that "Nobody has been impoverished [by deregulation]". Instead I reinterpreted it in more general terms as the less egregiously wrong "people aren't/weren't made worse off as a result of the economic crisis". For that I got a page or so worth of rebuke.

If you want to make the pretense of having logical clarity, then the least you can do is to avoid making ambiguous statements. It's rich to accuse me of constructing a strawman when your initial statement is apparently in itself cartoonishly false.

 

[Alassius]

I would, but unfortunately somebody has surrounded every fruit-bearing tree with bear-traps. What's a commie to do?

No. Nobody is laying down bear traps. Today's world is much more friendly towards leftist ideas of equality. It's just the radicals, either the anarchist or the authoritarian type, that are rejected. You got rejected because your predecessors did try, but they failed. Now you simply say you don't know how to avoid hitting trees.

I mean comprehensive economic planning, which has really was never the case anywhere outside of the minds of ideologues (both East and West), for the simple reason that it's not a feasible model of production, even if it were one that the Soviet, Chinese, etc. ruling classes really had any interest in pursuing. It's better described as "central administration", and even then, represents a form of organisation rather than a fundamental economic system.

A non-comprehensively planned economy does not have to be private.

How is this "central administration" different from "planning"? How is the "form of organisation" not "a fundamental economic system"? It certainly doesn't share any features with a market economy. By mid '80s, before market reforms touched the inner lands, everyone in cities and towns worked for the same employer, and were paid according to grades set by Beijing. Even what you can buy was planned. A major part of the wage were different coupons for grain, meat, cooking oil, cloths, bicycles, even stools and matchsticks, most of which you couldn't buy with money. In the countryside, all foodstuff were bought and sold by the state. Communes were supposed to be autonomous but in reality commune managers had tasks given by superiors. How do you think the Great Leap Forward happened? Similarly, factories did not individually decide what to produce, nor did they decide who they sell to. All of that came from five-year plans and whoever got to interpret them.

You are confusing "not feasible" with "couldn't be tried" or "hadn't been tried". Planned economy was tried. it was abandoned because it wasn't feasible.

Wait, are you seriously claiming that "it did not make a single person poorer" could really mean "it made two people poorer"? When has the English language worked that way? In any case, I don't see what this has to do with the claims that you actually made.

Try read what I said again

Maybe it would have helped if you had worded your claim in a more precise manner? Despite the accusations that I interpreted your claim in a deliberately uncharitable way, I actually did not believe that you were honestly making the obviously wrong claim that "Nobody has been impoverished [by deregulation]". Instead I reinterpreted it in more general terms as the less egregiously wrong "people aren't/weren't made worse off as a result of the economic crisis". For that I got a page or so worth of rebuke.

If you want to make the pretense of having logical clarity, then the least you can do is to avoid making ambiguous statements. It's rich to accuse me of constructing a strawman when your initial statement is apparently in itself cartoonishly false.

I'll give you the benefit of doubt. You said you "find the claim that deregulation did not impoverish anyone so absurd". Did you find the claim "nobody has been impoverished" absurd, or did you find the claim "so few people were impoverished, that we should not let it override the benefits" absurd?

 

[Traitorfish]

No. Nobody is laying down bear traps. Today's world is much more friendly towards leftist ideas of equality.

When workers can appropriate a workplace without any fear of state reprisal, then I shall consider the bear-traps removed.

It's just the radicals, either the anarchist or the authoritarian type, that are rejected. You got rejected because your predecessors did try, but they failed. Now you simply say you don't know how to avoid hitting trees.

Yeah, now you're just clambering back on your soap-box. Don't bother.

How is this "central administration" different from "planning"? How is the "form of organisation" not "a fundamental economic system"? It certainly doesn't share any features with a market economy. By mid '80s, before market reforms touched the inner lands, everyone in cities and towns worked for the same employer, and were paid according to grades set by Beijing. Even what you can buy was planned. A major part of the wage were different coupons for grain, meat, cooking oil, cloths, bicycles, even stools and matchsticks, most of which you couldn't buy with money. In the countryside, all foodstuff were bought and sold by the state. Communes were supposed to be autonomous but in reality commune managers had tasks given by superiors. How do you think the Great Leap Forward happened? Similarly, factories did not individually decide what to produce, nor did they decide who they sell to. All of that came from five-year plans and whoever got to interpret them.

I think that we're disagreeing on what "planned" means. You seem to be using it to refer to a heavy degree of state interference, state production quotas, rationing, etc., while I'm using it to describe a state of affairs in which every exchange was state-mandated. The former was certainly the case, but I'd be reluctant to call it "planning" when such a large part of it was not, y'know, planned.

You are confusing "not feasible" with "couldn't be tried" or "hadn't been tried". Planned economy was tried. it was abandoned because it wasn't feasible.

And you're confusing "planned economy" with "economy in which they actually gave production firms advertising budgets I mean seriously what the hell is this some kind of joke". Which is really the bigger error.

(Has anyone else ever noticed that only ones with the devotion to Marxist-Leninist mythology capable of approaching that of the Marxist-Leninists themselves are their most vehement right-wing critics? It's very strange.)