The Difference Between Modern Communism & Socialism

So what you are arguing, in essence, is that capitalism- a term which was originally defined by Marx, let's remember, not by any Smith or Ricardo- does not exist, but, rather, what we have seen in the last few centuries is merely an advanced form of commerce?
Nope. What we have today is merely an advanced form of capitalism. And I'm also arguing that capitalism doesn't require money, and existed before money did.

Except that the real world doesn't work like that. The historical tendency is for capital to centralise
I know. My point is, this centralization is merely a means to an end. What end? To produce more C. The cycle always ends with C. <this just cries out for a joke involving Cookie Monster......>
 
Nope. What we have today is merely an advanced form of capitalism. And I'm also arguing that capitalism doesn't require money, and existed before money did.
But then why even call it "capitalism"? Smith put forward much the same argument as you do, and he felt no particular obligation to invent a new word for it. That was an innovation that required a conceptual distinction between capitalist and pre-capitalist social formations, which you explicitly dismiss.

I know. My point is, this centralization is merely a means to an end. What end? To produce more C. The cycle always ends with C. <this just cries out for a joke involving Cookie Monster......>
If the end was to produce more C, the capitalists would not endlessly plough their profits back into production, a process which ultimately diminishes their personal access to C. The majority of them could've taken ever penny they own and removed themselves to a lazy bliss years ago, yet they do not; why is that, if it is not because forces beyond their own whims drive them to accumulate? Greed alone, regardless of whether you view that as a positive or negative thing, simply can't account for it.
 
But then why even call it "capitalism"? Smith put forward much the same argument as you do, and he felt no particular obligation to invent a new word for it. That was an innovation that required a conceptual distinction between capitalist and pre-capitalist social formations, which you explicitly dismiss.


If the end was to produce more C, the capitalists would not endlessly plough their profits back into production, a process which ultimately diminishes their personal access to C. The majority of them could've taken ever penny they own and removed themselves to a lazy bliss years ago, yet they do not; why is that, if it is not because forces beyond their own whims drive them to accumulate? Greed alone, regardless of whether you view that as a positive or negative thing, simply can't account for it.

"One more turn.."?
 
You had a serious error in there (which I underlined).

If we were to divide the entire world's GDP evenly among all its seven billion people, each person would get $8,500 a year. Grand total. Includes room and board, food, clothing, education, health care, everything.

I've proven before how ridiculous of a red herring this whole train of thought is.

Socialism would give everybody the same low standard of living. A standard nobody can abide. Not even the poor; they don't want to get to this line, they want to get above it. Certainly they would be happy(er) once they reached this line, but they will not stop there. Everybody wants the same standard of living the developed world has. Which will never happen unless they build it for themselves.

You're missing the part where no one "builds it for themselves." The rich are rich because of the people they have employed to create wealth for them to accumulate. They got there because of the poor. Because of dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of people.

But even that only covers the nouveau riche. What about the established "old wealth?"
 
I've proven before how ridiculous of a red herring this whole train of thought is.
And I've proved that proof wrong before.

I did it like this: the poor of the Earth don't want "only" $8,500 a year. They want the following:

Now perform the calculation for a single nation, one that is not devoid of natural resources or a functional economy, like the USA. 14.12 Trillion GDP / 315 million people = $44,825.
Everybody on the planet wants $44,825 a year. Which is mathematically impossible. It will never happen.

But then why even call it "capitalism"?
Because it's capitalism.

That was an innovation that required a conceptual distinction between capitalist and pre-capitalist social formations, which you explicitly dismiss.
I put this to you: that there never was any such thing as "pre-capitalist". Before money existed, people were still taking wealth away from others and accumulating it for themselves. The same basic things that all Communists and Socialists complain about, the unequal control over the means of production and the unfair distribution of wealth, were still there.

People have always been trying to control more land and produce more stuff.

If the end was to produce more C, the capitalists would not endlessly plough their profits back into production, a process which ultimately diminishes their personal access to C. The majority of them could've taken ever penny they own and removed themselves to a lazy bliss years ago
Wrong. You're doing the black-and-white thing here. The world is gray, Jack. In the long run, the above strategy produces less C. The best way to maximize your C is to put some of your M into more M, and some of your M into C. The only real question is, how much C do you want now, and how much do you want later? Everybody does this same balancing act--but the goal is always C.

Greed alone, regardless of whether you view that as a positive or negative thing, simply can't account for it.
Why not simply ask the same question of yourself? What do you want money for? Do you just want the money?
 
And I've proved that proof wrong before.

I did it like this: the poor of the Earth don't want "only" $8,500 a year. They want the following:


Everybody on the planet wants $44,825 a year. Which is mathematically impossible. It will never happen.
Oh, lord, you're a Malthusian now? :rolleyes:

Because it's capitalism.
That's a circular answer, don't you think? :rolleyes:

I put this to you: that there never was any such thing as "pre-capitalist". Before money existed, people were still taking wealth away from others and accumulating it for themselves. The same basic things that all Communists and Socialists complain about, the unequal control over the means of production and the unfair distribution of wealth, were still there.

People have always been trying to control more land and produce more stuff.
Yes, but feudal and tributary systems of exploitation were non-commercial by nature, and based upon non-private systems of property. You can't call that capitalism, at least not unless the word is to be reduced to utter redundancy. Commerce, in that world, was an entirely secondary economic activity; significant, inarguably, but ultimately dependent upon a more fundamental form of social reproduction. Only with the emergence of capitalism does commerce become all-encompassing.

Wrong. You're doing the black-and-white thing here. The world is gray, Jack. In the long run, the above strategy produces less C. The best way to maximize your C is to put some of your M into more M, and some of your M into C. The only real question is, how much C do you want now, and how much do you want later? Everybody does this same balancing act--but the goal is always C.
And you really think that capitalist accumulation happens in a non-competitive void, or that capitalists operate independently of each other, and therefore of the threat of being out-accumulated? That would seem to be what you're suggesting.

Why not simply ask the same question of yourself? What do you want money for? Do you just want the money?
Why is that relevant? I am not a capitalist.
 
You know if you follow BasketCase's logic, you get to a very strange idea of what a successful investor looks like.
If the goal is C, Mike Tyson is a very successful investor. He got a lot of M, he converted that into C (in the form of Tigers and what not). He gets the idea of accumulating capital. A very bad investor would be Buster Douglas, who bought a large house, a yacht, a sports car, and then saved his money and put it into money making schemes, failing to acquire more C. If only he had a sounder investment strategy, like siring eight children.
 
Everybody on the planet wants $44,825 a year. Which is mathematically impossible. It will never happen.

I never said that it was possible for the entire planet, nor was that the point. :huh:
 
Fortunately, we have a thread for this subject!

Ask a Red, Second Edition.

... Sorry Cheezy, but that's why threads like that are bad. They monopolize the conversation and questions like this get lost.

You're missing the part where no one "builds it for themselves." The rich are rich because of the people they have employed to create wealth for them to accumulate. They got there because of the poor. Because of dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of people.

But even that only covers the nouveau riche. What about the established "old wealth?"

I've never understood why communists have such an affinity for homo laborans and people having built up their wealth with their own "toil and trouble." Who gives a whore's snout if some people have money that they "accumulated" because of others?
 
That's a circular answer, don't you think? :rolleyes:
Nope. It's "calling a spade a spade".

Yes, but feudal and tributary systems of exploitation were non-commercial by nature, and based upon non-private systems of property.
Disagree. It was all about private ownership.....it was the lords who owned the land (and frequently the people). If anything, it was a lot more private than today. And it all still took place in a commercial environment. There were still merchants and traders, and the same rules of economics present today were present then.

And you really think that capitalist accumulation happens in a non-competitive void, or that capitalists operate independently of each other, and therefore of the threat of being out-accumulated? That would seem to be what you're suggesting.
I say the goal of having M is to get C. Recycling M to get more M is merely a method to get even more C. That's all. Non-competitive voids and independent operations and out-accumulation are all irrelevant here.

Why is that relevant? I am not a capitalist.
Doesn't matter. People want money because they want to eat. And because they want a roof over their heads. And they want a PC with which to read CFC Off Topic. They want M in order to get C (largely in order to avoid starving to death).
 
Disagree. It was all about private ownership.....it was the lords who owned the land (and frequently the people).
You can disagree, but that doesn't actually make it true. Ownership of land was not vested into private persons prior to the modern era.
 
You can disagree, but that doesn't actually make it true. Ownership of land was not vested into private persons prior to the modern era.

What do you consider the "modern era"? Some people consider that to go as far back as the Columbus/Renaissance days.

Feudally speaking, AFAIK, all the land in a kingdom belonged to the King, who granted that land to Lords, Knights, etc. but could be taken away and given to someone else at the King's whim.
 
What do you consider the "modern era"? Some people consider that to go as far back as the Columbus/Renaissance days.
I go back to surrender and regrant.

Feudally speaking, AFAIK, all the land in a kingdom belonged to the King, who granted that land to Lords, Knights, etc. but could be taken away and given to someone else at the King's whim.
"Feudalism" was a simplifying term invented after the fact. There was not a solidified system of ownership throughout Europe.
 
I've never understood why communists have such an affinity for homo laborans and people having built up their wealth with their own "toil and trouble." Who gives a whore's snout if some people have money that they "accumulated" because of others?
Because private accumulation is an exploitative, oppression, spiritually destructive process. Is that not enough for you to find some issues with it?

Nope. It's "calling a spade a spade".
No, that would be "commerce". This is "calling a spade a confabulatory crumbulatrix".

Disagree. It was all about private ownership.....it was the lords who owned the land (and frequently the people). If anything, it was a lot more private than today.
"Feudal" (for want of a better word) and tributary forms of ownership did not constitute private ownership, and surplus value was not exploited in those forms of ownership through commodity exchange. That's very basic.

And it all still took place in a commercial environment. There were still merchants and traders...
The existence of merchants and traders did not employ capitalistic forms of production, which is to say, of generalised commodity production. These forms of commerce were economically secondary, in that they were made possible only by an agricultural surplus, rather than constituting the economy in its entirety, as under capitalism.

...and the same rules of economics present today were present then.
Then why did pre-modern economies look nothing at all like contemporary economies? Technological progress alone can't account for the difference.

I say the goal of having M is to get C. Recycling M to get more M is merely a method to get even more C. That's all. Non-competitive voids and independent operations and out-accumulation are all irrelevant here.
That's a lovely idea, I'm sure, but it doesn't actually explain the real world. Capital is accumulated and centralised at a rate and a scale far beyond that which would ever be necessary to meet an individual's demand for "C"; it is not a sufficient explanation. You can only square it off by saying that the majority of capitalists are megalomaniacs or magpies, neither of which paint an exactly flattering picture of the system to which you are wedded.

Doesn't matter. People want money because they want to eat. And because they want a roof over their heads. And they want a PC with which to read CFC Off Topic. They want M in order to get C (largely in order to avoid starving to death).
"People" do not represent a social class.

Oh, it was very simple. The King.
...What about him? :confused:
 
I've never understood why communists have such an affinity for homo laborans and people having built up their wealth with their own "toil and trouble." Who gives a whore's snout if some people have money that they "accumulated" because of others?

Because it's the excuse that capitalists and capitalist defenders use to justify the wealth of the rich. "They built themselves up to be rich," is their excuse, and their justification for the supposed capability of anyone to do it, and their reasoning for his supposed right to his wealth. But it's not so, and thus their whole argument falls apart.

Socialists believe that a man has a right to the fruits of his own labor. If he works harder than someone else, he ought to receive more. From each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution. This is also the argument that capitalists use against something like unemployment checks or welfare; it is the argument we use against capitalists. One is right and one is not.
 
Explain why it's any of things.
Exploitative: Labour is the source of all value; therefore, the appropriation of value is the exploitation of labour. In the capitalist mode of production, profit is generated by the application of labour power, bought at a certain cost, to capital, producing commodities which are then sold on for more than the original labour cost (taking into account the overheads of capital). This is described as M-C-M', in which "M" is the original investment, "C" is the commodity produced, and "M'" is the exchange value of that commodity. M is comprised of the costs of capital and the costs of labour, while M' is comprised of both of these, and of additional value, "surplus value". As capital cannot create value- it can only facilitate the creation of value- that surplus value must have been created by labour. Yet the labour power, the commodified form of labour, was bought for less than the value it generated; a part of the value of the labour is never returned to the labourer herself, but is instead snatched up by the capitalist through uneven commercial transactions; it is appropriated, and therefore exploited.
That's a simple summary, of course; a video offering a more detailed explanation can be found here.

Oppressive: Humanity is a labouring creature- homo laborans, as you say- who makes and remakes his material surroundings, who creates his experience of the world through his labour. Autonomy demands freedom of labour. Thus, for the majority of the human race to be placed in a position where they do not have freedom of labour, but are obliged to sell their labour to a property-owning elite, is an oppressive state of affairs. The attainment or human liberty therefore demands the reclamation of labour as a free endeavour, unhampered by capitalist parasites, through the re-appropriation of the means of production by the labouring masses.
Beyond this, socialists make an additional claim, which sets them apart from individualist anarchists (who is not the same thing as "anarcho-capitalists"), distributists, and so forth, is the claim that production is a social process, and that no one individual's labour can be meaningfully removed from the social context which allows that labour. The capitalists, in taking control of the process of production, usurp this social process, and so not only engage in individual oppression, but in social oppression, that is, of the subjugation of society as a whole to capitalist interests. Therefore, the reclamation of free labour must be a reclamation of social labour, which means that the means of production must not simply be re-appropriated, but socialised, which is to say, must be placed under the control of the community, dissolving capitalist social relations and thus preventing the restoration of the capitalist class. (The failure of the Bolsheviks to dissolve these relations in Russia, and the subsequent emergence of a state-capitalist regime, demonstrates their necessity.)

Spiritually Destructive: This follows on, to a large extent, from the above. Man the labourer, again, is a creator, and defines himself through the creation and recreation of his material environment. Free people create as they wish, and so are able to strive for self-fulfilment on their own terms, while unfree people do not create as they wish, and are able to strive for self-fulfilment only- in the majority of cases- in the margins of their productive experience, if at all. They make seek satisfaction in their work, or through hobbies or volunteering, but ultimately they are bound to the profit-motives of capital, which pays no regard for individual well-being, and instead places human self-fulfilment entirely secondary to the process of accumulation.
Furthermore, if we accept the socialist proposition that labour is a social process, then this self-fulfilment and self-realisation is also a social process. Capitalism, as a system which atomises individuals and breaks them apart, stifles this process, preventing not only the individual pursuit of self-fulfilment through the monopolisation of individual labour, but by preventing the emergence of social conditions which allow a true self-fulfilment to be achieved. As social liberation is the pre-requisite of individual liberation, social conditions allowing for self-fulfilment is the pre-requisite of individual conditions allowing for self-fulfilment.
 
Capital work, Traitorfish! My little baby's all growed up! :love:

... Sorry Cheezy, but that's why threads like that are bad. They monopolize the conversation and questions like this get lost.


The purpose of that thread is to monopolize the discussion of what socialists and communists believe, because there is a great tendency to misrepresent our views by other people, and without monopolization of answering we cannot control that and it quickly becomes an argument of essentially "you believe this" "no I don't" "yes you do" which leads to nowhere but ignorance, a thread lock, and red moderator tags.

If you want to have a discussion about any of those topics, then that's why there are threads like this.
 
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