Any and everyone who is a worker, is a member of the working class is going to be bombarded by anti-communist rhetoric and that'll manifest as anti-china rhetoric
This is not a new revelation, this has been American policy since before we were born
Pretty much yeah as much as any nation ever has been.
It would be pretty easy to no true Scotsman argue that they technically weren't communist for reasons as well or that real communism has never been tried at least at a national level. But then you get into the 'cant fail / can only be failed' arguments that run hard into problems of human nature, power imbalances, and hierarchy and the reason pretty much any pure or true communism falls apart when you start dealing with more than a few hundred people.
Frank Wilhoit:
There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.
There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.
There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.
No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
EDIT: I am also reminded, as too often I am, of Orwell:
Under this lies a fact never mentioned aloud, but tacitly understood and acted upon: namely, that the conditions of life in all three super-states are very much the same. In Oceania the prevailing philosophy is called Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is called Neo-Bolshevism, and in Eastasia it is called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-Worship, but perhaps better rendered as Obliteration of the Self. The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense. Actually the three philosophies are barely distinguishable, and the social systems which they support are not distinguishable at all. Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure, the same worship of semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
Lanz are you a first-year political science student? This is an honest question.
Short answer; defininitonally no. Current attitude is they are on ‘capitalist roads to socialist destinations’.
Long answer; this forum is not equipped for such a debate. This question is the subject of many a knockdown, drag-out knife fight amongst leftists.
One thing that has to be understood in these sorts of discussions is that communism is an end state, the beginning of which starts in capitalism (or any other mode that can effectively coerce the people to expand the means of production). To reach communism, the means of production must be suitably advanced such that the people only need to work a fraction of the time; the less the better. There’s more to it than that, but it’s probably the most relevant to these discussions.
Related to the conversation about quality of life discussion: The whole “8 hours work, 8 hours rest, 8 hours leisure” thing was borne out of a revisionist compromise with communism. I think almost without exception, most advances in worker rights, improvements in quality of life we the workers enjoy, was a compromise on the original communist position
Why do people (and seemingly the same people) keep bringing up the fact that we have more and better products as if we aren't ALL very well aware. It's not even the point you guys seem to think it is. Society saw some benefit, but (and this has been noted) we have only seen it on the consumer (read: profit for the owner class) side, not in a reduction in work needed to maintain a sense of life.
I would even go so far as to say that a lot of what we've gained in terms of consumerism has been at the expense of actual quality of life that we'd have gotten by more free time/etc as workers. I would generally gladly trade having an extra full day or two with my kids a week for everyone having a new phone every year.
Because while I think that everyone should be in a union and industries should be well regulated I also believe that capitalism has done a lot for human progress and quality of life. And blaming it for all the evils in the world and wanting to eliminate it is wrong- headed.
To be fair, it's really also been the only game allowed to be played, so we don't have a lot of good evidence of if that progress is because of capitalism or in spite of it. We DO know that capitalism has contributed to or been the root of a LOT of evils in the last few centuries at least.
We did give a few flavors of communism a spin last century.
They didn't exactly have a stellar showing and managed to be more horrific than capitalism and have absolutely staggering death tolls for the people trapped in those experiments.
State capitalism
We have state capitalism a spin
Whatever helps you sleep at night while still supporting an absolutely brutal, failed ideology.
Short answer; defininitonally no. Current attitude is they are on ‘capitalist roads to socialist destinations’.
Long answer; this forum is not equipped for such a debate. This question is the subject of many a knockdown, drag-out knife fight amongst leftists.
One thing that has to be understood in these sorts of discussions is that communism is an end state, the beginning of which starts in capitalism (or any other mode that can effectively coerce the people to expand the means of production). To reach communism, the means of production must be suitably advanced such that the people only need to work a fraction of the time; the less the better. There’s more to it than that, but it’s probably the most relevant to these discussions.
Related to the conversation about quality of life discussion: The whole “8 hours work, 8 hours rest, 8 hours leisure” thing was borne out of a revisionist compromise with communism. I think almost without exception, most advances in worker rights, improvements in quality of life we the workers enjoy, was a compromise on the original communist position
[Simpsons Monkey Knife Fight Gif]
Vs
[Peakey Blinders Leftist Factions No Fighting clip]
EDIT: But yeah, what Tef said.
I find it would generally behoove folks to actually like, more seriously engage with Leftist writing and academia than they do, because a lot of the questions asked here are heavily debated in those spaces. The “Russia and China and so and so and so are communist, therefore we can frame communism as inherently authoritarian!” Take is effectively the domain of a kind of pop-history/sociology that’s rooted less in actual study and more in the propaganda that ultimately served the interests of the ruling classes on both sides of the iron curtain. The First World gained an ideology to rail against in “communism,” as well as a hammer to use against leftist groups seeking societal change and accountability of power structures, the Second World gained the propaganda win of claiming their efforts were to create a communist society as their elites profited as elites usually do, contrary to the tenets/end goal.
Short answer; defininitonally no. Current attitude is they are on ‘capitalist roads to socialist destinations’.
Long answer; this forum is not equipped for such a debate. This question is the subject of many a knockdown, drag-out knife fight amongst leftists.
One thing that has to be understood in these sorts of discussions is that communism is an end state, the beginning of which starts in capitalism (or any other mode that can effectively coerce the people to expand the means of production). To reach communism, the means of production must be suitably advanced such that the people only need to work a fraction of the time; the less the better. There’s more to it than that, but it’s probably the most relevant to these discussions.
Related to the conversation about quality of life discussion: The whole “8 hours work, 8 hours rest, 8 hours leisure” thing was borne out of a revisionist compromise with communism. I think almost without exception, most advances in worker rights, improvements in quality of life we the workers enjoy, was a compromise on the original communist position
[Simpsons Monkey Knife Fight Gif]
Vs
[Peakey Blinders Leftist Factions No Fighting clip]
Lanz are you a first-year political science student? This is an honest question.
Monwyn, have you ever had an education on socialism, outside of drunken rants at the bbq from your uncle who works at Nintendo and hates unions? This is an honest question
No, retirement as a killer isn't stress specifically. More a sense of purpose - your whole life being based around some goal that then just disappears, even if you've supposedly 'won'.
Retirees who remain mentally active and engaged live longer, those who just relax like they would on the evenings of a 9-5 start to rot if they have to do it all day.
Keeping people engaged and involved in life is the challenge that UBI has. Not as a insurmountable one, but more a "hey, they don't need to work to live anymore - they still need stuff to do and society doesn't suggest much off that bat because it assumed you worked to live".
I think it makes sense that if we never reach post-scarcity ever, capitalism will always be better at pricing the economy than methods that fix prices by policy
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I think it makes sense that if we never reach post-scarcity ever, capitalism will always be better at pricing the economy than methods that fix prices by policy
Arguably we’re already there, or at least have reached the capacity for it at a practical level
But profit motive demands we behave otherwise, and enforce scarcity so that there can be profit for the upper class
EDIT: hell, here’s Steinbeck decades ago:
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
I'm not as optimistic, what with global warming and the increasing frequency of world conflict.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I see the bolded, which again runs counter to everything I've ever read about the Industrial Revolution, and I find myself asking, yet again, for some damn sources to back up your claims.
I might ask what might make you think that... in light of like.. All the evidence already presented. That laborers did not work all the time in the 1500's as compared to the 1800's and beyond?
The main answer is that if there was a reduction in work it was largely due to seasonality. I.E. You would work fewer hours each day but work more days over the year. This could have (and some estimations do) produce an increase in net work as a result per year but almost all agree that there was a reduction in the hours worked per day when working.
Unless I missed something, the evidence you've presented depicts the conditions of workers in the 1800s and onwards, not the 1500s. Certainly the early industrial era had far worse conditions, in terms of hours and compensation, than contemporary conditions in western countries. The GDP to population ratio is not indicative of anything regarding hours worked
I have read repeatedly that the average feudal workweek (though varying from area to area) was less than that of industrial economies, even today, but moreso in the early industrial era. Google hasn't immediately turned up good studies pointing in either direction to back my claim up with
And your analysis also mostly ignores the degree to which production and extraction take place in other countries. The conditions of Chinese, Bangladeshi, Pakistani etc. workers must be taken into account when assessing the gains you describe. I mean the phone I'm posting with is probably some Foxconn shit and my clothes are made by people in southeast Asia.
But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction--indeed, in some sense was the destruction--of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which WEALTH, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while POWER remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. To return to the agricultural past, as some thinkers about the beginning of the twentieth century dreamed of doing, was not a practicable solution. It conflicted with the tendency towards mechanization which had become quasi-instinctive throughout almost the whole world, and moreover, any country which remained industrially backward was helpless in a military sense and was bound to be dominated, directly or indirectly, by its more advanced rivals.
Just thinking without any empiric evidence, seems like it would be physically impossible to make people in the 1500s work 80 hours a week, probably because they'd lose an arm or die of consumption or something
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Just thinking without any empiric evidence, seems like it would be physically impossible to make people in the 1500s work 80 hours a week, probably because they'd lose an arm or die of consumption or something
That's 'just' 12 hours a day 7 days a week. Not even sun up to sun down every day a good chunk of the year.
I think that 80 hours a week is a baseline for hours 'worked' through most of human history. Of course there are breaks and downtime but that's not even close to a stretch.
Just look at the hours slaves were forced to work on plantations and their conditions were no better and that's all well documented.
Also, when assessing retirement age and the leisure hours of retirement, one must also consider life expectancy over time. When life expectancy is 45, the retirement hours lost are significantly less than implied by the graph Goum posted.
Therefore, we must take a longer view and look back not just one hundred years, but three or four, even six or seven hundred. Consider a typical working day in the medieval period. It stretched from dawn to dusk (sixteen hours in summer and eight in winter), but, as the Bishop Pilkington has noted, work was intermittent - called to a halt for breakfast, lunch, the customary afternoon nap, and dinner. Depending on time and place, there were also midmorning and midafternoon refreshment breaks. These rest periods were the traditional rights of laborers, which they enjoyed even during peak harvest times. During slack periods, which accounted for a large part of the year, adherence to regular working hours was not usual. According to Oxford Professor James E. Thorold Rogers[1], the medieval workday was not more than eight hours. The worker participating in the eight-hour movements of the late nineteenth century was "simply striving to recover what his ancestor worked by four or five centuries ago."
An important piece of evidence on the working day is that it was very unusual for servile laborers to be required to work a whole day for a lord. One day's work was considered half a day, and if a serf worked an entire day, this was counted as two "days-works."[2] Detailed accounts of artisans' workdays are available. Knoop and jones' figures for the fourteenth century work out to a yearly average of 9 hours (exclusive of meals and breaktimes)[3]. Brown, Colwin and Taylor's figures for masons suggest an average workday of 8.6 hours[4].
The contrast between capitalist and precapitalist work patterns is most striking in respect to the working year. The medieval calendar was filled with holidays. Official -- that is, church -- holidays included not only long "vacations" at Christmas, Easter, and midsummer but also numerous saints' andrest days. These were spent both in sober churchgoing and in feasting, drinking and merrymaking. In addition to official celebrations, there were often weeks' worth of ales -- to mark important life events (bride ales or wake ales) as well as less momentous occasions (scot ale, lamb ale, and hock ale). All told, holiday leisure time in medieval England took up probably about one-third of the year. And the English were apparently working harder than their neighbors. The ancien règime in France is reported to have guaranteed fifty-two Sundays, ninety rest days, and thirty-eight holidays. In Spain, travelers noted that holidays totaled five months per year.[5]
The peasant's free time extended beyond officially sanctioned holidays. There is considerable evidence of what economists call the backward-bending supply curve of labor -- the idea that when wages rise, workers supply less labor. During one period of unusually high wages (the late fourteenth century), many laborers refused to work "by the year or the half year or by any of the usual terms but only by the day." And they worked only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income -- which in this case amounted to about 120 days a year, for a probable total of only 1,440 hours annually (this estimate assumes a 12-hour day because the days worked were probably during spring, summer and fall). A thirteenth-century estime finds that whole peasant families did not put in more than 150 days per year on their land. Manorial records from fourteenth-century England indicate an extremely short working year -- 175 days -- for servile laborers. Later evidence for farmer-miners, a group with control over their worktime, indicates they worked only 180 days a year.
Also, when assessing retirement age and the leisure hours of retirement, one must also consider life expectancy over time. When life expectancy is 45, the retirement hours lost are significantly less than implied by the graph Goum posted.
For the periods we're talking about, the average life expectancy was brought down drastically by child mortality. Someone who survived to adulthood was expected to reach their 60s.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
- John Stuart Mill
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
I think it makes sense that if we never reach post-scarcity ever, capitalism will always be better at pricing the economy than methods that fix prices by policy
I'm not as optimistic, what with global warming and the increasing frequency of world conflict.
I... what? There is a ton to unpack here, besides the very self-fulfilling prophecy you seem to have written.
A lot of the problem with capitalism as people seem to expect is .. it's a fantasy. They assume a market of individual consumers driven to find their best selfish interest, but with an incredibly weak specific weight on the market, will be able to coerce the producers in the market to compete and maintain a competitive marketplace. The problem is, by it's vary nature, capitalism trends towards monopoly/monopsony as the more successful competitors consume the less successful ones, and if their product is in any way desirable will hit a point (see ISPs for instance) where people will pay what they have to to get it. We see this played out all over the world. It requires a ton of gov't regulation to maintain checks and balances in capitalism to keep it from being excessively exploitative.
Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.
I see the bolded, which again runs counter to everything I've ever read about the Industrial Revolution, and I find myself asking, yet again, for some damn sources to back up your claims.
I might ask what might make you think that... in light of like.. All the evidence already presented. That laborers did not work all the time in the 1500's as compared to the 1800's and beyond?
The main answer is that if there was a reduction in work it was largely due to seasonality. I.E. You would work fewer hours each day but work more days over the year. This could have (and some estimations do) produce an increase in net work as a result per year but almost all agree that there was a reduction in the hours worked per day when working.
Unless I missed something, the evidence you've presented depicts the conditions of workers in the 1800s and onwards, not the 1500s. Certainly the early industrial era had far worse conditions, in terms of hours and compensation, than contemporary conditions in western countries. The GDP to population ratio is not indicative of anything regarding hours worked
I have read repeatedly that the average feudal workweek (though varying from area to area) was less than that of industrial economies, even today, but moreso in the early industrial era. Google hasn't immediately turned up good studies pointing in either direction to back my claim up with
And your analysis also mostly ignores the degree to which production and extraction take place in other countries. The conditions of Chinese, Bangladeshi, Pakistani etc. workers must be taken into account when assessing the gains you describe. I mean the phone I'm posting with is probably some Foxconn shit and my clothes are made by people in southeast Asia.
The short answer is that there is no good data because it’s not well recorded. We have estimates (linked in your quote) which more or less suggest that if an increase in working hours if they occurred were likely in net and not per day, due to seasonal variations*. IE most people would work shorter days but more days in total under industrialization. Because you could not sow or reap in the winter. But the worst you can say if you’re making a paean to the data is that you don’t know or that it was probably higher. We know that as industrialization has increase so has working hours decreased.
Even data to the 1870s is not well done due to recording issues. But… You legitimately work less and are better off than feudal peasants.
It does take into account foreign countries. Unless you believe that we were exporting all of our labor to China in the 1910s through 1970s. Or that their industrializations producing reduction in working hours are/were flukes.
Like. Your belief just does not survive even a base level of scrutiny. Where did the people come from, those who were suddenly massed in cities to work the machines? What did they do before hand? How were they born and how did they survive long enough to get jobs? Why did those people stop doing the things they were doing before to take the factory jobs? How do people suddenly work less while also having higher incomes? Are we doing magic? Is it a global conspiracy of slavery?
*and there are a lot of reasons to suspect that this is not the case, including the current 40 hour bias, which suggests that labor desires tend to drive employment hours more than other factors.
I see the bolded, which again runs counter to everything I've ever read about the Industrial Revolution, and I find myself asking, yet again, for some damn sources to back up your claims.
I might ask what might make you think that... in light of like.. All the evidence already presented. That laborers did not work all the time in the 1500's as compared to the 1800's and beyond?
The main answer is that if there was a reduction in work it was largely due to seasonality. I.E. You would work fewer hours each day but work more days over the year. This could have (and some estimations do) produce an increase in net work as a result per year but almost all agree that there was a reduction in the hours worked per day when working.
Unless I missed something, the evidence you've presented depicts the conditions of workers in the 1800s and onwards, not the 1500s. Certainly the early industrial era had far worse conditions, in terms of hours and compensation, than contemporary conditions in western countries. The GDP to population ratio is not indicative of anything regarding hours worked
I have read repeatedly that the average feudal workweek (though varying from area to area) was less than that of industrial economies, even today, but moreso in the early industrial era. Google hasn't immediately turned up good studies pointing in either direction to back my claim up with
And your analysis also mostly ignores the degree to which production and extraction take place in other countries. The conditions of Chinese, Bangladeshi, Pakistani etc. workers must be taken into account when assessing the gains you describe. I mean the phone I'm posting with is probably some Foxconn shit and my clothes are made by people in southeast Asia.
The short answer is that there is no good data because it’s not well recorded. We have estimates (linked in your quote) which more or less suggest that if an increase in working hours if they occurred were likely in net and not per day, due to seasonal variations*. IE most people would work shorter days but more days in total under industrialization. Because you could not sow or reap in the winter. But the worst you can say if you’re making a paean to the data is that you don’t know or that it was probably higher. We know that as industrialization has increase so has working hours decreased.
Even data to the 1870s is not well done due to recording issues. But… You legitimately work less and are better off than feudal peasants.
It does take into account foreign countries. Unless you believe that we were exporting all of our labor to China in the 1910s through 1970s. Or that their industrializations producing reduction in working hours are/were flukes.
Like. Your belief just does not survive even a base level of scrutiny. Where did the people come from, those who were suddenly massed in cities to work the machines? What did they do before hand? How were they born and how did they survive long enough to get jobs? Why did those people stop doing the things they were doing before to take the factory jobs? How do people suddenly work less while also having higher incomes? Are we doing magic? Is it a global conspiracy of slavery?
*and there are a lot of reasons to suspect that this is not the case, including the current 40 hour bias, which suggests that labor desires tend to drive employment hours more than other factors.
I'm not as optimistic, what with global warming and the increasing frequency of world conflict.
Pretty sure that world conflict has been decreasing in frequency and severity.
In severity I don't know, but in frequency we've been in one conflict after another since the cold war
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Also, when assessing retirement age and the leisure hours of retirement, one must also consider life expectancy over time. When life expectancy is 45, the retirement hours lost are significantly less than implied by the graph Goum posted.
For the periods we're talking about, the average life expectancy was brought down drastically by child mortality. Someone who survived to adulthood was expected to reach their 60s.
It doesn’t even matter that is the percentage of people above 65 working. Definitionally you must live to be 65 in order to be a person over 65.
You would expect, if the complaints about industrialization were true that the reverse would happen as life expectancy increased. More people living to 65 would mean fewer aristocrats living to 65 as a proportion of people 65 and older and so the proportion of people working, if industrialization was making these poor people so much worse off, would increase.
I think it makes sense that if we never reach post-scarcity ever, capitalism will always be better at pricing the economy than methods that fix prices by policy
I'm not as optimistic, what with global warming and the increasing frequency of world conflict.
I... what? There is a ton to unpack here, besides the very self-fulfilling prophecy you seem to have written.
A lot of the problem with capitalism as people seem to expect is .. it's a fantasy. They assume a market of individual consumers driven to find their best selfish interest, but with an incredibly weak specific weight on the market, will be able to coerce the producers in the market to compete and maintain a competitive marketplace. The problem is, by it's vary nature, capitalism trends towards monopoly/monopsony as the more successful competitors consume the less successful ones, and if their product is in any way desirable will hit a point (see ISPs for instance) where people will pay what they have to to get it. We see this played out all over the world. It requires a ton of gov't regulation to maintain checks and balances in capitalism to keep it from being excessively exploitative.
Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.
Terrible, but not impossible. A market that is allowed to be a market measures supply and demand in real time, which is helpful for being efficient with a limited economy
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Goum at this point what even are you talking about
It feels like ever since the discussion of the textile factory owners using advances in technology to replace skilled labor with cheaper, unskilled labor, that there has been this strawman repeatedly constructed to suggest that what we are arguing for is “the industrial Revolution was bad actually,” instead of the actual argument about the ownership class for centuries now utilizing the power of mechanization on productivity to capture the benefits of said productivity into itself on the basis that it owns the damn machines, but doesnt actually do the work of operating the damn things.
No one here is arguing to return to some kind of agrarian utopia or whatever nonsense you’ve put together. We’re arguing that capital has always used mechanization to divide labor, reduce its power and selfishly attain any benefits mostly to itself. And that, historically, the answer to that then has been “then fuck your machines, you don’t get to profit while we suffer in the ditch as your cast offs because you don’t feel you owe us or society a thing”
instead of the actual argument about the ownership class for centuries now utilizing the power of mechanization on productivity to capture the benefits of said productivity into itself on the basis that it owns the damn machines, but doesnt actually do the work of operating the damn things.
How does one “utilize the power of mechanization on productivity”?
Also again… up until 1980 compensation/wages rose directly proportional to productivity increases. So at the worst up until that point the production surplus was shared at the same rate.
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
instead of the actual argument about the ownership class for centuries now utilizing the power of mechanization on productivity to capture the benefits of said productivity into itself on the basis that it owns the damn machines, but doesnt actually do the work of operating the damn things.
How does one “utilize the power of mechanization on productivity”?
Also again… up until 1980 compensation/wages rose directly proportional to productivity increases. So at the worst up until that point the production surplus was shared at the same rate.
By using mechanization in various forms to allow labor to increase productivity beyond what it was capable of before mechanical intervention.
Also you keep skimming past the reason that wages rose was because of the efforts of labor movements to demand those increases, as well as attendant rights such as shorter hours, days off, the end of child labor, etc.
Which ultimately is the problem folks are having with you: you’re walking into the labor thread, seemingly with no context as to labor history, and delivering spiels that wouldn’t be out of place in a textbook on the evolution of the workplace if written by Ayn friggin’ Rand. Your paradigm has no place for the suffering or costs borne by labor for decades at the demands and wonts of robber barons and would be lords, nor the sweat and blood that was spilled to correct it. You acknowledge that that compensation rose with productivity until the latter 20th century but you don’t interrogate why that is, what social forces changed, or had been repressed and thus were now forces-absent that allowed the capitalist class to reassert dominance and bring us to the neo-gilded age we now find ourselves in.
It is a comfortable fantasy that allows you to not engage, let alone with us but even with yourself, with the realities of the power dynamics of the laborer and the owner and how the latter exploits the former to establish power, wealth and luxury for themselves and entrench societal hierarchies
Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.
Better than all the rest though.
Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.
You were saying nobody has tried anything else.
When it was pointed out the attempts to try something else last century fell flat on their face and resulted in mega deaths to unnecessary famine you kinda didnt even respond.
Like capitalism sucks and maybe some communist kumbaya end state is the best outcome, but so far nobody has even a semi-legitimate map how we get to an end state that is better than our fairly but not total shit status quo.
Cause tell you what. Just all out cards on the table. I'd rather be dealing with our shit capitalist system vs. some commissar sending me to the gulag because I didnt magic up enough wheat or steel.
End state sounds great but still dont believe the plan to get to this utopia is there.
Edit - and dont say marx because if 150 years doesnt get you there you need new material.
Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.
Better than all the rest though.
Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.
You were saying nobody has tried anything else.
When it was pointed out the attempts to try something else last century fell flat on their face and resulted in mega deaths to unnecessary famine you kinda didnt even respond.
Like capitalism sucks and maybe some communist kumbaya end state is the best outcome, but so far nobody has even a semi-legitimate map how we get to an end state that is better than our fairly but not total shit status quo.
Cause tell you what. Just all out cards on the table. I'd rather be dealing with our shit capitalist system vs. some commissar sending me to the gulag because I didnt magic up enough wheat or steel.
End state sounds great but still dont believe the plan to get to this utopia is there.
Edit - and dont say marx because if 150 years doesnt get you there you need new material.
No in ours they just send you to the Not a Gulag Prison because you had a joint on you, where they still get free labor out of you because whoops! 19th century white folk put a loophole in the amendment that “ended” slavery
Like that’s the issue: the systems werent that fuckin’ different
Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.
Better than all the rest though.
Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.
You were saying nobody has tried anything else.
When it was pointed out the attempts to try something else last century fell flat on their face and resulted in mega deaths to unnecessary famine you kinda didnt even respond.
Like capitalism sucks and maybe some communist kumbaya end state is the best outcome, but so far nobody has even a semi-legitimate map how we get to an end state that is better than our fairly but not total shit status quo.
Cause tell you what. Just all out cards on the table. I'd rather be dealing with our shit capitalist system vs. some commissar sending me to the gulag because I didnt magic up enough wheat or steel.
End state sounds great but still dont believe the plan to get to this utopia is there.
Edit - and dont say marx because if 150 years doesnt get you there you need new material.
No in ours they just send you to the Not a Gulag Prison because you had a joint on you, where they still get free labor out of you because whoops! 19th century white folk put a loophole in the amendment that “ended” slavery
Like that’s the issue: the systems werent that fuckin’ different
As bad as the American prison system is, are you really really trying to equivalate it to the Stalin gulags or Mao's commissars?
Is that really the equivalence you are going with here?
By using mechanization in various forms to allow labor to increase productivity beyond what it was capable of before mechanical intervention.
And this means that they get productivity how? And like. Is it some dastardly plot? It sure seems like you think it’s some dastardly plot.
Also you keep skimming past the reason that wages rose was because of the efforts of labor movements to demand those increases, as well as attendant rights such as shorter hours, days off, the end of child labor, etc.
I did no such thing. That labor rights are distributional does not change the history of the world.
Your paradigm has no place for the suffering or costs borne by labor for decades at the demands and wonts of robber barons and would be lords, nor the sweat and blood that was spilled to correct it. You acknowledge that that compensation rose with productivity until the latter 20th century but you don’t interrogate why that is,
I cannot explain everything in every post. I am not God. I can only correct things one at a time.
So when you say that industrialization decreased wages I can explain that that is false. And when you say that it increased hours and made people worse off I can explain that that is false. But I cannot just like. Show you anything you want to gallop to at any particular moment.
I am most definitely aware of the pitfalls of “capitalism” and the value in labor organizing. But that we can use some less of the former and more of the latter does not mean that productivity is bad. Or that mechanization is bad. Just as much as the fact that luddites sacrificed did not make them right about technology. They were just wrong the whole time and sacrificed in service of that wrongness.
Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.
Better than all the rest though.
Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.
Typically the one making the extraordinary claim is the one who should bring proof. But I suppose we should clarify because a strict statement kind of implies “capitalism” is a thing. Markets price, not “capitalism”. And they’re pretty good about it.
But if you want proof stick your head outside to feel the acid rain that is coming down on your face. We used markets to fix that problem.
Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.
Better than all the rest though.
Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.
You were saying nobody has tried anything else.
When it was pointed out the attempts to try something else last century fell flat on their face and resulted in mega deaths to unnecessary famine you kinda didnt even respond.
Like capitalism sucks and maybe some communist kumbaya end state is the best outcome, but so far nobody has even a semi-legitimate map how we get to an end state that is better than our fairly but not total shit status quo.
Cause tell you what. Just all out cards on the table. I'd rather be dealing with our shit capitalist system vs. some commissar sending me to the gulag because I didnt magic up enough wheat or steel.
End state sounds great but still dont believe the plan to get to this utopia is there.
Edit - and dont say marx because if 150 years doesnt get you there you need new material.
No in ours they just send you to the Not a Gulag Prison because you had a joint on you, where they still get free labor out of you because whoops! 19th century white folk put a loophole in the amendment that “ended” slavery
Like that’s the issue: the systems werent that fuckin’ different
As bad as the American prison system is, are you really really trying to equivalate it to the Stalin gulags or Mao's commissars?
Is that really the equivalence you are going with here?
“As bad as” makes me think you’re unaware of just how bad this shit is here
Posts
This is not a new revelation, this has been American policy since before we were born
Frank Wilhoit:
EDIT: I am also reminded, as too often I am, of Orwell:
I graduated college over a decade ago, Monwyn.
Short answer; defininitonally no. Current attitude is they are on ‘capitalist roads to socialist destinations’.
Long answer; this forum is not equipped for such a debate. This question is the subject of many a knockdown, drag-out knife fight amongst leftists.
One thing that has to be understood in these sorts of discussions is that communism is an end state, the beginning of which starts in capitalism (or any other mode that can effectively coerce the people to expand the means of production). To reach communism, the means of production must be suitably advanced such that the people only need to work a fraction of the time; the less the better. There’s more to it than that, but it’s probably the most relevant to these discussions.
Related to the conversation about quality of life discussion: The whole “8 hours work, 8 hours rest, 8 hours leisure” thing was borne out of a revisionist compromise with communism. I think almost without exception, most advances in worker rights, improvements in quality of life we the workers enjoy, was a compromise on the original communist position
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
But enough about capitalism,
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
[Simpsons Monkey Knife Fight Gif]
Vs
[Peakey Blinders Leftist Factions No Fighting clip]
EDIT: But yeah, what Tef said.
I find it would generally behoove folks to actually like, more seriously engage with Leftist writing and academia than they do, because a lot of the questions asked here are heavily debated in those spaces. The “Russia and China and so and so and so are communist, therefore we can frame communism as inherently authoritarian!” Take is effectively the domain of a kind of pop-history/sociology that’s rooted less in actual study and more in the propaganda that ultimately served the interests of the ruling classes on both sides of the iron curtain. The First World gained an ideology to rail against in “communism,” as well as a hammer to use against leftist groups seeking societal change and accountability of power structures, the Second World gained the propaganda win of claiming their efforts were to create a communist society as their elites profited as elites usually do, contrary to the tenets/end goal.
Damn leftists! They ruined the left!
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
Monwyn, have you ever had an education on socialism, outside of drunken rants at the bbq from your uncle who works at Nintendo and hates unions? This is an honest question
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
Retirees who remain mentally active and engaged live longer, those who just relax like they would on the evenings of a 9-5 start to rot if they have to do it all day.
Keeping people engaged and involved in life is the challenge that UBI has. Not as a insurmountable one, but more a "hey, they don't need to work to live anymore - they still need stuff to do and society doesn't suggest much off that bat because it assumed you worked to live".
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Arguably we’re already there, or at least have reached the capacity for it at a practical level
But profit motive demands we behave otherwise, and enforce scarcity so that there can be profit for the upper class
EDIT: hell, here’s Steinbeck decades ago:
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I have read repeatedly that the average feudal workweek (though varying from area to area) was less than that of industrial economies, even today, but moreso in the early industrial era. Google hasn't immediately turned up good studies pointing in either direction to back my claim up with
And your analysis also mostly ignores the degree to which production and extraction take place in other countries. The conditions of Chinese, Bangladeshi, Pakistani etc. workers must be taken into account when assessing the gains you describe. I mean the phone I'm posting with is probably some Foxconn shit and my clothes are made by people in southeast Asia.
Again, reminded of Orwell:
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
That's 'just' 12 hours a day 7 days a week. Not even sun up to sun down every day a good chunk of the year.
I think that 80 hours a week is a baseline for hours 'worked' through most of human history. Of course there are breaks and downtime but that's not even close to a stretch.
Just look at the hours slaves were forced to work on plantations and their conditions were no better and that's all well documented.
For the periods we're talking about, the average life expectancy was brought down drastically by child mortality. Someone who survived to adulthood was expected to reach their 60s.
- John Stuart Mill
I, too, enjoy a good personal barb veiled as an “honest question.”
I... what? There is a ton to unpack here, besides the very self-fulfilling prophecy you seem to have written.
A lot of the problem with capitalism as people seem to expect is .. it's a fantasy. They assume a market of individual consumers driven to find their best selfish interest, but with an incredibly weak specific weight on the market, will be able to coerce the producers in the market to compete and maintain a competitive marketplace. The problem is, by it's vary nature, capitalism trends towards monopoly/monopsony as the more successful competitors consume the less successful ones, and if their product is in any way desirable will hit a point (see ISPs for instance) where people will pay what they have to to get it. We see this played out all over the world. It requires a ton of gov't regulation to maintain checks and balances in capitalism to keep it from being excessively exploitative.
Honestly, capitalism is pretty terrible at fairly pricing the economy if given it's way, and often gets to ignore externalities.
The short answer is that there is no good data because it’s not well recorded. We have estimates (linked in your quote) which more or less suggest that if an increase in working hours if they occurred were likely in net and not per day, due to seasonal variations*. IE most people would work shorter days but more days in total under industrialization. Because you could not sow or reap in the winter. But the worst you can say if you’re making a paean to the data is that you don’t know or that it was probably higher. We know that as industrialization has increase so has working hours decreased.
Even data to the 1870s is not well done due to recording issues. But… You legitimately work less and are better off than feudal peasants.
It does take into account foreign countries. Unless you believe that we were exporting all of our labor to China in the 1910s through 1970s. Or that their industrializations producing reduction in working hours are/were flukes.
Like. Your belief just does not survive even a base level of scrutiny. Where did the people come from, those who were suddenly massed in cities to work the machines? What did they do before hand? How were they born and how did they survive long enough to get jobs? Why did those people stop doing the things they were doing before to take the factory jobs? How do people suddenly work less while also having higher incomes? Are we doing magic? Is it a global conspiracy of slavery?
*and there are a lot of reasons to suspect that this is not the case, including the current 40 hour bias, which suggests that labor desires tend to drive employment hours more than other factors.
Pretty sure that world conflict has been decreasing in frequency and severity.
In severity I don't know, but in frequency we've been in one conflict after another since the cold war
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It doesn’t even matter that is the percentage of people above 65 working. Definitionally you must live to be 65 in order to be a person over 65.
You would expect, if the complaints about industrialization were true that the reverse would happen as life expectancy increased. More people living to 65 would mean fewer aristocrats living to 65 as a proportion of people 65 and older and so the proportion of people working, if industrialization was making these poor people so much worse off, would increase.
And yet…
Better than all the rest though.
Terrible, but not impossible. A market that is allowed to be a market measures supply and demand in real time, which is helpful for being efficient with a limited economy
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It feels like ever since the discussion of the textile factory owners using advances in technology to replace skilled labor with cheaper, unskilled labor, that there has been this strawman repeatedly constructed to suggest that what we are arguing for is “the industrial Revolution was bad actually,” instead of the actual argument about the ownership class for centuries now utilizing the power of mechanization on productivity to capture the benefits of said productivity into itself on the basis that it owns the damn machines, but doesnt actually do the work of operating the damn things.
No one here is arguing to return to some kind of agrarian utopia or whatever nonsense you’ve put together. We’re arguing that capital has always used mechanization to divide labor, reduce its power and selfishly attain any benefits mostly to itself. And that, historically, the answer to that then has been “then fuck your machines, you don’t get to profit while we suffer in the ditch as your cast offs because you don’t feel you owe us or society a thing”
How does one “utilize the power of mechanization on productivity”?
Also again… up until 1980 compensation/wages rose directly proportional to productivity increases. So at the worst up until that point the production surplus was shared at the same rate.
Also make sure (general-you) your posts are more than shitty flamebait, while you're at it.
By using mechanization in various forms to allow labor to increase productivity beyond what it was capable of before mechanical intervention.
Also you keep skimming past the reason that wages rose was because of the efforts of labor movements to demand those increases, as well as attendant rights such as shorter hours, days off, the end of child labor, etc.
Which ultimately is the problem folks are having with you: you’re walking into the labor thread, seemingly with no context as to labor history, and delivering spiels that wouldn’t be out of place in a textbook on the evolution of the workplace if written by Ayn friggin’ Rand. Your paradigm has no place for the suffering or costs borne by labor for decades at the demands and wonts of robber barons and would be lords, nor the sweat and blood that was spilled to correct it. You acknowledge that that compensation rose with productivity until the latter 20th century but you don’t interrogate why that is, what social forces changed, or had been repressed and thus were now forces-absent that allowed the capitalist class to reassert dominance and bring us to the neo-gilded age we now find ourselves in.
It is a comfortable fantasy that allows you to not engage, let alone with us but even with yourself, with the realities of the power dynamics of the laborer and the owner and how the latter exploits the former to establish power, wealth and luxury for themselves and entrench societal hierarchies
Citation Needed. Like seriously, people keep making this, but with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It's just truthy because it's what we've got.
You were saying nobody has tried anything else.
When it was pointed out the attempts to try something else last century fell flat on their face and resulted in mega deaths to unnecessary famine you kinda didnt even respond.
Like capitalism sucks and maybe some communist kumbaya end state is the best outcome, but so far nobody has even a semi-legitimate map how we get to an end state that is better than our fairly but not total shit status quo.
Cause tell you what. Just all out cards on the table. I'd rather be dealing with our shit capitalist system vs. some commissar sending me to the gulag because I didnt magic up enough wheat or steel.
End state sounds great but still dont believe the plan to get to this utopia is there.
Edit - and dont say marx because if 150 years doesnt get you there you need new material.
No in ours they just send you to the Not a Gulag Prison because you had a joint on you, where they still get free labor out of you because whoops! 19th century white folk put a loophole in the amendment that “ended” slavery
Like that’s the issue: the systems werent that fuckin’ different
As bad as the American prison system is, are you really really trying to equivalate it to the Stalin gulags or Mao's commissars?
Is that really the equivalence you are going with here?
And this means that they get productivity how? And like. Is it some dastardly plot? It sure seems like you think it’s some dastardly plot.
I did no such thing. That labor rights are distributional does not change the history of the world.
I cannot explain everything in every post. I am not God. I can only correct things one at a time.
So when you say that industrialization decreased wages I can explain that that is false. And when you say that it increased hours and made people worse off I can explain that that is false. But I cannot just like. Show you anything you want to gallop to at any particular moment.
I am most definitely aware of the pitfalls of “capitalism” and the value in labor organizing. But that we can use some less of the former and more of the latter does not mean that productivity is bad. Or that mechanization is bad. Just as much as the fact that luddites sacrificed did not make them right about technology. They were just wrong the whole time and sacrificed in service of that wrongness.
Typically the one making the extraordinary claim is the one who should bring proof. But I suppose we should clarify because a strict statement kind of implies “capitalism” is a thing. Markets price, not “capitalism”. And they’re pretty good about it.
But if you want proof stick your head outside to feel the acid rain that is coming down on your face. We used markets to fix that problem.
“As bad as” makes me think you’re unaware of just how bad this shit is here