The Rawness

T Bone,

I have a feeling you are trying to draw me out of the wood work with this one.

I’m working on a reply.

I can’t speak for the “intellectuals and elites” since I am neither. I have a high school education and I am the son of working class parents, and as odds would have it, a member of the working class myself. I work as a computer programmer and systems analyst, so I have plenty of time to spend analyzing the business logic of economic organizations. I will tell you why I am for Socialism and against Capitalism, but first, a clarification of the terms is in order since there is a lot of confusion about what these terms even mean. Contrary to popular belief, if the terms are to have any meaning whatsoever, Capitalism and Socialism have little to do with the level of government involvement in the economic sphere. If that was the case, Capitalism disappeared in the 20th century completely and was replaced by Fascism, or as Mussolini preferred to call it – Corporatism – “the merger between state and industrial power.” However, I don’t think this is the case. Capitalism reigns everywhere on the globe, and has since the end of World War II. It is just defined improperly so that it is harder to resist.

Capitalism is a system of social relations where labor is a commodity, like anything else, to be bought low and sold high. By this definition, the USA, Russia, and China are / were Capitalist systems. In this system of social relationships, one class of people own the means of production and another class sells their labor in exchange for currency to buy back what is necessary for survival. ( To buy back the very things they have worked to produce ) The owners purchase the labor power of the workers, and resell the output, accumulating the difference or surplus value as profit, or capital. In this system it doesn’t matter if there is state planning or state ownership, or no planning, and private ownership, or all of the above. These are just different management strategies.

In Capitalism, one group of human beings dictate what, why, when, how, and where another group of human beings will utilize their time and energy. One group of human beings accumulate the surplus value created by this process, the other is given enough to re-produce their own labor energy and in more developed parts of the world, enough to purchase leisure-oriented commodities. ( Not because of the generosity of Capitalists, either, but because they need markets of consumers. ) Whether this owning class is government bureaucracy, private entrepreneurs, or monopoly corporations is a surface detail, the fundamental social relation stays the same.

If the above is an accurate description of Capital, one has to ask, how did things get this way? and how do they stay this way?

Things got this way because the working class all over the world descended from peasants, serfs, and slaves. Landless people, and conquered people, who for the longest time were forbidden, without means, or too busy with drudgery to ever learn to read or write. Things stay this way by force. Violence, over which the State has a monopoly, to break strikes, to put down revolts, to start wars against the working classes of other countries, or psychological force: propaganda, advertising, public relations. The control of the school system, which in all developed countries participation is compulsory. Even Urban planning. There are a number of means. The control of currency, and credit. I have to stop eventually, so I’ll make this point:

Capitalism is maintained with mass amounts of effort in deception, seduction, and violence. Capitalism could never be put up to a vote. They would never allow it. Liberal Democratic societies have turned Fascist and will again before that possibility could even emerge.

The one requirement for Capitalism is that labor remains a commodity, and that it can always be bought and sold with a surplus to be accumulated. And since this is true, work can never end. You can never be completed with your work, because the Capitalist never stops being concerned with “growth” for its own sake. My opposition to this, as a technologist, an environmentalist, and a lover of leisure, is that we have the physical, mental, and technological capacity to eliminate labor as a commodity, and restore its true purpose which is to create use-value, and upon its completion, to move on to leisure and play. ( The link between creativity, and play is well established in the psychological community. The negative link between creativity and work, and things done for monetary compensation, is equally well established including in the book Predictably Irrational which I read thanks to your suggestion. )

In a Socialist society, the value of a meal is the nutrition it provides. In a Capitalist society, it is how cheaply it can be produced and how expensively the market will tolerate it being sold. In a Socialist society, the value of a home is the shelter it provides, not its resale value. In every society it is workers, technicians, and technology who create all beauty and utility, in other words, all wealth. In a socialist society, these workers would have control over the who, what, when, where, and why of their work. The surplus would belong to the workers. In a Capitalist society, we would still be competing against one another and largely have no say over any of these questions outside of our ability to choose different bosses, and we’d still have nothing to show for our work besides the wages we take home.

That is why I am for a Socialist society, one which has yet to exist, I will admit, but which is technologically and socially possible and represents the ultimate fulfillment of human potential. The dilemma, though, is that those of us who are in favor of this society can not do anything to bring it about. The failure of every Socialist revolution to date is proof of this.

( Excuse the poor grammar and organization, the above was a stream of consciousness and unedited piece of work. )

Jonathan,
You really need to get out of your bubble and spend sometime checking out how human nature actually works. People are greedy, people compete with each other.

We have had a 100 years of Socialist nations now and the end result has always been blood, massive poverty, and really bland concrete buildings. But hell Capitalism is a shit sandwich too, it’s just a less shitty one. There are no perfect systems of the world there are only better ones and the differences are measured in CM, not KM.

“In a socialist society, these workers would have control over the who, what, when, where, and why of their work. The surplus would belong to the workers. In a Capitalist society, we would still be competing against one another and largely have no say over any of these questions outside of our ability to choose different bosses, and we?d still have nothing to show for our work besides the wages we take home.”

So anything beyond the production costs that you work brings in should be yours? As a programmer myself I would really hate to work on a project for 2 years, do excellent work but not being paid until the project comes out. Wages exist to pay for work regardless when and if the produce result in income.

Also if I got to choose then I might just go skiing for a month instead of finishing my code for that pace maker that’s coming out next month. No code means the pace maker is not released on time and people may die because of my selfish delay. In the system you describe it would be impossible to get things done.

Is it possible to make labor not be a commodity? How do you do that? (Assuming that it were up to you, say you get to be the president or whatever.) Outlaw paying people for their labor? Outlaw corporations in favor of cooperatives?

Interesting hypothesis T. I’d say there may be some merit to it in that intelligence and academic achievement are relatively low value in our culture. I don’t think that this is universal to capitalism however. We have a particularly anti-intellectual bent in the US:read “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life” by Richard Hofstadter. This wasn’t the case in say Plato’s time, nor is it in some other cultures today. While capitalism necessitates a marketplace, and that success be rewarded etc. what we often see is in realms which are more socialistic, such as democratic governance, where representing the masses and populism means the best should rise to the top, they don’t. We typically don’t see intellectuals as leaders. A great many of our politicians are placed by capital and are dumb as bricks. It’s a sad commentary on the education of our populace that they elect based on sound-bites and commercials, rather than ability. We Americans suspect the intelligent as cunning. We prefer to vote for the dopey aw-shucks sensibilities of an everyman. Well I for one know there are people more intelligent, and better able to run things than I. I don’t understand why we wouldn’t elect our betters intentionally. I don’t want the guy I could have a beer with in charge. I want a Plato or an Isaac Newton.

In response to Jonathan above, I think your description of capitalism is merely one of human organization. Ever since we became agrarian and had surpluses, the culture’s aristocrats have controlled them. I think we need greater detail in describing forms of governance than simply everything equals capitalism.

alphadominances last blog post..The Alpha Female: Estrogen and Female Dominance

Briefly, you are an intellectual, we do live in a semi-fascist society (one that just got a wee bit more fascist due to the introduction of a semi-religious attitude toward the leader) and your definition of capitalism suffers from Marxist tunnel vision.

(I mean a tunnel vision that happens to be Marxist, but it raises the interesting question of what a Marxist tunnel might be.)

Fred?spheres last blog post..Credo

Alpha,

That’s a valid point. I only mean to argue that wage labor is the central component of Capitalism. That the division of society into classes, based on this social relationship is what makes a society Capitalist. A society or culture which keeps this fundamental relationship in tact, can not accurately be called Socialist. I like the term State-Capitalism or Bureaucratic-Capitalism to describe countries like China, or the former USSR. I also like Mussolini’s term, Corporatism, to describe everywhere else.

Many people argue that a Socialist society isn’t possible because people are too greedy. I say this is bullshit. Capitalism only persists because people are not greedy enough. If people were truly greedy, they would never tolerate being paid 10 dollars an hour to produce 100 dollars of value. People are not greedy, they are meek, and self-sacrificial. They can be made otherwise, and your blog which I am a reader of, contains a basic formula which is proof of this fact.

Greed is the only basis for a Socialist society.

Is this even a serious question? For most of human history, labor was not a commodity. A lot of human labor today is not in commodified form. Try going to dinner at a person’s house and when you’re done with the meal, ask them for a bill. See if you’re invited back.

I was hoping Nozick would talk about the religious aspect. The left appears to be more prone to making a religion out of its political movements. The right already has its religions, and tends not to mix the two.* (These are only tendencies, however.) Thus the tendency for the hard-right to be seen as scary, while the hard-left is merely silly; the left almost literally demonizes its opponents. (Again, there are plenty of exceptions.)

Since traditional religions are out of fashion among intellectuals, and few people have no religious drive, intellectuals need to latch only a movement that satisfies the drive. A movement that preaches small government, checks-n-balances, federalism, the unperfectibility of human nature, and does not believe that, in every case “when somebody hurts, government has got to move” ain’t gonna cut it.

*At least in the sense of treating the movement as a religion. I know the right wants to impose its morality via law. Just like the left.

Fred?spheres last blog post..Credo

Further, the majority of the technology the “blogosphere” you are participating in runs on was produced by non-commodified labor. The most popular and widely used web server in the world – Apache – is created and maintained mostly by volunteers who receive no monetary compensation for their work. The free / open source software movement itself is a perfect example. ( There are exceptions, however. )

Johnathan:

“In Capitalism, one group of human beings dictate what, why, when, how, and where another group of human beings will utilize their time and energy.”

You have not defined capitalism. In capitalism there is no dictation of utilization of time and energy. Everyone is a free agent. Each laborer has the right to determine if he accepts the offer of his employment. Perhaps a man can’t pay his bills without that job, so he is de facto servile to his boss, but he still has the power to walk away, nonetheless.

“In this system it doesn?t matter if there is state planning or state ownership, or no planning, and private ownership, or all of the above. These are just different management strategies.”

You’re missing a huge aspect of capitalism and economics in general. We live in a world of scarce resources. The *best* mechanism we have developed to deal with that scarcity is capitalism. Given that capitalism isn’t a complete solution, we have to weight our opportunity costs. It does matter what the level of state ownership is, our economic freedoms would be much more constrained in a socialist society.

“Capitalism is maintained with mass amounts of effort in deception, seduction, and violence. Capitalism could never be put up to a vote. They would never allow it. Liberal Democratic societies have turned Fascist and will again before that possibility could even emerge.”

Is that why Communist and socialist regimes tend to fall under the rule of dictators moreso than capitalist nations? Democratic processes, although as imperfect as capitalism, allow for referendums on the level of economic freedom in a society. The U.S., the longest-standing democracy in the world, has had their economic structure put up to vote every 4 years. We still remain one of the more capitalist nations in the world. Between the two alternatives, a democracy will elect capitalism over socialism (Communism).

“In a Socialist society, the value of a meal is the nutrition it provides. In a Capitalist society, it is how cheaply it can be produced and how expensively the market will tolerate it being sold. In a Socialist society, the value of a home is the shelter it provides, not its resale value. In every society it is workers, technicians, and technology who create all beauty and utility, in other words, all wealth. In a socialist society, these workers would have control over the who, what, when, where, and why of their work. The surplus would belong to the workers.”

First, value is subjective. Do you think that people living in a socialist country only care about how sturdy the roof over their head is? No. They are subject to human nature as well, but because of the top-down mechanism for controlling scarce resources, they don’t have the opportunity to care what color their carpet is or how many bathrooms they have. They place value where they can. Their restricted options, due to socialisms shortfalls, create this dilemma.

You also say that workers and technicians create all beauty and wealth. Sure they do, at the end of the creative process. What you’re forgetting to consider is the capital investment made by a bunch of rich guys that provide the machine, plants, and inventory to make such items.

Your main issue seems to be that the worker is a commodity and he is not able to reap what he sows. Let’s use the ideal of the farmer as an example. People have a romantic notion of the farmer as master of his own domain and destiny. Does not the farmer have to toil his whole life in the field? Assuming he hasn’t stowed away enough of his profits to enjoy a work-free retirement, he will spend his life working just as the computer technician has to. The farmer trades his surplus crops for clothing, money, and other goods. Similarly, you work for dollars which you trade for food, clothing, and goods. You are further angry that a man’s services are commoditized. They are, but are you not the one selling those services? You are only angry because the market value for those services is not higher. In essence, you are the one selling your labor. You are commoditizing yourself. You do have the option to move somewhere that you work for yourself, make your own goods, and sell the surplus. Chances are, you won’t live the same prosperous lifestyle you currently do though.

Chuck,

I don’t really have a reply to offer which will not be completely pedantic and a waste of both of our time.

If you really think that the masses of human beings are wage laborers because of choice, and that they can become something else, simply by choosing to do so on an individual basis, then you and I really have nothing in common and can not possibly have a productive discussion.

Scarcity? seriously? That argument may have worked around 1900 but after the invention of the assembly line, and computers? Give me a break.

Best of luck
JS

“If you really think that the masses of human beings are wage laborers because of choice, and that they can become something else, simply by choosing to do so on an individual basis”

I don’t think that’s the case at all. Can you think of a feasible situation in which everyone can be exactly what they want to be and make as much money as needed to fill their financial desires? It’s not possible given the scarce resources of this planet. There has to be a system, in this case the free market price system, that sorts out who gets what. It’s not perfect, but it is the best alternative thus far. Once cold fusion is discovered maybe this paradigm will change, but until then, good luck with that socialism.

If you aren’t willing to acknowledge that resources, people, land, air, water, raw materials etc, then you’re correct, we have nothing else to say on this issue.

Chucks last blog post..Saturday Night IS Alright for Fighting

If you really think that the masses of human beings are…

What I really think is that human beings are first and foremost animals. It is our nature, the same as every other animal, to have to “work” to survive. The inestimable advantage we have developed since our subsistence past is the division of labour which allows individuals to produce a “surplus” which can then be “traded” for products which we might never have been able to produce for ourselves. I.E. Humans have no choice but to labour in some way – by their nature. Whether an individual chooses to labour at a subsistence level or join in the more productive “capitalist” system is still a choice, even in a “capitalist” state (granted it is more difficult but it is still possible).

As to your scarcity comment – what reward should the inventor of the assembly line receive? Has he (and let’s face it nearly every invention is a man’s) not raised the productivity (and therefore value) of every worker to be employed on that line? Doesn’t he deserve much greater rewards and shouldn’t the “labourers” appreciate the enormous advantage he has bestowed on them?

If by rewards you mean dictatorial control over how entire groups of people and their offspring spend their time, and the right to pass this privilege on to his own, offspring, then no.

And in either case, this rhetorical question of yours doesn’t quite grasp the reality of our historical situation. The technician who “invented” the assembly line was probably paid a wage for his genius. The person who paid him a wage, and owned the patent, would get the reward.

And you all seem to be ok with this. Defeated creatures that you are.

This is also worth a read, though it is very long:

http://www.janehaddam.com/chd/marx1.html

Martin Regnens last blog post..A Call For a New Spirituality

Do you at least agree that every human must “work” in some way in order to survive?

I have a proposal – all those of us who are happy with the capitalist system should get together and all those who prefer a socialist system could get together. Then the socialists will be free of all the nasty dictators.

It was a serious question. I’m a little offended that you thought otherwise!

At the end of your post, you claim that the [sic] “dilemma” (Catch-22) is that those who want a socialist society are not those who are in power to bring it about. So let’s assume that you are the one in power. And you’ve done so.

I would like to continue to own a car and so would many other people. The auto industry today, I’d say, is capitalistic in that there are some CEOs and shareholders in charge, they have all the money and they hire workers like they buy steel and airbags. They get the surplus profits and the workers get a paycheck to spend on things like cars. (Let’s also pretend that the auto industry isn’t flailing. You can pick a different, large industry if you like.)

So, you’re in charge and when you said no more capitalism. The shareholders and CEO of GM or whomever flew to some other country that still has capitalism, like, I dunno, Mexico.

What needs to happen so that we can continue to have cars? I’ve read many a blog and been to a couple dinner parties and never did I get a car. Who makes the cars now? How much do they cost? Is there a profit? Who gets the profit? Are workers getting paid and how much? With what money does whoever is making the cars buy raw materials like steel and whatever else is needed?

I’m all in favor of the socialist society, I just want a picture of how it works. My inculcation has obviously been so thorough that I require an explanation!

Sure, I will agree that man and most animals must exert effort into order to “survive” ( excluding, notably, parasites, capitalists, and their children ) but this is one of the most laughable straw men arguments that I have heard in response to my criticisms of Capitalism in the years that I have been making them!

The work that we do for survival is not the problem, it is the social relationship that requires large number of human beings to keep working, well after they have produced more than what is necessary for their own survival and leisure many times over, in order to retain the “privilege” of employment. ( They must compete against those poorer and more desperate than them. Notice nobody who is rich ever wants to become a wage laborer, yet they will extoll the virtues of a society which condemns 95% of the population to this same fate. )

Further, it is the fact that large number of people are prohibited from working, and thus forced toward poverty… regardless if that work they are capable of performing is productive, and useful, if that work does not meet the requirement that it can be purchased cheaply and sold for an acceptable level of profit.

You have a lot of thinking to do about the nature of work in Capitalist society, before you can truly say you are in favor of Capitalism. Don’t cheat yourself.

Johnathan:

“it is the social relationship that requires large number of human beings to keep working, well after they have produced more than what is necessary for their own survival and leisure many times over”

How do you know how much a given person could have produced in their given job without the use of resources that others have put in place before them? How could an assembly line worker’s production and proper earnings be allocated in your system when he is able to work in the first place because of the plant, machinery, patents, technology, land, inventory, risk, capital infusion, advertising, etc. of others in his organization? You’re acting as if everything each worker produces today arises solely out of his own doing. Hint: He’s piggy-backing on the labor and capital of those before him.

“Notice nobody who is rich ever wants to become a wage laborer, yet they will extoll the virtues of a society which condemns 95% of the population to this same fate.”

Is an aversion to economic backsliding common to any other economic philosophy? Are communists special in that they don’t care if they work harder than others with equal pay? Probably not. The fact that people don’t especially like menial jobs isn’t an indictment of the whole system. The plain fact is that there is a natural hierarchy that humans naturally fall into. Communism and socialism is an attempt to jumble that hierarchy, whereas capitalism accepts it as part of the human condition. The best thing about capitalism is that, while accepting this hiearchy, people are free to attempt to move up and down that ladder. This is the best humanity can hope for.

Maybe I’m imagining things here, but it seems to me that what’s going on in these articles is intellectual-bashing. To establish credentials, I was an English major, I currently teach/tutor at a community college, and don’t really care for socialism. These articles all basically read to me like someone saying that not only are people in the humanities useless, they’re dirty commies as well. In fact, they’re dirty commies primarily because they are useless. Seems to me like vicious populist baiting, which serves primarily to reaffirm people’s prejudices and suspicions against those who went to school longer than they did, and to make people proud of going with their guts instead of thinking things through.

Now, it’s true that no sensible person goes into the arts or humanities to get rich. In general, it takes someone who truly cares about knowledge for the sake of knowledge to do that. So, why would anyone care about something so impractical? Well, it’s possible that, even though the arts and humanities don’t serve a direct, practical purpose in the same way, say, knowing how to build a house does, they do help to elevate the way people think. They serve to help us better understand ourselves and make better use of all those practical bits of knowledge we acquire. I would argue that isn’t useless at all.

As for intellectuals thinking they’re better than other people, yes, perhaps some do. But some powerful businessmen, some powerful religious icons, both of whom often decry intellectuals, certainly feel the same about themselves, they just B.S. the public better. But the truth is, the purpose of the arts and humanities isn’t to make people feel bad about themselves and what they like. Done properly, it’s designed to expand a person’s worldview, to allow them to decide for themselves what they like by giving them chances to experience things they might not have. I enjoy both Shakespeare and Marvel Comics, and I see no shame in either one.

As for intellectuals in favor of socialism, I don’t think it’s so terribly epidemic. While there are certainly smatterings of young, overly idealistic college students who think the world would be better if everyone shared, on the whole, intellectuals should know that socialism isn’t really for them. Who gets shot in communist societies right after the aristocrats? Teachers, doctors, and scholars.

Intellectuals are often more on the liberal side of the spectrum, and as to why that is I don’t care to debate, but I suspect this vast conspiracy of commie college professors is just an overstatement designed to demonize a group of people who are often misunderstood. The authors of these articles, who are themselves the type who write scholarly papers, ironically enough, work at creating an “Us vs. Them” mentality, while denigrating people who care about learning. It reminds me a lot of high school.

Hating Intellectualism…

While pondering the rise and fall of British character, Theodore Dalrymple digs up a passage from an old book.

It was then a common French opinion that the British were less intelligent than the French; and in the book, Maurois? fictional alter ego,…