iCP2: They're throwing in the towel.

[klapse]

4) I don't think I said "streamlining for efficiency", at least that doesn't sound like me. Anyway, I don't think there would be a reduction of diversity under (real/democratic) socialism, to the contrary. The main difference is that it would be the subject of democratic debate where and what kind of diversity would be encouraged in what sectors. I don't think we need hundreds of differently branded versions of the same fever-reducing chemical molecule, but in most cases, more diversity than what we have now would be nice, e.g. when I look at the market of (fast-food) restaurant chains, high-budget movies, or Pandora-like devices.

Sorry if I misappropriated "streamlining" to you. maybe it was rohezal. 

To respond to your point nonetheless, the kind of discussion you claim would be the basis for democratic production is already part of societiy. Township Zoning Committees already micro-manage what types of commercial uses are allowed within a particular city zone. People are debating what should be done with government money right now in the democratic political realm. How well do those outcomes of real democratic political process align with your imagined production committees? Do the outcomes we see from current, democratically elected senates, parliaments, state governments, cities and townships encourage or warn against giving such organs more power, even direct control over what is produced?

EDIT: Oh i see you answered in more detail here

These are crucial questions indeed. How to avoid corruption, how to avoid degeneration and power grabs. I don't think it is possible to avoid this only by means of statutes and procedures; it will be necessary to obtain and maintain a general political awareness and participation. However, this would be a good starting point in my opinion:

- all political and socio-economical matters are decided by representatives at the appropriate scale (e.g. local / regional / national / international)

What about a factory with a production line. Who decides how many shifts it runs, how long each shift is? Right now the representative of a logical unit of employees in the firm is a manager. He takes direction from those higher up the decision chain, and is responsible that his department(s) are thriving and well functioning. In many countries there are union managers who are democratically elected, to represent worker interests. Are you suggesting that ALL firms cut-out their hierarchical command structure and that each production unit operates via a voted hierarchy of controllers/representatives directed by votes cast by the workers? 

- all representatives are democratically elected

Sounds nice, but how far does this reach? What happens when you replace all civil service workers (bureaucrats) with elected people who have no training or experience in that agency? For example is a debt consultant (social worker) in a neighborhood clinic to be elected every four or more years? By whom, just the benefit recipients or by the general public?

- all representatives are held accountable at all times for their actions as a representative; at any point in time, those who elected the representative can revoke the mandate and trigger a new election.

Sounds nice. Would love to have that implented in our current social-democracy. You can stipulate that representatives must be accountable to the electorate but hasn't that been tried in every western democracy? Currently elected representatives are accountable to their electorate, but also to donors and various shadowy forces that persist throughout administrations. Wishing away the rent-capturing essence of democratic political activity is not going to make it disappear.

 

[_wb_]

4) I don't think I said "streamlining for efficiency", at least that doesn't sound like me. Anyway, I don't think there would be a reduction of diversity under (real/democratic) socialism, to the contrary. The main difference is that it would be the subject of democratic debate where and what kind of diversity would be encouraged in what sectors. I don't think we need hundreds of differently branded versions of the same fever-reducing chemical molecule, but in most cases, more diversity than what we have now would be nice, e.g. when I look at the market of (fast-food) restaurant chains, high-budget movies, or Pandora-like devices.

Sorry if I misappropriated "streamlining" to you. maybe it was rohezal. 

To respond to your point nonetheless, the kind of discussion you claim would be the basis for democratic production is already part of societiy. Township Zoning Committees already micro-manage what types of commercial uses are allowed within a particular city zone. People are debating what should be done with government money right now in the democratic political realm. How well do those outcomes of real democratic political process align with your imagined production committees? Do the outcomes we see from democratically elected senates, parliaments, state governments, cities and townships today encourage or warn against giving such organs direct control over what is produced?

The kind of democracy we have today is quite weak compared to what I have in mind. Sure, there are elections, but most of the time, you only get a choice between "bad" and "worse". There are exceptions of course, but most of the time our parliamentary democracy is a joke, not much more than a distraction from the economic reality in which the actual power lies elsewhere. It does not help that our politicians usually do make significantly more money than the median wage (causing them to get disconnected from normal people even if they start out as one of them and with good intentions) and are generally untouchable until the next elections, and the media are sufficiently superficial and have the attention span of a goldfish, which together with the lack of alternatives and the generally high levels of political apathy, often even enables extremely crappy politicians to get re-elected.

 

[Klumpen]

Sir _wb_, I hereby give you the title "General Discussion".

*salutes*

 

[klapse]

_wb_ so it is essential for your plan for democratic elections to get better, less "choice between lesser of two evils"? Maybe the chance of instant recall elections might make elected officials more accountable. Im glad you see the difficulty in this.

A very interesting proposition was made for an innovative control method (for your economic planning ideals), "vote values but bet beliefs" by Robin Hanson. Interesting theory, but a  good rebuttal to this was made by tyler cowen here.

EDIT: Trotsky had some insight...

After the administrative suppression of the NEP, the celebrated “six conditions of Stalin” – economic accounting, piecework wages, etc. – became transformed into an empty collection of words. Economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations.

kewl

EDIT2: And one from Ludwig von Mises

The dilemma is not between automatic forces and planned action. It is between the democratic process of the market, in which every individual has his share, and the exclusive rule of a dictatorial body. Whatever people do in the market economy, is the execution of their own plans. In this sense every human action means planning. What those calling themselves planners advocate is not the substitution of planned action for letting things go. It is the substitution of the planner's own plan for the plans of his fellow men. The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute preeminence of his own plan

 

[_wb_]

Just one general pointer for those who are interested in political philosophy and (genuine / democratic / my favorite flavor of) socialism: http://www.marxist.net/

 

[ekianjo]

An interesting series of articles about soviet Russia (and the Soviet Army): 

http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/index.html

and an extract of Part VIII :

The great ideals of Socialism are simple and can be understood by anyone.

Society is built upon reasonable principles. Unemployment is a thing of the past. Medical services are free. Food, in reasonable quantities, is free, too. Every person has a separate room, with light and ventilation. Water, drainage and heating are free. Everyone has the right to some free time. There are no rich or poor. Everyone has comfortable, durable clothing, appropriate to the time of year-and this is, of course, provided free. Everyone is equal before the law.

You may say that this is nothing but a beautiful dream, that no one has ever succeeded in building pure socialism. Nonsense. In every country there are already islands of pure, untainted Socialism, in which each one of these requirements are met.

Is there a prison in your town? If so, go and take a look at it-you will find yourself in a society in which everyone is fed, and everyone has work, in which clothing, accommodation and heating are all provided free.

Soviet Communists are frequently reproached for having attempted to build a socialist society but having produced something which closely resembles a prison. Such a charge is entirely unjustified. In the Soviet Union some of the inmates have larger cells than others, some eat well, others badly. There is complete confusion-a lot remains to be done to tidy up the situation. True socialism, in which everyone is truly equal, does not just resemble a prison-it is a prison. It can not exist unless it is surrounded by high walls, by watchtowers and by guard-dogs, for people always want to escape from any socialist regime, just as they do from a prison. If you try to nationalise medicine and, from the best possible motives, to guarantee work for all the doctors, you will find that they pack their bags and leave the country. Try to bring a little order into the situation and your engineers (the best ones), your designers, your ballerinas (again, the best ones) and many, many others will also flee abroad. If you continue your attempts to establish a model society you will need to build walls around it. You will be forced to do this sooner or later by the flood of refugees.

 

[Pistol]

What the hell

 

[sswam]

- Unemployment is a thing of the past.

- Medical services are free.

- Food, in reasonable quantities, is free, too.

- Every person has a separate room, with light and ventilation.

- Water, drainage and heating are free.

- Everyone has the right to some free time.

- There are no rich or poor.

- Everyone has comfortable, durable clothing, appropriate to the time of year-and this is, of course, provided free.

- Everyone is equal before the law.

Most of those ideals seem basically well-intentioned, and in many ways might be an improvement (for the poor / working class) compared to what they had before. But it should not be enforced by an overbearing and misguided authority.

If someone wishes to be free and unemployed, and wander about for a while, they should not be forced to work.

The rooms and clothing should not be monotonous and uniform, who wants to live in such an ugly city?

We cannot enforce exactly uniform wealth distribution, and that is not desirable.

We can encourage successful people to help those who are less fortunate when they are in need.

We can forbid or discourage extreme acts of greed, at the expense of poor people, for example the accumulation of land.

I have been reading some religious books including the bible and quran.

I think it's interesting to look at the rules on society and economy in those books.

If we're already talking "extreme politics", why not throw religion into the mix?

 

[sswam]

The kind of democracy we have today is quite weak compared to what I have in mind.

Agreed.


One thing that particularly annoys me, in Australia we have two houses of parliament, "the senate" and "the house of representatives". For the house of representatives, there are 150 electorates around the country (with widely varying populations); and for each electorate one member of parliament can be elected.


Suppose there are two parties Big and Small, and in each electorate the Big party gets exactly 60% of the vote, while the Small party gets 40% of the vote. One might hope that Big party would get 90 seats and Small party 60 seats. But no, because Big party had the majority in each electorate, Big party wins ALL 150 seats, and Small party gets zero seats. This is wrong.


In reality there is some variance in popularity so Small party would get some seats. But this really does affect the results. I support the Greens party here in Australia. They tend to get between 8% and 13% of the vote, so by rights they should have 8% to 13% of the seats, i.e. between 12 and 20 seats. However there is only one Greens MP in the house of representatives, Adam Bandt the member for Melbourne. So the Greens are more than 10 times under-represented in this "house of representatives".


I'm very interested to create an alternative mechanism for voting, policy-making, publishing and sorting articles, and possibly for currency.


I'm not exactly sure how it should work, I'm thinking something like this:

• every person has the same amount of "voice" or vote-power
  either a constant fixed amount belonging to them
• or a uniform supply like 1 "vox" per day

[*]vox can be spent to promote a policy or article
[*]vox can be spent to oppose a policy or article
[*]vox can be given to any other person, who represents you by using your vox (to support or oppose policies, and distribute to other representatives)
[*]vox can be saved, to be used later
[*]vox can be broken into small parts (like dollars and cents)
[*]if using a constant fixed amount of vox, vox can be recalled to its original owner at any time like "unvoting".
[*]if using a daily supply of vox, we need to limit accumulation:

• could have a mechanism of "inflation" at perhaps 2.8%, this effectively limits accumulation
• or "taxation", where the new vox supply is from taxing accumulated vox. This might be simpler.
  Note: tax capital, not transfers or gains, to limit accumulation.

A policy's strength is the amount of voice it has divided by the length of the text or "weight".


I'm not sure how to images or video should be weighed, presumably they should be heavier than text.


The exact formula used might be selected by the reader. Someone might want to view less popular articles.


And it would be good to have some random component to reduce bias toward the very most popular items.


So rather than just showing the articles in order of strength, show one article chosen randomly from all the articles,


but weighted by strength - so there is a higher probability to see the stronger articles.

If using a daily supply of vox, it might become something like a currency. People could also buy and sell goods and services with it.

 

[_wb_]

 

I support the Greens party here in Australia.

In Austrialia, I support the Socialist Party: http://www.socialistpartyaustralia.org/

I've met Anthony Main and Stephen Jolly and some of the other comrades back when I worked in Melbourne for a month, I think they're doing a pretty good job. If you live in Australia then I suggest you consider voting for them and joining them

 

[sswam]

I like trees better than workers, so I will continue to support the Greens.

But seriously now, I can't imagine a Greens "party leader" committing genocide against Jews, Homosexuals, Intellectuals,

Gypsies, Tibetans, Falun Gung practitioners, etc; whereas such has happened under communist socialism.

I might support a form of socialism that does not see violent revolution and totalitarian government as an acceptable means to achieve its goals.

Perhaps we could talk about ways to improve democracy, rather than which parties we might prefer to vote for.

 

[ekianjo]

Perhaps we could talk about ways to improve democracy, rather than which parties we might prefer to vote for.

There's certainly a lot of work to do there. Most democracies are utterly broken out there, and sadly politicians see their jobs as a way to become rich and avoid prosecution rather than actually doing something useful for their countries.

One thing I'd like to see is to reduce the number of Laws out there. Every single day it keeps inflating, but it never goes in the opposite way (i.e. simplification), there's literally more laws that you can ever hope to understand or grasp, that's even a headache for lawyers. 

 

[ekianjo]

But seriously now, I can't imagine a Greens "party leader" committing genocide against Jews, Homosexuals, Intellectuals, Gypsies, Tibetans, Falun Gung practitioners, etc; whereas such has happened under communist socialism.

Maybe not to that extreme, but there's certainly a lot of violence in the discourse of some Green Party advocates (at least in Europe, I don't know about Australia) about people who don't agree with them on the climate change issues or on how to address them. 

 

[_wb_]

I like trees better than workers, so I will continue to support the Greens.

But seriously now, I can't imagine a Greens "party leader" committing genocide against Jews, Homosexuals, Intellectuals,

Gypsies, Tibetans, Falun Gung practitioners, etc; whereas such has happened under communist socialism.

I might support a form of socialism that does not see violent revolution and totalitarian government as an acceptable means to achieve its goals.

The Australian Socialist Party is very much against totalitarian/authoritarian/dictatorial governments. They have always been extremely critical against regimes like Stalinism, Maoism, the Khmer Rouge, Castroism and so on. In some cases (e.g. Cuba) their position is a nuanced one with critical support for the positive aspects of the regime (e.g. education and health care) while still condemning the negative aspects (e.g. single-party state). In any case, they completely disagree with totalitarian, repressive methods.

This "split" in the socialist/communist movements goes back all the way to Stalinism versus the Left Opposition (Trotskyism) in the 1920s. This was the last major point of difference between socialist movements; the descendants of Stalinism still exist world-wide as the Third International (aka COMINTERN), while Trotsky founded the Fourth International (which has seen many further splits later on, mostly about more minor differences).

Brief history lesson:

The First International, the one in which Marx was active, contained a mix of anarchists, social-democrats and revolutionary socialists. It broke down mostly because of differences between the socialists and the anarchists: anarchists believed in individual terrorism as a means to change society, while socialists argued against that and in favor of mass action.

The Second International contained both social-democrats and revolutionary socialists. The split between those two movements became a fact when in the first World War, the social-democrats took a patriotic position (defending their respective nations and voting in favor of funding the war) while the revolutionary socialists took a radical internationalist anti-war position. After the war the Second International was rebooted and it still exists to this day (it's called the Socialist International now): all major social-democratic parties are a member of it (e.g. the German SPD, the French PS, the Australian ALP, etc).

The Third International was that of revolutionary socialists, but it rapidly degenerated into a tactical instrument to implement the international political agenda of Stalinism.

The Fourth International was that of genuine revolutionary socialists who opposed Stalinism. After Trotsky was assassinated by one of Stalin's agents in 1940, the Fourth International had a series of splits and unions (more splits than unions), so like GNU/Linux distributions, there are still a lot of different descendants to this day.

 

[sswam]

there's certainly a lot of violence in the discourse of some Green Party advocates

True, the people who don't agree with the greens on climate change issues should be buried in coal up to their necks.

Here's some comedy related to some bogus campaign for more coal mining in Australia.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/simoncrerar/why-australia-needs-more-coal

 

[klapse]

I might support a form of socialism that does not see violent revolution and totalitarian government as an acceptable means to achieve its goals.

This "split" in the socialist/communist movements goes back all the way to Stalinism versus the Left Opposition (Trotskyism) in the 1920s. This was the last major point of difference between socialist movements; the descendants of Stalinism still exist world-wide as the Third International (aka COMINTERN), while Trotsky founded the Fourth International (which has seen many further splits later on, mostly about more minor differences).

Splits in socialist/communist movement predates Stalin.  For e.g. Lenin, not Stalin came to power as a result of the socialist/communist revolution in Russia.

Funny how _wb_ ignores Lenin in this discussion, preferring instead to paint the crimes of the Soviet Union as a personal fault of Stalin. If you read Lenin's early writings, he is all about lauding wb's democratic socialism. When he attained power, he gave the farmland to the peasants (soviets) but then implemented numerous totalitarian (collectivist) policies under the NEP and implemented a secret police (the Cheka). Many thousands of dissidents, deserters, or other people were arrested, tortured or executed by various Cheka groups.

But no, all the "badness" of socialism is due to individuals like Stalin. Never is it seen that siezing power in itself results in repression.

[SIZE=100%]"The real significance of the Lenin revolution is to be seen in the fact that it was the bursting forth of the principle of unrestricted violence and oppression. It was the negation of all the political ideals that had for three thousand years guided the evolution of Western civilization."[/SIZE]
- Ludwig von Mises

"We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence."
- V.I.Lenin

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

His ACTIONS as a socialist leader speak for themselves. But his LANGUAGE on the way to power was perfectly in line with _wb_s aspirations.

"We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general." - V.I.Lenin

If that isn't dark irony, I don't know what is. For more, see Ralph Raico's Marxist dreams and Soviet Realities

But well, wasn't at least Trotsky a "good Marxist" in principled opposition to Stalin?

All essential items in Trotsky's program were in perfect agreement with the policies of Stalin. Trotsky advocated the industrialization of Russia. It was this that Stalin's five-year plans aimed at. Trotsky advocated the collectivization of agriculture. Stalin established the Kolkhoz and liquidated the Kulaks. Trotsky favored the organization of a big army. Stalin organized such an army. Neither was Trotsky when still in power a friend of democracy. He was, on the contrary, a fanatical supporter of dictatorial oppression of all "saboteurs."
- L.v.Mises, "Planned Chaos"

Hardly. The Trotsky/Stalin fight was a power struggle which Trotsky lost.

And how does a Trotskyist digest quotes like the following:

(Under Communism) "The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise."

LOL

"Come see the violence inherent in the system!"

- Monty Python

The core tenet of all flavors of socialism is the substitution of individual plans by state plans, enforced by threat and actual use of force and violence. This is shared by the Greens as well.

Just for example, the Greens and Socialists in Germany decreed that gas stations no longer sell regular unleaded gas, but must sell gas mixed with 10% ethanol. The production of ethanol for fuel is an extremely energy intensive process, yielding (by some measures) less energy via combustion than was put into creating it, at much higher cost than gasoline. It is an economic harm to me and a harm to the environment to force me to purchase bio-ethanol. If, someday, a process is found to manufacture ethanol-gasoline that is cheaper and less wasteful, it could compete on the market versus normal gasoline and would be used, without the threat of force.

Always the political question is "do we let individuals plan, work, spend as fits their individual needs best, or do we force them to behave in ways other than they want."

Freedom is the market. Any "system" is violence.

 

[Morn]

Perhaps we could talk about ways to improve democracy, rather than which parties we might prefer to vote for.

 There's certainly a lot of work to do there. Most democracies are utterly broken out there, and sadly politicians see their jobs as a way to become rich and avoid prosecution rather than actually doing something useful for their countries.

I think it's kind of "the grass is always greener on the other side" dillema. Democracy has some eminent flaws and no voting system that can eliminate all. Poland once tried strictly proportional system which ended with over 20 parties and committees in parliament (including Polish Beer-Lovers' Party) where the biggest party had about 12% of the seats.

 

[_wb_]

I might support a form of socialism that does not see violent revolution and totalitarian government as an acceptable means to achieve its goals.

This "split" in the socialist/communist movements goes back all the way to Stalinism versus the Left Opposition (Trotskyism) in the 1920s. This was the last major point of difference between socialist movements; the descendants of Stalinism still exist world-wide as the Third International (aka COMINTERN), while Trotsky founded the Fourth International (which has seen many further splits later on, mostly about more minor differences).

Splits in socialist/communist movement predates Stalin.  For e.g. Lenin, not Stalin came to power as a result of the socialist/communist revolution in Russia.

Funny how _wb_ ignores Lenin in this discussion, preferring instead to paint the crimes of the Soviet Union as a personal fault of Stalin. If you read Lenin's early writings, he is all about lauding wb's democratic socialism. When he attained power, he gave the farmland to the peasants (soviets) but then implemented numerous totalitarian (collectivist) policies under the NEP and implemented a secret police (the Cheka). Many thousands of dissidents, deserters, or other people were arrested, tortured or executed by various Cheka groups.

But no, all the "badness" of socialism is due to individuals like Stalin. Never is it seen that siezing power in itself results in repression.

[SIZE=100%]"The real significance of the Lenin revolution is to be seen in the fact that it was the bursting forth of the principle of unrestricted violence and oppression. It was the negation of all the political ideals that had for three thousand years guided the evolution of Western civilization."[/SIZE]
- Ludwig von Mises

"We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence."
- V.I.Lenin

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

I mostly agree with Lenin. I'm not a pacifist. If in a revolutionary situation -- a mass uprising -- the minority that used to be the ruling class attempts a counter-revolution using military or paramilitary force, then I am not in favor of sitting in peaceful protest in front of a tank until it runs me over. Sometimes violence can be avoided by arming the people. The October revolution was much less bloody than the February revolution, mostly because it was better planned and executed through mass action of the armed working class.

Yes, I agree that the Red Terror was horrible, but you have to put it in the historical context, that is, a brutal civil war, fuelled by capitalist nations all over the world, in particular the Triple Entente (France, UK and Tsarist Russia) . See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_%28Russia%29

The main problem of Russia was that the revolutionary wave did not properly spread to other countries, leaving Russia isolated, which caused it to be attacked from all sides, as well as from within, through the White Army that was supported not just by the old Tsarist ruling class, but also by the ruling class of many other countries like France. This forced the Bolsheviks into a so-called "war communism", which was obviously not the best context in which to improve democracy -- even though the revolution did have immediate positive effects: e.g. women's right to vote was established in 1917 in Russia (cf. 1920 in USA, 1928 in UK, 1944 in France, 1947 in India, Japan, and China, 1948 in Belgium, 1971 in Switzerland).

We can discuss more about Lenin if you want, but I think it's important to have such a discussion in a nuanced way, not by simplistically jumping to conclusions by looking at a few short quotes. No, Lenin was not perfect. No, Marx and Trotsky were not perfect. But I think most of Lenin's core ideas are fundamentally correct and still relevant. And I certainly don't think that Leninism automatically leads to Stalinism. Lenin and Trotsky were very close in terms of positions and ideology, building on Marx; Stalin is very clearly something completely different.

Not that Stalinism is the "fault" of the individual person Stalin. That would be a grave mistake, and it would be a historical analysis that is completely contrary to marxist historical materialism. If Stalin would never have been born, chances are that there would still have been Stalinism. Just like if Hitler would never have been born, there would probably still have been Nazism. Although single persons can be a catalyst for historical processes, the base ingredients have to be present in society.

In several books, Trotsky made an excellent analysis of Stalinism. It is important to draw the lessons from this, because history does have a tendency to repeat itself.

Freedom is the market. Any "system" is violence.

Any class-based system ultimately relies on some kind of violence, some kind of oppression.

The capitalist market system is no exception to that: the ruling class (which is a tiny minority of the population) relies on a state apparatus, including police and military, to maintain its power and oppress the majority. Of course they prefer subtle oppression (e.g. using propaganda to convince the majority of people that there is no longer such a thing as "social classes") over more expensive and generally less effective/productive brutal oppression ("sending in the tanks"), but oppression it is nonetheless.

Socialism, as a first step towards a classless society called communism (although both words have been tainted by history so please keep in mind that no actual communist system has existed so far), also uses oppression -- oppression of a minority by a majority, but still oppression.

Only a classless society can get rid of that oppression of human by human. That is the dream of both anarchists and socialists, although we have different opinions on how to get there.

 

[ekianjo]

Only a classless society can get rid of that oppression of human by human. That is the dream of both anarchists and socialists, although we have different opinions on how to get there.

You can't have classless society unless you force it upon people. Because there will always be people who want more than others, that's the nature of Mankind and the source of progress. That's precisely why Socialism ends up breeding totalitarian regimes. It's not by chance, it's by necessity.

 

[Klumpen]

You are both right.