[extropy-chat] how partisanship skews perception

[Trend Ologist]

I like the Marxist professors I've talked to, they
know what is going on. However 'rank & file', 'grass
roots' Communists are mostly thugs, they want revenge
for being raised in lower class households, they want
power. Sean, I've served my sentence in the Marxist
mind-prison, no more probation.
 Please, don't ever forget the Communism of 1917 gave
birth to the fascism of 1922. No aside this, it's a
central issue.



> And there is no denying Marx was right about one
> thing - there IS a ruling
> class...and then there is "everyone else". Do you
> support such a divide?
> 
> Perhaps a quick reminder of a few basic things from
> Marx, as posted by to
> another list I subsrcibe to, will jog your memory on
> other matters relating
> to some of the  sensible components of "Marxism".
> His definitions of systems
> are still useful tools. And those who still examine
> all political constructs
> to find a way to re-work and improve old ideas try
> not to despise or hate.
> There are utter pragmatic pernicious bastards within
> ALL political
> constructs.....that is a by product of power and the
> loss of compassion it
> engenders.
> 
> Sean
> 
> Extracts follow, which I hope someone on this list
> finds interesting:  
> 
>
---------------------------------------------------------
> > I don't know that the market can, or should, or
> would, be totally 
> suppressed even in a socialist democracy. 
> 
> Alexandra, this reveals that you accept the
> existence of the market, a basic
> tenet of liberalist thinking. "The market" is
> predicated on two things,
> firstly
> the appropriation of the means of production by
> those who thereby become
> capitalists (ie, through processes of expropriation
> of lands, such as the
> land clearing acts in England to establish
> capitalist farming, and the
> industrial revolution/s that built bigger factories
> that therefore made
> goods cheaper that therefore ruined handcraft
> manufacturing / independent
> small producers), and secondly by a pricing system
> that factors in the
> profit overhead and relative shortages to maintain
> prices (especially in
> conditions of monopoly or collusion among
> producers). 
> 
> A socialist system solves the first through working
> people running their own
> enterprises where everyone votes on all matters
> including their own equal
> remuneration (with perhaps some differences
> according to skill). Working
> examples exist in some socialist states, and in
> Argentina where economic
> collapse in this capitalist state has seen quite a
> few enterprises abandoned
> by their capitalist owners due to a lack of a
> sufficient profit stream. The
> second is solved by a continuous process of
> decommodification, predicated on
> understanding that price is a rationing mechanism
> essentially, along with
> reflecting the costs of the commodities that make up
> the commodity in
> question. The initial step is that through workers
> taking control of their
> enterprises, the profit motive and its overhead are
> taken out of the system.
> This then works itself through the economy as each
> element / commodity feeds
> into the next process up through production levels.
> The second step is to
> ensure that the basics of life (housing, food,
> clothing, transport,
> education) are met, ie that there is enough
> production to satisfy these
> equitably so that any shortages of these are
> eliminated. This eliminates
> pricing as a supply / demand signal, the only
> remaining question is of the
> cost of the elements / commodities that go to make
> up the particular basic
> good. The cheapening of these basic items then works
> itself through the
> economy, deflating the cost of other parts of the
> economy. The third step is
> to engender automation of as much of production as
> possible, this being
> impossible in a capitalist economy due to the
> unemployment this would cause
> and the resulting imbalance / contradiction of
> falling demand for the goods
> produced, but entirely possible under socialism,
> going hand in hand with
> lowering of working hours (but not pay) throughout
> the economy. Sustainable
> energy production and consumption of raw materials
> would be a priority here.
> This would cheapen goods even further, and such
> deflation would then work
> itself through the economy, cheapening other goods.
> 
> Part of this cheapening of goods would include
> cutting out as much as
> possible of the wasteful sales / advertising effort
> (and its engendering of
> socially useless wants) that is an essential part of
> capitalism, as well as
> the greater efficiency involved in communal / social
> solutions as opposed to
> production geared to individual solutions. This
> would then be an ongoing,
> iterative process, working towards the communistic
> ideal of a society where
> people only work because they want to in some
> desired field, and people
> simply rock up to be allocated their essential
> goods.
> 
> However, there will still be markets, on the side of
> society, say for
> ancient Grecian urns, or rare stamps (as Dick
> Nichols once put it). But the
> main things of life will no longer be allocated by
> the biased and class
> based allocation system of the "market" (I once
> wrote an essay at uni
> asserting that Adam Smith's blind "hand" of God in
> the market wasn't so much
> blind as authoritarian and directive in the
> Calvinist predestination sense
> of the then emerging late 18th century understanding
> of the nature of human
> society as ordered, rational, scientific and
> bourgeois).
> 
> I will tackle other areas you have mentioned in
> later posts. Suffice to say
> that only after the capitalist market is mostly
> removed in human society can
> we truly move to address the environment as part of
> a rationally social
> solution to human problems.
>  
> Paul Oboohov
> A lowly denizen of the State
> ---------------------------------------------
> <then another person adds>:
> 
> Alexandra,
> Your analysis of capital is one-sided. Essentially
> the logic of 
> capital is not to get people to consume but rather
> to valorise, to 
> reproduce its own dynamic and transcend all
> barriers.
> Capital produces surplus value from workers but the
> surplus value is 
> locked into the commodities - thus as you point out
> a barrier to 
> capital reproducing and expanding is a lack of
> consumption 
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