Recent analyses inspired by Polanyi suggest that neo-liberalism can be understood as the first phase of a new double movement, with neo-liberalism emerging initially in the 1970s as a reaction to the excesses of the welfare state and Keynesianism, creating in the 1980s—through the application of its ideas—a new era of free-market dominance. In turn, it is suggested, this will be followed by a reaction to curb the excesses of neo-liberalism and reimpose political controls over the market.

Polanyi’s critique of the gold standard has also appeared highly relevant in the context of the ordoliberal European economic and monetary union. Just as maintaining gold parity at all costs meant inflicting austerity on depression-era Britain, so the requirements of EMU forced Greece into the ‘internal devaluation’ of cuts in real wages and pensions amid the eurozone crisis.

In the contemporary European context, the generation-long half-cycles of the double movement have been replaced by much shorter periods of liberalisation and socialisation. Instead of the long cycles of Anglo-American economic history, we can observe short cycles of a European pas de deux: the establishment of the single market is followed by EU-level labour legislation and cohesion policy, the Stability and Growth Pact is followed by the Lisbon strategy, the eastern enlargement is followed by reviews of the posted-workers directive and the eurozone crisis triggers the adoption of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR).

The balance between liberalisation and socialisation in the European context must be further studied. Most certainly, the EPSR is not a full answer to the failure of the initial model of EMU, which explains why in the recent period a new discussion has begun about the need for a European ‘social union’ that would offer an EU-level safety net for the social-security systems of the member states.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/karl-polanyi-against-the-free-market-dystopia

I've just read how back in feudal times, a feudal lord could just decide to have an intercourse with a few of his female serfs or peasants whenever they wished.

Even if capitalism has some flaws, it still solved this problem of people being able to be arbitrarily raped.

An income tax punishes those who work harder and smarter, and welfare rewards those who work less and have less marketable skills.

The tax/welfare system produces a financially poorer and less skilled society that is outcompeted by economically freer societies.

Disclaimer, not all Marxist-Leninists are like this, but having been an ML myself for years I'd say most online and IRL I've encountered tend to be.

This isn't a question about theory, practice, history, or economics. It's about psychology. In my experience MLs are usually incredibly rude and condescending people. If you disagree with their outlook, even if you are another Marxist, even if you are an ML the move is frequently to condescend to you, accuse you of ignorance, tell you to read more, etc. If you're doing irl activities and suggest alternative strategies or make any sort of mistake while organizing with them, real or imagined, you're usually subject to intense and vicious criticism. MLs, in my experience, often cannot handle disagreement either, whenever I talk to MLs online, for instance, no matter how calm I am, once we have disagreed they actively try either to proselytize or simply shut down the conversation if they can't necessarily say you are wrong. They very regularly insult Anarchists, non-Leninist Marxists, Marxist-Leninist subgroups they dislike, etc.

They claim this behavior happens among anarchists too, but, having recently abandoned MLs to mostly interact with anarchists, I have to say, I think this is a myth MLs mostly tell each other, anarchists are so open to disagreements and differences I genuinely think anarchists are too open as they won't, for instance, simply push a liberal out of their space.

This intolerance of difference, general deference to authority, fierce criticism of their own peers, rejection of any criticism towards themselves other than from a respected authority is something I've noticed is close to a general tendency among MLs and forms of Marxism closely aligned with it, like Trotskyism, Bordiga Thought, Maoism, Marxist-Leninist-Maoism, etc.

Can one understand political economy without some background in mathematics? And, if yes, I suppose a follow on question is, how much or what mathematics specifically?

Knowing myself, I'll probably be argumentative in replies. This is a question where what I intellectually think should be the case and my feelings and attitude are not in sync. So I do wonder what people will say.

For marginalism, I think Debreu's Theory of Value is the last canonical statement of the theory. Many textbooks since 1959 try to explain aspects of this theory. Academics might argue that this is no longer the theory that they use, but no comprehensive theory has replaced it yet.

Some, not just myself, have recommended Morishima's Marx's Economics: A Dual Theory of Value and Growth as a textbook presentation of the modern revival of classical and political economy. (You can find a free PDF of this somewhere on the web.) Many other presentations are available, some starting out with one and two-good models to introduce ideas.

If you do not have the mathematics or inclination to follow these sorts of publications, are you just an interested on-looker dependent on trusting the supposed experts? But how can one expect these sort of ideas to be built on by, say, political parties?

Is inequality a problem? Is too much inequality a problem? Most capitalists will say "no" to at least one of those two questions, or variations of them. If I'm wrong here, please let me know and point me to the polls and policy track records and the prevailing conversations on the topic that I have somehow missed.

If inequality isn't a problem, then we are left with two possible conclusions:

1. Those who have less deserve nothing more than what they have. This is nothing more than the Just World Hypothesis. This is a hierarchical and hyperconservative worldview, based on premises that rich people are "better" and more deserving than others, that wealth and power should be distributed unequally because some people are inferior to others.

It is a baseless assumption that I dismiss as easily as it is thrown around.

2. Those with less have the capcity and full opportunity to also amass wealth as others have, if they simply made the right decisions. This differs from the first in that these folks tend to argue that "the pie can always grow," meaning that any poor person could suddenly just become the next billionaire if they did the right combination of moves, and this would only "grow" the pile of total wealth, not shift it from anywhere else.

While the former is a kind of moralistic worldview used to justify the status quo, the latter is usually framed in an optimistic way - even if the tone is usually smug and snarky - which suggests that we can all reach our full potential and "who knows" what that potential may be?

The contradiction can most readily be seen when discussing raising wages for workers.

Capitalists almost always say that just raises inflation, but a rich person becoming richer? No such protest.

How can it be that workers receiving raises accelerates inflation but if the 0.1% get 15% richer, this does nothing for inflation? Unless we understand that wealth, in all its forms, doesn't just spontaneously spring into existence from business transactions?

If I'm a restaurant chef and the owner doesn't pay me enough, cappies say I should just start my own restaurant. Assuming a static system - no population growth, no "printing" of new money, etc - then my new restaurant will only displace existing customers, labor, cash flow, and supplies. My new wealth as a restaurant owner must necessarily come at a direct dollar-for-dollar loss from the competing businesses, or else all customers need to be spending more overall on food, without going into debt.

In other words, cappies seem to understand how all available resources - including consumer disposable income, business revenues, ownership shares, etc - are finite at any given time, and it takes special action to make new resources available - when they exist at all (i.e. you can't create more land).

So when workers demand raises, cappies know that the raises are increased costs for the business. That means the owners either must accept lower profit margins, or else they can try to raise their prices to maintain whatever margins they had prior to a wage increase. In a sufficiently competitive market (or one with constraints on pricing, for example), raising wages will mean lower total wealth valuations for owners, because they cannot always raise their prices as quickly as wages, since consumers go elsewhere.

Therein lies the contradiction. Great accumulation of wealth comes at a cost to workers' wages, and actually growing an economy to simply accomodate more ultra wealthy is unrealistic, as the financial, labor, and material resources are all being sought after by other actors, especially those who already hold disproportionate amounts of wealth.

The rich are rich only because workers are relatively (or absolutely, in many cases) poor.

Hello. My name is Agile-Caterpillar. You may remember me from highly praised submissions such as "Was Hitler Left or Right? - New groundbreaking review of medical files shows right testicle was missing", "Titan - The Life of John D. Rockefeller" and "Are socialist attitudes linked to iron deficiency? - A statistical analysis". Today I want to talk about something socialists believe doesn't exist, human nature. Socialists believe that either human nature is inherently socialist and altruistic or they believe doesn't exist at all, it's just learned behavior. Of course socialists also assert that bad selfish behavior is exclusively the result of capitalist influence.

Socialist experiments have shown us something else. They were more totalitarian, more inhumane, more hostile towards individual freedom and enslaved workers even more than the capitalists themselves. Why? Were the socialists better or worse? No they were exactly the same.

The truth about human nature is that it does not only exist but that humans are both altuistic and selfish at the same time.

People tend to be altruistic when it comes to people close to them but more selfish when it comes to people they don't know.

Socialism failed because power was transferred to a supposedly benevolent elite taking care of millions of people. It turned out that the leaders didn't care about strangers they never met. They had no problems killing them if needed. There was no trace of altruism to be seen. Capitalism isn't any better, as it doesn't change human nature but at least it gave people the chance to advocate for themselves and their families.

I mean, some of the most disturbing events in history were perpetrated by those who thought they were always right and their opponents always wrong.

With that being said here's a chance to demonstrate whom is more openminded: find at least one merit to the other economic system/policy, or a policy that worked particularly well. Try not to give backhanded compliments.

I understand that you guys are sick and tired of capitalists like me who keeps asking about LTV without understanding it, but trust me when I say Ive read a lot of discussions and wiki articles and tried to understand it.

Ill try my best to be good faith.

So what is Value?

From my understanding, price is exchange value. And price is determined by supply and demand. Sure labour does effect the price, but its not the determiner of exchange value. So its kinda difficult to understand what the value in LTV is.

My guess is the exchange value socialists talk about is different from price of goods and services,

or is the value in LTV is different from exchange value? In which case, I would like to know what that exactly is. And how can this value even be a useful tool?

I understand that you guys are sick and tired of capitalists like me who keeps asking about LTV without understanding it, but trust me when I say Ive read a lot of discussions and wiki articles and tried to understand it.

Ill try my best to be good faith.

So what is Value?

From my understanding, price is exchange value right? And price is determined by supply and demand. Sure labour does effect the price, but its not the determiner of exchange value right?

My guess is the exchange value socialists talk about is different from price of goods and services,

or is the value in LTV is different from exchange value? In which case, I would like to know what that exactly is. And how can this value even be a useful tool?

I have a feeling(no real evidence) that the fundamental reason for the divide between capitalists and communists is a matter of values. If my hypothesis is true then the cons of communism would be things that the capitalists arent willing to compromise on. Capitalists,please dont answer. And communists, dont say that communism is literally perfect. Thats is literally impossible for all things

In the late 19th century one thing was the theory of social democracy, the way the theorists imagined a socialist society. Then they got on to start to implement that social-democratic society but reality is always different from the theory. And the first adaptation had to do with the electoral ground on which they were going to bring their vision to fruition. They very quickly saw—and Marx and Engels were the first to argue it—that parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage offered them an incredible tool to bring that vision of society about. But again, how they imagined their electorate, and in particular the working class or the supporters of the labour movement, was quite different from the voters they encountered on the ground. And so if the road to power was through elections—was through the parliamentary road—they had to adapt to these new voters.

These voters might have been quite sympathetic to the cause of social democracy—they might have been very supportive. But they were not militants and they were not dogmatic followers of theory. So if parties wanted to win elections, they needed to adjust to that reality. They also had to adjust to the fact that in many countries the industrial working class was not a majority. So if they wanted to be in power and to start to transform society, they needed to make proposals that offered something to those other voters.

       This over 160 years of history has been one of struggle and one where social-democratic parties with the exception of Scandinavia have 
         been mostly in opposition. Very few times have social-democratic parties governed in the countries in which they are operating.

However claiming that it’s only possible after destroying capitalism is a huge mistake. Very quickly, social democrats realised that that was not possible but they tried to tame it and they believed that capitalism was also highly adaptable.

            Those were some of the conclusions they reached at the beginning of the 20th century and, to a large extent, it was that a regulated capitalism that delivered the 30 years of social mobility, economic growth and so on [of the postwar period]. 

So we have got again to a moment where we have rising inequality, rising insecurity that is felt in a variety of ways in all areas of life. And many social democrats have realised that they’ve conceded too much power to the market and they need to rediscover a different role for the state. It will be along those lines that social democrats can try to carve out a new agenda.

               Left-wing populism is an interesting phenomenon because it is so different from social democracy—not only because of the 
                different project it assumes but also because it is predicated on an idea of charismatic leadership, which is not necessarily 
                    democratic.

So a revival of social-democratic parties will need to include very strong trade unions. Interestingly, trade unions are also changing. They are much more feminised. They are also much more ethnically diverse, because the workforce has also changed. Now the number of trade unions now led by women is very, very large and we see that in other European countries.

This is a very good sign, because old trade unions were not always the defenders of progressive values. They were often against gender equality. They were often against allowing workers from ethnic minorities to access certain jobs and so on. But all of that has changed. Trade unions have modernised and they can become really important agents of, and standard-bearers for, the social-democratic parties.

And what we’ve seen, especially in the 21st century, has been the rise of insecure work, of precarity, of inequality. So to a large extent we are back to the same level of inequality and unbridled capitalism which Marx and Engels.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/social-democracy-its-history-and-its-future

I think this question poses a lot of thought surrounding the concept that if people seek for self it will benefit society (the invisible hand).

How much of this is true that society actually benefits when people are self seeking? Are people self seeking? How can we find this to be true?

So let's say in communist country you have people doing hard physical labour working the fields so people have enough to eat. They can't build their wealth or own more property than others in return for it since that leads to capitalist inequality. In return the communist country gives them shelter, food, etc.

What makes this "deal" of labour in return for basic needs different than systems we have long before the industrial revolution - slaves, feudal system, etc.

I find the following amusing:

It is possible to defend our economic system on the ground that, patched up with Keynesian correctives, it is, as he put it, the 'best in sight'. Or at any rate that it not too bad, and change is painful. In short, that our system is the best system that we have got.

Or it is possible to take the tough-minded line that Schumpeter derived from Marx. The system is cruel, unjust, turbulent. but it does deliver the goods, and, damn it all, it's the goods that you want.

Or, conceding its defects, to defend it on political grounds - that democracy as we know it could not have grown up under any other system and cannot survive without it.

What is not possible, at this time of day, is to defend it, in the neo-classical style, as a delicate self-regulating mechanism, that has only to be left to itself to produce the greatest satisfaction for all.

But none of the alternative defenses really sound very well. Nowadays, to support the status quo, the best course is just to leave all these awkward problems alone. -- Joan Robinson. 1964. Economic Philosophy. Pelican: p. 130.

Some well known quips from Robinson are in this book.

So at first this title sounds non-sensical but not if you use definitions of "true value of one's labor" put forward by many socialists in this sub-

A worker is paid his TRUE value of labor and is not exploited when-

1. his wage is decided by the collective by democratic vote

2. his wage is decided by a government planning committee

The above definitions were the consensus when I posed this question in an earlier thread-

https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/1bvf67y/socialists_in_a_company_like_apple_with_a_complex/

I feel like the above definitions sound vaguely absurd, I was hoping there was some empirical way to work out how much an employer was stealing from a worker, but apparently the True value of one's labor is determined by power relationships rather than material absolutes.

Anyways, given the above definitions, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to think of a scenario where a worker exploited by his boss is paid more than that same worker being employed in a "non exploitative" workplace that pays his "true" value of labor.

I'll give an example. Let's say John works at a Acme artisanal bakery. John is exceptionally talented and has a real gift for making incredible sourdough bread. His boss tastes the bread every day and he can see that John has the magic touch for making delicious bread. His boss sees the value in his artistry and potential and pays him more than other workers. Let's say he's paid $25 per hour.

Let's imagine also that John now works in a state-owned bakery and all bakers are paid the standard Baker's Wage as determined by the Remuneration committee. That wage is $20/hour for every baker with the same experience, across the board .

In Acme bakery, John is being exploited by his boss and in theory not earning the "true" value of his labor and is being exploited. In the second case he, by the definitions above, he is no longer being exploited and therefore is paid his "true" value.

Now you have a case where the exploited worker earns more than one that earns the full output of his labor.

Obviously I made up the figures in the private company and the state company, but it's not unrealistic to think that a worker in a private enterprise might earn more than a state-owned company surely? If that's the case, is it not a paradox that an exploited worker earns more than one that owns the full value of his output?

Am I wrong because the definitions of exploitation are wrong? If exploitation is truly an empirical formula where of X+Y where X is one's wage and Y is expropriated by one's employer, how do you work out Y (see my other thread linked above).

I have already talked about this before, but I want to talk about it again in a slightly different way.

I have heard a lot of times that any technological advancement that increases productivity will stay in the hands of the rich and will never make it down to the average person. The big fear is that automation will leae the working class with nothing after losing their jobs to robots and the rich get to keep everything after replacing all the workers with robots.

However, understanding the historical precedent behind tech advances and some basic economics reveal this argument to be very, very flawed. First, some definitions:

Structural unemployment: When workers experience unemployment for a long period of time as a result of structural changes in an economy and its labor force. The number of jobs

available in some labour markets is insufficient to provide a job for everyone.

Long term aggregate supply: The natural level of output of an economy. It depends on the supply of labour, capital, natural resources, and on the available technology used to turn these factors of production into goods and services. On a graph of price (y) vs quantity of goods produced (x), this is vertical becuase the natural production rate is the same regardless of price.

Aggregate demand: quantity of all goods and services demanded in the economy at any given price. On a graph this slopes downward since people want more if the price is low

Oppourtunity cost: How much a person has to give up in order to get a desired state of affairs

Short term aggregate supply: Same as the long term supply, but with the addition of expected price vs actual price. For example, if a farmer sees that the price of beans has gone down relative to other crops, they will produce very little beans and focus on higher yielding crops. This is an example of misconceptions. Sticky price theory and sticky wage theory also make this curve slope upward.

See this: https://accessdl.state.al.us/AventaCourses/access_courses/economics_ua_v16-2/06_unit/06-02/06-02_graph6_text.htm

If robots become more widespread, people will use them becuase they are more efficient. The capacity of the overall economy increases drasticly. This means that the aggregate supply curve for consumer goods will bank sharply to the right. As that happens, the price level for goods and services will go down becuase the oppourtunity costs are much lower. Since the oppourtunity costs are lower and output is higher, the long term aggregate supply curve will shift to the right as well. In the end, we have lower costs AND more production.

What about aggregate demand? It could also shift to the right. If people demand more consumer goods perfectly in porportion to the increase in supply then the price of such goods will rise once again to the same place. Aggregate demand can only shift right IF there are consumers or other firms willing to purchase and can purchase. If firms want to sell their stuff they made with the robots, they have to take supply and demand into consideration.

If manual labour is replaced by robots, it wll cause structural unemplyment. Structural unemployment is not something new. It has happened before in history and has caused many to lose their jobs. Quality of life improved overall despite this, and those people eventually found new markets to find work in. There are no existing historical examples of technology that improved production by automation that resulted in a decrease in standard of living.

If ALL labour was replaced by robots, then the cost of living will approach zero for everyone due to supply and demand (limit, not absolute) becuase the oppourtunity costs will be essentially nothing besides maintenece work. I also mentioned in my other post about this subject that the assumption that robots will get rid of all markets for humans is dubious becuase we dont know what AI will unlock in terms of new markets themselves.

We already use phones and other electornics that make us more productive than 50 years ago. We got our hands on them becuase the increase in efficiency made them cheap and it allowed us to make things even cheaper. Such technology isnt "kept away from the working class permanently". That is not how markets, supply and demand and the increase in production suggest the trajectory will be. If the rich could simply "keep the tech away", why arent we in the middle ages or something? Why do we have cars? Why do we have phones? Why do we have all this technology that used to only belong to the top 1 percent?

Here's the video. It's only 12 minutes long.

I'm going to steel man his argument. Here are some of the claims he builds on:

1. Even a good, well-paid, job under capitalism is often bad and unfulfilling.

2. However doing jobs you want to do makes work fun and rewarding and gives meaning to your work.

3. Monarchies are inefficient and corrupt. Monarchy is similar to a business top-down management structure.

All of the above claims are true, however, his support for point 2 is very weak. He claims he did a full renovation on an apartment in one week. That's a lie. Even the most highly skilled carpenter on the planet could not renovate an entire apartment in one week. Whatever work he did, I'm sure he found it rewarding, but there's an enormous difference between doing work on your own place for a week verses doing construction work for other people year after year. The truth is only a very small percentage of jobs are actually enjoyable.

Then at 6:28 he outlines what changes to the typical workplace would make a big, positive difference:

1. Jobs should meaningfully involve the employees.

2. Employees should have a real stake in the company.

3. Employees should have a say in management.

4. The company should be a common project.

He then tries to show the benefits to the above by using some hypothetical situations. One scenario is that when business is bad, the employees could vote to reduce their pay by 25% instead of laying people off. He assumes that the workers are always going to vote for what's good for the business, instead of what's good for themselves. Those two are not the same. People are inherently self-interested.

Then he correctly points out that the bigger a company gets, the harder it becomes for one person to oversee and control it. He claims the workers are the ones who really know what's going on, therefore they should be given power to control the business. The problem here is that most workers simply don't give a shit. There is a book called The Myth of Mondragon that shows workers hate voting on stuff and only vote when it's mandatory.

He then makes the world's worst argument for workplace democracy. It starts at around the 9 minute mark. It goes like this:

In government, democracy is better than a dictatorship. Therefore workplace democracy is better than a top-down management structure.

The problem is that a private firm is not a dictatorship, because dictators pay no price for doing bad things. However private companies in a market economy do pay a big price for bad decisions. A recent example is the Bud Light fiasco. Anheuser-Busch made a bad decision and the market made them pay dearly for it.

In short, his analysis ignores the incentives that face workers, CEOs, and politicians. If you want to get things like this right, remember that everyone is out for themselves.

Firstly, the best way to explain what the calculation problem is if the state has a certain amount of wood, how does it know what the best use of it is, rolling pins, chairs, table tops. A private company will use a mixture of speculation, looking at other prises and trial and error until they are making the most amount of money. In fairness a state can replicate both of these things, however this would simply be the state competing as another market actor, so this already precludes a central planned economy.

Most but not all socialists dismiss the calculation problem, I would say this view is wrong.

Most capitalists on the other hand treat it as a magic bullet and a gotcha applying it far more broadly than it should be. My criticism of this view is as follows.

The First problem with the capitalist is view is that it assumes utilitarianism in the first place, however I generally think utilitarianism is often a good approximation, so I'm going to let this one fly.

Secondly the political application of the problem is based on the assumption that what has the most realised demand is necessarily what satisfies the most and strongest wants. This would only be the case within an economy with an extreme amount of wealth equality.

The third problem with the right wing view is that it makes the assumption that there can be no empirical evidence outside of market price signals suggesting that a certain allocation of resources is the most beneficial to a large amount of people. Although it is true that we cant precisely know how much an individual actually wants something, we can know roughly what the majority of people want and where the majority place these needs in a hierarchy. We can also make a pretty guess of what is the most materially efficient way to satisfy a certain common want. I don't see a reason to assume that it is impossible that there can be some situations in which the potential benefits of some state interventions can out way the drawback of not getting its demand completely correct when a pretty good guess will suffice.

For example they're are some situations such as natural monopolies in which the service is over priced or of poor quality if run by the private sector, as it only needs to compete with another possible inefficient means of satisfying that, if such an alternative even exists. A good example is railways. The libertarian capitalist may respond that I don't know that the states investment in railways is not necessarily the best use of these resources among the alternatives. To this I can respond that since we know that transport is a common human need, we can make educated guess using maths and physics that rail is a very efficient method of transportation, therefore we then know that investment likely takes resources from alternative means of transport opposed to the economy in general and that this use of resources probably has utilitarian benefit, opposed to leaving the rail industry exclusively to the private sector. The most efficient way to go about this is to have the state railway be self funding while charging just enough to break more than even(and constantly adjusting fairs to achieve this), investment would then continue slowly until expenses just about touch income. It would speculate for demand more or less like a private enterprise does, only its only goal is to break even while increasing in size and meeting certain quality standards. Its boss would keep his job as long as he could consistently do this and he would receive a hansom pay check. If you know that most people have some need to travel and most often they desire to travel between large populations centres then it is possible speculate demand imperfectly but nevertheless useably.

PS plz point out typos in the comments so I can edit.

58 minute video, summarised as such:

An overview of the evidence surrounding worker democracy. In summary: it's good, but far from perfect. Hope you enjoy the video and the new animations.

If you've seen it, do you think he gets anything wrong?

For those who don't dream of becoming rich, capitalism might not fully satisfy their needs or aspirations. Since capitalism primarily rewards and incentivizes wealth accumulation, those who aren't driven by this goal may feel marginalized or overlooked within such a system. They may find it challenging to find fulfillment or recognition for pursuits that don't directly contribute to financial success.

Seems pretty based to me, hes a socialist or atleast leftist youtuber who actually talks about stuff that matters to me, like public transport and housing, instead of just rambling on about 150 year old theory or foriegn policy whatever. He often uses maths and logic to prove his points which I think is pretty cool. I hope this is enough words to get through the bloody filter.

Read a comment (can't say if reliable) in AskReddit https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1c9g3ve/comment/l0l2phi/

Explains that its not illegal to give food to homeless people, BUT:

I also cant just give food away in case i want to celebrate something - like my restaurants one year birthday. Come in, Today its on us - I have to get it clearedby the local business association. And if i rejected that bitch at the bodega who also happens to have a clothes store somewhere, she can just VETO all your shit.

Ignoring the language of that bodega comment, below he explains why:

Equal competition laws, - they also protect you from a major chain moving in and operating at a loss, so everything else dies.

Is this even true of Denmark - the top 5 in the Economic Freedom Index lists?

Reading about these laws preventing giving away food in reliable posts from USA and UK is always frustrating. All individuals and businesses should be free to give away whatever they like.

What are the rationales behind these laws and do you agree with them?

<The Critique of the Gotha Programme (German: Kritik des Gothaer Programms) is a document based on a letter by Karl Marx written in early May 1875 to the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP), with whom Marx and Friedrich Engels were in close association.[1]

<Offering perhaps Marx's most detailed pronouncement on programmatic matters of revolutionary strategy, the document discusses the "dictatorship of the proletariat", the period of transition from capitalism to communism, proletarian internationalism and the party of the working class. It is notable also for elucidating the principles of "To each according to his contribution" as the basis for a "lower phase" of communist society directly following the transition from capitalism and "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" as the basis for a future "higher phase" of communist society. In describing the lower phase, he states that "the individual receives from society exactly what he gives to it" and advocates remuneration in the form of non-transferable labour vouchers as opposed to money.>

<The Critique of the Gotha Programme, published after his death, was among Marx's last major writings. The letter is named after the Gotha Programme, a proposed party platform manifesto for a forthcoming party congress that was to take place in the town of Gotha. At the party congress, the SDAP ("Eisenachers", based in Eisenach) planned to unite with the General German Workers' Association (ADAV, "Lassalleans", from Ferdinand Lassalle) to form a unified party. The Eisenachers sent the draft programme for a united party to Marx for comment. He found the programme negatively influenced by Lassalle, whom Marx regarded as an opportunist willing to limit the demands of the workers' movement in exchange for concessions from the government. However, at the congress held in Gotha in late May 1875 the draft programme was accepted with only minor alterations by what was to become the powerful Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Marx's programmatic letter was published by Engels only much later, in 1891 when the SPD had declared its intention of adopting a new programme, the result being the Erfurt Programme of 1891.>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_the_Gotha_Programme

<3. Critique of the State: Marx's critique extends to the Gotha Programme's treatment of the state. He argues that the program's endorsement of a transitional state characterized by "the dictatorship of the proletariat" is inherently flawed. Marx contends that such a state would perpetuate class divisions and ultimately hinder the achievement of a classless society.>

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_the_Gotha_Programme

It`s actually pretty fascinating, because if you delve deeper and look into the Erfurt Programme, which superseded the Gotha Program...

<[The Erfurt Programme] was criticised by Friedrich Engels for its opportunist, non-Marxist views on the state.>

<Kautsky wrote the official SPD commentary on the program in 1892, which was called The Class Struggle. The Marxism exemplified by The Class Struggle was often referred to by later critics as "vulgar Marxism" or "the Marxism of the Second International."[2]>

<The popular renderings of Marxism found in the works of Kautsky and Bebel were read and distributed more widely in Europe between the late 19th century and 1914 than Marx's own works.>

<The Class Struggle was translated into 16 languages before 1914 and became the accepted popular summation of Marxist theory.>

<This document came to represent one of the core documents of 'orthodox' Marxist theory before the October Revolution of 1917 caused a major split in the international socialist movement.>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_Program

The Class Struggle

<was first published in Stuttgart and was the official commentary of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) on their brief 1891 Erfurt Program (by Kautsky, party leader August Bebel and Eduard Bernstein).>

<It became and is still considered the seminal (and popular) text for Orthodox Marxism and the Second International.[2]>

<In 1894, Lenin translated it into Russian.[2] This was during his exile in Geneva.[5]>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Class_Struggle_(Erfurt_Program)

Is it possible MLs follow revisionist Marxism!? I dont want to jump to conclusions (or maybe this is common knowledge?), but I know that the SPD party leaders played a pivotal role in the dissipation of the very promising German revolution of 1918.

(For some reason I got banned from /communism for posting this, exactly as it's written here, and by extension /communism101?)

Clearly this shows that the republikans know how to run a country for Russian fascists.

• Ogles (TN) - Prohibits the use of funds to arm, train, or otherwise assist the neo-Nazi Azov Battallion, it's successor, the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, or any other successor organizations.
• Perry (PA), Ogles (TN), Biggs (AZ) - Repeals various tax credits related to renewable energy, fuels, and vehicles to pay for this bill.
• Greene (GA) - Prohibits funding until Ukraine closes all bio-laboratories.
• Greene (GA) - Prohibits funding until Ukraine stops persecuting Christians.
• Greene (GA) - Redirects funds to the Attorney General to initiate mass deportations of illegals.
• Greene (GA) - Redirects funding in the bill to build The Wall.
• Good (VA), Biggs (AZ) - Prohibiting funds to be dispersed until Zelenskyy certifies in writing to Congress that President Trump did not seek Zelenskyy's assistance in influencing the 2020 election.
• Moskowitz (FL) - (LOL!) Renaming 403 Cannon House Office Building the “Neville Chamberlain Room”

tl;dr anarchist/libertarian socialists took over the tramway of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War for 10 months, during that time they:

• Increased the amount of trams operating from 600 at a time to 700.
• Eliminated 3,000 metal poles across Barcelona holding up electrical wires and replaced it with aerial suspension to decrease accidents.
• Fares were changed, originally they costed 10-40 pesetas based on difference, but this was changed to a flat 20 peseta fare.
• Area covered went from 21.7 million kilometres to 23.3 million. I suspect this is a bad translation of him saying how far all the trams traveled per year.
• Ridership increased from 183 million per year to 233 million per year, although this also happened during fuel shortages reducing people's abilities to use cars.
• New models of tram were developed that were 21 tons heavy, compared to the previous models that were 35 tons.
• Wages were increased for the tramworkers. Nearly doubling for labourers from 8-9 pesetas a day to 15.
• Medical services and hygiene was expanded among tramworkers, with showers being installed at depots. (EDIT: I forgot to complete this section before posting)

This information is taken from the book Collectives in the Spanish Revolution by Gaston Leval, which you can read for free at theanarchistlibrary.org (link). If you have any sympathy for the idea that workers should control their workplaces, this book is a must read. And if you're a libertarian capitalist, I want the state to hold a gun to your head to force you to read this book. (Jokes)

Some notes:

1. This is a defense of socialism as the concept of workers control rather than state control.
2. This is reporting on actions taken during the Spanish Revolution of 1936, a 10-month experiment into anarchist/libertarian socialism during the Spanish Civil War.
3. The CNT (National Confederation of Labor) is a libertarian socialist trade union that was and is still active in Spain. The FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation) often worked alongside it.
4. Syndicate just refers to the worker-run organisation that owned and run the tramways.

In summary, Barcelona had a large tram/cablecar network around 1936. The majority of workers in it were members of the CNT and collectivised it. According to Gaston Leval, this was a success. To quote the positives mentioned by him at length:

The tramways were the most important means of transport in Barcelona. Sixty routes criss-crossed the city and served the suburbs and the surrounding localities. The General Tramways Company was a private company mainly with Belgian capital and employed 7,000 workers, not only as drivers and conductors but also in the eight tram depots and in the repair workshops.

Out of the 7,000, about 6,500 were paid up members of the C.N.T. where they made up the section of the industrial transport Syndicate corresponding to their occupation.

The street battles had brought all traffic to a standstill, obstructed the roadways by barricades that had been set up all over the city and for which buses and trams often were the main materials used. The roads had to be cleared, and public transport so indispensable for this large city had to be got moving again. So the syndical section of the tramways appointed a commission of seven comrades to occupy the administrative offices whilst others inspected the tracks and drew up a plan of clearing work that; needed to be done.

The Comite of seven immediately called together the delegates from the different syndical sections: electric power station, cables, repairs, traffic, conductors, stores, accounts, offices and administration, etc. Yet once more the synchronisation of the industrial Syndicate was working perfectly. It was unanimously agreed to get the tramways moving without delay.

Five days after fighting had stopped seven hundred tramcars instead of the usual six hundred, all painted in the colours of the C.N.T.-F.A.I., in red and black diagonally across the sides, were operating in Barcelona. The number had been increased in order to do away with the trailer-cars which were the cause of many accidents. To do this work had gone on night and day repairing and putting back into service a hundred tramcars which had been discarded as being beyond repair.

Each section had at its head an engineer nominated by agreement with the Syndicates, and a representative of the workers and this was how the work and the workers were dealt with. At the top the assembled delegates constituted the local general Comite. The sections met separately when it was a question of their specific activities which could be considered independently; when it was a question of general problems, all the workers of all the trades held a general assembly. From the bottom to the top the organisation was federalist, and in this way they maintained not only a permanent material solidarity but also a moral solidarity which linked everyone to the general task, with a nobler vision of things.

Agreement was therefore also permanent between engineers and workers. No engineer could take an important decision without consulting the local Comite, not only because he agreed that responsibility should be shared but also because often, where practical problems are involved, manual workers have the experience which technicians lack [Hayek's knowledge problem anyone?]. This was understood by both parties, and thereafter, very often when the Comite of the Syndicate or a delegate thought up an interesting idea, the specialist engineer would be called in for consultations; on other occasions it was the engineer who proposed the examination of a new idea and in that case manual workers were called in. There was complete collaboration.

The technical organisation and the traffic operation was improved; the importance of the improvements achieved was remarkable. To start with, 3,000 metal poles holding up the electric cables supplying the current were eliminated as they were interfering with the traffic and causing many accidents and were replaced by a system of aerial suspension. Then a new safety and signalling system was introduced consisting of electric points and automatic discs. Furthermore the company for Agua, Luz y Fuerza (water, light and power) had installed in many places and right in the middle of the routes taken by the tramcars, transformer cabins or power distributors, which made all kinds of detours and bifurcations necessary, sometimes very sharp (very often a single line), and resulted in accidents. This had gone on from when the services had first been laid, arid were determined by the whims of financial or political interests. The comrades of Agua, Luz y Fuerza moved these cabins to where they would be in nobodyºs way, thus making it possible to straighten out once for all the tramway lines.

Sections of track that had been damaged during the fighting were reconstructed, such as the double track for Route 60 which was completely relaid. In other cases the roadway was asphalted.

These improvements took some time to complete as did some modifications of the general infrastructure. From the beginning the organisers, without for all that forgetting the interests of the workers in the vast enterprise, sought to perfect the tools being used. In less than a year a number of notable acquisitions were made; first of all there was the purchase in France of an automatic American lathe, the only one in Spain, and costing £20,000, which was able to produce seven identical parts at the same time.

Thus tooled it was possible to make appreciable strides forward, and a start was even made on building tramcars, including two new models of funicular cars for the Rebasada line which climbed the Tibidabo and for the one in Montjuich. The new cars weighed 21 tons compared with 35 tons for the old type which also carried fewer passengers.

It now remains to see what part of the profits went to the tramway workers. At the time of the uprising the peones (labourers) earned between 8 and 9 pesetas a day, traffic controllers received 10, lorry drivers and skilled engineering workers (lathe operators, fitters, etc.) 12. All wages were readjusted so that labourers received 15 pesetas and skilled workers 16. One was approaching a state of basic equality.

During the year 1936 the number of passengers carried was 183,557,506. The following year it had gone up by 50 million to 233,557,506 passengers. This is not all, for the kilometres covered also increased from 21.7 million to 23.3 million, an, increase of 1.6 million kilometres.

But other improvements in working conditions deserve to be mentioned. Firstly washbasins were installed in the sheds and workshops, which had never been done before. Showers were installed (and one should bear in mind that this was 1936) in all undertakings employing numbers of workers. Tramcars were disinfected weekly. Then a medical service was organised from which we can draw some lessons.

To conclude this aspect of things, it is worth underlining that honesty was general. Not that there were no cases of unscrupulous actions but in three years they amounted to six cases of larceny which would not even deserve to be mentioned but for the fact that we do not wish to appear to gloss over the negative aspects. The most serious case was that of a worker who from time to time took away small quantities of copper which he would sell when he had made up a kilo's worth. He was dismissed, but as his wife came to tell the undertaking's comite that she had a child which would suffer the consequences, she was given three or four weeks' wages and her husband was moved into another workshop.

Leval's book is great, I'd like to also add some quotes from the sections on the town of Graus

In spite of all these expenses a number of quite ambitious public works were undertaken. Five kilometres of roads were tarred, a 700 metre irrigation channel was widened by 40 cm and deepened by 25 cm for better irrigation of the land and to increase its driving power. Another channel was extended by 600 metres.

and the town of Fraga

Medical care was therefore virtually completely collectivised. The hospital was quickly enlarged from a capacity of 20 beds to 100. The out patients' department which was in the course of construction was rapidly completed. A service to deal with accidents and minor surgical operations was established. The two pharmacies were also integrated into the new system.

All this was accompanied by a massive increase in public hygiene... And for the first time ever the hospital was provided with running water and the project in hand was to ensure that all houses were similarly provided, thus reducing the incidence of typhoid.

There are still plenty of objections you can make to libertarian socialism on both moral and practical grounds, but I think the idea that it wouldn't be efficient or get anything done is strongly challenged by Leval's work. If you keep in mind something like this research into worker co-ops, then you can make a strong case for libertarian socialism being efficient and constructive in practice.

Also, not everything Leval mentions is positive. He notes that a lawyer who had persecuted left-wing workers in the past was likely assassinated, despite an anarcho-syndicalist arguing against this.

In my previous post I argued that it's extremely hard to run a state, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are some great ideas out there and the science of statecraft has in fact been mastered by socialists long ago. I wouldn't know.

So please imagine that this is real. Like totally real. Everything is in your hands. The world is awaiting your next move.

What's your plan?

Why can't we agree on how to run a nation-state?

Some of you may have tried to start a company. When you do this you'll find that it's extremely hard. Even if it's just a 3-person affair, you're constantly going from crisis to crisis and disagreeing about what to do and trying to keep everyone happy

Imagine being the CEO of a 30.000 person company. How hard do you think it is? To me it sounds extremely complex. In fact I think it's impossible to do it "correctly", in the sense that no 30.000 person company exists that isn't fucked up in some way or another

Now scale that to a country of hundreds of millions.

We complain that politicians don't know what the fuck they're doing, but the irony is that we don't realize that we don't know what the fuck we're doing either. Maybe organizing an organization of hundreds of millions is simply impossible at a human level of intelligence.

Some of you may have heard of Dunbar's number. Often said to be somewhere around 150. It's the maximum amount of relationships that a human brain can handle. Some have interpreted this number as the maximum size of a "tribe", the archetypical form of organization from prehistoric times. When it gets even bigger, it naturally splits into subgroups

But modern humans are hubristically trying to create tribes that scale into the millions, and they're applying their tribal intuitions that are designed for 150.

So let us be humble for once and acknowledge that maybe, we don't actually have the answer yet. Maybe the right answer is not the intuitive one. Maybe we need to approach this problem like engineers, rather than ideologues. Or maybe we should just give up on trying to make millions of people get along, and focus on our local communities.

Okay this is not going to be a doomer post or a post necessarily aimed at preserving the capitalist system but we have to face facts:

People do not want socialism or a revolution. This is not because people are simply naive and uneducated or brainwashed by capitalist propaganda (although there is definitely an aspect of that).

I’ve done so much research on socialism and anarchism. I’ve gone to reading groups for my local socialist organisation and had countless conversations about it to become a “better leftist” and no one has been able to convince me that a revolution is something that can just happen tomorrow. Not that we are even in the position to just immediately move towards revolution.

The idea that we can achieve anything close to that right now to me is laughable because have you seen the world right no? Do you think people give a crap about what the local socialist group is saying unless it’s meeting their immediate interests? And for them their immediate interests are not overthrowing the status quo. All the people want right now is money. And that’s not because they’re greedy but because they’re all broke. They don’t have time to deal with idealism and dreams they want change right now and socialism at this exact moment is not going to give that to them.

No imo we need to have a period where we transition to a post-capitalist society as imagined by people like Nick Srineck in Inventing the Future and Aaron Bastani in Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Those dreams actually sound somewhat plausible because they don’t propose entirely dismantling the social relations upon which we all rely for better or worse.

I’m not saying full on techno-utopianism. I’m not saying class struggle won’t be a part of setting up such an interim society in fact I believe that class struggle will be a necessity for the formation of a society that is post-work and post-capitalist. As we have seen so far with developments in technology they tend to be used against the interests of the working class unless the workers demand that they are used in their interests as well. This is where I think class struggle will be instrumental in creating this more equitable society and I cannot overstate how much I don’t just naively believe that technology such as automation will automatically fix everything if it is not seized by the workers to create alternative social relations than those observed under capitalism via class struggle.

But, unlike socialism as conceived of in its current form which proposes that we just dismantle the entire social structure with no alternative that people are realistically gonna just switch to instantaneously, this system will actually allow people to switch slowly so that eventually we can have a proper revolution.

It makes the situation better in the meantime and allow for the emergence of an alternative form of socialist organisation to slowly emerge that will eventually be able to overthrow capitalism when the time is right and people are already living under the new system for the most part.

If we have a revolution now I don’t believe that we can ensure in any way that it’s not just gonna degenerate into what the USSR and china pre-dengism and I don’t believe you can suggest to me even in the most generous view that these societies didn’t have monumentous issues even when they did also have isolated moments when in some ways they greatly surpassed the west. The fact that they even collapsed in the first place is a testament to how they were inherently unstable and quick to revert back to capitalism during various periods when it was advantageous for the leadership to do so.

No. We need a social structure that provides a true alternative not just on the level of ideology but on the level of instinct and completely surpasses any systems that could degenerate back into capitalism. This has not happened yet, ever.

In history the revolutions that lead to the institution of capitalism via the overthrowing of feudalism didn’t just happen because the people had finally had enough. If that was the sole cause then it would have just lead to the installation of another tyrant.

No. The reason these revolutions resulted in capitalism being naturalised as the new order of things was because capitalism already was the new order of things. By the time revolution came about all it needed was one relatively little push from the masses to finish the job of canonising capital as the god of the new world.

In this same vein I propose that a socialist revolution cannot take place until the new order of things has reached a point where it can no longer be contained and hence springs forth in glorious revolution.

This is why I think we should focus on the development of technology that will allow for post-work and post-capitalist conditions to emerge and also on the struggle against capitalism for these technologies to be used not just in the interests of capitalists but for the good of workers as well.

1: How would anyone get paid differently? I read on here that people who worked harder would get paid more, it’s just that there wouldn’t be too rich people or too poor people, but how would people get paid more? Why would anyone vote for others to get paid more?

2: Why would people work? Assuming food, water, and shelter is a given (paid for by society) why would people ever choose to work? Why wouldn’t people just sit back and relax? Why would people work MORE either if everything was handed to them?

3: How would companies get maid? I assume the person making the company would get paid more for the idea, but how would it be funded and how, once again, would they get paid more?