Is Bidens campaign dead? (EDIT: Well, this was turned around completely.)

[Nuvendil]

Jumpin said:

Nuvendil said:

Not going to derail this into the protracted debate here but I will hit a few points.  First, I am well aware that Communism the party/government system isn't communism proper, that's their goal.  Hence why I called them socialist.  When I say diet socialism, what I mean is that he has more or less sliced out the "bad" part as most see it and left the "good" part:  removed totalitarianism and (most) nationalization but left in the large scale redistribution of wealth and massive expansion of government programs.  

The things you list from Germany are *goals*, features of their society.  My critique of him is the methods and plans which are problematic.  Also, again, it's a matter of him using labeling that is inappropriate with regards to the Nordic Model specifically.  

Also, what Bernie proposes is far, far, far to the left of the New Deal.  And it has a few features in particular that Roosevelt would have called insane.  The New Deal label is another oft misused one and many don't have full knowledge of what was in the New Deals (and many actually don't realize how fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants the New Deal was :P).  And some of what was in there was knowingly hairbrained but done for a publicity stunt, most notably the Wealth Tax Act that literally only taxed Rockefeller and was intended as a campaign platform. The New Deal is generally viewed as favorable, but it was a blunderbuss approach of "throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks."  I do, however, think that it was a necessity.  The economy had experienced a highly irregular crash driven by a host of forces both internal and external and the downward spiral was caused by outside panic that collapsed the banking system.  However, different horses for different courses:  our current issues have different causes and different effects.  The problems are also radically different as well.  The issue of that time wasn't income inequality or stagnant wage growth or housing deficits, it was the utter collapse of nearly all of the economy and 25% of the entire workforce being without work due to...well mass idiocy.  The issues of our day call for plans that address them in a way that makes sense, not tearing pages from playbooks of yesterday.  

The need for balance is true yes.  You need to keep an eye on the top 5% to make sure they aren't rigging the system or competing unfairly or being abusive and you need to help the bottom 5% and you need safety nets for when things go sideways and you need to curate the market to ensure it is competitive and not stagnant.  But it has to be done delicately or measures intended to help will do harm.  FDR could afford to be crazy because...well 25% of the workforce was unemployed and the entire economy was in a giant hole that market forces on their own would have taken a long, painful time to rectify.  But worth noting, a number of things were implemented, tried, thrown out.  These days things are implemented, have unintended consequences, and then forgotten about.

Which is the other thing we have to remember: the government of FDR's time was very, very, very different from the government now.  If we want to do even a sliver of what Bernie proposes with regards to public sector work projects, our government needs a massive, systemic reform from the city level all the way up to the fed.  

Also, a thing to seriously remember: Cronyism is a tango.  And a tango takes two.  We don't have unregulated or unchecked capitalism, not even close.  Some regulations are good and necessary and some new ones could stand to be done.  But There's also an inconceivable mountain of regulations that are currently in place purely to be used to club the opposition before they become a threat and a means to give bureaucrats something to do to justify their own existence.  A government this mired in exponentially expanding bureaucracy couldn't actually implement the New Deal.  It's so cripplingly slow, bloated, inefficient, it would be a clownshow of unparalleled proportions.  So it's a two sided problem.  Regulations that should be there aren't, regulations that shouldn't exist do.  And when unnecessary regs are in, you can check history and see for yourself: they always help established players in the market.

I think the main confusion I see about socialism is that it's a form of government. It has nothing to do with government. It has to do with the replacement of capitalists with workers as the owners of the means of production. Marx also held the belief that the competitive marketplace had too much to do with money and not enough to do with the value of the work put into the commodity. He felt that capitalists drove those values out of wack by essentially conspiring against the working class to exploit them as much as possible. Generally speaking, the board of directors of a corporation is hired by the capitalists in order to achieve this; this is why it's so important to have Union representation present (which is not obligated in some countries, I believe the US is one of these).

But while the term "capitalism" and "capitalist" was around pre-Marx, it was really Marx which gave these terms the understanding we have today. A capitalist is basically a person who lives off of capital: money which is invested into commodity only for the purpose of money (The M-C-M model). But rather than delving too deeply into economic theory, I'll focus on the core movements.

Socialism - is the abolition of the capitalist, in its simplest terms. It has nothing to do with government or governmental systems. Marx believed socialism was inevitable because of the leftward march of progress throughout history (or the movement from hierarchical society to a more equal society - demonstrated by the destruction of the divine right of Kings for common citizens to hold those positions, and continued with the suffrage movements, etc...). He saw the business structure as being hierarchical in its ownership, and that the capitalists weren't actually the people running the business or doing the work, rather hiring other people to do it all for them: Capitalists hires board of directors > Board of directors hire management > Management hires workers - the basic corporate structure. The real ownership of the means of production lies in the hands of the corporation which is owned by the Capitalists and in the hands of the board of directors. Marx believes it should be the workers (which also includes management) who should own the means of production, not the capitalists. So, for example: instead of jack-off billionaire X owning 17 companies with 150,000 workers, it would be those 17 companies instead owned by the 150,000 workers (not collectively, the idea of all of society owning everything is not socialism, it's communism). Socialism doesn't abolish money, it just abolishes the M-C-M (Money for commodities for more money) model in favour of the Ca-M-Cb model and the Ca is owned by the worker him/herself rather than a capitalist. I won't get into the details of union structures and negotiations and such, as this post is already lengthy. Dialectics is a whole other topic, but, in short, a Biden Presidency would be an example of the victory of dialectics because neither of the two extreme positions (Trump or Sanders) is a victorious, and instead the compromise wins; you could say Marx was a progressive centrist by today's language - but this has more to do with general Marxism (a historical theory) than socialism.

Revisionist Marcism/Communism - in short is much of the above but also involves the revolt and destruction of the government. The progression toward a society that provides each according to their need, and the opportunity for individuals to contribute according to their ability. The destruction of government and all forms of hierarchy and state is the case here. This includes the abolition of currency according to some writers.

Stalinism (more unfortunately under its official label of Leninist Marxism) is the establishment of a state and government with the goal of eventually reaching communism. They called themselves both socialist and democratic, but the truth is they were neither. The USSR was a command economy, which is effectively a state corporation run by a hierarchy. It is not socialism in the conventional sense, though I think it is fair to call it a type of communism, even if the methods do not match any classical Western model. The big problem this creates is the confusion when people from some countries talk about "Communism" with people from other countries or schools of thought where it means something different; as a result, I think Stalinism is the best label, not communism.

Totalitarianism has nothing to do with socialism. The fact that the USSR was a Totalitarian regime has much more to do with the fact that it was run by extremists who wanted a Republican Czardom. Christopher Hitchens goes into detail on this, that the USSR held all of the core features of the Czardom to justify why such a thing happened - because it was normal culture for them at the time. This would almost certainly never happen in a country where liberal democracy is the norm (countries that have been liberal democracy for many generations). It would actually go against the Marxist model if France, Germany today, the UK, or the US suddenly became a totalitarian dictatorship. No matter how much people think it's going to happen, it's not. When Hitler took over Germany, keep in mind this was mainly as a Resurrection of the German Empire, and had nothing to do with democratic people suddenly deciding "Hey, this fascist thing looks like a great idea." The Republic was far too short lived to have lasting impact on culture - but in the end, the fascist regime was eviscerated and 100 years after the end of the Empire, Germany is the capital of the free world. We will never see a Fourth Empire or any other form of Totalitarianism again; that is, if the Marxist model is correct. Russia is another story, I think it will have to be another 30-50 years before they truly shake off the shadow of totalitarianism. The toxic right of Germany has a ceiling, and they will shrink as East-Germanism fades into history.

Anyway, lastly. This lefting Revisionist-Revisionist Socialism that people talk about today, where the whole thing is voted in through the government via bills: this is more or less Social Democracy since none of this even proposes the elimination of the Capitalist ownership of the economy. Medicare for All, Minimum Wages, etc... This is social democracy, not socialism. Socialists shouldn't want government to have their hands on these things.

Anyway, this is bulky, and parts probably aren't clear or accurately stated; so I will stop here.

In short. Three schools of socialism since Marx:

Classic Socialism - nothing to do with government, government has no role. An economic system. Instead of the Capitalist class owning the means of production it's owned by those who actually work. A Ca-M-Cb (commodity a for money to buy commodity b) model as opposed to an M-C-M model (invest money to buy commodity whose purpose is to sell for more money)

Revisionist Socialism - The rise up and destruction of the government who maintains the bourgeoisie class's power. 

Revisionist-Revisionist Socialism - Using the government to implement features of socialism. Social Democracy could be considered an offshoot of this.

Stalinism - a totalitarian state which promises a communist Utopia in the future.

I'll throw in one more: Revisionist-Revisionist-Revisionist Socialism: Maintaining the corporation with Union power over the board of directors, Unions being elected by the working class. This is the current type of socialism which looks most promising. This doesn't require the government like the last two models.

Anyway, I am not sure where I was going with this. Probably a bad response for your post. Sorry for the long ramble.

Ok last time I further this thread, but I want to make it clear:  I know about all these schools of thought.  Socialism is a broad umbrella built around the concept of "public/societal ownership of the means of production and the redistribution of wealth."  The various schools to follow are trying to figure out how to make that work.  Classic socialism isn't something worth bringing up much because...well in an ironic twist it has proven to be unscalable as a nation-wide model.  Centrally planned economics with government control over the means of production was the broadly accepted way around this issue pursued by both totalitarian and elected governments in USSR, Mao's China, Venezuela.  

And these all require government.  You have to enforce the existence of these types of structures one way or another. 

Beyond this not going to get into this or we'll be at it for a lot of pages. 

I will say though that while requiring unions control boards of directors is a bit out there in my mind, I am in favor of organized labor as it allows employees to leverage their position as stakeholders in the company.  Shareholders vote, investors withdraw, customers boycott, employees organize.  

Oh and yes, people who think that Bernie vs Trump would be Communism vs a Fascist Dictatorship are waaaaaay off base.