Category: Pondering Infinity

A Taste of my mind. Anything from Sociopolitics to Religion to Philosophy in general goes.

Going down…

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The US economy is tanking. Here’s some data to press the point.

…faster than a…uh…ok who can give me a good and humorous analogy?

Every single working day in the month of December 2008:

  • 190 U.S. companies filed for Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection
  • 4,950 Individuals filed for bankruptcy protection
  • 3,100 Homes went into foreclosure
  • 26,190 Jobs were lost and 25,035 workers filed for unemployment insurance
  • For the year 2008, the $6.9 trillion in lost stock market value among 110 million households represents a per household loss of $62,727. The $6 trillion in lost residential real estate property value nationally in 2008 adds $54,545 per household for a total of $117,272 in lost household asset value in 2008, exceeding by 27% the national household median net worth in 2007 of $86,000. (Losses were concentrated in the middle quintiles aka “the middle class.”)

Sweet titty-fucking Cheezus…

(h/t kevin)

In defense of Syndicalism

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Why does Labour syndicalism not suffer from the same problems as normal Capitalism? It’s because socialism is inherent in its basic premises

Anarcho-Syndicalism (Libertarian-Socialism)
Image by anarchosyn via Flickr

The Barefoot Bum has written a criticism of Labour Syndicalism as a system and how it cannot suffice for a post-industrial communist society. The core argument seems to be this:

But these questions fade into triviality beside a more subtle flaw in the idea of labor syndicalism: the system of workers controlling the means of production as the sine qua non of socialism still embodies commodity relations, only the workers are now directly transforming money to commodities to more money instead of the owners of capital doing so. This is not to say that having workers having more control the means of production is a particularly bad idea; it at least eliminates the most egregious form of capitalist exploitation.

That is not exactly true. If we are talking about Communism, then money relationships or production for profit does not exist. As such, the workers are not producing commodities  in order to make more money but rather to fulfil needs of other workers. Furthermore, the concept of exploitation does not apply at all in this situation as exploitation is simply the surplus value of a worker’s labour going to the capitalist. As long as the workers retains his full surplus labour (as he would by owning the means of production) then exploitation is impossible.

The problem of Capitalism is not simply that everything is a commodity, including labour, but rather that everything is done in the name of accumulation. And what drives accumulation is profit. This is further exaggerated by the need for the capitalist to accumulate in order to survive the competition with other capitalists. But when worker syndicates own the means of production, such accumulation is impossible and the need for profit evaporates.

Why does this happen? Well the only reason accumulation is a guiding factor is because you can own items you do not use and then use them to extract the surplus value of other people’s labour. When you have a society that workers retain their own surplus value, even if you were to have a syndicate which produced a lot of value, it wouldn’t be able to use it to disrupt the balance of power. They would not be able to accumulate. The workers of any factory own the factory. They cannot buy another one and get the value of workers there.

As such labour syndicalism by it’s very existence as the dominant sociopolitical system, immediately disrupts the Capitalist mode of production and moves the society towards Communism.

TBB also brings the issue of what happens with workers who do not produce tangible commodities, such as infinite goods (Software for example). The argument here is that as long as someone does not produce a finite good, then he has no political power in a labour syndicalist society. But that is a wrong. It is not the production of finite goods with exchange value that gives political power to someone, it is their ability to labour.

You have two types of objective value. Commodities and Services. Both of these are the result of human labour and as a result they are capable of labour syndicalism. The mistake TBB makes here is that he consider computer software to be a type of commodity in the modern day (due to IP) and cannot conceive how this commodity can be valued and thus provide political power when it’s infinite. But the solution to this problem is that software itself is not a commodity. Rather, software production is a service and this is what gives the worker (programmers) political power through their possible syndicate. In the same way that sewer cleaners, musicians, etc retain political power as a result of their labour’s significant effect on society.

We can see then that Labour Syndicalism does not really suffer from the issues TBB enumerates.

It can reduce the labour required to produce the same amount of commodities or services as it’s in the best interest of the people composing the syndicate to work less hours. They are not challenged by the competitiveness of accumulation so there is no fear of going out of business.

It can achieve increased non-commodity production by treating those as services and improving their production times for the benefits of the workers.

And finally, fundamentally it can achieve the communist goal, “from each according to her abilities, to each according to her needs.” because the workers, unfettered by capitalist drive for profit can instead distribute their services and commodities to those who need them most.

This article of course is not to say that labour syndicalism is perfect in all regards, certainly it may be suffering from other issues such as how to implement distribution between separate syndics or how to arrange long-term planning. But at a fundamental level (anarcho-) syndicalism is not flawed in regards to progressing towards communism. Indeed, the ownership of the means of production by the owners will inherently push society towards it.

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Why I am opposed to State Socialism

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A big socialist state led by the enlightened leaders is a recipe for disaster. The only way should be through worker activism. Through Self-emancipation.

Fatherland, Socialism or Death
Image by Nicholas Hall via Flickr

State socialism is the idea that we need to strive and implement a system where coercive power resides in the hands of a state mechanism who (ideally) uses it to progress to further stages towards communism by taking measures such as installing a democratic government and suppressing the capitalist class.

I consider that putting this as an immediate goal is a mistake. Relying on state power to handle the progression towards communism has two very mortal perils: The subdual of the activist feeling of the working class and the danger of the state leadership appropriating the power.

The revolutionary working class

By having reached the point of even considering State Socialism it means that a society has achieved a revolutionary victory over the bourgeoisie. This has obviously happened as a result of popular proletariat action. Strikes, marches, occupations etc. It has not and it could not have been achieved through the actions of an enlightened leadership as proven by the miserable failure of reformism to deliver even miniscule results in the last century. As a result installing state socialism would require the activist workers to willingly deliver coercive power to a new enlightened elite who will then guide society.

Putting aside for a moment the likeliness of this happening without external coercive factors, lets consider for a moment that this comes to pass. The immediate loss of such a setup would be the activist spirit of the working class. Where before all the gains, up to and including the revolution have been because of mass action which led to more and more revolutionary consiousness and camaraderie, now all that is required from the proletariat is continued subservience to the leadership of the state.

Even were I to grant that the state is benevolent, because the worker (and his own institutions – councils and the like) is not required anymore to strive for his own gains and progress, he is more and more losing his feeling to do it and simply learns to get along with what the state instructs him to do. Such a loss is immeasurable as this is the main reason any potential dictator can disrupt the movement towards Communism and instead turn the whole thing towards his own benefit. As the workers are now not anymore used to thinking and taking decisions for themselves but rather have to judge which of their leaders is actually on their side, it’s only a matter of propaganda before this happens.

Hijacking the State

By far the biggest threat going in the path of State socialism is that the people who have been chosen to defend the insterests of the Proletariat will turn against them. Indeed it has often been the case that the main reason why State Socialism was implemented was specifically for this purpose, as we can see by looking from Stalin’s rise to power. It was named “State Socialism” when it was actually State Capitalism.

By looking at the situation before this State setup was brought forward, we will see a surprisingly libertarian working of society, where workers councils were taking the decisions and the power was federated and controlled from its own distribution.

Once you replace the distributed and necessarily democratic organization of worker’s councils with centralized state power, you setup the base for the Socialist’s undoing. All a tyrrant needs to do is parrot the socialist rhetoric until the worker’s activism is sapped (see above) and then slowly roll back all the benefits achieved by discovering emergencies and necessities to do so. From one year to the other, the workers are back where they started, only now their leaders call themselves socialist as well.

No, state socialism is absolutely the wrong path to take. The only way to proceed towards communism is by letting the workers emancipate themselves. This can certainly include making use of the state mechanism in order to defend against counter-revolutionary attempts or to keep providing other necessary services (such as healthcare), but it should not be used for leadership or anything else that has the capability to remove the power from the workers or make them into simple passive tools.

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Quote of the Day: Obsolete class struggle ideas

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A quote about the constant resurgence of class struggle.

Quoth Corey Oakley

Perhaps – for once – they [the conservative columnists] have learnt at least one lesson from history. That is that time and time again, just when the ruling classes relaxed, working class struggle has suddenly appeared to declare, in the manner of Mark Twain, that rumours of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

How does distribution of wealth work in a socialist society?

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A Libertarian Socialist explanation of how a future such society would deal with people who do not want to work and laziness

think about justice (portrait)
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A redditor recently made the following question

how would a socialist society deal with members who do not want to work, yet still claim to be entitled to the fruits of other people’s labor? Also how would under performing or laziness be dealt with?

I’ve dealt with the similar concept of stagnation in a previous post but to this question, another redditor gave a very well thought out response that I believe should not be lost in comment history.

UPDATE: I’ve been informed by a commenter that this was actually lifted from the Anarchist FAQ. That’s why you should give attribution people…

Anarchism (Libertarian Socialism) is based on voluntary labor. If people do not desire to work then they cannot (must not) be forced to. The question arises of what to do with those (a small minority, to be sure) who refuse to work.

On this question there is some disagreement. Some anarchists, particularly communist-anarchists, argue that the lazy should not be deprived of the means of life. Social pressure, they argue, would force those who take, but do not contribute to the community, to listen to their conscience and start producing for the community that supports them. Other anarchists are less optimistic and agree with Camillo Berneri when he argues that anarchism should be based upon “no compulsion to work, but no duty towards those who do not want to work.” [“The Problem of Work”, in Why Work?, Vernon Richards (ed.), p. 74] This means that an anarchist society will not continue to feed, clothe, house someone who can produce but refuses to. Most anarchists have had enough of the wealthy under capitalism consuming but not producing and do not see why they should support a new group of parasites after the revolution.

Obviously, there is a difference between not wanting to work and being unable to work. The sick, children, the old, pregnant women and so on will be looked after by their friends and family (or by the commune, as desired by those involved). As child rearing would be considered “work” along with other more obviously economic tasks, mothers and fathers will not have to leave their children unattended and work to make ends meet. Instead, consideration will be given to the needs of both parents and children as well as the creation of community nurseries and child care centers.

We have to stress here that an anarchist society will not deny anyone the means of life. This would violate the voluntary labor which is at the heart of all schools of anarchism. Unlike capitalism, the means of life will not be monopolized by any group — including the commune. This means that someone who does not wish to join a commune or who does not pull their weight within a commune and are expelled will have access to the means of making a living outside the commune.

We stated that we stress this fact as many supporters of capitalism seem to be unable to understand this point (or prefer to ignore it and so misrepresent the anarchist position). In an anarchist society, no one will be forced to join a commune simply because they do not have access to the means of production and/or land required to work alone. Unlike capitalism, where access to these essentials of life is dependent on buying access to them from the capitalist class (and so, effectively, denied to the vast majority), an anarchist society will ensure that all have access and have a real choice between living in a commune and working independently. This access is based on the fundamental difference between possession and property — the commune possesses as much land as it needs, as do non-members. The resources used by them are subject to the usual possession rationale — they possess it only as long as they use it and cannot bar others using it if they do not (i.e., it is not property).

Thus an anarchist commune remains a voluntary association and ensures the end of all forms of wage slavery. The member of the commune has the choice of working as part of a community, giving according to their abilities and taking according to their needs (or some other means of organizing production and consumption such as equal income or receiving labor notes, and so on), or working independently and so free of communal benefits as well as any commitments (bar those associated with using communal resources such as roads and so on).

So, in most, if not all, anarchist communities, individuals have two options, either they can join a commune and work together as equals, or they can work as an individual or independent co-operative and exchange the product of their labor with others. If an individual joins a commune and does not carry their weight, even after their fellow workers ask them to, then that person will possibly be expelled and given enough land, tools or means of production to work alone. Of course, if a person is depressed, run down or otherwise finding it hard to join in communal responsibilities then their friends and fellow workers would do everything in their power to help and be flexible in their approach to the problem.

Some anarchist communities may introduce what Lewis Mumford termed “basic communism.” This means that everyone would get a basic amount of “purchasing power,” regardless of productive activity. If some people were happy with this minimum of resources then they need not work. If they want access to the full benefits of the commune, then they could take part in the communal labour process. This could be a means of eliminating all forces, even communal ones, which drive a person to work and so ensure that all labor is fully voluntary (i.e. not even forced by circumstances). What method a community would use would depend on what people in that community thought was best.

It seems likely, however, that in most anarchist communities people will have to work, but how they do so will be voluntary. If people did not work then some would live off the labor of those who do work and would be a reversion to capitalism. However, most social anarchists think that the problem of people trying not to work would be a very minor one in an anarchist society. This is because work is part of human life and an essential way to express oneself. With work being voluntary and self-managed, it will become like current day hobbies and many people work harder at their hobbies than they do at “real” work (this FAQ can be considered as an example of this!). It is the nature of employment under capitalism that makes it “work” instead of pleasure. Work need not be a part of the day that we wish would end. As Kropotkin argued (and has been subsequently supported by empirical evidence), it is not work that people hate. Rather it is overwork, in unpleasant circumstances and under the control of others that people hate. Reduce the hours of labor, improve the working conditions and place the work under self-management and work will stop being a hated thing. In his own words:

“Repugnant tasks will disappear, because it is evident that these unhealthy conditions are harmful to society as a whole. Slaves can submit to them, but free men create new conditions, and their work will be pleasant and infinitely more productive. The exceptions of today will be the rule of tomorrow.” [The Conquest of Bread, p. 123]

This, combined with the workday being shortened, will help ensure that only an idiot would desire to work alone. As Malatesta argued, the “individual who wished to supply his own material needs by working alone would be the slave of his labors.” [The Anarchist Revolution, p. 15]

So, enlightened self-interest would secure the voluntary labor and egalitarian distribution anarchists favor in the vast majority of the population. The parasitism associated with capitalism would be a thing of the past. Thus the problem of the “lazy” person fails to understand the nature of humanity nor the revolutionizing effects of freedom and a free society on the nature and content of work.

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Quote of the day: Tyranny of structurelessness

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A quote about how an unstructured movement might be tyrannical.

Quoth Socialist Action

Often anarchist movements are much more undemocratic than socialist parties, because they lack the democratic procedures to make majority decisions. Instead you get the ‘tyranny of structurelessness’ – where the best speakers (or the loudest!), those with the best informal clique links, are able to manipulate and dominate the movement.

Leadership has a way of always enterring into the equation wether you want it or not. The trick is of course to recognise that it will be there and find ways to make it accountable.


How to save the economy the Austrian way

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A socialist’s refutation of a recent Mises.org article where the author was asking the Obama administration to basically leave everything to the Free Market.

(The Depression) The Single Men's Unemployed A...
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Everytime a Mises.org article happens to fall into my field of vision, I am usually either stunned by the idiocy displayed or I simply burst our laughing at the absurdity and this latest one which even claims to be watered down in order not to be considered “unserious” by the current US Administration, is no break from this rule.

So after the introduction which attempts to claim the high ground of consistency and morality, we get an attempt at an analogy, which of course is made to showcase the Austrians as the rational good guys

If an allergic man has been stung by a bee, I don’t know what to do except rush him to the hospital and maybe scour the cupboards looking for Benadryl. But I’m pretty sure drawing blood from his leg, in order to inject it into his arm and thus “stimulate his immune system,” is a bad idea on numerous accounts

Unfortunately this analogy can easily be turned around to put the Government in the place of the hospital and whoever you don’t like in the place of the crazy ad-hoc injection doctor. If anything, one would see how this analogy would be to the detriment of the Austrians, as one could imagine that their reaction in this case would not be to do fucking nothing. After all, you shouldn’t be helping someone who took such risks and his death would imrpove the gene pool.

But hey, as long as the author is so proud of his metaphors, who am I to complain. Moving right along to his actual (*shudder*) recommendations.

After the mandatory fault blaming on the Gov’ment and declaration of his undying faith that were the state to go away everything would turn into pink bunnies and unicorns by the magic of the free markets, we get to the “serious” proposals:

Eliminate the personal and corporate income tax

And just to show everyone that he’s not joking around, he complements this with his very modest proposal to “blow up the IRS building”. ‘Cause that’s how he rolls, dawg!

Aside from the silliness of blowing up buildings, he doesn’t really explain to us why that is a good idea. I suppose that we need to take him as his word that it’s all in our best interests and it will not simply lead to public resources being wasted since there would be no money to repair them. No, the free market would find a way.

Also look forward however to the rise of epidemics of easily preventable diseases through vaccination. But hey, as long as the rich are protected, let the rabble die. It would certainly thin out the labour supply and increase their minimum wage (more on that below) so it’s all good eh ?

Unfortunately, dismantling the Social Security system will have to wait

Not that would do much good without any funding behind it. We’re going to go back to the good ol’ days where being poor means staying poor and you’ll be lacking any means to get back on your feet. Look forward to no security at an old age, no matter how hard you’ve worked the rest of your life. All wonderful stuff that people were struggling to fix a century ago but nowadays, they have become obsolete for the Austrians through the free market.

The author continues

The loss of some $1.5 trillion in annual tax receipts sounds absurd, but the actual figure would be lower, because of “supply-side” effects.

What could be better than supply side economics. This wonderful myth that has proven to not work anywhere but is still touted around on faith. But yeah, apparently removing tax incomes would provide a “stimulus to the economy”, as with the money injection to the banks I guess. Ah faith. What a wonderful thing.

Auction off all government assets progressively

Because we all know that private owners always do things better for the public than the government. Just look at Enron and General Motors. And privatizing things like water has always turned out for the best right?

At this point, I am starting to get quite annoyed at the author simply proposing random “free market” moves (Very similar to the ones the US has been taking for the last 30 years) and asserting that it will be for the best, at which point you think that we are supposed to trust him or be already convinced of the Austrian theory’s validity.

Eliminate the DEA and the SEC.

The author cites as an example Madoff who was not caught by the regulations and thus this proves that they are worthless. Nevermind that their powers to regulate Wall Street have been frowned upon, reduced and/or taken away by the US neoliberal politics. Basically the author is saying “The Agencies that we had to prevent this kind of thing failed after we limited their ability to do so, so the best thing to do now is to remove them altogether.”

Of course the continued existense of Madoff and the rest of the Wall Street implosion pretty much proves that the self-regulation of the markets is nothing more than a fairy tale. Expect the Madoffs to multiply in the future once there is not fear of being caught at all.

It is especially funny to see his proposal about drugs. Although I am one of those who would say to dismiss the war on drugs because it is counter-productive, restricts freedoms and it’s main purpose is to simply increase the prison slave labour, the author’s argument is that simply a stern talk and a watching of Requiem for a Dream will make people “just say no”, and even if they don’t, well, who cares.

Cut the Pentagon budget in half.

Finally, one of the few things that I think he’s not going far enough. Of course the military/imperialist budget is not necessary but not because it’s more than enough to protect US Americans from “Iranian Tanks” as the author uses as an argument, but because the reason for the budget is simply to enrich the war lobby. Which incidentally is privately owned, so where’s this trickle down effect I’ve been hearing so much of? His arguments once again display the authors half-assed understanding of how the world works.

Eliminate the Department of Education

Oh just brilliant. Because what we need right now is more unskilled workers. We can never have enough MacDonald servers afterall and having so many of them will certainly help keep the wages high..oh wait. No it won’t. If there’s one thing that will happen through the destruction of education opportunities is another descent into mysticism and religion and the destruction of the high level job market.

The authors argument is that not everyone deserves a higher education (only the born rich I guess) and hey, we’re saving money in the short term aren’t we? When has the short term been a worse investment than the long term?

Cancel all the pending “stimulus” and other bailout packages

Although I agree that the current “solution” implemented is wrong, the author presents this act for all the wrong reasons. He simply wants to “wipe the state clean” and let everything rebuild. He does nothing more than take the stand the liberals had as the Great Depression struck and they refused to save the banks. That of course turned out just dandy in the long term and only the banks suffered, right?

Of course the authors greatest failing is that he simply considers the bank itself, not the people who have their money saved in it. The folding of the major banks would mean that millions would lose all their life’s savings, loans would grind to a halt (even moreso than now) and a long period of rebuilding would happen while the economy reconstructed. Untold suffering for millions is what the author’s proposal is promising but as long as we stick to free market principles, I guess it’s worth it.

Allow unrestricted immigration

Hey, one thing I agree with. Oh wait, it was too good to be true…

So long as the incoming folks had a secure job in which the employer (a) paid three years in advance on any state and local taxes that would accrue from the employment and (b) bought at least a $100,000 house for the immigrant and his or her family.

Aaaahahahaha. Right. So basically the point is moot from the get go, as such wealthy or prestigious immigrants are probably allowed in now anyway. But hey, as long as it helps to “sell the package somehow”…

Abolish the minimum wage.

Wait, you need to read the whole quote

That — coupled with the elimination of the income tax — will take care of unemployment within 6 months.

If your goal is simply to “take care of unemployment” then this might be true but if you goal is to have people employed with a wage they can live a decent life instead of 3rd world situations, then you’re probably going to fail. Sure, you’ll get more employment but it’s going to be the employment of a bare subsistence wage, if that at all.

And with that the author finishes his proposal. Of course all of this is generally the kind of delusion the Austrians promote, that somehow anything can change by pleading with the Government to implement their “moderate proposals” which are generally watered down versions of their positions. Centuries of the same thing have proven more than enough already that nothing changes through such requests, especially not when the State is there to protect and support those at the top.

Watered down Socialism becomes Social Democracy and watered down Austrianism becomes Neoliberalism. Both in the end don’t achieve what they set out to do but rather betray their principles in order to retain their positions. You cannot reason with a system who’s continued existence relies on being “unreasonable” to your ideas.

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What is Socialism?

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Did you know that there is more than one type of Socialism? The welfare state is just one (popular form). The revolutionary from-below socialism is another.

If there’s one thing that has been as misunderstood and misrepresented as Communism, that must certainly be Socialism. What it means to be a socialist nowadays, for most people, has very little to do with how the term was used in its origins of the 19th century. There’s not much point in rehashing the history of why this happened but I do want to point a few things about it.

First a very basic definition. At the very core, Socialism means the public or collective ownership of the means of production and a general attempt towards egalitarianism.

There have certainly been a quite a few currents towards Socialism, each attempting to bring it about in a different way. From escapism to revolution and, the most popular one, through reformation of Capitalism. The latest one is how most people today understand Socialism indeed, and that is in the form of a Big Government of “enlightened leaders”.

But just because one current is popular does not mean that it’s the only one and this is why it is disconcerning when I see otherwise smart people writing about Socialism in general as if it conflates with Social Democracy and then attacking flaws of Social Democracy as flaws of Socialism. This denotes either ignorance or laziness and in either case it promotes misinformation.

Certainly, there are enough flaws in Social Democracy or Fabianism to make the whole system fail in regards to Socialism (that is, to achieving collective ownership of the means of production and egalitarianism). What Social Democracy does manage to achieve is rather to alleviate some of the most obvious suffering (mainly by offshoring it or displacing it in time through debt) and thus serves as a palliative to the disease that is Capitalism, preventing societies from ever actually progressing towards Socialism. The fact that many Social Democratic ((The obvious exceptions are the US American parties where the MacCarthian era has hopelessly screwed the usual names. Social Democrats are ‘Liberals’, Liberals are ‘Libertarians’ and Far Right Imperialist Theocrats are ‘Conservatives’ )) parties call themselves ‘Socialist’ is simply the insult to the injury.

But there is another much more important distinction between currents of Socialism which neatly separates the way each tries to achieve it. It’s the distrinction between ‘Socialism from Above’ and ‘Socialism from below’ ((For more information on this, I wholeheartedly suggest you read Hald Drapers “Two Souls of Socialism” which explains it much better than I ever could and I consider it one of the most important pieces on this subject)). The former is the classic kind of “Socialism” where the few enlightened leaders at the top try to bring about and sustain Socialism without needing any action from the general populace either than their unconditional support and submission to their ideas. This is the way that both USSR, and Social Democrats work and it suffers many of the problems that the Atheist Ethicist mentions.

The later way, which incidentally is the one I propose as well, is supposed to be achieved through the acts of the vast majority of people themselves (and not through some form of government).  The most popular currents of this type is Marxism and Anarchism and these methods have none of the same failing as ‘Socialism from Above’. It is because of this distinction, that talking of Socialism as if it only means Social Democracy is plain insulting to quite a few Socialists.

So please, if you’re going to talk about Socialism, either criticize what Socialism itself is trying to achieve, or criticize a particular method of achieving it (as in Marxism or Social Democracy). Those two are not the one and the same.

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