Socialism v capitalism

[An_Inspector_Calls]

"in order for that value to be added (at a compound rate) more value needs to be added as time goes on"
is more corretly put as
"in order for that value to be added (at a compound rate) more perceived value has to be added as time goes on"

[heliocentric]

as others have made reasoned contributions I hope to return to them his weekend.

I hope that will include an exegesis of your "strategy needed to put things on a more even footing" mentioned in #245 but not yet expanded upon. It's somewhat surprising to see you concur with Prof Harvey on some important points. No doubt you'll be aware that the logic of his argument leads to an eventual requirement for zero or negative economic growth which in turn would require the abandonment of capitalism. To continue from my earlier quote,

Leaving aside the indisputable constraints in the relation to nature (with global warming of paramount importance), the other potential barriers of effective demand in the market place, of technologies and of geographical/ geopolitical distributions are likely to be profound, even supposing, which is unlikely, that no serious active oppositions to continuous capital accumulation and further consolidation of class power materialize. What spaces are left in the global economy for new spatial fixes for capital surplus absorption? China and the ex-Soviet bloc have already been integrated. South and SouthEast Asia is filling up fast. Africa is not yet fully integrated but there is nowhere else with the capacity to absorb all this surplus capital. What new lines of production can be opened up to absorb growth? There may be no effective long-run capitalist solutions (apart from reversion to fictitious capital manipulations) to this crisis of capitalism. At some point quantitative changes lead to qualitative shifts and we need to take seriously the idea that we may be at exactly such an inflexion point in the history of capitalism. Questioning the future of capitalism itself as an adequate social system ought, therefore, to be in the forefront of current debate.

[John Shelton]

Please consult the back of a £20 note

I'd be delighted to! . Shall I PM you my address?

[ahinton]

Suggesting that it can be controlled for the benefit of society is a bit like holding a loaded gun to your head and imagining that if you pull the trigger in a particular way your brains will remain intact. Capitalism didn't develop for the benefit of society but for the extraction of profit by one class from another. There's no way it can be teased into some other shape.

So, unlike many people, including some Marxists of my acquaintance, your desire for the wholesale and permanent abolition of capitalism in all its manifestations rests on a belief that no capitalist activity of any kind has ever had any consequences for society as a whole other than adverse ones; that is, of course, your prerogative but it does you no favours to assume that more than a tiny minority of people share such a view.

"How would growth on the investment be achieved", you ask in an earlier post.

I did indeed, albeit in the specific context of the investment of pension contributions and in terms of how such investment can produce the growth necessary to enable the contributor's pension fund to grow over time in order (hopefully) to achieve a value sufficient to generate an adequate pension income throughout his/her retirement and, since the question has yet to be answered, I still ask it. Indeed, far from answering it, all that you have been able to come up with so far is an assertion that ""economic growth" is not a solution, it's part of the problem" which, as any kind of addressing of the problem of how to help pension contributors invest in a realistic pension, tells us nothing.

But clearly you cannot or will not perceive how limited your thinking is, so there's little point in continuing yet another discussion that you've brought creaking to a halt.

I have done nothing of the kind, actually; indeed, the only halting here is in your omission to answer the question! "My thinking" is in any case not at stake here when, rather than submitting thoughts, I am asking a question such as the above for the purpose of eliciting yours!

I hope your music makes more use of your imagination than your political thinking!

I hope that you will perceive and agree the virtue of leaving my music out of this discussion!

[ahinton]

I said nothing about what kind of country I want to live in, but since you've apparently drawn your own conclusions, I would prefer to live in a country where power is not concentrated in the hands of so few individuals, be they Andrew Mitchell or police officers.

Up to a point, so would I, but how on earth can anyone stop this from happening - permanently and sustainably - especially those who not only have insufficient power of their own to enforce it but are also too concerned with pursuing their own individual agendas and dealing with their own day-to-day concerns to have the time and energy to effect such a difference?

That's one part of it; the other is to ask whether you can be so sure that the said power concentrated in far more people's hands might necessarily be capable of guaranteeing better outcomes for society?

[ahinton]

You think it's a good thing that power is concentrated in the hands of so few individuals, Simon? That wealth is concentrated in the hands of so few individuals? That that concentration of wealth has become more pronounced over the past 30 years? That so many people's lives are determined from birth by economic dispossession?

I cannot speak for Simon, but, I certainly don't think that this is a good thing; what concerns me, however, is that what some people would seek to persuade us about this as a bad thing seems to be only a part of an agenda based on a belief that such "excessive" wealth shouldn't be concentrated in any individuals' hands at all.

[heliocentric]

your desire for the wholesale and permanent abolition of capitalism in all its manifestations rests on a belief that no capitalist activity of any kind has ever had any consequences for society as a whole other than adverse ones

Untrue; I was talking about why capitalism developed, and, like Marx, I am fully aware of the benefits it brought with it. You must think me a total idiot.

which, as any kind of addressing of the problem of how to help pension contributors invest in a realistic pension, tells us nothing.

Indeed so. I have no idea how to help in this regard, and I can't say it occupies my thoughts a great deal, which no doubt is highly irresponsible of me, but the way I see it I have more interesting things to think about (ie. almost anything else).

I hope that you will perceive and agree the virtue of leaving my music out of this discussion!

Actually, you rarely miss an opportunity to mention your "being a composer", as if you thought this information was in fact relevant in all manner of situations. I do find the thought of a composer as obsessed as you seem to be with pension schemes and tax arrangements somewhat bizarre.

[ahinton]

Since Marx has been mentioned: I would think that, even for those unfamiliar with or antipathetic towards Marxist ideas, it's at least worth considering the fact that this tradition of political thinking is the only one which provides both a coherent analysis of the causes and nature of the current global financial crisis and a coherent set of pointers towards strategies for removing those causes.

In you view and the view of some others, yes but, again, not in everyone's view; I am neither unfamiliar with nor even necessarily antipathetic to each and every one of his ideas in principle - indeed, his congtributions to society are far too important to be ignored, let alone treated with unconsidered contempt and dismissed accordingly - but I do deprecate the notions that any one political and economic thinker was the only one ever to have had all the answers and that what he believed to be the case in his own place and time somehow possesses a kind of ineffable and non-geographically-confined logic and truth that will forever merit and justify wholesale acceptance and pertinence internationally.

[ahinton]

The widespread use of renewable energy sources is not taken seriously because it doesn't offer short-term profit, even though it would ensure long-term sustainability.

You and I may not agree on very much, but I have to assure you that I do take the widespread use of renewable energy sources very seriously indeed! - as some on here may already realise - and whilst I'm not as convinced as you appear to be that there's no possibility of short-term profit in it, the fact that it would ensure long-term sustainability is beyond argument and I agree wholeheartedly with you about this! In fact, is widespread use on a small scale is such that more and more people would be able to become less and less dependent upon vast fossil fuel extraction, processing and distribution corporations, thereby unhooking themselves from some of the very worst aspects of the abuse and misuse of capitalism. OK, this cannot be done without materials and whoever has to manufacture those must generate at least sufficient profit from so doing that they can not only continue doing so but also develop ever more efficient means of harnessing and using renewable energy resources; this being the case, it's a source of no small puzzlement to me that some of those giant fossil fuel conglomerates have not had the vision to perceive the massive potential profits that could arise from their diversification into such renewables.

Ultimately the survival of the planet is going to depend on finding a different way to organise things, it's as simple as that.

Agreed - although there are at least some efforts in this direction, just nowhere near enough!

Or that different way will be forced on whoever is left behind by the violent upheavals that will result from an acceleration of climate change and the aforementioned exploitation of the poor.

I don't entirely share your climate change argument here, but there can be no doubt that widespread substitution of fossil fuel use with renewable energy use will have a positive effect upon environmental pollution - not only air but also water and soil.

[ahinton]

Since the drive to economic growth leads necessarily to reckless exploitation of finite natural resources, not to mention the kind of rapacious exploitation of the third world which involves grabbing those resources and then selling them back to people who can't afford them (to give one particularly egregious example), it can only ultimately lead to rendering the planet uninhabitable. That is the logic of "perpetual growth".

Not necessarily. I do agree that this might be one possible outcome and it is therefore one which any intelligent capitalist should recognise for what it is and try to do all possible to avoid it. Where we disagree here is that I believe that capitalist principles and the benefit of society do not have, by immutable definition, to be antonymous.

[ahinton]

If you understand the concept of entropy you'll know that it's a measure of the amount of disorder in a system. When fossil fuels are extracted and burned, the "cost" of the energy derived from the process is a net increase in entropy. The fuel can't be reused; it's "moved", to use your word, from a state where it can be used as an energy source to a state where it can't.

This is entirely true in terms of its relevance to the extraction and use of fossil fuels for the simple reason that they are a finite resource, whereas renewables are, by definition, not so; that said, it is by no means the case that capitalists en masse have no interest in the development of renewables or in their potential replacement of fossil fuel consumption.

[John Shelton]

Not necessarily. I do agree that this might be one possible outcome and it is therefore one which any intelligent capitalist should recognise for what it is and try to do all possible to avoid it. Where we disagree here is that I believe that capitalist principles and the benefit of society do not have, by immutable definition, to be antonymous.

I don't think antonymous is the right word there - as far as I know its use is exclusively in semantics (words with opposite - semantic - meanings). Do you mean antithetical?

[ahinton]

Untrue; I was talking about why capitalism developed, and, like Marx, I am fully aware of the benefits it brought with it. You must think me a total idiot.

Not at all; my statement was based upon remarks that you had made about the negative aspects of capitalism over the years and about how capitalism is and has always been inextricably linked to the disadvantaging of some by others, as though it embraces no other possibilities. I am therefore pleased to be corrected as you have done here but, in so saying, I am minded to remind anyone who might care that if capitalism can bring and has brought benefits with it, it is those aspects of it that should be explored instead of those involving corrupt practice and the disadvantaging of certain groups by others.

To my repeated question about how a pension contributor could manage to invest for e secure pension in retirement, all that you can now tell us is that you

have no idea how to help in this regard, and I can't say it occupies my thoughts a great deal, which no doubt is highly irresponsible of me, but the way I see it I have more interesting things to think about (ie. almost anything else)

That's fine if that's how you want it, of course, but since you do not wish, any more than I do, to witness the emergence of the kind of arrogantly insensitive "scrapheap" mentality that would have so little care for those who are past working age that they dismiss their fate as an irrelevance to the society to which they belong, I would have thought that the matter might have exercised you to at least some degree and that you might have had some interest in the possible answer even if you were not in a position actually to provide it.

Actually, you rarely miss an opportunity to mention your "being a composer", as if you thought this information was in fact relevant in all manner of situations.

Neither is true - i.e. the proportion of posts in which I mention it is vanishingly small (a fact that may be demonstrated by a perusal of them) and that I do not attach to it a relevance in all manner of situations.

I do find the thought of a composer as obsessed as you seem to be with pension schemes and tax arrangements somewhat bizarre.

I might find the same, were it the case but, in reality, not only am I far from "obsessed" with either of these phenomena (does entering into and contributing to a discussion of something inevitably signify and "obsession" therewith?), the fact of being a composer (for mention of which I offer due apology) surely no more determines the need for a lack of any genuine interest in such matters as it would be expected to do in the case of a teacher, politician, lawyer or member of any other profession?

[An_Inspector_Calls]

It seems heliocentric has several criticisms of his ideas which he's choosing to ignore.

1) He's demonstrated no resource constraint which would stop growth. Some materials may be in short supply from time to time (due to uneven geographical distribution), but nothing that would stop it altogether. Where's the lesson in entropy and thermodynamics?
2) He's completely ignored PhilipT's excellent example of growth through innovation when in fact this has been a massive source of growth in the twentieth centrury. And innovation is very far from done.
3) Marx predicted increasing exploitation of the workforce as capitalism slowed, but in fact the west has seemingly exchanged greater growth for shorter working weeks, and increased leisure time. No sign of exploitation here. Every sign that the workforce happily swaps leisure for growth.
4) Mills pointed out that there was nothing wrong with the concept of zero growth. It doesn't mean that capitalism has to end. Harvey seems to preach to a growth rate of 3 % when very few western societies have seen such growth levels on a consistent basis in the twentieth century.

[ahinton]

I don't think antonymous is the right word there - as far as I know its use is exclusively in semantics (words with opposite - semantic - meanings). Do you mean antithetical?

In the sense that I sought to illustrate an issue of mutual incompatibility, I rather think that I do and I appreciate your correction; thanks! I hope, nevertheless, that the sense of what I wrote was not unduly undermined by this error.