5 ms·

While I found many of the author's assertions to be ideological predictions, this sentence made me happy: "So much depends on the balance of forces between capi

by Hytosys 11y ago

While I found many of the author's assertions to be ideological predictions, this sentence made me happy: "So much depends on the balance of forces between capital and labour at the moment of its implementation." Historically speaking, economic change in favor of the massive people is only successful (even if fleeting) if it is demanded by millions of working people. UBI only plays with the ratios of capitalism; a UBI implementation would result in a different distribution of equality, so surely there would be historic social consequences. Those consequences are clearly up for endless debate by concerned reformists (a.k.a. fortune tellers; see the article's citations). So, the details are all up in the air. What a brief Marxian analysis would tell you regarding UBI and any other reform programs: since the control of the means of production and the subsequent control of the surplus labor remains in the hands of the capitalists, the capitalists will maintain their power and quickly destroy any of the proletarian benefits that the program seemed to promise. The best example in recent US history of this happening: the New Deal.

sageikosa 11y ago
Both Marxist and Austrians agree: intermediate socialist policies are doomed to fail. Marxists would say because they weren't Marxist enough, and Austrians would say because all socialist systems must fail because they lack a means to calculate relative value sufficient for anything other than robbery, and certainly not sufficient for directing activity fit for an industrial society.
- vidarh 11y ago
  > because they lack a means to calculate relative value sufficient for anything other than robbery, and certainly not sufficient for directing activity fit for an industrial society. That seems to me to be an argument against a planned economy, not against socialism. There's no requirement for socialism to remove markets as mechanism to determine value. There is a requirement to reject a market based on private ownership of the means of production as the means to determine the individuals return for work rendered, not to reject market mechanisms in general. In a sense you are right that Marxists and "Austrians" could agree that "intermediate" socialist policies that hamper the functioning of the market are doomed to fail. But some Marxists will believe that this is because an actual Marxist implementation could have freed the market from the limitations of the halfway house of social democrats. E.g. a problem with the social democratic model of Norway for example is exactly that the market is stymied by all kinds of regulations that are intended to cushion society from the effects of unrestrained capitalism. These clearly affect the ability of the markets to accurately price e.g. the actual cost of a product, because it ends up pricing in societal costs of dealing with labour issues unrelated to what this company actually does. But these are necessary to achieve a socialist programme under the constraints of capitalist modes of ownership, not because of the market. As a specific example, in Norway it is incredibly hard to make people redundant, and even normal notice periods are typicall 3 months. These protections were hard won successes of the labour movements. But they are there to safeguard employees in a system where long term unemployment is a risk leading to reduced earning ability - possibly for the rest of your life if you end up losing career progression. Consider a socialist system where the cost of employment are effectively borne by society whether or not there is currently work for you, and where you're not losing out on salary progression. In such a system you might want to strip most redundancy protections back to the bone, because they obscure the real costs of production and they obscure real unemployment. By stripping such protections, society would be able to see what the free labour pool actually is, and take measures on that basis - whether it would be to lower working hours, or offer more vacations, or encourage more education, or offer up resources to people wanting to start new projects. It is thus not the market that is a problem for Marxists, but a capitalist market under capitalist modes of ownership. That does not mean all socialists, or all Marxists, want market economies, but there certainly are Marxists who see the market as by far the best means to calculate relative value exactly in order to direct activity fit for an industrial society. At least some Marxists and Austrians will in fact agree to levels of regulation in many areas that would cause "intermediate" socialists like social democrats to have strokes.
  - nzp 11y ago
    I'm not sure I would agree with a lot of what you say here, but nevertheless you bring a very important point that I think is chronically misunderstood, or overlooked, about Marx's analysis. Free market is a crucial assumption in Marx's labour theory of value. It is the free market that drives commodity (exchange) values towards their labour value, which then drives the whole Marxist theory of capitalism forward.
- eru 11y ago
  Fabians (and other social democrats) disagree. So far, the Fabians seem to be on a roll---social democracy hasn't collapsed yet, and brought much stronger legal position for workers. (Health-and-safety laws, 40h work week, etc.)
  - sageikosa 11y ago
    Every system collapses eventually. I'm not the kind of person who thinks society can be engineered, so I don't have to posit a counter system that won't collapse.
tom_mellior 11y ago
> What a brief Marxian analysis would tell you regarding UBI and any other reform programs: since the control of the means of production and the subsequent control of the surplus labor remains in the hands of the capitalists, the capitalists will maintain their power and quickly destroy any of the proletarian benefits that the program seemed to promise. I see this objection raised from time to time. But I don't think it's accurate. If there is a UBI I can live off, I'll immediately quit my job at EvilCo doing stuff that I don't believe in or that I find actively harmful. The more evil a corporation is, the more it will have to pay in wages to find someone to do the dirty work. At the same time, the UBI allows people to found startups with much lower risk than today because, if the company does something people believe in, they will be willing to do it for much less money or maybe even for free. (Of course you'll still need startup capital for capital-intensive industries.) Essentially, the UBI is a subsidy for small business doing socially desired stuff at the expense of big, evil capitalists. I really don't understand why Marxists don't see this and even fear the exact opposite.
- Hytosys 11y ago
  I would think most Marxists would agree that any society would be have a more prosperous working class with a basic income than it would without one. Because of the framework of class analysis Marx provides however, Marxists do not compromise on moving beyond capitalism. The problems of capitalism run much deeper than just poverty. I don't think that you argued my point, though. Virtually every reform program in the history of capitalism has eroded over time, even the ones that probably sounded as impressive as UBI at the time (near 100% tax rates, social security, etc.).

by Hytosys 11y ago

sageikosa 11y ago

Both Marxist and Austrians agree: intermediate socialist policies are doomed to fail. Marxists would say because they weren't Marxist enough, and Austrians would say because all socialist systems must fail because they lack a means to calculate relative value sufficient for anything other than robbery, and certainly not sufficient for directing activity fit for an industrial society.

vidarh 11y ago
> because they lack a means to calculate relative value sufficient for anything other than robbery, and certainly not sufficient for directing activity fit for an industrial society. That seems to me to be an argument against a planned economy, not against socialism. There's no requirement for socialism to remove markets as mechanism to determine value. There is a requirement to reject a market based on private ownership of the means of production as the means to determine the individuals return for work rendered, not to reject market mechanisms in general. In a sense you are right that Marxists and "Austrians" could agree that "intermediate" socialist policies that hamper the functioning of the market are doomed to fail. But some Marxists will believe that this is because an actual Marxist implementation could have freed the market from the limitations of the halfway house of social democrats. E.g. a problem with the social democratic model of Norway for example is exactly that the market is stymied by all kinds of regulations that are intended to cushion society from the effects of unrestrained capitalism. These clearly affect the ability of the markets to accurately price e.g. the actual cost of a product, because it ends up pricing in societal costs of dealing with labour issues unrelated to what this company actually does. But these are necessary to achieve a socialist programme under the constraints of capitalist modes of ownership, not because of the market. As a specific example, in Norway it is incredibly hard to make people redundant, and even normal notice periods are typicall 3 months. These protections were hard won successes of the labour movements. But they are there to safeguard employees in a system where long term unemployment is a risk leading to reduced earning ability - possibly for the rest of your life if you end up losing career progression. Consider a socialist system where the cost of employment are effectively borne by society whether or not there is currently work for you, and where you're not losing out on salary progression. In such a system you might want to strip most redundancy protections back to the bone, because they obscure the real costs of production and they obscure real unemployment. By stripping such protections, society would be able to see what the free labour pool actually is, and take measures on that basis - whether it would be to lower working hours, or offer more vacations, or encourage more education, or offer up resources to people wanting to start new projects. It is thus not the market that is a problem for Marxists, but a capitalist market under capitalist modes of ownership. That does not mean all socialists, or all Marxists, want market economies, but there certainly are Marxists who see the market as by far the best means to calculate relative value exactly in order to direct activity fit for an industrial society. At least some Marxists and Austrians will in fact agree to levels of regulation in many areas that would cause "intermediate" socialists like social democrats to have strokes.
- nzp 11y ago
  I'm not sure I would agree with a lot of what you say here, but nevertheless you bring a very important point that I think is chronically misunderstood, or overlooked, about Marx's analysis. Free market is a crucial assumption in Marx's labour theory of value. It is the free market that drives commodity (exchange) values towards their labour value, which then drives the whole Marxist theory of capitalism forward.
eru 11y ago
Fabians (and other social democrats) disagree. So far, the Fabians seem to be on a roll---social democracy hasn't collapsed yet, and brought much stronger legal position for workers. (Health-and-safety laws, 40h work week, etc.)
- sageikosa 11y ago
  Every system collapses eventually. I'm not the kind of person who thinks society can be engineered, so I don't have to posit a counter system that won't collapse.

tom_mellior 11y ago

> What a brief Marxian analysis would tell you regarding UBI and any other reform programs: since the control of the means of production and the subsequent control of the surplus labor remains in the hands of the capitalists, the capitalists will maintain their power and quickly destroy any of the proletarian benefits that the program seemed to promise. I see this objection raised from time to time. But I don't think it's accurate. If there is a UBI I can live off, I'll immediately quit my job at EvilCo doing stuff that I don't believe in or that I find actively harmful. The more evil a corporation is, the more it will have to pay in wages to find someone to do the dirty work. At the same time, the UBI allows people to found startups with much lower risk than today because, if the company does something people believe in, they will be willing to do it for much less money or maybe even for free. (Of course you'll still need startup capital for capital-intensive industries.) Essentially, the UBI is a subsidy for small business doing socially desired stuff at the expense of big, evil capitalists. I really don't understand why Marxists don't see this and even fear the exact opposite.

Hytosys 11y ago
I would think most Marxists would agree that any society would be have a more prosperous working class with a basic income than it would without one. Because of the framework of class analysis Marx provides however, Marxists do not compromise on moving beyond capitalism. The problems of capitalism run much deeper than just poverty. I don't think that you argued my point, though. Virtually every reform program in the history of capitalism has eroded over time, even the ones that probably sounded as impressive as UBI at the time (near 100% tax rates, social security, etc.).