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I'm not sure a private-sector restructuring is exactly the right frame for left policy change, since the whole point of these changes is to refocus ourselves aw

by CamTin 8y ago

I'm not sure a private-sector restructuring is exactly the right frame for left policy change, since the whole point of these changes is to refocus ourselves away from the tyranny of constantly optimizing for productivity instead of happiness. Also, even in a successful corporate restructuring, there is pain all around (layoffs and capital losses) before there is any gain to anyone. This is the hallmark of disastrously unsuccessful left policies like the Cultural Revolution, where tons of people suffered but there was no real gain to anyone except perhaps a small minority of Party members for decades. In my view, a successful left policy change should make a minority "suffer", while almost everyone else benefits or, even better, make everybody better off with outsized gains to the worst off. I'm not advocating a revolution, and meant to bring it up as one limit of left policy change. This exact problem (radical changes to relationships during a revolution destroying lots of wealth) is why I think a Russian-style revolution is a bad idea, unless the revolutionaries are making the conscious choice to create a post-revolution society that is drastically poorer than the pre-revolution one. I don't think most people (except extreme radicals) would support this goal. Any socialist revolution would therefore have to downplay or ignore this fact in order to succeed, which is precisely what happened in places like Russia, China, and Cuba in the 20th century. (To be fair, the Russians were the first to try this, so they didn't have anyone else to look at and learn this lesson.) That doesn't mean incrementalist left policies don't have to grapple with the problem though. Single-payer healthcare, for example, would probably reduce the amount of wealth in society, since most of the value in private healthcare firms comes from the current structure of the healthcare market. A leftist should be OK with this and support single-payer anyway because most people will gain.

jahaja 8y ago
> To be fair, the Russians were the first to try this, so they didn't have anyone else to look at and learn this lesson. They were well aware of this [1]. That's part of the reason why most leading revolutionaries, including Lenin, saw the spread of the revolution to western European countries as a requirement for their (edit: I meant to write "its", but "their" is probably more accurate after all) long-term success. IIRC he remained deluded in the prospects for this until his death. [1]: There's probably a more direct source for this but here's one I remember. This is from "The Conquest of Bread" (1892), albeit an anarchist rather than a bolshevik, Peter Kropotkin was famous enough during that time to prove the point: It is evident, as Proudhon has already pointed out, that the smallest attack upon property will bring in its train the complete disorganization of the system based upon private enterprise and wage labour. Society itself will be forced to take production in hand, in its entirety, and to reorganize it to meet the needs of the whole people. But this cannot be accomplished in a day or a month; it must take a certain time thus to reorganize the system of production, and during this time millions of men will be deprived of the means of subsistence.
- CamTin 8y ago
  Fascinating! I have always understood the desire to spread the revolution to the West was straight from Marx, where the struggle against capitalism, a global system, must of course be a global one. Coldly understanding that "millions of men will be deprived of sustenance" while the new Socialist system takes place, and yet doing it anyway, is I guess just a reflection of how steely-eyed these radicals were. Still, my point stands that this was not how it was sold to the masses. Going out with a message of "Out with the bosses, we'll take all the riches ourselves!" is a much easier sell than "Listen, I know you are all desperately poor and suffering, but that will have to get even worse, and a lot of you are probably going to starve, before it gets better if we're going to build socialism."
  - jahaja 8y ago
    > I guess just a reflection of how steely-eyed these radicals were. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of factors to take into account during that time ofc, most social upheavals will not come with an attached short-term economic benefit. I do not think that they necessarily thought that most would simply die either, but experience a generally hard time rebuilding. Tsarist Russia was a powder keg that were likely to blow up even without the brutal version served by the bolsheviks. You're right, I didn't really mean to address your initial point about that, I'm just cherry-picking and adding some thoughts. Propaganda will always emphasize the positives and downplay the negatives as you wrote. In fact, and maybe I'm getting a bit side tracked, but Lenin and others of the more cynical revolutionaries of that time, and probably before and today, thought it might be necessary for things to get worse to reach the conditions needed for the revolution to succeed. Of course there's some amount truth to that, but it's nevertheless very much in line with the terror that followed in the means to an end fashion. On the other hand, Bertrand Russell, for example, while agreeing on the need for communism thought the price to pay through these bolshevik methods were just "too terrible" to justify it. So the spectrum of revolutionaries during that time was quite wide.

by CamTin 8y ago

jahaja 8y ago

> To be fair, the Russians were the first to try this, so they didn't have anyone else to look at and learn this lesson. They were well aware of this [1]. That's part of the reason why most leading revolutionaries, including Lenin, saw the spread of the revolution to western European countries as a requirement for their (edit: I meant to write "its", but "their" is probably more accurate after all) long-term success. IIRC he remained deluded in the prospects for this until his death. [1]: There's probably a more direct source for this but here's one I remember. This is from "The Conquest of Bread" (1892), albeit an anarchist rather than a bolshevik, Peter Kropotkin was famous enough during that time to prove the point: It is evident, as Proudhon has already pointed out, that the smallest attack upon property will bring in its train the complete disorganization of the system based upon private enterprise and wage labour. Society itself will be forced to take production in hand, in its entirety, and to reorganize it to meet the needs of the whole people. But this cannot be accomplished in a day or a month; it must take a certain time thus to reorganize the system of production, and during this time millions of men will be deprived of the means of subsistence.

CamTin 8y ago
Fascinating! I have always understood the desire to spread the revolution to the West was straight from Marx, where the struggle against capitalism, a global system, must of course be a global one. Coldly understanding that "millions of men will be deprived of sustenance" while the new Socialist system takes place, and yet doing it anyway, is I guess just a reflection of how steely-eyed these radicals were. Still, my point stands that this was not how it was sold to the masses. Going out with a message of "Out with the bosses, we'll take all the riches ourselves!" is a much easier sell than "Listen, I know you are all desperately poor and suffering, but that will have to get even worse, and a lot of you are probably going to starve, before it gets better if we're going to build socialism."
- jahaja 8y ago
  > I guess just a reflection of how steely-eyed these radicals were. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of factors to take into account during that time ofc, most social upheavals will not come with an attached short-term economic benefit. I do not think that they necessarily thought that most would simply die either, but experience a generally hard time rebuilding. Tsarist Russia was a powder keg that were likely to blow up even without the brutal version served by the bolsheviks. You're right, I didn't really mean to address your initial point about that, I'm just cherry-picking and adding some thoughts. Propaganda will always emphasize the positives and downplay the negatives as you wrote. In fact, and maybe I'm getting a bit side tracked, but Lenin and others of the more cynical revolutionaries of that time, and probably before and today, thought it might be necessary for things to get worse to reach the conditions needed for the revolution to succeed. Of course there's some amount truth to that, but it's nevertheless very much in line with the terror that followed in the means to an end fashion. On the other hand, Bertrand Russell, for example, while agreeing on the need for communism thought the price to pay through these bolshevik methods were just "too terrible" to justify it. So the spectrum of revolutionaries during that time was quite wide.