6 ms·

It's the most efficient way to extract value from us

walrus01 7y ago
When I was a teenager, old people told me that my political views would grow more conservative as I got older. If anything, as I've watched growing income inequality and the further concentration of wealth among the one percent, I can better appreciate the point Karl Marx was trying to get across to people.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Being conservative has little to do with consumption culture.
- danlindley 7y ago
  I'd argue that rationale was based on a very different economic evironment to what we have now, and arguing that today, a failing to know and understand the different challenges that are faced by the very people they may empart this idea to.
- atemerev 7y ago
  I was born in the USSR, where Marxist socialism was implemented: no significant private property (you own your clothes and furniture, but not your apartment, a car is borderline suspicious), and most certainly no private business ownership. Life was pretty miserable back then, if you ask me. Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons.
  - jahaja 7y ago
    It's a big problem that our current political imagination is so narrow to only allow the false dichotomy of either neo-liberalism or Stalinism. The number of top-down Stalinist within the general leftist movement is tiny.
    - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
      Indeed. Since capitalism is "lots of smaller dictatorships(companies) with a set of rules for all", and the migration to communism was "get rid of the smaller dictatorships and make a nation-wide dictatorship". "Communism" ala USSR, North Korea, etc just moved the problem to a strictly worse area, and something you could not get away with. At least in capitalism, there are better and worse 'masters'.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      The modern democratic and republican parties are chock full of pro-totalitarian, pro-authoritarian, "pro-state control of people's lives" politicians (of course they're inconsistent and they'll say or vote the opposite when they are pandering to their base though). If the "modern socialist" types gained tons of traction tomorrow and became mainstream within the democratic party people like Feinstein and other authoritarians won't stop pushing regressive authoritarian policy. They'd just do it in a way that's sculpted to line up with the (newly) popular "socialist" sentiment. So the end result would be pretty darn Stalinist IMO. So yes, you're right that current socialists are generally not in favor of secret police and shipping undesirables to the gulag but you're also wrong because if socialism becomes popular it will include all the totalitarians on that side of the isle who do want secret police and gulags. As regrettable as it may be I don't see any path for going from the status quo to something more socialist without the current crop of totalitarian jerks in the ruling class turning it into a 1984 dystopia (the technical, procedural and much of the precedent for said dystopia already exists) along the way.
      - jahaja 7y ago
        From my European perspective both those parties are firmly capitalist and right-wing. I will never expect anything other that what you described from members of them. Certainly not to do some sort of socialist transformation. The current US mainstream "socialists" are after all at best bog standard EU social democrats - that is, still capitalist. I don't believe that currently ostracized strains/ideas/people will somehow inherently come to power just because democratic socialist ideas become mainstream. Democratic minded socialist are just as inoculated against authoritarianism as liberals. These people were persecuted and killed by ML/Stalinist authoritarians too.
  - jerf 7y ago
    Yes, it's a bit ironic to complain about "work all the time" culture and think Marxism is going to fix it, when the first thing the State does is essentially extend this workplace culture to the entire culture, so that you are never off the clock of being a correct-thinking employee obedient to your superiors in every way, even your speech, even when alone with your family. (And that was prior to when we all carried around portable surveillance devices voluntarily.) The US may draw you in to that culture, but plenty of people escape it, and plenty of people in it can yet get out of it with reasonable effort. Marxism created cultures where it is a crime to escape that culture.
  - dictum 7y ago
    > Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons. I've seen this quote elsewhere, and the spurious correlation bothers me. That prisons supply inmates with basic necessities does not make systems that supply members with basic necessities akin to prisons. In practice, many of them may operate with restrictions to freedom, but so does employment in most fields under capitalism. Even business ownership is a significant restriction of freedom if you cannot delegate work (i.e. you cannot afford to hire), liquidate assets, or stay free from mounting debt.
    - atemerev 7y ago
      The difference you are ignoring here is voluntary and/or unenforced restriction of freedom (which is a contradiction in terms — you are free to change your conditions) vs. imposed and enforced restrictions. Kind of important.
      - hobs 7y ago
        And the obvious thing you are ignoring is that prisons just dont do this: free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment Prisons are places where rape, neglect, and violence are the norm. Being pithy reduces whatever point you had into dust.
        atemerev 7y ago
        Perhaps in United States. Our European prisons are much more comfortable. Additionally, in the USSR we perhaps had less rape and violence in peacetime (our prison guards were professional and order was enforced), but oh boy, we knew a thing or two about neglect.
        fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        The Gulag Archipelago paints a very different picture, torture was common according to that text. Serves them right for not giving up every single ounce of grain they produced to the government.
  - Sharlin 7y ago
    > Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons. Ah, the good old "noncentral fallacy" [1]. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...
    - atemerev 7y ago
      So, you are calling USSR a non-central example of Marxism implementation? What would be a central example, then?
  - Retra 7y ago
    >Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons. Or "schools". Or "military bases." But you do you, I guess.
    - atemerev 7y ago
      As a member of military, you are allowed to own property, but have to take orders. Same, same, but different. But yes, many people compared the USSR to essentially a huge military organization. School students are very limited in rights, indeed. Their welfare depends on welfare of their parents. But they can hope to become free adults one day; no such hope for citizens of socialist countries.
      - Retra 7y ago
        What is your point? That every person who has to make decisions with costs may as well be in prison? Going to school and serving in the military are only different kinds of prisons because you can't escape them? You can't escape capitalism either.
- mlevental 7y ago
  if only people really new what Marx said instead of the caricatures deployed by McCarthyism. Marxism is about alienation. read this and tell me you don't relate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation#Types_of_alienation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienatio...
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    And especially so this one: "Alienation of the worker from other workers" Now, look at the 'gig economy'. Instead of grousing about shitty bosses, these companies pit 'employee' against each other. The gig economy companies are setting up zero sum style games: There's only X work per day, and each person claws for their slice of it against others.
  - wry_discontent 7y ago
    I'm in the midst of reading Capital after realizing I'd never read any Marx, but only heard second hand stuff. It's surprisingly different from what I expected. It's a behemoth of a book, but I'd still recommend it.
- eli_gottlieb 7y ago
  Yeah, that's how I felt when I got my first job out of college. Then I met a bunch of Marxist-Leninists and they reminded me why I stick to democratic socialism.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  Indeed. Same here. It doesn't matter how nice a system of fluid economics the Wealth of Nations was on paper. The problem is that people will exploit them. And exploitation of rules leads to exploitation of people. And where are we now? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/middle-class-americans-increasingly-rely-on-the-safety-net/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=56511256 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/middle-class-americans-increasi... "In 2014, the middle 60 percent of Americans accounted for 46.8 percent of federal aid offered to people who qualify for such help, Brookings found." Any one of us can 'fall', and not able to be self-sufficient to 'pull up by ones bootstraps'. We've given capitalism a good 300 year run. And we know its pathologies. Communism isn't necessarily the best, but it provides a converse theory to start the discussion.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    > Communism isn't necessarily the best, but it provides a converse theory to start the discussion. Well, compared to capitalism its much more utopistic - I mean how far it is from reality of human nature and how much you should expect from people in the system. As history shows us numerous times, it really doesn't matter how good things look on the paper or during academic discussions. The reality is, evil, messed up, unbalanced, sociopathic etc. folks are part of society. I don't mean in insane asylums, I mean in schools, hospitals, corporations, hackernews, everywhere. And somehow, for number of reasons, when numerous factors combine these people rise to power although they shouldn't. Every communism I am aware of ended up as dictatorship very quickly. In real capitalism, they come and go much more quickly and the impact is smoothed out over time. This is the breaking point for me where the system is obviously worse - in communism, those dictators always ended up as net loss for citizens and mankind. And you gotta be brutal if you want to force millions into situations they wouldn't choose themselves. There are other obvious issues - no private ownership means nobody will work hard to maintain/enhance/create if at the end benefits are marginal at best. Better enjoy that beer. And over time, these things compound and the result is always the same. Capitalism wins through sheer efficiency and overall upper hand. When comparing similar starting systems, its pretty clear which is more beneficial. But yeah, it looks cool and very nice on the paper, or in TV like Star Trek.
    - 7y ago
- sjg007 7y ago
  I've heard this too. I think it is that people fear change intrinsically. Also they want to avoid anything that could kill property values. Plus there it is just competition in general that people view incorrectly as zero sum.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 7y ago
    Feedback loops like transistors increasing economic efficiency to pay for more transistors are unusual. Sure, over the long term markets change, but day to day most competition approaches zero sum. Americans are only going to pay for and consume so much food each year. That may move around a little, but mostly it’s a question of competition between food producers not expanding the market. Entertainment competes for only so much free time and disposable income etc. Now as productivity increases people may have more disposable income, but Disney can’t really influence how much money people have.
bpyne 7y ago
And the most efficient way to keep people from reflecting on their lives, realizing how far from their "ideal lives" they are.

When I was a teenager, old people told me that my political views would grow more conservative as I got older. If anything, as I've watched growing income inequality and the further concentration of wealth among the one percent, I can better appreciate the point Karl Marx was trying to get across to people.

cameronbrown 7y ago
Being conservative has little to do with consumption culture.
danlindley 7y ago
I'd argue that rationale was based on a very different economic evironment to what we have now, and arguing that today, a failing to know and understand the different challenges that are faced by the very people they may empart this idea to.
atemerev 7y ago
I was born in the USSR, where Marxist socialism was implemented: no significant private property (you own your clothes and furniture, but not your apartment, a car is borderline suspicious), and most certainly no private business ownership. Life was pretty miserable back then, if you ask me. Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons.
- jahaja 7y ago
  It's a big problem that our current political imagination is so narrow to only allow the false dichotomy of either neo-liberalism or Stalinism. The number of top-down Stalinist within the general leftist movement is tiny.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    Indeed. Since capitalism is "lots of smaller dictatorships(companies) with a set of rules for all", and the migration to communism was "get rid of the smaller dictatorships and make a nation-wide dictatorship". "Communism" ala USSR, North Korea, etc just moved the problem to a strictly worse area, and something you could not get away with. At least in capitalism, there are better and worse 'masters'.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    The modern democratic and republican parties are chock full of pro-totalitarian, pro-authoritarian, "pro-state control of people's lives" politicians (of course they're inconsistent and they'll say or vote the opposite when they are pandering to their base though). If the "modern socialist" types gained tons of traction tomorrow and became mainstream within the democratic party people like Feinstein and other authoritarians won't stop pushing regressive authoritarian policy. They'd just do it in a way that's sculpted to line up with the (newly) popular "socialist" sentiment. So the end result would be pretty darn Stalinist IMO. So yes, you're right that current socialists are generally not in favor of secret police and shipping undesirables to the gulag but you're also wrong because if socialism becomes popular it will include all the totalitarians on that side of the isle who do want secret police and gulags. As regrettable as it may be I don't see any path for going from the status quo to something more socialist without the current crop of totalitarian jerks in the ruling class turning it into a 1984 dystopia (the technical, procedural and much of the precedent for said dystopia already exists) along the way.
    - jahaja 7y ago
      From my European perspective both those parties are firmly capitalist and right-wing. I will never expect anything other that what you described from members of them. Certainly not to do some sort of socialist transformation. The current US mainstream "socialists" are after all at best bog standard EU social democrats - that is, still capitalist. I don't believe that currently ostracized strains/ideas/people will somehow inherently come to power just because democratic socialist ideas become mainstream. Democratic minded socialist are just as inoculated against authoritarianism as liberals. These people were persecuted and killed by ML/Stalinist authoritarians too.
- jerf 7y ago
  Yes, it's a bit ironic to complain about "work all the time" culture and think Marxism is going to fix it, when the first thing the State does is essentially extend this workplace culture to the entire culture, so that you are never off the clock of being a correct-thinking employee obedient to your superiors in every way, even your speech, even when alone with your family. (And that was prior to when we all carried around portable surveillance devices voluntarily.) The US may draw you in to that culture, but plenty of people escape it, and plenty of people in it can yet get out of it with reasonable effort. Marxism created cultures where it is a crime to escape that culture.
- dictum 7y ago
  > Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons. I've seen this quote elsewhere, and the spurious correlation bothers me. That prisons supply inmates with basic necessities does not make systems that supply members with basic necessities akin to prisons. In practice, many of them may operate with restrictions to freedom, but so does employment in most fields under capitalism. Even business ownership is a significant restriction of freedom if you cannot delegate work (i.e. you cannot afford to hire), liquidate assets, or stay free from mounting debt.
  - atemerev 7y ago
    The difference you are ignoring here is voluntary and/or unenforced restriction of freedom (which is a contradiction in terms — you are free to change your conditions) vs. imposed and enforced restrictions. Kind of important.
    - hobs 7y ago
      And the obvious thing you are ignoring is that prisons just dont do this: free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment Prisons are places where rape, neglect, and violence are the norm. Being pithy reduces whatever point you had into dust.
      - atemerev 7y ago
        Perhaps in United States. Our European prisons are much more comfortable. Additionally, in the USSR we perhaps had less rape and violence in peacetime (our prison guards were professional and order was enforced), but oh boy, we knew a thing or two about neglect.
        fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        The Gulag Archipelago paints a very different picture, torture was common according to that text. Serves them right for not giving up every single ounce of grain they produced to the government.
- Sharlin 7y ago
  > Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons. Ah, the good old "noncentral fallacy" [1]. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...
  - atemerev 7y ago
    So, you are calling USSR a non-central example of Marxism implementation? What would be a central example, then?
- Retra 7y ago
  >Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons. Or "schools". Or "military bases." But you do you, I guess.
  - atemerev 7y ago
    As a member of military, you are allowed to own property, but have to take orders. Same, same, but different. But yes, many people compared the USSR to essentially a huge military organization. School students are very limited in rights, indeed. Their welfare depends on welfare of their parents. But they can hope to become free adults one day; no such hope for citizens of socialist countries.
    - Retra 7y ago
      What is your point? That every person who has to make decisions with costs may as well be in prison? Going to school and serving in the military are only different kinds of prisons because you can't escape them? You can't escape capitalism either.
mlevental 7y ago
if only people really new what Marx said instead of the caricatures deployed by McCarthyism. Marxism is about alienation. read this and tell me you don't relate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation#Types_of_alienation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienatio...
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  And especially so this one: "Alienation of the worker from other workers" Now, look at the 'gig economy'. Instead of grousing about shitty bosses, these companies pit 'employee' against each other. The gig economy companies are setting up zero sum style games: There's only X work per day, and each person claws for their slice of it against others.
- wry_discontent 7y ago
  I'm in the midst of reading Capital after realizing I'd never read any Marx, but only heard second hand stuff. It's surprisingly different from what I expected. It's a behemoth of a book, but I'd still recommend it.
eli_gottlieb 7y ago
Yeah, that's how I felt when I got my first job out of college. Then I met a bunch of Marxist-Leninists and they reminded me why I stick to democratic socialism.
crankylinuxuser 7y ago
Indeed. Same here. It doesn't matter how nice a system of fluid economics the Wealth of Nations was on paper. The problem is that people will exploit them. And exploitation of rules leads to exploitation of people. And where are we now? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/middle-class-americans-increasingly-rely-on-the-safety-net/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=56511256 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/middle-class-americans-increasi... "In 2014, the middle 60 percent of Americans accounted for 46.8 percent of federal aid offered to people who qualify for such help, Brookings found." Any one of us can 'fall', and not able to be self-sufficient to 'pull up by ones bootstraps'. We've given capitalism a good 300 year run. And we know its pathologies. Communism isn't necessarily the best, but it provides a converse theory to start the discussion.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  > Communism isn't necessarily the best, but it provides a converse theory to start the discussion. Well, compared to capitalism its much more utopistic - I mean how far it is from reality of human nature and how much you should expect from people in the system. As history shows us numerous times, it really doesn't matter how good things look on the paper or during academic discussions. The reality is, evil, messed up, unbalanced, sociopathic etc. folks are part of society. I don't mean in insane asylums, I mean in schools, hospitals, corporations, hackernews, everywhere. And somehow, for number of reasons, when numerous factors combine these people rise to power although they shouldn't. Every communism I am aware of ended up as dictatorship very quickly. In real capitalism, they come and go much more quickly and the impact is smoothed out over time. This is the breaking point for me where the system is obviously worse - in communism, those dictators always ended up as net loss for citizens and mankind. And you gotta be brutal if you want to force millions into situations they wouldn't choose themselves. There are other obvious issues - no private ownership means nobody will work hard to maintain/enhance/create if at the end benefits are marginal at best. Better enjoy that beer. And over time, these things compound and the result is always the same. Capitalism wins through sheer efficiency and overall upper hand. When comparing similar starting systems, its pretty clear which is more beneficial. But yeah, it looks cool and very nice on the paper, or in TV like Star Trek.
  - 7y ago
sjg007 7y ago
I've heard this too. I think it is that people fear change intrinsically. Also they want to avoid anything that could kill property values. Plus there it is just competition in general that people view incorrectly as zero sum.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 7y ago
  Feedback loops like transistors increasing economic efficiency to pay for more transistors are unusual. Sure, over the long term markets change, but day to day most competition approaches zero sum. Americans are only going to pay for and consume so much food each year. That may move around a little, but mostly it’s a question of competition between food producers not expanding the market. Entertainment competes for only so much free time and disposable income etc. Now as productivity increases people may have more disposable income, but Disney can’t really influence how much money people have.

bpyne 7y ago

And the most efficient way to keep people from reflecting on their lives, realizing how far from their "ideal lives" they are.