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Thanks for this. I'm curious how you feel the oil crisis in 78 impacted Nyerere's vision, or if that was not a factor. From what I've read, Nyerere didn't have

Thanks for this. I'm curious how you feel the oil crisis in 78 impacted Nyerere's vision, or if that was not a factor. From what I've read, Nyerere didn't have a desire to become an autocratic ruler in the style of a Stalin. (Though using police forces to relocate people pretty much makes one an autocracy.) I genuinely do believe that socialist policies can work, but not Marxist-Leninist (or Tankie) approaches. Soviet style socialism, with its vanguard parties is basically set up to install a strongman leader, I agree with you there! But it's not the only model. Read Bordiga and Gramsci for how council communism and left communism are built on democracy, and letting workers councils collaborate (rather than seizing power through force). These ideologies strongly oppose state capitalism or state communism and planned economies. Chomsky and Kropotkin discuss a sort of Anarcho syndicalism. I certainly don't claim to be a scholar, but plenty of scholars do exist and do not consider the discussion as settled as you do. Zizek and Badiou, David Harvey, etc. I believe strongly that Marxist-Leninist policies are bad and will demonstrably fail. But that we can learn from those failures and investigate the other modes that Stalin stamped out as opposition to his autocracy.

churchill 4y ago
Of course, financial crises will always affect entire countries financially. But, private firms usually reallocate capital quickly enough to weather economic shocks faster than the government can. If they can't, they go out of business, losing their own capital. Government bureaucrats don't change their mind quickly enough because they don't suffer personal loss. They might even get promoted. For instance, Nigeria's former economic minister (Okonjo Iweala) was part of a super-corrupt administration; guess where she works today? World Trade Organization DG! I'm a bit relieved you obviously see the evils of Marxist-Leninism and Stalinist strongman socialism, but I doubt any other than those can even exist. If you can recommend a book on truly democratic socialism, I'll take a look at it to see things from your perspective to see why you sincerely believe them. on my own part, I'd love if you check out this book (History of American Socialisms; link: https://cdn.mises.org/History%20of%20American%20Socialisms_3.pdf https://cdn.mises.org/History%20of%20American%20Socialisms_3...). The book analyzes 20+ socialist experiments in the United States. This were individuals pooling their farms and property to start democratic socialist communes because they sincerely believed capitalism was the answer. Mostly sincere humans, but their ideas always failed, and they had to split up. I sincerely want you to read it, even if just the last chapter. Thanks for your reply - not the typical 'gotcha' you expect on a HN thread.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  I'll check it out. Learning from failures, as long as they are written constructively, is always useful. Have you read about Kibbutzim in your studies? I'm obviously not a fan of ethnonationalism, but they seem to be a collectivist arrangement akin to your brief on farmers in America. As for books to recommend, I'm just finishing The Origin of Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins Wood, but that's more of a historical analysis of the differences between French and English agrarian land ownership and how that led to capitalism in England but not France (not immediately, anyway). Peter Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread is next in my queue. It's quite critical of ML politics and suggests instead socialism is only achieved via bottom up worker organizing. It's highly recommended by a bunch of folks. Also, I've found David Harveys lectures a very approachable intro to Marx's Capital https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n5vu4MpYgUo&feature=emb_title https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n5vu4MpYgUo&feature=emb_title And yeah, holy shit so many socialists get way to caught up in feeling superior and it sucks. Also, so many people see the word socialist and start hitting insults. Always nice to have a conversation with someone who disagrees but does so in an interested way.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    Ordered the book you suggested, and I'll reconsider how I represent Ujaama. I'm curious, given your background as coming from Nigeria, and given the extractive (and write destructive, from my understanding) oil industry there that seems to be primarily benefiting the wealthy, how do you view the role and impact capitalism has on Nigeria? Is it the best model? Are there other models to try?
CrackerNews 4y ago
The wrench in being against ML was that it was responsible for the tremendous growth of the USSR and China. Every third world country would love to replicate this. At best, ML would make a country self sufficient enough to withstand geopolitics and economic pressure from first world countries seeking to use their advantage against third world countries. Cuba and North Korea are isolationist in this regard. However, their standard of living is comparably higher than similar third world countries. The issue in countries where "socialism" (arguably indirect democracy state capitalism) took off were that they faced backwards conditions compared to the first world. ML provided the command economy to quickly divert investment for creating the nonexisting infrastructure necessary to be able to achieve more advanced modes of capitalism. This capitalistic step is necessary to build up the conditions for socialism according to a Marxist timeline of development. The Stalin model attempted to reinterpret a state control of capital as a socialism since it was in theory held responsible to the worker masses as opposed to private individual capital holders. Perhaps, the fall of the USSR inro capitalism for better global trade and investment and the fall of Maoism into Dengism were rebukes of the Stalin model in being unable to sustain growth without global trade that first world capitalism benefits from. China however maintains the ML party control over the state and economy in order to maintain control over how capitalists invest and develop their country more for the Chinese benefit rather than the foreign country interest. This is not as free and bottoms up as alternative models of socialism, but from a game theory perspective its hard to compete against a top down system of private capitalists and their democratic representatives without another top down system unless the economic circumstances do rapidly shift (perhaps in a Marxist manner where the economic forces destabilize the upper classes and the lower classes are empowered to grow the economy in a new way)

churchill 4y ago

Of course, financial crises will always affect entire countries financially. But, private firms usually reallocate capital quickly enough to weather economic shocks faster than the government can. If they can't, they go out of business, losing their own capital. Government bureaucrats don't change their mind quickly enough because they don't suffer personal loss. They might even get promoted. For instance, Nigeria's former economic minister (Okonjo Iweala) was part of a super-corrupt administration; guess where she works today? World Trade Organization DG! I'm a bit relieved you obviously see the evils of Marxist-Leninism and Stalinist strongman socialism, but I doubt any other than those can even exist. If you can recommend a book on truly democratic socialism, I'll take a look at it to see things from your perspective to see why you sincerely believe them. on my own part, I'd love if you check out this book (History of American Socialisms; link: https://cdn.mises.org/History%20of%20American%20Socialisms_3.pdf https://cdn.mises.org/History%20of%20American%20Socialisms_3...). The book analyzes 20+ socialist experiments in the United States. This were individuals pooling their farms and property to start democratic socialist communes because they sincerely believed capitalism was the answer. Mostly sincere humans, but their ideas always failed, and they had to split up. I sincerely want you to read it, even if just the last chapter. Thanks for your reply - not the typical 'gotcha' you expect on a HN thread.

socialismisok 4y ago
I'll check it out. Learning from failures, as long as they are written constructively, is always useful. Have you read about Kibbutzim in your studies? I'm obviously not a fan of ethnonationalism, but they seem to be a collectivist arrangement akin to your brief on farmers in America. As for books to recommend, I'm just finishing The Origin of Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins Wood, but that's more of a historical analysis of the differences between French and English agrarian land ownership and how that led to capitalism in England but not France (not immediately, anyway). Peter Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread is next in my queue. It's quite critical of ML politics and suggests instead socialism is only achieved via bottom up worker organizing. It's highly recommended by a bunch of folks. Also, I've found David Harveys lectures a very approachable intro to Marx's Capital https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n5vu4MpYgUo&feature=emb_title https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n5vu4MpYgUo&feature=emb_title And yeah, holy shit so many socialists get way to caught up in feeling superior and it sucks. Also, so many people see the word socialist and start hitting insults. Always nice to have a conversation with someone who disagrees but does so in an interested way.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  Ordered the book you suggested, and I'll reconsider how I represent Ujaama. I'm curious, given your background as coming from Nigeria, and given the extractive (and write destructive, from my understanding) oil industry there that seems to be primarily benefiting the wealthy, how do you view the role and impact capitalism has on Nigeria? Is it the best model? Are there other models to try?

CrackerNews 4y ago

The wrench in being against ML was that it was responsible for the tremendous growth of the USSR and China. Every third world country would love to replicate this. At best, ML would make a country self sufficient enough to withstand geopolitics and economic pressure from first world countries seeking to use their advantage against third world countries. Cuba and North Korea are isolationist in this regard. However, their standard of living is comparably higher than similar third world countries. The issue in countries where "socialism" (arguably indirect democracy state capitalism) took off were that they faced backwards conditions compared to the first world. ML provided the command economy to quickly divert investment for creating the nonexisting infrastructure necessary to be able to achieve more advanced modes of capitalism. This capitalistic step is necessary to build up the conditions for socialism according to a Marxist timeline of development. The Stalin model attempted to reinterpret a state control of capital as a socialism since it was in theory held responsible to the worker masses as opposed to private individual capital holders. Perhaps, the fall of the USSR inro capitalism for better global trade and investment and the fall of Maoism into Dengism were rebukes of the Stalin model in being unable to sustain growth without global trade that first world capitalism benefits from. China however maintains the ML party control over the state and economy in order to maintain control over how capitalists invest and develop their country more for the Chinese benefit rather than the foreign country interest. This is not as free and bottoms up as alternative models of socialism, but from a game theory perspective its hard to compete against a top down system of private capitalists and their democratic representatives without another top down system unless the economic circumstances do rapidly shift (perhaps in a Marxist manner where the economic forces destabilize the upper classes and the lower classes are empowered to grow the economy in a new way)