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> We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Ursula K Le Guin [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2

> We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Ursula K Le Guin [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/20/ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards-speech https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/20/ursula-k-le-gu...

7thaccount 3y ago
I was literally just thinking of this quote 15 minutes ago. Weird to see it at the top of HN. Capitalism seems to work better than the systems we've tried in the recent past (communism and feudalism are obviously worse in my eyes due to reduced freedom and the huge amounts of life lost in both Russia and China under these systems) , but it's obviously far from perfect. I'm not sure what could be done better, but Le Guin reminds me it's possible to think of alternatives. Speaking of alternative ideas..Chesterton was critical of both communism and capitalism. He proposed something that was intriguing and involved focusing on smaller local communities. I'm not sure how it could work towards technological advancement though which in my eyes is important. It seems to have had some popularity with certain Christian movements in the past century. The concept that ownership of the economy shouldn't be concentrated into a small group of people or corporations makes sense to me, but I don't see a way to make that work economically in modern times. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism Regardless, I'm really interested in these kinds of niche ideas if anyone has others to share.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  If you're into christian anarchists, consider Tolstoy.
  - 7thaccount 3y ago
    I'm not religious myself anymore, but try to keep an open mind to alternative ideas. My assumption is we still haven't figured out an optimal system...and may never escape bouncing from one idea to the other.
  - krapp 3y ago
    "Christian anarchist" seems like a contradiction in terms. "God" is the ultimate coercive authority and the Church the ultimate hierarchy, and most of the evils of government have been done in the name of both.
    - 082349872349872 3y ago
      It's been a while since I read him, but I believe Tolstoy, like Jesus (or for that matter, Brian), was pretty anti-Church. I mentioned him specifically because his justification for anarchism was all the love & peace & everything in common (or at least eye of the needle?) hippy biblical stuff. The Buddha was also anti-Church, I believe. (and St. Francis was fonder of animals than his fellow clerics?) There's an excellent conceit in Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964) in which the diagnosable mental disorders have their corresponding roles in society: the paranoid form the military, the narcissists the political class, etc. Hebephrenics provide their religious prophets.
      - sickofparadox 3y ago
        Jesus was not anti-church, he founded the early Christian church and established Peter as its leader. Catholics are often heard saying to Protestants that God did not give his people a book, but he did give them a church.
        082349872349872 3y ago
        My google-fu is poor; I'm not coming up with any hits for that. Do you have any references? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple doesn't seem to me to be the act of someone who is in favour of combining spiritual with temporal power, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_centur... looks like a muddle from here.
        krapp 3y ago
        The cleansing of the Temple isn't evidence that Jesus objected to combining spiritual with temporal power. Jesus didn't object to the existence of the Temple, he objected to its' corruption by the presence of the merchants and moneychangers. He was still traveling to Jerusalem and to the Temple, and he referred to it as "my Father's house." He was a Jew preaching to Jews and claiming to be the messiah of the Jews. All of that presupposes the legitimacy of the extant temporal Jewish hierarchy and the Temple itself as a holy site. By my reading, Jesus wasn't an anarchist, he was a reformist. Also Matthew 16:18, where Jesus declares Peter as "the rock" upon which his church shall be built, is well known. You can find more information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_Peter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_Peter Although personally I would claim the modern church owes more to Paul (for better or worse) than Peter.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  Yes, I was just thinking of Distributism in this context. Communism says the means of production is owned by the state, Capitalism says the means of production is owned by those with capital (so in practice that means in a few hands). Distributism says let's distribute the means of production as widely as possible. I recall an article in Make magazine about 15 years ago on distributism - they made the case that things like 3D printers could be the technological enabler to allow distributism to work.
- fao_ 3y ago
  > Distributism views laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism as equally flawed and exploitative This is also termed "anarcho-communism" within the academic literature and grassroots movements, just FYI (A common misconception of anarchism is that it is a 'lack of law and order' -- it is merely the lack of centralization). The Bolshevik implementation of Communism was called State-Capitalism for a long time by Lenin himself, and many Communist thinkers (I'm thinking of Tony Cliff, who was exceptionally progressive for his time) disagree with the Bolshevik implementation of Communism.
  - 7thaccount 3y ago
    I'm not knowledgeable enough to debate on Communism. I was somewhat aware that many of the proponents have pointed out that the major failings were partially because they were implemented incorrectly. The common counterargument is that despite the very real and good intentions that they would all end up the same as an elite group perverts the goals and makes the entire system self serving. Is that too simplistic though? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
    - 082349872349872 3y ago
      > all end up the same for which, see Goldstein, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism (appearing in [Orwell49]) > "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." —EAB
      - keybored 3y ago
        A state of affairs totally unlike the ones we have in the West, to be sure.
    - notarobot123 3y ago
      > ....an elite group perverts the goals and makes the entire system self serving That sounds about right. Any system that concentrates power seems to go the same way in a generation or two.
- keybored 3y ago
  > communism [is] obviously worse in my eyes due to Death squads, Banana Republics, indefinite US embargo and coup attempts, Pinochet & the Chicago Boys, risking the US military invading you in order to avoid the Domino Effect. > Speaking of alternative ideas..Chesterton was critical of both communism and capitalism. Distributism as described in that article is socialism modeled on the ideal of the small-time craftsman or whatever of that time. That would probably be called naive by normal socialists (certainly by communists like Leninists) but it has some similarities with socialism. On the other hand it seems to outright reject anything like the modern capitalism that we are dealing with in the present. > Regardless, I'm really interested in these kinds of niche ideas if anyone has others to share. Riffs on socialism, an idea which is over two-hundred years old and has adherents all over the globe. Fought against and repressed is not the same as niche.
  - 7thaccount 3y ago
    I'd lean pretty heavily towards capitalism in a contest with communism or any other authoritarian system strictly based on personal liberty. It may suck at times, but I do have a choice. I'm thinking about Hayek's well known road to serfdom here that explains how well meaning systems like communism inevitably end up. I think you may be splitting hairs with regards to terminology. I said niche as in unpopular and not well known. I think it and many other systems match that description and are interesting to talk about.
    - keybored 3y ago
      > I'd lean pretty heavily towards capitalism in a contest with communism or any other authoritarian system strictly based on personal liberty. Freedom to form death squads, Banana Republics, establish indefinite [US] embargo and coup attempts, help out Pinochet & the Chicago Boys, freedom to invade countries just because they are communist.
      - Sabinus 3y ago
        Do you think a communist government with the same power as the US would refrain from the above?
- int_19h 3y ago
  "Communism" is not like the others in one important sense: all regimes that have been or are called communist derive from the same one source, namely the Russian Bolsheviks. Of all the people who called themselves communist, only they have succeeded in taking power and holding it long enough to entrench. Consequently, every subsequent communist revolution elsewhere was largely bankrolled by them, and they made sure that everyone they supported adopted their ideology - even if there were later breaks over detail, the fundamentally authoritarian core of Bolshevism always remains. This is, of course, quite different from capitalism, which has evolved organically in many places in parallel. (It should also be noted that whether "feudalism" is even a thing that can be meaningfully defined is contentious, and many modern historians consider it a largely nonsensical retroactive attempt to fit very diverse systems and patterns into a single category.) In general, look up "libertarian socialism" - it is an umbrella term for left anarchists of various stripes as well as more moderate socialists who don't shy away from some degree of centralization but still place a lot of emphasis on avoiding any kind of authoritarianism as crucial to success of any such political system. I would particularly draw attention to Murray Bookchin and his "libertarian municipalism", not the least because Le Guin herself did in later prefaces to her books. For real-world examples, something along these lines (but less, shall we say, theoretically pure - which shouldn't come as a surprise!) has been practiced for a while in the Chiapas in EZLN-affiliated communities, and more recently also in AANES (Rojava). As you rightly note, the real question there is how well it all would scale to a modern industrialized society - Chiapas are pretty rural, Rojava somewhat less so but still hardly comparable to what first-worlders are generally used to. It's also interesting to note that the Rojava take on it is a milder version where e.g. cooperatives are encouraged but there are still plenty of privately owned businesses.
082349872349872 3y ago
One of the advantages of reading older authors is the sensation of cognitive dissonance inspired by their taking it for granted that monarchies are superior to oligarchies. You'll find a lot of this pre-1914, but also pre-1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#:~:text=According%20to%20Polybius%2C%20who%20has,ochlocracy%2C%20oligarchy%2C%20and%20tyranny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#:~:text=Ac....
rexpop 3y ago
> Dialogue cannot be carried on in a climate of hopelessness. If the dialoguers expect nothing to come of their efforts, their encounter will be empty and sterile, bureaucratic and tedious. Paulo Freire [0] 0. Pedagogy of the Oppressed - https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire...

7thaccount 3y ago

I was literally just thinking of this quote 15 minutes ago. Weird to see it at the top of HN. Capitalism seems to work better than the systems we've tried in the recent past (communism and feudalism are obviously worse in my eyes due to reduced freedom and the huge amounts of life lost in both Russia and China under these systems) , but it's obviously far from perfect. I'm not sure what could be done better, but Le Guin reminds me it's possible to think of alternatives. Speaking of alternative ideas..Chesterton was critical of both communism and capitalism. He proposed something that was intriguing and involved focusing on smaller local communities. I'm not sure how it could work towards technological advancement though which in my eyes is important. It seems to have had some popularity with certain Christian movements in the past century. The concept that ownership of the economy shouldn't be concentrated into a small group of people or corporations makes sense to me, but I don't see a way to make that work economically in modern times. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism Regardless, I'm really interested in these kinds of niche ideas if anyone has others to share.

082349872349872 3y ago
If you're into christian anarchists, consider Tolstoy.
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  I'm not religious myself anymore, but try to keep an open mind to alternative ideas. My assumption is we still haven't figured out an optimal system...and may never escape bouncing from one idea to the other.
- krapp 3y ago
  "Christian anarchist" seems like a contradiction in terms. "God" is the ultimate coercive authority and the Church the ultimate hierarchy, and most of the evils of government have been done in the name of both.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    It's been a while since I read him, but I believe Tolstoy, like Jesus (or for that matter, Brian), was pretty anti-Church. I mentioned him specifically because his justification for anarchism was all the love & peace & everything in common (or at least eye of the needle?) hippy biblical stuff. The Buddha was also anti-Church, I believe. (and St. Francis was fonder of animals than his fellow clerics?) There's an excellent conceit in Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964) in which the diagnosable mental disorders have their corresponding roles in society: the paranoid form the military, the narcissists the political class, etc. Hebephrenics provide their religious prophets.
    - sickofparadox 3y ago
      Jesus was not anti-church, he founded the early Christian church and established Peter as its leader. Catholics are often heard saying to Protestants that God did not give his people a book, but he did give them a church.
      - 082349872349872 3y ago
        My google-fu is poor; I'm not coming up with any hits for that. Do you have any references? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple doesn't seem to me to be the act of someone who is in favour of combining spiritual with temporal power, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_centur... looks like a muddle from here.
        krapp 3y ago
        The cleansing of the Temple isn't evidence that Jesus objected to combining spiritual with temporal power. Jesus didn't object to the existence of the Temple, he objected to its' corruption by the presence of the merchants and moneychangers. He was still traveling to Jerusalem and to the Temple, and he referred to it as "my Father's house." He was a Jew preaching to Jews and claiming to be the messiah of the Jews. All of that presupposes the legitimacy of the extant temporal Jewish hierarchy and the Temple itself as a holy site. By my reading, Jesus wasn't an anarchist, he was a reformist. Also Matthew 16:18, where Jesus declares Peter as "the rock" upon which his church shall be built, is well known. You can find more information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_Peter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_Peter Although personally I would claim the modern church owes more to Paul (for better or worse) than Peter.
UncleOxidant 3y ago
Yes, I was just thinking of Distributism in this context. Communism says the means of production is owned by the state, Capitalism says the means of production is owned by those with capital (so in practice that means in a few hands). Distributism says let's distribute the means of production as widely as possible. I recall an article in Make magazine about 15 years ago on distributism - they made the case that things like 3D printers could be the technological enabler to allow distributism to work.
fao_ 3y ago
> Distributism views laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism as equally flawed and exploitative This is also termed "anarcho-communism" within the academic literature and grassroots movements, just FYI (A common misconception of anarchism is that it is a 'lack of law and order' -- it is merely the lack of centralization). The Bolshevik implementation of Communism was called State-Capitalism for a long time by Lenin himself, and many Communist thinkers (I'm thinking of Tony Cliff, who was exceptionally progressive for his time) disagree with the Bolshevik implementation of Communism.
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  I'm not knowledgeable enough to debate on Communism. I was somewhat aware that many of the proponents have pointed out that the major failings were partially because they were implemented incorrectly. The common counterargument is that despite the very real and good intentions that they would all end up the same as an elite group perverts the goals and makes the entire system self serving. Is that too simplistic though? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    > all end up the same for which, see Goldstein, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism (appearing in [Orwell49]) > "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." —EAB
    - keybored 3y ago
      A state of affairs totally unlike the ones we have in the West, to be sure.
  - notarobot123 3y ago
    > ....an elite group perverts the goals and makes the entire system self serving That sounds about right. Any system that concentrates power seems to go the same way in a generation or two.
keybored 3y ago
> communism [is] obviously worse in my eyes due to Death squads, Banana Republics, indefinite US embargo and coup attempts, Pinochet & the Chicago Boys, risking the US military invading you in order to avoid the Domino Effect. > Speaking of alternative ideas..Chesterton was critical of both communism and capitalism. Distributism as described in that article is socialism modeled on the ideal of the small-time craftsman or whatever of that time. That would probably be called naive by normal socialists (certainly by communists like Leninists) but it has some similarities with socialism. On the other hand it seems to outright reject anything like the modern capitalism that we are dealing with in the present. > Regardless, I'm really interested in these kinds of niche ideas if anyone has others to share. Riffs on socialism, an idea which is over two-hundred years old and has adherents all over the globe. Fought against and repressed is not the same as niche.
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  I'd lean pretty heavily towards capitalism in a contest with communism or any other authoritarian system strictly based on personal liberty. It may suck at times, but I do have a choice. I'm thinking about Hayek's well known road to serfdom here that explains how well meaning systems like communism inevitably end up. I think you may be splitting hairs with regards to terminology. I said niche as in unpopular and not well known. I think it and many other systems match that description and are interesting to talk about.
  - keybored 3y ago
    > I'd lean pretty heavily towards capitalism in a contest with communism or any other authoritarian system strictly based on personal liberty. Freedom to form death squads, Banana Republics, establish indefinite [US] embargo and coup attempts, help out Pinochet & the Chicago Boys, freedom to invade countries just because they are communist.
    - Sabinus 3y ago
      Do you think a communist government with the same power as the US would refrain from the above?
int_19h 3y ago
"Communism" is not like the others in one important sense: all regimes that have been or are called communist derive from the same one source, namely the Russian Bolsheviks. Of all the people who called themselves communist, only they have succeeded in taking power and holding it long enough to entrench. Consequently, every subsequent communist revolution elsewhere was largely bankrolled by them, and they made sure that everyone they supported adopted their ideology - even if there were later breaks over detail, the fundamentally authoritarian core of Bolshevism always remains. This is, of course, quite different from capitalism, which has evolved organically in many places in parallel. (It should also be noted that whether "feudalism" is even a thing that can be meaningfully defined is contentious, and many modern historians consider it a largely nonsensical retroactive attempt to fit very diverse systems and patterns into a single category.) In general, look up "libertarian socialism" - it is an umbrella term for left anarchists of various stripes as well as more moderate socialists who don't shy away from some degree of centralization but still place a lot of emphasis on avoiding any kind of authoritarianism as crucial to success of any such political system. I would particularly draw attention to Murray Bookchin and his "libertarian municipalism", not the least because Le Guin herself did in later prefaces to her books. For real-world examples, something along these lines (but less, shall we say, theoretically pure - which shouldn't come as a surprise!) has been practiced for a while in the Chiapas in EZLN-affiliated communities, and more recently also in AANES (Rojava). As you rightly note, the real question there is how well it all would scale to a modern industrialized society - Chiapas are pretty rural, Rojava somewhat less so but still hardly comparable to what first-worlders are generally used to. It's also interesting to note that the Rojava take on it is a milder version where e.g. cooperatives are encouraged but there are still plenty of privately owned businesses.

082349872349872 3y ago

One of the advantages of reading older authors is the sensation of cognitive dissonance inspired by their taking it for granted that monarchies are superior to oligarchies. You'll find a lot of this pre-1914, but also pre-1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#:~:text=According%20to%20Polybius%2C%20who%20has,ochlocracy%2C%20oligarchy%2C%20and%20tyranny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#:~:text=Ac....

rexpop 3y ago

> Dialogue cannot be carried on in a climate of hopelessness. If the dialoguers expect nothing to come of their efforts, their encounter will be empty and sterile, bureaucratic and tedious. Paulo Freire [0] 0. Pedagogy of the Oppressed - https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire...