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I just want to point out that Marxism was started as a response to the Industrial Revolution. [1] If you guys think that machines are going to decrease our sta

I just want to point out that Marxism was started as a response to the Industrial Revolution. [1] If you guys think that machines are going to decrease our standard of living-- that the separation of (production value)/wages is going to cause poverty-- you have to prove to me that the same thing happened during the Industrial Revolution. [1] Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist

amerika_blog 13y ago
Most revolutions replicate what they rebel against. Marxism was just an extension of French Revolution logic (1789) and not surprisingly, has followed a similar path: executions, social engineering, fanatical militarism and finally internal turmoil brings it down.
- Volpe 13y ago
  Except the largest country (by population) in the world is a product of that line of thinking.. So where is the "internal turmoil brings it down" happening?
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    China is not communist though, it's state capitalism.
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
      State corporatism.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      China is also not internally very harmonious, which is why the Chinese military is focused mostly inward rather than outward.
    - Volpe 13y ago
      State capitalism... you really want to go down the rabbit hole of language semantics. So it's capitalism where all the money goes to the state, which is the government, which is the people... which is exactly what "communism" is. If you think of a "commune" as a "corporation", then it's almost identical. I'd be happy to see the arguement, that they are a pretty bad communist state, and they don't allocate their money too well, and they (like every other country) have problems with corruption. But "they are not communist" is just as valid as "the US is not a democracy" (Technically it's kind of true, but it isn't useful as a discussion point). My point is, Communism is pretty much just as popular as democracy... so saying it's died, is just being ignorant.
      - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
        > So it's capitalism where all the money goes to the state, which is the government, which is the people... which is exactly what "communism" is. If you think of a "commune" as a "corporation", then it's almost identical. Not it's not. It's called state capitalism because the state interferes directly on the market, instead of abolishing corporations and capital. It's a different kind of regime, that allows China to be inserted in a free market world without making the communist party lose control of the country.
        Volpe 13y ago
        So you have a new name for a communist country... That doesn't change the fact the old one exists still... So I can say: America isn't a democracy, because it's an oligarchy. (This statement isn't true, but is equivalent to yours). China achieves it's communism, through state capitalism... Or is that not a true scotsman... I mean communist? Communism hasn't died, Chinese officials still study Marx and Mao, and it is well and truly part of the Chinese propaganda message. There is still a large picture of Mao hanging in Beijing, and the leaders constantly profess to be Marxists... But of course, how could I think that communism is still alive!?
- oscargrouch 13y ago
  You are making the classical mistake, equalizing Marxism to the political scene executed by the Soviet Union.. The marxism is much more sophisticated and deep; I think maybe trotsky could make a better socialism.. but even than probably away from the Marx vision But you know, politicians will always think about their own selves in the end of the day, no matter what they say, as long people believe in them.. So, in the day we have real altruistic people on power, things might change for the better... Socialism requires a much more sophisticated politician type. But let me make clear, that i dont defend pure left or pure right.. if nature teach us something is decentralization and and micro-management.. If a government has the tendency to concentrate power, its like a dead body to the crows... it will seduce only the people with fetish for power, and control over the lives and destinies of others.. Thats why the history of world politics has been a greek drama where the weak(and sadly the majority) always lose in the end
  - gaius 13y ago
    No you are making the classical mistake of thinking the combination of Marxism and human nature can play out any other way. The Sovs even knew this themselves, hence their trying to create New Soviet Man (and predictably failing).
    - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      Except, of course, for the fact that the attempt to create the New Capitalist Man has been every bit as much a failure, but we all pretend it's been a wild success because that's the ideology our rulers demand.
      - oscargrouch 13y ago
        Your well made point, make a pretty depressing observation that we still live under the Positivism umbrella (adored and used by "our rulers") where role-models serve as "guide" to shape ordinary people by the owners of the institutions of power at their own will, so they can be easily manipulated. Our society doesnt even get into the Nietzsche philosophical level were we are free of this State+Capital controlled lobotomization ideology where human beings are far away from their freedom and humanity.. which is our fuc$##%ng natural rights for start Its sad that the people that has shaped the last century has listened more to Comte than Nietzsche..
Volpe 13y ago
> If you guys think that machines are going to decrease our standard of living-- that the separation of (production value)/wages is going to cause poverty No we don't. We just have to show that the benefits only go to a select few, and the "workers" generally get screwed (as in paid a lot less than their value). If you accept the above, then relative poverty is rather easy to show (99% vs top 1% etc)... EDIT: To simplify my point, relative poverty has a massive effect on standard of living.
- asperous 13y ago
  Workers are paid based on supply/demand of the value they can provide. If they were legally required to be paid based on their output, some people would make 10x as much as others for the same amount of time and education. It would basically just be based on luck, whoever could land the higher yield jobs. Does this seem more fair to you?
  - ForHackernews 13y ago
    > It would basically just be based on luck, whoever could land the higher yield jobs. The honest truth is that it's already mostly luck that determines who gets the big payouts and who doesn't. There are so many factors beyond your control that play into your success. From that perspective, a society where we were up front about that fact would at least be "more fair" in the sense that it would reduce lauding some for their unearned success while disparaging others for their equally happenstance failures.
    - asperous 13y ago
      There's a lot of luck, and a lot of factors beyond your control that is true. But it's based on Market Forces which drives value rather than 100% random (or corrupt) forces. However to say people should be payed based on the percent yield. Most people consider only physical value in looking at labor. I imagine you would believe that someone working for a corporation carving blocks into a statue should be payed a percentage of that sale of the statue. Yet it's obvious that that line of thinking (physical value only) is incorrect. How much would you pay doctors? Doctors don't create anything, but they generate value by instructing surgeons, nurses, etc on what they should do. By physical value only, coal miners would make hundreds, doctors 0. Okay, so we concede that intellectual value should be also considered in the percentage yield owed to an individual. Then that brings us a really good CEO. Per product, a good CEO might only cost a fraction of a cent. You can calculate finding a number of sales of a product and dividing into it the CEOs billion $ salery. A bad CEO might make an OK on a failed product that costs the company 5 cents a product. This costs him billions of dollars of his own money. A really good CEO might one day decide to test a method of production, or a new mass production strategy that decreases cost of making each good by 10 cents. He is payed hundreds of Billions. You might agree that based on this, it would make sense to pay CEOs based on output, but once you realize that the good CEO and bad CEO are the often same person, and once you charge a person hundreds of billion of dollars for their 5 cent mistake, they would have make the risk needed to gain the the 10c discovery, you might begin to understand that CEOs simply cannot be payed based on this method of value. Okay so we try the opposite approach. It's based on luck so we should pay everyone the same. No one would want to take on the stress for a low-power, high risk, boring job like supervising a reactor core. Especially since that job pays the same as a fun job like stopping crime, or something more interesting and easy to get into. There would be a constant problem of not enough people in some jobs and too many in others. Redistributing people would be completely random and people would be placed in to jobs they hate, and paid the same amount as people doing jobs they would love. So here, much more people are unhappy, and incompetence is all around. (Then some guy says he's going to fix it and everyone rallies around him and soon dictatorship).
crdoconnor 13y ago
The same thing sort of did happen during the industrial revolution, but not really because of the machines, as Marx is careful to point out. Regular economic history assumes that life before the industrial revolution must have been worse. Sure, people worked 11 hour days, had no weekends, but if it were that bad why did they go and work there in the first place? It must have been better. Similar arguments today are made about sweatshops in 3rd world countries. The answer is simply that they were kicked off their land via the enclosure movement and the game laws. So they were left with very little option. This was intentional.
- mempko 13y ago
  What happened was laws changed to make their former lives impossible and unbearable. In Britain, new taxes sprang up on land which forced people into the cities.
  - scarmig 13y ago
    That's a bit generous of a description of what happened. Their were communally owned lands that peasants had access to. Landowners seized those lands, and the British crown was more than happy to back them up with mass violence.
nopassrecover 13y ago
With a certain reading of Marx you could make the argument that startups and the freelancer movement embody Marxist ideals. Technology empowers and magnifies the productive ability of creators while decoupling their dependence on and/or displacing traditional economic structures (e.g. companies and markets). As an added bonus technology prices have historically fallen over time which further reduces the value of (demand for) capital. These aspects enable individuals to minimise "Marxist alienation" by creating goods without needing (much) capital, owning the output of their labour, and increasing their share of the surplus value of their goods (PG's "100x multiplier").
- gaius 13y ago
  Yep, in the '90s we called that "dot-communism".

amerika_blog 13y ago

Most revolutions replicate what they rebel against. Marxism was just an extension of French Revolution logic (1789) and not surprisingly, has followed a similar path: executions, social engineering, fanatical militarism and finally internal turmoil brings it down.

Volpe 13y ago
Except the largest country (by population) in the world is a product of that line of thinking.. So where is the "internal turmoil brings it down" happening?
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  China is not communist though, it's state capitalism.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    State corporatism.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    China is also not internally very harmonious, which is why the Chinese military is focused mostly inward rather than outward.
  - Volpe 13y ago
    State capitalism... you really want to go down the rabbit hole of language semantics. So it's capitalism where all the money goes to the state, which is the government, which is the people... which is exactly what "communism" is. If you think of a "commune" as a "corporation", then it's almost identical. I'd be happy to see the arguement, that they are a pretty bad communist state, and they don't allocate their money too well, and they (like every other country) have problems with corruption. But "they are not communist" is just as valid as "the US is not a democracy" (Technically it's kind of true, but it isn't useful as a discussion point). My point is, Communism is pretty much just as popular as democracy... so saying it's died, is just being ignorant.
    - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
      > So it's capitalism where all the money goes to the state, which is the government, which is the people... which is exactly what "communism" is. If you think of a "commune" as a "corporation", then it's almost identical. Not it's not. It's called state capitalism because the state interferes directly on the market, instead of abolishing corporations and capital. It's a different kind of regime, that allows China to be inserted in a free market world without making the communist party lose control of the country.
      - Volpe 13y ago
        So you have a new name for a communist country... That doesn't change the fact the old one exists still... So I can say: America isn't a democracy, because it's an oligarchy. (This statement isn't true, but is equivalent to yours). China achieves it's communism, through state capitalism... Or is that not a true scotsman... I mean communist? Communism hasn't died, Chinese officials still study Marx and Mao, and it is well and truly part of the Chinese propaganda message. There is still a large picture of Mao hanging in Beijing, and the leaders constantly profess to be Marxists... But of course, how could I think that communism is still alive!?
oscargrouch 13y ago
You are making the classical mistake, equalizing Marxism to the political scene executed by the Soviet Union.. The marxism is much more sophisticated and deep; I think maybe trotsky could make a better socialism.. but even than probably away from the Marx vision But you know, politicians will always think about their own selves in the end of the day, no matter what they say, as long people believe in them.. So, in the day we have real altruistic people on power, things might change for the better... Socialism requires a much more sophisticated politician type. But let me make clear, that i dont defend pure left or pure right.. if nature teach us something is decentralization and and micro-management.. If a government has the tendency to concentrate power, its like a dead body to the crows... it will seduce only the people with fetish for power, and control over the lives and destinies of others.. Thats why the history of world politics has been a greek drama where the weak(and sadly the majority) always lose in the end
- gaius 13y ago
  No you are making the classical mistake of thinking the combination of Marxism and human nature can play out any other way. The Sovs even knew this themselves, hence their trying to create New Soviet Man (and predictably failing).
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    Except, of course, for the fact that the attempt to create the New Capitalist Man has been every bit as much a failure, but we all pretend it's been a wild success because that's the ideology our rulers demand.
    - oscargrouch 13y ago
      Your well made point, make a pretty depressing observation that we still live under the Positivism umbrella (adored and used by "our rulers") where role-models serve as "guide" to shape ordinary people by the owners of the institutions of power at their own will, so they can be easily manipulated. Our society doesnt even get into the Nietzsche philosophical level were we are free of this State+Capital controlled lobotomization ideology where human beings are far away from their freedom and humanity.. which is our fuc$##%ng natural rights for start Its sad that the people that has shaped the last century has listened more to Comte than Nietzsche..

Volpe 13y ago

> If you guys think that machines are going to decrease our standard of living-- that the separation of (production value)/wages is going to cause poverty No we don't. We just have to show that the benefits only go to a select few, and the "workers" generally get screwed (as in paid a lot less than their value). If you accept the above, then relative poverty is rather easy to show (99% vs top 1% etc)... EDIT: To simplify my point, relative poverty has a massive effect on standard of living.

asperous 13y ago
Workers are paid based on supply/demand of the value they can provide. If they were legally required to be paid based on their output, some people would make 10x as much as others for the same amount of time and education. It would basically just be based on luck, whoever could land the higher yield jobs. Does this seem more fair to you?
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  > It would basically just be based on luck, whoever could land the higher yield jobs. The honest truth is that it's already mostly luck that determines who gets the big payouts and who doesn't. There are so many factors beyond your control that play into your success. From that perspective, a society where we were up front about that fact would at least be "more fair" in the sense that it would reduce lauding some for their unearned success while disparaging others for their equally happenstance failures.
  - asperous 13y ago
    There's a lot of luck, and a lot of factors beyond your control that is true. But it's based on Market Forces which drives value rather than 100% random (or corrupt) forces. However to say people should be payed based on the percent yield. Most people consider only physical value in looking at labor. I imagine you would believe that someone working for a corporation carving blocks into a statue should be payed a percentage of that sale of the statue. Yet it's obvious that that line of thinking (physical value only) is incorrect. How much would you pay doctors? Doctors don't create anything, but they generate value by instructing surgeons, nurses, etc on what they should do. By physical value only, coal miners would make hundreds, doctors 0. Okay, so we concede that intellectual value should be also considered in the percentage yield owed to an individual. Then that brings us a really good CEO. Per product, a good CEO might only cost a fraction of a cent. You can calculate finding a number of sales of a product and dividing into it the CEOs billion $ salery. A bad CEO might make an OK on a failed product that costs the company 5 cents a product. This costs him billions of dollars of his own money. A really good CEO might one day decide to test a method of production, or a new mass production strategy that decreases cost of making each good by 10 cents. He is payed hundreds of Billions. You might agree that based on this, it would make sense to pay CEOs based on output, but once you realize that the good CEO and bad CEO are the often same person, and once you charge a person hundreds of billion of dollars for their 5 cent mistake, they would have make the risk needed to gain the the 10c discovery, you might begin to understand that CEOs simply cannot be payed based on this method of value. Okay so we try the opposite approach. It's based on luck so we should pay everyone the same. No one would want to take on the stress for a low-power, high risk, boring job like supervising a reactor core. Especially since that job pays the same as a fun job like stopping crime, or something more interesting and easy to get into. There would be a constant problem of not enough people in some jobs and too many in others. Redistributing people would be completely random and people would be placed in to jobs they hate, and paid the same amount as people doing jobs they would love. So here, much more people are unhappy, and incompetence is all around. (Then some guy says he's going to fix it and everyone rallies around him and soon dictatorship).

crdoconnor 13y ago

The same thing sort of did happen during the industrial revolution, but not really because of the machines, as Marx is careful to point out. Regular economic history assumes that life before the industrial revolution must have been worse. Sure, people worked 11 hour days, had no weekends, but if it were that bad why did they go and work there in the first place? It must have been better. Similar arguments today are made about sweatshops in 3rd world countries. The answer is simply that they were kicked off their land via the enclosure movement and the game laws. So they were left with very little option. This was intentional.

mempko 13y ago
What happened was laws changed to make their former lives impossible and unbearable. In Britain, new taxes sprang up on land which forced people into the cities.
- scarmig 13y ago
  That's a bit generous of a description of what happened. Their were communally owned lands that peasants had access to. Landowners seized those lands, and the British crown was more than happy to back them up with mass violence.

nopassrecover 13y ago

With a certain reading of Marx you could make the argument that startups and the freelancer movement embody Marxist ideals. Technology empowers and magnifies the productive ability of creators while decoupling their dependence on and/or displacing traditional economic structures (e.g. companies and markets). As an added bonus technology prices have historically fallen over time which further reduces the value of (demand for) capital. These aspects enable individuals to minimise "Marxist alienation" by creating goods without needing (much) capital, owning the output of their labour, and increasing their share of the surplus value of their goods (PG's "100x multiplier").

gaius 13y ago
Yep, in the '90s we called that "dot-communism".