Would you rather live in France, where you have a job for life and it’s protected so you can idle away being mediocre, or the UK where you have to make the effort to be good at your job and innovate?

The UK every time.

BTW, you are the worst socialist ever. 😉

France.. 100%

this thread is slowly turning my stomach..

I’m out..

this thread is slowly turning my stomach..

Only because you do not understand what we are trying to say!

Greed is bad, money is necessary as long as there are unpleasant jobs.

BTW, you are the worst socialist ever.

Because I’m also a pragmatist?

Or because I understand there’s a difference between what I’d like to happen and what is possible currently?

Because you’re not a socialist. FFS – can’t be arsed with this any more – molgrips you are delusional.

Because you’re not a socialist. FFS – can’t be arsed with this any more – molgrips you are delusional

That’s what everyone says, but they can’t explain it to me properly. Call me thick, I don’t understand, please help.

Only because you do not understand what we are trying to say

ok.. I’ll re-phrase my previous post..

Molgrips is turning my stomach with that peculiar brand of narrow minded and misplaced condescension that he occasionally seems determined to make himself reknowned for..

it’s irritating enough to give one an ulcer.. and for that reason I really am out..

Molgrips is turning my stomach with that peculiar brand of narrow minded and misplaced condescension that he occasionally seems determined to make himself reknowned for.

Ok that’s better.

Except I am not narrow minded.

Yes, it’s bad that people are disadvantaged.

Yes we need to fix it yesterday and big changes are needed, the world order is f*cked

BUT

We can’t do without capitalism in some form until we have machines to do all the jobs no-one wants to do.

Would you rather live in France, where you have a job for life and it’s protected so you can idle away being mediocre, or the UK where you have to make the effort to be good at your job and innovate?

At the core of this statement is a sentiment that, if you truly believe it defines you as a capitalist. It is built upon the assumption that job security provided by a legislation will lead to fecklessness and laziness, whereas people motivated by money and innovation are more likely to thrive.

We can’t do without capitalism in some form until we have machines to do all the jobs no-one wants to do.

A proper socialist would argue that the respect you engender from your community and your self should be payment enough for doing the dirty jobs.

FFS molgrips you are a social democrat …have you forgotten the thread where I ecplained this and you agreed. You are left of centre you agree with capitalism [SOCIALIST DONT] but want it to be a bit nicer. That is no more socialism than someone eating organcally reared fair traded humanely treated cattle is a vegetarian.
You can call your self a socialist if you want but you are using a definition not recognised by anyone other than yourself….please call yourself a social democrat …nothing wrong with that and it is what you are left on centre capitalist. i am probably one too just a lot more left of you and a lot more controlling/interventionist as I think the market is an amoral cesspool of greed. Ther eis no morality in a market equibrium and it cares not one jot if you starve or die of a preventable disease..I do care about this.

At the core of this statement is a sentiment that, if you truly believe it defines you as a capitalist.

It’s not a statement, it’s a question.

I’m not proposing my own answer just yet.

FFS molgrips you are a social democrat …have you forgotten the thread where I ecplained this and you agreed.

Yes, sorry, Social DEMOCRAT. I thought that Socialist was a broad term comprising many sub-categories. Social democrat is a strange term since democracy is about how governments are constructed, not economics.. but ok – Social Democrat it is 🙂

I think the market is an amoral cesspool of greed

I think that too. Well – parts of it.. some parts are just necessity.

However I find it very hard to conceive of an alternative.

A proper socialist would argue that the respect you engender from your community and your self should be payment enough for doing the dirty jobs

That’s the kind of socialist I disagree with.

I was discussing this (not the personal insults) at work (idling). A colleague suggested that centralised regulation would probably fail. The economics engine is many interacting engines on different cycles. The algorithm to govern engines must therefore be scalable to all engine sizes and self-regulate in a distributed way.

I was thinking more of human nature. People want income for a standard-of-living they expect. This drives the economy. But at some point, it goes beyond this into greed – accumulating wealth for it’s own sake. The law places no limits or controls on greed. And so wealth imbalances happen which are both unjust and damage the economic engine.

Putting these together, perhaps the regulation we are looking for is about enforceable limits on personal and organisation wealth. Unthinkable! Financiers who have most control over the system of money are, by definition, the greediest. They have no interest in being poorer. If they cared they would not have taken their bonuses or demanded their share dividends until the economy is healthier.

Governments can do nothing to better regulate them until they have paid off most of the current debt.

You watch too much CNBC if your really believe France is some kind of socialist eutopia where people have jobs for life. Strange too that socialist land manages to beat the UK for GDP with a similar population and no North Sea oil or gas.

If it weren’t for the forces of capital working on civilisation since its start, we’d all be in mud huts dying like flies aged 40.

This is complete ahistoric fantasy. “We” had moved on from mud huts and a life expectancy of 40 prior to the rise of capitalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

Fantasy?

As if I WANT that to be the case?

Anyway the table in that article backs me up, what’s your point caller?

As does this quote from same:

During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically.

Capitalism started in the ancient world.

Capitalism started in the ancient world.

You seem to be treating “capitalism” as if it is somehow synonymous with “business” or “trade”. The wikipedia link states that age expectancy was over forty in “Early Modern Britain” between 16th and 18th Century i.e. the era prior to the rise of capitalism as the dominant order in Britain.

If you want to continue the metaphor of me as a late-night caller, my point is that, like a late-night radio DJ, you have not the slightest idea what you’re talking about. This is consistent with you not knowing that social democrats (I’d like to smooth the rough edges of capitalism) are the same as socialists (I’d like the means of production to be collectively owned).

Ok.

What’s your definition of capitalism then?

Capitalism: investing capital to make profit. Normaly thought of in terms of venture capitalism in which capital is invested in means of production and labour to produce goods or services to be sold at a profit.

I’m sure Lipsey has a more exact definition but that’ll do for most people.

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit.

First line of the first internet source – that’s what I thought it was. Motive = private profit.

So therefore the emergence of money in world society is intimately linked with the emergence of capitalism, isn’t it? The two are synonymous at first. Money is useless without an element of capitalism.

Are you getting capitalism mixed up with capitalist?

Anyway wiki goes on to say this:

There is no consensus on the precise definition of capitalism

Which seems to be what we are experiencing.

Before money there was barter and the money system evolved from it. Tokens (money) becoming a universally accepted exchange item.

I don’t think you need precise definitions, but it makes debate difficult if people refuse to accept the simplest and most widely accepted notions that make up the definition.

Tokens (money) becoming a universal accepted exchange item

.. that were non-perishable and could be accumulated indefinitely…

I didn’t know that the system had to have capitalists in it to be capitalism.

What are you debating about then? The existence of investment banking?

that were non-perishable and could be accumulated indefinitely

Our money is perishable, it is one of the huge flaws of our system.

Whether there’s a crisis in capitalism as the OP questions and as the guy that speaks on the vid seems to think. That’s what we’re debating.

Personally I don’t think there’s a crisis in capitalism or that capitalism at the heart of any of the problems the vid evokes. I think the issues are a question of governance. The need to have a social framework in which the rules for fair and resonable behaviour are well defined, respected and enforced.

If we have a crisis it is not of capitalism but of government. A small number of people, the rich, have manipulated the system to bend the rules in their favour to the detriment of the masses. Capitalism isn’t the problem, morally corrupt government is.

molgrips – Member

Ok.

What’s your definition of capitalism then?

Tressell had it about right

‘Money is the cause of poverty because it is the device by which those who are too lazy to work are enabled to rob the workers of the fruits of their labour.’

‘Prove it,’ said Crass.

Owen slowly folded up the piece of newspaper he had been reading and put it into his pocket.

‘All right,’ he replied. ‘I’ll show you how the Great Money Trick is worked.’

Owen opened his dinner basket and took from it two slices of bread but as these were not sufficient, he requested that anyone who had some bread left would give it to him. They gave him several pieces, which he placed in a heap on a clean piece of paper, and, having borrowed the pocket knives they used to cut and eat their dinners with from Easton, Harlow and Philpot, he addressed them as follows:

‘These pieces of bread represent the raw materials which exist naturally in and on the earth for the use of mankind; they were not made by any human being, but were created by the Great Spirit for the benefit and sustenance of all, the same as were the air and the light of the sun.’

… ‘Now,’ continued Owen, ‘I am a capitalist; or, rather, I represent the landlord and capitalist class. That is to say, all these raw materials belong to me. It does not matter for our present argument how I obtained possession of them, or whether I have any real right to them; the only thing that matters now is the admitted fact that all the raw materials which are necessary for the production of the necessaries of life are now the property of the Landlord and Capitalist class. I am that class: all these raw materials belong to me.’

… ‘Now you three represent the Working Class: you have nothing – and for my part, although I have all these raw materials, they are of no use to me – what I need is – the things that can be made out of these raw materials by Work: but as I am too lazy to work myself, I have invented the Money Trick to make you work for me. But first I must explain that I possess something else beside the raw materials. These three knives represent – all the machinery of production; the factories, tools, railways, and so forth, without which the necessaries of life cannot be produced in abundance. And these three coins’ – taking three halfpennies from his pocket – ‘represent my Money Capital.’

‘But before we go any further,’ said Owen, interrupting himself, ‘it is most important that you remember that I am not supposed to be merely “a” capitalist. I represent the whole Capitalist Class. You are not supposed to be just three workers – you represent the whole Working Class.’

… Owen proceeded to cut up one of the slices of bread into a number of little square blocks.

‘These represent the things which are produced by labour, aided by machinery, from the raw materials. We will suppose that three of these blocks represent – a week’s work. We will suppose that a week’s work is worth – one pound: and we will suppose that each of these ha’pennies is a sovereign. …

‘Now this is the way the trick works -’

… Owen now addressed himself to the working classes as represented by Philpot, Harlow and Easton.

‘You say that you are all in need of employment, and as I am the kind-hearted capitalist class I am going to invest all my money in various industries, so as to give you Plenty of Work. I shall pay each of you one pound per week, and a week’s work is – you must each produce three of these square blocks. For doing this work you will each receive your wages; the money will be your own, to do as you like with, and the things you produce will of course be mine, to do as I like with. You will each take one of these machines and as soon as you have done a week’s work, you shall have your money.’

The Working Classes accordingly set to work, and the Capitalist class sat down and watched them. As soon as they had finished, they passed the nine little blocks to Owen, who placed them on a piece of paper by his side and paid the workers their wages.

‘These blocks represent the necessaries of life. You can’t live without some of these things, but as they belong to me, you will have to buy them from me: my price for these blocks is – one pound each.’

As the working classes were in need of the necessaries of life and as they could not eat, drink or wear the useless money, they were compelled to agree to the kind Capitalist’s terms. They each bought back and at once consumed one-third of the produce of their labour. The capitalist class also devoured two of the square blocks, and so the net result of the week’s work was that the kind capitalist had consumed two pounds worth of the things produced by the labour of the others, and reckoning the squares at their market value of one pound each, he had more than doubled his capital, for he still possessed the three pounds in money and in addition four pounds worth of goods. As for the working classes, Philpot, Harlow and Easton, having each consumed the pound’s worth of necessaries they had bought with their wages, they were again in precisely the same condition as when they started work – they had nothing.

This process was repeated several times: for each week’s work the producers were paid their wages. They kept on working and spending all their earnings. The kind-hearted capitalist consumed twice as much as any one of them and his pile of wealth continually increased. In a little while – reckoning the little squares at their market value of one pound each – he was worth about one hundred pounds, and the working classes were still in the same condition as when they began, and were still tearing into their work as if their lives depended upon it.

After a while the rest of the crowd began to laugh, and their merriment increased when the kind-hearted capitalist, just after having sold a pound’s worth of necessaries to each of his workers, suddenly took their tools – the Machinery of Production – the knives away from them, and informed them that as owing to Over Production all his store-houses were glutted with the necessaries of life, he had decided to close down the works.

‘Well, and what the bloody ‘ell are we to do now?’ demanded Philpot.

‘That’s not my business,’ replied the kind-hearted capitalist. ‘I’ve paid you your wages, and provided you with Plenty of Work for a long time past. I have no more work for you to do at present. Come round again in a few months’ time and I’ll see what I can do for you.’

‘But what about the necessaries of life?’ demanded Harlow. ‘We must have something to eat.’

‘Of course you must,’ replied the capitalist, affably; ‘and I shall be very pleased to sell you some.’

‘But we ain’t got no bloody money!’

‘Well, you can’t expect me to give you my goods for nothing! You didn’t work for me for nothing, you know. I paid you for your work and you should have saved something: you should have been thrifty like me. Look how I have got on by being thrifty!’

The unemployed looked blankly at each other, but the rest of the crowd only laughed; and then the three unemployed began to abuse the kind-hearted Capitalist, demanding that he should give them some of the necessaries of life that he had piled up in his warehouses, or to be allowed to work and produce some more for their own needs; and even threatened to take some of the things by force if he did not comply with their demands. But the kind-hearted Capitalist told them not to be insolent, and spoke to them about honesty, and said if they were not careful he would have their faces battered in for them by the police, or if necessary he would call out the military and have them shot down like dogs, the same as he had done before at Featherstone and Belfast.

[Robert Tressell, ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’]

The need to have a social framework in which the rules for fair and resonable behaviour are well defined, respected and enforced

True, but like I say there’s a balancing act. Too much regulation and growth is limited so business goes elsewhere – that’s the theory. I do not know enough to refute that.

If we have a crisis it is not of capitalism but of government

Agreed whole-heartedly.

If there were a properly left of centre party on the ballot I’d have voted for it.

I haven’t seen that before uplink. Good one!

Too much regulation and growth is limited so business goes elsewhere – that’s the theory. I do not know enough to refute that.

But isn’t the current crisis of capitalism due to an almost complete lack of regulation, essentially?

Investment bankers got their hands on the capital resources of retail banks due to deregulation (eg. repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act in the US in 1999) which has allowed them to do what they damn well like with savings capital. Big financial institutions became bigger and more bloated by swallowing up smaller competitors. These big corporations become a law unto themselves because government had taken away all the controls. Mortgage lenders lost money hand over fist by making unsecured loans of 11 times the nominal salary of their shit-poor customers. Surpise, surprise! They don’t make the payments. Bad debt causes the whole grotesque system to spiral wildly out of control then the Government has to step in to bail out institutions which are too big to fail because the same government has allowed them to get that way in the first place. Systemic risk?

Markets always find novel ways to fail but will probably survive, despite all the lurches and crashes and re-configurations and capitalism will no doubt be with us as the dominant social and economic force in the lives of just about everyone on the planet, whether they know it or not. The great competitive theory of the 20th Century, Communism has all but failed. Before deregulation, a lot of people got really quite rich out of the triumphant ideology but now a very few people have become unimaginably well-off and a very large number of people have become very poor. The current incarnation is not a force for good in the world.

We are now being asked to subsidise failed banks and hand over control to bankers who will (we hope) get us back on track but only if they are allowed to help themselves to huge chunks of the profits. “Oh but we must! Otherwise the best talent will go elsewhere”. **** that. Call their bluff and let them go. Better still, turn the whole risk/reward thing on its head and say “You broke this and now you have to fix it. If you fix it we won’t put you in jail”

BUT, and here is the genius that lies at the heart of the deregulation movement, we can’t put them in jail. They haven’t broken any laws because there are no laws any more. Government has failed us by not exerting state control over economies. In this sense, I agree with molgrips.

That appears to me to be the state capitalism is in just right at this moment. No doubt it’s a gross over-simplification but this debate is helping me to cut through the fog.

If it weren’t for the forces of capital working on civilisation since its start, we’d all be in mud huts dying like flies aged 40.

It is ridicolous to say there would be no progress without capitalism or that it alone , rather than improved undersatnding of disease, sanitation, diet etc increased this. Even today many poor non capitalist [ relatively] have higher life exxpectancies despite having less money

However, some countries like Saudi Arabia have very high GNP per capita but don’t have high life expectancies. Alternatively, there are countries like China and Cuba that have low GNP per capita have reasonably high life expectancies.

It now (apparently) depends on your definition of capitalism.

A great many things were invented because they could be sold were they not?

Neccessity is the mother of invention
I have never heard the phrase profit is the mother of invention.

Pretty pithy though I feel.

Sorry. If you pay me I will come up with something better 😆

Will £3bn be enough sir?

*tugs forelock*

IMO the video in the OP was disappointedly bad. A mixture of omissions, half-truths, and stating the bleeding obvious. I learnt nothing from it, and had I not known better, I could have easily been misled by it.

The video does however provide something very useful – it encapsulates everything which is wrong with the left, and why the political-economic situation today is so dire.

David Harvey sums it all up very nicely towards the end with “I don’t have the solution, I think I know what the nature of the problem is” A strange thing for a Marxist to say – I have never met a Marxist who doesn’t think they know the solution.

Of course David Harvey does know what the ultimate solution is. He is a communist and he therefore believes in the transformation from a capitalist society into a socialist society. But as a professional waffler, David Harvey does not provide answers – only critique. And that, lies at the very heart of why the left is in such a mess.

For 30 years the left in Britain has either been in retreat or stood impotent on the sidelines. It is very quick to criticise the big bad Tories, the bankers, the neo-liberals, etc, and yet never offers any viable alternative – it lacks both the confidence and the commitment to do so. And then it throws up its collective hands in horror when the mass of the people believe that there is no alternative to the neo-liberal model. The left blames everyone but themselves.

A couple of weeks ago I was at this event :

http://6billionways.org.uk/

It was full of academics and professional wafflers, like David Harvey, who spent the day talking mostly to sun-dried organic Guardian readers about the great evils of capitalism and the terrible things it was doing to poor people and the environment.

Needless to say no answers were provided – but everybody felt a whole lot better at the end of the day after they had slapped each other on the back for being such good anti-capitalists. An exercise in self-congratulatory waffle.

Tomorrow there will be a national demonstration against government cuts. It was first announced that it would happen about 6 months ago – now there’s a bit of spontaneous activity which grabs the mood of the nation. The organisers very thoughtfully decided to have it at the weekend so as to cause minimal disruption – hopefully it will pass with very few people even noticing.

The official TUC leaflets for the demo focused mostly on the tired old message concerning how horrible and nasty the Tories are – just in case not everyone was aware. And again needless to say, it doesn’t bother too much offering an alternative.

Today for the first time in over thirty years people are starting to doubt whether TINA is true after all, there is potentially a captive audience for anyone who is prepared to offer an alternative. We are at the present faced with a government more regressive than even Thatcher. And yet the left instead of grabbing this opportunity would rather remain silent – other than telling everyone how awful things are. If this strategy is so good then why hasn’t it worked for the last 30 years ?

Still, everyone on the demo will feel good at the end of tomorrow – basking as they will in the warm glow of knowing that they’re not Tories.

If anyone wants more waffle by David Harvey, then I reckon this video is better – it certainly imo covers a lot of truths :

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYQb0fthNfI[/video]

It is a lot longer but he does at least mention socialism – although he appears to be uncertain how that can be achieved….very useful. Part of David Harvey’s problem imo is his obsession with the complexities of dialectics, ie, no one single issue can be the cause of change – society must evolve in many different aspects. So like the neo-liberal who argues that the complex nature of the market means that a laissez faire approach which allows it to evolve is the only solution, David Harvey appears to be unsure on intervention – preferring instead to give a running commentary as events unfold. Of course I could be misrepresenting him, but it’s the only conclusion I can come up with.

Thanks Ernie.

Once I’d distilled all the emotive lefty-bashing out of your response, I discerned that you feel that critics of the current incarnation of capitalism (should “capitalism” have a capital C?…) have one thing in common: none of them offer any solutions. Am I right in this interpretation? (serious question, ignore my goading).

But I think some solutions are being offered, both by yer man David Harvey (join an anti-capitalist organisation and mobilise society to become aware of what is actually going on) and by respondents on this thread who are arguing for a return to regulation in the spirit of the Glass-Steagall Act which followed the Wall Street Crash. Conditions may differ radically from those times but I’m sure there are smarter people than us who have regulation strategies which will allow market economies to flourish sustainably under regulation, and which might prevent the worst of humanity sucking $3bn into their own personal accounts at the expense of a marginal European nation. Surely you agree that this is an absurd scenario?

There seems to be a passive-aggressive rhetoric coming from the “right” or the “pro-free-market” faction which is the product of a monstrous hubris.

As the frequently-referred-to “OP” (another P-A affectation, I think), I have to state my own personal standpoint. I’m no Marxist. I readily acknowledge that Communism has failed and I’m pragmatic enough to temper my socialist leanings with a note of realism; however there has to be some kind of humanist territory where hard work and enterprise are rewarded but greed is rightly vilified.

buzz-lightyear – Member

I was discussing this (not the personal insults) at work (idling). A colleague suggested that centralised regulation would probably fail. The economics engine is many interacting engines on different cycles. The algorithm to govern engines must therefore be scalable to all engine sizes and self-regulate in a distributed way.

That’s a rather profound insight.

As the frequently-referred-to “OP” (another P-A affectation, I think), I have to state my own personal standpoint. I’m no Marxist. I readily acknowledge that Communism has failed and I’m pragmatic enough to temper my socialist leanings with a note of realism; however there has to be some kind of humanist territory where hard work and enterprise are rewarded but greed is rightly vilified.

Which probably makes me a Social Democrat, by definition. I’m uncomfortable with that, if only because it conjures up images of Spitting Image caricatures of David Owen and Shirley Williams.

Once I’d distilled all the emotive lefty-bashing out of your response

All politics is emotive. But I can assure you that my “lefty-bashing” is done from a cool analytical perspective.

OK.

So how about answering my questions? 😉

So how about answering my questions?

Well I’ve got a demo to go on tomorrow so can only give quick answers.

Yes you can write capitalism have a capital C, although I tend not bother these days.

And yes the left does have the solutions, it just doesn’t feel that it’s vital to get that message across…….just bash the Tories instead. Part of the problem is that it feels that talking about stuff like socialism will rock the boat too much. There is also imo a lack of commitment plus a lack of connection with ordinary working people.

There are of course exception such as Leninists like myself 8)

And finally, yes regulating the market is indeed a solution. In fact the immediate solution to the present crises is a return to the social-democratic agenda and a mixed economy with universal welfare provisions. Sadly even this is too radical for some on the left to articulate – despite the fact that John Maynard Keynes was an anti-socialist who offered his solutions as a means of preserving capitalism.

So that’s a “yes” to all three of your questions then.