Marxism And The New Age Progressive Movements

[Lollipop2]

I totally understand your situation. Tried to do this myself in 2009 with my news recommendation engine that was capable of automatic "deception detection" long before Facebook and even Google had (publicly) tried to do anything similar. Had provisional patents on most of the technology too. All investors I approached basically told me "incredible idea...but a recipe for legal disaster...and no 7 figure revenue, so we won't invest". Sold parts of it for way less than it was worth (IMO) but it allowed me to start IdeaLabs. So, I guess there was a silver lining for me...but for the vast majority of my fellow entrepreneurs it is a catch 22 all the way through unless they somehow get incredibly lucky and get either a very sympathetic angel investor or a massive influx of paying clients.

Wow Haidut, fascinating. What a wonderful idea you had! It further strengthens my thought that VC’s and Angel’s are killing innovation in this country. They are exactly like banks but want a higher interest rate. As an IdeaLabs customer, I am happy for the outcome, but truthfully, as an entrepreneur and tech lover, I would have liked to see you run with your idea.

 

[Based Kantian]

Marx & Engels witnessed the same things as Charles Dickens - eight year old kids in workhouses 12 hours a day with bent legs from pellegra/berri berri - "please sir, could I have some more...?"
They figured, "hey, this is no way to go", so bingo, out comes Das Capital.
True Communism depends on a populace that fits in place like round pegs, which they are far from, thats why it can only be a theory. True Democrasy depends on a populace that votes, which doesn't happen here.
Sole - propietier capitalism is near to dead, last vestiges eatin away by Covid.

Have you ever read "Das Capital"? Since it's never been published under that name, it's pretty likely you not only haven't read the book, but also have never held a copy of it.

"True Communism" does not "depend on a population that fits in place like round pegs. " You're thinking of capitalism. In capitalism, each person must take their place on the assembly line or find himself on the streets (unless he happens to be a property owner)! To quote from Karl Marx's German Ideology:

the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the “general interest,” but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

I tried to address why this is misleading in my last post .. it is Private Banks who lead money creation and are endorsed by the Government. It is not the Government who has had authoritative control of the money supply. Unless it comes directly from the Treasury as with coins, historically with Lincoln Greenbacks etc.

The Government does not control the Federal Reserve authoritatively nor Private Bank behavior, these are the things that drive Money creation.

As for your statement "there were not individuals or groups creating money"...
I provided a different direct example of exactly that happening, when Private Banks were creating Bank Notes and created a crisis that led to the Bank Charter Act of 1844. This happens now except there are no Notes, just an account statement.

The government chooses to pretend the central bank is independent. This is to keep money creation out of the political discourse.

Those private banks you keep talking about were state creation. All of them had charters. They were not individuals printing money in the basement.

 

[michael94]

The government chooses to pretend the central bank is independent. This is to keep money creation out of the political discourse.

Technically the Federal Reserve is a State creation, that doesn't mean the State runs the FED or that the State has control over Private Bank loan activity ( which drives money creation ). Yes Private Banks operate under the guidelines of a Government, because we have laws and stuff... That doesn't mean that the State has complete control of the money supply. It could with a law change, but it doesn't now. As for Government wanting to keep money creation out of the political discourse.. of course I do not doubt that. But Private Banks want it out of public discourse even more because they actually have more to lose. Obviously there is overlap because many State officials are lapdogs for Financial interests.

But the point is, there's no reason to pretend as if this is a Government problem since most of the money creation is out of their purview. Just because Banks need the Government to operate doesn't mean Banks are being operated by the Government or are dependent on a green light from the elected officials to create money. The track record of State controlled Money is much better than this State endorsed privately run system we have copied from the City of London.

The Corona helicopter money has actually been an improvement over business as usual in that regard.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

Technically the Federal Reserve is a State creation, that doesn't mean the State runs the FED or that the State has control over Private Bank loan activity ( which drives money creation ). Yes Private Banks operate under the guidelines of a Government, because we have laws and stuff... That doesn't mean that the State has complete control of the money supply. It could with a law change, but it doesn't now. As for Government wanting to keep money creation out of the political discourse.. of course I do not doubt that. But Private Banks want it out of public discourse even more because they actually have more to lose. Obviously there is overlap because many State officials are lapdogs for Financial interests.

But the point is, there's no reason to pretend as if this is a Government problem since most of the money creation is out of their purview. Just because Banks need the Government to operate doesn't mean Banks are being operated by the Government or are dependent on a green light from the elected officials to create money. The track record of State controlled Money is much better than this State endorsed privately run system we have copied from the City of London.

The Corona helicopter money has actually been an improvement over business as usual in that regard.

Government has created an entity and given it the power of money creation. It is out of control only by choice. Like not grabbing a steering wheel while driving is a choice.

 

[michael94]

Government has created an entity and given it the power of money creation. It is out of control only by choice. Like not grabbing a steering wheel while driving is a choice.

I agree and it could all be rectified with a simple law change. They tried this in Switzerland and America.

Swiss "Vollgeld" Proposal
2018 Swiss sovereign-money initiative - Wikipedia
sovereign money

American NEED Act ( also known as H.R. 2990 )
NEED Act - Wikipedia

There is a UK Group which pushes for similar reforms as well
Making money and banking work for society

 

[Whichway?]

Government has created an entity and given it the power of money creation. It is out of control only by choice. Like not grabbing a steering wheel while driving is a choice.

If you think the Governments of the world with privately owned central banks are in control of those banks, you should watch some of the documentaries by Adam Curtis which aired on the BBC. In one of them he talks about President Clinton who was elected on a big spending reform agenda. As soon as he got into office he had a meeting with Treasury Officials who informed him that much of what he wanted to do would not be funded by the Reserve. He simply had to reign in his agenda. So that was financiers dictating public policy.

If however, he had wanted to go to war with some tin pot middle east country, where the war would benefit a certain ethnostate in that area, and make the bankers and war industrialists rich, he would have been given a green light.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

If you think the Governments of the world with privately owned central banks are in control of those banks, you should watch some of the documentaries by Adam Curtis which aired on the BBC. In one of them he talks about President Clinton who was elected on a big spending reform agenda. As soon as he got into office he had a meeting with Treasury Officials who informed him that much of what he wanted to do would not be funded by the Reserve. He simply had to reign in his agenda. So that was financiers dictating public policy.

If however, he had wanted to go to war with some tin pot middle east country, where the war would benefit a certain ethnostate in that area, and make the bankers and war industrialists rich, he would have been given a green light.

Yes, capital has captured the levers of power and we live in a plutocracy. That literally has nothing to do with my post, since my agenda is to bring the economy under democratic control. Something the government has the power to do overnight, should there be political will.

 

[Regina]

@snacks I agree. This isn't something that would be successful alone. Community is an important aspect of this project of independence. People could organize into their own local groups to achieve these kinds of goals. This isn't something that will likely succeed if only there is one group doing this. Many people would have to take it upon themselves to take initiative to think of what they can do and organize with like-minded people. Imagine thousands of these groups, each numbering in the hundreds or even thousands, scattered around the world. This would likely throw a giant wrench in the plans of the military industrial complex. I think they would be confused by such a widespread resistance.

@Lollipop2 I uploaded the image directly to my previous post, should be viewable now (let me know if it isn't).

Energizer, I think you'd like this one:
Corbett Report Extras

 

[Marvel]

In the last podcast with Danny Roddy he asked Ray directly "do you think replacing the current system with socialism will be better" to which Ray answered flatly "No, it would be just as rotten".
There is neither socialism nor capitalism any more. We now have some weird hybrid that managed to combine the worst parts of both systems - i.e. the welfare state and fascism/corporatism. I am pretty sure Ray is against both and is for empowering the individual as much as possible to take matters of importance into their own hands. Not sure what political *ism these views fall within but that's the vibe I am getting from him.

This is libertarianism, generally speaking. Not the shill for big businesses currently benefiting from crony capitalism, but real libertarianism based on true liberal values of freedom of speech, freedom of association, non aggression principle, but right to defend yourself, right to property.

Ludvig von Mises is worth reading.

 

[Marvel]

As John Gray in his book "Straw dogs" said, people are animals: “The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre-Darwinian error that humans are different from all other animals.”

I agree but the impression I get is that Peat is a hopelessly naive idealist who seems to think this set of ideas is some sort of fascist conspiracy theory.

I can see how it can be used as such but nevertheless it’s a true enough statement about human nature and is exactly why communism doesn’t work and hierarchies are endemic to society. We should be critical of them, especially where they do harm but wishing they weren’t necessary or inevitable leads to worse outcomes.

 

[Marvel]

Great post! @Jessie
To people saying that they mute him when he talks about politics and that he is dumb, well:
His views on politics are totally connected and correspondent to his philosophical views, including politics, if you think that his political views are nonsense then if you don't view his science/ biologic approach as also nonsense, you're the one misunderstanding and creating paradoxes.
Peat Supports Anarchism (Talking With Ray Peat #3: The Origins Of Authoritarianism)

About communism, there are lots of approaches to how to achieve it, but communism is simple a stateless, anti-statist and non-market society.
The problem is power, concentrated power, you're too innocent if you think that, principally in our culture, a competition culture, one that profit with war, creating and profiting with misery, a very powerful thing/ man would be and could be a good and omniscient dictator, the "best", who would govern for the good of humanity. Someone who can and wanna to controls people's life so strongly, is clearly a terrible guy.
Communism at least is much more decentralized than Capitalism is.
Deliberation Makes People Consistently Selfish

Liberals are capitalists, how they are viewed as the left is crazy.
Controlled Opposition, Left Vs Right

The culture affects/ reflects the politics, in Brasil, principally by 1987 to before was a seriously fascist/ dictatorship regime, the culture from this time was very aggressive and authoritarian, was good and normal to torture their child, the education even today ppl say was the best, even knowing the torture the child had, people even today say that during that time had less crime, even considering that a woman who divorce, the husband would be considered an honored man if he killed her. The culture praised brutality.
Its almost unbelievable to think that my parents passed through it... Reasonable parents before was a rare thing...

Brasil since this pandemic is becoming fastly liberal/ conservative. Both authoritarian types. @haidut @Drareg @Energizer

Communism is absolutely centralised. It’s only workable at all if state has absolute power, which inevitably leads to most people being impoverished and only those in charge living comfortably.

 

[Marvel]

Literally nobody on the political spectrum (except possibly some die-hard libertarians) would want or allow that to happen. The left are ideologically against it, and every large corporation and most run-of-the-mill Republicans will be working against it (usually by saying they want to protect US jobs or whatever). The goal of most corporations (naturally, without govt intervention) is to NOT compete - i.e. monopoly and/or becoming "too big to fail". The core motto of every VC firm these days is to invest only in companies that have massive barriers to entry or at least unique talent on board that cannot be easily replicated by the competition.
Who is going to ensure such monopolistic large twisted entities don't form when an (initially successful, value-driven) corporation becomes too large and decides it just does not want to compete or provide value any more? The free market favors the big and powerful entities/companies. Once successful = always successful, unless there is competition. But truly disruptive competition usually comes from the periphery - the small players, startups, etc. So, if you don't regulate, the big corporations will use their enormous economic power to crush (or buy-and-bury) any potential competition/innovation from a small(er) player. If you do regulate, then the corporations will simply capture the regulatory agency (as we have seen them do time and again over the last century). It seems pure capitalism only works in a decentralized society and up to a certain scale. Ironically, the same seems to apply to communism/socialism.
Anyways, if a company has a market capitalization bigger than 75% of the world's countries, employs directly/indirectly millions of people and literally pays for the jobs of so many politicians then it is no longer capitalism except on paper and on TV. In reality, that massive corporation can demand/extort subsidies and bailouts while offering nothing in return except the same old rhetoric "leave businesses alone" and "no govt intervention".
I think we need new ideas. Capitalism, socialism, etc seem to simply not cut it any more in this dynamic and rapidly evolving, interconnected world where a too-big-to-fail entity can form in a matter of a few short years and then use that power to extort the entire world.

I don’t know how you can say that corporations don’t compete without government intervention, this is nonsense. If you have a product for sale that is shifting units, you attract other people to your market. They will inevitably vary the product a bit, but best evidence for there being a market there to make money from is when someone else is already profiting from it.

The opposite of what you say is true: government intervention and protectionism (patents, trade treaties that favour established providers etc) these reduce competition and promote monopolies.

 

[Marvel]

Now replace the word "state" with "mega-corporation" and you see that both systems (Soviet-style socialism and late-stage capitalism in the West) are the same. Heck, a true mega corporation of the rank of Apple, Microsoft, Huawei, etc has a market capitalization and economic/legal power worldwide bigger than 75%+ of actual countries around the world. What massive entity (state or company), run by corrupt people, will want to give back that unlimited power??
The main arguments for the existence of large corporations have always been economies of scale (lower cost of products) and job creation. However, over the last 30+ years those mega corporations have not been really providing much of either and many of those jobs they claim they created are heavily taxpayer-subsidized to the point that in many cases the corporation is a job "creator" only on paper - it is the taxpayers' funds that make those jobs possible. The push for globalization has always been led by large corporations as it makes outsourcing and tax avoidance/evasion much easier. So, in a sense the leaders of capitalism have been (ironically) pushing for the socialization of the world economy, as it directly benefits them. Those companies are above the law and they rarely compete, while for everybody else the only thing left is a race to the bottom, on a global scale.
The political sticker we attach to such entity is really immaterial. It does not matter much if a totalitarian state sends you to the gulag for your political views or a large tech company builds a life-long profile of you based on your online/offline behavior, private information, health record, etc and then uses that profile to legally direct most aspects of your life indefinitely while also making massive profits, and selling (usually partial) access to that profile to more of its corrupt "partners" for even more control over you and more profit, while at the same time raising noise about how much they are doing to protect your "rights". To make matters worse, those mega-corporations love to "fuse" with the govt and form the proverbial "complexes" that Eisenhower warned about as far back as the 1950s (despite being part of them).
The end result is the same - enslavement and destruction of humanity. What difference does it make if it comes from a totalitarian state or a corporation that has become a household name (people tend to trust the familiar) but nobody really knows its true size, reach, owners, goals, etc. If power corrupts and ultimate power corrupts ultimately, then no entity should be allowed to assume such a position of power.

You misunderstand capitalism. You’re a capitalist, you run a supplements business.

The crony capitalism you are talking about is a kind of quasi-fascism, only possible because government and central banking (structures that oppose liberal capitalism) enable them.

 

[Marvel]

Ray is a paradoxical character.
He is a rebel at heart, but very feminine in nature: against conflict, very non-assertive and with an egalitarian worldview.
He, still to his old age, holds the naive conviction that if people just had the right resources and stimuli during their development, the world would be full of intelligent and compassionate Raymond's just like himself who would work together for a paradise on earth.
Yet life is comprised of eternal conflict and struggle for domination. There is also a degree of differentiation within the human species which is remarkable when compared to all other animals. Most people are very agreeable and not able or not willing to think for themselves. They are guided by a small group in power who instill their worldview and will via various media. This has been the case for all known human history. The kind of media used has developed and enabled larger and larger groups of people to be organized in an ever more precise manner, starting from small tribes of a dozen people to huge nations and empires. The characteristics of a given society is thereby mainly shaped by the worldview of the group of people in power.

This is accurate.

 

[Marvel]

Capital is a state creation. The stock market, property rights, the corporate structure, money etc are all created and enforced by the state. Capitalism is a an authoritarian system that crates an unaccountable elite of the rich.

Better than feudalism, sure. But we should not excuse the faults of capitalism which is destroying the world and our rights as we speak.

This is nonsense. A neolithic farmer in a barter trade society could be said to have capital, i.e. land to work and produce to trade. He would have fought to protect it.

 

[Marvel]

I tried to address why this is misleading in my last post .. it is Private Banks who lead money creation and are endorsed by the Government. It is not the Government who has had authoritative control of the money supply. Unless it comes directly from the Treasury as with coins, historically with Lincoln Greenbacks etc.

The Government does not control the Federal Reserve authoritatively nor Private Bank behavior, these are the things that drive Money creation.

As for your statement "there were not individuals or groups creating money"...
I provided a different direct example of exactly that happening, when Private Banks were creating Bank Notes and created a crisis that led to the Bank Charter Act of 1844. This happens now except there are no Notes, just an account statement.

The problem here is the concept of central banking. Banks should exist in a state of market competition to offer superior services, not under an authoritarian hierarchy.

They won’t give up their power easily, however, and much we see follows from that. Once you understand this, conspiracy theories largely have little weight or drama. All systems / power structures seek to survive and grow. It’s not “tHe rOtHsChIlDs” as such.

 

[Marvel]

Yes, capital has captured the levers of power and we live in a plutocracy. That literally has nothing to do with my post, since my agenda is to bring the economy under democratic control. Something the government has the power to do overnight, should there be political will.

You have this back to front. Capital is just property and is a natural right. It’s centralised power, government, central banking, that usurps, controls and manipulates the natural flow of capital in society.

 

[Marvel]

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith ~ Murray Rothbard:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1GehpY2EON_RPYo1rfW6-uOChOZ9lsNN

Recommend for anyone interested in economic history.

 

[MatheusPN]

This is libertarianism, generally speaking. Not the shill for big businesses currently benefiting from crony capitalism, but real libertarianism based on true liberal values of freedom of speech, freedom of association, non aggression principle, but right to defend yourself, right to property.

Ludvig von Mises is worth reading.

Yeah, Mises is great to the elite and to persuade people that he defend freedom while he supports slavery and to convince people that monarchy is better than democracy, (evident, he loves a similar system) or that people should lose even more power by rejecting democracy. Power to the superior, rich people!
Mises endorses a monopolistic system.

Communism is absolutely centralised. It’s only workable at all if state has absolute power, which inevitably leads to most people being impoverished and only those in charge living comfortably.

History and actual societies tell otherwise.