Primitive accumulation is a bad term. It works if you’ve read the theory behind it, but otherwise it sounds like someone saving up a bunch of money then starting a successful business compared to what it is which was colonial genocide, enclosure of the commons, and mass starvation as people were ripped from agricultural labor and cast into the factories and mines to work for feudal lords turned industrial capitalists.
Love to spend insane amounts of resources on creating a phone that has the same tech and capabilities as all the other phones, but I can’t just get access to their research and they can’t just get access to mine.
Love to spend insane amount of time working up a cure to covid, but I can’t share my research with others and they can’t share it with me, yay this is awesome.
Love to spend insane amount of resources working out how to make people want to buy a sugary drink and then spend even more to make them want to buy my drink specifically.
Love to build empty houses and love to create 1.21 times more food than we need.
Love to do all this as the world is burning and people are starving.
Capitalism is the most efficient distribution of resources
Damn this third person never heard about the reserve army of labor, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, and like all of American history showing the hollowing out of working class power. JUST INVEST YOUR NON-EXISTENT SAVINGS INTO NEW COMPANIES ITS SO EASY. And please how will your worker coop survive in this hellscape with a bourgeois state over it? It will be outcompeted and swallowed immediately by corporations who have no qualms over worker or environmental rights. This isn’t china, Huawei (a worker coop) is villified and attacked at every turn here. You know maybe you have a point, let’s be more like China.
You didn’t engage with their argument, but good try nonetheless. It’s nice to see you cling to a fallacy rather than engage in good-faith discussion of an argument clearly illustrated for you to relate to.
There is no point in engaging with someone playing such games. They’re not going to be convinced when they’re already putting words in the opposition’s mouth.
A good faith discussion is not about convincing another, but instead about having an open exchange of information.
They’re not going to be convinced when they’re already putting words in the opposition’s mouth.
They’re illustrating a point which you failed to engage with. In no way did it put words in your mouth. The fact that you choose to be insulted by the way they decided to illustrate that point rather than engage with them in good faith says a lot more about you.
To reiterate: You didn’t engage with their argument, but good try nonetheless. It’s nice to see you cling to a fallacy rather than engage in good-faith discussion of an argument clearly illustrated for you to relate to.
Do better.
Markets have brought more people out of poverty than anything.
Yes, just like the Irish people who were “helped” by the free market in the 1840s. Or the Indian people who were “helped” by the free market in the late 1800s. You might be interested in this book by the late, great Mike Davis which completely refutes your ideas with hard evidence that the free market can be used (and has been used) as a tool of genocide: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7859
Obviously it is a counterfactual but no serious leftist would say that China without market reforms wouldn’t have eradicated poverty, and moreover done it faster and more completely. The seeds of poverty alleviation were planted during the Maoist era; improvement in health, education improvement, and industrialization.
To corroborate your point you can just look at life expectancy in rural communities to see that it rose steadily throughout the Maoist period and then froze during the Dengist reforms
The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
Why should they? You do not engage with any of the responses of substance. When you choose not to engage in good-faith discussion, why you believe you deserve anything other than ridicule?
I think it is important to take a critical look at past tragedies and mistakes, and work hard to avoid them in the future. Unfortunately I fear that many people would repeat them if given the opportunity and it served their idealogical and/or selfish interests, unless it was more convenient to do the right thing.
Yeah I also think we should look at the past and the present in order to create a better future, which is why I say one famine once is better than constant famines like we have now. How many millions die of hunger each year? How many have died at the hands of capitalism? How many are dying? While we have food available. This isn’t even to count for the famines that were enacted on purpose like those the british did in Ireland and in India.
Meanwhile both the USSR and China managed to eliminate famine in regions that had been plagued by it since history could account for it. Were the countries perfect? Far from it. Pretending that they are somehow worse for eliminating famine while people are starving in countries with food on the shelves is ridiculous.
They eliminated famine in their own borders … after causing famine in their own borders. Congratulations, I guess?
International efforts to deliver food aid to those most in need are typically hampered by war, not by a lack of food. Real supply & demand issues caused by poor yields, conflicts & other supply chain disruptions often drive up prices which hits the poor the hardest, but we haven’t had a global food shortage in a long time.
Both imperial Russia and Qing China were plagued by frequent famines, I don’t see how it is damnng that the PRC and the USSR had a famine in their early years of existence (after they’d fought long and drawn out wars), when they then never had famines again.
There a millions of people starving in the us today, in Europe, in africa, in south America, in the middle east, in India. There is more than enough food, but somehow these capitalist countries have millions starving. The us has kids missing lunch in school, despite food being available in cafeterias.
If one famine once in a region that used to be plagued by famines is too much for you, what does this ever-present famine then mean to you? What system do you suppose we make use of? Surely you cannot be a capitalist, since you are so staunchly against people starving
Did you know that China is responsible for 75% of the global poverty reduction over the last 40 years?
Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. At China’s current national poverty line, the number of poor fell by 770 million over the same period.
Do you know how China got such a huge poverty by the 1980s? Do you know how China got the wealth to start impacting it’s poverty?
Hint: the CCP took power in 1949. The Maoist era ended 30 years later, and massive economic liberalisation reforms started.
China today is a world trade powerhouse governed by an elite class (The CCP) with the proles given just enough to keep them where they are. It’s lifted them out of poverty, but it is the shining example of a totalitarian capitist state. If anybody thinks the proletariat have power in China, and it is therefore a socialist state…or that it’s classless with no elite and a communist state… well… You need to talk to some Chinese people.
Yes, even those ones. I’ve met a few and the stories they tell send shivers down my spine. They think they’re telling me good thing about their country, and I listen respectfully. However, it sounds like being caged in a zoo. The keepers provide your essentials, but you have no freedom.
Nuh, uh. Markets controlled by Oligarchs who spend billions to erode social safety nets do. A market socialist economy with strong regulations and systems like a UBI wouldn’t create poverty, while still being a market (albeit a very different one to what we have today). Albeit I do think that for many things (like healthcare) having a market of any kind is just dumb.
Markets controlled by Oligarchs who spend billions to erode social safety nets do.
And where do these billionaires come from? Do they just spring out of the ground?
Oligarchs are a feature of capitalism, not a flaw.
A market with a UBI would simply increase rent by the UBI amount. Markets in capitalism exist to extract wealth, it is what they encourage. Thus they will support those that are best at extracting wealth, which leads to the creation of those billionaires.
Or they can enjoy the fact that they have regulatory capture and change the regulations, as has been seen historically.
For practical observance: Denmark pays a wage to university students. The function of this wage is to make sure the students can focus on their studies, instead of having to have a job that demands time from them, which would lower the quality of education.
Students also need housing, which the private sector provides in the form of “student housing”, which requires you to be a student in order to live there. This “student housing” has a rent that is usually, approximately right around the student wage - thus meaning the student needs to take a job in order to afford things such as “food” and “electricity”. This state of affairs occured despite regulations.
I said market socialist. In a market socialist economy there would be no billionaires. Also housing is an absolute necessity, which means it shouldn’t be governed by a market at all, no matter the economic system. Only things outside of staple foods, a roof over your head, utilities, drinking water, healthcare and other things absolutely necessary for your continued survival, can (not should) be governed by a market, and one that doesn’t funnel money upwards.
Capitalism in any form is absolutely horrible and should not exist.
Also, creating artificial demand should be banned.
The bias is justified. The left is correct. Markets don’t create wealth without necessarily simultaneously creating poverty
For more information, research “surplus army of labor”, “primitive accumulation”, and “accumulation by dispossession”.
Primitive accumulation is a bad term. It works if you’ve read the theory behind it, but otherwise it sounds like someone saving up a bunch of money then starting a successful business compared to what it is which was colonial genocide, enclosure of the commons, and mass starvation as people were ripped from agricultural labor and cast into the factories and mines to work for feudal lords turned industrial capitalists.
I agree but in this context I’m literally telling them to read about it.
I was just summarizing for the people who are too lazy to go read anything and will just stop here
Well that’s just bullshit. Markets have brought more people out of poverty than anything.
Capitalism literally requires poverty to even function.
Lib - “Markets make everything cheaper, which is good.”
Leftist - “But if there is a labor market, won’t that make labor cheaper?”
Lib - “Yes, and that is good.”
Leftist - “How is that good?”
Lib - “It leads to more profits.”
Leftist - “But why is it good to have more profits?”
Lib - “Because a good country is when corporations make profits, and the more profits the corporations make, the gooder the country is.”
Love to spend insane amounts of resources on creating a phone that has the same tech and capabilities as all the other phones, but I can’t just get access to their research and they can’t just get access to mine.
Love to spend insane amount of time working up a cure to covid, but I can’t share my research with others and they can’t share it with me, yay this is awesome.
Love to spend insane amount of resources working out how to make people want to buy a sugary drink and then spend even more to make them want to buy my drink specifically.
Love to build empty houses and love to create 1.21 times more food than we need.
Love to do all this as the world is burning and people are starving.
Capitalism is the most efficient distribution of resources
A third person - "Not necessarily. If the demand for labor is bigger than the supply then markets make labor more expensive.
Leftist - " How is that possible? "
A third person - " There are various ways. Workers could start more cooperatives or invest their savings in new companies"
Leftist - “But why should I care about markets when it is easier to change the political system?”
A third person - “Is it easier?”
deleted by creator
Damn this third person never heard about the reserve army of labor, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, and like all of American history showing the hollowing out of working class power. JUST INVEST YOUR NON-EXISTENT SAVINGS INTO NEW COMPANIES ITS SO EASY. And please how will your worker coop survive in this hellscape with a bourgeois state over it? It will be outcompeted and swallowed immediately by corporations who have no qualms over worker or environmental rights. This isn’t china, Huawei (a worker coop) is villified and attacked at every turn here.
You know maybe you have a point, let’s be more like China.
Kid: “Mommy, what’s a strawman?”
Mother: “Take a look a this post here. See how they speak for both sides of the argument?”
Kid: “Yes, they’re arguing with themselves.”
Mother: “Exactly, and they can make their opponent say what they want.”
Kid: “That seems like an easy way to make your argument look good”
Mother: "Yes. It’s like fighting someone who can’t put up any resistance. They could be made of straw. A strawman. "
Kid: “Oh, I see.”
You didn’t engage with their argument, but good try nonetheless. It’s nice to see you cling to a fallacy rather than engage in good-faith discussion of an argument clearly illustrated for you to relate to.
There is no point in engaging with someone playing such games. They’re not going to be convinced when they’re already putting words in the opposition’s mouth.
A good faith discussion is not about convincing another, but instead about having an open exchange of information.
They’re illustrating a point which you failed to engage with. In no way did it put words in your mouth. The fact that you choose to be insulted by the way they decided to illustrate that point rather than engage with them in good faith says a lot more about you.
To reiterate: You didn’t engage with their argument, but good try nonetheless. It’s nice to see you cling to a fallacy rather than engage in good-faith discussion of an argument clearly illustrated for you to relate to.
Do better.
Anything?
Yeah, but please don’t say that too much, we don’t want to carry water for the CCP
*CPC
I don’t think you got the joke
Yeah it completely wooshed over my head, I thought you were serious
No it hasn’t, socialist agitation in the teeth of capitalist opposition did that
Without it westerners would still be working 16 hour days seven days a week without any safety nets while dying of lead poisoning
Yes, just like the Irish people who were “helped” by the free market in the 1840s. Or the Indian people who were “helped” by the free market in the late 1800s. You might be interested in this book by the late, great Mike Davis which completely refutes your ideas with hard evidence that the free market can be used (and has been used) as a tool of genocide: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7859
Wrong, that would be China, under the direction of the CPC
Deng literally introduced market reforms to do so. This is not the own you think it is
Obviously it is a counterfactual but no serious leftist would say that China without market reforms wouldn’t have eradicated poverty, and moreover done it faster and more completely. The seeds of poverty alleviation were planted during the Maoist era; improvement in health, education improvement, and industrialization.
To corroborate your point you can just look at life expectancy in rural communities to see that it rose steadily throughout the Maoist period and then froze during the Dengist reforms
For the sake of simplicity, please enjoy the following meme:
The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
In that case, it was totally worth the deadliest famine in history. :-P
gottem
Is that another circle-jerk response? Say something useful (ie. that has significance outside of your circle), please.
Why should they? You do not engage with any of the responses of substance. When you choose not to engage in good-faith discussion, why you believe you deserve anything other than ridicule?
One famine one time is definitely preferable to the constant famines that exist under capitalism
If only the dead could argue their case…
I think it is important to take a critical look at past tragedies and mistakes, and work hard to avoid them in the future. Unfortunately I fear that many people would repeat them if given the opportunity and it served their idealogical and/or selfish interests, unless it was more convenient to do the right thing.
Yeah I also think we should look at the past and the present in order to create a better future, which is why I say one famine once is better than constant famines like we have now. How many millions die of hunger each year? How many have died at the hands of capitalism? How many are dying? While we have food available. This isn’t even to count for the famines that were enacted on purpose like those the british did in Ireland and in India.
Meanwhile both the USSR and China managed to eliminate famine in regions that had been plagued by it since history could account for it. Were the countries perfect? Far from it. Pretending that they are somehow worse for eliminating famine while people are starving in countries with food on the shelves is ridiculous.
They eliminated famine in their own borders … after causing famine in their own borders. Congratulations, I guess?
International efforts to deliver food aid to those most in need are typically hampered by war, not by a lack of food. Real supply & demand issues caused by poor yields, conflicts & other supply chain disruptions often drive up prices which hits the poor the hardest, but we haven’t had a global food shortage in a long time.
Both imperial Russia and Qing China were plagued by frequent famines, I don’t see how it is damnng that the PRC and the USSR had a famine in their early years of existence (after they’d fought long and drawn out wars), when they then never had famines again.
There a millions of people starving in the us today, in Europe, in africa, in south America, in the middle east, in India. There is more than enough food, but somehow these capitalist countries have millions starving. The us has kids missing lunch in school, despite food being available in cafeterias.
If one famine once in a region that used to be plagued by famines is too much for you, what does this ever-present famine then mean to you? What system do you suppose we make use of? Surely you cannot be a capitalist, since you are so staunchly against people starving
Those who care more about past tragedies than current tragedies don’t care at all. They’re just looking for some excuse to feel self-righteous.
Did you know that China is responsible for 75% of the global poverty reduction over the last 40 years?
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/e9a5bc3c-718d-57d8-9558-ce325407f737/content
This is the correct response. Practically all of global poverty reduction is being done by central planning, right now.
Do you know how China got such a huge poverty by the 1980s? Do you know how China got the wealth to start impacting it’s poverty?
Hint: the CCP took power in 1949. The Maoist era ended 30 years later, and massive economic liberalisation reforms started.
China today is a world trade powerhouse governed by an elite class (The CCP) with the proles given just enough to keep them where they are. It’s lifted them out of poverty, but it is the shining example of a totalitarian capitist state. If anybody thinks the proletariat have power in China, and it is therefore a socialist state…or that it’s classless with no elite and a communist state… well… You need to talk to some Chinese people.
You mean the Chinese people that overwhelmingly.support the CPC and their government? Ok
Yes, even those ones. I’ve met a few and the stories they tell send shivers down my spine. They think they’re telling me good thing about their country, and I listen respectfully. However, it sounds like being caged in a zoo. The keepers provide your essentials, but you have no freedom.
“Chinese people mostly like being animals”
…being treated like animals by their government, rather than the humans they are.
“Chinese people mostly like being treated like animals by their government”
Glad to see Liberals busting out the good old “it’s not real socialism!!111!!” to cope with China’s success :’)
Nuh, uh. Markets controlled by Oligarchs who spend billions to erode social safety nets do. A market socialist economy with strong regulations and systems like a UBI wouldn’t create poverty, while still being a market (albeit a very different one to what we have today). Albeit I do think that for many things (like healthcare) having a market of any kind is just dumb.
And where do these billionaires come from? Do they just spring out of the ground?
Oligarchs are a feature of capitalism, not a flaw.
A market with a UBI would simply increase rent by the UBI amount. Markets in capitalism exist to extract wealth, it is what they encourage. Thus they will support those that are best at extracting wealth, which leads to the creation of those billionaires.
*Correction: an unregulated market with UBI would.
In a regulated market, those corporations can either follow the guidelines or fuck off the market.
Or just change the regulations
Or they can enjoy the fact that they have regulatory capture and change the regulations, as has been seen historically.
For practical observance: Denmark pays a wage to university students. The function of this wage is to make sure the students can focus on their studies, instead of having to have a job that demands time from them, which would lower the quality of education.
Students also need housing, which the private sector provides in the form of “student housing”, which requires you to be a student in order to live there. This “student housing” has a rent that is usually, approximately right around the student wage - thus meaning the student needs to take a job in order to afford things such as “food” and “electricity”. This state of affairs occured despite regulations.
I said market socialist. In a market socialist economy there would be no billionaires. Also housing is an absolute necessity, which means it shouldn’t be governed by a market at all, no matter the economic system. Only things outside of staple foods, a roof over your head, utilities, drinking water, healthcare and other things absolutely necessary for your continued survival, can (not should) be governed by a market, and one that doesn’t funnel money upwards.
Capitalism in any form is absolutely horrible and should not exist.
Also, creating artificial demand should be banned.
There’s already one long-ass discussion about market socialism in this thread, so I’m not gonna start another, but glad to hear your perspective!