UKC

This thread rumbles on https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/carillion_and_capitalism-677344 
 

and people obviously have beliefs.I suspect at the root of many peoples problem with socialism or communism or leftism, lazy titles but bear with me, is that many remember the 70s and 80s, Red Robo and that stuff, and soviet era skodas and Ladas gave an idea of what that system could do.

However most western economies are massively in debt, and the one that is not that comes to mind, Norway, has had a windfall from Oil. And even here, if Norway had to compensate the world for the damage done by the CO2 that they have released, I suspect they would be skint.

Then I read this https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2018/jan/16/bankrupted-by... $2.5 million plus, to save 2 16 month premature babies, really, no matter how its funded, can any system afford that, long term.

What I wonder is this. Is our lifestyle sustainable, not just environmentally, but financially, long term. Could any system deliver it, left or right, socialist or capitalist . Or is it just a huge Ponzi scam with a can being kicked down the road, that eventually someone somewhere sometime, is going to have to deal with. 

Communism gets a bad reputation, but actually the idea behind it is great, it's jus that people are greedy. I'd suggest that some sort of Scandinavian model with higher taxes is probably the most sustainable, but I am no economist!

On the medical story that you linked, surely the idea of an NHS or something similar is that most people won't cost the system such massive amounts as these guys did, so shared amongst the whole population it is affordable (if the governement actually funds the system rather than trying to run in into the ground!). Also, to what extent are American medical costs inflated by the drugs and insurance companies? This is a genuine question, maybe they are not, but I am suspicious that they might be! Whether they are or not, what a good advert for why we must fight tooth and nail for our NHS!!

On an admittedly very simplistic level, there is no global deficit, only balance. We owe, while China (or UAE or any other cash and/or resource rich nation) lends. If we default, our lenders' wealth diminishes but the sum remains the same as our debts get written off.

It's resources you should be focused on. When the rate of asset consumption exceeds the capacity for asset creation, then the global economy must go into reverse. Again a simplification.

Not environmentally, but financially yes. We just need to reinvent money.

Currently money is the Ponzi scam. Its value has long since broken from a correlation with a value for work done. This what has led us to believe poor people owe rich people lots of money and the world is in debt to itself.

I like this meme...

https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/49048388/the-world-is-300-trillion-...

Not really, imho. Nothing to do with capitalism vs socialism. Financial cost is simply a proxy for supply and demand of finite resources (broadly, obviously there are various distortions that come into this) and as population continues to increase and expectations of living standards rise, resources become 'increasingly finite.' Everyone can't have everything. 

Regarding medical treatment specifically, it is a significant problem for the NHS that many expect cutting edge treatment to be available to them whatever the cost/benefit reality, simply because it does exist. 

How are babies born 16 months premature?

Linked article says 16 weeks.

On reflection I totally agree, that money is a proxy for something else, one of those things being environmental cost, which currently is externalised by the west, and the cost born by poorer less powerful people, eg those in Sub Saharan africa. I wonder how much health care $2.5 never mind $2.5 million, will buy in Sub Saharan Africa?

Nail on head. End of thread.

Communism is the most murderous idea. It cost over 100 000 000 lives and the score is not finished yet. And don´ t tell me I am (or my friends and relatives) greedy because I lived in shity communist state witch didn´ t work

The idea behind it wasn't to murder milllions though. The idea was to create a state of equals, which is a great idea. The problem was the leaders who didn't implement equality, they just saw an opportunity to instal a dictatorship.

I blame Thatcher

I think the point is that there are greedy people out there, who end up controlling things, socialist, capitailist or communist. And thats what buggers the job up.

That's her story and she's sticking to it.

No, the idea behind communism is that it must be installed violently because capitalists do not give up their property voluntarily. Read Marx.

Communism is "dictatorship of the proletariat"

Again, this is the implementation. The idea is that all people should be equal! 

I'm not saying I agree with how Marx suggested it should be implemented, but I do agree with the idea behind it.

I have spent large amounts of time living in Russia, I do understand how bad it was for the countries that followed it, but this is not due to the idea of equality for all, but due to the inability of people to treat everyone equally and fairly

I watched one of those survival programs based on stone age life. What struck me was that in the program the lazy , self centred and workshy ones  seemed to survive better than those who worked hard finding food etc. They worked themselves to the bone while the others nicked the food and lay about conserving energy. I guess in the real stone age those tossers would have been tossed out of the tribe. Anyway, so any system has to account for negative traits of humans as well and there will always be some who try to exploit the system for personal gain.

No, they were the Shaman. Now we call them bankers, senior civil servants and MPs.

Financially: yes, money is just a tool, like all tools it can be modified or used differently as the user chooses.

Environmentally: Not even close at present levels of consumption without almost unimaginable changes to the care taken in extracting, consuming and reusing resources. With that... maybe but I've no idea how we get there since that 'we' has to be a global we and we're not global or instinctively cooperative at scale, we're tribal and we fight to stay that way. I'd like to think education can balance if not totally counteract instinct but even universal education in a world of entrenched inequality will not suffice and fixing that inequality quickly without seriously exacerbating the environmental challenges or frightening those with privilege and the power to disrupt that process (includes you and me) seems insurmountable. Hopefully brighter minds can be applied to finding a clearer path, we don't have long and we have much work to do.

jk

Yes; but they were supported in case the tribe got involved in any heavy construction work

because the could move, move, move any mountain....

But people are not equall in their skills, motivation, endurance, intelligence, knowledge etc. How  could they be equally rewarded? The only way is to make uneqal rules disadvantaging those more capable and that´ s a worm in shiny apple of communism which causes that all attempts to install it fail to ugly dictatorship every time

The road to hell is usually paved with good intentions

Indeed they are not, but does that make them any less valuable as people? I see the principle behind communism as vauling the person and ensuring that all have a decent quality of life, regardless of whether they are not so clever, sick, injured etc. 

The practicalities of this have been shown not to work so well, but the idea behind it really appeals. 

Look up the Spanish anarchists, they see to have some good ideas.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08z007p

Sadly not available in this capitalist controlled bourgeois state we live under

How many lives have been lost due to capitalism, and still are being? Blood diamond, arms dealing, slavery!

I'm not suggesting communism is the answer, but I don't think it's got the trophy for "Deaths of Social Systems Award",, if not I think it's closely followed by a few others.

Maybe true. But for killing its own countrymen it's got an outstanding track record.

Is it? People are not equal, and to treat them as equal is catastrophic for people far from the mean - on either side of the Bell curve.  

Equality of opportunity, equality under the law, elimination of gross wage inequality - all of these are good for society and are worthy goals, but none of them are predicated on people being equal.

One might sometimes wonder why a strong populist socialist movement always seems to end with a dictatorship...  One could argue that it will never be democratically elected and thus can only arise by force, or one may argue that it’s the most successful way to con the people into their enslavement in the absence of a strong fundamentalist religious background.  Certainly things seem to go beyond random chance.

This is why Socialism is best and way to go.
Equality for everyone, reward for the ... let's say, the more intellectually endowed, but without the interstaller gap between the rich and poor, which seems to be getting worse by the day, that we have at the moment.

Then there is the Anarchism option ...

If you take empires as capitalism red in tooth and claw then I think you find it had a fairly poor track record on the millions dead.

as for communism it always seemed to be an experiment that was never carried out properly,  carl Marx envisaged it as  taking place in an established industrial nation were the proliteriate rose up and took over the resources and means of production, in reality it was always applied to industrially poor mainly agricultural countries usually at point of externally applied social trauma, Russia after 3 years of the First World War, china after the brutal Japanese invasion, Cambodia after being bombed by America ditto Vietnam, historically these have always been times when dictators have thrived, This isn't a defence of communism it's just an observation that if it was a scientific experiment it wouldn't pass any form of peer review because of poor methodology, capitalism has failed many times as well it's just got better PR

This is an outstanding xenophobic statement, it's OK as long as the deaths are Johnny Foreigner, is that it?

That's a rather deluded and insulting comment. Please think again.

If you call capitalism free market or laissez - faire, not many then.

Blood diamond, arms dealing, slavery is not related to capitalism. It exists in every kind of society

Really slavery not related to capitalism, the British Empire was built on it, and America for that matter.

Does it really matter who gets killed?

Communist, dictator or capitalist surely it's the deaths that's the problem. Singling out one system on the league table of deaths, especially when there is probably not that much in it, seems a little trite, to be insulted about.

Was Soviet Union with its 10 millon slaves in Labour camps, my country (Czechoslovakia) with some 200 000 (just for example) capitalist country? Is it North Korea?

Norway has been lucky with energy. Low population to support, but well before offshore oil it had very cheap hydroelectricity for industrial processes etc.

Our lifestyle sustainable long term? Probably not.

More demands of an increasing population, in practice more people = more pollution etc. Little discussion of limiting family size for social, and religious reasons. Many more "non-productive" old people (like me) with requirements for support increasing with age and frailty. Any greed/parasitism from all parts of the wealth spectrum doesn't help, but has always been present.

Main partial saviour might be help from new technology.

Regarding health service I do believe in NHS type system with cost spreading (ie" insurance" with no requirement for profit and using indirect wealth based contributions).

Of course it does.  The primary job of a state is to protect its citizens, if the state instead of doing that is murdering them it's not doing its basic job, it's doing the opposite.  If a state (like say the UK in WWII) kills lots of Nazis to protect its citizens it has done nothing wrong despite killing lots of people.

So are you suggesting because the Soviet Union used slavery as part of their system of control, that the slavery used in America was nothing to do with Capiatlism?

You seem to think only communism can be brutal or nasty or do bad things to other people. Seems a bit blinkered to me.

And if a state kills lots of people from another country to provide riches for itself? This is better or worse than killing you own citizens?

Where is your league table? and who's at the top?

It's bad also, in a different way.  Do you accept that it matters who a state kills and why?

Do I need a league table?  Communism in all forms tried has ended up with the state controlling the actions of its people and murdering them if they don't do what they're told.  Denying freedom to your citizens is also pretty damn bad, even if it's not as bad as actually murdering them.

Without trying to defend communism, capatilsm as practiced historically hasn't put individual freedom at the fore front either, it has usually taken some form of collective socialist action to achieve the freedoms that we take for granted now and those freedoms have really only just been practically achieved in my lifetime in a small number of countries and if you fall in the wrong demographic it could be seen as very much an ongoing process. (if you take the actual implementation of gender equality and emancipation in the US etc. etc.)

As has been pointed out Socialist democracy seems to provide something approaching a workable way forward and the capitalist v communist approach  is probably mute as both are extremely prone to failure. We don't really see capitalist societies because we have governments which is a collective system and in Neolibral thought should be minimized as much as possible so there are no checks and balances on capitalism, this hasn't yet happened so we cant really say we have a purely capitalist society  , in a purely capitalist  society we wouldn't have democratic governments as such we would have a transactional system were services would be purely on supply and demand and purchasing power. The societies and it resources would then be focused around the needs and demands of those who have the money and capital, we can then give these people some fancy titles and some ermine robes and hey presto we have come full circle.

As far as I know there is not now, and has never been, a capitalist state or an attempt to create one.  Markets are just things that exist, always have, and states manipulate those markets to achieve their aims - and this manipulation goes back millenia.  We've had monarchies, republics, etc, but no capitalisms.

I'm not sure what you mean by collective socialist actions.  Would that include forcing King John to sign Magna Carta, or Cromwell fighting the king?

I'm not sure what you mean by socialist democracy either.  We're a democracy, in the 50s (ish) we decided to start up the NHS.  That didn't change the nature of the democracy we live in, it didn't make it suddenly a "socialist" democracy as opposed to some other kind (what's the other kind anyway?) as far as I can see.

It feels like those, like yourself, arguing in favour of communism are arguing against a reality that does not exist, has never existed, and that no one wants.

I've at no point advocated communism, I stated I believe in social democracy along the lines of the Nordic model as an indication of what is achievable and yes the NHS did make us a social democracy and is very much a part of what defines us a s a nation so much so we made it a major part of our Olympic opening.

Isn't that a bit of a gross simplification - I am pretty sure that during all the recent QE not all that debt has been sold?  Of course the issue is that if you overdo it you devalue your currency. 

Re. The later discussion on Marxism, violence, as I recall Marx says a lot about the period up till the revolution, and not a whole lot about a post revolutionary economy. My opinion is that right now you can see the disparity between a buoyant stock market and stagnant wages as producing conditions Marx predicted.  Whilst you might not get a revolution a political correction is inevitable

Can't speak for much else, but regarding healthcare, I'd say that yes, we can afford to provide everyone a modern, effective healthcare service. It all depends on how we allocate the funds. For example, if instead of forcing £20 billion of cuts onto the NHS we redivert the £100 billion to be spent on the new Trident nuclear submarine class, I believe the NHS could comfortably afford to function healthily. If society as a whole adopted a healthier lifestyle e.g. went vegan (here come the trolls), then massive money pits like type 2 diabetes would be vastly reduced. Big pharmaceutical industry greed could be reigned in by governments to reduce healthcare costs, too. And, the US isn't a great benchmark for this question, because it is the most expensive in the world; in the US people pay much more for equivalent healthcare services in the UK (whilst receiving a lower quality of care). (http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2015/oct/us-healt...).

Sorry if I misunderstood - what are you advocating and what are you arguing against?

Why does having the NHS mean we’re socialist?  What does socialism mean in this sense?  I’m not saying that the NHS isn’t important/part of our country.

Socialism can describe a public/collective ownership of a system, equity or means of production, under that description the NHS is more of a socialist idea along with social housing and the welfare state, as it was something that happened through a democracy it would broadly described as social democracy.

Generally in Europe at least socialism is associated with democracy and usually doesn't advocate the public ownership of all aspects of production manufacturing etc. but does impose some control on things like labour laws, environmental laws, safety etc. as a counter balance to unfettered capitalism 

if you live in America this is communism no arguments  

Americans seem to live in a system that people assume they will become a millionaire and we tend to ere on the side of pessimism and what if, hence the welfare state. This probably results in our incredulity that poor Americans would vote for trump when he was going to Gut Obama care but this is a factor of the famous American optimism that one day they will be rich and they want to live in a country that respects and rewards the rich.

So the poor laws was socialism?  And when we developed the new model army that was socialism?  Any collective action at all?

Unfettered capitalism is a myth, it doesn't exist and never has.  Socialism in Europe (as you've defined above, collective ownership of...means of production, etc) is historically associated with the USSR, not democracy.  Control on things like labour, environment, etc existed long before socialism was dreamt up.

I've already made the point that unfettered capitalism no longer exists as such. The poor laws have their origins in the post Black Death to control  the labour market, as the landowners realised the labour shortage gave more control to labourers and upset the master serf balance. Im not sure of what 17th century environmental, labour etc controls your referring to, maybe guilds were a form of collective bargaining and there has been evolution of the concept of collective bargaining but this has been strongly resisted by the people at the top, British politics for much of the 17th and 18th century was about the political classes walking the tightrope between keeping the ruling class happy whilst doing just enough to prevent revolution from by the working class, the shadow of the guillotine haunting many a ermine glad dukes dreams.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre

change didn't come about by the good heartedness of the ruling class, it was brought about by a couple of centuries of ground up protest and political activism, a lot of it harshly punished and demonised by the press and parliament, the mother of parliaments being quite outspoken against what we would call democracy for much of the 17th and 18th century.

"control" of labour and socialist ideas of labour laws are very different things, in most cases it is an absence of control that marks more capitalist bent to a society so removal of labour laws, and environmental laws and safety laws(like the Paris accord or the bonfire of red tape that people are looking forward to sparking up once Brexit kicks in) can be the obvious thing for some one wanting more "unfettered "capitalism.

The Vegan is a touch extreme IMHO, but the real problem you have is this. Most people seem to be very quick to claim their rights, but not so keen to take on responsibilities.

It’s mostly associated with the USSR because a) their leaders found it useful to claim they’d accomplished a socialist state and b) because it’s been a handy way of smearing socialist movements elsewhere. 

Seems more likely it's because as a matter of fact in the USSR the state did own the means of production, whereas elsewhere in Europe it was/is largely in private hands.

Same question to you - what is socialism?  Does the USSR not count for some reason?

Socialism should invove social (not necessarily state) ownership of the means of production accompanied by democratic control. The USSR clearly failed on the latter criterion. 

Yes, change doesn't come without action by somebody - again was Cromwell's revolution socialism?  I do realise that we only got full sufferage last century, what I don't understand is what counts as socialism to you.

I'm not really sure what you mean here.  Do you mean laws that benefit workers are in some way inherently socialist?  When we barred children from working was that socialist?

Okay, well that's new to me.  So you'd classify all democratic countries as socialist then?

We, in the UK, also had a windfall from oil, which we largely wasted. In a way, the whole world had a windfall from petroleum in the last century - the petroleum era.

But Norway has another more unusual windfall - hydroelectric power, which means they are not so dependent on their oil.

The only 'system' I can think of that allows for sustainable 'Western' lifestyle is a massively technological one where resource is effectively unlimited.  Think Iain M Banks' Culture.  Anything that depends on human nature (for good and bad) is inherently limited by human nature.

If you cherry pick one item or individual law then no, the telling bit was when you said "we" abolished children working, this was part of a socialist movement that took a long time to get to "we" making decision that benifited us as a society rather than a select few. Don't forget in the 17th and early 18th century "we" had no political voice at all.

Political actavism like this is people playing the long game and trying to create a society that is better for their children than it was for them, at least in Britain in France they tried the short cut and in the short term that didn't work to well with the Guillotine getting rather more action than maybe people planned.

This is why we must be wary of people rolling back legislation like health and safety and labour laws, these were hard won rights and took generations to accrue, if we creep them back we could be the first generation n several centuries to leave our kids and grand kids with less rights than we have. 

No. The other necessary element is the commitment to social ownership. And before you ask, I’d say that most countries that are described as socialist probably aren’t so much socialist yet as aspiring to be socialist. 

interesting graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day#/media/File:Human_welfare...

compare Cuba with Norway...

what's the deal with Cuba?

England could also have had a hydroelectric windfall ( is that a mixed metaphor?)  The Pennines are the perfect location but have never been developed. I think this is due to the British NIMBY attitude the election of a succession of  governments that promise cake and circuses with no investment in bakeries and circus schools.

No. Every dictatorship is nasty and there are nasty democracies as well. However communist dictatorships are the worst in modern history and there is no communism without dictatorship

Well, the two worst are often reckoned to be Mao and Stalin, so you're technically correct, but being a terrible dictator is not exclusive to so-called communists. Hitler typically ranks third, then people like Leopold of Belgium and the Japanese emperor Tojo feature highly. As for 'no communism without dictatorship', the usual rejoinder is that if it's a dictatorship it isn't communism, just something pretending to be communism. 

Interesting, I'd imagine it's the easy access to goods and resources, maybe being limited in the scope makes you more inventive, ingenious and more ready to recycle and not waste so much. I very much doubt much gets thrown in the bin in Cuba unless it's completely f*cked.

Educational and health care is supposed to be very good too.

Maybe we should all move to Cuba,..................... oh! no, wait a minute!

The dictatorship of the proletariat?

There have been plenty of slaves in non-capitalist countries; including of course those African countries which supplied them in the first place. Capitalism doesn’t need slavery; exploited free labourers do fine.

jcm

Is that not debateable. The rich industrialised countries, yes, however developing countries are suffering from Climate change with limited resources, and the middle east  has been a political football for the North due to Oil, so not much of a windfall there.

According to Marx that was supposed to be a transitional phase after revolution and before the establishment of actual communism. The working class as a whole were supposed to be doing the dictating, to prevent middle-class counter-revolution.  Of course what happened was more like the dictatorship of former proletarians and assorted bourgeois agitators and intellectuals.

That’s true but slavery was a key element in the development of modern capitalism. It provided finance and drove the development of the institutions of capitalism like banking and insurance. This of course was especially true in the US. 

And they just supplied them for free I suppose, or were they staking their first steps toward capitalism. While there may have been slavery outside of capitalism, it's pretty hard to disput, America was founded on slavery, and it was a major income stream for the British Empire.

Slavery or Communism, isn't really the issue though is it?

Because present day capitalism is about, buy more, use more, and have more kids to support us in the future and cover our pensions. There comes a point where if nothing else we have nowhere to put our new stuff and dispose of the old. the world is being raped and poisoned to continue with this encouragement to have new things.

Are you any different to anyone else and is what we are describing merely human nature rather than capitalism?

It should surprise me, but doesn't, that the only alternative to what we have now that is being discussed is a system that has never worked, ever, and when given the opportunity those living under it reject it in favour of some form of capitalism.

I've read most of this thread but I think the original question deserves a response along different lines. Historically, what has largely paid for a "western lifestyle" in developed countries has been a world order in which the resources of poor countries have been exploited, through colonialism, to pay for it. 

The last 50 years has seen a steady erosion of that system towards what we now call "globalisation". Poorer countries are still exploited, to a degree, but the beneficiaries are rich people in these countries as well as in the west, and the significant losers are poorer low skilled workers in the west.

We still have a system in the UK which just about supports those with low skills in a "western lifestyle", through minimum wage legislation and benefits, but it's looking increasingly creaky when labour of the same value can be obtained at a fraction of the cost in Asia, or labour of greater value can be imported into the UK, via immigration, at the same minimum wage. And measures to prevent outsourcing or cutting off immigration will not solve this.  It will simply become more economic to get much of the low skilled work done by machines. 

I don't think there's a simple solution to this, but it will never be solved if it isn't addressed, and currently I don't think it's being addressed.

Martin

capitalism killed 205,000,000

http://guerrillaontologies.com/2014/05/attempting-the-impossible-calculatin...

A good forward step would be for people to accept responsibility.

I find this ironic, in the baby story millions are spent to save a baby born at 24ish weeks, yet our NHS would abort a baby up to 24 weeks, mind that is "

• surgical abortion – you have a minor procedure to remove the pregnancy and normally go home soon afterwards"

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/abortion/#what-happens-during-an-abortion

I have no particular view on abortion, but this seems bit odd