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March 23, 2007 03:35 AM UTC
33 Comments
technically, is the opposite of socialism (liberalism was originally loosely synonymous with individualism). But I think, in a sense, you’re right, and that it is a very good thing that will hopefully evolve over time.
Look at all the good things it has done for Laos, N. Korea, Vietnam, China and Cuba.
judging from the inclusion of some societies horribly marred by Communist experiments. And I agree wholeheartedly that socialism and communism, as intentional political-economic ideologies, have been disastrous: They dismantle, or obstruct the development of, relatively decentralized political and economic systems which better exploit “the genius of the many,” while concentrating power into few hands for the benefit of those few. No argument whatsoever.
However, I believe that, by a very generous interpretation, Marx was in some ways right, though his time-line and sense of the process involved were pretty far off the mark. Marx’s contention was that Capitalism, the most advanced and progressive political-economic system to date, suffers from “internal contradictions,” that, upon the maturity of the system, lead to a revolution (not necessarily a violent one, though Marx was a rabble-rouser as well), giving way to a different system, one which better distributes the fruits of human enterprise.
I believe that he was prescient in these ways: In spite of, and, in some ways, because of, its robustness in the exploitation of Nature and the production of wealth, there are indeed “internal contradictions” within Capitalism, and society does indeed gradually address them in ways which produce a “revolution,” and the production of a new paradigm. This is a very natural process, and is evidenced wherever paradigms of any kind exists: Religious, scientific, political, cultural, you name it. Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is the best model: Anomolies accumulate within the dominant paradigm, energy is focused on resolving those anomolies, and, as a result, a new, more refined, paradigm emerges.
The anomolies of capitalism rest on the fact that, while producing vast wealth, it completely fails, on its own, to provide required and desired public goods, and produces as a by-product many very robust public bads. The failure to provide public goods is what necessitates the continuation of governments that tax citizens and, ideally, act as their agent, investing the money in collective purchases (military, police, roads, public education, etc.). Government also attempts to regulate against the public bads (environmental problems forming the largest and most critical category).
As economists have long known, and on which topic there is a huge literature, markets are not sufficient, nor optimally efficient, on their own: Hierarchies (governments, corportations, organizations) are often better solutions to economic challenges, exploiting economies of scale, providing public goods, preventing public bads. It follows logically that the optimal strategy for society is not to favor a sub-optimal system, tacking on corrective measures in an ad hoc fashion, but rather to seek the optimum balance between hierarchies, markets (and, I would add, norms and ideologies as well, whose generated forms can be included as semi-predictable and controllable effects of policies with semi-predictable consequences).
That optimum balance increasingly resembles a hybrid between capitalism and socialism, exploiting the robustness of decentralized, self-interest motivated enterprise, while guiding that process (the importance of which John Maynard Keynes emphasized, to great effect). That is what my original little blurb meant.
Now, if you prefer jingoism to analysis, by all means, cite a few cases of something that has nothing to do with what I’m talking about in order to debunk a much more subtle and complex set of considerations.
Stop lecturing professor, we were all impressed by your intellect within the first two paragraphs. I gave actual examples of the eventual outcome of what you were talking about in one poorly constructed sentence, yet in that whole 7 paragraph diatribe you managed to miss the mark. Please enlighten me on the society that is benefitting from a socialist or communist foundation.
and that carry a label. In the real world, there is limitless variety, not a few simple categories, and some aspects of what you call “socialism” or “communism” have certainly been woven into the fabric of some very successful societies: Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands are famous for their generous social welfare programs, for examples, and, while global competition has limited how far they can go, my friends in those countries are delighted by the system they’ve developed -even my friends there who are fairly wealthy and pay huge taxes. I certainly find their system preferable to ours, and, if the playing field were leveled (as may well be the case some day), I think it could go a bit further to the great benefit of the world’s population.
By the way, I explicitly said, in the first paragraph, that I don’t believe that societies built on “a socialist or communist foundation” do well, because the intentional imposition of those doctrines destroy incentives and overcentralize power. What I did say is that the defects of capitalism, incrementally addressed through representative government, tend to give way to some quasi-socialist modification, and that that the resulting hybrid is better than either of the more extreme social forms.
I’m glad you were impressed, but “Yev” is fine, thanks.
I gave the only examples that there truly are. While I can not speak, without a bit of research, on Sweden or the Netherlands I can speak on Denmark. My grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Denmark because of that nonsense. While I am proud to be a Dane I do think Will got it right when he said “There is something rotten in the State of Denmark.”
various commune movements in various times and places, the examples are endless. You listed the only examples (more or less) of societies labled “Communist.” And, I don’t know when your grandparents immigrated, but the largely successful western European experiment in high levels of social welfare spending began, I would guess, in the 1960s, and began to really pay off in the 1970s.
I do not have the statistical data, but I am pretty sure that there has been enormous satisfaction in these programs and in these societies. People like living in societies with violent crime rates less than a tenth of our own, where poverty has largely been eradicated, where town and country are both fairy-tale clean, and where most people enjoy moderate affluence. It doesn’t sound so horrible to me!
But, yeah, you’re right: If we’re talking about a bunch of commies, then it doesn’t really matter how well they’re living. They got it wrong because of the word you use to describe it.
And, just to make sure that this thing I’ve repeated in each post isn’t lost: I agree with you on what, I presume, is your actual belief, that what we call communist or socialist doctrine, as a doctrine in and of itself, doesn’t work. It creates perverse incentives (there was an old soviet workers saying: “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work,” and everyone knew not to buy a big ticket item stamped with a date near the end of the month, because it was undoubtedly slapped together with spit and a prayer to meet quota), and tends toward totalitarianism.
But, even so, the New Deal was both very successful and very popular, and, to this day, no politician, no matter how conservative, would dare to directly attack social security or medicare on the basis of their being just a little bit socialist. And yet we all know that they are.
The world is full of variety, with a little of this and a little of that mixed together in various ways. Some of the best mixtures include elements of what we call socialism. You may not agree, but just insisting that Cuba, China, et. al. prove that all things communist or socialist are bad isn’t much of an argument.
Those folks almost two hundred years ago, founders of Oneida, New York. Doubt if the local C of C points out that one of the tenets was that post-menopausal women initiated young men into the joys of sex and took care of their needs without babies.
Pretty damned logical to me.
and how much more I would have been able to focus on other objectives, had I had the benefit of such an institution in the blind and stumbling horniness of youth!
One of the great B&W masters, used the phrase “the tyranny of ecstasy” within a larger writing. I latched onto it. Ecstasy is a harsh dominix and I was once her toy.
Camille Paglia, in Sexual Personnae, praises prostitutes for “mopping up the excess semen of the world.” How un-PC, how true.
BTW, she’s back on Salon.com .
Just cuz you don’t like – or understand? – what he says doesn’t mean that it is invalid.
Just as there is no pure Communist or Capitalist economic systems, there is no pure Socialistic system. The Scandinavian nations probably have as much experience as any culture with socialsim. Since WWII, they have constantly tweaked the system, sometimes rejecting what hasn’t worked, sometimes trying new things.
Paul Krugman recently pointed out that althought Swedish taxes are virtually double ours in total GDP, their economy is doing very well, thank you. Unemployment is just a tick over ours (and he did not get into their more accurate employment reporting), everyone has health care, and optimism is abundant.
My only beef with Steve’s post is calling Capitalism a “politico-economic” system. It has nothing to do with politics, see what is going on in totalitarian, Communistic China. Capitalism is economic only.
I know this is falling on deaf eyes, so to speak, that you have difficulty getting past generalities and emotions and you conflate political labels with economic labels.
I usually make the distinction between political and economic systems, but sometimes draw other boundaries, depending on the context of the conversation.
“Economy” originally refered to the bookkeeping of the home or manner. When the discipline of economics first developed (in the wake of “The Wealth of Nations,” around the turn of the 18th-19th century), the name of the new discipline was “political economy,” to distinguish it from household economy. The qualifier was mostly dropped, except by Marxists and, later, Game Theorists, who retain the emphasis on the political dimension of national and international economics. But I still agree with you that, in most contexts, it’s more useful to distinguish between political and economic systems.
I had kinda given up on ColoradoPols for a while assuming that posters and readers seemed to be largely composed only of wing nuts from both political parties who form their political analyses from talk radio.
It’s refreshing to seem something from someone who actually has some education in political economy participating on this board.
needs to be un-Hannitized. Or at least bought a dictionary. My neighbor used to wear the same T-shirt, he was an idiot too.
Roads are socialized travel – are you against them?
you forget how they built E-470…..it must be the only road on which Gecko travels since he swears that he pays so much in taxes but accepts NO public benefits in return, including I presume use of public highways and bridges
….such wisdom and talent as “Tank” possesses should not be wasted on simply one race!
Forget Congress, go for the big time!
You’re a national embarrassment and the sooner you go down in flames and crawl back into obscurity, the better.
(if the Gestapo are on their way, they had better hurry while the cookies are still warm!)
But, I’ll simply say…to one of the most highly respected participants in “the game”…and on CoPols…your perspective is, as always, spot on!
as quixotic as it may be, let’s take advantage of Tom’s imminent departure!
TT scares me with his fearmongering tactics. I think both Dems and Repubs would be scared if he runs. Dems because there’s some chance he might win (particularly if the immigration issue becomes heated in 2008), but Repubs more so because the man has no qualms about trashing people in his own party (including the president) who don’t back him on his pet issue. Tancredo vs. Schaeffer COULD be a very nasty, bloody, primary fight.
He’s a loose cannon — you never know who he’s going to hit.
Although I cringe to see -CO after your name, your entertainment value is priceless.
if for no other reason than just to piss off the crybaby liberal lefties.
I would need no other reason than that.
I hope he runs so that he gives up his House seat (he will of course lose the nomination). We would get someone bad, but not as bad as him as a replacement.
$1 million puts Tom Tancredo in Dennis Kucinich land. Serious candidates are doing $500,000 a day not $1 million a quarter. Tancredo will have his fun and than run for reelection.
They generally balance one another out on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. But today both “Dennis the Menace” and “Back to the Border” Tancredo were on the same side in voting against the supplemental appropriations bill for the Iraq War with restrictions imposed.
P.S. I agree with you that when all is said and done, he will flip flop and announce that he’s running for re-election. (Much like breaking his term-limits pledge. He’ll announce that there’s still too much work to be done and he never realized what a void his retirement would leave in the U.S. House, yadda yadda yadda.)