Has anyone read Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy?

[Dan '82]

I don’t read many books by libertarian economists as a rule they lack original thinking, but I think Schumpeter’s “new class” might be relevant to my current thinking about class dynamics.  If anyone has read it could they give a summer of what Schumpeter and if they think it’s worthwhile?

[pbrower2a]

The first book that I would recommend as an introduction to libertarian thought is The Road to Serfdom (Friedrich Hayek),  a warning of the hazards of economic planning. Bureaucrats can plan while facing few consequences for the destruction that such planning can do to those obliged to fit the plan. Planning underrates specialized skills and denies the capacity of economic actors to improvise solutions to economic problems. Although one can dissent with Hayek's call for all power to the capitalists, one needs recognize that a market is far preferable to a planned order. In a planned society, the workers pay for the failures of the planners, but the planners are generally exempt from the consequences of their failures except for a proltarian revolution that topples and exterminates them.

Ayn Rand is a favorite among some right-wing intellectuals, but beware: my libertarian brother tells me that people who have read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead all the way through are insufferable jerks for six months. Such should warn us of her flaws as a novelist. I might suggest Anthem for suggesting a positive sequel to George Orwell's 1984 -- with assertion of Self as the sole way to achieve freedom after living in a world that obliterates all self-hood. Anthem is eminently readable, unlike her bloated 'masterpieces' and her cranky efforts at philosophy.

[Odin]

(07-05-2016, 07:55 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The first book that I would recommend as an introduction to libertarian thought is The Road to Serfdom (Friedrich Hayek),  a warning of the hazards of economic planning. Bureaucrats can plan while facing few consequences for the destruction that such planning can do to those obliged to fit the plan. Planning underrates specialized skills and denies the capacity of economic actors to improvise solutions to economic problems. Although one can  dissent with Hayek's call for all power to the capitalists, one needs recognize that a market is far preferable to a planned order. In a planned society, the workers pay for the failures of the planners, but the planners are generally exempt from the consequences of their failures except for a proltarian revolution that topples and exterminates them.

Ayn Rand is a favorite among some right-wing intellectuals, but beware: my libertarian brother tells me that people who have read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead all the way through are insufferable jerks for six months. Such should warn us of her flaws as a novelist. I might suggest Anthem for suggesting a positive sequel to George Orwell's 1984 -- with assertion of Self as the sole way to achieve freedom after living in a world that obliterates all self-hood. Anthem is eminently readable, unlike her bloated 'masterpieces' and her cranky efforts at philosophy.

Hayek is one of the few Libertarian political philosophers I have any respect for. "Centralized Planning" was the hip "in" thing all along the political spectrum when he wrote The Road to Serfdom and it needed a good takedown, although I think his own ideological biases made him too quick to condemn all Leftist thought as if it were Stalinism.

[TnT]

When I was in my MBA studies we read some Schumpeter. The thing that sticks out for me is the concept of "Creative Destruction."

There was much made of that - the idea that there is this inexorable force at work that destroys obsolete ideas, while the new and innovative shove them out of the way and in turn, eventually become the old shopworn.

[Eric the Green]

I think Pete Townshend and The Who had the same idea.

[Eric the Green]

(07-06-2016, 05:08 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(07-06-2016, 10:49 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I think Pete Townshend and The Who had the same idea.

Meet the new boss .... same as the old boss.

Yeeeaaahhh!

[Galen]

(07-05-2016, 04:40 PM)Odin Wrote: Hayek is one of the few Libertarian political philosophers I have any respect for. "Centralized Planning" was the hip "in" thing all along the political spectrum when he wrote The Road to Serfdom and it needed a good takedown, although I think his own ideological biases made him too quick to condemn all Leftist thought as if it were Stalinism.

Considering that is where leftist thought tends to go in the end it would seem that Hayek's position is quite reasonable.  So far every place that goes down that road ends up in poverty complete with a nasty police state.  Let us look at places that leftist thought created, as I recall there was the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba and, my current personal favorite, Venezuela.  Then there is Europe which seems to be sliding into poverty, if more slowly.  Not sure if they are a police state currently but if history is any guide they will get there eventually.

[Odin]

(07-06-2016, 08:38 PM)Galen Wrote:

(07-05-2016, 04:40 PM)Odin Wrote: Hayek is one of the few Libertarian political philosophers I have any respect for. "Centralized Planning" was the hip "in" thing all along the political spectrum when he wrote The Road to Serfdom and it needed a good takedown, although I think his own ideological biases made him too quick to condemn all Leftist thought as if it were Stalinism.

Considering that is where leftist thought tends to go in the end it would seem that Hayek's position is quite reasonable.  So far every place that goes down that road ends up in poverty complete with a nasty police state.  Let us look at places that leftist thought created, as I recall there was the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba and, my current personal favorite, Venezuela.  Then there is Europe which seems to be sliding into poverty, if more slowly.  Not sure if they are a police state currently but if history is any guide they will get there eventually.

Marxism-Leninism is not the alpha and omega of Leftist thought, and none of the regimes you listed were truly socialist, by which I mean worker control of the means of production. You seem to be stuck in the ignorant belief that socialism = "big government", a belief created by decades of right-wing propaganda and by Social-Democratic parties trying to insist they were still socialist.

[Galen]

(07-07-2016, 04:03 PM)Odin Wrote: Marxism-Leninism is not the alpha and omega of Leftist thought, and none of the regimes you listed were truly socialist, by which I mean worker control of the means of production. You seem to be stuck in the ignorant belief that socialism = "big government", a belief created by decades of right-wing propaganda and by Social-Democratic parties trying to insist they were still socialist.

First, I believe it was Lenin that said "The goal of socialism is communism".  I have run in more than a few of that type here in the People's Republic of Portland.  Second, the continuing attempts by the left leave us with and ever larger and more oppressive government because all a bureaucracy knows to do is grow ever bigger and acquire more power.  The end result of this progression is a more or less totalitarian regime that knows know limits on its power.  By the way socialism by definition is bigger government since that is who ends up controlling everything in such an environment.

These expansion of government are not the product of libertarian thought or the classical liberals.  This is the product of the left trying to solve every little problem with the sledgehammer of government and it isn't working.  The right unfortunately has its desire for war and the enforcement methods used there are now coming home.  If there was a choice between using those methods and shrinking the size and scope government I would be willing to bet that the left is perfectly fine with using such police state tactics.

[Mikebert]

(07-08-2016, 01:27 AM)Galen Wrote: I believe it was Lenin that said "The goal of socialism is communism".

The terms "socialist" and "communist" are jargon in the sense Lenin was using them.  They do not have the same meaning to non-Marxists.

For me, communism is a brand, like Kleenex, whereas socialism is a generic term like facial tissue.  Marx and Lenin wanted people to believe that their Communism was the best kind of socialism, or even that it was the only kind possible.

Some types of socialism are perfectly compatible with free enterprise and a market economy.  Communism is not.

How do you define the two?

[Odin]

(07-08-2016, 08:42 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(07-08-2016, 01:27 AM)Galen Wrote: I believe it was Lenin that said "The goal of socialism is communism".

The terms "socialist" and "communist" are jargon in the sense Lenin was using them.  They do not have the same meaning to non-Marxists.

For me, communism is a brand, like Kleenex, whereas socialism is a generic term like facial tissue.  Marx and Lenin wanted people to believe that their Communism was the best kind of socialism, or even that it was the only kind possible.

Some types of socialism are perfectly compatible with free enterprise and a market economy.  Communism is not.

How do you define the two?

Also, Marxism isn't the only Communist ideology, IIRC the followers of Murray Bookchin also call themselves Communists.

[pbrower2a]

(07-08-2016, 01:27 AM)Galen Wrote:

(07-07-2016, 04:03 PM)Odin Wrote: Marxism-Leninism is not the alpha and omega of Leftist thought, and none of the regimes you listed were truly socialist, by which I mean worker control of the means of production. You seem to be stuck in the ignorant belief that socialism = "big government", a belief created by decades of right-wing propaganda and by Social-Democratic parties trying to insist they were still socialist.

First, I believe it was Lenin that said "The goal of socialism is communism".  I have run in more than a few of that type here in the People's Republic of Portland.  Second, the continuing attempts by the left leave us with and ever larger and more oppressive government because all a bureaucracy knows to do is grow ever bigger and acquire more power.  The end result of this progression is a more or less totalitarian regime that knows know limits on its power.  By the way socialism by definition is bigger government since that is who ends up controlling everything in such an environment.

You have it backwards. Lenin spoke of his form of socialism, to wit Marxism-Leninism. Other socialists may see socialism as the fulfillment of liberal democracy, a way to economic justice. Lenin was a very flawed ruler, as shown by the failure of his style of socialism within a couple of years.

The Left is no monolith. Some on the Left more competitive, participatory democracy with solid checks and balances against despotism and autocracy -- and believe that socialism is necessary for democracy at its fullest. Some have no problem with the Gulag or the killing fields should such accelerate socialism.

...So what is Communism as Marx saw it? The final stage of human progress, the end of history, the time in which ease supplants need. The State withers because Humanity no longer needs inequity and repression to enforce class privilege and bureaucratic power. Such results from productivity that makes poverty no longer a control over people.

Quote:These expansion of government are not the product of libertarian thought or the classical liberals.  This is the product of the left trying to solve every little problem with the sledgehammer of government and it isn't working.  The right unfortunately has its desire for war and the enforcement methods used there are now coming home.  If there was a choice between using those methods and shrinking the size and scope government I would be willing to bet that the left is perfectly fine with using such police state tactics.

I do not trust the Right to eschew the lash, the concentration camp, or the torture chamber. Its ideal of freedom is often the ability of elites to exploit and humiliate their lessers at every chance.  The Right concept of freedom is the freedom of the lord of the manor or the plantation to treat his serfs or slaves brutally.

[radind]

(07-08-2016, 04:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-08-2016, 01:27 AM)Galen Wrote:

(07-07-2016, 04:03 PM)Odin Wrote: Marxism-Leninism is not the alpha and omega of Leftist thought, and none of the regimes you listed were truly socialist, by which I mean worker control of the means of production. You seem to be stuck in the ignorant belief that socialism = "big government", a belief created by decades of right-wing propaganda and by Social-Democratic parties trying to insist they were still socialist.

First, I believe it was Lenin that said "The goal of socialism is communism".  I have run in more than a few of that type here in the People's Republic of Portland.  Second, the continuing attempts by the left leave us with and ever larger and more oppressive government because all a bureaucracy knows to do is grow ever bigger and acquire more power.  The end result of this progression is a more or less totalitarian regime that knows know limits on its power.  By the way socialism by definition is bigger government since that is who ends up controlling everything in such an environment.

You have it backwards. Lenin spoke of his form of socialism, to wit Marxism-Leninism. Other socialists may see socialism as the fulfillment of liberal democracy, a way to economic justice. Lenin was a very flawed ruler, as shown by the failure of his style of socialism within a couple of years.

The Left is no monolith. Some on the Left more competitive, participatory democracy with solid checks and balances against despotism and autocracy -- and believe that socialism is necessary for democracy at its fullest. Some have no problem with the Gulag or the killing fields should such accelerate socialism.

...So what is Communism as Marx saw it? The final stage of human progress, the end of history, the time in which ease supplants need. The State withers because Humanity no longer needs inequity and repression to enforce class privilege and bureaucratic power. Such results from productivity that makes poverty no longer a control over people.

Quote:These expansion of government are not the product of libertarian thought or the classical liberals.  This is the product of the left trying to solve every little problem with the sledgehammer of government and it isn't working.  The right unfortunately has its desire for war and the enforcement methods used there are now coming home.  If there was a choice between using those methods and shrinking the size and scope government I would be willing to bet that the left is perfectly fine with using such police state tactics.

I do not trust the Right to eschew the lash, the concentration camp, or the torture chamber. Its ideal of freedom is often the ability of elites to exploit and humiliate their lessers at every chance.  The Right concept of freedom is the freedom of the lord of the manor or the plantation to treat his serfs or slaves brutally.

The US is now controlled by Secular Humanists , so you can relax and I will worry.

[pbrower2a]

(07-08-2016, 06:07 PM)radind Wrote:

(07-08-2016, 04:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-08-2016, 01:27 AM)Galen Wrote:

(07-07-2016, 04:03 PM)Odin Wrote: Marxism-Leninism is not the alpha and omega of Leftist thought, and none of the regimes you listed were truly socialist, by which I mean worker control of the means of production. You seem to be stuck in the ignorant belief that socialism = "big government", a belief created by decades of right-wing propaganda and by Social-Democratic parties trying to insist they were still socialist.

First, I believe it was Lenin that said "The goal of socialism is communism".  I have run in more than a few of that type here in the People's Republic of Portland.  Second, the continuing attempts by the left leave us with and ever larger and more oppressive government because all a bureaucracy knows to do is grow ever bigger and acquire more power.  The end result of this progression is a more or less totalitarian regime that knows know limits on its power.  By the way socialism by definition is bigger government since that is who ends up controlling everything in such an environment.

You have it backwards. Lenin spoke of his form of socialism, to wit Marxism-Leninism. Other socialists may see socialism as the fulfillment of liberal democracy, a way to economic justice. Lenin was a very flawed ruler, as shown by the failure of his style of socialism within a couple of years.

The Left is no monolith. Some on the Left more competitive, participatory democracy with solid checks and balances against despotism and autocracy -- and believe that socialism is necessary for democracy at its fullest. Some have no problem with the Gulag or the killing fields should such accelerate socialism.

...So what is Communism as Marx saw it? The final stage of human progress, the end of history, the time in which ease supplants need. The State withers because Humanity no longer needs inequity and repression to enforce class privilege and bureaucratic power. Such results from productivity that makes poverty no longer a control over people.

Quote:These expansion of government are not the product of libertarian thought or the classical liberals.  This is the product of the left trying to solve every little problem with the sledgehammer of government and it isn't working.  The right unfortunately has its desire for war and the enforcement methods used there are now coming home.  If there was a choice between using those methods and shrinking the size and scope government I would be willing to bet that the left is perfectly fine with using such police state tactics.

I do not trust the Right to eschew the lash, the concentration camp, or the torture chamber. Its ideal of freedom is often the ability of elites to exploit and humiliate their lessers at every chance.  The Right concept of freedom is the freedom of the lord of the manor or the plantation to treat his serfs or slaves brutally.

The US is now controlled by Secular Humanists , so you can relax and I will worry.

I thought that we had government by lobbyists, a serious compromise of democracy.

We secular humanists don't have a problem with the expression of devout faith. Of course we tend to mock religious expressions that prove hateful or moronic.

[radind]

(07-08-2016, 11:07 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-08-2016, 06:07 PM)radind Wrote:

(07-08-2016, 04:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-08-2016, 01:27 AM)Galen Wrote:

(07-07-2016, 04:03 PM)Odin Wrote: Marxism-Leninism is not the alpha and omega of Leftist thought, and none of the regimes you listed were truly socialist, by which I mean worker control of the means of production. You seem to be stuck in the ignorant belief that socialism = "big government", a belief created by decades of right-wing propaganda and by Social-Democratic parties trying to insist they were still socialist.

First, I believe it was Lenin that said "The goal of socialism is communism".  I have run in more than a few of that type here in the People's Republic of Portland.  Second, the continuing attempts by the left leave us with and ever larger and more oppressive government because all a bureaucracy knows to do is grow ever bigger and acquire more power.  The end result of this progression is a more or less totalitarian regime that knows know limits on its power.  By the way socialism by definition is bigger government since that is who ends up controlling everything in such an environment.

You have it backwards. Lenin spoke of his form of socialism, to wit Marxism-Leninism. Other socialists may see socialism as the fulfillment of liberal democracy, a way to economic justice. Lenin was a very flawed ruler, as shown by the failure of his style of socialism within a couple of years.

The Left is no monolith. Some on the Left more competitive, participatory democracy with solid checks and balances against despotism and autocracy -- and believe that socialism is necessary for democracy at its fullest. Some have no problem with the Gulag or the killing fields should such accelerate socialism.

...So what is Communism as Marx saw it? The final stage of human progress, the end of history, the time in which ease supplants need. The State withers because Humanity no longer needs inequity and repression to enforce class privilege and bureaucratic power. Such results from productivity that makes poverty no longer a control over people.

Quote:These expansion of government are not the product of libertarian thought or the classical liberals.  This is the product of the left trying to solve every little problem with the sledgehammer of government and it isn't working.  The right unfortunately has its desire for war and the enforcement methods used there are now coming home.  If there was a choice between using those methods and shrinking the size and scope government I would be willing to bet that the left is perfectly fine with using such police state tactics.

I do not trust the Right to eschew the lash, the concentration camp, or the torture chamber. Its ideal of freedom is often the ability of elites to exploit and humiliate their lessers at every chance.  The Right concept of freedom is the freedom of the lord of the manor or the plantation to treat his serfs or slaves brutally.

The US is now controlled by Secular Humanists , so you can relax and I will worry.

I thought that we had government by lobbyists, a serious compromise of democracy.

We secular humanists don't have a problem with the expression of devout faith. Of course we tend to mock religious expressions that prove hateful or moronic.

Lobbyists have a lot of power( on both sides), but my take is that the Secular Humanists are now a voting majority and that fear of the right is overblown.
Mockery seems to be rampant with no difference of opinion tolerated. 
Too much labeling to suit me.

[pbrower2a]

An example of hateful: Fred Phelps's "godh@tesf@gs.com"
An example of moronic: Jimmy Swaggart calling evolution "evil-lution".

I consider neither representative of Christianity. Indeed, devout Christians can mock this stuff.

...I have an argument for the existence of God as a Creator and Enforcer, and I think that you might like it.

The Universe makes sense, and we humans exist with the ability to make sense of it. Sure. we have our limitations, one of which is the inability to understand randomness. But random phenomena make the world much of what it is.

Start with the periodic law of the elements and the curve of binding energy. The first row of atoms is but two atoms, the completion of an electron cloud ending with two electrons. If the outermost shell could contain four elements, then hydrogen and helium would be a solid elements, and much of the primordial hydrogen and helium would congeal as planets. That would be a very different universe. Lithium would be a halogen, beryllium would be an inert gas, and boron would be an alkali metal. So those elements aren't particularly common. Carbon becomes an alkaline-earth metal, and common as it is, it would mess up life. Nitrogen would be somewhere in between boron and aluminum as we know them in chemical properties, also messing up life. Oxygen would be much like carbon, relatively scarce fluorine rather like nitrogen but its scarcity messing up biochemistry, neon something like oxygen, sodium a dangerous halogen like fluorine (messing up biochemistry), magnesium a very common (and suffocating) inert gas. I could go further, with commonplace iron taking the role of the element chromium and comparatively-scarce zinc taking over for iron -- making up the magnetic field of an Earth-sized planet much weaker and making blood hard to form.

Change the binding law of nuclear energy so that the low point is calcium or titanium, and iron becomes rare, which would be big trouble for magnetic fields and hemoglobin which would depend upon a far scarcer and less-readily available element. Move the low point on the binding curve of energy to germanium, and highly-toxic arsenic becomes commonplace. Move it to krypton, and planetary atmospheres flood with inert (and irrespirable) krypton.

[radind]

(07-09-2016, 01:27 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: ...
...I have an argument for the existence of God as a Creator and Enforcer, and I think that you might like it.

The Universe makes sense, and we humans exist with the ability to make sense of it. Sure. we have our limitations, one of which is the inability to understand randomness. But random phenomena make the world much of what it is.

Start with the periodic law of the elements and the curve of binding energy. The first row of atoms is but two atoms, the completion of an electron cloud ending with two electrons. If the outermost shell could contain four elements, then hydrogen and helium would be a solid elements, and much of the primordial hydrogen and helium would congeal as planets. That would be a very different universe. Lithium would be a halogen, beryllium would be an inert gas, and boron would be an alkali metal. So those elements aren't particularly common. Carbon becomes an alkaline-earth metal, and common as it is, it would mess up life. Nitrogen would be somewhere in between boron and aluminum as we know them in chemical properties, also messing up life. Oxygen would be much like carbon, relatively scarce fluorine rather like nitrogen but its scarcity messing up biochemistry, neon something like oxygen, sodium a dangerous halogen like fluorine (messing up biochemistry), magnesium a very common (and suffocating) inert gas.  I could go further, with commonplace iron taking the role of the element chromium and comparatively-scarce zinc taking over for iron -- making up the magnetic field of an Earth-sized planet much weaker and making blood hard to form.

Change the binding law of nuclear energy so that the low point is calcium or titanium, and iron becomes rare, which would be big trouble for magnetic fields and hemoglobin which would depend upon a far scarcer and less-readily available element. Move the low point on the binding curve of energy to germanium, and highly-toxic arsenic becomes commonplace.  Move it to krypton, and planetary atmospheres flood with inert (and irrespirable) krypton.

 Thanks. I do not resonate to that argument, but I do enjoy many of the articles from the ASA such as this one:

Randomness and God’s Nature
http://www.godofchance.com/pdf/PSCF6-12Bradley.pdf