The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(02-11-2021, 05:15 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(02-11-2021, 03:02 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-11-2021, 05:23 AM)Einzige Wrote:

(02-11-2021, 05:15 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-11-2021, 04:23 AM)Einzige Wrote: All this is really code for "it's time to make an example of rural whites and sacrifice their wealth to the needs of Capital the way minorities have". It6just another attempt to destroy class consciousness.

The focus is on COVID, racism and the environment rather than the division of wealth.  The diversity of modern problems is much wider than the capitol centric Marxist perspective.  I suspect something will be done with the division of wealth, if only because change tax policy will be necessary in this economically stretched time, but the division of wealth doesn't seem to be the central issue of this crisis.

90% of modern social ills are driven by Capital.

Communism is not a method of redistributing wealth but a radical and fundamental alteration in the mode of production altogether. It does away with wealth as such.

What's the natural drive associated with Communism that Communism relies on for the system to work and succeed long term?

The need for social production. There is coming a time when capitalism literally breaks down - when a profit can no longer be turned. And yet things will still need to be produced.

Quote: Marxist view on how exactly this might be achieved could be beneficial.

Communism is not intrinsically about more productivity. It is about applied productivity - production to meet need. Indeed, a Communist world system might produce less overall than capitalism, but will meet it's own needs far more efficiently. Markets are unnecessary where need can be communicated directly to producers.

Initially, labor output is to be measured in units of labor vouchers - nonfungible, nonaccumulative, non-interest bearing certificates of work that are invalidated after use. Eventually, so goes the theory, even these could be dispensed with.

Will there be freeloaders on this system? Of course - and their needs will still be met, and these will vary person to person. But most will choose to produce at the very least for want of anything better to do, and because their survival will not be tied to a job (and because credentialism will largely be a thing of the past) they will be at liberty to experiment with their capacities and try a wide variety of things. And there are freeloaders today- I refuse to work under capitalism and consider this my obligatory social production. I would have worked happily under Communism, where I was confident my basic needs were being met and that labor  incurred no obligations to an employer.

Technology makes the economic conditions of the early capitalism that Marx knew utterly irrelevant. Scarcity and low productivity were the problems of Marx' time; they are not now. More people have a problem with surfeit than with material scarcity. Of course it remains possible to exploit people harshly...  but even at that, the problem may not be so much working people to exhaustion on starvation pay as it is wasting people in jobs far too small for their talents. I have frequently gone to dollar stores for a quick purchase (frozen entree and perhaps a soft drink) only to find that one of the clerks is taking a smoking break. Someone who needs a drag on a coffin nail to maintain some semblance of consent with one's way of life pro0bably has a very unsatisfying life.  Such probably shows a lack of imagination and foresight.

Reasonable assumptions are that the system will prepare people for lives that justify the investment in human capital through education. Formal education may have a diminishing return... but not that much. Maybe the people who gravitate to jobs as clerks in dollar stores are toward the bottom in learning and diligence, or they are very young and marking time until they get something better... which could be getting married to some "good provider".  OK, that too is a myth. 

As productive capacity increases, profit margins shrink. $5 per $150 for a TV set of which ten million are made is better than $50 per $500 for a TV set of which 200,000 are made. Henry Ford got rich selling the cheapest car on the mass market in his time, the Model T. Sure, the car was a piece of crap, but he could sell his cars more cheaply than those who had lower productivity. Business still needs a profit, but it can make up lower margins on higher volumes.  

Here is the problem in the terms of the Generational Theory: every Crisis has some Great Devaluation, and in this one in the United States it seems to be in the pay for material productivity. The capitalists have no problem with this: they can go from being manufacturers to being importers. People who used to make middle-income pay in factories had better find some other means of making their income. Manufacturing wages and employment of semi-skilled workers have taken the hit.