What the left gets wrong about economics that annoys the shit out of me

[grumbler]

I've just been waiting for an opportunity to change the subject to the American Civil War.

Oh so you think the Civil War started because of economic systems rather than slavery eh? Typical pro-Confederate propaganda from Missouri. Send in the Jayhawks!

The Antebellum South supported slavery because it was the system that allowed the elites to control their society.  Slaves were too expensive by the 19th Century to allow for "start-ups" in any numbers:  wealth came from inheriting the land and the slaves that worked it.  That's why the South had 9and still has) the worst schools in the country, because the elites want it that way.  The elites se private schooling (far more so in the South than the North).   Inherited wealth allowed the elites to absolutely dominate the political system of the South.  Industrialization threatened a non-inherited source of wealth, anathema to the landed elites of the South.

So, yeah, the ACW was fought to preserve the political-economic system that only slavery allowed. 

[Josquius]

If we can say that the state has evolved from the 18th century to the present to become vastly larger, more complex, more intrusive, more effective, more insightful (in the seeing as a state sense), these are all byproducts of capitalist driven imperatives.  Not communism, not Marx.  Capitalism.

There's a lot of ground between communism and marx, and capitalism.

Sure. You could argue most change comes about because the elites figure better for profits to give the people what they want than to face unrest.
However the people demanding better working conditions and effective social systems was very definitely coming from a socialist direction.

Again here it's the same old problem of seeing the two as an absolute binary rather than the real world situation where practically every nation going, bar as mentioned (didn't I mention it earlier too?) Somalia, is some mix of the two.

[Berkut]

If we can say that the state has evolved from the 18th century to the present to become vastly larger, more complex, more intrusive, more effective, more insightful (in the seeing as a state sense), these are all byproducts of capitalist driven imperatives.  Not communism, not Marx.  Capitalism.

There's a lot of ground between communism and marx, and capitalism.

Sure. You could argue most change comes about because the elites figure better for profits to give the people what they want than to face unrest.
However the people demanding better working conditions and effective social systems was very definitely coming from a socialist direction.

Again here it's the same old problem of seeing the two as an absolute binary rather than the real world situation where practically every nation going, bar as mentioned (didn't I mention it earlier too?) Somalia, is some mix of the two.

That's why the term is completely useless. It doesn't tell you anything to say "America is not socialist, and France is". To the extent you can argue that statement is true can only be in relation to one another, and you can then say "Turkey is not socialist, but America is".

The left that annoys me is making the same error the right makes, but in the other direction. I often wonder if their "error" is as cynical as I suspect it is on the right.

The joke meme on this hits this perfectly:

[Josquius]

Sure. Labels don't mean much. Yet still we persist with them as it is useful to have handy short hands rather than explaining your stance on every single issue all the time.
I'm a socialist, that's where my beliefs generally lie, I'm all about equality and uplifting the disadvantaged.
This doesn't mean I agree with every single thing any socialist has ever stood for. But I am more likely to see things their way than I am a conservative.

Everything is relative really. As mentioned much of the world today is vastly more socialist than the world of 150 years ago and I have no doubt that 150 years hence we'll be saying the same thing. Despite the set backs things are steadily moving in a leftwards direction.

I would totally agree to say as an absolute that one country is socialist and another not doesn't literally work. But I think from context its pretty clear that when an American says Norway is  socialist they mean its substantially to the left of America rather than it is 100% socialist.

[The Minsky Moment]

If we can say that the state has evolved from the 18th century to the present to become vastly larger, more complex, more intrusive, more effective, more insightful (in the seeing as a state sense), these are all byproducts of capitalist driven imperatives.  Not communism, not Marx.  Capitalism.

There's a lot of ground between communism and marx, and capitalism.

Because Marx was first and foremost a theorist of capitalism; he didn't really have much to say about communism.

As I see it - he made two major errors stemming from two basic frameworks he adopted. One was his his over-reliance on the Ricardian model which assumes constantly decreasing returns to capital - thus his conclusion of the tendency of profit rates to fall and the inevitability of immiseration.  T. The second is Hegel's historical schema proceeding with thesis, anthesis, and synthesis.  Marx was pretty astute in assessing the challenges  facing capitalism but missed the mark is seeing them as "contradictions"  that could be resolved only through revolutionary change and replacement rather than inherent characteristics of early capitalist development as it proceeded to later stages of development.  Can't really blame him to harshly for that as one can't really know the future until it happens.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, to be fair to Marx, it would have been difficult to predict the rise of democratic socialism at that time.

Or the fact people still think democratic socialism is free market capitalism...

[Berkut]

But I think from context its pretty clear that when an American says Norway is  socialist they mean its substantially to the left of America rather than it is 100% socialist.

The only problem here is that from data that probably isn't even true. If we define "socialist" as a relative term describing how much a country spend on social spending on a per capita basis....the US is MORE socialist then the Netherlands!

This is why the entire term is just dumb.

For one, the way it is used in the way you are using it is just describing being a progressive. So it has no utility in that it definitionally has near perfect overlap with a common term already used and well understood, and one that is eplicitly relative.

And secondly, it is actually incorrect when used most of the time anyway! If you look at total net public spending on social programs, the USA is actually MORE socialist then Norway! In fact, the only country that spends more per capita on net public expenditures on social programs is France. According to that metric, the USA is the second most socialist country in the entire world!

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

I think what is so frustrating about all this (to me, it doesn't appear to bother others) is that there is perfectly adequate, much more clear, and vastly more neutral language to discuss all this in, and yet....people insist on using terms that lead to bullshit and ambiguity and the meme posted above.

Seriously, we laugh about it, but that meme is fucking spot on on how this debate works in America today. All because of the insistence on both sides to use language that they both know is open to being interpreted badly.

[The Minsky Moment]

From Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program

[A]ccording to II, the German Workers' party strives for "the free state"...what is this?

It is by no means the aim of the workers, who have got rid of the narrow mentality of humble subjects, to set the state free . . . Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it; and today, too, the forms of state are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the "freedom of the state".

The German Workers' party — at least if it adopts the program — shows that its socialist ideas are not even skin-deep; in that, instead of treating existing society (and this holds good for any future one) as the basis of the existing state (or of the future state in the case of future society), it treats the state rather as an independent entity that possesses its own intellectual, ethical, and libertarian bases.

. . . [T]he different states of the different civilized countries, in spite or their motley diversity of form, all have this in common: that they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed. They have, therefore, also certain essential characteristics in common. In this sense, it is possible to speak of the "present-day state" in contrast with the future, in which its present root, bourgeois society, will have died off.

The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically . . .Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

The [Gotha] program does not deal with this nor with the future state of communist society.

Its political demands contain nothing beyond the old democratic litany familiar to all: universal suffrage, direct legislation, popular rights, a people's militia, etc. They are a mere echo of the bourgeois People's party, of the League of Peace and Freedom. They are all demands which, insofar as they are not exaggerated in fantastic presentation, have already been realized. ...

That, in fact, by the word "state" is meant the government machine, or the state insofar as it forms a special organism separated from society through division of labor, is shown by the words "the German Workers' party demands as the economic basis of the state: a single progressive income tax", etc. Taxes are the economic basis of the government machinery and of nothing else. In the state of the future, existing in Switzerland, this demand has been pretty well fulfilled. Income tax presupposes various sources of income of the various social classes, and hence capitalist society. It is, therefore, nothing remarkable that the Liverpool financial reformers — bourgeois headed by Gladstone's brother — are putting forward the same demand as the program.

The argument is that a reformist program based on getting existing states to provide public goods and benefits funded from progressive taxation is not a socialist program because it maintains and reinforces the existing state of relations. A Socialist state is something that comes into being only after existing state structures are overthrown in their entirety and replaced with something completely new, after a transitional phase of "dictatorship of the proletariat".  Marx here as always is cagey about what that socialist state would look like, but his comments about a state being completely subordinate to society does not seem to accord with the centralized administrative states that we today associate with the concept of "socialism"

One can respond to Marx by arguing that he was simply wrong about the progress the socialism and that the true future of socialism was not his vaguely conceived utopian endpoint following the scouring of the proletarian dictatorship but rather Bernstein's Revisionism.  But that response misses the real power of Marx's critique here - that reformism isn't really about concessions wrested from reluctant capitalists through ballots rather than bullets, but part-and-parcel of the bourgeois program itself.

For example, take the spread of universal primary public education beginning in the 19th century. Is this socialism?  Or is it a response to the voracious needs of capitalist producers in the countries on the then technological frontier for literate workers that have been formed and prepared from a young age with habits of diligence and respect to authority?  Yes that is a rhetorical question.

By the 1930s, leaders in the advanced capitalist countries are coming to grips with the severe periodic crises and panics of the system, which is diagnosed by many as a problem of "under-consumption".  After a period of "war capitalism" that appears to confirm that theory, what follows are packages of income and wage support legislation designed to stabilize consumption across time.  These measures may be termed socialistic and in some places sponsored by political parties that use that name, but they are enacted because they also draw support from powerful institutions of the capitalist society and state that see them as needed adjuncts to make capitalism work better, under the control of the traditional state structures.

[grumbler]

I absolutely disagree that "way you are using [socialism] is just describing being a progressive. So it has no utility in that it definitionally has near perfect overlap with a common term already used and well understood, and one that is eplicitly relative."  The term "progressive" is probably fraught with more controversy over its meaning than "socialist" is.   Bernie Sanders and AOC uses it to describe their far-left policies, while Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg use it to describe their center-left policies.  Teddy Roosevelt, a mainstream republican, considered himself a progressive.

I would argue that the real difference between a socialist and a progressive is that the socialist believes that the government should actually control the means of production in one or more significant sectors, while a progressive would pursue the same goal but using government as another participant in the market.

[Berkut]

I absolutely disagree that "way you are using [socialism] is just describing being a progressive. So it has no utility in that it definitionally has near perfect overlap with a common term already used and well understood, and one that is eplicitly relative."  The term "progressive" is probably fraught with more controversy over its meaning than "socialist" is.   Bernie Sanders and AOC uses it to describe their far-left policies, while Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg use it to describe their center-left policies.  Teddy Roosevelt, a mainstream republican, considered himself a progressive.

I would argue that the real difference between a socialist and a progressive is that the socialist believes that the government should actually control the means of production in one or more significant sectors, while a progressive would pursue the same goal but using government as another participant in the market.

I think the things you don't like about the term progressive is exactly what I DO like about the term!

It encapsulates what unites the modern left, and the fact that former mainstream Republicans can reasonably be described as progressive illuminates just how fucked up current "mainstream" Republicans are that they consider the term an insult. I do think there is a difference between the Sanders/AOC wing of the left and the Biden/Buttigieg center, but it isn't that they are not both progressive. I do think it is around the idea of actual socialism, meaning more then just a debate about whether to spend 26% of 29% on social programs.

The "real difference" you cite I agree with, but nobody else seems to think so - they insist that socialism practically has nothing to do with the productive side of the equation. If you go back to my very first post, this is just the argument that I made. If socialist means anything real, it has to mean some kind of actual government role in managing production beyond just regulation (since, again, regulation is ubiquitous so does not differentiate).

[grumbler]

I absolutely disagree that "way you are using [socialism] is just describing being a progressive. So it has no utility in that it definitionally has near perfect overlap with a common term already used and well understood, and one that is eplicitly relative."  The term "progressive" is probably fraught with more controversy over its meaning than "socialist" is.   Bernie Sanders and AOC uses it to describe their far-left policies, while Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg use it to describe their center-left policies.  Teddy Roosevelt, a mainstream republican, considered himself a progressive.

I would argue that the real difference between a socialist and a progressive is that the socialist believes that the government should actually control the means of production in one or more significant sectors, while a progressive would pursue the same goal but using government as another participant in the market.

I think the things you don't like about the term progressive is exactly what I DO like about the term!

It encapsulates what unites the modern left, and the fact that former mainstream Republicans can reasonably be described as progressive illuminates just how fucked up current "mainstream" Republicans are that they consider the term an insult. I do think there is a difference between the Sanders/AOC wing of the left and the Biden/Buttigieg center, but it isn't that they are not both progressive. I do think it is around the idea of actual socialism, meaning more then just a debate about whether to spend 26% of 29% on social programs.

The "real difference" you cite I agree with, but nobody else seems to think so - they insist that socialism practically has nothing to do with the productive side of the equation. If you go back to my very first post, this is just the argument that I made. If socialist means anything real, it has to mean some kind of actual government role in managing production beyond just regulation (since, again, regulation is ubiquitous so does not differentiate).

The term you are looking for is "Democrat," not progressive.  If "progressive" just means people that want to make things better, then it applies to current Republicans as well, though their methods and desired end states differ as much from Biden as Biden's do from Sanders.

[Berkut]

I don't think progressive means simply that people want things to be better, I think it means the belief that the human condition can be made better by organized, active, and society level changes to how we do things - that progress is something that we can make a decision to push for actively, not just something that we hope to happen but have no control over.

It also encapsulates the idea that the future is and ought to be better then the past - this (to me) is the real difference in practical terms that goes beyond Republican/Democrat. Progressives believe that the best years for humans are still to come, while conservatives believe they have already passed.

And no, I don't think "Democrat" ecompasses that at all. I think once could be a conservative Democrat, and once could be a progressive Republican. They are not right now, for sure, but they could be.

I think the delta between the GOP and Biden is not just much larger then the delta between Biden and Sanders, it is of a entirely different outlook entirely.

[Oexmelin]

But that response misses the real power of Marx's critique here - that reformism isn't really about concessions wrested from reluctant capitalists through ballots rather than bullets, but part-and-parcel of the bourgeois program itself.

Why, yes. The opposition of reformist vs revolutionary has somewhat of a long history...

That people are looking for labels to either identify with, or villify, is more indicative of a prolonged malaise than any command of Marxist (or Chicago school) theory. People who denounce "capitalism" are trying to issue a global diagnosis of today's ills, and trying to find some connector. Amongst those ills are some that we can link to what Marx identified long ago (commodity fetichism, alienation, etc.). Others are problems identified through very simple comparisons with a past that continues to exist in collective memory - about wealth transfers, access to property, etc. And others still are directly linked with environmentalism.

Given that, whatever the definition of capitalism that one operates under has wide-ranging, systemic components - from wealth accumulation, to work organization, to production and consumption - and that the last 30-40 years of political discourse have made economic concerns the prevalent organizing principles of our political and personal lives, it's not entirely surprising that "capitalism" becomes both the cause, and the disease.

I read denunciation of capitalism as a call for radical transformation as the only possible solution to the kinds of challenge we are confronted with. It is not fueled by a coherent alternative replacement ideology. It doesn't really have a good sense of what could replace it. How could it? Imagining possible future worlds is famously challenging, and we don't have any good sense of the future right now, including for the proponents of the status quo, who are basically arguing there is nothing wrong with the way the world is set up, and that the challenges of the future are the future's problems. The world I live in has many features I like. It also has many features I dislike. To say they are the product of capitalism is simply to say the world we live in is a product of capitalism. It's not false, but it's not super helpful either.

Denunciations of capitalism are fumbling in trying to assemble a critique of collective forces while being the product of a very individualistic world. Meanwhile, the ancient counter-argument of the reformists remains the same: it goes too far. Surely there must be some incremental transformation we can enact? And, of course, there always is. But it never truly addresses the sense of general malaise that fuels both the right and the left.

[Barrister]

I don't think progressive means simply that people want things to be better, I think it means the belief that the human condition can be made better by organized, active, and society level changes to how we do things - that progress is something that we can make a decision to push for actively, not just something that we hope to happen but have no control over.

It also encapsulates the idea that the future is and ought to be better then the past - this (to me) is the real difference in practical terms that goes beyond Republican/Democrat. Progressives believe that the best years for humans are still to come, while conservatives believe they have already passed.

And no, I don't think "Democrat" ecompasses that at all. I think once could be a conservative Democrat, and once could be a progressive Republican. They are not right now, for sure, but they could be.

I think the delta between the GOP and Biden is not just much larger then the delta between Biden and Sanders, it is of a entirely different outlook entirely.

The problem is that there is no real serious intellectual movement known as progressivism, no body of thought behind it.  That's not to say that "progressive" is a bad label, or people are wrong to use it - it just has meant very different things to different people .

And I disagree that a conservative is someone who says that humanity's best days are behind it.  Rather, conservatism (intellectually speaking at least) rather believes that today's society rests on the shoulders of our past, and while it is possible to make things even better, we must be careful not to make them worse.

[Berkut]

I don't think progressive means simply that people want things to be better, I think it means the belief that the human condition can be made better by organized, active, and society level changes to how we do things - that progress is something that we can make a decision to push for actively, not just something that we hope to happen but have no control over.

It also encapsulates the idea that the future is and ought to be better then the past - this (to me) is the real difference in practical terms that goes beyond Republican/Democrat. Progressives believe that the best years for humans are still to come, while conservatives believe they have already passed.

And no, I don't think "Democrat" ecompasses that at all. I think once could be a conservative Democrat, and once could be a progressive Republican. They are not right now, for sure, but they could be.

I think the delta between the GOP and Biden is not just much larger then the delta between Biden and Sanders, it is of a entirely different outlook entirely.

The problem is that there is no real serious intellectual movement known as progressivism, no body of thought behind it.  That's not to say that "progressive" is a bad label, or people are wrong to use it - it just has meant very different things to different people .

And I disagree that a conservative is someone who says that humanity's best days are behind it.  Rather, conservatism (intellectually speaking at least) rather believes that today's society rests on the shoulders of our past, and while it is possible to make things even better, we must be careful not to make them worse.

Yes, that is why they are all aligned behind Donald Trump. Because they are so concerned about making things worse.


I am not going to even bother responded to the claim that there is no body of thought behind the progressive movement. That is just...well, not true.