Capitalism is the most efficient system possible for concentrating the wealth in hands of as few people as possible.
@yogthos Scandinavian one, really?
@kravietz Sweden is an interesting case study https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/08/the-social-democratic-road-to-socialism
I think capitalism has a fundamental problem that it accumulates the wealth in the upper class. Then this class starts using this wealth to influence policy in their favor creating a downward spiral. So the setup seems like it's inherently fragile.
@yogthos If both USA and Sweden have capitalist economy, and in one the accumulation happens, and in the other it doesn't, then the capitalist economy isn't the root cause. Let's just apply some scientific thinking here.
@kravietz the article shows that the more capitalist Sweden gets the worse life becomes for the average person though. Socialism and democracy keep capitalism in check, but the capitalists continuously work to undermine socialist policies. And it's an inherently asymmetric relationship because capitalists are the ones with the wealth.
@yogthos Because market economy generates wealth in general. Then it's only matter of redistribution. US does it poorly, Scandinavian countries - much better.
Marxian economy is economics of shortages, for everyone and arbitrary redistribution by the ruling party.
@kravietz the distribution of wealth is precisely the problem, and I think it's an inherent problem. Scandinavian countries are in a fragile balance right now, and Sweden example that I linked shows that the balance is eroding.
And I don't really understand what you mean by this to be honest:
Marxian economy is economics of shortages, for everyone and arbitrary redistribution by the ruling party.
@kravietz another issue that you have to take into account is that ALL capitalist countries, including Scandinavia, are built on top of exploitation of third world countries where majority of the goods are manufactured. That has to be considered as part of the overall system.
@yogthos And the notion that outsourcing production to poor countries is "exploitation" is quite absurd. In 80's in Poland you could buy a pair of shoes for maybe month's salary. In France - for two hours salary. When joint ventures started to open in late 80's everyone dreamed of working there (eg IKEA) because this guaranteed not only high salary but also reasonable working hours and that the salary will be actually paid on time.
@kravietz it's not just "outsourcing" work to poor countries. It's active subjugation of poor countries at the barrel of a gun. Take a look at all the wars, coups, and dictatorships that US is responsible for around the world. All of that traces back to capitalist economics of needing a large cheap labor force.
Capitalism is a system that works on gradients. You need to produce goods cheaper than what you sell them for. This creates an inherent incentive to exploit.
@kravietz furthermore, capitalism requires growth to function. This translates into consumerism which is what's killing our biosphere right now. There is a very real possibility that capitalism will make us go extinct as a species.
@yogthos Somehow it were capitalist economies that reduced emissions of ozone-depleting gases and saved Earth's ozone layer. USSR at the same time caused the largest nuclear disaster so far in 1986 and hundreds of smaller yet catastrophic environment pollution incidents.
@kravietz look up how many people died total in Chernobyl disaster and compare it to oil industry disasters in the West.
@yogthos Look how much it costs today to clean up and put safety cover on Chernobyl and who pays for it: Ukraine and... the West. Not USSR.
@kravietz well yeah since USSR doesn't exist anymore, who's paying for all the damage US fossil fuel industry is causing? Who's going to pay for the fucking climate disaster capitalism is responsible for that might well kill us all.
How does the free market solve this problem please do explain?
@yogthos In market economy BP had an insurance and paid for cleaning up Deep Water Horizon from their operational profit and reserves. And we knew about the disaster from the first minute. USSR denied Chernobyl disaster for a week, just as it covered Kyshtym, Andreev Bay and other nuclear incidents you never heard of.
@kravietz also since you keep bringing up Poland as an example, I don't see how the situation was improved by capitalism myself https://borgenproject.org/top-10-facts-about-poverty-in-poland/
@yogthos So, to summarise, Poland is still recovering from the poverty left by real socialism, but on the right track.
At least in terms of economy, because the current national-populist government is a separate topic...
@kravietz that's not what the numbers show at all though. The numbers are showing that the upper class in Poland is actively exploiting the poor to get ahead.
I guess if you're ok with having a comfy lifestyle at the expense of exploiting those who were unlucky to be born into poverty then it's a pretty fantastic system though.
@yogthos It's not true. Here's the graph of Poland's Gini index (higher=more inequality) from 1800 till 2019. As you can see inequality has fallen significantly in the beginning of 20th century (II Rzeczpospolita), then inequality started rising (!) after Soviet occupation and communist Poland, further increased during 90's and then started falling again after 2000. You can play with the graph here https://bit.ly/2lOgFLn
@kravietz that seems quite different from the numbers here that show a huge increase in poverty after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and around 18% of the population being below the poverty line today. That's a staggering percentage of the population.
@yogthos Again you post something that actually disproves your point.
At the end of real socialism in 1990 there were 24% people living below the poverty line. This 24% is the socialist Poland's closing balance (not to mention collapsed pension system and 48 billion dollars of foreign debt).
Even your graph shows that it never returned to the "socialist" levels of poverty.
If you more detailed data you can see it's falling down all the time (green=changes in law)
@kravietz this is a more detailed analysis that's more meanignful btw http://www.roiw.org/2006/2006-21.pdf
@yogthos It briefly rises to 28% in 1995 but quickly falls to 17% in 1999 and then continues to decrease.
Also note that people losing income from collapsing enterprises in 90's is not the "fault" of market economy. It was direct consequence of their often absurd ineficiency resulting from applying Marxian economy. They were only able to function as long as the party was receiving Western loans.
@kravietz I don't think what Poland or USSR had was anything even remotely like Marxist economy though.
Marxist economy would be running worker owned coops as opposed to state level planning which is clearly Leninist.
@yogthos You don't know much about Marxian economy then. Marx and Engels had a few very outright directives: first violent revolution, then dictatorship of the proletariat and nationalisation of means of production, central planning, prices based on (rather bizarre) labour-value theory. USSR did everything correctly from the theory point of view.
These elements like the cult of the Plan or regulated prices survived to the very end of USSR.
@kravietz I don't understand the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", it seems self contradictory to me. Proletariat is the majority of the population, and a "dictatorship" of the majority is commonly referred to as a democracy.
Meanwhile, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having central planning, and it's necessary to do any large scale projects efficiently.
Incidentally, this is similar to the system China currently has where the state governs a capitalist market.
@yogthos "Contradictory"? Oh, welcome to the world of Marxism! It's full of contradictions.
Here's what Bertrand Russell (a British philosopher and socialist) said after visiting Soviet Russia in 1920:
@kravietz once again that has nothing to do with Marxism, and describes the problem with abandoning Marxism in favor of creating a ruling party which is state capitalism.
@yogthos Bolsheviks did everything correct:
"A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists." (riedrich Engels, On Authority)
@yogthos Do you mean dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in 1918 and arrests of SR and Menshevik?
Oh, that was easy from ideological point of view. They just said that only Bolsheviks properly represent the interests of proletariat and the Revolution, and the others don't and are actually reactionary and counterrevolutionary. And throw a few citations from Marx & Engels.
They did it all the time.
@kravietz sure, but that's why I say that USSR perverted a lot of ideas of Marx & Engles. The blame should go where it belongs in this case.
@kravietz you have to remember the context of the time here. We're talking about peak capitalism following the industrial revolution.
However, I don't see any fundamental problem the idea of the people's party that represents the workers.
The first thing bolsheviks did was dissolve the local soviets if you recall. That goes completely against Marxism.