There's not much point in answering to the whole of what you said, Tahir. I'll
take the more coherent and meaningful bits, though. A kind of heroic last
attempt. Of course, I'd be ready to answer productive questions and
comments on the points I've avoided.
>What is certain IMO is that he said
>many silly things.
>
>But you can't quite remember any of them can you? (I'm sure
>it will come back to you soon though)
It came back already. Just one: Plundering villages, killing people randomly in
cruel and gore ways, starving them, etc. is progressive if they are socially
retarded non-whites (Marx on the 1857+ revolt in India - it's obviously my very
personal rendering of his position).
That's down-to-earth enough so that you can understand?
>Anyway, I can usually make more sense out of commentators
>and
>contemporary marxists.
>
>Why not share some of that sense around then?
As to commentators, nothing unusual (I guess). Stuff like the concept of
SNALT. As to creative stuff from contemporary marxists, well, if you're really
interested, ask me off-list for examples. Or you could simply explore the
archives of the list. There are marxists making sense here.
>When the means of production are not held privately? No!
>
>Oh yes! It's called state capitalism, for want of a better
>term. This is not rocket science: the state owns the banks;
>the bureaucrats control the state; the bureaucrats are a
>bureaucratic capitalist class. Capish?
OK, here's your only point in the whole post.
I did not consider that because I think that if there is only one capitalist (the
state) who has nearly total power over society, the incentives for
accumulations are inexistent or of a different nature (I answered to your linking
of money and accumulation). Besides, state capitalist accumulation can of
course happen without money.
>The "prices" of items with heavy "ecological footprints"
>have to be
>set higher if you want your brand of socialism to do any
>good.
>
>We could just agree on a ceiling for each person's
>consumption of these items.
Then you see my point. To each according to his labour time is not a good
solution. If you prefer rationing to market-pricing, it's OK for me. It'll be a bit
more complicated. And more importantly, it will not let you adjust output
to the desires of the workers (at least unless you do stuff like opinion polls).
>I'm still not convinced that it's a sufficient cause and I'm
>quite sure that there
>are ways to put the genie back into the bottle. It's
>possible to drive profits
>underwater either through unionism or taxes, f.ex.
>
>So who's going to invest in anything with no profits?
I've a very good down-to-earth example for you: you surely heard about those
dot-com companies.
Now, barring speculative excesses, there are more theoretical reasons for the
continuation of investment even if profits are not believed to be restored
through in the future:
First, there is a limited supply of actual money. It is already uninvested, of
course. If profits drop and people scramble on notes, it won't reduce the
amount of investment unless more notes are printed. The real issue is the
potential for a credit crunch. A credit crunch could be a very bad thing or not
depending on the conditions, but there are ways to fight it consequences.
Second, if there is inflation, it makes sense not to hoard money as long as the
negative profits are not too high compared to the inflation.
Third, the government or the unionized workers who benefit of the fall in profits
can invest for no profit.
Fourth, even buisnesses that are making losses pay interests. It can make
sense to lend to them as long as they have more assets than debt.
Fifth, in today's world, most of the investment is done by the corporations
themselves out of their ordinary revenue and not by the capital markets. A fall
in profits would of course also affect this kind of investment, but less IMO.
There is of course the issue of a scramble for foreign gold (a higher price for
domestic gold has little effects IMO) or a foreign currency.
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