>>> "Julien Pierrehumbert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 08/11 11:05
AM >>>
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).
Yes this is very, very obvious.
>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.
This probably requires some explanation.
>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.
It's not the final solution, but it is still operative here.
There is an absolute limit to all goods that one may need or
desire regardless of whether this limit is attributed to
labour or to nature. But one should note that the
consumption of natural resources without the intervention of
ANY human labour is a very rare instance indeed. The point
is that through money, already within the capitalist system,
there is an implicit recognition that labour is the basis of
one's right to consumption. (I have ten dollars - that
represents an amount of dead labour - therefore I have the
right to consume the corresponding quantity of goods). But,
crucially, the transferrable and accumulable nature of money
means that the right is not necessarily bestowed upon the
person who has mainly created that value through labour. (On
the contrary.) But the socialist principle is for the
producer to retain that right - that is why money is not the
best way of apportioning one's right to consume according to
one's contribution to production. In several earlier posts I
therefore mentioned the need to develop a different kind of
index or measure. This would then operate, whether the good
to be consumed is water, a CD or a Chinese takeaway. In
other word if there is a water shortage you get a lesser
amount of water for a given amount of labour, but the amount
of water you get is still proportional to it - just the
amount per unit of labour is changed. This could be done by
arbitrary agreement.
This is not the best solution imaginable, because it
operates on the basis of unequal capacities, mainly the
capacity to work. It would be nicer to get to a stage where
everyone just took the amount of water they needed and left
the rest for others, regardless of who did what work. But
now we are getting back to ground covered already and that's
why I'm discontinuing the thread after this.
If you prefer rationing to market-pricing, it's OK for me.
Good, although rationing is not quite what I described.
The stuff below I will not comment on because I think it
comes out of a kind of misunderstanding between us. I said
something much simpler than what you think I said, so your
answer is a bit of overkill: I just meant that removing the
imperative towards profit makes no sense within an unchanged
system, taking the system as a whole. And profit implies to
me surplus value and therefore exploitation. (And perhaps
also a final entropy to the system.) I wasn't concerned with
more localised or shorter term effects such as you describe.
That's more for the microeconomists amongst us. I have other
hairs to split.
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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