- 19 Apr 2013 01:51
#14217447
Hello all:
From my point of view we have two parts to consider: a theoretical part and a pragmatic part. For me, socialism involves a view of reality, a sort of epistemology, and ethical system. These philosophical elements work together to form an understanding of the “individual” and “society.” The conceptions involved here will help determine ‘how’ one falls along the socio-political spectrum. If, for example, you believe that we are separate beings in the world and who affect the world in ways that are genuinely unique, then you’re likely to see the world as “filled up” with individuals whose choices are only their own and the consequences created by such lives are “fundamentally” theirs. We are connected, therefore, by a common knowledge and experience of the world “as it is.” We live in communities that offer advantages to us as “individuals.” So, our ethics, and by extension our economy, is to be organized around what benefits the individual and allows the individual to exist as freely as he, in fact, does exist: autonomously.
Now, such a person would also argue that this is the most practical way to see things. Since this separateness of being is just how we experience things, it is only reasonable to have a social-economic order that fits those experiences. Any theory or practices that attempts to take our mind and work too far from our own preferred experience of the world, will likely fail. So, they argue, capitalism is both theoretically attractive, because it organizes and makes sense of our world as we experience it, and practically attractive since such economic praxis doesn’t require us to be other than what we are: self-interested beings.
Keynesians can range from classical to versions of far left neo-Keynesian thought. Here, the above view can be integrated with at least Keynesian thought. In basic, this thought emphasizes the practical and successful use of ‘social’ state organization on market-social processes. In this view, there are separate individuals too. However, this view sees that there are those who for non-economic reasons-are not able to participate in the benefits of the market. For many Keynesians, public policy designs and structures the social order. Since capitalism does bring about individual advantages to alter one’s standing and allows for enormous innovations, there’s little reason to deviate from this general model. Yet, they know that since many people cannot participate in these benefits, capitalism is actually hindered by certain arbitrary social restrictions against equality. So, for them, when the playing field is more leveled, more people will benefit and capitalism will actually improve its various processes and functions. They also believe that since the market is a human institution that it contains all the imperfections that humans bring to it. As a consequence of this, the system must be regulated for its own benefit. But this isn’t all. They also think that the market does fail from time to time in other ways. They argue that the state with all its resources can create advantages for people and business that neither individuals nor businesses can for themselves when such failures occur. Given this, we’re told, government plays a key role in preserving capitalism and making it more efficient while preserving the rights of those who live under its economic influence.
The key difference here is that Keynesians believe that the “group” or society and its varied institutions (like “government”) contribute to enhancing the individual and his autonomy. They think this because of the general belief that the social component is essential to accomplishing strong and happy human communities. There’s certainly more to be said than what’s had in this gist of a review-but here you have the essential differences that largely demarcate key social and political differences here in the U.S. and elsewhere.
From my viewpoint, neo-Marxism isn’t just a correction of the neo-classical position, as is the case with Keynesianism. Rather, it is a wholesale rejection of it. One clear and real point of divergence begins in the theoretical domain. Many neo-Marxians see the world as an “interconnected-causally complex (overdetermined)-impermanent-finite series of processes.” There’s far too much here to go over but here’s my brief take on the matter: Reality isn’t composed of separate beings that contain their own fundamental properties. In this view, nothing is independent from another. So, for us, all being is dependent on something else for its existence. A leaf is dependent on water, the branch, soil, sunlight etc. We can only “define” this thing in terms of what makes sense to our semantic conventions and practices. This simple semantic practice helps us to organize and conceptualize our world. We can move around in both mental and physical space better once we have such things categorized. This makes sense for finite and fallible beings like us do. Such cognitive-semantic practices simply work for our purposes. However, we cannot determine what a thing is by its conceptual-semantic referents. This is so because things are never constant. Things are always changing between being what they are at point X to being something different at point X1. Change is constant. The causes that go into something being what it is at any given point are simply too numerous to give any real accounting. We know things change and are influenced and defined by still other things, but we can never know which influence, thing or process is predominant or which is most “important.” Rather, these are cognitive-semantic choices we make about things-including our conceptual-semantic choices. So, we too have a multiple series of constant changes and influences that shape and are shaping our thought as well as our being in any given moment. This happens because of the seeming nature of interconnectedness: things overlap and interdepend in ways that defy clear fixed empirical or rational delineation.
So, economically, the capitalist order is caused by, and being caused by, a vast sea of processes: natural disasters; scientific innovations; cultural practices; actions of some group of individuals; political desires and so on. Likewise capitalism is affecting these things as well: causing natural resources to be used in certain ways; influencing how money will be spent on scientific projects; how we will relate to certain cultural practices-like money that we can afford on our marriage ceremony or what schools we will attend or what clothes and music I’ll buy etc. Sometimes these things reproduce something else whenever there are tensions between some set of things: like some cooperative that forms from groups of dissatisfied workers. Different choices we make, either as so-called individuals or as groups about any of these things, will have real world consequences. These results will, in turn, create new processes and so on. Some of these processes will be known and desired and others unknown and undesirable.
This leads to another significant theoretical feature in this version of neo-Marxism: tensions exist as part of any order. Since change is inevitable and we live in a world in which things pass from one form of being to another, and we’re interconnected with all else, whenever one set of things pull in one direction, there’s likely to be some resistance to that pull. Like a blanket you pull over you will often catch on some part of you or something else that makes the desired task difficult. So, these pulls and pushes may be large or small. Again, how the tension will go will depend on the “conditions of existence” that such a system happens to be under. For example, the wage needs of the laborer will likely increase if inflation is high. However, such a need puts downward pressure on the owner of capital who also needs to spend more money on keeping up with, and resisting, inflationary pressures. This sort of tension would likely not be easy to resolve. Whereas workers may still want higher wages for reasons that have to do with, say, higher birth-rates-which, in turn, create higher demands on domestic costs (see the mid-1950’s as an example of this). Regardless, tension and conflict is part and parcel of the system.
Now we see where this ideology begins to clash with the above two: in neo-classical and Keynesian worldviews, the socio-economic system is largely a cooperative process. They argue that even the competition in the system works to better the whole system. So, for them, you can devise ways to ensure that all the participatory performers, and those things affected by them, produce or increase the benefits of the whole socio-economic order. For us, this is impossible because (1) it assumes that there are some set of unchangeable properties that exist as inherent in us and in the social order that once tapped into and used for social organization, all will run, by and large, as well as can be expected, and (2) we can estimate, always or almost always, the results of such an organization. Given our position (1) ignores the reality that no thing exist independently of another-and (2) ignores overdetermination—you can never know the full consequence of any given causal series. Hence, economic efficiency is as strange and magical a concept as vitalism once was. Such a conception reflects our current cultural economic beliefs than it adequately deals with the indeterminacy of economic decision-making as we have actually experienced it. So, for us, history and all its unexpected complexities that are produced cannot be ignored in any theoretical system’s analysis of capitalism (or any “ism”).
An example might help. For neo-classical theorists the late 19th century to early 20th is seen as an age worthy to be studied and implemented wherever free-markets were had. However, such an position ignores that this too was an age of unprecedented industrialization (dwarfing the industrial period prior); that there was a surplus in labor allowing businesses extra-capital to invest; numerous laws and cultural biases benefited this process by giving employers options to choose the cheapest minority-labor feasible (like women, Irish, African-American, and even children); new technologies and government policies allowed for businesses to expand in ways unthought-of prior, and so on.
Keynesians have theirs too: They argue, for example, after WWII new public policies, when combined with the New Deal policies, created what we know of today as the Middleclass. Given the appropriate tax structure and regulation to boot, our economy saw unprecedented wealth and growth that made the U.S. and other Western nations the most powerful and envied nations in the world. This has some teeth to it for sure. However, it also misses the fact that these economic advantages came at a time when ALL industrialized nations, outside of the U.S. were badly smashed by the worst war in human history! Once these nations began to recoup by the late 60’s and early 70’s, the economic policies that were just lauded began to fade in their overall affect. There are other reasons too for this-but this factor appears to be a major player in the slow decent of U.S. economic dominance.
Such things are largely ignored or simply seen as being of secondary and trivial importance. It is true that if you let businesses go, they will produce undesirable affects. However, it is also true that when you regulate them and tax them in an increasingly competitive economic world, you limit their abilities to continue to invest in ways that contributes to growth. Also, BOTH positions miss that there are other factors that will play a role in altering the system that may or may not even be economic.
For capitalists to so ignore these seemingly real forces alive in the world only spells out capitalism’s own doom as it attempts to “fix” itself by re-adjusting to the very premises that causes its own imbalances. The system of self-interested capitalists produces a social order wherein workers and managers MUST work and work for wages that MUST also be LESS than what the market value that-that labor produces: a surplus of value that the capitalist is able to use. This involves splitting society into groups (classes) wherein you have the owners of productions and the labor class whose labor-value is owned by those owners of production. But, you must also have non-class orders as well. Banks willing to lend; police that are willing to protect your property; a government willing to supply the police AND the social policies that will enable capitalists to have access to real and abstract domains of the public in order to operate; capitalists will require those who can legally protect their interests against corruption from within and with those who they do business with; the social order will develop public resources that enable the capitalist to function and allow workers to work: educational sources; roads; civil engineering planning and execution of those plans; a military that can protect and possibly promote the interests such businesses may have elsewhere in the world etc. The capitalists will want security in case of some social (e.g. war or riots) losses or natural disaster (flooding or earthquakes etc.). Insurance capitalism (part of the financial industry that is the result of surpluses created from the social order itself) will provide this and other products. Yet, they too will need buildings; roads, an educated workforce and a whole host of others that can keep track of the vast business transactions and possible corruption that occur on every business day.
Laborers will want homes and insurance against possible natural and social disasters. Relators and construction companies will need to hire skilled labor that in turn received their skills over time and from social resources that so on and so on and so on.
In any of these possible interactions or outside of them, tensions and conflict is all too easy! The varied interests of all these actors pulling on the system requires choices to be made that are never likely to work for those with the least pull. The system will try to correct itself by regulation; or by deregulation; or by giving labor higher wages and better bennies; or by reallocating certain financial resources through borrowing and investing in hopes of stemming the tide of higher wages and costs of doing business; or by labor taking lower pay or buying cheaper products; or by CEO’s paying out less on dividends; or by investing in cheaper resource capital; or by increasing credit- debts in order to reduce immediate burdensome costs, and so on and so on. In the end, the system is inherently unstable. The pushes and pulls ingrained in these capitalist conditions of existence do not allow for constant or eternal stability.
Since labor or non-productive property owners are where the power neither exists for the system nor is even the necessary economic object of interest for the system, the ones who will have to pay the costs of the systems many dysfunctions will be those who are the least able to do so. They have the least power and therefore the least pull to alter the system from within-or from within for long.
For us, then, we argue that since there’s no way to determine causality or identify who is worthy of what- ultimately, then all people have a right to use nature and social resources, live freely with one another, form a government that honors the rights of people and their labor-in that no one can own me or my labor. No one has the right to stop me from making my home in a community of accepting others and participating in the organization of the surplus we all contribute to through the creation of our labor. No man has any more of a right over my life or labor than I have over his.
This doesn’t ignore conflict. In fact, it openly sees its inevitability. However, the conditions of such social –communal arrangements allow for platforms to evolve and develop that would manage such conflict. At least, and if, these basic ideas and values are held, then such societies would have enormous resources for democratically resolving conflict.
This is why getting these ideas down becomes important when addressing the practical part. If one chooses ONLY to better workers conditions through having stronger labor rights, or having universal healthcare, or through having better wages, then one hasn’t dealt with the issues of capitalistic systemic inequality; the instability of the system that MUST favor the owners of production in moments of crises; the self-interest of those who’s objective is to increase their own personal shares over the economic order; the inherent conflict between communities and business interests; the inability to provide educated labor due to the interests in pursuit of profits; addressed the varied and often conflicting interests that compose most of the problems between management and workforce, and so on.
If you want increased freedom of choice, then how do you create the material conditions that make such a thing possible for more people without also addressing the economic order’s interests in increasing the material options for those who ‘own’ that economic order? Creating worker co-ops is great, but without the larger theoretical analysis and pieces, one leaves wide open the inbuilt fatal features inherent in the larger system!
For us, we will naturally support better working conditions; equality in opportunity; better community conditions; better living wages for many; more funding for needy families etc. We do this not because we support the welfare system. But because such programs are evidence of the failure and unjust nature of capitalism itself. We do so as an opportunity to convince and enrage people to political action. Revolution must begin with what historical life we have-not just the life we could simply settle for. In this way, our practical interests and theoretical interests find common ground and life!
Eric D.
- By QatzelOk
- By Tainari88