Discussion of Capitalism, Socialism, Liberalism, Democracy, Communism, the UN, ...

Holiday,

I would first like to say that I think this is a great opening post. It is very accesable and offers many routes for the topic to evolve by.

I think for you yourself it would be best to start at the workings, or evolution of corporations and/or state. As of there we could investigate further. I am quite sure some terms will come to bearing in this topic and, if needed, we could choose to open more topics so as to explore a more wide range of subjects to ensure a full understanding of what is going on in the world around us.

I think the first thing one must get a clear grasp of is the fact that at one point several humans were alive and interacting. These interactions can be categorised under the term 'social contract'. John Locke was the first to busy the term, but the most famous for it are Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In my opinion a study of the subject would best be served by studying Rousseau's work. The books Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right are works I can recommend personally.

The reason I am bringing this to the discussion is because at a certain point humans did start to work together in a voluntary manner. A great mammoth would take the cooperation of many men to slay, and slain they were. In that sense there was a point were humans chose to work together because it would be mutual beneficial. This voluntary cooperation is called the social contract. Although at times humas would choose not to cooperate it is the interaction; the posing of the choice of you will, which embodies the spirit of the social contract. From this social contract several theories of cooperation were spurred.

One is the absolute freedom of anarchy, where just the social contract exists. Another is the body of men working together as a giant Leviathan under the guidance of a monarch and a third might be a cooperation under a chosen leader. The last two perhaps lean more towards a constitutional setup, but in the social contract theories the difference between the contract itself and the laws influencing it are not always set out clearly. Society seperates two forms of cooperations: the state and the company, forgetting about the spirit of the social contract in the sense of the absolute freedom to engage or disengage in specific interactions, but rather choosing a formal contract to seal the pact and to bind all concerned to the cooperation in a 'legal' manner.

The two forms of cooperations are alike in the sense that a group of men work together towards an end, under the guidance of one or a few, with a sealed formal contract. The difference between the two consists in the end that is worked to; the cooperation being clear that a personal gain is the end and a state claiming to work to the betterment of all men in equal manner in the form of a legislative 'force' (thereby effectively denouncing the social contract because force implies the lack of freedom to choose (to interact)).

Anyway, the two forms are nearly the same in the sense that states operate as companies, with the addition that a circulation of wealth (economic workings) can also be seen amonst its members, instead of merely a pay of wages; in that sense showing a different structure.

I think that an important part of your opening post is about which structure has what effect and what effect do we desire, if any? I am going to leave it at this for a moment, so I can see what your take on this is and where you want to go next in this discussion, Holiday. I think we can work up a whole lot more between us.

Holiday, as I'm sure you know these political terms are much different in practice than in theory. Nearly all democracies in the world have elements of socialism, capitalism, and even communism. What makes the US and Canada not true, pure socialist states is that private enterprise is still central to the operation of the economy. But in a place like Canada, with nationally subsidized education and health care, there is a strong move towards socialism.

I also don't quite agree with your definition of liberalism. What you're describing is more like libertarianism. Liberalism over the last century or so (at least in the US) has been very interested in formal protections for people, including labor / wage / safety standards, education, civil rights, universal suffrage, and rights for various other disenfranchised groups (like the disabled). Because many of the regulations that facilitate these standards are opposed by big business, it has happened that environmentalism has become part of the liberal movement (even though Teddy Roosevelt, who was one of the major conservationists in US History, was pretty conservative in most other respects).

Holiday's definition of liberalism sounds about right to me - libertarians are, after all, liberals. Libertarians are classical liberals; they focus on opposing government coercion as a way to promote individual liberty. American liberals tend to be social liberals, which is the sort of liberalism Aedes describes.

Modern liberals since at least FDR (but perhaps all the way back to abolitionism) have been vastly different than libertarians.

Libertarianism is one of the most conservative of all American political schools -- it regards the Constitution nearly as religious dogma and rejects any modern reinterpretation of Constitutional provisions; it rejects federalism (remember THAT debate from the Constitutional convention??); it rejects any sort of federal regulatory authority, including taxation; and some still favor local militias rather than a national military. It's a political school that's still living in the Adams administration.

Right - but we have to understand that, despite the liberal vs conservative narrative in the US, both the GOP and DNC espouse liberal doctrine. It's just two different kinds of liberalism.

Liberalism is, most basically, advocating individual liberty. The different ways of going about this have evolved into various schools of thought which aggressively oppose one another. Libertarians make their arguments from the basis of individual liberty; even if they are classified as conservative on the modern American political spectrum, they are still, essentially, liberals.

Consider - Mike Gravel is, last I checked, seeking the Libertarian nomination to run for President.

But we're not talking about Republicans versus Democrats, whose policies are not strictly speaking synonymous with political or economic or social conservatism versus liberalism.

I think we have to be careful with using terms like "liberal", though, and we have to define whether we're talking about historical use of the word, or if we're comparing to contemporaries. But if we're going to use the word "liberal" to describe both radical socialists and libertarians, who are in actuality complete political opposites, then we're being uselessly imprecise with the word.

Not really - both are in agreement that individual liberty is the most significant issue in politics.

But I do think that if we are going to talk about liberalism we should account for the variety of liberals. All this takes is a willingness to use more terminology, like libertarian and socialist to further describe a particular liberal/liberal movement.

"Individual liberty" is also imprecisely defined. Nearly EVERYONE believes in individual liberty. But individual liberty is defined completely differently by different movements. I mean Marx and Lenin saw themselves as champions of individual liberty as well. So does individual liberty mean that there are social protections set in place by government? Does it mean that the government completely stays out of individual life? Does it mean that the government protects people from harm with things like domestic surveillance and militarism? You can rationalize any reasonable political theory (other than monarchy) into advocacy for individual liberty. Problem is that the term itself only means what you make out of it.

That said, libertarianism and socialism are indeed complete and total opposites when it comes to social policy, economic policy, role of government, and interpretation of law. So how can they both have liberal economic policy? How can they both have liberal social policy? They can't -- and the libertarian positions on all these issues are very conservative.

I'll be replying shortly as an edit to this post so don't think I'm ignoring this, I've a lot to add. And this is great stuff.

I'm not denying that the term liberal can be broadly applied. Liberalism is a product of the enlightenment, and was taken in many different directions - thinkers are diverse as Marx and Mises.

In modern America, the term liberal is generally used to refer to modern American liberalism. Go figure. Hence the term 'classical liberalism'; a way to distinguish the more traditional approach to liberalism.

I understand the objection. If we are going to talk about liberalism, we should be conscious of the varieties of liberalism. Especially considering that in modern politics, liberalism is extremely influential in the world, and dominant in many places. More than likely, liberalism is dominant in the nations we hail from - liberalism certainly dominates the US and Canada. The varying strains vie for power.

The economic system and financial planning of the government is absolutely fundamental to the growth and sustenance of wealth within a nation. For a background in Political Economics, I would recommend The Worldly Philosophers by Heilbroner. It serves as an accessible introduction.

Also, while gross mistreatment of the citizenry is more likely to occur under a totalitarian system, stability and continuance of power is the domineering trait of democracy. From my anarchist's view, it is not as wonderful a trade-off as many like to portray it to be.



The way I look at it, we are too used to having a government. People are not so hopeless or self-destructive as to necessitate government.



Capitalism is not a form of government, it is a system of property distribution. I believe it can be separated from government, in fact, I believe it can only exist where separated from government.

And the flaws of corporations can only be laid upon capitalism if one looks at the surface, a slight understanding of the properties of a market system dispels this.



Certainly these two are not mutually exclusive. It is rare to find a communist who does not also support democracy.




Corporations is a form of private property ownership (albeit a rather collective form) and is not compatible with communism, rather they are a capitalistic model. The history of industrialization and corporations is a long and convoluted one with many different sides arguing different things.

I tend to hold that industrialization necessitates capitalism (or at least complex market exchange), but that our current system does not represent either a free market or a free development.

This is by a very interesting current writer. I don't agree with everything he says, and it may require you to digest some economics that you haven't really looked into yet, but it is a good look at how the political climate has shaped the economic system over the three centuries:

The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand

So a social contract is a formula for the formation of a nation and a stable society. And the social contract's purpose is to have social order and is helped by the creation of a government. It relies on the fact that there is a "sovereign will" (as wikipedia refers to it) to instigate the social contract. So I figure that the will of the public implies the public being the sovereign. But this is not the case when corporate media can manipulate the will of the public, and the government limits the rights of the public. So the sovereign will can't ever be of the people if there is a state? Is that what we are trying to get at with the positive talk on communism? And capitalism must have a negative effect on the social order(in some way, which I have yet to find out), which limits the values of a social contract.

If capitalism is an economic system (not government system) that gives the right to property by individuals privately, for production and profit then there is little government control. Is this good or bad? I mean, businesses gain the ability to control flow of assets, money, and work to create monopolies, I'm assuming. Is it not prudent to consider restricting corporations in some way.

So socialism is moving companies to the government control and capitalism is about private ownership, away from government control. It is odd to choose which one is better because the government in a democracy speaks for the people:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: and the corporation only gain through meeting the needs or wants of the public. I'm not sure what is better because there is greed from both fronts.

Because of this, would socialism deteriorate capitalism? And democracy advocates for it.
And communism is really against capitalism in that people's dependency on reality becomes greater through the means of production and absolute cause(a job) as in capitalism; whereas communism is negating sovereign influence to connect people's wills.

John Galt, "I swear -- by my life and by my love of it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

Does this mean that communism has an underlying tacit sort of thing going here? I really can't see the connection of socialism to communism here. I'm lost, I mean did marxist see socialism as a way of centering the influence of will to the state, away from other social and economic influences so that it can be separated much more easily, deminishing sovereign's will.?:confused:

In terms of liberalism it would be better to not have a government at all because the government has control of rights and can force immoral actions upon societies.

Though I have a problem with advocating such libertarianism. A society must input, somewhere in the social contract, for the sake of social order, a common goal. Something that can be strived for where work and force is applied to constantly to reach the goal. Humanity evokes religion for this reason I think.

But the more I think about this I realise that it is only for the sake of stability of the political power; not really advocating the original intentions of the public. (Most likely, the influence is the one driving the common goal). So an individual's will is threatened by the concept of coalescing will. But thats just selfish. We must help others, which is an act of controlling their will; in that one is entending or limiting the potential of another's will.

If there is truly liberty it can only be reached if people are not applying their intentions upon one another, sort of. I really can't word this. People can help each other reach their moral, rational, reactions to the environment, while not forcing another's will to interfere with the other. That seems very improbable to happen and constitutes for less social interaction.


This is only followed through by anarchy, I suppose, or maybe communism, but certainly theoretical still. Socialism doesn't work because the sovereign will still exists, and democracy only causes conservatism, which I believe a little is good. But then what to do with true liberty, in that common goals are only realisations of common actions evoking the same, wanted moral virtue, meaning to our life. (This is why we have mass production, its unavoidable this way, because more virtue is attained when not ignoring the chance to stack peoples' wills with common goals). And it is reason for industrialization, then capitalism is the following in the social sense.

Capitalism only initiates more selfishness b/c of how there is the aspect of ownership. Everybody must have belongings, but through currency, there's better methods. So money doesn't work well with true communism?

I know this was not coherent but I will understand it all soon and I hate to write formally and structuring it.

You have asked a lot of good questions that I would need to devote some substantial time to. I will continue to update this post with what will hopefully be helpful answers.

Note: I am very opinionated, but will try to be somewhat fair.

Social Contract Theory is a method for modeling and justifying the role of government. The idea is that individuals, in a state of nature, being bound only by the law of nature, come together in agreement to form a system of laws that limits their actions and provides protections. The idea is that, if these people are free and entering this contract by rational self-interest, we can take government control to be justified. Liberal political theory is big on government by consent.

The "sovereign will" is the will of the governing body. This can be traced back to Hobbes in his argument justifying the monarchy, where people consented to live by the will of the sovereign monarch in exchange from protection from evils of the state of nature they would be in otherwise. Presently, it would represent the will of the public, if you wish to call democratic decision making the will of the public.

I don't really believe there is any sort of good Social Contract Theory, but the most acceptable one is probably that of John Rawls, as it may be said that there are basic rules of human reason and behavior that simply would not be argued against in contractual agreement.

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The knee jerk decision is to look at present capitalism and assume that capitalism leads to big business control over markets.

The capitalistic response is to simply look at basic market forces and the reasonable actions of the individuals who make up the market. Briefly, businesses are successful when they offer the consumer the greatest value; this is the way competition works. If a company offers a product at a higher price than another company could, then they will lose market share and suffer. Monopoly, therefore, is only possible if that private entity truly provides for the customer best and customers keep coming back. This, however, is not really a monopoly, as the business is still competing, it is simply outclassing. There is nothing barring competitors other than the fact that they simply aren't good enough.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are arguments that present game theory, where rational people acting in large numbers may be diverted into behavior that they don't truly want. There are arguments about externalities in which the costs of a transaction are not fully covered by the actors of the transaction. There also arguments about transaction costs. I will not get into these right now, but if you look for them you will find them.

Holiday, I want to say that your post is really insightfull. The only thing left for you to make accurate judgements is some information. I am going to try and steer you right on the social contract, clearly seperate the social contract from the state, start this discussion on its way to the ethical foundatins of it and point towards the religious matters. I think we are going to have to elaborate on all subjects though, so, as I mentioned before, I think a seperation of topics would be a good idea. I am awaiting your initiative on the matter, if any.

Social Contract
The social contract is the interaction (or lack thereof) between a number of people, not the formula for it. Every group of people has it's 'private' social contract. A populace has a social contract because they are grouped together under the same laws and in that sense their actions influence one another, a tribe has a social contract because they all live in the same region and their actions influence one another, a bridge club has a social contract because interactions are undergone or denied on the basis of playing bridge. These are a number of social contracts, which are undergone or denied on a free basis. The unfree part comes into view when laws or guidelines are instituted.

The State and its Laws
The state is a body of men (or only one), which supposedly is formed by the sovereign (the sovereign is the combined will of the populace); the resultant. The difference between laws and the social contract is the fact that laws are a means of saying what interactions should be undergone and which should be denied. There are two capitol differences between the social contract an the laws:
1) The social contract is absolutely unbinding for any person, while laws are absolutely (or so the state wold like us to believe) binding.
2) The social contract and laws exist on different levels. The laws exist within the social contract, supposedly as a resultant of the will of the populace. The state therefore can only influence the execution of the kind of interaction and not the interaction itself (taking the lack of interaction as a kind of interaction).

Interaction between the Laws and the Social Contract
Because the state presumes to be the resultant of the combined will of the populace (sovereign) it claims authority of the execution of the interactions. The state, however, has never asked the populace their will. It is sometimes simulated by voting in which usually 10%-20% of the people voice their opinions on who to elect from a selected group of statesmen, but no true interaction takes place. Thomas Hobbes, in his Leviathan, paints us a picture of the authority of state. The work is often referred as a pit from hell because of the fact that the freedom of the populace is twisted so that it would appear that laws are in every way lawfull because the state deems them so. The social contract is in that sense used to ligitimise the state, while in effect different systems are used such as selection, voting, commercials or brute force (to name but a few). The truth is that the state is only facilitated by the social contract because of the fact that the state would claim authority over a group of people who interact. The social contract at no point gives any power to any ruler, but sometimes, by its inaction, allows someone to rule. If the sovereign (the combined will of the populace) objects to the ruler a revolution takes place (the proof that the state and the social contract in fact are two different things is the fact that revolutions do take place).

The thing that is of importance is that the social contract is the kind of contract for which no approval is needed. The state on the other hand does need approval. The approval which is needed is one of an ethical level. When the populace revolts it always has ethical reasons.

Ethics and the StateEthics and Religion
When one gets down to it the ethical 'rules' a populace wields are really just learned behavior. Although there are exceptions (that I will not address now because at this point they are not relevant; that comes later) all ethical philosophies are merely the seperation of 'right' from 'wrong'. A strong factor to influence such 'rules' is religion. Religion is the institution which subscribes what is 'right' or 'good' by a divine mandate. That is why, in times now long gone in the west, monarches were said to have been placed on the head of the 'Leviathan' by 'God'. That gave an ethical basis for the state, which could then subscribe the executions of interactions.
Today the religious factor is a lot less present, although candidates still seek endorsement of important religious figures to stipulate their 'good'. The state has the necessity to appear as 'the good' to the populace to prevent revolutions, that is why the people are often kept in the dark on the truth of thing and therefore lied to.

I would like to conclude with a quote:

Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels, Nazi minister of propaganda said, "It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State."

Marx believed that capitalism, by its own mechanisms would unravel itself. He believed that capitalism required the owners of capital to leech surplus labor out of the workers, and as production technologies increased they eventually would not be able to sustain themselves on this leeching.

Modern economics (and the economics of Marx's own day) show that this surplus labor is not necessary to keep capitalists afloat.

As an agorist, I believe that the efficiencies and benefits of the market will draw more and more individual actors away from planned economics. Instead of engaging and dealing with violent and costly regulators, they will engage in counter-economics.



There isn't a necessity for any sort of top down social order. A society based on individuals interacting with other individuals can produce emergent properties.

I would not recommend approaching society from the model of a social contract. People do not act as if a social contract exists.



I will say that I like the way you think and you are on a good path.

My favorite politically oriented quote deals both with a better way of looking at society as an amalgamation of contracts between individuals, rather than a contract between an individual and society, and with the only way a free society can conduct itself:

"... liberal social theory proves that each single man sees in all others, first of all, only means to the realization of their purposes, while he himself is to all others a means to the realization of their purposes; that finally, by this reciprocal action, in which each is simultaneously means and end, the highest aim of social life is obtained - the achievement of a better existence for everyone. As society is only possible if everyone, while living his own life, at the same time helps others to live; if every individual is simultaneously means and end; if each individual's well-being is simultaneously the condition necessary to the well-being of others, it is evident that the contrast between I and thou, means and end, automatically is overcome."



I don't think that capitalism necessarily initiates more selfishness, or that the selfishness it does initiate is necessarily bad.

And yes, communists generally deride currency.

Holiday, Marx's point when he said we'd evolve into communism was based on his so-called "historical materialism." IIRC, he showed how society evolved in terms of who owned the means of production. In essence, there was a "centralization" from primitive communism, to fuedalism, etc. and then we saw a "decentralization" as feudal lords gave way to burges who gave way to the bourgeoisie. In his view, this "decentralization" of the means of production will continue to modern communism where, just as primitive communism, everything will be held communally.

Of course, his argument ignores the basics of economics. There really wouldn't be any difference between modern and primitive communism, both are, ultimately, primitive. Both would lead to a society with basically zero division of labor, and thus you'd see a huge loss in productivity as capital would not be maintained and new capital would not be built. Communism can only exist in primitive agricultural and hunter gatherer societies.

However, beyond that, communism cannot exist. A modern society needs division of labor to achieve the high level of output (production) that it does. This division of labor implies that we need money to pay workers who otherwise wouldn't be producing anything of value.

Furthermore, Marx's critique of capitalism is quite naive and unwarranted. For example, he uses the labor theory of value and the surplus value theory as his basis. LTV states that the value of an object solely rests in the labor needed to do it. In this sense, capital does not count because it is only "stored labor" (the labor that created the capital) and even special skills/education are also considered "stored labor" (the labor the teachers used to teach you, etc.). By this reasoning, something that takes 14 labor hours to build should cost the same amount of another product that took 14 labor hours to build. This is completely fallacious though.

Modern economists, starting with Jevons and Menger in the "marginalist revolution" explained how there is no intrinsic value in products. The value is purely subjective. They also explained the value in terms of utility. Essentially, if an apple brings me more "utility" than a grapefruit, I'll get an apple. However, the more apples I have, the less each apple is worth. So even though I might value apples more, I might get a graprefruit after the fifth or sixth apple due to the diminishing value of the apple.

This second aspect of diminishing value is called marginalism and it's the basis of supply and demand. The more supply (or less demand) that we have, the lower the price. So price isn't based on an intrinsic value as Marx postulated, it is simply based on the preferences of millions of individuals. If you can make a greater profit growing apple trees, more farmers will grow apple trees and therefore produce more apples. There will be greater supply of apples so apples will cost less. But because of that grapefruits might become more profitable so people will grow more grapefruits. Essentially, the market will always move towards an "equilibrium" of supply and demand.

Marx's second big fallacy in his critique of capitalism - the surplus theory of value is based on his first (LTV). He essentially stated that any and all profits made by capitalists "steal value" away from the labor. This is false since the profits are nothing but a sign of the supply and demand. Also, the capitalists themselves do contribute to the production process. They find land and capital, they choose adept workers, and then they find where to sell the products produced by their land, capital, and workers. So really, the money they make is well deserved since they actually coordinate the economy to meet our demands.

So now to your question: Is Western society better off as democracy or socialism?

My answer: aren't they the same? In the words of the economists Hans Herman-Hoppe, democracy is the God that failed. The majority is not well informed and they often will vote for special interests.

For example, look at the popularity of Barack Obama. Why would anyone in their right mind vote for someone who will restrict oil supply, tax business out of this nation, regulate health care even more, restrict trade, etc.? Take him wanting to renegotiate NAFTA, CAFTA, and other "free trade" agreements to "favor" workers. It's nothing more than a plan that favors certain domestic businessmen over others who could use the cheaper products and over foreign businessmen. Also, it's in the special interest of large unions, like the UAW, to restrict trade so that they can keep their artificially high wages, even though it doesn't benefit the public.

So I would argue that the superior system of government would be one that is extremely limited by a very, very strict and clear constitution. Our constitution is very strict but not very clear due to the number of other documents you need to read to understand it (i.e. Virginia ratifying convention).

Hey Mr. Fight the Power, nice to see an agorist! I'm an individualist anarchist, so I guess that makes us like political cousins or something. :cool:

As a lesser of two evils option. It's not like John McCain's economic policies are any less destructive than Obama's.

In The Netherlands we have like a dozen different political parties. And a real Queen. The parties try to form a mayority government. We normally have christian or social party in this coalition. No wild changes here