Thanks Col Rouge, BN and Yabby

You are my triumvirate.

We see the world differently - you through the lens of capital and me through the lens of labour.

Col you say: Lenin and Stalin both did it, five year plan after five year plan.

Stalin began the first five year plan in 1930. It was an attempt to develop Russian industry at the expense of workers living standards. Stalin cut wages by 50% fto use the surplus they created to develop more and more heavy industry. "What the west has done in a hundred years we must do in ten" he said. In other words he fast forwarded the development of capitalism in the USSR through cheap and also forced labour,and collectivisation which drove peasants off the land into the cities. Read Capital Volume 1 when Marx describes the history of the establishment of capitalism in Europe. It is eerily similar to the Stalinist period and the first five year plan. Why? Because it is the same process.

Col, in 1930 when the first five year plan began, Lenin had been dead for over 6 years.

There is a perfectly legitimate argument that socialism has been tried and failed. I wish you could make it so I could rebut it. But to say that history has changed so much is to miss the fact the world is still divided between labour and capital.

Even the examples Col Rouge gives of the decline for example of Nazism are incorrect. At the last Austrian election recently the two fascist parties got 29% of the vote in total.

The global crisis may see fascism arise again in strength, with some agreeing that "finance capital" rules the world.

What about South America and the leftist Governments in power there, expressing the hope of workers and peasants for a better world. (Let me add that none of them are socialist or communist in the sense I use of the self emancipation of the working class. They may challenge the rule of private capital but appear to be substituting state captialism for it.)

*But to say that history has changed so much is to miss the fact the world is still divided between labour and capital.*

That is the thing Passy, the world has changed dramatically in
100 years. 100 years ago, your theories of the division of capital
and labour applied. Not today.

100 years ago there were very few people with money, today they
are everywhere. I once saw a survey of who has wealth in Australia
and was amazed at how much those grey nomads, in their 50s-70s,
have tucked away.

Look around you. Where people used to have nothing and work in
a factory, today you have contractors, self employed people running
their own businesses, people own real estate, super, 40% own
shares directly. The millionaire next door is very much alive and
common as chips.

So your old division of labour and capital is largely obscure,
certainly in the West. Labour and Capital are intertwined these
days.

But then it also comes back to human nature. Give everyone 100k$,
one person will turn it into a million, the other will blow the lot
in a short time. We can even test for this in three year olds,
with the marshmallow test.

So you will will always have some rich and some poor, by the very
nature of humanity. The best we can do is to give them every
opportunity to help themselves, but like the horse to water, we
can't make it drink.

Passy “Col, in 1930 when the first five year plan began, Lenin had been dead for over 6 years.”

An insignificant error on my part, especially when Lenin’s intentions were curtailed only by the occasion of his death. However, we can see how he had fostered the idea from statements such as

“But the most brilliant confirmation of the correctness of Lenin's words has been provided by our five-year plan….”
http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/RFFYP33.html

wanna split more hairs?

“Even the examples Col Rouge gives of the decline for example of Nazism are incorrect.”

I have not mentioned “Nazism”

But pleased you brought it up

We can consider the treaty of Brest-Litovsk and later the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,

and observe how the reprehensible interests of socialism were in accord with the despicable perversions of fascism, working together against the interests of individual freedom and democratic libertarian capitalism

I recall Stalin only opposed Hitler following Germany’s launch of Barbarossa.

As for South America, “and the leftist Governments in power there, expressing the hope of workers and peasants for a better world.”

Why are most of the workers and peasants queuing up to get up to Mexico and into USA, if their “leftist governments” are so wonderful?

“(Let me add that none of them are socialist or communist in the sense I use of the self emancipation of the working class. They may challenge the rule of private capital but appear to be substituting state capitalism for it.)”

Of course, “Chicken little”,

Passy must never place himself in a position where his theories could actually be tested or measured against a “real life” example,

“Factual accountability” is the destroyer of whimsical fantasy and certain to cause Passy’s “sky to fall in”.

Yabby “but like the horse to water, we can't make it drink.”

You should know better, the socialist way is not to water the horse but to deny it water until it submits to the will of the party.

It has worked for Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, the Kim Il-sung dynasty, Robert Mugabe etc…..

At the risk of sounding like I'm bignoting myself, I'll respond to this:

Passy “You don't grasp my arguments because they are outside your thinking and life experience.”

Relevent to this discussion, my life experiences include being the global lead for a piece of HR/Payroll software, and as a result, I've been around the world a bunch of times, including spending a couple of years in third world countries. So I've seen the 'best' countries and the 'worst' countries, and all manner of government styles. The best countries are those who interfere the least with peoples individual lives.

In addition, and probably more relevent, I spend a lot of time with C-level (usually CFO/CHRO) and senior managers (and via some conferences, leaders in other fields), and what I've noticed is that those who are most successful (and this applies to sports people, entrepreneurs, 'ordinary people', developers etc) are those who make it happen for themselves and don't wait for someone else to give it to them. That's one of the reasons why I'm an advocate of capitalism - you succeed because of your own actions. It's also why I'm against socialism - i'm against the notion of people gaining benefit without doing the work to earn it.

Back to the discussion - this is long, but worth listening to: http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/14744 It shows that it's the more social ideas which exacerbated the sharemarket crash. If the more lefty politics hadn't been involved in Freddie Mac etc then this would've been a less traumatic experience.

My dear triumvirate

Look, I am not trying to be disrespectful, but this appears to me to be a dialogue of the deaf. I can say as many times as I want that stalinism is not socialism (with a set of arguments to justify that) and Col will reply that it is.

I can explain the labour theory of value in simple terms and get responses rejecting out of hand that theory.

I do argue that there is a tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Not too many address that issue in reply.

I can and do argue that the crisis is one of profitability, and if it is, then no amount of neo-liberal, or Keynesian, or mercantilist interventions (can you have neo-liberal interventions? I think so) will cure the problem. Only things like the destruction of capital (physical or in value), new technology and other means of cheapening food, clothing and housing etc, driving down workers' living standards and lengthening the working day can rescue profit rates.

Your response is likely to be "let the market rule and this is as good as it gets (and any socialist alternative is even more dangerous.)

So be it. Can we agree to disagree? I know that Col may well say that my philosophy is inherently evil, but that is like saying that fascism is the offspring of capitalism and so capitalism is as inherently evil as fascism. (In fact fascism is one of the state variants arising from capitalism, while Stalinism is a state designed to create capitalism.)

Any way, I think the current plan to increase liquidity (by guaranteeing interbank loans and guaranteeing bank etc deposits) may work in the short term, but since it doesn't address stagnant profit rates isn't really a solution in capitlaist terms - the sorts of atrocities I mentioned above like war and driving down living standards, and making us work longer.

TBC - on the life experience discussion.

And BN, in terms of life experience I was a young boy going to his first anti-Vietnam demo at 16, resolving not to register for national Service, and being saved from having to make a decision on that with Whitlam's election just under a year before I turned 20.

9 years in the ATO, 9 years in a law faculty teaching and researching and then 9 years back in the ATO. (Do I have a nine year itch?) I led international tax new law measures, ran an international area giving precedential advice and also an area giving banking and finance advice.

My life experience from all of that teaches me that most of the "successful" business people are imbued with a sense of their own self-importance, are narrow thinkers, fixated on the short term and total individualists who care only about themselves. They are driven by profit to the exclusion of all else.

The real doers are on the shop floor or its equivalents, and they have the ideas, energy (until it is ground out of them) and experience to lead and decide and manage.

I came to be a revolutionary socialist through union activity - the best activists were the revolutionaries and their arguments made real sense to me about the way forward for the campaigns and then more broadly for society. And of course then reading the writings of Marx and Engels and Lenin and Luxemburg and Trotsky etc and later socialist thinkers opened my eyes to a different reality that goes beyond surface analysis.

I am a socialist of the heart.