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Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

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Re: Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

#91

Post by yazantapuz »

VictorPath wrote: post #79
l-_l-_l-_lo_ol wrote: post #55

"Stalin : There is no, nor should there be, irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of the individual person and the interests of the collective. There should be no such contrast, because collectivism, socialism, does not deny, but combines individual interests with the interests of the collective." Horrifying.

There is no, nor should there be, irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the family, between the interests of the individual person and the interests of the family. There should be no such contrast, because family, does not deny, but combines individual interests with the interests of the family." Horrifying. Not really. In a well-functioning family individual and family interests are in tune (of course t…

> In a well-functioning family individual and family interests are in tune

In a family, yes, it is possible. With millions of individiuals? Hardly.

Also, you can leave your family. Good look leaving a proletarian dictatorship.

Re: Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

#92

Post by zozbot234 »

Miner49er wrote: post #61
lordnacho wrote: post #50

This bit makes me think of HN people and UBI: > Wells : I remember the situation with regard to the technical intelligentsia several decades ago. At that time the technical intelligentsia was numerically small, but there was much to do and every engineer, technician and intellectual found his opportunity. That is why the technical intelligentsia was the least revolutionary class. Now, however, there is a superabundan…

UBI is interesting, because it isn't really socialist. It can easily be a tool of capital to retain power. If lots of things are automated, to the point where many don't need to work, who will own the robots (the means of production)? The socialist solution would be to find a way to collectively control/own these. Maybe vote on a board to decide what is best or something like that. They would find a way to distribute…

OTOH, there's a lot of renewed advocacy for breaking off the naturally monopolistic "platforms" developed by existing tech firms, and making sure that they're run in the public interest via strong regulation. That's basically a residual argument for centralized collective "planning" in an economic context, even as part of a market-based economy. Based on the observation that, either way, a monopolized "platform" is not really subject to market discipline, so the government needs to step-in as a substitute.

Re: Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

#93

Post by cloutchaser »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #64
mcv wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _Someone else_ will we working to give you a comfortable life. Robots, preferably. We're not there yet, but it would be a nice goal. And certainly a lot better than having robots do all the work but the fruits of their work going only to the rich who own them.

Yes this is why anything to do with ai should be open source. It can be too powerful in the hands of bad actors.

> Yes this is why anything to do with ai should be open source. It can be too powerful in the hands of bad actors

Maybe read your sentence again. Carefully...

Re: Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

#94

Post by CodeGlitch »

cloutchaser wrote: post #93
CodeGlitch wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is why anything to do with ai should be open source. It can be too powerful in the hands of bad actors.

> Yes this is why anything to do with ai should be open source. It can be too powerful in the hands of bad actors Maybe read your sentence again. Carefully...

By being open source = democratising

Bad actors start using ai to do bad things. Good actors use ai to counter bad actors.

Or is that not what you meant?

Re: Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

#95

Post by InitialLastName »

fsloth wrote: post #15
marcodiego wrote: post #6

It is a shame Marxsim/communism/socialism is so much associated with tyranny and dictatorships.

The only implementations are basically run by dominant elites, who emerge as the ruling class, resulting in exclusive political economic systems. Daron Acemoglu's "Why nations fail" offers a great framework to discuss this, I think. Appropriation of capital basically means that the government decides to eradicate right to private ownership, thus reducing the will for economic creative destruction. The lack of this cr…

> The only implementations are basically run by dominant elites, who emerge as the ruling class, resulting in exclusive political economic systems.

This is mighty reminiscent of basically every other system of large (super-Dunbar-scale) society control, from the ancient priest-kings, through the Roman "republic" and imperial systems, medieval feudalism, and late-stage capitalism.

When control of the political system (how society allocates resources) can be used in a self-dealing manner, and resources can be used to control the political system, the steady state will tend towards the pattern you noted above (especially when those resources tend toward power-law distributions).

Notably, the argument can be made that the situations where political power has reverted to a wider base (including the establishment of modern democracies) has come about when social or technological changes destabilized the economic distribution structure. Examples include the workers' movement you cited, the growing late medieval era's growing merchant class (whose willingness to be taxed to fund mutually-beneficial programs and corresponding demands for control over those programs helped trigger the creation of European democracy), and the western Roman Empire's decaying ability to use the funds of expansion to exert social control in its occupied territories.

Lastly, it should be noted that, as brutal, illiberal, and inegalitarian as the USSR ended up being, the society they replaced (the Tsarist Russian Empire), being an industrialized dictatorship built around an enormous serf class was probably worse on all three counts.

Re: Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

#96

Post by oats »

akvadrako wrote: post #86
Miner49er wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is interesting, because it isn't really socialist. It can easily be a tool of capital to retain power. If lots of things are automated, to the point where many don't need to work, who will own the robots (the means of production)? The socialist solution would be to find a way to collectively control/own these. Maybe vote on a board to decide what is best or something like that. They would find a way to distribute…

UBI isn't socialist at all; socialism is about central planning – large bureaucracy making decisions. UBI mostly removes the bureaucracy and decision making power of how to spend government proceeds. This is why in the 21st century the most prominent promoters of UBI (sometimes called negative income tax) were libertarians.

Nor is "central planning" a socialist concept. The only remotely consisent throughline in the vast spectrum of socialist thought has been democratic ownership or control of one's workplace. In fact, many strains of leftism explicitly reject central planning of an economy, which they would see as a result of an unjustified hierarchy.

Re: Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

#97

Post by dragonwriter »

akvadrako wrote: post #86
Miner49er wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is interesting, because it isn't really socialist. It can easily be a tool of capital to retain power. If lots of things are automated, to the point where many don't need to work, who will own the robots (the means of production)? The socialist solution would be to find a way to collectively control/own these. Maybe vote on a board to decide what is best or something like that. They would find a way to distribute…

UBI isn't socialist at all; socialism is about central planning – large bureaucracy making decisions. UBI mostly removes the bureaucracy and decision making power of how to spend government proceeds. This is why in the 21st century the most prominent promoters of UBI (sometimes called negative income tax) were libertarians.

> UBI isn't socialist at all

It is consistent with socialism, but not essentially socialist.

> socialism is about central planning

No, it's not. Central planning may be part of some versions of socialism, though there are serious arguments within socialism that central planning in the strong sense is incompatible with socialism, and instead a degenerate single-capitalist form of capitalism.

Socialism is about common/worker ownership and control of the institutions, means, and proceeds of economic production (each of these is a goal and a means to the others.) UBI, especially when funded from taxes on wealth, property, or income where capital income is not excluded or favored, is a mechanism for common participation in the proceeds of production.

> This is why in the 21st century the most prominent promoters of UBI (sometimes called negative income tax) were libertarians.

I think you mean the 20th Century and right-libertarians, though as you state it jt is, in fact, also true of the 21st Century (but there it is libertarian socialists at the fore, who aren't the libertarians you seem to want to refer to with your “UBI isn’t socialist” line.)

Re: Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

#98

Post by syki »

virgilp wrote: post #90
syki wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1919 no one in the world would have thought the backward, fledgling Soviet Union would be the first in space. Your example is not apt.

But it is - they could because the party leadership wanted to/ decided it was important. My point isn't that communism can't achieve anything, it's that you can't have private initiative that's against the party line - and that's not an accident of one particular implementation, that is a "feature" of communism itself. "Unanimous" agreement on the collective good/collective interests only works, at all, in small grou…

A person (or persons) with sufficient power/influence decided to pursue space flight and it happened. Which example does the previous sentence refer to?

Re: Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

#99

Post by dang »

Past threads on this:

H. G. Wells' 1934 interview with Stalin (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17054704 - May 2018 (52 comments)

H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616566 - April 2014 (137 comments)

It doesn't seem to be possible for an open internet forum to have an intellectually interesting discussion about this kind of thing. The reflexive reactions are so intense that they simply overwhelm anything reflective ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Intellectual curiosity can't survive that level of activation.

Re: Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

#100

Post by slothtrop »

yazantapuz wrote: post #35
marcodiego wrote: post #6

It is a shame Marxsim/communism/socialism is so much associated with tyranny and dictatorships.

Maybe because that's the only way that they can be implemented?

And yet the only words of assurance you have in return following scrutiny of this point is "well it doesn't have to be that way, next time will be different". They never, ever, ever want to focus on this, because they have nothing.
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