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Mondragon as the new city-state

elysian.press

291–300 of 372 posts

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialism traditionally meant workers control over production. To the degree that Mondragon is democratic it is socialist. Socialism came to be commonly associated with "State-capitalist monopoly" (Lenin) later in the 20th century but that does not describe revolutionary Spain at all. There companies were mostly worker owned, democratically managed and freely associated within democratic regional and industrial carte…

Socialism is about social control over production, not worker control. That's the big difference here, so it's relevant to point out. A co-op gives you worker control within the framework of a private ownership society.

Workers control over production was the objective of virtually every popular (socialist) movement well into the 20th century.

Even Lenin propagandized "All power to the soviets!" because his coup d'etat would have been impossible without popular support.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#292
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a Marxist and believes in Marx's labor theory of value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value As wikipedia says, "modern mainstream economics rejects the LTV" (for very good reasons). It leads to some pretty obvious absurdities if you take it seriously. For example, 10,000 people digging holes should be more "valuable" than one guy designing a microchip, because hey! The holes take more labor.

Your "holes" example is a distortion (simplification and misinterpretation) of Marx's theory.

And it's the same idiotic one that comes up every single time. "MUDPIES CHECKMATE!!"

Nevermind Marx accounted for demand and markets when talking about cost of labor, but people love to strawman.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware of social washing to justify higher costs. cosocial.ca charges CA$50 for its annual membership. Omg.lol charges $20/year for Mastodon and a bunch of services and for $29/year, I can offer Mastodon, Lemmy, Matrix and Funkwhale, with 250GB of storage.

It's not "social washing" if it's actually a working co-operative. We all collectively own the funds, and if we ever want to lower yearly rates or pay our members dividends from surpluses, members are free to put it to a vote. Part of the reason we run a surplus is to deal with any unexpected costs (they don't just scale with users, but also the popularity of users on our server), but FWIW I think we should open up a…

What would be the point of "paying dividends from surpluses", if the funds are getting in and out of the same (collective) pockets?

And if "everyone" owns the coop, then why do you need to get the surplus in the first place? Seems to be it would be just fine to say "Every month we run a report of the total expenses, and every member pays an equal share".

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. Every failure of communism is because it wasn't really communist! I wonder where the tipping point of "true" communism is? Because the closer one gets to communism, the worse the results. Free markets, on the other hand, work even if they aren't perfect. The more free they are, the better they work.

On the other hand, countries with more regulated markets such as European nations, the U.K. and Commonwealth nations, and Japan and some of the East Asian Tigers might have less pollution than the United States. You get Americans importing EU baby formula because they are more restrictive about what chemical additives can go into them. Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-ce…

>> Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-central planning position?

You shouldn't have a problem demonstrating this then? It's easy to enumerate all failed central planned economies, there really never was one that succeeded. Why don't you give an example of country that failed miserable with millions of deaths because of too much free markets.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no value without labor. True, but there is also no value without investment and risk. Marx's failure was ignoring the other two ingredients. Marxism is building a road with hundreds of laborers with shovels. Capitalism is one guy with a bulldozer. P.S. Cuba has no riches to steal.

Marx wrote a gigantic book called Capital and it provides a thorough analysis of investment and risk. He wrote a great deal of words describing how investment relates to surplus value (hint: investment is simply a capitalist's way of generating surplus value - profit, which is then used to generate more surplus value, which is... you understand the systemic contradiction here, I hope). You should probably read it if…

From the same genre I like Grimms' Fairy Tales more. They seem more realistic.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be because since 2019 and the withdrawal of the US military presence in NE Syria, the relative prosperity of Rojava has plummeted. This draws into question exactly how 'autonomous' said autonomous zone was.

Yeah that's on of the things that get hand-wavity when you bring up these city-state type plans as well as anarcho-whatevers. They generally wouldn't be big enough to defend themselves from religious extremists or nation states acting against them--many of them not even figuring in defense against other entities and saying "we're pacifists". That kind of stuff only works when external factors like aggressive neighbor…

Most models include various types of People's Militia. YPJ is the military of Rojava. Interestingly, it's a military without a hierarchy, just individual teams with some basic coordination.

Yet with this they were able to beat ISIS when others had failed.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#297
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, countries with more regulated markets such as European nations, the U.K. and Commonwealth nations, and Japan and some of the East Asian Tigers might have less pollution than the United States. You get Americans importing EU baby formula because they are more restrictive about what chemical additives can go into them. Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-ce…

>> Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-central planning position? You shouldn't have a problem demonstrating this then? It's easy to enumerate all failed central planned economies, there really never was one that succeeded. Why don't you give an example of country that failed miserable with millions of deaths because of too much free markets.

1990s Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Crash in standards of living, skyrocketing alcoholism and suicides, societal immiseration.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/how...

https://www.britannica.com/place/Russia/Post-Soviet-Russia

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/alcohol-blamed-ha...

An infestation of pyramid schemes (also happened in post-communist Albania, too, leading to civil war).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_schemes_in_Albania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Albanian_civil_unrest

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#298
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-central planning position? You shouldn't have a problem demonstrating this then? It's easy to enumerate all failed central planned economies, there really never was one that succeeded. Why don't you give an example of country that failed miserable with millions of deaths because of too much free markets.

1990s Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Crash in standards of living, skyrocketing alcoholism and suicides, societal immiseration. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/how... https://www.britannica.com/place/Russia/Post-Soviet-Russia https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/alcohol-blamed-ha... An infestation of pyramid schemes (also happened in post-communist Albania, too, leading…

How are the events you listed a consequence of too much free markets? You just proved my point with your examples. Collapse of the Soviet Union was literally a direct consequence of failed central planing. It didn't work that is way it collapsed, hence crash in standard of living. Pyramid schemes were also very popular in the eastern European countries before the fall of communism as well.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#299
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1990s Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Crash in standards of living, skyrocketing alcoholism and suicides, societal immiseration. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/how... https://www.britannica.com/place/Russia/Post-Soviet-Russia https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/alcohol-blamed-ha... An infestation of pyramid schemes (also happened in post-communist Albania, too, leading…

How are the events you listed a consequence of too much free markets? You just proved my point with your examples. Collapse of the Soviet Union was literally a direct consequence of failed central planing. It didn't work that is way it collapsed, hence crash in standard of living. Pyramid schemes were also very popular in the eastern European countries before the fall of communism as well.

And what replaced central planning in those countries, and proved unable to stop the crash?

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#300
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, countries with more regulated markets such as European nations, the U.K. and Commonwealth nations, and Japan and some of the East Asian Tigers might have less pollution than the United States. You get Americans importing EU baby formula because they are more restrictive about what chemical additives can go into them. Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-ce…

>> Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-central planning position? You shouldn't have a problem demonstrating this then? It's easy to enumerate all failed central planned economies, there really never was one that succeeded. Why don't you give an example of country that failed miserable with millions of deaths because of too much free markets.

Why don't you give an example of country that failed miserable with millions of deaths because of too much free markets.

The beauty of capitalism is that it works (or seems to work for some people, for the time being) by externalizing its true costs to other countries, other social strata -- and indeed far into the future.

Though mortality rates seem not to have risen (and may in fact declined) in the U.S. during the peak depression years (1930-1933) -- as a global phenomenon, the collapse of a system based on "too much free markets" is generally seen as one of the primary drivers of WW2, so we would have to attribute some share of its 70-85 million fatalities this market-driven collapse as well.

And not just by accident. There's also the fact that "free market" interests and Western financial support were key to Hitler and Mussolini's rise to power in the first place, as the former saw the latter as a perhaps unsavory but ultimately necessary bulwark against the rising spectre of a global socialist movement (whether on the Bolshevik model or otherwise).

Plus the whole European colonial project in Asia, Africa and the Americas, and the several hundred million deaths that it brought to the table. Though to be fair, this wasn't so much a matter of any collapse of the free market system of the time -- but rather of it working exactly as it was intended, from the very start.

And of course now we're headed for a much larger disaster with likely at least as many hundred millions of deaths looming on the horizon -- in the form of climate change and its attendant disruptions, also very much a direct result of "too much free markets".

So there you go.

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