LWDT IX: Discussing the Left From All Engels

[Ostroeuropa]

I don't really mean some hypothetical future where humanity has been replaced. The processes I describe are ongoing.

Manufacturing was mostly replaced by services as the dominant form of economic employment in industrialized countries because manufacturing was easily mechanized.
In-person services have proven harder to mechanize, but we're already starting to see it happen with automated tellers, digital cashiers in restaurants, etc.

This will, and is currently, switch the service-based employment mode to a highly specialized employment mode where the need for unskilled labor is lessened to the point of leading to unavoidable mass unemployment. Current labor-relations-based economic models are completely unprepared to account for the possibility of unskilled labor being replaced by non-unionizable "workers."

In 1950, the U.S.'s largest employer was General Motors. As the manufacturing economy was mechanized and employment switched largely to services, in 2010 the U.S.'s largest employer was Wal-Mart. What happens when the cashiers, rack-fillers, and warehouse employees are replaced with machines?

Actually the reason we lost jobs in manufacturing was not automation:
https://www.epi.org/publication/manufac ... e-culprit/
Outsourcing is the reason they work in Walmart.
All the stuff sold at Walmart uses a lot of labor to produce. Just labor overseas.

You attribute the symptoms to the wrong disease.

But Ostro covered this. If less working hours are needed then we increase the wages per hour and decrease the hours of work required via legislation.

It's a solution that works right up until the point of total automation.

[Novus America]

Exactly. If the number of workers needed decreases we can simply increase the hourly rate so that the can work less (obviously this precludes neoliberals outsourcing and mandates some level of protectionism) and reduce the number of hours needed to work.
In the future it may be we have a 4 hour rather than 40 hour working week. But that is fine.

One way to do this is to set the minimum wage to say 45% to 60% of the median wage (which is near the empirically demonstrated equilibrium wage and thus would not adversely effect employment despite regularly increasing.

And we need probably some criteria by which we set the working week. Say if unemployment exceeds a certain amount the working hours are cut a certain amount.

How would you prevent mass outsourcing?

Pretty simple. I would set a tariff to the trade deficit. Say we export 50 billion to a place and import 75 billion. 75-50=25. 25/50 = .5 x 100 = %50 tariff. This would of course cause us to import less from them, causing the tariff to fall, until the trade equalized.
Retaliation is impossible because the more the retaliate the worse it gets for them.

Unless we have a proper trade agreement with the country which protects labor and worker standards adequately, then the tariff could be reduced or waived.

[Novus America]

Actually the reason we lost jobs in manufacturing was not automation:
https://www.epi.org/publication/manufac ... e-culprit/
Outsourcing is the reason they work in Walmart.
All the stuff sold at Walmart uses a lot of labor to produce. Just labor overseas.

You attribute the symptoms to the wrong disease.

But Ostro covered this. If less working hours are needed then we increase the wages per hour and decrease the hours of work required via legislation.

It's a solution that works right up until the point of total automation.

Sure. At the point of total automation we have an interesting issue, although by having an NIT/GMI we can increase as needed we might be able to address that too.

[Liriena]

Reminder that under Lenin, towards the end of WW1 when Britain approached the Soviets and was like; Yo, Russia, wanna get in on some of this Imperialism? We can divide Anatolia. We got this sykes-picot shit arranged with france by the way, here's a copy. lol arabs.


The USSR went :I

And then Trotsky published every single secret treaty, agreement, and communique they had with imperialist nations from the last hundred years for all the world to see and basically showed what a bunch of utter cunts they were, including the British trying to get the USSR to join in on an imperialist venture to occupy Turkey with them and openly talking about dicking over the Arabs. The British immediately had to go explain to the arabs that it was all communist lies and propaganda. But it wasn't.


Based USSR. Fuck international norms and diplomacy when it gets in the way of chad moments like that.

Also good praxis for a conscientious state imo. If you want other nations to never ask yours to conspire with them in that way, do things like that. In a sense it binds your successors to similar principles.

It's hard not to kinda like the USSR even at its worst. So much BDE concentrated in one totalitarian state.

[Byeclase]

Okay so you admit the bunkers were wasteful and thus wasted the people’s labor and resources.
So the bunkers took they value of their labor giving little to nothing in return.

I didn't say they were wasteful, just that you may consider they were a waste in comparison to possible alternatives and in this they may have been wrong. I justified the fears of infiltration, I think they were right in that.

2% of GDP is still a big amount. Had they spent that on housing and roads, obviously housing and roads would be better.

I wrote 2 percent of net material product not 2% of the GDP. The NMP is similar to GDP but it's lower as it excludes some sectors. Housing was already covered for everyone, I think 2 houses or more would be wasting resources instead and that technology for defense or improving accountability systems (to root out the incoming clique) would have been a better choice.

And if defense was a concern, they could have spent that on a a more professional army equipped with modern A2/AD capabilities like SAMs, AShMs, ATGMs, SSKs etc. I am not against defense spending. I am against stupid spending. The bunkers were for the most part stupid.

I doubt this. Did they have the resources and tech to do all that? If yes then I can agree. The book criticizes this as you do, that it wasn't useful against the power of surrounding countries in a military way, but that they had impact on the population mentality for self-defense. The useful thing of this would be unity and vigilance for struggle.

But sure I understand the high tensions in the 50s but remember the bunkers were built in the 70s!
There was very little threat at the time, and certainly the idea of 11 NATO airborne divisions attacking was idiotic, NATO and the Soviets cared very little.
Hoxha was an egomaniac but actually basically nobody careD about him by that time. Globally he was utterly irrelevant.

The book says Hoxha was a person willing to do anything to get Albania to the XX's century when he was young and in the beginning of the rule following his thought, but that at the end of the rule he became paranoid and tried to consolidate power.
Sure that there were already tensions in the 50s, but the Sino-Albanian split is in the 70s when China sides with Yugoslavia. This is dangerous.
If you consider egomaniac state officials having similar payments to the people, eliminating classes, defending the country, boosting industry, education, healthcare and denouncing revisionist and corrupted cliques like the Ceausescu... then ok. I think if something he'd be patriotmaniac.

I disagree that Albania was less relevant than before. I think imperialism tries a constant siege of other countries.

There were parties which followed the line of the Party in Albania and even had splits with maoists as a pro-Hoxha tendency, his work denouncing the revisionists was relevant internationally for communists.

That was the problem. He though he was important outside Albania. He really was not.
It is very telling that the NATO and Warsaw Pact battle plans in the 70s do not mention Albania at all!

There were many instances during the late 1940's and early 1950's, when the West, particularly the United States and Great Britain did attempt to overthrow the Hoxha government. Covert means were used, including the use of Albanian volunteers to parachute into the country. These attempts failed due not only to Albanian vigilance but especially due to the exploits of Kim Philby, the MI6 and KGB double agent who notified Moscow and Albania concerning the dates of the infiltrations. The agents were met by Albanian security forces when they landed.

In the 50s... and in the 70s the maoists. Mao equated Titoist struggle with Albanian struggle, when the former tried to make Albania their territory and infiltrate them.

Sure maybe he did not trust the military for a reason but that was because he was a bad leader on military matters. He should have then build a better more trustworthy military and earned their loyalty over destroying the military.
Albania despite the cost of the bunkers had a shitty military.

Not sure, sometimes gaining people's trust and empowering them rather than the military can be worthy to call them to arms in case the infiltrators are entering the military trying to coup.

Although sure Hoxha did have some achievements and yes Albania came from a very poor start, still it did not do that well. It improved materially in some ways but it still remained backwards and could have improved more with a better leader.

Despite technical criticism leading to its failure, I think a better leader could only have been marxist-leninist and that leader would have to denounce the other countries as he did, and we can take those texts as classics to prevent further deviations in the future.

And no, poor allocation of resources is exploitation. They only way to reduce exploitation is to properly distribute resources. Again people really care a bout the OPPORTUNITY COST of their labor being compensated. Wasting their labor fails to do that. It extracts labor from them without giving them fair benefits in return, hence it is exploitation.

This is alien to marxism and a weird marginalist approach, it's a judgement about something happened in the past as a result, yet I haven't been shown this is technically true with all data, not saying you are wrong or right in the judgement about bunkers. There's no deliberate exploitation by a class or even the intention of it. There's not a class extracting value. Just decision processes in which people can allocate wrong a budget deciding in the circumstances of their environment. How can you call a past democratic mistake exploitation when there's no class to exploit? We'd have to know the future and all variables of the environment for it to be a deliberate mistake and know if it's 100% an error or not. And in that case it'd be corruption of those who allocate the budget knowing it on purpose.
I don't believe in this exploitation by democratic ignorance stuff.

[Novus America]

Okay so you admit the bunkers were wasteful and thus wasted the people’s labor and resources.
So the bunkers took they value of their labor giving little to nothing in return.

I didn't say they were wasteful, just that you may consider they were a waste in comparison to possible alternatives and in this they may have been wrong. I justified the fears of infiltration, I think they were right in that.

2% of GDP is still a big amount. Had they spent that on housing and roads, obviously housing and roads would be better.

I wrote 2 percent of net material product not 2% of the GDP. The NMP is similar to GDP but it's lower as it excludes some sectors. Housing was already covered for everyone, I think 2 houses or more would be wasting resources instead and that technology for defense or improving accountability systems (to root out the incoming clique) would have been a better choice.

And if defense was a concern, they could have spent that on a a more professional army equipped with modern A2/AD capabilities like SAMs, AShMs, ATGMs, SSKs etc. I am not against defense spending. I am against stupid spending. The bunkers were for the most part stupid.

I doubt this. Did they have the resources and tech to do all that? If yes then I can agree. The book criticizes this as you do, that it wasn't useful against the power of surrounding countries in a military way, but that they had impact on the population mentality for self-defense. The useful thing of this would be unity and vigilance for struggle.

But sure I understand the high tensions in the 50s but remember the bunkers were built in the 70s!
There was very little threat at the time, and certainly the idea of 11 NATO airborne divisions attacking was idiotic, NATO and the Soviets cared very little.
Hoxha was an egomaniac but actually basically nobody careD about him by that time. Globally he was utterly irrelevant.

The book says Hoxha was a person willing to do anything to get Albania to the XX's century when he was young and in the beginning of the rule following his thought, but that at the end of the rule he became paranoid and tried to consolidate power.
Sure that there were already tensions in the 50s, but the Sino-Albanian split is in the 70s when China sides with Yugoslavia. This is dangerous.
If you consider egomaniac state officials having similar payments to the people, eliminating classes, defending the country, boosting industry, education, healthcare and denouncing revisionist and corrupted cliques like the Ceausescu... then ok. I think if something he'd be patriotmaniac.

I disagree that Albania was less relevant than before. I think imperialism tries a constant siege of other countries.

There were parties which followed the line of the Party in Albania and even had splits with maoists as a pro-Hoxha tendency, his work denouncing the revisionists was relevant internationally for communists.

That was the problem. He though he was important outside Albania. He really was not.
It is very telling that the NATO and Warsaw Pact battle plans in the 70s do not mention Albania at all!

There were many instances during the late 1940's and early 1950's, when the West, particularly the United States and Great Britain did attempt to overthrow the Hoxha government. Covert means were used, including the use of Albanian volunteers to parachute into the country. These attempts failed due not only to Albanian vigilance but especially due to the exploits of Kim Philby, the MI6 and KGB double agent who notified Moscow and Albania concerning the dates of the infiltrations. The agents were met by Albanian security forces when they landed.

In the 50s... and in the 70s the maoists. Mao equated Titoist struggle with Albanian struggle, when the former tried to make Albania their territory and infiltrate them.

Sure maybe he did not trust the military for a reason but that was because he was a bad leader on military matters. He should have then build a better more trustworthy military and earned their loyalty over destroying the military.
Albania despite the cost of the bunkers had a shitty military.

Not sure, sometimes gaining people's trust and empowering them rather than the military can be worthy to call them to arms in case the infiltrators are entering the military trying to coup.

Although sure Hoxha did have some achievements and yes Albania came from a very poor start, still it did not do that well. It improved materially in some ways but it still remained backwards and could have improved more with a better leader.

Despite technical criticism leading to its failure, I think a better leader could only have been marxist-leninist and that leader would have to denounce the other countries as he did, and we can take those texts as classics to prevent further deviations in the future.

And no, poor allocation of resources is exploitation. They only way to reduce exploitation is to properly distribute resources. Again people really care a bout the OPPORTUNITY COST of their labor being compensated. Wasting their labor fails to do that. It extracts labor from them without giving them fair benefits in return, hence it is exploitation.

This is alien to marxism and a weird marginalist approach, it's a judgement about something happened in the past as a result, yet I haven't been shown this is technically true with all data, not saying you are wrong or right in the judgement about bunkers. There's no deliberate exploitation by a class or even the intention of it. There's not a class extracting value. Just decision processes in which people can allocate wrong a budget deciding in the circumstances of their environment. How can you call a past democratic mistake exploitation when there's no class to exploit? We'd have to know the future and all variables of the environment for it to be a deliberate mistake and know if it's 100% an error or not. And in that case it'd be corruption of those who allocate the budget knowing it on purpose.
I don't believe in this exploitation by democratic ignorance stuff.

“Despite technical criticism leading to its failure, I think a better leader could only have been marxist-leninist and that leader would have to denounce the other countries as he did, and we can take those texts as classics to prevent further deviations in the future.“

We have been over this before. The answers are not in strict adherence to flawed texts of the past. We can learn things from them sure, but we must also be able to move on, keep what we need to keep sure, but change what we need to change. We must adapt our ideologies to the realities of the present. And keep adapting them, as the present is constantly becoming the past.

Nobody in the past had all the answers, not theory was perfect, and empirically we absolutely had alternatives that worked much better. Other models we have seen are more successful.

And if my approach is alien to Marxism or at least your version of it IDGAF. I am not a Marxist.
In a democratic society people can exploit their fellow man, even themselves.
Not that Albania was democratic, obviously the people did not all support the regime hence they overthrew it. It was exploitation to appease Hoxha’s egomania. Waste of the opportunity cost of labor and resources. GNP or GDP it was still a massive allocation of labor and resources needed elsewhere to something not needed.

Even though housing was in theory guaranteed the quality of housing was poor.
And roads were poor, how many roads could be paved or built with that much labor and concrete? Roads can have military function too.

Exploitation can be subconscious, it need to require you to consciously intend to exploit.

So you acknowledge the bunkers had very little military purpose and had only a political purpose.

But even if you feel instilling the requisite siege mentality in people is necessary there are cheaper and more efficient ways to do so, like requiring buildings to be built to certain defense standards. Why use a bunker when you can use an existing structure that serves another purpose?

Or like was said you could just teach them how to did a fox hole and give everyone a shovel as a reminder without actually having them dig them all the time.

Plenty of countries created such a siege mentality without going to such extremes. The US did too, by having a huge national guard with a draft, air raid drills and stuff. The US in the 50s and 60s, Germany and Switzerland up through the 80s and Israel and Singapore too the present have all done this in a similar more logical manner.

And no, the fact a few marginal groups still adhered to Hoxha did not make Albania particularly relevant.
If imperialists always want to attack or whatever is true, why do NATO and Warsaw Pact plans not mention Albania?

Actually the US and Soviets cared little about the details of theory. The US supported a socialist government in Somalia and the Soviets supporters any place claiming to be Marxist regardless of the details as long as the place supported Soviet foreign policy.

Sure at the very beginning of the Cold War (40s to early 50s) the situation was more complex and the risk higher, but by the mid 50s it had stabilized. Especially by the 70s Hoxha alienated even the PRC Albania was largely ignored. Yes Hoxha’s foreign policy made him few friends (but he could have just shut up internationally instead of looking to start ideological fights) but military actions are a cost benefit analysis. Obviously the US and Soviets focused on places with more strategic relevance.

Sure maybe a few spies and all sent, but surely there were cheaper ways to dissuade possible infiltrators, the bunkers stopped zero infiltrators. The Soviets tried to infiltrate the US military yet the US never destroyed its military to prevent a coup, rather just did background checks and such.

A coup only happens in poorly run places.

And the bunkers were built under the argument that massive number of paratroopers would come raining down from the sky. Obviously Deng was not going to send in airborne armies just because Hoxha criticized him. Especially because the PRC did not even have the ability to attack Albania.

The whole thing was based on delusional paranoia.

Stable well managed societies can manage a well equipped professional military without a coup.

[Byeclase]

And under mutualism surplus value is supposedly not extracted?

As far as I know, surplus value is supposedly not extracted in theory.

Because turning ownership over to the state does not do away with capitalism. In fact, it should be obvious to any Marxist that Soviet-type economies were capitalist, because they exhibit the same categorical features.

Leninism tries to be scientific on how to do away with capitalism. After a revolution there are still enterprises to be expropriated, bourgeois remnants, internal and external opposition which tries to sabotage the territory. To handle all these tasks and problems we need organized violence and administration with accountability.

Socialism does not concern itself with production of commodities earmarked for exchange. It does not concern itself with value, only use-value, production for use. In other words, money is not a feature. It knows neither selling nor buying, and that includes selling and buying of labor power (wage labor). The fact that products existed as commodities in Soviet-type economies, being sold and bought for money, should already ring alarm bells in your head. Indeed, labor power was one of these commodities, just like in every Western country. The worker would seek employment with a state enterprise or ministry, selling their labor power to the state in exchange for payment in the form of wages (wage labor). The importance of value should be obvious in the simple existence and usage of money (you posting the defense budget of Albania only illustrates this point). Marxist-Leninist sometimes try to handwave this by claiming money only served an "accounting function", but accounting for what exactly? As always, it is value.

I mostly agree, socialism does not concern itself with production of commodities earmarked for exchange... except when state trade is needed for its survival and those practices are totally controlled. I conceive it as a body with practice according to the circumstances. Yet, a mode of production which is dominant is socialist and has controlled (in this case the peasant cooperatives and state trade as monopoly) the bourgeois remnants and advances as fast as possible towards their total abolition (unlike Dengism for example). These bourgeois remnants can't be abolished at once at the first year, the analysis of classes has to be done to gain the support of the classes and advance towards the higher stage communism.
I think Leninism admits socialism still has the value-form and the law of value. We can't go straight to the higher stage. The division of work is still needed to defend ourselves against our enemies and build a scientific approach (how could we go towards communism from primitivism or without defense?).
"The worker would seek employment with a state enterprise or ministry, selling their labor power to the state in exchange for payment in the form of wages (wage labor)."
There isn't an extraction of anything by the state in this process, wage labor here doesn't mean the same than when there's bourgeoisie, the worker doesn't sell anything like a negotiation of a contract and there's no parasitism. If you mean taxes and the excesses of production... yes, needed for the survival of socialism.

What they're doing is simply pretending that money isn't money and that commodities aren't commodities, because everything was owned by the state. But all that has done is turn the state into the vehicle for capital accumulation and the final entity that extracts surplus value. Exploitation - the extraction of surplus labor (not just for social upkeep) - takes place regardless. You obfuscate this fact by saying: "that extraction by the state so to speak isn't by the bourgeoisie and it isn't exactly exploitation, it's necessary for common interests in public services where everyone contributes (like for example defense and healthcare)". But that is like a capitalist telling you that he's not exploiting you because he pays for the security guards that protect you, the safety gear you wear, and your health insurance. It's a convenient excuse when the state owns everything.

If they turn revisionists and corrupted yes, they concern with themselves instead of advancing towards the higher stage of communism and rob the people. And we call that state capitalism.
The state is built as democratically as possible while the party purges the deviations inside at the same time.
The "extraction" is so low that direct taxes are abolished in the Albanian case. The alternative for me is simply leaving the state defenseless and not working, or do you have other alternative?

But the state also engaged in capital accumulation, as the national income would be used to that end: accumulated capital would be re-invested into expanded production (to say nothing of exploitation by rentiers and nomenklatura along the way).

The state doesn't work like an investment or a saving enterprise to enrich any bourgeoisie. Its aim is to administrate in this matter and raise productive forces of the country, of course this is needed to defend themselves from surrounding enemies unless you want primitive communism with peasants.
No nomenklatura with Hoxha; in whose case I'd accept it was state capitalism. It was a titoist-demsoc thesis to attack the USSR and the parasitic nomenklatura actually existed with post-1956 revisionists who started raising their wages over the people. I don't know what rentiers are you talking about. What I admitted they had were peasant cooperatives, but they don't have a position to control the state. The dictatorship is of the proletariat. Yet of course you can say... "but state secrets may lead to manipulation of people's opinion if corrupted people took over", there's no alternative here with all those imperialist external threats. After they're gone we can abolish that too.

The profit-motive was the de-facto driver of economic activity. We also see that in how Soviet-type states were dedicated to growth, to frantic accumulation, as was always evident by the drive towards the over-fulfillment of plan targets and the glorification of increased productivity (Stakhanovism) and competition (!) with the Western world. "Socialism" was made to look like a kind of super-capitalism - we socialists can accumulate better and grow faster than you! But this is nonsense: production for production's sake and growth for growths sake are measures of success in a capitalist framework, not really in a socialist one that operates without value.

This is simply to each according to his contribution. In the USSR if you worked a certain level of hours of work, of course yes, you had more pay. Stakhanovism glorified with medals and paid more those who worked more hours, I think this was a good policy taking into account they needed the fast industrialization to win the war. This is still lower stage communism or socialism. The value form is still present here.

And don't get me started on how Eastern Bloc "planned economies" were total bullshit. That linked post (and the back and forth which you can look through yourself) was about the USSR, but I assume the same can be said for 20th century Albania.

Again, not everything can be done instantly, in the case of Albania they had lots of peasants, you can't propose direct elimination of peasant's cooperatives with that, you have to earn them in alliance with the working class, and then eliminate the class with time. I also consider that Eastern Bloc countries simply turned capitalist with their parties rejecting marxism-leninism. I consider post-1956 the USSR turned capitalist.

The insults are earned because of pigheaded excuses for totalitarian hell holes and the paranoid mad-men who ran them.

People who developed totalitarianism: liberals in red, labour zionists... I think when you read totalitarian theory it seems that you can apply those characteristics to capitalism already, or that they're so exaggerated that they're purely fictional. Some council communists equated bolshevism with fascism too, I don't agree with this. It seems to me like they think ideas come from magic instead of classes, that they have the same value and they ignore they're represented by parties, whose accountability systems may be better or worse of course. Soviet democracy takes into account the people. I think USSR and Albania were better than any other country for proletarians. What's the "non totalitarian" alternative?

We have been over this before. The answers are not in strict adherence to flawed texts of the past. We can learn things from them sure, but we must also be able to move on, keep what we need to keep sure, but change what we need to change. We must adapt our ideologies to the realities of the present. And keep adapting them, as the present is constantly becoming the past.

This is what marxism-leninism already says, thus there's no need to modify the label of the ideology. The texts of Hoxha aren't in contradiction to the criticism of how military resources were allocated.

empirically we absolutely had alternatives that worked much better. Other models we have seen are more successful.

Empiricism (as models and countries) can be a cheap excuse in an all imperialist world where the state can throw bucks at certain groups, socdems love to point out the nordic model as a good empirical one. This can serve to buy the labour aristocracy section of the working class, but not as a whole. We aren't in a static world where all countries are born in the same conditions. But anyways all the socdems can't compare with the elimination of misery for the worst off by the USSR and Albania. They love GDP too much.
In a world dominated by socialism, that empiricism would change its side, the empiric success of a new capitalist society would be very low, not to say impossible.

Not that Albania was democratic, obviously the people did not all support the regime hence they overthrew it.

Not less democratic than any liberal democracy for the proletarians, and the vanguard purges elements that harm them. In the dictatorship of the proletariat the poor people disappears, the people can earn a decent wage and live, they have more time to inform themselves to take an accurate political decision. The consequence of replacing the dictatorship of the proletariat with liberal democracy is the infiltration of bourgeois peasant influences in the party and getting into capitalism, which undermines all the former, thus making the proletarians powerless, ignorant and exploited.
But since coming from capitalism or an even older mode of production, the state can't be done away with, and the proletarians still hasn't been elevated all their consciousness, it isn't instant. This is where cryptocapitalist can arrive at the party and corrupt the whole of society, and they have to be watched and purged as soon as possible. The party designed a revisionist clique after Hoxha and it collapsed like the USSR.

Even though housing was in theory guaranteed the quality of housing was poor.

I don't think they were slums nor mansions.

And roads were poor, how many roads could be paved or built with that much labor and concrete? Roads can have military function too.

Were they needed as priority?

Exploitation can be subconscious, it need to require you to consciously intend to exploit.

I don't understand this. I'd have to read Freud or Lacan don't know.

So you acknowledge the bunkers had very little military purpose and had only a political purpose.

I don't acknowledge the bunkers had very little military purpose. I'm neutral on this question.

like requiring buildings to be built to certain defense standards. Why use a bunker when you can use an existing structure that serves another purpose?

Could this be done, would they be able to make a better defense than the bunkers? Would we have to sacrifice actual functioning houses for other important purposes? I think I'd have to read more military theory.

The US did too, by having a huge national guard with a draft, air raid drills and stuff. The US in the 50s and 60s, Germany and Switzerland up through the 80s and Israel and Singapore too the present have all done this in a similar more logical manner.

But they already trained people with weapons as a guard. And they came from a more primitive system than those countries and they country is small.

And no, the fact a few marginal groups still adhered to Hoxha did not make Albania particularly relevant.

They had influence over little territories if you refer to that, but It generated a new comintern and today's marxist parties are still struggling into it for those who bother to look for solutions and read about marxism-leninism.

If imperialists always want to attack or whatever is true, why do NATO and Warsaw Pact plans not mention Albania?

I already quoted how there were attempts in the 50s. I didn't mention NATO and Warsaw Pact because I said the split was with China in the 70s, unrelated to NATO and the Warsaw Pact. They left the Warsaw Pact and denounced the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the soviets, I think they had reasons to be paranoid of attacks from this, withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact already shows their international solidarity with Czechoslovakia. The texts of Lenin show that imperialism is a stage of capitalism and it has this expansionism. You don't need to wait for the NATO or the Warsaw Pact to name the country. Another thing are their invasion priorities.

Actually the US and Soviets cared little about the details of theory. The US supported a socialist government in Somalia and the Soviets supporters any place claiming to be Marxist regardless of the details as long as the place supported Soviet foreign policy.

Hoxha denounced soviet social imperialism and rejected them because of their anticommunist theory. Of course, the soviets didn't care they were already revisionists at that point. Same interest with the US and the capitalist (I don't consider socialist) government of Somalia, siding opportunistically.

the bunkers stopped zero infiltrators.

Don't wait until the army comes. Also take into account dissuasion. But nevermind I always said I don't mind a position regarding this.

The Soviets tried to infiltrate the US military yet the US never destroyed its military to prevent a coup, rather just did background checks and such.

As long as I know their military was already consolidated and they expel communists. The US has already years of existence as a capitalist country in comparison to the little Albania and can focus on it. People's militia support can be more important in Albania in a certain period. They don't have the same context.

A coup only happens in poorly run places.

Or in former socialist states where bourgeois influence isn't cut down, which is why the USSR had an internal coup after its revisionist decades (the referendum of conservation of the USSR wasn't respected).

Obviously Deng was not going to send in airborne armies just because Hoxha criticized him.

Not already Deng but Mao was very bad at the end of his life. He even supported Pinochet. They don't care about the criticism, it's just the imperialist expansionism.

Stable well managed societies can manage a well equipped professional military without a coup.

Albania wasn't so stable, first they had enemies all around them. They had cooperativist remnants which had to be eliminated. Then, they didn't have enough time to build the mechanisms to elevate the consciousness of the people and make a truly accountable state, which is why revisionists can take power and turn back to capitalism; in Albania and in the USSR, and people can't eliminate them.

[Salus Maior]

You guys sure are writing novels around here.

[Cisairse]

You guys sure are writing novels around here.

Welcome to the left-wing

[Salus Maior]

You know, the idea of worker-owned companies sounds pretty interesting.

[Cisairse]

You know, the idea of worker-owned companies sounds pretty interesting.

It's a tried-and-true method of proletariat liberation.

[Salus Maior]

You know, the idea of worker-owned companies sounds pretty interesting.

It's a tried-and-true method of proletariat liberation.

There are companies that actually work this way, right? I think I remember someone saying that there are some in Spain.

[Brunswick-upon-Raritan]

How would you prevent mass outsourcing?

Pretty simple. I would set a tariff to the trade deficit. Say we export 50 billion to a place and import 75 billion. 75-50=25. 25/50 = .5 x 100 = %50 tariff. This would of course cause us to import less from them, causing the tariff to fall, until the trade equalized.
Retaliation is impossible because the more the retaliate the worse it gets for them.

Unless we have a proper trade agreement with the country which protects labor and worker standards adequately, then the tariff could be reduced or waived.

This is a terrible idea. For starters, there is nothing wrong with deficits. But even for deficit control, that formula would be a terrible tool. As is, the US exports approx. $299 billion to Mexico and imports $372 billion. 372-299=73. 73/50=1.46. Do you want to slap a 146% tariff on everything we import from Mexico? Do you know what a colossal tax hike on U.S. businesses and consumers that would be? Sure, it would probably flatten the trade deficit, by killing trade, and making inflation on everything from cars to basic grocery items skyrocket. There’s nothing wrong with importing or exporting more from some countries than others, and tariffs for the sheer sake of getting rid of deficits doesn’t take into consideration many strategic and practical dimensions of trade. If you want to prevent outsourcing and layoffs, pass laws to regulate employers and the labor market, not import/export tariffs.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

It's a tried-and-true method of proletariat liberation.

There are companies that actually work this way, right? I think I remember someone saying that there are some in Spain.

Average shares held by all employees and no public offering

[Salus Maior]

There are companies that actually work this way, right? I think I remember someone saying that there are some in Spain.

Average shares held by all employees and no public offering

Hm, sounds pretty simple.

[Cisairse]

It's a tried-and-true method of proletariat liberation.

There are companies that actually work this way, right? I think I remember someone saying that there are some in Spain.

The Mondragon Corporation is the most famous; it was founded in 1956 and is, now, the tenth-largest company in Spain.

Cooperatives exist throughout the world and history, though. There were many worker-owned cooperative factories in the industrializing United States; The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was heavily involved in knowledge transfer/sharing and interfactory coordination between these factories, acting as a sort of union for companies without bosses.

In modern times, the IWW and the International Co-operative Alliance represent many such worker-owned cooperatives (these sorts of trans-industry unions are necessary because for-profit hierarchical companies generally try to run cooperatives into the ground financially); the ICA has 312 member cooperatives. The IWW has a more active/political role, so it's difficult to gauge how widespread the "Wobbly Shop" model is (I don't have hard numbers). However, I do know that they exist in some shape or form still. I know that lately they have been trying to break into Silicon Valley and establish programmer-owned tech startups, deriving heavily from the way the open-source community works. Google has even dropped boatloads of funding on these cooperatives, for the simple reason that it's been shown time and time again that worker cooperatives result in happier workers and thus more innovation/quality output than hierarchical companies.

In fact, it's been shown empirically that worker cooperatives are 70% to 80% more productive than hierarchical companies, while having substantially less income inequality. Also, against what conventional right-wing wisdom says, democratic worker cooperatives are half as likely as private businesses to fail within ten years of forming.

The effects on worker productivity and happiness are obvious, but what isn't obvious is just how far the benefits go: a 2012 Italian study showed that workers employed in democratic cooperatives had better mental and physical health, committed domestic abuse on a much smaller scale, committed less crime overall, had higher rates of domestic engagement such as blood donation and charity participation, and were more optimistic about their futures. Much of this can be attributed to the "liberation effect," whereas the worker does not feel they are being forced to submit/subjugate themselves to a hostile and aggressive entity just to survive.


TLDR: Yes, there's plenty of both very large and very small companies that work this way, and studies have shown that the system has massive benefits to the output of the company, the lives of the employees, and society as a whole.

[Novus America]

What some text by Hoxha says is not really relevant.
It is just some fringe theory. Why would we care?

I care about results. The Nordic model has achieved living standards Albania could not even dream of.
Empiricism is really everything.

If it works it works, if it does not it does not.
And what works today may not work tomorrow.
I actually agree with Deng here, “it does not matter if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice”.
Revisionism is great when it comes to political and economic theory. You cannot oppose revision while remaining pragmatic, flexible and continually learning and improving.

And allocation is key. See what a wrote about the Soviets and whales. The bunkers apply too, both the Soviets and Albanians had a model that failed to allocate resources well, the failures of allocation coming from the inherent flaws of the model.

Although I do agree one size does not fit all, what works one place might not in another.

I am not going to play those games, or the false equivalency that Hoxha was as democratic as a liberal democracy or whatever garbage. He was a paranoid dictator.
But I think we are at a roadblock here because you are too stuck in defending the past.
You do not see the past as it was but as you wished it was and in looking back you cannot see forward.

On military policies we might be able to make more progress because at least you are willing to admit it may have been wrong.

The bunkers were stupid because a “people’s militia” or irregulars have one big advantage, mobility and the ability to hit and run, hide.
The bunkers kills the one big advantage of such irregulars making them static, easy targets.

Hardening existing buildings makes more sense because one you can use the building for other peace time purposes, and the opponent has no idea what building or window you will use.

You can move quickly, blend in. Fire out one window then run to another before the enemy shoots back.

The one man bunkers leave you no mobility at all.

They lock you down in an obvious target. Speed and stealth are the keys to irregular warfare.

And again the bunkers were built to fight an 11 division airborne attack.
You might have said nothing about the Warsaw Pact or NATO but Hoxha thought they might send massive airborne assaults. Which was silly. And the bunkers not very good against such an attack anyways.

Like I said the risk of spies was a legitimate concern, but the bunkers did not help with that.

You only demonstrated spies were a problem, especially in the late 40s to early 50s, but that says nothing to support the bunkers in the 70s. Which were a 1920s tactic taken to an extreme. (At least the Maginot line had communications, interconnected bunkers, anti tank weapons and they built it on the border, not in middle of Paris). Even by 1920s standards Albania was bad.

Albania had a very poor military, it was luck nobody tried to attack it because it would have lost badly.
Its military doctrine was just stupid, and as I said there are easier and more effective ways to build a siege mentality. Sure Albania was not as high tech or developed as the 50s US, 80s Switzerland or Germany or modern Singapore or Israel but the things I mentioned to not necessarily require high tech or development.

Obviously it could not build some like SAGE but I never said it had to. You do not need to do that to harden government buildings, build a smaller but better trained and more professional militia, put up air raid sirens and have nuclear attack drills and what not.

Had the money spent on bunkers been spent on better weapons, training, radios, vehicles uniforms and such for the militia it would have been much better. Training makes for better militia than one man bunkers.

[Novus America]

It's a tried-and-true method of proletariat liberation.

There are companies that actually work this way, right? I think I remember someone saying that there are some in Spain.

Even in the US. Although most are small. Non stock corporations with all employees being members can work and are perfectly legal.

They certainly have value.

[Salus Maior]

There are companies that actually work this way, right? I think I remember someone saying that there are some in Spain.

The Mondragon Corporation is the most famous; it was founded in 1956 and is, now, the tenth-largest company in Spain.

Cooperatives exist throughout the world and history, though. There were many worker-owned cooperative factories in the industrializing United States; The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was heavily involved in knowledge transfer/sharing and interfactory coordination between these factories, acting as a sort of union for companies without bosses.

In modern times, the IWW and the International Co-operative Alliance represent many such worker-owned cooperatives (these sorts of trans-industry unions are necessary because for-profit hierarchical companies generally try to run cooperatives into the ground financially); the ICA has 312 member cooperatives. The IWW has a more active/political role, so it's difficult to gauge how widespread the "Wobbly Shop" model is (I don't have hard numbers). However, I do know that they exist in some shape or form still. I know that lately they have been trying to break into Silicon Valley and establish programmer-owned tech startups, deriving heavily from the way the open-source community works. Google has even dropped boatloads of funding on these cooperatives, for the simple reason that it's been shown time and time again that worker cooperatives result in happier workers and thus more innovation/quality output than hierarchical companies.

In fact, it's been shown empirically that worker cooperatives are 70% to 80% more productive than hierarchical companies, while having substantially less income inequality. Also, against what conventional right-wing wisdom says, democratic worker cooperatives are half as likely as private businesses to fail within ten years of forming.

The effects on worker productivity and happiness are obvious, but what isn't obvious is just how far the benefits go: a 2012 Italian study showed that workers employed in democratic cooperatives had better mental and physical health, committed domestic abuse on a much smaller scale, committed less crime overall, had higher rates of domestic engagement such as blood donation and charity participation, and were more optimistic about their futures. Much of this can be attributed to the "liberation effect," whereas the worker does not feel they are being forced to submit/subjugate themselves to a hostile and aggressive entity just to survive.


TLDR: Yes, there's plenty of both very large and very small companies that work this way, and studies have shown that the system has massive benefits to the output of the company, the lives of the employees, and society as a whole.

Hm, interesting. Now, I don't really identify as a Leftist myself, but I do have sympathy for concepts like Distributism, probably because people in my Catholic circles talk about it all the time. It seems to me that worker-owned industries would be complementary to that idea, and honestly anything which treats everyday people fairly and enables them to live fulfilling lives is good in my book. I imagine that such workers are better able to support a family life as well, which is one of my big concerns these days. The decline in domestic abuse rates certainly seems encouraging in that regard.

Not to mention, it doesn't have that ill effect of concentrating power in the hands of people that don't really deserve it, nor serve the nation.

Honestly, I'm about as sick of the 1% as anyone is.

[Novus America]

Pretty simple. I would set a tariff to the trade deficit. Say we export 50 billion to a place and import 75 billion. 75-50=25. 25/50 = .5 x 100 = %50 tariff. This would of course cause us to import less from them, causing the tariff to fall, until the trade equalized.
Retaliation is impossible because the more the retaliate the worse it gets for them.

Unless we have a proper trade agreement with the country which protects labor and worker standards adequately, then the tariff could be reduced or waived.

This is a terrible idea. For starters, there is nothing wrong with deficits. But even for deficit control, that formula would be a terrible tool. As is, the US exports approx. $299 billion to Mexico and imports $372 billion. 372-299=73. 73/50=1.46. Do you want to slap a 146% tariff on everything we import from Mexico? Do you know what a colossal tax hike on U.S. businesses and consumers that would be? Sure, it would probably flatten the trade deficit, by killing trade, and making inflation on everything from cars to basic grocery items skyrocket. There’s nothing wrong with importing or exporting more from some countries than others, and tariffs for the sheer sake of getting rid of deficits doesn’t take into consideration many strategic and practical dimensions of trade. If you want to prevent outsourcing and layoffs, pass laws to regulate employers and the labor market, not import/export tariffs.

No, for Mexico it would be 372-299=73, 73/299 x 100 = 24% except we have a trade agreement with Mexico so actually it would be whatever the terms of the trade agreement are.
So it would not change the tariff with Mexico unless the USMCA expired without renewal or replacement and would only be 24% if it did.

Actually the overall deficit is a big problem, so a import voucher system might work as a way to work across the all countries but it is harder to implement. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sfgate ... 873083.php
But we could do that instead maybe. I would consider that too.

The thing is while true you can have a deficit with one off offset by a surplus with another but you negotiate on a country by country (or trade bloc by trade bloc, my formula could treat the EU as one country).

Laws regulating labor markets and employers only make the problem WORSE! Because they can just outsource to avoid the laws and regulations!
There is no point in raising the wages of your people only to have their jobs sent to a place with lower wages.

Neoliberalism does not work.

[Novus America]

The Mondragon Corporation is the most famous; it was founded in 1956 and is, now, the tenth-largest company in Spain.

Cooperatives exist throughout the world and history, though. There were many worker-owned cooperative factories in the industrializing United States; The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was heavily involved in knowledge transfer/sharing and interfactory coordination between these factories, acting as a sort of union for companies without bosses.

In modern times, the IWW and the International Co-operative Alliance represent many such worker-owned cooperatives (these sorts of trans-industry unions are necessary because for-profit hierarchical companies generally try to run cooperatives into the ground financially); the ICA has 312 member cooperatives. The IWW has a more active/political role, so it's difficult to gauge how widespread the "Wobbly Shop" model is (I don't have hard numbers). However, I do know that they exist in some shape or form still. I know that lately they have been trying to break into Silicon Valley and establish programmer-owned tech startups, deriving heavily from the way the open-source community works. Google has even dropped boatloads of funding on these cooperatives, for the simple reason that it's been shown time and time again that worker cooperatives result in happier workers and thus more innovation/quality output than hierarchical companies.

In fact, it's been shown empirically that worker cooperatives are 70% to 80% more productive than hierarchical companies, while having substantially less income inequality. Also, against what conventional right-wing wisdom says, democratic worker cooperatives are half as likely as private businesses to fail within ten years of forming.

The effects on worker productivity and happiness are obvious, but what isn't obvious is just how far the benefits go: a 2012 Italian study showed that workers employed in democratic cooperatives had better mental and physical health, committed domestic abuse on a much smaller scale, committed less crime overall, had higher rates of domestic engagement such as blood donation and charity participation, and were more optimistic about their futures. Much of this can be attributed to the "liberation effect," whereas the worker does not feel they are being forced to submit/subjugate themselves to a hostile and aggressive entity just to survive.


TLDR: Yes, there's plenty of both very large and very small companies that work this way, and studies have shown that the system has massive benefits to the output of the company, the lives of the employees, and society as a whole.

Hm, interesting. Now, I don't really identify as a Leftist myself, but I do have sympathy for concepts like Distributism, probably because people in my Catholic circles talk about it all the time. It seems to me that worker-owned industries would be complementary to that idea, and honestly anything which treats everyday people fairly and enables them to live fulfilling lives is good in my book. I imagine that such workers are better able to support a family life as well, which is one of my big concerns these days. The decline in domestic abuse rates certainly seems encouraging in that regard.

Not to mention, it doesn't have that ill effect of concentrating power in the hands of people that don't really deserve it, nor serve the nation.

Honestly, I'm about as sick of the 1% as anyone is.

Worker owned companies can be quite good, and of course fully within distributism.
I think they should be encouraged. Again they are already legal and exist in the US and Europe.

[Salus Maior]

Hm, interesting. Now, I don't really identify as a Leftist myself, but I do have sympathy for concepts like Distributism, probably because people in my Catholic circles talk about it all the time. It seems to me that worker-owned industries would be complementary to that idea, and honestly anything which treats everyday people fairly and enables them to live fulfilling lives is good in my book. I imagine that such workers are better able to support a family life as well, which is one of my big concerns these days. The decline in domestic abuse rates certainly seems encouraging in that regard.

Not to mention, it doesn't have that ill effect of concentrating power in the hands of people that don't really deserve it, nor serve the nation.

Honestly, I'm about as sick of the 1% as anyone is.

Worker owned companies can be quite good, and of course fully within distributism.
I think they should be encouraged. Again they are already legal and exist in the US and Europe.

Yeah, I think they do need a kind of free-market setting to really take place.

Because as far as I'm aware, most Communist societies just handed corporate power to the government rather than the workers.

[Cisairse]

Hm, interesting. Now, I don't really identify as a Leftist myself, but I do have sympathy for concepts like Distributism, probably because people in my Catholic circles talk about it all the time. It seems to me that worker-owned industries would be complementary to that idea, and honestly anything which treats everyday people fairly and enables them to live fulfilling lives is good in my book. I imagine that such workers are better able to support a family life as well, which is one of my big concerns these days. The decline in domestic abuse rates certainly seems encouraging in that regard.

Not to mention, it doesn't have that ill effect of concentrating power in the hands of people that don't really deserve it, nor serve the nation.

Honestly, I'm about as sick of the 1% as anyone is.

Worker owned companies can be quite good, and of course fully within distributism.
I think they should be encouraged. Again they are already legal and exist in the US and Europe.

Unfortunately the inherent labor power dynamics in capitalism make it very difficult to get off the ground with cooperatives. Laws can help here; see eg how ridiculous the laws for credit unions are compared to private banks.

What I would like to see is the government, which is democratic at least in name, include biases towards worker cooperatives when issuing contracts just like they include biases towards domestic enterprise.

[Cisairse]

Worker owned companies can be quite good, and of course fully within distributism.
I think they should be encouraged. Again they are already legal and exist in the US and Europe.

Yeah, I think they do need a kind of free-market setting to really take place.

Because as far as I'm aware, most Communist societies just handed corporate power to the government rather than the workers.

Only the ones that got into the history books by winning world wars

You can find examples of libertarian socialist/communist societies throughout history. Most were invaded by imperialistic foreign powers before they could really get off the ground. Some didn't - for example, the Zapatistas have been operating a pretty large anarcho-communist society for almost two decades and have seen relative success.

Of course, an important part of non-free-market societies is group consent. By that I mean they don't work unless everyone involved with them really wants to run their society that way. It would be much better, in my opinion, in large countries like the U.S. and western Europe, to simply "tip the scales" towards worker cooperatives by enacting economic policies favorable to them (without needing to outright abolish other methods/force people to work that way).

Coercion is bad, authoritarianism is bad; luckily, it's more than feasible to get all the benefits I mentioned prior while still retaining a liberal democracy and ensuring individual freedom.

[Novus America]

Worker owned companies can be quite good, and of course fully within distributism.
I think they should be encouraged. Again they are already legal and exist in the US and Europe.

Unfortunately the inherent labor power dynamics in capitalism make it very difficult to get off the ground with cooperatives. Laws can help here; see eg how ridiculous the laws for credit unions are compared to private banks.

What I would like to see is the government, which is democratic at least in name, include biases towards worker cooperatives when issuing contracts just like they include biases towards domestic enterprise.

I fully support regulatory reform to make it easier to form and operate non stock corporations like worker owned companies and credit unions, I agree there.