jlou

joined 1 year ago
[–] jlou@mastodon.social 3 points 1 month ago

Here is a short introduction to the core argument against capitalism based on liberal principles: https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/

@socialism

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The root of the loss of community that everyone feels is capitalism's total emphasis on institutional logics of exit that make everything extremely transactional while completely ignoring the dual institutional logic of commitment, cooperation and voice. Community emphasizes the latter. We need communities based around shared property, mutual aid and collective action. Incidentally, having such communities could help solve some public goods problems in a non-state manner and be more egalitarian

 

What are your thoughts on liberal anti-capitalism and reclaiming liberalism for the radical left?

Liberal anti-capitalists typically show that capitalism is illiberal through demonstrating how it violates liberal principles. An example would be David Ellerman in:

https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Article-from-ReclaimingLiberalismEbook.pdf

He argues that capitalist employment violates liberal principles of justice such as the norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match implying a theory of inalienable rights

@socialism

 
[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 1 month ago

The academic definition would be the systems of the historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production

@leftymemes

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Most people think

Socialism = state central planning

@leftymemes

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 10 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I'm not a socialist, but what I advocate for is explicitly postcapitalist.

Some postcapitalist policies include

- All firms are mandated to be worker coops similar to how local governments are mandated to be democratic
- Land and natural resources are collectivized with a 100% land value tax and various sorts of emission taxes etc
- Voluntary democratic collectives that manage collectivized means of production and provide start up funds to worker coops
- UBI

@leftymemes

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 3 points 2 months ago

Did you read the article? It argues that democracy is necessary to meet the requirements of liberal procedural justice, so it isn't just a matter of outcomes

@sneerclub

 

The Problem of Collective Harm: A Threshold Solution

https://ejpe.org/journal/article/view/798

"Many harms are collective: they are due to several individual actions that are as such harmless. At least in some cases, it seems impermissible to contribute to such harms, even if individual agents do not make a difference. The Problem of Collective Harm is the challenge of explaining why. I argue that, if the action is to be [moral], the probability of making a difference to harm must be small enough."

@humanities

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 2 points 2 months ago

Econ 101 is designed to obfuscate the real issues. Even talking about specific wealth distribution ratios is falling for the misframing of the issues that Econ 101 wants to lead people into with the pie metaphor. In the capitalist firm, the employer holds 100% of the property rights for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs while workers qua employees get 0% of that. The entire division of the pie metaphor in Econ 101 is based around hiding this fact

@196

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 15 points 2 months ago (5 children)

I'm a leftist as well. The paper argues that the non-democratic liberals are wrong about the implications of liberal principles. It even goes further and makes an argument that coherent liberalism must also oppose capitalism, and capitalism is inherently non-democratic. By the end, the paper argues that a democratic economy controlled by workers is the only kind of economic organization compatible with liberalism. Capitalist liberalism is poison because it is incoherent

@sneerclub

 

Why capitalists are coming out against democracy - "Does classical liberalism imply democracy?"

https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Reprint-EGP-Classical-Liberalism-Democracy.pdf

"There is a fault line running through ... liberalism as to whether or not democratic self- governance is a necessary part of a liberal social order. The democratic and non-democratic strains of classical liberalism are both present today. Many ... libertarians ... represent the non-democratic strain in their promotion of non-democratic sovereign city-states."

@sneerclub

 

A profoundly stupid case about video game cheating could transform adblocking into a copyright infringement

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/29/faithful-user-agents/#hard-cases-make-bad-copyright-law

@socialism

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 3 points 2 months ago

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.” -- Abraham Lincoln

This quote captures the differing understandings and notions of liberty between these different political groups

@linux

 

Utility, social utility, democracy, and altruistic and moral behavior from unexploitability, Darwinian evolution, and tribes

https://www.rangevoting.org/OmoUtil.html

"S.M.Omohundro in 2007, by building on and/or simplifying ideas by a large number of economists, demonstrated that the philosophy of utilitarianism is forced upon an organism if that organism wishes to be "unexploitable." Exploitable organisms presumably tend to get exploited, suffer a competitive disadvantage."

@humanities

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

If you emphasize giving workers what they literally produce instead of its value, the contrast is even greater. With value, you are still emphasizing the pie metaphor, which capitalist economists invented to obfuscate the real issues. In terms of property rights to the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs, workers qua employees get 0% while employers qua employer get 100%. In the property theoretic terms, workers don't get the fruits of their labor at all
@humanities

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

A worker coop is a firm. A pure market is trade between people that have no direct social ties prior.

Weyl's mechanisms become relevant in larger communities where Elinor Ostrom's method doesn't work as well. Currencies can be community oriented by having build in fees that go into the community fund that scale with social distance. They can emphasize a logic of commitment

Capitalism emphasizes the logic of exit to the exclusion of the logic of commitment. This is dehumanizing

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, we are using "community" differently. I agree that with strong ties this would be irrelevant. There are degrees of how coordinated actors can be. Capitalism misses that with its false dichotomy of total economic planning as in the firm, and full autonomous action as in the market. What we want is a gradient

The spectrum is:

pure market → large-scale communities with collective ownership using PCO → Ostrom-style CPR → firms

Here is the voucher stuff:

https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/blog/plural-money-socially-provided-goods-and-the-principal-agent-problem/

@anarchism

 

Partial Common Ownership: A New Model for Ownership - A new alternative to capitalist private property that addresses scarcity in the small

Partial Common Ownership (PCO) is a flexible template for reconfiguring property relations, which has inspired many of us at RadicalxChange because it opens the door to a different kind of conversation about capitalism.

https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/blog/pco-a-new-model-of-ownership/

@anarchism

 

"Inalienable Rights: Part I The Basic Argument" - All responsibility lies with workers

https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/

@socialism

 

AI, Guaranteed Income, and the “Which Way Is Up?” Problem Afflicting Our Elites

https://cepr.net/ai-guaranteed-income-and-the-which-way-is-up-problem-afflicting-our-elites/

@politics

 

Rethinking free and open source and its role in the movement against capitalism - "Copyfarleft and Copyjustright"

https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/copyfarleft-and-copyjustright

This is an interesting paper and something like this should be explored. Although, I would shift the anti-capitalist analysis to the labor theory of property and shift some of the critique of property to employment contracts.

@socialism

 

Capital Has No Borders—Why Should We?

Precarious immigration status creates an exploitable labor force, allowing bosses to drive down wages for everyone. Inside the labor case for open borders:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/capital-open-borders-immigration-labor-exploitation-migrant-crisis-urban-citizenship

@politics

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