Would socialism/communism really help racial minorites

[SpuriusMaximus]

There are people genuinely advocating an actual command economy, it's just not most of the people the right is calling "socialists" right now.

So, if we're talking about practical options on the table for the US, then the USSR is pretty irrelevant.

I'm taking OP at his word and engaging about command economies rather than just robust welfare.

There are various degrees of command, though.

I mean, if you're intent of talking about the USSR, even Lenin discovered it pretty early that he can't make the economy work 100% by command. Hence the NEP (New Economic Policy.) Stalin throttled that back a bit, but still not all the way to 100% by command, and then it swung somewhat more back in Lenin's direction under Khrushchev.

But generally, just because someone advocates more of X, doesn't mean that "but going 100% X is bad" is actually a counter-point. Too much of ANYTHING can be bad for you, but that doesn't really mean anything more than that.

I mean, even too much water can kill you. Literally, if you drink too much, your cells can explode from osmotic pressure and you die. But it would be silly to use THAT as a counter-point when the doctor says you should drink more water.

Or too much vitamin A can literally kill you. Seriously, lipo-soluble vitamins go right through the cell wall without any regulation by the proteins on the membrane, so the same biological safeguards that make it impossible to overdose on other vitamins don't apply. But too little is bad too. If someone says you need more vitamin A, going straight to "BUT TOO MUCH CAN KILL YOU" isn't really disproving their point.

Etc.

I'd say the same applies to some degree of command on the economy. Even granting that there is such a thing as too much command, and that Stalin's USSR exemplifies it, that's hardly an argument against command in general.

There might be some valid argument against any command, mind you. But that's not it.

 

[Cavemonster]

I appreciate you taking the OP at his word and engaging on that basis, but the OP doesn't say anything about command economies:

Most of the thread has pointed to comparisons with more or less command economies in history. But take most of what I wrote and substitute in "planned economy" and the points still stand.

 

[Cavemonster]

There are various degrees of command, though.

I mean, if you're intent of talking about the USSR, even Lenin discovered it pretty early that he can't make the economy work 100% by command. Hence the NEP (New Economic Policy.) Stalin throttled that back a bit, but still not all the way to 100% by command, and then it swung somewhat more back in Lenin's direction under Khrushchev.

But generally, just because someone advocates more of X, doesn't mean that "but going 100% X is bad" is actually a counter-point. Too much of ANYTHING can be bad for you, but that doesn't really mean anything more than that.

I mean, even too much water can kill you. Literally, if you drink too much, your cells can explode from osmotic pressure and you die. But it would be silly to use THAT as a counter-point when the doctor says you should drink more water.

Or too much vitamin A can literally kill you. Seriously, lipo-soluble vitamins go right through the cell wall without any regulation by the proteins on the membrane, so the same biological safeguards that make it impossible to overdose on other vitamins don't apply. But too little is bad too. If someone says you need more vitamin A, going straight to "BUT TOO MUCH CAN KILL YOU" isn't really disproving their point.

Etc.

I'd say the same applies to some degree of command on the economy. Even granting that there is such a thing as too much command, and that Stalin's USSR exemplifies it, that's hardly an argument against command in general.

There might be some valid argument against any command, mind you. But that's not it.

I don't disagree with any of that.

 

[theprestige]

But I don't think there is a point in that, because no one in the western world is actually living in a full-blown capitalist system. Unfettered capitalism would be unbelievably terrible for a lot of people, especially minorities. You would have to compare like with like, and even the capitalism of the US is heavily (and thankfully) saturated with socialist policies. You cannot compare that with the worst history had to offer. A more honest question would be whether communism is better for minorities than libertarianism.

Capitalism is an economic system. Libertarianism is a social system. Communism is both.

I'd say the western system pretty much is full-blown capitalism. It's not full-blown anarcho-libertarianism, obviously. But those two things are not the same.

Capitalism boils down to two basic principles: The individual right to own property, and individual right to profit from the use of property one owns.

Those two basic principles are alive and well throughout the west. Even the western nations with the most generous social safety nets still uphold those two principles. Even where those principles are infringed, it is exactly that: an infringement.

One way we can tell that western systems are full-blown capitalist systems is by looking at the source of funding for their social safety nets: These programs are funded by skimming the profits of all the capitalist activity. It's a necessary infringement on the capitalist principles, but it's still an essentially capitalist system.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, the problem with defining it that loosely, and being that generous with how it's still full blown capitalism no matter how much you intervene or skim, is that then

1. even the USSR didn't COMPLETELY abolish it. Individual craftsmen could still own their own means of production and benefit from them, and peasants could still at least have a garden around the house. Well, there were some attempts to go full tilt Marxist at the start, but as I was saying, even Lenin discovered pretty early that he can't make it work that way.

2. then it kinda makes it impossible to discuss anything else than full-tilt communism vs pretty much an amalgamation of everything else. Because as was said before, at least western socialists (better known as social-democrats) don't actually propose anything else than more skimming and safety nets. So it obviously wouldn't be anything else than yet the same capitalism if that makes no difference to the classification.

 

[Olmstead]

Capitalism is an economic system. Libertarianism is a social system. Communism is both.

I'd say the western system pretty much is full-blown capitalism. It's not full-blown anarcho-libertarianism, obviously. But those two things are not the same.

Capitalism boils down to two basic principles: The individual right to own property, and individual right to profit from the use of property one owns.

Those two basic principles are alive and well throughout the west. Even the western nations with the most generous social safety nets still uphold those two principles. Even where those principles are infringed, it is exactly that: an infringement.

One way we can tell that western systems are full-blown capitalist systems is by looking at the source of funding for their social safety nets: These programs are funded by skimming the profits of all the capitalist activity. It's a necessary infringement on the capitalist principles, but it's still an essentially capitalist system.

[bolding mine]

But that's exactly why it isn't a full-blown capitalist system. The only question is where you draw the line and what you consider necessary. Police? Education? Army? Health care? Roads? Housing? Food? Transport? Entertainment? Everything? Nothing? It's always a scale, and there are always extremes. Full-blown capitalism has no regulations or compulsory taxes.

 

[theprestige]

Well, the problem with defining it that loosely, and being that generous with how it's still full blown capitalism no matter how much you intervene or skim, is that then

1. even the USSR didn't COMPLETELY abolish it. Individual craftsmen could still own their own means of production and benefit from them, and peasants could still at least have a garden around the house. Well, there were some attempts to go full tilt Marxist at the start, but as I was saying, even Lenin discovered pretty early that he can't make it work that way.

Agreed. My theory is that capitalism is pretty much impossible to get rid of, in practice. Like money, police, and political parties.

Not only is it going to be disastrously unworkable, as Lenin discovered, but even if you did try to make it work, people would still immediately create a black market on capitalist principles.

2. then it kinda makes it impossible to discuss anything else than full-tilt communism vs pretty much an amalgamation of everything else. Because as was said before, at least western socialists (better known as social-democrats) don't actually propose anything else than more skimming and safety nets. So it obviously wouldn't be anything else than yet the same capitalism if that makes no difference to the classification.

Also agreed, more or less. I think the economic aspect of communism is somewhat of a red herring. Suffice to say that in practice it seeks to greatly limit private property and individual profits, and leave it at that. I tend to think of communism more in terms of its distinction as a totalitarian statist social system. Which it pretty much has to be, to crack down on private property to the degree the theory calls for.

That's the real issue, I think. Not the economic theory of communism, but the practical need for a totalitarian regime to even try to put it into effect.

 

[theprestige]

[bolding mine]

But that's exactly why it isn't a full-blown capitalist system. The only question is where you draw the line and what you consider necessary. Police? Education? Army? Health care? Roads? Housing? Food? Transport? Entertainment? Everything? Nothing? It's always a scale, and there are always extremes. Full-blown capitalism has no regulations or compulsory taxes.

I'd say that regulations and taxes are socio-political measures that are orthogonal but complementary to capitalism as an economic system.

A liberal democracy where capitalists vote on certain profit-sharing measures for the common good is still a capitalist system, economically.

Anyway, that's how I see it. I'm okay if you disagree.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

That's the real issue, I think. Not the economic theory of communism, but the practical need for a totalitarian regime to even try to put it into effect.

Well, the need for a dictatorship to make it actually work on a large scale, and dictatorships being bad, certainly seem to be valid points, if practical experience is anything to go by.

 

[Ziggurat]

My point wasn't to make a case for a particular educational model from available options, or to exaustively explore the factors that create or alleviate educational disparity. It was to show one sliver of inequality and how the more free the market is, the more possible it is to screw a group over without particularly wanting to and the more controlled markets are, the more you need the decision makers to be deliberate to screw over marginalized groups.

Oh, the dynamics can certainly be different. But I wouldn't say that decision makers need to be deliberate to screw over marginalized groups. They can easily do so out of simple cluelessness or indifference, it happens all the time. Unintended consequences are a thing.

What markets are not particularly good at is handling situations in which there are significant costs or benefits external to individual market participants. And there's an argument to be made that primary education falls within this category. There is a benefit to you when other people meet some minimum level of education. The marginal benefit for you individually paying for a stranger's education is too diffuse to incentivize you to do so (the benefit will also accrue to people who didn't pay), but it can add up to a net positive when summed across the whole of society. That's basically the argument for public funding for education: the collective benefit justifies a collective allocation of resources. And it's a good argument, and I actually agree with it. Where our current system falls down is the inability of many people, especially the poor, to make decisions that do affect them directly and for which they have better incentives to make smart choices than bureaucrats ever could, namely where they send their children to school.

Another example where I'm in favor of non-market solutions because of the externalities involved is vaccines. I'm in favor of public funding for vaccines, because the benefits accrue not just to the individual vaccinated but also to everyone around them.

So in this respect, I'm not a free market absolutist. Free markets are the best available mechanism for handling a whole lot of human interactions, but not all of them. But generally I think the justification for intervening needs to be better than just not liking the specific outcome a market produces. Unless there's a mechanistic reason to expect the market to produce a worse outcome than government (such as externalities being sufficiently large), then I think we shouldn't expect government to do any better. Government has a pretty limited capacity to reduce racism, and to finally get back to the topic of the thread, socialist/communist governments aren't any better at it than democratic/capitalist governments.

 

[Olmstead]

I'd say that regulations and taxes are socio-political measures that are orthogonal but complementary to capitalism as an economic system.

A liberal democracy where capitalists vote on certain profit-sharing measures for the common good is still a capitalist system, economically.

Anyway, that's how I see it. I'm okay if you disagree.

But that's a very broad definition to the point of being impractical. You either presume the existence of a perfect democracy or you could argue that every society throughout history had a capitalist system simply because the population let it happen.

 

[theprestige]

But that's a very broad definition to the point of being impractical. You either presume the existence of a perfect democracy or you could argue that every society throughout history had a capitalist system simply because the population let it happen.

My argument is that pretty much every society throughout history had a capitalist system simply because that's what people do whenever they get half a chance.

 

[Loss Leader]

Thanks for the attempt to educate me, but I'm familiar with all the received wisdom you presented chapter-and-verse.

However you seem to have forgotten that the discussion is about systems of government since humans first 'civilised' (Sumeria?).

Civilization is absolutely not mankind's natural state. It is a side-effect of irrigation creating an overabundance of food.

My argument is that pretty much every society throughout history had a capitalist system simply because that's what people do whenever they get half a chance.

Don't think so, but see your general point.

 

[Roboramma]

Including the USSR. Which brings us right back around to the central question of the thread: Would socialism/communism really help racial minorities?

And the answer is: Probably not, if the attempts at implementing socialism/communism are anything to go by.

I'm still trying to decide if you arguing that the USSR was no more anti-semitic than any other country is either entirely irrelevant, or a central pillar supporting the answer.

He's arguing that the USSR was less anti-semitic than was Tsarist Russia, and that the relevant metric here is not the absolute value of anti-semitism, but rather it's rate of change.

Similarly abolitionism in the US was good for black people, in spite of the fact that racism still existed after slavery was abolished.

I don't know that he's right (I started reading this thread thinking that he's wrong), and comparing the anti-semitism between Tsarist Russia and the USSR is probably not the right comparison either, particularly post WWII we'd expect anti-semitism to decline everywhere, so maybe it's the second derivative that we should be looking at? Also some of his arguments seem weak, for instance Jews being overrepresented in Academia: that was true all over Europe in spite of anti-semitism. I know American universities had quotas on the maximum number of jews they would allow into Phd programs, yet Jews were still overrepresented in academia. So overrepresentation in academia doesn't demonstrate a lack of anti-semitism, as we don't know the counterfactual of if they would be more over represented without the anti-semitism.

To sum up: did anti-semitism decline in USSR (not did it go to zero)? That seems a relevant question. Caveman1917 claims yes.
Did it decline faster than it would have had the revolution not occurred? No one has asked, let alone attempted to answer that question, but it seems even more relevant. Perhaps that question can't really be answered, but we can look at whether the rate of decline in the USSR is similar to the rate elsewhere around the world and see if they kept up the the zeitgeist.

I have no answers to these questions. My prior view, based on what I've read, is that the decline was slower than elsewhere, but I don't have the data to back up that view, so I leave it to the rest of you to educate me.

 

[theprestige]

Civilization is absolutely not mankind's natural state. It is a side-effect of irrigation creating an overabundance of food.

How can there be an "overabundance" of food?

You make it sound like humans are should to be hunter-gatherers with limited food supplies.

And I'd say it's pretty obvious that the natural state of humans is to reason abstractly and devise tools to improve their quality of life and reproductive success. That whatever improvements they come up with is as much a part of their natural state as anything else.

Communism might be an unnatural state of humans, though.

 

[Lplus]

How can there be an "overabundance" of food?

You make it sound like humans are should to be hunter-gatherers with limited food supplies.

And I'd say it's pretty obvious that the natural state of humans is to reason abstractly and devise tools to improve their quality of life and reproductive success. That whatever improvements they come up with is as much a part of their natural state as anything else.

Communism might be an unnatural state of humans, though.

Communism requires a level of altruism completely foreign the the human animal in order to operate without some form of coercion.

 

[Belz...]

How can there be an "overabundance" of food?

You make it sound like humans are should to be hunter-gatherers with limited food supplies.

Well, it's "natural law", after all.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, our brains did evolve for when we were hunter-gatherers with limited supplies. In fact, before we even were apes. But that's exactly why expecting people to just stay happy because they have enough doesn't really work. The brain didn't evolve for that situation.

What I'm getting at is that we don't react positively to the current state, but to the difference we just caused. The brain evolved to make you feel good about satisfying an immediate need, not to deal with abstract utopias.

E.g., when you're hungry and you eat, it feels great, but after that that happiness expires, and you have to take care of some other need instead. You don't stay happy for the rest of the day just because you ate. You just don't get UNhappy until you get hungry again.

The same applies to any other needs too. Psychological too. E.g., you feel great when you buy a new phone, or whatever else you wanted, but then that fades away. You don't stay happy for ever after because you HAVE it. It's the difference in state that you react to, not the absolute state. To get happy again via consumerism you have to go buy something else again. And again. And again.

Now obviously consumerism isn't the only way to get that kind of a neurochemical happy signal. It's just one example. But the other kinds still work the same. E.g., if you get happy for making a new friend, you don't stay happy for ever. You have to go make another friend if you want to get the same reward signal. Or if you feel happy for talking to someone, once you stop, it goes away. You have to go talk to someone again if you want that happiness signal again. And so on.

You may recognize it as being perfectly good for dealing with basically the animal or primitive hunter-gatherer thing, where you have to do stuff over and over again to ensure your survival. If you get a brief moment of happiness for having ensured your survival for today (e.g., because you successfully hunted something), you have to do it again tomorrow.

And IMHO basically that's the problem with ideas that need people to realize that they have enough, there's no reason to want more, you can just be happy with what you have. The brain just doesn't work that way. It still reacts positively to deltas, not to the absolute value. If you don't have any needs that you can satisfy, you just get bored, not happy.

 

[Distracted1]

Well, our brains did evolve for when we were hunter-gatherers with limited supplies. In fact, before we even were apes. But that's exactly why expecting people to just stay happy because they have enough doesn't really work. The brain didn't evolve for that situation.

What I'm getting at is that we don't react positively to the current state, but to the difference we just caused. The brain evolved to make you feel good about satisfying an immediate need, not to deal with abstract utopias.

E.g., when you're hungry and you eat, it feels great, but after that that happiness expires, and you have to take care of some other need instead. You don't stay happy for the rest of the day just because you ate. You just don't get UNhappy until you get hungry again.

The same applies to any other needs too. Psychological too. E.g., you feel great when you buy a new phone, or whatever else you wanted, but then that fades away. You don't stay happy for ever after because you HAVE it. It's the difference in state that you react to, not the absolute state. To get happy again via consumerism you have to go buy something else again. And again. And again.

Now obviously consumerism isn't the only way to get that kind of a neurochemical happy signal. It's just one example. But the other kinds still work the same. E.g., if you get happy for making a new friend, you don't stay happy for ever. You have to go make another friend if you want to get the same reward signal. Or if you feel happy for talking to someone, once you stop, it goes away. You have to go talk to someone again if you want that happiness signal again. And so on.

You may recognize it as being perfectly good for dealing with basically the animal or primitive hunter-gatherer thing, where you have to do stuff over and over again to ensure your survival. If you get a brief moment of happiness for having ensured your survival for today (e.g., because you successfully hunted something), you have to do it again tomorrow.

And IMHO basically that's the problem with ideas that need people to realize that they have enough, there's no reason to want more, you can just be happy with what you have. The brain just doesn't work that way. It still reacts positively to deltas, not to the absolute value. If you don't have any needs that you can satisfy, you just get bored, not happy.

it's a spectrum.
It is possible to be happy with what one has. Requires conscious effort though.

Adam and Eve were in the Garden.
Adam looked at Eve and began to speak.
"Eve", he said, look around. We are surrounded by natures wonders. When hungry we just pluck food from the trees. We commune with all the animals of the Earth, and walk with the creator every day."

Eve looked back at Adam. "Adam", she said, "I know exactly what you mean.......

it's just not enough, is it?"

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

it's a spectrum.
It is possible to be happy with what one has. Requires conscious effort though.

What I wrote is actually basic biology. As soon as the chemical reward signal has been released in your brain, its very presence triggers the release of whatever enzyme removes it from your system. E.g., the very presence of dopamine in your brain triggers the release of the MAO-B enzyme that metabolizes it, bringing your mood back to baseline. Unless you do something that causes another release of dopamine, you then stay at baseline, not stay happy.

Now I will grant that you could at least theoretically learn to think something that you feel as an achievement every single time, and gives you more reward signal every single time. Which I assume is what you mean by that conscious effort. I'm not sure it's actually possible in practice for most people in the long run, since you get used to whatever signal you're using to trick your brain. But at least in theory it doesn't really contradict any biology.