Harry Guerrilla
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2008
- Messages
- 28,951
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- Libertarian
Worker-owned cooperatives aren't primarily intended to be "altruistic" or "good"; they're intended to be efficiency maximizers, and clearly are, judging by the Venezuelan rate of economic growth. Chavez is also not a "giant central planner." Indeed, he has little involvement with the nature of economic democracy in Venezuela, considering its local coordination.
"Government dictated" price? The nature of worker owned enterprises necessitates participatory budgeting at the local level, another commendable facet of Bolivarian socialism.
Just because the people of Venezuela like him doesn't make him any less of a dictator. We are just used to automatically assuming that dictators are evil bastards who have taken their country by pure force, and guile. I mean I am not saying he is innocent of anything it's just that he is no Saddam.
Wouldn't you agree though that seizing airports and seaports does nothing but concentrate the power of the central government?
There are national prices on items like rice though. If they were to try and sell excess goods above that price Chavez could take over the collectives as he has done with the corporate entities.
A significant portion of my step family lives in Venezuela, support for Chavez is not as prevalent as we are led to believe.
Such actions should be examined in their situational context, along with analysis of what the alternative consequences would be. His previous intent clearly hasn't been the implementation of strong centralized planning; it's not unlikely that these would be subject to local, decentralized management to some degree.
It's not unjust that corporate entities were subject to nationalization, considering their inefficiency and promotion of social ills as a consequence of that inefficiency. Democratic management and local participatory efforts have proven themselves to be preferable in terms of efficiency maximization. There is some degree of national pricing, but this comes as a necessary result of national coordination and supply management. The majority of economic management that occurs is participatory, decentralized, and democratic, but you're so intent on finding any single point of Bolivarian socialism to criticize that you're willing to ignore this reality.
We aren't "led to believe" that support for Chavez is prevalent in any form. On the contrary, the American mass media would have us believe that Chavez's elections were fraudulent, despite the contrary opinions of reputable international observers, and that he "shut down" opposition media, despite the inaccuracy of that claim also.
How much of that local management actually exists and what would stop Chavez from overruling it once he has finished consolidating power?
So if corporate entities where actually the cause of the problems why not just reform instead of take drastic actions to remove ownership.
Markets are usually best implemented with less intervention from outside forces like governments that can not see into the future.
I'm not ignoring anything, I see plenty of flaws with populist ideologies that restrain individual freedom in favor of collectivism.
Humans naturally gravitate to that which benefits them most. If at some point one sees that they can generate excess revenues outside of the collective on their own they will.
Or if they can take a stronger leadership role inside the collective to increase their personal returns they will do what is necessary to get to that point.
I am sorry, I did not clarify then.. as Chavez wants us to believe. I don't get my perception of the reality of the situation in Venezuela from the media, I get it from friends and family who actually are living in Venezuela, and it is a cross segment of social and economic classes.
He's not in the process of "consolidating power." He does have an interest in power, as all state officials naturally will (a problem that will only be solved by elimination of the state, which isn't an immediately available option), but his alleged "tyranny" seems no greater than that of any other head of state, and indeed, seems far less than that of most. The greatest check to state supremacy is, and always will be, public opposition to such. The public is unwilling to abandon participatory, democratic economic structure at the grassroots level to statist bureaucracy, and would likely resort to violent physical resistance if such schemes were to be forcibly implemented.
Nothing short of socialism is capable of entirely eliminating the capitalist business cycle. As such, nothing short of socialism is capable of generating the efficiency gains that the Bolivarian democratic model has delivered to the Venezuelan citizenry. You're on similarly dubious grounds regarding the alleged immorality of democratic ownership and control of the means of production formerly dominated by corporate entities.
That's a poor analysis dependent on free market utopianism. Since the reality is that government is a necessary stabilizing agent in a capitalist economy, you'll have to examine the nature of government protection of infant industries in developing states, for instance, to understand the manner in which government often has the effect of promoting capitalist expansion.
There's little "restraint" of individual freedom involved. Unlike the coercive nature of the capitalist firm, the democracy and participatory qualities of the worker-owned enterprises have the effect of minimizing coercion to a significant degree, essentially eliminating it in the appropriate situational context in which the circumstances are favorable to such a policy.
You're not familiar with the structural formation of cooperatives and economic democracy as implemented in Venezuela. There isn't a means available for one individual to exploit other members of the cooperative or local community because the democratic structure of cooperatives would prevent him/her from accessing the means of production to any significant degree. Ownership and control of the means of production and generally productive assets are necessarily the sovereign realm of the public at large, not powerful individuals or classes.
Then if that was the case, national intervention in the operation of cooperatives would ultimately be a lesser imposition of tyranny than the alternative. But that's typically not the case, because the democratic structure of cooperatives includes checks and balances on the power of individuals and powerful classes, as opposed to the structure of a capitalist firm.
I posted on another political board about five years ago on which one of the members was a committed communist/anarchist. She had this odd ability to disgorge voluminous posts with all sorts of novel and revolutionary ideas about transforming society into her own Utopian ideal. The few forummers who chose to engage her soon regretted it.
:2wave:
I posted on another political board about five years ago on which one of the members was a committed communist/anarchist. She had this odd ability to disgorge voluminous posts with all sorts of novel and revolutionary ideas about transforming society into her own Utopian ideal. The few forummers who chose to engage her soon regretted it.
:2wave:
The public does not always violently resist.
The public can not always be counted on for assurance of continuing democratic governments.
The present situation in the U.S. and Europe are obvious of that.
Socialism whether Bolivarian or other will eventually have diminished returns once the psychological factors start to take effect.
Democratic ownership is by design inefficient. Your again using short term gains to show long term results which won't happen.
A survey of empirical research on productivity in worker-owned enterprises and cooperatives finds a substantial literature that largely supports the proposition that worker-owned enterprises equal or exceed the productivity of conventional enterprises when employee involvement is combined with ownership. The weight of a sparser literature on cooperatives tends toward the same pattern. In addition, employee-owned firms create local employment, anchor jobs in their communities and enrich local social capital.
What about privately owned non corporate entities?
It is not a Utopian assessment. A free market will always have inefficiencies and efficient aspects. They are complementary and can never disappear.
Otherwise there is little need to have market competition.
Capitalism is by design voluntary. No coercion needed.
That is just pure unfettered foolishness.
Just as everything else has been manipulation proofed there is always an individual or class sly enough to consolidate power.
Talk about Utopia.
Checks and balances depend on the individuals involved and if one powerful class, like the uneducated poor in Venezuela gain power they invariably support fallacious policies because it sounds good not because it is economically sound.
If you wade through all the big words and unfounded short sighted assumptions and "empirical" evidence you can shoot right through the nonsense.
I posted on another political board about five years ago on which one of the members was a committed communist/anarchist. She had this odd ability to disgorge voluminous posts with all sorts of novel and revolutionary ideas about transforming society into her own Utopian ideal. The few forummers who chose to engage her soon regretted it.
:2wave:
The public does not always violently resist.
The public can not always be counted on for assurance of continuing democratic governments.
The present situation in the U.S. and Europe are obvious of that.
Socialism whether Bolivarian or other will eventually have diminished returns once the psychological factors start to take effect.
Democratic ownership is by design inefficient. Your again using short term gains to show long term results which won't happen.
A survey of empirical research on productivity in worker-owned enterprises and cooperatives finds a substantial literature that largely supports the proposition that worker-owned enterprises equal or exceed the productivity of conventional enterprises when employee involvement is combined with ownership. The weight of a sparser literature on cooperatives tends toward the same pattern. In addition, employee-owned firms create local employment, anchor jobs in their communities and enrich local social capital.
What about privately owned non corporate entities?
It is not a Utopian assessment. A free market will always have inefficiencies and efficient aspects. They are complementary and can never disappear.
Otherwise there is little need to have market competition.
Capitalism is by design voluntary. No coercion needed.
That is just pure unfettered foolishness.
Just as everything else has been manipulation proofed there is always an individual or class sly enough to consolidate power.
Talk about Utopia.
Checks and balances depend on the individuals involved and if one powerful class, like the uneducated poor in Venezuela gain power they invariably support fallacious policies because it sounds good not because it is economically sound.
If you wade through all the big words and unfounded short sighted assumptions and "empirical" evidence you can shoot right through the nonsense.
Of course, the most "utopian" of economic ideas presented is free market capitalism, which is characterized by an air of extreme unreality, due to its lack of practical applications outside of the textbook. Socialism is merely practical in that it produces efficiency gains that actually existing capitalism is unable to generate, due to its minimization of information asymmetries and their related problems, for instance.
You're clearly unfamiliar with the tumultuous political climate of Latin America, I'd say. You can point to no historical record of public apathy whilst democratic management of political and economic structure is being stripped from them, since the perpetuation of power is a natural human inclination, and those who have power over the means of production will naturally wish to perpetuate it, be they authoritarian dictators or libertarian collectives. Or can you point to a situation in which there was decentralized public control of political and economic structure, and it was willingly surrendered to an authoritarian state?
There's no basis for this claim. Capitalism has the tendency to promote inefficient outcomes due to its ignorance of imperfect information and social opportunity costs in an economic system. Socialism's egalitarian elements prevent such ignorance and thereby generate efficiency gains, as is the case with autogestion (workers' self-management), for instance.
That is not an accurate description of the nature of worker-owned enterprises, as indicated by empirical evidence rather than ideological dogma. I'd recommend that you have a look at the work of researchers Logue and Yates in Cooperatives, Worker-Owned Enterprises, Productivity and the International Labor Organization. As noted by the abstract:
Hence, you have clearly committed insufficient analysis to the role of worker ownership and management in efficiency increases.
Given the non-existence of the "free market" that you fallaciously depict, private entities of all varieties typically lack the efficiency-increasing qualities of socialism and worker management.
Inefficiencies can be minimized, as is the case with a socialist economy. Regardless, you haven't addressed the point of my assessment, which is that the state functions as a necessary stabilizing agent in a capitalist economy, as with government protection of infant industries serving as a means for greater long-term capitalist expansion.
That is a flagrantly inaccurate analysis that is again dependent on a utopian conception of political economy. Considering my frequent assessment that "capitalism is an economic system in which the private ownership of the means of production and consequent hierarchical subordination of labor under capital enables the extraction of surplus value from the working class in the production process through the use of wage labor and subsequent utilization in the circulation process in order to perpetuate a vicious cycle of capital accumulation," the subordination of workers under an employer is itself anti-democratic and coercive.
As I've noted, since the means of production are privately owned, large components of the public have no alternative but to subordinate themselves under an employer. The best way to illustrate this form of authoritarianism is to use the "robbery analogy." If a person were to be violently tackled by an assailant and have his/her valuables torn out of his/her pockets, we would accurately call this a robbery. Now, if the assailant were to instead point a gun at the victim and demand that the valuables be surrendered, we would still call this a robbery, as coercion was used to gain the valuables, if not outright physical violence. The fact that the victim technically "consented" to surrender his/her valuables is not pertinent, since it was consent yielded while under duress.
The former example represents the direct tyranny of statism, often blunt, direct, and brutal, whereas the latter represents the more subtle tyranny of capitalism, specifically wage labor, in which a person technically "consents" to work for an employer, but does this only because he/she has no other alternative for sustenance.
Your own ideas and conceptions are utopian. Since you fail to realize this through an explanation of structural framework, can you point to any single case in Venezuela, in which socialism has effectively existed for about six years, in which a powerful group of individuals from the financial class or any other similarly powerful class hijacked a cooperative or federations of cooperatives?
Ultimately, there aren't economically unsound elements of Bolivarian socialism to the same extent that they exist in capitalism, which is why Bolivarian socialism has had the effect of promoting economic growth and development to a far greater degree than capitalism ever did, ever can, or ever will.
You haven't "shot through" anything except your initial semblance of credibility. You're simply hostile to empirical evidence. That's fine if it's acceptable to you, but it doesn't equip you for serious economic analysis.
In other words, you weren't capable of rebuttal?
Free market approaches are less Utopian than socialist ones because they directly infer human nature.
Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man [menschliche Wesen = ‘human nature’]. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence is hence obliged:
1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious sentiment regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract — isolated - human individual.
2. The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as ‘species’, as an inner ‘dumb’ generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way.
- Marx, Theses on Feuerbach
I recently heard that Chavez agreed to let Russia station long
range bombers in Venezuela. Russia wants to counter America's
stationing of nuclear missles in Poland (against "Iran", yeah right).
You can admit it or deny it, but it won't be less true.
This isn't really an argument. Define what you mean when you say "human nature". Then support your assertion. That is how an argument works ("I'm right and you're not!" is not an argument).
Human nature- What drives humans to continue existence, what the inner man and woman wants and needs and how they get it.
Some think of it as sin, I think of it as biological psychology.
We like every other animal on the planet, we are driven to exist in the easiest way possible.
By definition human nature is selfishness, I don't particularly view it as good or bad.
This makes no sense. If human nature is what drives humans to continue existence, then it isn't "by definition...selfishness," as it is certainly preferable in various circumstances to cooperate rather than compete.
Moreover, I can point to countless examples that proves that either human nature (i.e. "what drives humans to continue existence") does not exist or if it does then it is easily superseded by the fact that we are conscious, thinking beings.
If human nature is what you say it is, then how do you reconcile suicide, martyrdom, self-sacrifice, selfless acts of charity, etc...?
Do you really think that suicide is not a relief to someones pain?
Cooperation is done because something is easier to get than if it was done alone.
First, you have not offered up an explanation of what human nature is, but merely what it does.
Second, your original assertion was that human nature "drives humans to continue existence". If that were the case then suicide would go against human nature, whatever the reasoning.
This invalidates the idea that human nature is an unbreakable law. So if human nature indeed does exist, it is possible to overcome. What, in your opinion, are the circumstances where this is possible? Granted, I'm assuming that you don't believe that human nature is an unbreakable law, as that would be incredibly stupid to believe.
As for my belief, I don't think human nature exists in the manner that you are presenting it. I certainly think that humans are endowed with the same survival instincts granted to all other species, but it would then be counterintuitive to call this human nature. Following from this, what differentiates humans from other animals is that we can think, we can reason and ultimately we can overcome such instincts. It is in this sense that our instincts have become subordinate to our consciousness.
Animals enter into relationships in order to further the survival of their species; this can either be in cooperation or competition. Certainly, though, one does not by nature take precedent over the other; these relationships are determined by the environment in which one lives.
So I agree with your statement, but would qualify it with a second: Competition is done because something is easier to get than if it was done through cooperation.
Following from this, any such view that the socialization of production "goes against human nature" does not have a leg on which to stand, for if human consciousness is determined by the environment in which it develops then there is no inherent barrier in transforming to one conducive with socialization (aside from one's environment, which is exactly why the Utopian Socialists were incorrect in their outlook).
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