Come on, ladies and gentlemen, the fine submitted article is about stark conditions in India, where "Western capitalism" was specifically rejected, and socialism embraced, as an economic model after independence in 1947. The comparison with Taiwan (where I have lived, twice) is instructive. Taiwan too, under the China Nationalist Party (KMT) dictatorship, had a period of governance that accepted Sun Yat-sen thought and dabbled with a lot of socialism. (That the field of Taiwan's flag, formally the flag of the Republic of China, is red is no accident. The KMT was very much part of a worldwide socialist movement when it was founded.) Meanwhile, as the mainland fell to the Commmunist Party of China and then Stalin's invasion of South Korea from the north began, the United States felt constrained to prop up Taiwan, and one way it did so was by promoting land reform in Taiwan and local free and fair elections. Gradually, Taiwan became more "capitalist," and it went from stark poverty (being poorer in my wife's birth year than some newly independent countries in Africa) to prosperity. Taiwan hasn't had a garment industry like that described in the submitted article for a long, long time. Essentially everyone who gets online to discuss issues on Hacker News probably uses an Internet device with multiple components made in Taiwan and traded in international trade.
Trade is the foundation of capitalism, not exploitation. (The references for this, of course, are the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.) India (and also much of South America) specifically rejected this wisdom during much of my lifetime, and now those countries have to play catch-up. They still have time. They won't have stark poverty forever if they learn from the examples of other countries, just as Taiwan did.
Thank you for being a voice of reason and empiricism in this thread. Seems like too many people took a class in marxist sociology and all of a sudden see the whole world in terms of The Capitalists and The Exploited Class.
EDIT: Taking a class in economics and thinking everything has a monetary value attached to it, or that homo economicus actually exists would obviously be just as bad.
Personally I don't agree with Marx a lot (I'm more of a Groucho Marxist and am therefore not allowed to join any club that would have me as a member), but I do have Marxist family members and know a fair amount of what it is and what it is not. India is definitely not an example of a Marxist state.
edit - Folk keep framing stuff in the economic dogma-battles of the superpowers in the 19th and 20th century, but to me the problem is 14th century economics combined with 21st century logistics. Retaining a caste system in a world of global networks can give you a fucking big pyramid and systemise abuse on an unprecedented scale with the money that flows in from those outside the structure.
Groucho Marxism is the best kind of ideology. I didn't mean to imply that India is in any way a marxist state. I was referring to the unreflected usage of words like exploitation in this thread (not in the article) - a usage that I could easily see being picked up after taking a class or two. Pre-packaged vocabulary has a certain smell, just like bad code.
Not only that, if I recall correctly there's actually a few Maoist groups in India that are trying to start a revolution as well... They certainly don't see India as anything but capitalist.
Indeed, the communist party in India is about as militant as they come. You're probably referring to the naxalites[0], they're not shy about targeted violence[1], especially since they're active in a lot of poor, "backward" [2] areas that go ignored by the central government until there is an industrial resource to exploit.
Actually Marx chose to resign from the Friars Club, citing its low standards in allowing "people like me as a member", rather than not being allowed to join.
What's wrong in taking a class in anything including Marxist sociology? Are there some domains of knowledge which should be intentionally left unexplored, lest we corrupt all our precious bodily fluids? What is this--Texas Board of Education?
Seems to me too few people take classes in anything these days, let alone Marxist sociology.
The Popperian argument would be that Marxism is not a domain of knowledge, because it is not very good at making testable predictions about the world.
Popper compared Marx to Freud, in that both people spawned a theory of knowledge that is very good at explaining what has already happened but horrifyingly bad at telling you how things will be tomorrow, and how to change those things. Almost sixty years after this observation nothing has changed. We now recognize Freud as pseudoscience, but Marxism remains unfortunately persistent. Marxists like to talk about how well Marx predicted the nature of the class struggle and stuff like that, but in a theory which sees everything in terms of class struggle, this is not a scientific prediction at all.
> [Marx theory] is very good at explaining what has already happened [...]
And that's exactly why you should learn about it, Marx analysis of economic conditions is pretty much spot on. What conclusions you draw from that analysis is a different topic. And of course all the work is interesting for historic purposes, it's pretty much impossible to understand the history of the 20th century without (at least some of) it.
I also haven't met (or read) anybody for a long time who actually believed Marx' idea of class struggle by force of nature leading to a communist society, where do you still find those people?
Popper does not have a monopoly on the definition of 'science.' For example, quantum mechanics is not exactly falsifiable... And the general idea of falsifiability has been criticized by many, including non-Marxists.
When Marxists talk about it being 'scientific socialism,' they are contrasting with 'utopian socialism.' Scientific socialism takes the approach of examining the world, making changes, seeing how those work out, and then re-examining the theory. You can see how that relates to the scientific method.
Quantum mechanics certainly is falsifiable. If the electron two-slit experiment produces a pair of humps, it is falsified to extremely high confidence. (Also, we'd have a hard time dealing with the Pauli exclusion principle, and therefore solid matter, without quantum mechanics.)
Marxism is not scientific, as it does not attempt to falsify one of its core axioms—that the class struggle is over a local optimization game. A central committee can actually do a pretty good job of adjusting the ratio of copper tubing to copper wiring, but the actual challenge turns out to be making people want to invent things like graphene.
My physics knowledge is pretty limited, but I was under the impression that it's at least controversial.
Regardless, you're not engaging with my core point, which is that 'scientific' in this context means something specific, not whatever you happen to think scientific means. Nobody is claiming Marxism is falsifiable, that's a red herring.
The comparison is deeply flawed. Psychoanalysis is not good at explaining what has already happened. It only seems good if you don't know that those "explanations" have no actual basis in reality. Psychoanalysis is mostly based on completely made up "facts", not just on badly interpreted facts. This is a big difference if we're talking about philosophy of science (which we are if we're discussing Popper's views on what is science). By the way, Marxism can make testable statements about the world ("prediction" is a too strong requirement for this domain of reality, it's too complex; fluid mechanics can't make any predictions about turbulent flows, but that doesn't mean it's not science).
This is why my stomach turns when Popper is mentioned. The idea of falsifiability and testable statements being the essence of science is the best known guiding principle in scientific methodology. Having articulated this wonderful idea, he just couldn't help but muddy the water and misuse it to peddle his political and social views.
EDIT: I forgot to give an example of a falsifiable prediction in Marxism: the outcome of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the transitional socialist state leading to communism. It was actually falsified successfully by Soviet Union et al.
> I forgot to give an example of a falsifiable prediction in Marxism: the outcome of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the transitional socialist state leading to communism. It was actually falsified successfully by Soviet Union et al.
That's debatable, given the modifications to Marxism made in Leninism -- the actual "Communist" states all were based on Leninism, rather than Marxism. The advanced democratic capitalist states that had the foundations which Marx saw as essential for the transition to socialism on the way to communism have generally transitioned in the direction of socialism since Marx's time, though in a rather gradual way. At least in the direction of the natural progression beyond the model of political-economic system that Marx and other 19th century socialists critiqued under the name "capitalism", Marx seems to have been very broadly correct -- as to whether that eventually leads to communism is, well, something that we're probably several generations away from seeing.
I think that its a lot more likely that something like the modern mixed economy -- evolving with productivity in a way that increasing has a greater domain of social support and responsiveness -- will be dominant for a very long term. OTOH, I can envision that happening in a way where the social support is delivered in a way based on private property (e.g., through a mechanism like basic income) with social goods delivered more through the market than directly by the state. With sufficient productivity (and hence, goods being less scarce) this would in many ways resemble communism (while still having features of socialism and capitalism.)
I agree it's debatable in terms of relationship of Leninism to "vanilla" Marxism. It is much less debatable, I think, that Leninism is an honest (in the sense of not being intentionally wrong or deceptive) continuation of the original Marxist sociology and economy (at least the "late Marx" version of it). So in that sense I took the term Marxism to encompass all those strains of social and economic theory based on late Marx.
> It is much less debatable, I think, that Leninism is an honest (in the sense of not being intentionally wrong or deceptive) continuation of the original Marxist sociology and economy
Whether it is "honest" or not is largely beside the point, which is that it is a deliberate attempt to short-circuit what in Marx's theory was an essential step on the road from feudalism through developed capitalism and then socialism and finally to communism, and that a such a short-circuiting effort cannot be an empirical test -- whether it succeeds or fails -- of Marx's theory (well, except insofar as its success would refute at least one element of Marx's theory.)
Do note that I'm making a distinction between Marxism and Marx's theory (in the sense that he was just one, although first, Marxist philosopher/sociologist/economist). So, it may be that USSR was not a test of Marx's own ideas on transition, but it was certainly a test of one, very much dominant for the most part of the last century, strand of Marxist thought. And they didn't decide they wanted to short-circuit the process "just because", or because they were lazy; they did have a theoretical analysis and rationale behind the idea.
Marxists like to talk about how well Marx predicted the nature of the class struggle and stuff like that, but in a theory which sees everything in terms of class struggle, this is not a scientific prediction at all.
And they typically do him a dis-service. I find when "Marxists" speak of such things, "bad" is synonymous with capitalism just as "capitalism" is synonymous with bad.
The problem is not "taking the class." The problem is "taking the class and presuming it makes one an expert." After a single facet of study, it's certainly not possible to be an expert.
Your thesis assumes that Marxist sociology is a domain of knowledge. Apparently the parent hinted it is not. There is some controversy here, certainly. However people who have lived in, or learned about, the societies where the Marxist ideology was (supposedly?) placed in the foundation, can be excused if they have strong opinions about it, and mostly negative.
Perhaps Marxism could be studied as a specimen of a certain mindset, like intellectual design: "learn about it", not "learn it". One problem is so many people (millions!) have had Marxism shoved in the throats. No wonder it tends to go out the other way. (Sorry for the graphic image.)
"Western capitalism" was specifically rejected, and socialism embraced
That must be why it has such strong labour laws and enormous social safety net supported by a tax and spend government then. Or possibly the economy ditched socialism in 1991 when it carried out a series of free market reforms at the behest of global trade organisations. Who can possibly say.
But you have to realize that most people on hacker news who want socialism never had first-hand experience with it. People have to learn their lessons the hard way. :(
Just an added thought re: ROC, when I was in Taiwan some local coworkers were concerned about manufacturing getting outsourced to mainland China, because Taiwan's prosperity and standard of living started to make it less competitive. Imagine that!
NPR's "Planet Money" podcast team decided to sell t-shirts and did a similar project where they researched and followed the production process from start to finish. Some of the interviews have been pretty interesting:
The NPR staff wound up working with Jockey to have the shirt made and that obviously opened up a lot of doors to the production facilities and interviews with factory workers, etc.
The Mother Jones article reminded me, I guess, that Jockey's hand in the NPR access had a non-trvial amount of P/R influence in the project.
The thing that people don't realize is that exploitation is the foundational structure of capitalism, and 'civilized' wage work is only removed from the examples in this story by a matter of degrees. The current capitalistic structure is only a moderate change from the old-fashioned slavery it came from directly.
We clearly need to apply science and technology directly to human needs rather than relying entirely on outdated systems like money that primarily enforce hierarchies. In previous eras where the only means to an end was raw human labor, perhaps this type of system made sense. In our contemporary society with our technological capability it is absurd. Too bad that people can only see that when it involves the most extreme cases.
> No it isn't. Trade is. [snip meaningless analogy]
Trade? No, trade is the foundation of any kind of economy, of any kind of organized social life. Exploitation is one of the foundational concepts of capitalism, but the same is true for all past dominant economic systems, so it's true that it's not terribly useful to define capitalism as something that is just about exploitation. The way exploitation is structured, whom and how is exploited, in capitalism is the key point.
I'm on the fence about the whole "exploitation" thing. But it's surely false that "trade is the foundation of any economy".
I think it's more accurate to say "trade is the foundation of a market". According to Smith, river-valley civilizations arose because of markets. Markets arose because of specialization. Specialization arose because the rivers allowed more efficient transportation of goods than land (by a factor of 50?).
But for the paleolithic era, most tribes shared goods communally. No trade needed.
Well, for what it's worth Wikipedia article on the paleolithic suggests there is much evidence of trade during that era (referenced, but I don't have the time to research that ATM). But that's beside the point really. The issue here is how we define what economy is and what trade is. But more to the point, trade in general is not a defining characteristic of capitalism, it's not the differentia specifica of capitalism. But I agree that the statement "trade is the foundation of any economy" is too strong in the sense that it's not only trade that is needed to have an economy (you need production, consumption, etc.).
Capitalism is the only system that has a proven track record of bringing people out of poverty. Many industrial nations had a garment industry phase and graduated from it.
We have had experiments with other systems than Capitalsm, and some of them are still running. Korea is split in North and South, the southern part is capitalist, was in garment manufacturing and now has an exceptional level of wealth, while the northern part is communist and has become one big concentration camp.
I hope you won't bother pulling a No True Scotsman here, because the list goes on.
North Korea is not communist. Read the book The Cleanest Race to see how U.S. analysts really see North Korea. There are no communist countries today. It's fun to talk about capitalism in the abstract like it doesn't keep monarchism in the closet, underdevelops Africa, props up lackey dictators in the Third World, depends on colonialism/imperialism to get rich, and turns to fascism when in crisis. I'm sure mafias have made life better too for people but that doesn't look at the whole picture. Where would your bought off Scotsmen be if he wasn't capitalism's shock troops who invaded South Africa,Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the Americas and kept police order in India, the Middle East, and Asia?
Not only that, but I don't believe there ever was a pure communist state, only the intermediate stage experiments that ended up cruel dictatorships. The only way we'd ever get one is with the help of a Portal-like AI to distribute wealth and plan the economy.
There are no communist nations today because communism failed, utterly and often spectacularly, usually because some asshole came to power who was more interested in furthering his own agenda and increasing the power of himself and his friends than in doing what was actually good for the people.
This always occurs because in order to transfer to communism, an intermediate government is necessary to take power from the evil capitalists, consolidate it, and distribute it throughout the people before volunteering to dissolve. In practice, this never occurs. Where power is centralized, sociopaths will congregate, and the first stage of the transition to communism is nothing if not the centralization of power. Thus, communism has always failed under the weight of despots, and will always do so as long as that is the case. There are no benevolent governments, period.
Meanwhile, though capitalism is surely far from perfect in its implementation, every nation which has embraced it has done remarkably well relative to those which embraced its ideological opposite. No, it's not perfect, but it's obviously preferable to communism. I give those who sided with communism or socialism before 1980 or so the benefit of the doubt, as they were not privy to the vast evidence that we are today of communism's many failures. On the other hand, I immediately write anyone off who still believes communism > capitalism to be a delusional idiot who is almost certainly not worth arguing with.
Communism is not for you buddy, you're not the same class as those toiling in India or other Third World nations. With its proven track record of defeating imperialists and for those with nothing to lose and first world nation traitors, it has still proven viable.
I have the People's Republic of China, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Republic of Cuba on the line, all of which would like to have a word with you.
I should have said successful communist nations. China isn't communist; it's been capitalist since Deng Xiaopeng opened it up to foreign direct investment in the early 80's. Vietnam is socialist in name only, and is following a similar trajectory to China. The DPRK is a perhaps the only true communist nation on Earth, and we all know what a hellhole it's become. It is the last holdout, and is probably in the final throes of its existence. Something's going to happen there eventually, whether revolution or invasion of a foreign power I don't know, but the world will not tolerate that much longer. Finally, Cuba is socialist, not communist, and even they are trending towards capitalism, not communism, as all nations inevitably do.
Edit: allow me to clarify what I mean by the DPRK being communist. It is not communism as in the endgame of communism on paper; it is the intermediate stage of communism when it is allowed to exist for far too long by a world that is not interested in intervening. The central authority has seized power for itself, but it will never return that power to the people and transition to communism's final stage for obvious reasons. The DPRK is the final stage of communism as it exists in reality.
> I should have said successful communist nations. China isn't communist; it's been capitalist since Deng Xiaopeng opened it up to foreign direct investment in the early 80's.
If you take an equally narrow view of "capitalism" as you necessarily must of "communism" to make this even arguably true (well, and still it wouldn't be true to say China is "capitalist", but at least "not communist"), there aren't any "successful" capitalist nations today either, they all became "socialist" sometime between the late 19th and mid-20th century.
Realistically, most of the worlds major economies are mixed economies, and certainly one can make that case with regard to China -- though its a lot closer to communism than it is to capitalism.
> Finally, Cuba is socialist, not communist, and even they are trending towards capitalism, not communism, as all nations inevitably do.
The Communist Party of Cuba would be as surprised to learn that they aren't Communist (they'd agree that they are socialist, but they'd be baffled at the idea that the two were incompatible.)
At any rate, the idea that all nations eventually trend towards capitalism is ludicrous, especially given that the advanced nations whose systems in the 19th century were the defining exemplars of the term "capitalism" have since all trended toward socialism.
I suggest you look up the definition of "capitalist" and "communist." All successful nations today are, by definition, "capitalist," as in the government respects the right of the people to own property. Yes, there are some successful mixed economies, but they are "mixed" because the government owns some of the means of production alongside the people, not the other way around. And even those few nations have been liberalizing over the last few decades, a trend which continues today.
By the actual definition of "communism" there are no communist nations today, nor were there ever any for the reasons I gave in my initial argument. The definition of communism I've used for this discussion was actually more lenient than how it is defined.
>The Communist Party of Cuba would be as surprised to learn that they aren't Communist
The Communist Party of Cuba would not be surprised at all. They're just playing the game they've been given, and to think that they don't know the score is to assume they are all idiots right off the bat.
>At any rate, the idea that all nations eventually trend towards capitalism is ludicrous
Every formerly communist/socialist nation on the planet save one has moved to liberalize their economy in the last few decades, because communism/socialism is inherently flawed. All nations do, indeed, inevitably trend towards capitalism. If they choose not to, they inevitably fail, and once they pick up the pieces, they inevitably choose the alternative, which has been proven to succeed time and time again.
If you use as weak and binary a definition of "capitalism" as you expressly state that you are, then the idea of nations inevitably trending toward capitalism is even more ludicrous than it is if you use it in a meaningful way -- as it is, even currently socialist nations are "capitalist" (not trending toward it -- which is impossible, there is no way to have a variable distance from it -- but actually capitalist.)
Yes, I've noticed that debates with those who advocate socialism over capitalism tend to devolve into arguments over semantics.
It seems that so very few of you can argue in favor of your favorite alternative to capitalism well enough to refrain from nitpicking. It becomes tiresome after a while.
Using your weak definition of capitalism, I've rarely seen anyone advocate socialism over capitalism, since all socialism that I've seen advocated is compatible with (and even require) your weak definition of capitalism, they aren't alternatives to it.
And, while there's probably some definitions of "socialism" and "capitalism" for which my preferred tuning of a modern mixed economy is more "socialism" than "capitalism", all I've been arguing in this thread is that your Marx-in-reverse arguments about the inevitability of capitalism are as ludicrous as Marxist fanatics arguments about the inevitability of Communism -- and that's not even related to advocacy about the desirability of any system.
>I hope you won't bother pulling a No True Scotsman here, because the list goes on.
By cherry-picking North Korea as your only example as a non-capitalist experiment, and pre-disqualifying anyone who says that it isn't a representative example for all possible non-capitalist systems as someone employing a logical fallacy, you haven't really left any room for discussion.
Why not pick China, or the USSR?
Or the entire modern West, which pretty much exists as explicitly mixed socialist/capitalist economies - filled with welfare, national health services, unemployment benefits, industrial subsidies, public education, and progressive taxation?
I hope you won't bother pulling a No True Scotsman here, because the list goes on.
>> We have had experiments with other systems than Capitalsm, and some of them are still running. Korea is split in North and South, the southern part is capitalist, was in garment manufacturing and now has an exceptional level of wealth, while the northern part is communist and has become one big concentration camp.
> By cherry-picking North Korea as your only example as a non-capitalist experiment, and pre-disqualifying anyone who says that it isn't a representative example for all possible non-capitalist systems as someone employing a logical fallacy, you haven't really left any room for discussion.
> Why not pick China, or the USSR?
I cannot fathom what's going on in your comment. But there are two obvious responses:
1. North Korea was called out, as mentioned in the comment you respond to, because, unlike Maoist China and the USSR, it's still going.
2. Maoist China and the USSR also fit the bill of "one big concentration camp", so if he had picked one of them instead, nothing about his comment would have changed. Both were total, unimaginable disasters for the entire population of each country. It's like you said "sure, 2 is an even number, but what about 8?"
From the relevant wikipedia page: " In the wake of the spread of fascism through Europe, Stalin repressed both Communist Party members and elements of the population by creating an atmosphere of political paranoia and establishing a system of correctional labour camps."
Modern social democracy is basically capitalist-fueled redistribution of wealth, and just about every economist and policy wonk who believes in 'capitalism' is referring to this kind of government. It's an entire other world from capital-S socialism. So I'm not sure what you're getting at.
> Capitalism is the only system that has a proven track record of bringing people out of poverty.
Citation please.
It's become apparent to me that it does that until the workforce hits equilibrium at which point it divides people slowly into two classes, the lower of which is purely exploited by the upper.
The level of both classes is nevertheless much higher than the level of the earlier economy, before capitalism and its effects.
Unrestrained capitalism may of course creates huge levels of inequality. Luckily, unrestrained capitalism was largely put to rest (in the western world) after the 1900s, via unions and other similar movements.
Capitalism floats all boats, but not all equally. To ignore the fact that it floats all boats and point only add to the inequalities it creates is to miss the point.
so if "Unrestrained capitalism" exists , what is basic capitalism? hypocrisy ? Yes it is. In order to work , capitalism need slaves. wether they are 10 miles from your home or on the other side of the earth,it doesnt matter.
Capitalism got "restrained" in the West because people fought for basic rights, and many died during the process.
> I hope you won't bother pulling a No True Scotsman here, because the list goes on.
Then use another example from your list. North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship. It's not exactly clear whether its woes are the result of its economic system or its form of governance.
Communism in the formal sense, which is Marxist socialism or one of its offshoots, requires state control by definition. It can't be a "true scotsman" unless it's a dictatorship. Communist theory does not allow for democratic socialism, because it proposes real "democracy" is the "dictatorship of the proletariat", Marx's words.
Which communist theory? There are now as many communist theories as there are variations on the People's Front of Judea from Life of Brian and many of them explicitly reject state control and are closer to US libertarianism than either side would really care to admit.
edit - adding 'in the formal sense' to your post doesn't really change things. Formally, communism is supposed to be a developing theory, which is part of the reason for Marx famously saying that he wasn't a Marxist. Formally, communist theory, as envisioned by Marx, was never meant to be frozen as dogma, but rather relentlessly self-critical. Whether he was right or not is a seperate issue, but you are seriously misrepresenting his ideas.
You misunderstand what 'dictatorship' means in that context. The word didn't have the same connotation it has today.
Specifically, capitalism is the 'dictatorship of the bourguise,' so it needs to be counteracted by a dictatorship of the proletariat. Within the governing body, democratic councils run things. To draw a parallel to today's concept of 'dictatorship,' think of it this way: one class has absolute, total rule of things. But a class is made up of many people...
The dictatorship of the proletariat is not communism. Not even for Marx. It is the state before communism, in which the proletariat makes changes in society so that communism may take place.
Nice try, but I explicitly stated I was talking about Marxist-style socialism, which is what 'communism' has come to mean. I almost never see people talk about "real" Marxist communism anyway.
You explicitly said "Communism in the formal sense". You were wrong with that.
Most ideologies and political or economic ideas have had their names subverted to mean something different by opponents (democracy, republicanism, communism, anarchism, capitalism...). That doesn't mean that if you speak in the "formal sense" you can decide to use whatever meaning you prefer.
If the list goes on, you could have then easily picked better examples, couldn't you? When North Korean society still had any meaningful relationship to socialism (not communism) it actually had a higher GDP than South Korea. It only turned around in the 70s and 80s when NK leadership structures went completely insane.
So, what other systems? State socialism? It can only be viewed as an alternative system to liberal capitalism, not to capitalism in general sense because it still leaves the same economic relations basically intact. It's an incompetent, extremely monopolistic form of capitalism, which is why it failed so miserably.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my last paragraph, so I apologize to you, but I was thinking of something that didn't fundamentally had anything to do with capitalism. This example still clings to erroneous notion that state socialism is something fundamentally different. It's not really. Of course liberal capitalism outperforms state run centrally planned parody of capitalism.
"Capitalism is the only system that has a proven track record of bringing people out of poverty."
Not sure about that. Stalin may have achieved economic growth of 500% over 13 years - more than China.
The problem with socialism/communism is that you don't have a market. Besides lacking of incentives, feedback loops etc., you basically don't have a way to price goods. Not market, no prices. All these systems will fail in the long run.
This being said, a capitalistic system relies on expansion of credit (actually one point, in which good old Mises was wrong). Credit is always a ponzi scheme. If credit expansion stops, the whole system will collapse. What we currently see is the prevention of system collapse by the western government. People are maxed out and the gov, as a lender of last resort, goes into debt. This will not end good. I doubt that significant growth can be achieved anymore in western countries. So communism has failed but capitalism does not look very good either, at least in the west.
I doubt that significant growth can be achieved anymore in western countries
Then you should start an investment portfolio that broadly shorts Western bellwether stocks. You'll make a killing if you're right. Make sure you diversify your profit into non-Western countries so that you can keep those gains.
> a capitalistic system relies on expansion of credit
How did you get to this generalization? Just because the most prevalent current brand of capitalism works this way, it doesn't mean it's the only way it can work, or that when "expansion of credit" will stop capitalism will collapse.
"The only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism."
-- Joan Violet Robinson
More substantially, I disagree that our technological capability is currently sufficient. Maybe once we have universal molecular assemblers. Of course on the grand scale there will be competition over black hole orbiting real estate, because the energy for work has to come from somewhere.
Same "capitalist" problem with using technology too; for example, a textile weaving machine requires an upfront cost and then it has maintenance, depreciation, repairs, higher electricity bills and so forth - some one somewhere somehow worked out it's still cheaper to just employ more people and still generate a better return short and long term vs implementing modern tech.
And this is typically the end game for capitalism and globalisation. Can't see it changing without everyone working together and by nature that isn't going to happen if capitalism is in place.
The fairly standard solution that the West developed to these specific problems of capitalism is unions. Based on this article, what seems to be needed is unionisation. Of course, history shows that this is not an easy path. But history also shows that this path works, eventually.
The problem in India does not have its root cause in Capitalism.
It seems to me that what is required here is a deep change of Indian society. Women seem to compete for men with money, which is absurd. Moreover, there is this "caste" thing which, frankly, sounds like feudalism from 1000 years ago.
In most of the western world, adolescent males compete for women with their charm, looks, etc... and also the other way around. Flirting is cool. No caste system.
How do you change an ancient country's attitude towards women? I don't think you can.
Traditions can be much more powerful than laws.
Capitalism, in India, is simply one more tool used by the higher castes in order to give strength to some deeply rooted traditions which are totally disconnected from the 21st century Planet Earth.
Just thought I would point out that gender-related socioeconomic phenomena usually have a more complex explanation than "it's absurd". This is also true in the West, with all of our weird dating customs. But it's harder to see the absurdities you are taught from birth. For example, why is it traditionally (and most commonly even today) the guy's responsibility to take the initiative in the courtship process? This article provides a stark alternative which is a very efficient counter-example to the evo-psych explanations a lot of people come up with.
I'm not advocating cultural relativism; the reality described in this article sounds really shitty, but it is usually instructive to go deeper and ask why things are this way among poor people in India. With sexual attraction being one of the most powerful drives and varying socioeconomic conditions in the world, it stands to reason that different places will have wildly differing customs. These change over generations, as the conditions that formed them change. For instance, an undersupply of men in the wake of a deadly war could be one force which vastly increases the sexual market value of men, and causes customs like the ones described in this article.
Look at China if you want to see a third way this can play out, where the roles are reversed.
It works by outsourcing manufacturing to places without unions and phasing out unionized factories on any available excuse. Did you notice how around 2008 lots of american workers got sacked and production plummeted? Funny thing is that production is back to pre-crisis levels already but noone invites the workers back. Companies are more efficient than ever. They probably bless recession for providing them the opportunity to shed off unnecessary unionized workers.
Sorry, no idea. I've seen some article with nice graphs illustrating the thesis. Employment, volume, profit plotted over recent years. I'm afraid I can't find it now.
To misquote Churchill "Capitalism is the worst possible system, except for all the rest".
The problem here is more a lack of strong mechanisms to set and enforce standards along with a host of deeply rooted cultural norms (especially the dowry system) that are easily exploited.
That (mis)quote of Churchill doesn't really mean anything, it's a shallow apology of capitalism, just a catchy formula that superficially seems to make sense if you don't care to think about the possibilities. If you suspend thinking it works on an emotional level because it suggests that yes, the people in power are aware of capitalism's shortcomings, they feel the pain but, alas, there's nothing they could do, so stop complaining you ungrateful somebody...
Churchill and the likes are not exactly neutral observers with no interest in preserving the status quo by any means possible, starting with intellectual dishonesty.
Because the fat imperialist says capitalism is the best we have to keep it for all time until our star goes supernova? Our rooted first world lifestyle is the strong mechanism enabling these sweat shops.
A better argument is that free trade based on voluntary transactions is the only just and moral system of allocating resources, in theory and in practice.
Without further qualifications, I too agree completely. However, to me it's both sad and funny how twisted the meaning of "free" and "voluntary" become when used to defend (liberal) capitalism. This is a general remark, it's not meant as an attack of how you use these words (I wouldn't really know).
That's simply balderdash. Churchill was not only a brilliant politician, but an extremely witty and accomplished writer, thinker, and artist. He even received the Nobel prize ... for literature[1].
If you'd like to explain why you think he is "batshit" I'd love to hear it.
That misquote reminds me so much of Stroustrup's C++ (mis?)quote, and the cynical man inside me tells me that it's just that everything getting widespread use shows its dark side. Sometimes that dark side is more conspicuous and/or shows eariler, and sometimes it has more serious consequences, though. Btw, I am much more fond of C++ than capitalism, which, I guess, puts me inside a tiny minority here on HN :).
About your second line, I think that the biggest problem about capitalism and developing/underdeveloped countries is that capitalism doesn't break the existing power structures, and, worse, it may reinforce them. There, capitalism is (even) less of a sea of oportunities and more of a new source of oppression mechanisms. The vicious circle associated with poverty isn't any good for people from the lower strata.
And an acceptance of petty corruption and violence a coworker who's of Indian descent commented that his family had had had "several" properties expropriated by "gangsters"
What would it even mean to not be 100% self interested? Are people in India never charitable or selfless? No, of course that is not true. When someone acts charitably it is still self interested insofar as the charitable act is taken up in order to meet the end sought after. What you said sounds nice, but I don't see how you really do it.
Yes, it is true that India has a culture of corruption and bribery. I wonder if part of these girls' wages are taken for the housing or "company store" type things. There were some stories recently about workers in Dubai who are just lied to about the level of pay and then held hostage with visa or passport paperwork. If it is that type of case here, then it is fraud and the exploitation is due to the faulty legal system, lack of enforcement, culture of misogyny, etc.
I don't agree at all with the idea that wage labor by itself is exploitative. Basically the error with Marxist exploitation theory is that it ignores the concept of time preference. Wage laborers with a higher time preference prefer present goods in the form of wages to the process of saving and deferring some of the present enjoyment and then taking up their own entrepreneurial venture. Of course, the state by erecting barriers to entry and other distortions exacerbate the problem.
Almost 90% of the sports jerseys are produced from Southern part of India where the situations and characters mentioned in the article are still alive.
Multinational garment companies like Adidas, Nike, Puma etc. should have stricter vigilance towards exploitation of employees. Young girls are prone towards exploitation and they are willing to undergo this as they are desperate for money.
If you think Addidas, Nike, Puma etc. don't already know exactly what is happening in this factories, and even further - outsorce their production to EXACTLY those unethical factories, you my friend, are just deceiving yourself.
> just a quarter of the $105 a month she was promised, about $0.84 a day.
It really bugs me when reporters use inconsistent units to exaggerate a point. Yes, the pay difference is horrible, but it sounds almost as bad when you say $25.20 per month, and that is a less misleading way to describe it.
I read that differently to you - the words "a quarter of $105" instantly tells me $25.20 because it's such an easy calculation, whereas telling me an extra stat like what that is per day is something I hadn't already worked out myself.
Reducing costs is not necessarily linked to reducing quality of life for workers. In the early 20th century, Taylor deliberately attempted to increase both pay/quality of life and productivity, by encouraging systems where workers and managers worked together to make work more efficient, which was supposed to result in increased wages for workers as well. Of course, it was twisted out of recognition by endless consultants over the following decades. That said, the work culture that we have now in modern, enlightened companies, is a descendant of this movement - a movement that started in just as bad a place as the factory described in the article.
The fault lies not in reducing costs per se. Rather, it lies in reducing costs in an inhuman, inhumane, stupid and mean fashion: by abusing weaker people rather than by creating smarter solutions. In the long term, the latter will win. However, that does not help those poor souls caught in the former trap.
Lower costs are a noble objective. Lower costs through any means, however, are an abomination.
Lower costs are a noble objective. Lower costs through any means, however, are an abomination.
Agreed.
People have the causation backwards. Lower prices stem from lower costs which come from use of less resources (natural or productive) which means that there is more produced stuff out there. Increasing costs is the best way to increase prices and induce smaller supplies of produced goods.
I always find it amusing if people claim (just an example) "I would never buy Apple/Nike/++, they employ child workers, it is awful" and then they go to the supermarket, buy the cheapest meat/vodka/sugar/coffee they can find, or they buy a cheap $99 tablet/smartphone/TV from india/china/malaysia, or they buy $3.99 t-shirts/pants/shoes from throwaway stores. As if somehow these products can be produced at such low prices without affecting quality and wages of the workers behind it.
There are ways for those companies to reduce costs (and pass on savings) which still support low prices. Primark [1] is a case where they have no advertising spend and rely on low prices and word of mouth. Makes me wonder about the marketing budgets of other retailers.
It's better to buy $4 t-shirts than $14 t-shirts. Workers get pretty much the same in both cases but their exploiters get rewarded whole $10 less. This might put some of them out of business which is a good thing.
Can't say I have an example but let's hope there's at least one company who cares about that. Some industries actually changed to accomodate for those that care. A good example: food companies. At least in Europe it's quite easy to buy from companies that care about the environment, animals, lack of chemicals, etc. Eventually this kind of thinking will expand to other industries.
There is nothing that says the same isn't true of expensive clothing (and for that matter, online services). They may still cut the costs in the most unethical manner possible. They'll just have a higher profit margin at the same time.
This is the most frustrating thing about society today. We seem to have absolutely no means to discern quality.
If a no name brand starts to make quality t-shirts, no one will know about it, and no shops will stock it, because the margins will be too low and the marketing will have too little budget.
If it takes $1 to make a shitty $15 shirt, and $15 to make a proper shirt, what will you charge for the proper quality shirt? How will you market it?
The end result is that they're marketed as super high quality only available for the sort of person that can afford to spend $100 on a basic shirt, just to compensate for the decreased margin and decreased demand.
The solution would have to be that these kinds of brands need to be ran by charities, with such low margins that no one gets rich of it. You need someone to splurge a couple million to buy a factory in India, and then increase wages and conditions until you make 0 profit.
Is it true that the only way to run capitalism humanely, is to have capitalists surrender their money?
At least.. on an international scale? I mean, the reason we don't run those factories in the Netherlands, is because in The Netherlands things like minimum wage and working conditions are enforced more consistently, making it too expensive.
If we would force India to also enforce those conditions, all we would do is make their factories unattractive, and business would move to another country.
Solving that, would perhaps require legislation to ban clothing (et al.) companies from using offshore factories that are not under close scrutiny of our own government. But perhaps that will just make our brands like H&M unattractive to more liberal countries like the U.S.
I highly doubt the cost of clothing makes much difference, because labour is such a small percentage of the total price. For instance this report - http://www.ecouterre.com/infographic-how-much-does-that-14-t... - says that labour makes up 12c out of a $14 t-shirt, only 1% of the total. You could double wages, and only add 12c onto the final price. The difference between cheap and expensive clothes is branding, profit margin, and sometimes quality, it's not clear at all that there's any difference in labour practices.
I wouldn't want to buy goods made by children, primarily because children lack an eye for quality. But I also imagine that refusing to buy such goods would do no good to said children.
> primarily because children lack an eye for quality
Dont worry,it's likely they get beaten if they dont "deliver"
> But I also imagine that refusing to buy such goods would do no good to said children.
You are assuming children are getting paid. they are not most of the time.
Sure I assume that they get paid. If not in currency, perhaps in food or the stuff they manufacture? I remember taking a train through Russia in the early 90s: almost on every stop, there were people selling stuffed toys or lead glass tableware – that's what they've manufactured, and it was their payment.
When I can either work or starve to death, I would definitely prefer the former under any conditions. Exploitation of child labor is a consequence of poorly functioning government, not an isolated issue by itself. So if we want to do something with it, we should deal with the source of these problems.
Hans Rosling did some great talks on related issues here: http://www.ted.com/speakers/hans_rosling.html
How would you find clothes that have not been manufactured by slaves ?
In Switzerland I can buy from Switcher (switcher.ch), which markets clothes "made with respect", and I just found out about the Fair Wear Foundation, which has a short list of member brands (www.fairwear.org).
As pointed out in this thread, just buying more expensive clothes may not make a difference.
She started it because she realised that in the UK marketplace it was very hard to buy underwear that didn't come from sweat-shops, even if you were prepared to spend a bit (or a lot) more. So these are made here in the UK, by disadvantaged women who get to learn a skill and take home some pay.
I can't help but read this and wonder whether "Aruna" actually exists, and, if she does, whether all the details about her are as described. That's the legacy that Mike Daisey has left us with.
With a distrust of stories about labor exploitation? That's the wrong message to take from someone lying to you. Be less credulous about people's stories in general maybe, but restricting it to stories about labor is as reasonable as being racist because a black person bullied you in high school.
Not really the same thing - It's not that I don't trust monologuests (sp?) as a class of people, and, indeed, the writer of this article, Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau.
It's more along the lines of living your entire life without locking your doors, and then, one day getting burgled, and thereafter making a point to lock your doors when you leave.
Or getting mugged at night, and not walking down that dark street anymore.
Perhaps it's a good thing that I don't just automatically take things at face value; I'll admit to having listened with rapt attention to Mike Daisey's performance on NPR - he's really quite talented - maybe there was a positive takeway, Mike Daisey was like a vaccine, I'm now more resistant to false reporting.
I get the parallel, but that problem has always existed in reporting long before Mike Daisey and him writing his thing doesn't say anything about the ethics of this particular writer.
Ugh, motherjones, that perpetual bastion of leftist bullshit!
Why is this tripe being upvoted here on HN? You might as well have posted something directly from Rush Limbaugh's blog (or website, or whatever he has). It's crap.
Trade is the foundation of capitalism, not exploitation. (The references for this, of course, are the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.) India (and also much of South America) specifically rejected this wisdom during much of my lifetime, and now those countries have to play catch-up. They still have time. They won't have stark poverty forever if they learn from the examples of other countries, just as Taiwan did.