cqst [she/her]

I wonder if this doesn’t verge on simply seeing capitalism in everything that can be seen as dysfunctional in the current and previous economic systems. Maybe just turning the term into a economic boogeyman and watering down its more specific definition.

No. Nationalism and racism are products of capitalism. Part of capitalism is the division of the global proletariat, and subjugating them to a respective national bourgeoisie. Part of capitalism is the superexploitation of ethnic minorities and division of communities along ethnic lines to maintain the power of the bourgeoisie. Capitalism is a mode of production, and all that happens under it is part of its effects.

I noticed that edit. We might disagree on what counts as private ownership. Its best we not argue over the definition, but I think it might be valuable to ask if you believe in a distinction between “private” and “personal” property?

In truth, no. I think people can be in possession of objects and for one reason or another it’s “theirs”, but I don’t really believe in property, at all. But worker coops in a market system imply the existence of private property even ignoring the personal/private distinction.

I don’t think a violent revolution would meaningfully be any more capable

Some anarchists support insurrection over revolution, if your more palatable to that (considering you’re a mutualist?). But in essence this insurrection has the character of revolution in that, it is a violent rejection of the mode of production established by the state.

Leninism’s case result in state capitalism that is if anything more unlikely to “dissolve” into communism than even Social Democracy.

I don’t disagree

Power would be more evenly spread which would act as counter balances to running right back into exploitation, imperialism, etc (edit: in the sense of these things being unethical/harmful, not as technical concepts). And achieving a Mutualist market economy would “boil the frog” so to speak and minimize reactionary push back (Something Social Democracy fails at) and weaken/prevent power concentration (something state capitalism fails at).

Your organizational model will fall victim to the contradictions of capitalism as long as you retain capitalism. You can’t avoid that.

I am also a hard incompatibilist. Though I am also sympathetic to Egoism and Absurdism.

I don’t think hard incompatibilitsm is mutually exclusive with Egoism. Maybe absurdism.

To be clear, If hard incompatibilism is true, moral agents simply do not exist.

Moral error theory contradicts itself on a fundamental level: If all moral statements are “false” this implies that truth holds moral value

How does it imply that? Truth simply is, somethings are true, or false. “This apple is red”. Is a truth apt statement. I’m also a normative nihilist, so the sentence “we ought to believe things are true” is false to me.

I don’t think it actually matters if ethics or morality have some kind of moral external proof or external truth to what humans desire in life or society.

Which is compatible with error theory. This brand of error theory is called fictionalism, effectively after accepting all moral truths are false you retain moral discourse because it is convenient. But, I think you are an ethical subjectivist/moral relativist.

The superior alternative to moral error theory is to accept that morality and ethics exists in our minds individually and collectively and is “blurry”.

Which is ethical subjectivism. As a moral error theorist, I don’t think it’s impossible for people to believe in moral facts. “Sam believes murder is wrong.” Can be true or false. “Murder is wrong.” is always false.

Bringing up our self interest is also indicative of a sense of morality or ethics and at least in implication contradicts your belief in moral error theory. If anything it sounds more like you are a Stirnerite Egoist (maybe)

Stirnerite egoists also don’t believe morals exist. Self-interest is simply convenient to me. I don’t think it’s good or bad.

Dividends aren’t paid based on hours. They’re based on revenue minus expenses. Dividends are definitionally not wages.

Dividends are not a meaningful change to the wage labor system, they are simply an obfuscation, a different method of paying wages that appears to be more fair. But surplus value is still extracted in the exact same way, and the True Hourly Wage can be calculated by the amount of dividends paid by the number of hours worked. And with this, you can calculate the amount of surplus value generated for the firm.

I know the term “exploitation” is not intrinsically a moral condemnation but a technical description. But the whole reason worker exploitation is something socialists/communists argue against is because it is harmful.

I do not argue against exploitation. I see it as a reality of Capitalism. Exploitation leads to The Law Of The Tendency Of The Rate of Profit To Fall. This leads to inherent contradictions in the capitalist system and in turn leads to economic crisis.

Nationalism and racism existed before capitalism.

Yes, but the nationalism and racism we see in the forms today are capitalist in nature. In pre-capitalist societies, nationalism and racism took different forms as best to serve the ruling elite, whatever that may be. Pre-capitalist societies also have primitive commodity production and capitalist-esque elements that are similar to the society we have today, which lead to similarities of those nationalism and racisms to what we see today.

Why is it inevitable?

You would need to read Lenin for the gritty details. But in simple terms, as the capitalist crisis is made inevitable by the accumulation of capital, firms seek to solve, but really only temporarily stall, this crisis by finding new markets where the process can begin again.

You describe a system of mandatory worker coops, private ownership of the means of production as reform?

Yes, because it is a modification to the capitalist system, and not a replacement of the capitalist system with a new form.

I’m not sure if you are a leftcom or an accelerationist but I imagine your suggestion is that only violent revolution can succeed?

Only revolution can replace the capitalist system with a new mode of production. If you don’t wish to change the mode of production, no violent revolution is necessary, but as long as capitalism exists, so will it’s contradictions.

I’ve left the meta-ethics for last since it’s not really important to the main discussion.

You believe in good and bad, right and wrong, ethics/morals, or at least some kind. Otherwise you would not bother advocating for or against any particular economic or societal model.

No, I’m a moral error theorist. I think all moral claims evaluate to false. My basis for this is rooted in hard determinism and hard incompatibilism. I explain the contradictions of capitalism and how socialism as a mode of production can solve these contradictions. I advocate for socialism as it’s in my self interest, and I think in other peoples self-interest as well.

It’s proprietary so, no thanks.

That’s assuming they operate on a wage model rather than pure dividends.

Dividends are wage labor. You can calculate the hourly pay rate by dividing the dividends you received by the number of hours worked.

I think the alienation you are describing as stemming from being in a “majoritarian” coop is something we’d run into on a fully

I do think alienation remains in a socialist mode of production, yes, but what I am referring to here is your point about “control of own work”, in a majoritarian coop, you are bound by the decisions of the majority to produce what they tell you.

I’m curious if you think syndicalism has the same problem? More or less the in-between. Instead of a market you have a single negotiating table between industries. No market competition but you still would have competing interests.

I don’t really think syndicalism is an economic mode, its an organizing tactic.

Do you think a “firm” of one person self exploits?

A firm of one person is an artisan, petty bourgeoisie. They do not self exploit as all the money they make from their own labor is returned to themselves.

Who is the immoral one in that case, the self exploiter correct?

I don’t believe in morals.

Exploitation is only meaningfully immoral

Exploitation is not a moral term. Exploitation refers to the fact that wage laborers produce more value then they receive in their wages. Marx termed this “exploitation”, it’s not a moral claim.

As for imperialism, I don’t think imperialism stems from only economic exploitation.

It does.

Nationalism, racism, and a rampant growth mindset are generally an aspect if not a requirement.

All of these are products of Capitalism. Capitalism causes, nationalism, racism, and a “rampant growth mindset” which in turn leads to war. It’s called materialism.

Is imperialism possible under a mutualist economic system? Absolutely. I don’t agree that it is inevitable.

It is inevitable as worker coops are bound to seek new markets for their products by the contradictions of capitalism.

The mechanism social democrats describe capitalism dissolving into socialism is through a welfare state, not worker coops.

I was referring to the reformist belief that a better capitalism will lead to socialism.

systemd is an init system and just has not played the same role in the development of GNU/Linux distributions like GNU has. before systemd there was sysvinit, and there are number of alternate init systems. It’s not about system functionality that we name operating systems.

Uh no, it’s not. GNU has been integral to the GNU/Linux project for years. Without GCC, coreutils, glibc, there would be no linux distributions. Systemd has not played the same role.

Debian GNU/Linux has been called Debian GNU/Linux since at least 1997 https://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/1997/msg00013.html

labor and capitalists because of exploitation for profit

Cool. Worker coops have this.

alienation

As worker coops have.

lack of control over laborer’s own work,

As worker coops have. Especially in a majoritarian “democratic” worker coop model.

That said, I find meta-narratives (by any economist or philosopher) fairly wrong headed

No prophetism here.

Worker coops involve:

A worker, going to work, and selling their labor power for a wage. Just with an extra bonus at the end of the year with the profits and maybe some involvement in voting for decisions of the firm. The production of products for exchange value rather than use-value, a commodity. That’s called capitalism. The firm MUST reinvest SOME of the surplus extracted from their workers, into the operation of the firm, or else it could not continue to operate, this is exploitation, and will lead to imperialism, crisis and alienation.

Could it be a more resilient capitalism? Sure. A better Capitalism isn’t socialism though.

I do think that eventually a mutualist market would probably become sort of meaningless eventually and turn into something else.

This is what social democrats think. That eventually the market system will “reform” itself to socialism. Capitalism can’t be reformed, it’s inherently flawed.

The difference is the state does not choose who their opposition is

Are you sure about that?

and you are actually allowed to replace the governing system as a whole in liberal states which was not permitted in the USSR.

What does “replacing the governing system as a whole”, look like, in practice, exactly? How is this different from the USSR?

Profit falling leading to imperialism seems like its because of profit/expansion driven leadership

Leadership is irrelevant. Firms MUST reinvest some surplus value back into the firm. This will lead to the increase of capital in the business, and lead to overaccumlation crises. Firms must find new markets for their goods, or face certain economic despair.

You run an explicitly anti-capitalist community and don’t believe in the TRPF?

Other than the end-state of communism, a stateless, moneyless society, I’m curious as to what you think counts as ‘not capitalist’?

I think socialism requires an explicitly anti-nationalist character and the elimination of the commodity form. This looks like production with quotas (use-value), probably labor vouchers (but its not a requirement) and some form of worker ownership, like workers councils.

Many of the contradictions and crises of Capitalism are still present even under worker coop models in a market economy. Surplus value is still extracted, that money must be reinvested in the business to remain competitive. Meaning the Tendency of The Rate of Profit to Fall Remains, meaning capitalist crises remain. Imperialist incentives remain, and a worker coop nation-state would be equally imperialist as one with private corporations.

“You can vote for the Party Approved candidate or not vote”

I don’t really think its functionally different in the USA (or other liberal states). Democrats and Republicans are quite literally “Party Approved Candidates”. The presence of independents is incidental, and the USSR had independents in its parliament as well. This is why I view both the USA and USSR as “democratic”, but I would view neither as socialist.

That is capitalism

That might be relevant if the USSR was actually democratic.

Are bourgeoisie liberal states democratic? Curious your thoughts.

Humans have the capacity to be that, but all you have to do is look at the entirety of human history to know that we’re not really like that. It’s a nice lie that we tell ourselves. Hierarchies of power are an integral part of human nature and always have been. Any society that centers around empathy and cooperation will eventually be corrupted by those who only seek personal gain, and the masses will follow them.

Extrapolating out “human nature” from past human behavior is a form of surface level inductive reasoning that does not hold up to scrutiny. Inductive reasoning is flawed, “humans are naturally hierarchical” isn’t an argument. It’s possible to use material analysis to determine the source of hierarchy and as humans we have the ability to change our material conditions. Also ignoring anarchist projects that succeeded in horizontalism, maybe not in militarism though.

Capital might allow UBI below subsistence, and this very well could happen to stave off crisis. It just can’t be high enough that people aren’t incentivized to sell their labor power (be a wage-slave). This is arguably what minimum wage and tax credits already are.

There are definitely “right-wing” anarchist currents that are popular and not as unhinged as how “anarcho-capitalism” is generally characterized, as in, anarchism that espouses the use of capitalism, but I have not really seen any genuinely “socially conservative”, anarchists. Pacifism is reactionary and emboldens the status quo.

You can’t have Capitalist elements like, commodity production, wage-labor, money, markets, and call that “socialism”. All of the inherent contradictions and harms of capitalism remain (because its capitalism), like theft of surplus value, imperialism, and alienation.

The term leftist is considered to come from the fact that people sitting on the “Left” in the Estates General in France. Generally, liberals, (Jacobins, Third Estate). There is very poor sourcing for this online, but Wikipedia cites some untranslated difficult to source french book.

In mainstream discourse, “left” takes on a number of meanings, but to the extent that left is meant to mean anti-capitalist, and/or, Marxist, anarchism has left wing currents, hence, left wing anarchism.