"Economists on the whole"

"Most economists acknowledge"

"Environmentalists need to remember"

To this?!

"In the case of the national parks, I think the consensus is that the government does a pretty good job of management (better than a private company, maybe, maybe not). The national forests are a different story, as these are plagued by subsidies and corruption."

Sell the National Forests to whom?  Halliburton,Bechtel?  Saudi "princes"?  Chinese government corporations (like certain US sea ports?).

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

   "Most" means "People who agree with me".

   "Reasonable People" means "People who agree with me".

   "Not on purely ideological grounds" means "only on my ideological grounds" which means "no one should dare to disagree with me".

   "Knee jerk fashion" means "how dare any one think differently from me".

   "Ownership, property rights and free market" mean "My definition of these holy words which is not subject to discussion."

patrick

  First of all, he says that "much of the world's large forests" are subject to open access.  This is not true.  ALL of the world's large forests are property claimed by some entity or another (often governments).  

  He then goes on to claim that once some entity "owns" these resources, they can "restrict use of that resource".  

  Umm, yeah, they can also overuse that resource to make their quarterly numbers so Wall Street is happy.

  Ownership is not the same as "stewardship".  Jason gets the two ideas confused.

  Fishing quotas have been semi-successful, but not always.  Look at the US and Canada which have been unable to establish "effective" quotas on Salmon runs in the NorthWest.

  His second point is even more misleading.  "private entities, driven by competition and the profit motive, are almost always more efficient than state-run enterprises".  Yes, but this is what has lead to such lovely practices as strip mining, and fishing with the monstrous nets that collect everything in the ocean for miles (throwing away most of what they "kill", errr "catch").

  Such actions by private entities driven by the profit motive are certainly more "efficient", but to suggest that they benefit the environment is illogical.

  To argue that private interests are good because they only care about money, whereas the government can be corrupted by, ummm "private interests" is also illogical.  

  Jason would turn our resources over to those very companies who are corrupting the government, and let them "efficiently" use those resources.

  While it is true that most species (in the US) exist on private land, it is worth noting that many private land owners complain mightily of the government restrictions that require them to consider the species before they "efficiently" use their resources.

  If left to their own devices, many private land owners would not bother waiting for global warming to eradicate species.

  The idea that the strong central government should exist to enforce propety rights is humorous.  I thought the central government was supposed to care about society as a whole.  I guess those of us who don't own property don't count.  Perhaps non-property owners could be exempted from taxes and military service, please??

  We are in trouble, and these ideas don't move us further down the road towards a sustainable future.

patrick

1. First off, if you think my views are right-wing you know nothing about economics

2. If you think the U.S. government's handling of the national forests is a model for conservation you know nothing about conservation

3. I never said anything about privatizing the forests, but since you misrepresent everything I say might as well add that one

4. Wrong about forests, although ON PAPER most forestland is owned, in practice much of the world's forests in developing countries IS OPEN ACESS- especially the large rain forests in Brazil- if you don't believe me just ask a Brazilian who works in the area- and if you think the way the rain forests are managed in Brazil is optimum than you know nothing about Brazil or rain forests

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

    Dear Jason,

          On the political economic spectrum, your views are to the right. The economists you site as important and models rarely include people like Marx!  (LOL).  If I am wrong, please tell me where on a political economics spectrum, you would place your views?  I will admit, mine tend towards the left, though I try not to be dogmatic.  (You are free of course to disagree with that statement!).

          Who said the US government handling of forests is a model for conservation?  This is a typical straw dog, putting up an argument that neither AmazindDrX or I have made (the only respondents as of this point) and shooting it down.

          If you don't favor privatizing the forests, what do you favor?  You suggest that private ownership is the way to go.  do, it seems logical (lacking any other information from you) to believe that it is what you desire.  Please feel free to explain exactly what kind of program for forests you favor.  

          About number four, sorry, Jason, paper ownership counts.  You are confusing ownership and stewardship.  If something is "owned on paper", it is legally owned.

          Your problem is that the ownership of forests in places like Brazil (by the government, which you always cite as a type of ownership any time someone thinks you mean only private ownership) is poorly managed and useless.

          Is the problem bad governments?  Many of those governments are corruputed by big market players (large corporations).  Do you want to start an anti-corporate campaign?  I direct you to

www.corporatewatch.org

a nice site with folks who monitor corporations.

         Again, I have not suggested that rain forests in Brazil (legally property, not part of legal open access) are properly managed.  Another straw dog.

         You could have sited the farmers in Indonesia, who's legal use of their private property includes slash and burn activities that create huge clouds over the South Pacific.  But they are private property owners, the kind you suggest would preserve the land.

         Jason, as to the comment that we are left with "With lots of hyperbole, poor reasoning, defensiveness, and ridiculous claims.", all this amounts to is insults.  Which usually means that you can't refute the arguments others make.

         The real problem is that there is no evidence that private property owners or corporations will act as good stewards of their lands, preserving and protecting the environment.  Most of the evidence suggests otherwise.

         And that is the large elephant in the room you refuse to acknowledge.

patrick

if you think my views are right-wing you know nothing about economics

Comments like, "Reasonable people can disagree over the extent to which private entities should hold the rights to the world's environmental resources, but the discussion should always be based on a serious analysis of the different outcomes, incentives, and opportunity costs, not on purely ideological grounds", seriously irk me. For one thing, there's the implication that if I don't agree with whatever the statement is, then I'm not reasonable. In this case there's the assumption that private entities should hold the rights to resources, we just have to decide to what extent. I disagree. As has already been posted, private ownership all too often is translated to mean, "It's my land, I can do whatever the hell I want with it - I can conserve it or I can trash it." I consider myself a reasonable person but to me it is unreasonable to allow any entity - government, individual, or business - to clearcut, strip mine, pollute, pave over, or otherwise degrade land, especially given the current state of the environment. I don't see this as ideological, just practical.

The second reason I object to such statements is the implication that values that cannot be quantified have no place in such discussions. If I object to, for example, a company coming in to build another mall in my area (which happens all the time), and my main objection is that it destroys habitat for nonhuman species, that the peace and tranquility I enjoyed while hiking or whatever on that land is destroyed, that people need forested areas and open space for their emotional and spiritual well-being (something that has been proven but that cannot be quantified) then my objections are duly noted, perhaps a few eyes roll, perhaps people even agree with me, but because peace, beauty, and other species (unless they're officially endangered) don't fit into a "serious analysis" they are not taken into consideration when decisions are made. And when the final report is in, the project usually moves forward because the "incentives, outcomes, and opportunity costs" - things like jobs, economic growth, bringing more people into the area to spend money - always have priority.

Another real-life example: In the town where I live in Maine, and the surrounding area, we've been dealing with water rights. In Maine if you own the land, you own everything under the land. So private landowners are cutting deals with Nestle to sell millions of gallons of water pumped from the aquifer upon which we live. It's practically impossible at this point to stop it and believe me we have tried. Hydrological studies have been done and basically they're inconclusive. The fact is, despite how much water moves through the aquifer today, there is no guarantee that is how it will be in twenty or fifty or a hundred years. But there's no acknowledgement of that. What with climate change, population increases, and who knows what, the future will most likely not follow the path of the past. It would seem reasonable to me to err on the side of conservation and to strictly limit the amount of water that Nestle can pump out of the aquifer. Some towns are thinking along these lines but it's too late for my town because Nestle is already pumping millions of gallons a year - which a study showed is not sustainable, but because they are already doing it, we can't stop them now. We can only limit other companies who haven't started pumping. Even so the concern of citizens fighting the water contracts is generally dismissed as emotional and ideological, not based in facts. Some day there may not be enough water for the families and farmers who live here. To me that's not reasonable. And it's immoral.

In the introduction to For the Common Good, Daly and Cobb make a very strong, powerful statement about the current state of economics: "We human bengs are being led to a dead end - all too literally. We are living by an ideology of death and accordingly we are destroying our own humanity and killing the planet. Even the one great success of the program that has governed us, the attainment of material affluence, is now giving way to poverty. The United States is just now gaining a foretaste of the suffering that global economic policies, so enthusiastically embraced, have inflicted on hundreds of millions of others. If we continue on our present paths, future generations, if there are to be any, are condemned to misery. The fact that many people of good will do not see this dead end is undeniably true, very regrettable, and it is our main reason for writing this book."

Once they had taken enough slaves, the Conquistadors slayed any hapless native who couldn't understand the Latin and, therefore, rejected the chance to accept Christ.  Economics operates in much the same fashion--it's an expansionist, imperialist system, constantly justifying imposition of the most henious conditions on the unlucky heathens in the name of the worshipped diety.

Daly somehow deprogrammed himself and escaped the cult; everyone concerned with how the religion of economics is leading to the destruction of the natural world should read his "Beyond Growth"
(ISBN: 0807047090).

The 5% Project

Environmentalists need to remember that NGOs are private entities, and most of the work of international conservation organizations rests on their ability to obtain the rights for natural habitats in order to protect them

While the rest of us blog and argue, these NGOs quietly gain control over habitat for endangered species. They are the only ones really accomplishing anything, and all that they accomplish depends on property rights.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

   It is true that NGO's have played a valuable role in perserving some small portions of endangered places.  They are especially successful in places that face immediate danger.

   But their success is not due as much to acquiring property rights, as it is to working with local populations to develop alternatives to over-exploitation of resources.

   The portions of land they actually buy are small compared to what can be saved by creating alternatives such as eco-tourism or sustainable uses of the resources.

   Depending on a few fairly well off NGO's is not going to save the biodiversity we need.

patrick (it ain't the ownership, it's the sustainable development model)

Whether or not this is true historically, I get the impression that ideally at least, in New England the townsfolk could get together and decide if any one of them is abusing the commons.  And if so, the abuser could be stopped.

So, the "tragedy of the commons" does not necessarily conclude in an inevitable surrender to private property.

The aquifer situation in Lowry's town in Maine is unfortunate.  To me, it sounds like the business ethics of the Western US are being imperialistically imposed upon the North East.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

  What Hardin's piece really conveys is how economic maximizers--people in thrall to the religion of "growth" and "economic rationality"--will destroy even their own sustenance and the well-being of their communities in service to their twin gods and the dictates of their peculiar cult.

  As Meadows noted, you don't need a computer to show that there are limits to growth in a finite world.  Any five year old can see that.  It's being able NOT to see the limits of growth that requires intensive training or a PhD in economics.

  A wit once noted that advertising is the art of appealing to human intelligence in order to overcome it.  Similarly, economics--like Scientology (which it greatly resembles in practice)--is a belief system designed to persuade the lower-order cult members that the way to happiness is by maximizing the power and wealth of the high-order believers, which is accomplished by persuading the lower-order members of the cult to ignore their natural instincts and to prefer economic rationality to human connections and the natural world.  

After all, if a tree falls in a forest and there is no one to "salvage log" it, does it boost the GDP?(Boosting the GDP being the economists' parallel to "help get you into heaven"---anything can be justified if it helps with the Great Commission.)


The 5% Project

   Beyond their prejudice, there is a simple flaw in their ideas.  It is that people will not realize that they are heading towards "The Tragedy of the Commons" until it is too late, and even then will continue in their madness.

   (Ironically, based on current evidence, it is not the people they considered inferior who are acting this way, it is primarily white middle class Americans!).

   Generally speaking, throughout history, one or more of the four horsemen of the apocalypse have resolved this problem.

   But now, we are in a situation, where we are better educated, and can see the problem and see solutions.

   The true shortage is not resources, but the political will to solve our environmental problems.

patrick
 

1. the importance of property rights for managing resources.
   
2. The superiority of privately held for-profit entities at protecting the environment once they have rights over property.

private entities, driven by competition and the profit motive, are almost always more efficient than state-run enterprises.

However in defense of private property he holds up the example of NGOs

Environmentalists need to remember that NGOs are private entities, and most of the work of international conservation organizations rests on their ability to obtain the rights for natural habitats in order to protect them.

He's right and this very point contradicts his second argument very powerfully. Aren't NGOs basically non-profit, missio (rather than competition) driven organizations who serve a social purpose? It's not whether they are state-run or not that makes NGOs effective - it's their mission and organizational "motive". And most NGOs missions are not focused on profits. To me this suggests that a private for-profit competition motive alone lacks something intrinsic to resource protection.

It would be interesting to ask the NGOs what they think of privatization, and his second argument.

Anyone on this blog who is working for an NGO in forest conservation, or fisheries protection want to comment on Jason's second argument?

Just so ya know

Scenic pics at http://Lhfotoware.blogspot.com

. . like all religions, demands first that you apply the dogma to all problems and reject any notion that there are issues that transcend the religion itself and should not be submitted to the authority of its priests."

Thanks for exposing this crazy cult Jason.  

JMGs explanation would not be as easily understood without your cultish arguments.  

I thought that the constant reference to economists belive or agree or claim this or that was merely a continual reliance on informal fallacy, a common debate technique of the disinformed to spread disinformation to others.

But it is more than that, it truly seems to be a cult of disinformation.  Could it be labeled corporatarianism?  Rather than economics.

A belief system that places the rights and interests of corporate "citizens" above all else.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

If free markets were to all become non-profit NGOs, the whole system would collapse like the Soviet Union did. NGOs have their place.

Communism does not and will not work, it has been tried and tried and tried again. It looks good on paper, but does not work in reality, it can't work because people are not made that way. We will not willingly give the fruits of our labor to people who don't carry our genes into the future--an evolutionary mandate. Marx missed the mark, but it was a beautiful idea.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

It collapsed because communism does not mesh well with human nature.

In organizing a government dedicated to "reforming" the Soviet Union, Gorbachev created a government divided between local and centralized, Thatcherist and Stalinist, forces.  Eventually, as the Stalinists disgraced themselves by association with the old, repressive, regime, the Thatcherists took control, through the agency of Boris Yeltsin.

The Soviet Union was brought down by internal political and economic events.  If we are to accept the notion that the Soviet Union was "communist," a rather debatable assertion to say the least, then we need to understand why its "communism" was "human nature" for seventy-odd years.

Communism does not and will not work

The Soviet Union was brought down by internal political and economic events...

Short of being defeated by another country in a war, internal political and economic events are the mechanisms that bring down any unpopular political entity. The Soviet Union collapsed because its citizenry wanted it to. I have a good friend from the Soviet Union. She told me that everyone was hoping the free world would somehow find a way to dismantle their government. They were sick to death of living that way and there was nothing they could do about it. They were not even allowed to leave. In fact, it might do you some good to sit down and have some coffee with a walking talking refugee from the USSR.

You think that communism would work if a way could be found to keep bad people from wrecking the ideal every time an attempt is made to implement it. The weak link in your hopes is that people like Stalin, or Fidel, will always end up in control, because without that kind of control, communism evolves into other things that better fit human nature, not necessarily good things. The free market system is the best thing we have stumbled upon to date. It keeps people busy competing as they must, but in non-violent ways. If the young me in Lebanon, or our own inner city streets, were all busy earning money to pay for their cars and homes, they would not be fighting. We need to tweak what people compete with and for toward ecologically benign symbols.

... we need to understand why its "communism" was "human nature" for seventy-odd years.

Oh, it was human nature alright--our propensity to form into groups to defend ourselves from or to attack other groups. Those were 70 of the most violent years in all of human history. Go look at any Russian history timeline. It is appalling. You really should read Constant Battles. The Soviet Union remained on a war footing following WW II. The masses were controlled by fear (the cold war) just as Bush has remained in office using fear (terrorists).

The ideal of communism was used by the Soviet Union to transform a war-torn, famine-racked peasant nation into a nuclear-weapon-possessing, world's first spacefaring superpower in the space of four decades, despite the terrors of Stalinist dictatorship...

Hmm, nuclear bombs and a basketball sized satellite launched into space aboard a rocket designed to carry nuclear bombs. Those dubious accomplishments were not "despite" Stalin, they were because of him. War economies accomplish amazing results in a short period of time. They are analogous to a fistfight-- short, intensive, but unsustainable. The successes of the Soviet Union before its peaceful collapse a mere 44 years following WW II were accomplished by convincing the masses that they were still on a war footing. The illusion and therefore the momentum simply could not be maintained any longer.

and despite having absorbed 2/3 of the brunt of Hitler's armies during World War II.

True enough. The occupying red army also raped 90 percent of the women in Berlin in the first year of its occupation. Few German prisoners of war ever returned alive from Russia.

If that's the sort of "not working" that "Communism" is capable of, then I think we need some of that "not working" to transform world capitalism into a globally ecologically sustainable society in the space of four decades.

The technological advances and economic growth of Nazi Germany in the few years of its existence have never been matched by any free market economy before or since. A country the size of one of our states almost took over Europe in just a few short years. That's the sort of "not working" that "fascism" is capable of. Does that make fascism a good thing?

If communism, whatever that is exactly, is such a great idea, why are there no examples of it in the world fighting to keep immigrants from crossing "into" their borders? Take a little time to answer that question.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

You think that communism would work if a way could be found to keep bad people from wrecking the ideal every time an attempt is made to implement it. The weak link in your hopes is that people like Stalin, or Fidel, will always end up in control, because without that kind of control, communism evolves into other things that better fit human nature, not necessarily good things.

"always"?  You think you know the rest of history through to the end of the human race.  Yeah, bullcrap.  Like you or anyone else knows the course of the future.  By the way, what so terrifies you about economic democracy, with the public (and not Stalin) in control?

Lenin's Soviet Union became Stalin's Soviet Union because of a historical dynamic that was existent at that time, because it was the product of social life in a particular stage of capitalist development.  That stage has passed.

I have a good friend from the Soviet Union. She told me that everyone was hoping the free world would somehow find a way to dismantle their government. They were sick to death of living that way and there was nothing they could do about it. They were not even allowed to leave. In fact, it might do you some good to sit down and have some coffee with a walking talking refugee from the USSR.

How about that human trafficking, eh?  Is that the people's choice, too?

Oh, it was human nature alright--our propensity to form into groups to defend ourselves from or to attack other groups.

Those were 70 of the most violent years in all of human history.

The technological advances and economic growth of Nazi Germany in the few years of its existence have never been matched by any free market economy before or since. A country the size of one of our states almost took over Europe in just a few short years.

That's the sort of "not working" that "fascism" is capable of. Does that make fascism a good thing?

If communism, whatever that is exactly,

By the standard that says that only public (and not state) control of the means of production counts as communism, the Soviet Union was NOT "communism," but rather a form of state capitalism.

why are there no examples of it

The free market system is the best thing we have stumbled upon to date.

If the young me in Lebanon, or our own inner city streets, were all busy earning money to pay for their cars and homes, they would not be fighting.

The successes of the Soviet Union before its peaceful collapse a mere 44 years following WW II

We need to tweak what people compete with and for toward ecologically benign symbols.

If the Soviet Union did not fit your definition of communist, then, why are you defending it as though it were communist?

Go here for a good discussion of the topic of free markets. I found my own thoughts reflected in this article for example:

Some theories assume that a free market is a natural form of social organization, and that a free market will arise in any society where it is not obstructed. Other economic historians see elements of the free market in the economic systems of Classical Antiquity, and in some non-western societies.

The commune craze of the 60's died along with the fad of carrying Chairman Mao's little red book (John Lennon). I had a sister who lived in three different communes. Charismatic alpha males eventually dominated all of them before they disintegrated. No wait, those were not really communes, right? If communes work so well, where are they?

The wiki article on communism is also informative. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_state

I see your viewpoints reflected in places. The bottom line is that there has never been a working model of the communist ideal. There is however, a long list of countries that tried it and failed. It remains a theory, a warm fuzzy feeling in the back of some minds. Note that there is no mention of its incompatibility with human nature or of evolutionary psychology. Those are my independent thoughts, and I just might insert them in this article someday, although, with 6.5 billion other people, I am sure I am not the first to have or articulate these thoughts.

Go here for a discussion of charities.

In many countries, the charity sector is fast growing. Charities often take over services that used to be provided by the state, such as health, old age and unemployment, as the state ceases to fulfill these traditional social responsibilities.

Instead of using taxes, they use donations. But, like government, they depend on a market to finance them. Before our government developed social safety nets, charities were all we had, orphanages, poor houses, and the like. They depend on some market generating enough wealth that some of it can be given to them to pass on after skimming operating costs. Sounds a lot like the social services branch of government to me.

I am all for critical thought of the many imprefections of the economic system we live with today, but criticism without presentation of viable alternatives is fairly pointless. Some people like to argue and debate (compete) for the sake of it, like playing basketball. It has no postitive material outcome other than the endorphin dumps imparted by evolution for competing, and hopefully winning. I think your discussions fall into this category. Our discussions remind me of the monty python department of arguments.

You also seem to have little knowledge of evolution or of the latest in the nature/nurture studies. Retreat to a library and catch up... Dawkins, Dennet, Pinker, Wilson. This debate about communism is a century old now, and has been pretty much beat to death by others. The only thing new really is the idea of its incompaibility with evolutionary psychology, which is, I think, my idea, and you think evolutionary psychology is a right wing nut job idea. We are at an impasse, like Darwin was with religious leaders of his time.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Biodiv seems to be defining "competition" in more than one way.  And I doubt his definitions are compatible.  It can mean, "any effort made by a moral agent, with a view toward acquiring some good thing, which, absent that effort, might be acquired by someone else."  In that case, the moral agent is unaware of "someone else," of the effort of "someone else" to acquire the good thing, or even of the existence of any "someone else" who might make such an effort.

But it can also mean, "any encounter between two moral agents, who view themselves as adversaries, and who each expend effort with the intention of worsting the adversary or forcing his/her withdrawal."

My own definition of "competition" is closer to the second.  And I agree that debates between agents who disagree can be a form of competition.  But such competition is a very specialized kind of human conduct, and I utterly doubt it is in any way a display of "natural" gender-roles.  And by the same token, as I suggested earlier, I do not find much value at all in this doctrine of evolutionary psychology, that sexual selection, especially the active competition of males for the sexual favors of females, is foundational in explaining human motivation.

As for the former definition, that does not really fit what is mostly meant by "competition," save perhaps in the loosest and most metaphorical of ways.  So the connexion of such metaphorical "competition" with Biodiv's evolutionary-psychological doctrine looks tendentious in the extreme.

And I am sure Biodiv's female readers will be delighted to learn that, at bottom, wives and girlfriends are really the same sort of thing as apartments and jobs.

LSam makes the interesting observation that the economic categorization of the government or polity of the late Soviet Union is not "communism," but rather "state capitalism."  I had never read that before.  LSam provides a link to "state capitalism," but unfortunately that link took me no where.  Do you think you could try again, LSam?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

You are competing with me now.

If the Soviet Union did not fit your definition of communist, then, why are you defending it as though it were communist?

The bottom line is that there has never been a working model of the communist ideal. There is however, a long list of countries that tried it and failed.

I had a sister who lived in three different communes.

Charismatic alpha males eventually dominated all of them before they disintegrated.

They depend on some market generating enough wealth

Retreat to a library and catch up...

LSam makes the interesting observation that the economic categorization of the government or polity of the late Soviet Union is not "communism," but rather "state capitalism."  I had never read that before.  LSam provides a link to "state capitalism," but unfortunately that link took me no where.  Do you think you could try again, LSam?

   Females are not commodities.  I don't compete with other males for one.  I try to establish relationships that work for me in life (male and female, non-sexual), and hopefully I get to meet someone I wish to be sexually intimate with who wishes to be sexually intimate with me.

   (At the same time (smile, sigh)).

   But since I don't own a female, I can't take her from anyone, because they don't own her either.  

   Nor is there a "market" in relationships, at least not  in my life.  (I understand that television and the MSM may disagree, but really, who believes what they say?).  

   Everything and everyone is not for sale.

patrick

The wiki article on communism is also informative. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_state

On this page, it is said:

Some writers argue that the term "Communist state" is an oxymoron. These writers treat the term as synonymous with Communism's theoretical goal of stateless communism, a society that is propertyless, classless and stateless [1], where everyone works according to their ability and receive according to their need. Marx and Engels's theory does, however, include a transitional phase known as the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Communist state claims to be the practical enactment of this dictatorship of the proletariat.

Indeed, Marx's idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was the Paris Commune, and not some government...

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

So? Trotsky liked competition too. (I guess the implications of this went over your head the first time I said it.)

Second time also. You'll just have to enlighten me if you want to stop repeating yourself. I'm just not that bright.

The idea of communism implies a society without social classes, not a society without competition.

You cannot have one without the other. The only way to prevent social striation in modern societies that use currency is to prevent the accumulation of personal wealth, which is accumulated via economic competition. Squashing the natural genetically endowed tendency for our species to organize into hierarchies like other social primates do can only be accomplished by force, thus the consistent degeneration of all communist societies into authoritarian states. Sounds like a respectable hypothesis to me. Maybe some grad student can borrow it for their thesis and flush it out. Maybe that hypothesis will be bandied about a century from now and be as dog-eared and dated as the moldy arguments you have discovered and are so fond of repeating.

It disproves the right-wing folk notion that the Soviet Union "failed." The Soviet Union succeeded, and quite dramatically, but not at communism.

You label anyone who has concluded that the Soviet Union was a failure as being "right wing." Your conclusion that it actually "succeeded... quite dramatically" depends on your definition of success. It industrialized over a century at great cost and suffering. The rest of the free world is not right wing.

Soviet Union and China used the communist ideal to successfully industrialize peasant nations. There aren't really any peasant nations that need industrializing, today, so if I am suggesting that the communist ideal isn't dead, then I am also suggesting that it be put to another use than to create another Soviet Union. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to recognize this

Right. The great leap forward claimed about 20-30 million lives. Some estimates claim that Communist China and the Soviet Union account for about 75% of all deaths by atrocity in the 20th Century. It also does not take a brain surgeon to recognize that communism is something best left in the history books as a nice idea that degenerates into a disaster anytime anyone attempts to put it into practice. Based on its consistent track record, the last thing I would want to see is a communist movement to save the planet.

The good folks at the Directory of Intentional Communities aren't likely to believe you, and for good reason: they've catalogued dozens of thriving communes around the US.

"Dozens" of "thriving" communes in a nation of 300 million is not a statistic that bolsters your argument. Had I found that statistic first I would have used it as an argument against communism, not for it.

I've read all the stuff you've suggested, including one book you obviously haven't read. (I've only mentioned this book once before, so you get a free pass this time.) Snottiness is no substitute for inquiry.

I wasn't trying to be snotty. You just sounded like you didn't know much on the subject. I'm surprised that you've read the forty or so odd books authored by some of the world's leading intellectuals, Pinker, Dawkins, Wilson, Dennet. It just seems odd that after having done that, you chose to side with the thoughts expressed in an obscure 183 page paperback book written by an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia. I could not even find a review.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

And thanks, LSam, for restoring in our memories the glorious moment that was the Paris Commune.  Aux armes, citoyens!

(And in the background: "Love, love, love ... love, love, love ... [high note] love, love, love, love ... All you need is - love ... all you need is - love (All together now) ... All you need is love, love; Love is all you need.")  (What a bunch of fluffy-heads we were.  But, hey, one could do a lot worse.)

Our good friend Biodiv, fascinated with this competition business, and how we are all trying to be top dog, whether we know it or not, is unfortunately caught in an intellectual feedback loop.  Whatever you may say to try to refute him, he says the very fact of your saying it is all the more evidence that what he is saying is right.  There is little or nothing to be done for him from the outside.  He is just going to have to see his way out on his own.  Who knows, maybe one or another of his daughters' chickens will help, sort of like Noah's dove.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

You cannot have one without the other. The only way to prevent social striation in modern societies that use currency is to prevent the accumulation of personal wealth, which is accumulated via economic competition.

And I thought "wealth" was accumulated through the process of capital accumulation, which assumes several things: the exploitation of wage labor and the capitalists' claim upon surplus value being the most immediate of them.  The foundation of capitalist society, everywhere, is primitive accumulation.  In every capitalist society, the masses have been dispossessed of their access to the commons and herded into cities, where deprivation and coercion can be used to make them work for capitalists.  Afterward, the history of primitive accumulation is typically sanitized as "economic competition" by the same folks who would moralistically denounce "20-30 million deaths" under "communism." From Marx:

This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone-by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in the defence of property. M. Thiers, e.g., had the assurance to repeat it with all the solemnity of a statesman to the French people, once so spirituel. But as soon as the question of property crops up, it becomes a sacred duty to proclaim the intellectual food of the infant as the one thing fit for all ages and for all stages of development. In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly force, play the great part.

I continue:

Squashing the natural genetically endowed tendency for our species to organize into hierarchies like other social primates do can only be accomplished by force, thus the consistent degeneration of all communist societies into authoritarian states. Sounds like a respectable hypothesis to me.

And the phenomena of the Soviet Union and China, at least, can be explained by the need of large, peasant empires to industrialize in a hurry in an era (the early/ mid 20th century) in which superpowers fought to dominate the whole Earth.  An application of Ockham's Razor is in order here: it shouldn't be necessary to prove that humans are "like other social primates" in order to understand why "communism" turned out the way it did.

And too bad humans are more versatile than you think they are, although the proof of that is given in that book on "Neo-Liberal Genetics" I suggested.

The great leap forward claimed about 20-30 million lives. Some estimates claim that Communist China and the Soviet Union account for about 75% of all deaths by atrocity in the 20th Century.

It also does not take a brain surgeon to recognize that communism is something best left in the history books as a nice idea that degenerates into a disaster anytime anyone attempts to put it into practice.

"Dozens" of "thriving" communes in a nation of 300 million is not a statistic that bolsters your argument.

Charismatic alpha males eventually dominated all of them before they disintegrated.

J.S.

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

   Dear Biodiversivist,

        I have been called many things, but rarely a Christian!!  (ROFLMAO).

        No one disputes that competition plays a part in life or evolution, but you are, I am afraid, carrying things too far for me! (smile).  I believe that the solutions to global warming  and our environmental problems lie in cooperation.  I see people cooperating every day!  

       The argument about the roles that cooperation and ompetition played in evolution are much more complicated and nuance than you present.

      BTW, for everyone, quoting Wikipedia as a source should be banned.  As long as it is a toy that can be anonymously manipulated by anyone, it cannot be taken seriously.  Sorry.

   Dear Jason,

       I notice you ignore China.   (smile).

       FWIW, it can be said that over the last 30 years, capitalism has done nothing to end poverty or improve the life of most people in the world, only furthering enriching the already well off.  Some people would regard this as thus being a "failed" social system.  (Some would not!).

  Dear CanisCandida,

      I am eagerly awaiting the opening of the new movie about John Lennon and the attack on him by the US government!

patrick

All those charities, co-operatives, communes: were they disasters, too? What about the "primitive communism" of the hunter-gatherer societies? A disaster? Sharing's bad, folks: you heard it here first.

Charities, cooperatives and communes are not examples of what you get when you try to make an entire country communist. That is the last time I am going to say that. They have little to do with institutionalized communism in fact and your repetition of them as your best examples of communism makes for a very weak argument.

Religious hierarchies run a large percentage of charities in this country. Does that make churches examples of communism? Wasn't it Marx who said that religion is the opiate of the masses? How does that contradiction fit into the picture? I donate to charities, does that make me a communist? Absurd.

What about the "primitive communism" of the hunter-gatherer societies?

Warping the definition of a term (communism) for the sake of argument has its limits. I can define my boot here as being communist and argue that its only usefulness is to protect my feet. Where does Marx mention hunter-gatherers? How can Marx's writings apply to small groups of people who have virtually no possessions and no means of acquiring more than they have? What good are five stone axes when carrying one around is hard work?

On the subject of sharing. A band of hunter-gatherers is a unit not unlike a pack of wolves or African hunting dogs, in that they are more efficient than a lone hunter. When groups meet they exchange goods and genes and then separate again. These groups also defend their turf. They also make war on each other. If you step back and view this group as a single celled amoebae with parts inside of it that make it function, then you will note that these cells are not sharing, they are competing, using the elements inside them (the people in the band) to accomplish that. Where did all that communist love go?

In every capitalist society, the masses have been dispossessed of their access to the commons and herded into cities

Where did you get that? Urbanization is a voluntary process. No one is herding people into cities. They move from small towns and farms because they want to.

US-dominated capitalism which we celebrate today as it dismantles global ecosystems.

It has been pointed out numerous times here on Grist that China and the Soviet Union were worse stewards of ecosystems than capitalism. Oh, right, they were not really communist. Well, since no communist country is really communist, then you can't make the claim that communism isn't worse for ecosystems, since a communist country has never existed, you have no proof they are better, or worse for that matter.

Marx had ideas to fix all of the abuses of his time attributable to the beginnings of the industrial age and capitalism. Those days are gone, his ideas did not pan out. It is all history but you talk as if nothing has changed over the last century. Malthus similarly proposed solutions to problems that existed in his time. They also did not pan out. Hypothesis often fail to pan out. There comes a time when you let them go and move on.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Charities, cooperatives and communes are not examples of what you get when you try to make an entire country communist. That is the last time I am going to say that. They have little to do with institutionalized communism in fact and your repetition of them as your best examples of communism makes for a very weak argument.

Where does Marx mention hunter-gatherers?

No one is herding people into cities. They move from small towns and farms because they want to.

It is all history but you talk as if nothing has changed over the last century.

I, for my part, have been careful to make it clear that my support for economic democracy and the for the phasing out of dominative/ subordinate social classes for the sake of dealing with environmental catastrophe is contingent upon social developments that would make the further growth of solidarist organizations possible, most specifically the disasters that will shake the public faith in the existent system.  Furthermore, I have been careful to note that capitalism, among other "market systems," are historically-bounded frameworks within a developing global human society.  I do not assume, for instance, that "the free market" can be used to lump together the peasant markets of medieval Europe, and EBay, as if they were essentially the "same thing."  

I'm also quite careful to historicize other social frameworks.  "Communism," for instance, was not the same thing in 1917 as it was, for instance, in the 1980s when the marxists of the Sandinista regime were asked to theorize their control of the Nicaraguan state, or for that matter when Hugo Chavez talks of socialism.  I do not assume, furthermore, that the "communism" of the future (as it may coalesce in response to a need to end divisions within humanity for the sake of saving what will be left of a collapsing ecosystem) will be anything like 1917 or 1945 or 1979, nor do I assume that "charities, cooperatives and communes are not examples of what you get when you try to make an entire country communist," regardless of historical conditions.  In fact, I assume that the identity of a "country" or a "state" is in fact a historically-conditioned thing, and so I am capable of understanding, as do the world-systems theorists, the decreasing relevance of national identity in a globalizing world.

I would further like to note, for the record, that human notions of "human nature," linguistic constructs all of them, have changed with history, largely in the direction of assuming a wider berth for human versatility.  A very early example is instructive: the 4th c. CE historian Eusebius of Caesarea, court apologist for the Emperor Constantine, argued that, as there is one God ruling the universe, so there should be only one Emperor ruling the human race.  Monarchy, therefore, was presumed to be the natural order of things, as opposed to "polyarchy" (i.e. democracy), which was unstable, as the example of Classical Athens so obviously proved to all.

Now, in this historical era, the right-wing version of "human nature," that assumes social classes, capitalism, and competition to be an immutable and natural fact of human existence, is a prescription for mass human dieoff.  To reiterate a previous challenge I made more than two weeks ago:

More specifically: if we assume that human beings "naturally" compete and "naturally" self-organize into "free markets" because it is an inescapable part of the genetic code for humans to do so, then we can expect the rest of human history to be an ever-accelerating conflict.  As natural resources become scarcer, human beings will spend an ever-increasing proportion of said resources in competition for the right to dominate and commodify what is left of Earth's resource base, leading, ultimately to -- mass dieoff, when there is nothing left to conquer and commodify.  The US conquest of Iraq is only the first shot fired in this conflict.

This conclusion, of course, is only inevitable if one accepts the abovestated right-wing assumptions about "human nature."

Anyone care to take this one on?

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

God knows why.

For one thing, I, Christian that I am, have no misgivings whatsoever about natural selection, or about anything at all in Charles Darwin's books.  I, a Christian, firmly solidly believe that when it comes to talking about the universe and the contents of the universe, the voice of science speaks first and most truly.

I have never ever rejected natural selection as the most significant negative control on evolution.  And I entirely agree that competition, understood in this biological context, is part and parcel of natural selection.  And I do not see that to be at all incompatible with orthodox Christianity.

Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and their followers and their ilk are out-liers, so far as Christianity is concerned.  Unfortunately, they are becoming more numerous.  But until they take over the world, it is a serious intellectual error to assume that what they say is what Christians believe.

But really, it is incredible that Biodiv actually thinks that dudes with their forelocks gelled up, cruising down Main Street, are the love that makes the world go round.  Sure, now and then you find one who is kind of cute -- but there too Biodiv would be blind, imperatively so -- , but the point is, that is hardly all that makes evolution work.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

       You say that "It has been pointed out numerous times here on Grist that China and the Soviet Union were worse stewards of ecosystems than capitalism.".  

       I cannot speak for the Soviet Union, but in what regards is China a worse steward than capitalism?  Do you have any factiods to offer for this?  Or is this just in your fantasies?

       Maybe you are not aware that in terms of global resource usage, the United States (and it is just ONE of the developed capitalist countries) is the worst over-consumer.  By far.  No one else even close.

       This kind of off-the cuff hyperbole benefits no one.  (smile)   (Well, it may amuse some people.)

       Hmmmm, if your attacks on Christians and Communists fail, whatcha gonna do then?  (LOL)

patrick