It was never about capitalism vs communism - it was always about centralized vs decentralized
Both capitalism and communism have decentralized voluntaryism as their promised endgames, but both ideals corrupt in practice to centralized rent-seeking and use of lethal force. Thus, society was never so much about ideal distribution of resources, as it was about the centralized use of force vs a decentralized voluntary trade and resilience to such force. The Internet and blockchain technology is the best promise of decentralized resilience we've had in 500 years.
Acceptance of socialism is back on the rise, as a New Left of millenials in the US has forgotten the horrors of the Soviet Union and the millions of people murdered for not fitting in, and this New Left believes - understandably at the superficial level - that any inequality problem can be fixed by force and governmental regulation of a perceived injustice.
This is a horror to us old enough to remember large-scale socialism and how people were literally shot for trying to leave their oppressive country. Not to mention the 45 million starved to death in China during Mao's mass murder of peasants. At the same time, it's easy to understand the frustration with today's Western utterly corrupted ivory-tower policymaking, detached from reality, especially when it's called "capitalism": a better term would have been "outlawing competition and innovation to pander to vested interests who fund your next election campaign to continue the cycle". This is true for Washington DC as well as for Brussels.
But what's striking about capitalism and socialism are not so much the differences, but the similarities.
Capitalism - or rather, the voluntary decentralized free market, to avoid connotations to Big Corpocracy - brings 179,000 people out of extreme poverty, every day. It is not morally justifiable to not support this, the best tool we ever had to eradicate poverty. It beats any redistribution by force that has ever existed, for jaw-droppingly simple reasons I'll return to in a future post.
Meanwhile, socialism (the Marxist precursor to communism) promises to reduce poverty by use of force - ultimately lethal force - through redistribution of resources. It only works in very small proportions of a society - basically, as long as there's still enough free market to feed the intended redistribution with new resources to redistribute by force. When there isn't, only the lethal force remains, as we have seen time and again.
So how are these two possibly any similar at all?
They're similar in the promised endgame. For the promised endgames are one and the same, even though they're described in vastly different languages.
Both communism and capitalism have decentralized, voluntary free trade without use of force as their ideal outcome endgames. But what happens in both systems, instead of this decentralized outcome, is a corruption to centralized rent-seeking and use of lethal force on completely different paths.
"Communism is a highly organised society of free, socially conscious working people a society in which public self-government will be established." -- from the Ideology manifesto of the Communist Party of the now-collapsed Soviet Union
In capitalism, the bureaucracy keeps expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. What starts out as supposedly-benign regulations are quickly subjected to regulatory capture, where the supposedly regulated parties quickly become the ones setting the rules for use of force for its own benefit and to suppress competition, destroying any idea of a future free market.
In communism, the Marxist idea is that society passes through a number of phases (class war, dictatorship of the proletariat, socialism) until it ends at the "communist" endgame of decentralized voluntaryism. Now, it can easily be argued that Marxist communism is a pipe dream - specifically the part where everybody has unlimited access to every single luxury, where scarcities no longer exist at all and every single consumption good practically exists in unlimited quantity. ("I'll have a yacht, please. Make it two. Do they come in blue?") But that's still beside the point.
The observation to be made is that practical society-building was always about decentralized voluntaryism vs centralized corruption, with the former being used as a lure for the a reality of the latter.
The implications for the Internet in general, and blockchain technology in particular, should be apparent. For the first time in 500 years (since 1453), there is a radically decentralizing technology upending power structures. We don't have the resulting civil wars yet, but the power tensions are certainly there. To win, just like with the printing press, we need decentralized resilience to the centralized use of force.
By the time the corrupt rent-seeking centralized powers understand what's hitting them, we may have already won.
"Anarchy is not an absence of order; it is an absence of orders." For the first time in history, we may actually create more power in decentralization than in centralization. While that was always promised by power and philosophy, it may be this technology we're using right now that brings the promise to fruition.
Hi, Rick, and welcome to Steem! Quick question for you. You first acknowledge "Capitalism" to be "the voluntary decentralized free market," but later you say
This seems to me inconsistent. On the one hand, capitalism is the free market. On the other hand, capitalism destroys the free market. Are you arguing that capitalism is an impossible scenario which cannot exist for extended periods of time?
To me, pure capitalism (anarcho-capitalism) precludes the use of any force, including regulations backed by violence, but your analysis that capitalism yields regulatory capture which destroys the free market assumes the existence of forceful regulation, which in turn is not capitalism. It appears that your argument is really that capitalism-with-force (which is not actually capitalism) yields regulatory capture, but does not address pure capitalism.
It could be argued that pure capitalism cannot exist since there will always be bad actors, and while that is true, the issue of regulatory capture is not the use of force (for which there are defenses) but the perception of force as legitimate and moral. Without the institutionalization of forceful regulation, any attempts at regulatory monopoly would be rapidly quelled in the course of self-defense.
I think your observation of capitalism-with-force vs. capitalism-without-force is spot on. Depending on the issue (and the phase of the moon), I self-identify as somewhere between a libertarian and an ancap, and so run into these practical issues from time to time. They were particularly apparent (and depressing) from the inside of the European Parliament.
I think one of the key problems is that we've never had a society where decentralized power was greater than centralized power, and so, we've always had an X-with-force, where people have been varying the X to optimum output. And of all the X:es tried, capitalism has had the best success. But a capitalism-with-force is still a centralized use of lethal force, and as such, is subject to hijacking by those who find it more profitable to hijack the system as such than to provide a better offering.
So if you will, I was speaking in both terms of "capitalism as we've seen it" and "capitalism in terms of its ideal endgame", and you're right to point that out.
This is why I'm so stoked about the decentralization technologies: they hold the ability to negate the centralized power of regulatory capture, as they defy regulation to begin with.
Will they not try and tax crypto? The banks are now in. Are the laws stong enough for a government not to deem it currency? This happened in the wiermar republic. Historically ? https://steemit.com/steemit/@marco555/steemit-is-a-facebook-killer-a-brief-tallk-on-the-start-of-something-new
I think there is a very import distinction to be made between 'capitalism' secured by the free market and 'crony-capitalism' that is secured by regulatory purse strings.
The more money a centralized power is spending, the more certain you can be that corruption will be present at the core.
This is the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Capitalism can't exist without state backing. It never has and it never will. What you call "pure capitalism" is pure fantasy.
Hello again, bacchist. :) Once again, you've missed my point in your eagerness to accuse me of a logical fallacy. And once again, you've labeled me with a fallacy which does not apply to my argument.
No True Scotsman, by definition, applies only when there is no objective rule of difference between the two claims. I was careful to delineate a difference between "pure capitalism" and "capitalism-with-force." I had assumed readers would be able to tell the difference, but to spell it out, one of them has force and the other does not.
But all capitalism that has ever actually existed has required and implemented force in order to function. Capitalism can not exist without systematic violence.
This is from the Wikipedia you just cited...
Compare that to the following:
A: Capitalism doesn't require violence in order to function.
B: But literally every capitalist economy is underwritten by violence.
A: Yes, but pure capitalism doesn't require violence.
See?
And here's where that 4-tier reply limit really shows...
No, Ozer. The issue is the conflation of the notion of corporatism (capitalism + force) with the free market/capitalism (capitalism... as in the free market).
Communism always has force behind it. There is no form of communism that doesn't. Hence, it doesn't equate to parallel the two terms.
It is because of this tendency to conflate that "capitalism" has been such an insidious term:
Free market capitalism, do not require violence to work, or centralized power. Open source software, Internet, bitcoins, streem, other blockchain based technologies, are all great examples of violence-free, decentralized free markets.
I could say the same with communism. Communism requires centralized violence of state. No application of communism has ever been totally voluntary.
"Compare that to the following:
A: Capitalism doesn't require violence in order to function.
B: But literally every capitalist economy is underwritten by violence.
A: Yes, but pure capitalism doesn't require violence.
See?"
Which capitalist economy was "underwritten" with violence? You realize "underwrite" means "accept liability for", right? Where does violence come into consensual exchanges of capital among private property owners? If I rake someone's lawn for a glass of lemonade, who was the victim of violence?
Why are commies so intellectually dishonest?
I would say that a technologically decentralized financial system that prohibits the use of force will be pure capitalism without force meaning no monopolies only individuals exercising their rights to freely exchange. For example a smart contract using cryptocurrencies that allows a p2p exchange to exist and is encrypted and can not be hacked by any group. It runs itself endlessly with no arbitrary use of force and it runs honestly with open source software and never cheats you or tries to create a monopoly. SO we are now indeed coming into an age where pure capitalism ie a truly free unhindered market can exist where absolutely no force is used at all.
What happened in 1453?
Invention of the printing press by Gutenberg.
Technically not a new invention as much as a combination of four other inventions: oil based ink, cheap ragcloth-based paper, metal movable type, and the squeeze press.
The end of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Middle Ages.
The Fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Turks...
Ironically, I had this same conversation over lunch.
We ended on the discussion that decentralized works great until there is a serious conflict. (Usually someone breaking the rules/finds an unwritten opportunity to exploit.) From a blockchain perspective, the current solution is a hard fork. The powers that ultimately determine if a hard fork is required are effectively centralized.
Yes, the Tyranny of the First Defector is a very real thing in consensus cultures if there's something to be won by cheating.
Which would then lead to the usual first response of using force to "control/police" the cheater. The interesting aspect of steemit is that the "downvote" essentially enables a decentralized method of imposing that force.
yes thats true, in steem we have the possibility to vote in an decentralized way if we want to make a hardfork and if so what we want to change. The great thing is, thats all open source, so you have the choice to take part or not and copy it. In the future we don't need a world government and a world currency. We need a diversity of networking platforms and currencies. Every mono-culture is not resilient and therefore instable.
Because instituting cheating is a great solution to "serious conflict".
Centralization is systemized cheating.
Nice post.
May be communism or capitalism or else is only a sort of carrot for donkey?
Leaders speech is about politics and people but their solutions are about their power.
Power has only one goal -- more power, form of government does not matter, and usually it is only the symbol, not reality.
What do you think about my post about new form of social organization by blockchain?
https://steemit.com/blockchain/@soomrack/bitcoin-blockchain-steem-middlesociety-and-math-management
When is there not something to be won by cheating?
Trivia: when I was doing TV interviews, I sometimes had a little fun with the interviewing team while they were still setting up their equipment and obviously hadn't started recording (like I could see the tape slot on the TV camera still being open), and so I said things in a sincere voice like,
-- but you have to understand in this context, that I'm a politician. So it's never cheating if you don't get caught.
It was always fun to see them get stressed to get the recording started in case I would say something more like that on tape. :)
Journalists, bless their hearts!
A hard fork proposal can come from the community rather than the developers, and members can choose not to install a hard fork and continue the old chain. Look at ethereum.
@comcentrate : This is a good point. But correct me if I am wrong, Ethereum Classic is still susceptible to a replay attack. So, although many have chosen to remain with ETC after block 1920000, they are putting themselves at a higher risk than switching to the ETH chain.
But I definitely see your point though. They were not forced to change by the developers..
Yes, ETC has very low hash power, no one is developing apps - it's probably not going to survive. But the lessons we will learn from the DAO scandal keep coming, and they aren't stopping anytime soon!
Welcome Rick! Fully Agree :)
Posted this a couple of months ago:
https://steemit.com/politics/@clains/capitalism-communism-and-decentralization
Welcome @falkvinge!
It looks like you need to do an AMA :-)
Joking aside, I really like reading person so well known is here with us discussing really important things
I follow you @falkvinge 8]
Wow Rick, I'm so excited to see you on here. I loved Swarmwise, and I've been reading your other material for years. Actually, it was you who first turned me onto Bitcoin, way back in like late 09 / early 10.
This is a really great reframing of these political ideas. Cheers, keep on kicking ass.
Thanks for the shout out, Gendale! Looking forward to sharing thoughts and ideas with people here - I'm really impressed with the way the community is responding, and feeling sincerely welcome!
Can you really have decentralization in a communist society when the communist philosophies reject private property rights? Doesn't that impose a de facto decision-making entity or collective for "common property" or "common ownership" and doesn't that contradict the purpose of decentralization? Maybe there's a version of communism that I'm not aware of, but every iteration that I've ever had explained to me ultimately involved some sort of "democratic" body that made decisions for the collective. How do you reconcile this with the desire to eliminate centralized authority?
To some extent, the concept of public property without a governing use of force is indeed theoretical, but on smaller scales, you can observe that there have been common fields where people could let their sheep graze and similar.
(Which led to the Tragedy of the Commons, but sustainability of the idea is separate from the idea itself.)
Also, it's noteworthy that Marx' idea of a post-scarcity superabundance is something I don't see as realistic to begin with.
Communism only works with ants
But yes as you say it's a decentralized system.
(With a common goal. Keeping the queen alive, and feeding the newborns)
Yeah, I agree on the "post-scarcity" argument. That seems to make most of the socialist/communist theories completely worthless, in my opinion. It's great to dream about it, but it's nowhere close to being a realistic possibility.
But even shared property use doesn't address the management/maintenance of it, any exclusion from use by either inside or outside actors, and the rules created for it all in the first place. Democratic decision-making and enforcement presupposes some sort of unanimous agreement to the rules of voting beforehand, which is almost never actually proven in any "democratic" society. It just seems to me that any decentralization claims by those with centralized "democratic resolution" processes are completely contradictory. Property rights seems to be the only way that any centralization can actually be avoided in both theory and practice.
i lived now for 5 years mostly in a community without money. Of course to get used to it can be quite tricky, but i for my part don't want to miss it. Its functioning very simple, the ones who take care of something make the decision about it. Thats it.
But wasn't Marx a writer, a theorist, and not a politician? He would probably be disgusted with all that happened afterwards... I relate to part of communism, and parts of capitalism. I think neither one is perfect, both have their huge flaws. Communism means that there is someone, or a group of people that controls the destiny of the state. And every time that someone has too much power is his/her hands they become despotic. Even if they don't, the mere fact that you depend on who sits on the throne of power by itself...
On the other hand capitalism was created for the most part for the rape and robbering of other countries that are now the third world. The western world got its money from the Americas and Africa. Several banks were started by fortunes created through slavery. All this to say that there is not perfect system. There is no perfect nothing. Because the idea might be great, but in the end of the day, it's people who follow that ideia... and people are not perfect either... Only when we as humans become more conscious and grow, can we really change things. There are some signs already... amidst all the dread.