Competition

[chris_gerrib]

So, via Making Light, I find this Marxist critique of the financial crisis in cartoon format. It's an 11-minute video, and actually not terribly off base.

The final argument boils down to this (I paraphrase): In the 1970s, we had financial problems because labor had gotten too powerful. This 'problem' was fixed by outsourcing and off-shoring. We now have a problem where finance is too powerful, and it's being 'fixed' by the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.

The Marxist critique goes wrong when it argues that getting rid of the 'inherent contradictions' (AKA "conflicts") in the capitalist system is either possible or desirable. Getting rid of these contradictions is like getting rid of predator / prey relationships in ecology - neither possible nor desirable.

In ecology, predator species obviously need prey to eat. Prey species need predators to prevent overpopulation, which leads to habitat destruction. But expecting this relationship to be anything but adversarial is to live in a fantasy world.

Libertarians, to their credit, understand this need for competition. Where they go wrong is their desire for the competition to be as 'red of tooth and claw' as that in nature. As the French and Russian aristocracy discovered, there are more poor people (prey) then rich (predators) and the poor people can fight back.

The trick is to resolve the conflicts via peaceful means. That means government, regulation and the ballot box.

Comments

[jetfx.livejournal.com]

It would be wrong for a Marxist critique to suggest that getting rid of the inherent contradictions in the capitalist system is either possible or desirable, because the contradictions are inherent to the system according a Marxist perspective. The usual Marxist solution is a another system.

I think your predator/prey analogy is really weak, but rather ironic because it is an image straight out of communist propaganda - vampire capitalism. It's weak because capitalism is a lot more complicated than that, because capitalism hasn't always meant a transfer of wealth straight up the power structure; and two, capitalism is an economic system, not a state of nature, so it is a tremendous failure of imagination to think it's the best we can do, and accept the downsides.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

There are obviously multiple groups in capitalism, just like there are multiple competing groups in nature.

Humans can (in theory) manage an ecology, because we're smarter then the things being managed. Suggesting humans can fully manage an economy is like suggesting deers (or wolves) can manage an ecology.

[jetfx.livejournal.com]

But even in a free market humans are managing an economy. The economy is a human thing, and exists only as a product of human relationships. The difference between free market and centrally planned is simply who is doing the managing. It is a myth that there is such a thing as an unmanaged economy, because politics and economics are not separate.

And an economy is vastly less complicated than an ecology. It has little to do with the intelligence of either the participants or the managers, but because there are much fewer inputs and outputs in an economy.

Also, the alternative to capitalism is not always and everywhere Soviet style communism.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

No, an economy is at least as complicated as an ecology. There aren't just "managers" and "participants" - each of those groups consist of dozens if not hundreds of sub-groups.

Also, the alternative to capitalism is not always and everywhere Soviet style communism. Could you provide some examples?

[jetfx.livejournal.com]

I don't think we're going to agree on the complexity issue. I think that because there are more things n an ecology that the complexity of such a system is several orders of magnitude more than a human economy, particularly since human economies are part of an have an impact on ecologies.

As for examples of other economic systems, Wikipedia has a handy list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_system). I would point you to a few in particular, like a subsistence economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_economy), the system that was most common in human history; participatory economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics), which is often touted as an alternative to capitalist inequality and communist authoritarianism by making economic decisions communal and democratic; and virtual economies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy), which are currently a huge growth market, springing out of the proliferation of online gaming, like World of Warcraft's multi-million dollar gold farming trade.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I confine my analysis to economies that have actually been implemented, which takes out participatory. Besides - the decision-making process determines whether it collapses into communism or capitalism.

I can't eat virtual food, so virtual economies are right out.