We are not there yet but a lot more leisure could be distributed than is being done now, given the economic potential already actualized. But with AI and fusion, we could be and then some. AI would enable thinking on the level of the world system much more available. And clear sustainable energy is a big problem that is no longer looming. It is here.
What is in the way? Hysteresis and path-dependent are obstacles to creative thinking based on systems potential and available resources. The whole concept of living a good life in a good society needs to be revisited based on reflexivity and emergence.
R. Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller talked a lot about this fifty years ago. He still worth paying attention to.
Stumbling and Mumbling
Prince Philip & the communist ideal
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle
Stumbling and Mumbling
Prince Philip & the communist ideal
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle
16 comments:
As ever with Marxists, because they tend to see people as cookie cutter copies of each other, they forget that you still need those skilled people to work a full week to produce a surplus. And they ain't going to do that for nothing material in return.
It's always amusing to dig down with Libertarianism, Anarchy, Marxism even four-day-week'ers and see how all of them ultimately rely on altruism and/or near total fungibility of labour at the root.
"Who's going to do the Brain Surgery and why?" is a great question.
Marx's "error," if there actually was one, was in thinking as a political activist that the system could be changed quickly through revolution, with a transition period intervening. This is in contrast to Marx as economic sociologist holding that change in the system's social and political superstructure is depending on gradual change in the economic infrastructure that determines the superstructure.
While I view this as insightful, I think that Marx perhaps placed too much influence on the economic as determinative of the rest of society. Marx was a thorough-going 19th century materialist in reaction to 18th century rationalism and idealism, and in my view he pushed this too far. Marx's writing shows that he was quite aware of the spiritual aspect of human nature in a humanistic sense and took at integrative approach to it. Some subsequent Marxian attempted to balance this.
Changes in the mode of production have changed greatly since he wrote owing to the scaling of technological innovation, resulting in enormous changes economically that have been reflected socially and politically. But the economic outcomes have not be distributed to optimize distributed prosperity and distributed leisure to the degree possible through gradual change. If this were done iteratively and incrementally, then it need not overly strain the system's capacity. The problems are most cognitive-affective rather than real, but they are real issues culturally, institutionally, socially, politically and economically.
Developed countries have now gone to a five-day work week and an eight-hour day, for example, which is unprecedented historically. Given that the major issue today is more demand that supply, it is likely that more could be done gradually (iteratively and incrementally) in the direction of distributed prosperity and leisure.
Bucky Fuller explored this decades ago and established the World Game as an exercise in systems thinking about real resources and their potential deployment. See also the Wikipedia article, which is only a stub but it has links at the bottom.
One of his big issues was diversion of real resources into military use, which he criticized as wasteful, aimed at solving the wrong design problem. If resources currency diverted to military use were redeployed to public use, then the world could enjoy an unprecedented level of peaceful development. So "the world game" has an alternative name, "the world peace game."
Marx's "error," if there actually was one, was in thinking as a political activist that the system could be changed quickly through revolution
I should clarify here that Marx's error as commonly understood is the failure of revolution in Russia and then China also to produce the kind of communist society that he envisioned and instead the transition state of "dictatorship of the proletariat" turned instead into dictatorship of a privilege elite, as it did in Russia satellite states, too.
However, objectors note that Marx analyzed developed societies with capitalist economies characteristic of Britain and the continent, especially Germany and France. He never expected his ideas to be exported to the underdeveloped China and developing Russia without going through development, especially as initial experiments. So it is fair to say that Marx's revolutionary ideas have not been tested in the environment on which he based his work. In other words, the jury is still out. When the world has largely adopted capitalism, the natural process that Marx analyzed as a sociologist may turn out to be the case. Or even revolutionary change that results in the kind of socialism he envisioned on the way to communism.
Another thing to note about Marx is that while he considered himself a materialist following a scientific approach, he is more properly viewed ashumanist than as a hard-nosed 19th c. scientific materialist. See Erich FrommErich Fromm on this.
Neil they dont value education and training...
Another thing about Marx that is significant is that he lived in Dickensian times. Marx and Engels were contemporaries of Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo, both of whom wrote about the conditions in England and France that appalled Marx and Engels, and many more. No doubt that this gave a sense of urgency the political activism of M & E in calling for the workers of the world to rise up.
Writing such as these, along with obvious social dysfunction did lead to the abandonment of a strict approach to economic liberal and the beginning of a mixed economy.
Ironically, it was Otto von Bismarck, a pretty conservative fellow, who instituted social programs to get ahead of the curve that was leading to rebellion. As result, conditions did change enough to avoid a repeat of the revolutions of the 1848 period that were unsuccessful.
Since then a lot of progress has been made, but there is still a long way to go to get to the level of distributed prosperity and leisure that would make humans free beings — as free as animals in the wilderness, but in a system free of the necessities that animals face daily and meet with the law of the jungle.
Another thing that is also significant. "Progress" was a key concept in the 19th century and M & E were believers in it. In this sense their work is "progressive." It is both aspirational and practical.
Since then economic sociologists and heterodox economists including Keynes have been influenced by this but conventional economists not so much.
Those with power get a sweet deal, while the rest get the shaft. All the academics, philosophers and ideologues cannot change that equation. In theory, the people could change it by organizing. In practice, they don't.
The future is one of decline, or collapse, or worse. As energy consumption per capita declines, unemployment/leisure will undergo an 'adjustment'.
I had the chance to marry rich. But unfortunately I was not attracted to the woman.
I think about it sometimes when I have vacuum and mopping at home :(.
...vacuum and mopping duties EVERY Saturday morning.
“ I had the chance to marry rich. But unfortunately I was not attracted to the woman. ”
You’re killing me greek...
"Developed countries have now gone to a five-day work week and an eight-hour day, for example, which is unprecedented historically."
I certainly don't know much about the history, but my understanding (which could very well be incorrect???) is the grueling terrible dickensian conditions came about, or at least got far worse, with the industrial revolution. Quite a bit prior to that, peasants in the middle ages got loads of days off. There were far more holy days back then, to were a peasant didn't really work any more, or possibly less, than a modern worker does. It was a clever sort of bribery the church did back then, abandon your pagans ways and we let you take days off from working for the lord of the manor. I guess technically there are still loads of official holy days, but Christians really only give a shit about the 3 or 4 main ones.
"Who's going to do the Brain Surgery and why?" AI directed robots would do a better job than most human doctors.
“ Marx thought that a particular level of affluence was necessary for communism”
Yo we’ve had a surplus economy since Noah’s flood...
“ ultimately rely on altruism and/or near total fungibility of labour at the root.”
Yeah you hear the incompetent unqualified Art degree leftists say “shovel ready projects!” like contemporary construction is ditch digging...
Their vision is a nation of ditch diggers.. this comes from reading Dickens at their Art Degree schools instead of taking a course in MATLAB...
Their matriarch AOC doesn’t even know what a kitchen garbage disposal is... thinks Agronomy is “magic!”...
One of Chris Dillow's main points is that the Duke of Edinburgh could escape soul destroying monotonous work because he was rich. Not exactly the revelation of the century..!!
surplus economy since Noah’s flood
And Marx's major point is that the surplus value as gone to an elite as economic rent. His point in Das Kapital is to show how it is done in the capitalist system.
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