/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

whats with all the dogshit threads lately

>>1817228
Man I'm trying to be as charitable as possible. I am really sympathetic to socialism as I was one in the past and I think that socialism from a conceptual level is superior to capitalism. But I just can't believe in it working anymore. It works to an extent, but not as well as it was expected to in theory,

>>1817233
good thing communism isnt about convincing dipshits on the internet

>>1817241
Yeah I forgot about them

>muh economics!!
economics is a fallacious school of thought created by 19th century industrial ruling class to post-facto justify their own political actions as being "just". it exists because political economy had to be ditched after karl marx showed its real nature to the world.

here's some food for thought: under neoclassical economics there was no way the soviet economy could have existed, it shouldn't have been possible, but it did. and a lot of right wingers took inspiration from their economy; Hitler in Germany had 4 year plans, Argentina under Peron had 5 year plans, Singapore still uses 5 year plans, and so on. Why? Because Soviets had incomprehensible success. For an economy to grow so fast in such little time planted doubt in the minds of western economists and made right wingers question their own economic beliefs.

>never seeing leftists being able to counter them in arguments make me disillusioned
Me too. The only people I see countering them are China supporters like Haz, it does speak volumes how he has purposely made connections with the AES states (and Russia too but not relevant here), unlike western so called "communists" who belittle these. They have conceded this position to Haz, he took the space that was left vacant it's their own fault.
>Socialism and Communism are economic systems
No. That's like saying chemistry is just a laboratory, or that astronomy is a telescope.
>so its good if you can make a good argument based on exploitation about it
These are in fact the weakest types of arguments, because the popular discourse right now regarding this is polluted with moralism, humanism and other garbage rather than per class interests. You equally can make a strong argument for support of exploitation because it's in bourgeois material interests, and on the flip side thats also polluted with the same garbage — "because we have more work ethic and gumption unlike the brokie cashlets".
>All the results we have in real world are state capitalist dictatorships
None of the communist states are dictatorships, and they are not capitalist. Market forces is not capitalism, and the existence of a bourgeoisie is not capitalism. These existed for thousands of years. The essence of a communist state is when you put chains on this and put it to work for the benefit of the masses, and over time the mode of production, commodity form etc organically transforms into something new. Don't confuse the essence of communism with formalistic bullshit about soviet 5 year plans that these dogmatic retards worship. They are undialectical
>Even then, economists who are professionals state that market socialism will not work, and I'm inclined to trust their beliefs more than the average leftist online who is not a professional economist.
Me too, likewise I'm more inclined to see reality with the rise of China rather than trust (((professional economist))) anglos that are mad their empire is in decline. If markets are "bad", then the only thing good left is to live naked in a cave and bang rocks together like an animal.
>to see how it played out and to see the authoritarianism take hold.
Good

>>1817290
>Me too. The only people I see countering them are China supporters like Haz, it does speak volumes how he has purposely made connections with the AES states (and Russia too but not relevant here), unlike western so called "communists" who belittle these. They have conceded this position to Haz, he took the space that was left vacant it's their own fault.
This is a topic for another day but the left in the US seems to be extremely islationist, even radical ones.

What is with all these threads by mental retards lately? Did someone post about leftypol on reddit or something?

>>1817235
dont be such a bitter fag, we have worse threads than this consistently and its basically a free write prompt for clarifying your own position in face of inevitable creeping cynicism

>>1817225
that said its late and im tired so all ill say is what else is there? communism is technically possible and it is the name justifiably associated with if not inexorably linked to the greatest liberatory movements of the last 2 centuries. none of the undeniable failures of 20th century communism hold the dimmest candle to the horrors inflicted by capital modes of reproduction in the 19th-20th centuries. communism is the name for the good when its taken seriously as an achievable goal

>>1817336
420chan redirects here now

>>1817341
>dont be such a bitter fag, we have worse threads than this consistently
this is just another one of those terrible threads faggot

>>1817345
>this is just another one of those terrible threads faggot

yeah but half of the initiative for good threads comes from good replies bullying shitty threads is also very necessary im trying to just balance the scale a bit

bourgeois economics is subjectivist nonsense

>>1817225
Why are you comparing
>economists who are professionals
to
>the average leftist online
?
You know that academic Marxist economists exist, right? The USSR alone produced hundreds of scientific works on economy, and there are people working in the field currently. How many of them have you read? Or are you just going off of vibes?

>>1817576
Whether I am a commie or not should I continue reading leftist literature and economics

>>1817581
The answer is probably maybe. I'll just keep reading to broaden my horizons and to have more knowledge

Op this is so dumb. There are as many economists who argue for privatization as there are those who argue against it and for communalism.

It should be a bannable offense to claim leftists can't respond to rightwing economic arguments without ever naming those arguments.
>state capitalist dictatorships
do you actually believe cuba is a dictatorship?
>Mao I think of in particular back before he became a dictator
A dictator who leaves office once he reaches the term limit?

>>1817225
You can always actually read books to see and find it by yourself. =(

>>1817225
Damn. If only there were a solution to this.

>But seeing online economists arguments being so strong
stopped reading here lol

>>1817225
Im not sure if thats a pol bait or a genuine left tendency liberal, but it was embarrassing to read

>>1817225
>But seeing online economists
Economics is just a shameless ideology to explain away the injustices produced by the naked, irrational greed of the people making decisions, OP.

>socialist countries, and to see how it played out and to see the authoritarianism take hold
Well there was a kind of "socialist" cronyism but in Eastern Europe they went from that to jumping straight into self-destructive consumer barbarism without any intermediate stages where a healthy political culture vis-a-vis economic relations could have developed. The only thing that can protect you from extortionary practices is the collective umbrella of a civil society that is at least somewhat assertive and aware of being screwed.

>>1817373
>pic
It's hard to tell whether the creator of this image is just ignorant about the price function or pretends to be ignorant or whether this is a false flag that tries to paint leftists as incapable of understanding the basics of economics.

I guess that's the post-meta-ironic nonsense that your parents warned about.

>>1817341
No, he’s right.
This thread is shit.

>>1817824
>>1817850
I'm putting together a team
SOCDEM GANG
DENG GANG
COMBINE YOUR FORCES TO BECOME:
CAPCOM EMPIRE

CAPITALIST SOCIALISM: NO CONTRADICTION!

>>1818356
Real communism has never been tried.

>>1817373
>the partial derivative of price wrt quantity is positive rather than negative
If supply increases while demand remains constant then price decreases. Notice the intersection is lower after the rightward shift to supply. Supply and demand does not state that price increases as supply increases, it states just the opposite. The supply curve curves upward because if the demand curve shifts to the right then the price will be higher, as I illustrated. If the partial derivative of price wrt quantity were negative, then the equilibrium price after a rightward demand shift would be lower, which violates common sense.

>>1818365
That misinformation agent can spam a lie ten times in the time you write down your one debunk.

>erm but liberal economists say communism is impossible?
communism is a whole different mode of production dumbshit

>>1818365
This graph is just a truism unapplicable to any real situation and having zero predictive power. It's akin to religious symbolism where you have to memorize the signs, and the signs' locations also signify something that's kind of true

>>1818375
>unapplicable to any real situation and having zero predictive power
Harvest bad, how will it affect the prices?

>>1818392
I am going to kill you

>>1818392
It can affect prices in ANY way whatsoever. They can rise and they can fall as a result of bad harvest. There's too many fucking variables in play.

>>1817225
> But seeing online economists arguments being so strong and never seeing leftists being able to counter them
Like… where?

>But seeing online economists arguments being so strong and never seeing leftists being able to counter them in arguments make me disillusioned
Gib arguments they make here plox
Tankyoo

>>1818365
>Supply and demand does not state that price increases as supply increases, it states just the opposite.
Actually it states both! Because economists flip back and forth between different time scales, often without being explicit about that. The time scales aren't hours and months or whatever, rather they are defined (or rather would be, if spelled out) in terms of what is allowed to change.

Your particular wording indicates that you believe that when economists say "supply", they must be referring to this supply curve. This word usage is not fixed actually. Sometimes they use it this way, other times they don't. When they don't, they just mean a particular quantity that is supplied at a particular price and not what the quantity would be (speculation) at a different price as displayed on the diagram. Likewise with "demand". A change in demand can refer to a different point on the fixed curve as the price changes or it can refer to this curve, which displays the (speculated) willingness to buy this or that amount at this or that price, moving or changing shape (speculation on top of speculation).

To reduce confusion, you should always say "demand curve" if you mean the demand curve. If price changes and quantity sold changes, has the demand curve changed or are we merely going to another "demand point" on the fixed curve? No way to tell. (I had to make up the term "demand point". What the fuck is wrong with economists that they can't talk with precision about the most basic stuff of their own field?)

Clearly there is a lot of wiggle room here to make up all sorts of diagrams that only need to touch reality at a few data points, for most of what these figures show almost anything you can imagine is equally valid.

If production is optimized for a certain quantity and then it has to increase soon with little warning ahead and you can't instantly install everything so you now have less than optimal mix of machines, building layout and so on, in that case the production cost per unit goes up. Economies of scale happen when the fact of increased output that you can sell is something you can rely on, and in that case the cost of production per unit goes down.

Neoclassical economists like to talk about the former case as a short-term situation and the latter case as a long-term situation. But this hinges on assuming that firms are extremely optimized for a specific quantity with no fat to trim. If this assumption is false, then the neoclassical idea of marginal productivity ruling things and people is also false.

>>1818392
Price will usually rise. Labor-time heuristic tells you the same though.

Just copy and paste that Adam Smith quote about landlords being parasites with the face of Karl Marx and the cheeky attribution at the end. Anything else is just wasting your and everyone else's time. "Economists arguments" are just bad faith tripe thrown into the "debate" to see who takes the bait and let the "economists" play their sophistry. You're never gonna "win" because there's nothing to "win" there, really.

Also, if you want some good grounding into fundamental economic concepts, check Varoufakis' Foundations of Economics: A Beginner's Companion" - there are two editions, the 1998 one by Routledge and the 2002 by Taylor & Francis - and then move to Brancaccio's Anti-Blanchard Macroeconomics: A Comparative Approach'' - 2019. They are a good starting point to criticise the dominant dogma of neoliberal-monetarist-marginalist crap the ruling classes shove down our throat every bloody day.

Id kill for a good state-capitalist dicatorship of the proletariat

woe is you bro

>>1818433
Things are so fucked, that a stagnant dotp like Vietnam starts to look utopian.

>>1818338
That's not true. Economics is a soft science, but still a science. Some economists are left wing and some are right wing but in the end I read up online that some view having political alignments and using economics to prove it is seen by some as "putting the cart before the horse" but I don't see it that way. I learned about this smart guy called Piketty who apparently is an economist but also wrote a book about how the past few decades capitalism has been failing badly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century

>>1818422
What do you think of Amartya Sen?

>>1818401
>>1818418
I can't tell whether you are memeing and pretending to be stupid or whether your are literally that misinformed about these concepts.

It feels like you are simply idiots and when faced with a complex question you'd just throw away all of science and declare:
>There's too many fucking variables in play.

You remind me of the idiots, who - when asked "you have a perfect, six sided die, how likely is it to roll a 1" - would respond with:
"It could be 1 or not 1, so it's 50/50".
or even worse:
"It's unknowable what if a cat eats the die or gravity suddenly stops working or aliens appear. Too many variables".
Stupid, arrogant fools.

>"anarchist" making yet another astroturf thread against the liberation of workers
The soviet union went from a tsarist shithole with people living in dirt huts to the #2 superpower in 50 years. China did the same and is arguably beating America in many ways which is why they suddenly clutch their pearls over human rights violations while simultaneously funding a genocide.
>but china and the USSR is capitalist!!! The STATE!!!
lmao, you haven't even read the basic roadmap of communism. China will continue nationalizing its big industries and executing corrupt bankers while you sit there saying "w-well that doesn't count because…" They will continue making every generation after them richer, unlike America where they make them poorer and increase the inequality of the capitalist system with literally no plan to fix it. Suck a dick bootlicker.

>>1818418 (me)
>>1818893
Can you actually reply to even a single statement I made in that post?

>Communism has fallen, billions must shock therapy.
<Meanwhile the communist country that is most fearmongered by western media (picrel)

OP, Read theory (i didnt read because i fucking hate reading but atleast i do not trust bourgeois economists)

>>1819567
Just looking at Pyongyang isn't really representative of NK

>authoritarianism
Unironic usage of this word is the ultimate indication that you haven't had your brain washed properly yet, as you still cling to liberal bougie ideals of individualistic freedom that do not exist outside of dreams. I recommend actually reading up about how the progression of history has taken place in the ways OTHER THAN what has been prescribed through liberal propaganda.

From there you will begin to understand what can actually be done and how to do it, and cease bemoaning of the horrible state of everything in the same way that liberals bemoan increasing illberalness.

>>1819610
I like the idea of freedom and socialism at the same time. I think repression and secret police are bad but you don't necessarily have to support them to be a communist.

>>1819613
Repression of the bourgeoisie is absolutely necessary to mantain the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It's not a matter of morality or aesthetic preference, it's not optative, it's a condition for its existence.
>I like the idea of freedom
Should I have the freedom to rape you, your parents, your siblings, and your future children? Should I have the freedom to behead negros on the street? Should I have the freedom to enslave you under the threat of violence or deprivation of food? These are all freedoms, I don't see why someone shouldn't be allowed to do those if they posses this so calles "freedom". I might not be a sociopath but someone else on this Earth is, and they'll do worse under material incentives.

>>1817225
Since I do empathize with the feelings that led to your post, I felt like sharing a brief reading list on these economic questions of socialism. Do keep in mind that being persuaded and understanding something are two separate things, but ignoring this dialectical process is equally dangerous. You may have some of these texts, but they may be useful to the other anons.
The first text should act as a short primer on what informed the soviet and chinese productive experiments; if you feel like focusing immediately on the economic subject you should read part IV of the book n°5 now, "Economics of Socialism". These two amount to roughly 80 pages (20+60) and two hours of time, since I understand how hard delving into something so deep can be if you don't know where to start.
The second is a general overview of the urss's economic history as a reference point for what can be done today.
After setting the stage of the past, the last three texts are concerned with the near future from two different perspectives: the AES examples of east asia in the third and Cockshott's analysis of contemporary implementation of planning in the last two.