This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose that at a given moment a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?
Yes, with three caveats:
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The pin factories would need to continue paying all their employees a full salary for a half-day of work.
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Someone - or some entity - would need to enforce point number one, as this measure goes against the general principles of administrative efficiency.
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Whatever entity assumes the power of dictating counter-intuitive administration policies, inevitably begs the question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
In the end, you would only substitute the tyranny of the bourgeoise for the tyranny of interventionism
Yeah, while I am sympathetic to the point, this thought experiment is easily observable to not be anywhere close to how the world actually functions.
But yes, Capitalism is functionally a manifestation of various forms of material and labor scarcity. It is trivial to demonstrate that markets break down at both scarcity extremes.
Yeah, that adds some spice to the discussion! How does the scarcity of pins and labor fit into the scenario? And how does the perspective change as we enter a post-scarcity world?
Ensuring that people have good working conditions and they’re not exploited is actually the opposite of tyranny.
Absolutely. But is working a half-day for full wages a decent working condition that should be provided to all workers? And again, who is going to enforce that rule?
It’s ensured by the workers owning the means of production and holding the power of the state in their hands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat
Is that achievable in the real world? The problem with any system is that power tends to be wielded by “representatives”
It’s not like it’s some sort of a hypothetical. China lifted 800 million people out of poverty just over the past few decades. You can also read up on USSR and what it managed to accomplish while it was around.
And did the oppressive state “wither away” into a Dictatorship of the Proletariat as hypothesized by Marx in both instances? Or was the tyranny of the bourgeoisie simply replaced by the tyranny of the state?
That’s completely wrong I’m afraid. If you actually read Marx, you’ll see that a transitional state is absolutely necessary. This is the state that withers, and it’s not something that happens overnight. Furthermore, it’s quite obviously impossible for a socialist state to wither when the world is dominated by a capitalist hegemon that actively works to undermine any socialist experiments. Only after capitalism has been defeated globally can there be any talk of the state withering.
Furthermore, it makes no sense to treat everything Marx said as dogma. A socialist state is objectively a better scenario than the tyranny of the bourgeoisie regardless of what flaws it may have. Improving things in practical terms is always more valuable than pining for utopian solutions that are unreachable.
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