“Job Creation Won’t Erase Poverty and Solve the Problems” https://tessaschlesinger.medium.com/9178ba75ca34 is an excellent essay by Tessa Schlesinger that inspired this response. (I think one part of her points was inadvertently expressed in reverse. “In order to do this, we have to make peace with the idea that allowing business to make profits instead of just breaking even (once everything is paid for) is the way to go.” I believe the intent was ‘allow businesses to just break even and not make profits’.) Her article drew the following response from me. None of the ideas presented here are new or original from me. It is a restatement of the work of others. My hope is to “bend the arc” toward justice if my recap somehow stimulates someone else to act on or spread the word about these well understood ideas.
But this (Tessa’s article) is about the promises (lies) of Capitalism and touches on its fundamental incompatibility with our existence as humans in the long term. Proponents of capitalism point out correctly that, overall, the material life of humans is far more secure and comfortable and enriched than ever before. They ascribe that material improvement to the advent of capitalism. I’m not convinced that capitalism Caused the material development of our world. It is pretty clear, though, that Capitalism removed constraints that should have been part of that growth. The idea that “the Market” (invisible hand, etc.) leads to the ideal solution of supply and demand which in turn solves all human issues was both idiotic and calamitously poisonous. The development and use fossil fuels, as we have done, could not be a more clear illustration of the problem and failure of capitalist free market ideology/fantasy.
(The magic of the “invisible hand” of the “free market” is a bunch of hand waving rhetoric that applies to only a very small aspect of the real world. Adam Smith’s depiction of it presumes so many things that are not part of reality that its practical application is next to irrelevant except as abusive, mendacious propaganda using the word “Free”. Adam Smith had good impulses, I believe. He abhorred the onslaught of the industrial revolution and was promoting a world of equality, balance and mutual benefit between the owning class and the working class. He ignored or didn’t understand the actual power of extreme or unbalanced wealth accumulated to individuals.)
First among the issues capitalism has wrought that need redress: restoring and enormously, vastly expanding the idea of a Universal “Commons”. The Environmental Movement embraces this notion only indirectly and obliquely, which is why it struggles to be effective. If there were a widespread strongly held understanding of “Commons” Public Universal ownership (IE , Right to and ownership by every individual) of water, air, minerals, wildlife, arable land, and in essence All natural resources, ESPECIALLY our own human labor, development would have gone perhaps more slowly, more wisely, more justly and happily, and better for all. Pollution of all kinds would have been considered very differently and not blithely ignored. One of the things Capitalism did was to usurp the little bit of Commons (as an idea) extant at the exit from the middle ages in order to be able dump its externalities there. We have to recognize that capitalism was happening before it emerged as an explicit economic theory or even the idea of “Economics”. It became increasingly entrenched as the industrial revolution emerged. In the broad sweep of a millennium, ideas of private ownership changed from divine right to capitalist ideology. Both have irrational, immoral “hand-waving” justifications and both are abusive, unjust and ultimately bad directions for humanity. To be clear, I don’t propose, and indeed reject totalitarian responses as an alternative. (Still, the positives of China’s transformation should not be summarily ignored.)
Another issue is Redress of the true value of work and who owns the results of work is essential to a sustainable and just society. This is a more general concept of reparations, which ultimately is more broadly and universally just. One essential nugget of Marx’s analysis of economics was the relation between Profit and the true value of work. Profit exists and capital accrues unequally because work is underpaid. Unequal Ownership of capital is what allows this to happen. Whether it’s Royalty and serfs or Capitalist Owners and workers or the (communist) State and directed workers, the essence is the same. Private ownership of land and then accumulated industrial and then abstract capital is Exactly why we are where we are. No industrial mogul builds with their own hands. That is physically impossible. They instead, through culture and politics, own a substantial part of everyone else’s labor that accumulates as their own capital. (As an aside, this is a problem with labor unions. Inherent in their approach is acceptance of the capitalist ownership paradigm that doesn’t reward the true value of work. They only try to mitigate the inequity among their members, which is to some degree pushing the problem onto others, and certainly not solving it in a meaningful way.)
Coming up yesterday: Ownership of Automation is critical to get corrected Now and moving forward. The accumulation of capital that workers for 700 years, have generated has led to the development of robotics and AI. We are facing a future in which increasing amounts of productive work formerly done by humans is done by machines. Rather than producing More stuff as automation and machines have done through the industrial revolution, robotics and AI promise to essentially eliminate the need for human labor to produce goods. The world is oversaturated with produced goods and the limits of consumerism are being understood by the wealthiest nations and indirectly by the whole world. For the wealthy to keep accumulating profits, producing still More stuff won’t work as it won’t be purchased. Instead, lowering costs to producing stuff is their short sighted path forward. Eliminating the costs of human labor is the profit motivation of the financial elite to develop robotics. Clearly this is unworkable in a system that presumes wages allow workers to also be consumers. With jobs supplanted by robots, workers won’t be able to work for wages and thus will not be able to be consumers. The system fails. Marx also anticipated this in some form as the end game of capitalism. With sufficient overall gains in capital, there will literally be no choice but to move to an alternative system. He suggested common ownership of the means of production. As it is shaping up those “means of production” would be robots and AI. It makes no sense that Bezos or Musk or Gates or Buffet types own everything as the wealth concentration trajectory suggests will happen. Overall wealth in the world is increasing and yet overall average people are increasingly insecure and angry. Clearly that is a bad trend of a bad system. It is wealth inequality, Ownership, which is the root problem. (Please don’t launch a ridiculous reductio ad absurdum argument that everyone owns everyone else’s toothbrush will be the result of communism. That’s not going to happen, ever.)
So those are some major understandings that must evolve in general public consciousness if we are to avoid self-immolation. Those changes can only happen constructively through political process. Politics is driven by general public consciousness. We, in the western world have been inculcated with “Free” market = good, socialism = bad. That is falling apart to some degree by the weight and consequences of its own lie. But because of the power of wealth and the nature of those who command it, a clear headed, sustainability minded, and justice oriented replacement notion is not readily forthcoming. The sad truth is notions like I’m promoting need a good Jingle.
There are some important things to accept about humans and organizations to move forward effectively. And to be clear I’m not an atavistic Luddite. I’m very much for material progress for humanity. But like the first principle of Doctors…First: do no harm. Science should be the basis of information for decisions. But Science in service to humanity, not profits.) The first thing is that large groups of humans can function effectively and efficiently to accomplish giant tasks, with Hierarchical Organization. The organizational structure of corporations and large businesses is effective to that purpose. Economic Progressives should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The actual problem with that structure is ownership of the capital and of the work put into the enterprise. In a just and sustainable world, the organizational structure would remain more or less the same. However, Ownership should be evenly distributed to everyone involved in the enterprise. CEO’s and boards should be elected by those same people, and their compensation also set by them. (We should recall that corporations exist Only because government allows them to exist. There is no inherent right of corporations. That they have obtained so much power is an abomination to democracy and the founding of our country.) These would be in some sense mini democratic states in which a constitution defining the structure and purpose is voted on and ratified. After that participants are bound to adhere to the rules they set. Or individuals can quit and do something else. The main point is operating by consensus or democracy on every single decision Can’t work for large enterprises and hierarchical structures are effective organizational tools. We should accept that and understand hierarchies for their organizational effectiveness and not as a basis for material rewards.
It’s important to bear in mind also that there are sociopaths everywhere. Some minority percent of humanity is just that way. All of our organizations: government and economic, have to be set up so sociopaths can’t undermine or damage them or use them to damage others. That is very clearly a serious problem right now. That’s not to say excluding or somehow banishing them, but rather directing their energies to positive outcomes, even if that’s not their intent or nature. In some circumstances they could possibly be more objective and effective in their decision making than more empathetic people might be. But they should never have power over others within an organization.
Sociopathy aside, there are wide variations in natural capacities and aptitudes of all sorts, physical and mental. We must try to grasp the idea that those variations in humanity are analogous to an ecosystem. In a stable and yet still adaptable ecosystem, all the parts have a vital though mostly inglorious function and are integral to its success even while we can’t yet grasp all the interactions of an ecosystem. So we must value that variety and variability in our humanity particularly with respect to material security. We must recognize also that there are leaders and followers by natural proclivity. That does not mean leaders are in any way more deserving of reward. But we must recognize reality and allow people to migrate to their greatest strengths and conversely not compel or encourage leadership from those not naturally inclined to it or who are inclined to it only for personal gain, especially sociopaths.
These are abstractions that can be translated into concrete policy. It will be (or seem like) a long, long process. From where we are, Justice Democrats and Our Revolution are the only political organizations effectively moving in the approximately right direction. Overall, they are about making our nominal democracy an actual honest democracy by countering the corrupting power of wealth. E.G., Manchin, Sinema, Republicans, et al. That, along with spreading notions of the Commons and Ownership I described to change the culture at large, has to be job one. Or, if you prefer, we can sit back and watch ourselves self-immolate.
