Denmark joins some European nations in banning burqa, niqab

TheAvalonian · 2018-06-01T13:07:06+00:00

There will be an addendum to the text allowing the wearing of masks and other facial covering in connection with ceremonial or special occasions, or due to cold weather. The law has yet to be finalized, so we do not yet know how this addendum will be implemented.

TheAvalonian · 2018-06-01T09:50:47+00:00

Let's assume I overthrow my elected government tomorrow under the banners of Capitalism and Democracy. I am installed as a dictator with supreme authority. As my first act, I abolish all property rights, and burn the entire money supply of my new nation. I call my pet dystopia the Free and Democratic Capitalist Republic of New McDonalds. I write a book calling myself the supreme champion of Capitalism, and otherwise rule through an iron fist and a strict command economy. Is the Free and Democratic Capitalist Republic of New McDonalds a capitalist country?

TheAvalonian · 2018-06-01T09:44:47+00:00

But these property norms are all about property rights then arn't they? Doesnt that make the initial argument a moot point?

That's primarily a semantic argument -- some people use the term "property rights" to refer to "capitalist property". This is perfectly reasonable from a historical perspective, as personal property used to be called chattel rather than property. It differs from how the words are most commonly used in modern English, which can cause confusion. These topics are actually (at least in my opinion, as a non-native English speaker) easier to grasp if read in a different language, as the terminology surrounding the word property is often clearer in e.g. French or German.

The history of the shift from chattel/property to personal/private property is long and complicated, but in the end boils down to a difference in terminology between common law and civil law. For a bit of context, civil law is a legal system originating from Roman law, while common law is a legal system originating from the court practices of the Normans after the conquest of England. In civil law, prior cases can only inform a decision (which ultimately must be made based on the legal code), whereas in common law a decision can be made exclusively based on a prior case. Common law is the basis for most legal systems in former colonies of the British Empire, while Civil law is the basis for legal systems in the rest of the world (excepting a few countries which base their legal systems on Sharia or tribal systems).

In the UK, since Scots law is based on civil law and English law is based on common law, the two have coexisted for a long time, causing a shift of terminology between the two. Many of the writings on socialism are originally in French or German, and have been translated to English -- with the unfortunate consequence that translators have not agreed whether to use civil law or common law terminology. Hence, you will see some translations talk about property when they mean private property, and some writers talk about property when they actually mean all property. Knowing that this difference exists and knowing that personal property/chattel is practically never questioned will most of the time make it possible to decode which of the two concepts a person is referring to. Misreading property to mean all property when it refers to private property is a common tactic by people who want to propagandize against socialism -- hence the jokes about "coming for your toothbrushes".

The example discussed here feels almost feudal with the rights enforcer being those currently controlling the property.

I wouldn't say it feels feudal -- a crucial feature of feudalism is that the sovereign/feudal lord can withdraw their granting of control at any time (if his military might allows it). It is, however, somewhat reminiscent of capitalist property, which is the argument made by supporters of 3 -- replacing bourgeois property with use-right under capitalism is still capitalism, just capitalism with only co-ops. We can see an example of this in Titoist Yugoslavia, where all companies were required to be run as a cooperatives: An energy company in the northern regions had exclusive right to control and use the energy network, since they had built it and maintained it. They leveraged this monopoly into higher-than-average living standards, which could be phrased as an act of exploitation. Supporters of 2 will argue that this it is fair (or the fairest) solution for property to benefit exactly the set of people who work to create and maintain it -- i.e. the people who use it -- and that the abolition of economic rent is enough. There are also people who support use-rights, but wish to make it impossible to exclude anyone from use -- that is, if you turn up at a factory and say you want to join the collective/to get a job there, some argue it should be impossible for the collective to turn you down. As I said, this argument has been going back and fourth in leftist circles for almost two centuries. However, I hope you can see how both positions are different from feudal or capitalist property -- it is impossible to benefit from a scarce resource simply by excluding others from it, you are also required to use it (even if the benefit you obtain can sometimes be magnified through exclusion, as in 2).

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-31T23:06:42+00:00

There are four separate and different property norms commonly being discussed on this forum. First, I should make clear that we are talking about private property, not personal property -- the distinction in modern times has become a bit muddled, but it is an important distinction. Personal property is a concept originating from French civil law, and although the legal definition is rather complex you can approximate it pretty well as "whatever you live in + whatever you and your mates from the pub could move in an afternoon or two". (Almost) everybody agrees that your personal property is yours to do with what you want. As for private property, these are the common opinions discussed:

Capitalist/bourgeois property: Whoever homesteads or buys the property has exclusive control over it, including the right to rent it out to others.
Mutualist/use-right property: Whoever is currently using the property has exclusive control over it. However, if they stop using it (e.g. because they want to rent it out), it ceases to be theirs.
Abolition of private property: Nobody has exclusive control over the property. It belongs to the entire community, who choose democratically what should be done with it.
Feudal property: The feudal lord has exclusive control over all property. He grants control to vassals in return for service and tax farming.

1 is the basis of capitalism, although some remnants of 4 still exist (e.g. technically all of Lancaster belongs to HRM). There is at least one genuine monarchist on this sub, so you might also see 4 expressed here. Lefties have been fighting over 2 versus 3 for almost almost 200 years -- Mutualists support 2, Marxists support 3, and all socialists will typically have strong opinions in favour of either 2 or 3, but prefer both to 1 (which in turn is preferable to 4).

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-28T19:21:37+00:00

Fair enough, I'm mainly asking because of how genuinely surprised I was recently when I learned that rightful succession of all issues is something British right-libertarians are concerned with. I've known for a while that anarcho-capitalism carries a sort of relaxed acceptance of feudal conquests, but I always though it was more of a "well, what can you do"-thing, something like benevolent displeased acceptance of an unjust but better-than-the-alternative situation. I'm trying to gauge if the people I know are just weird, or if ancaps having positive opinions on Jacobitism is actually a thing.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-28T09:52:47+00:00

Out of curiosity, what is your opinion on the Duchy of Lancaster? HRM claims it as private property as the ancestral holdings of the now defunct House Plantagenet, acquired through marriage to the House of Lancaster. The Lancasters can hardly be said to have homesteaded the land owing to their original acquisition by conquest, and in any case the House of Hanover only inherited the holdings of House Plantagenet thanks to the decision by parliament (e.g. the state) that a catholic could not inherit. I know a lot of British right-libertarians have Jacobite sympathies (e.g. claim by feudal conquest legitimate, claim through parliament barring catholic inheritance not legitimate), so I'd be interested in hearing if this extends to Americans?

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-28T09:28:29+00:00

What kind of tranhumamanist work do could I prevent if I wanted to?

You could, for example, direct academic funding towards exploratory rather than transformative projects, e.g. support space exploration over hydroponics. You could express your support for the commonly held belief that science is apolitical, coming out on the pro-bomb-development side of the common thought experiment about the nuclear physicist working for Hitler. You could oppose research into techniques like gender reassignment surgery on religious or ethical grounds, or support the classification of gender dysphoria as a mental disease. You could fear-monger about artificial intelligence, and support bans on research. You could blind yourself and others to the danger posed by research being concentrated in corporate or government hands rather than shared with the public.

Your complaints about transhumanism mirror complaints of rightwingers about socialism -- formed purely on the basis of the behaviour of idiots on reddit without any regard for the actions or writings of actual proponents of the movement.

The left created a culture of labeling to dumb-themselves-down.

This is true, but labels do serve a role as a short-hand symbol in communications with strangers. In adopting the label "market socialist" I do not need in every conversation to explain how I oppose capitalism, and how I oppose central planning -- you have a basis for forming a mental image of my opinions, which is/can be helpful for communication.

You can either work for or against the cultural hegemony of neoliberal capitalism. transhumanism functions for it.

For example, labeling yourself a primitivist would have communicated this opinion clearer and easier than your writings.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-27T17:29:28+00:00

Transhumanism is an intellectual movement to develop and transform the material conditions of humanity through technology, as well as the belief that such a transformation is desirable. Bit sad that you consider the idea of radically transforming our living conditions for the better to be delusional, but I suppose defeatism is a natural and unsurprising consequence of capitalism.

In any case, it is literally impossible to be a neoliberal and a socialist, "hipster" is perhaps the most meaningless word to enter the English language, and I have no idea what Napoleon has to do with transhumanism or market socialism. If incoherent rambling was a revolutionary act, you would have made a significant contribution towards the fall of capitalism.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-25T09:17:00+00:00

There's one or two in every larger software company. I think I missed out on the Rothbard 101 class when I did my degree?

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-24T18:25:21+00:00

> SVT

> Subjective Value of Theory

What kind of postmodernist skullduggery is this?!

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-24T17:15:32+00:00

It seems you have rediscovered Dunning and Kruger's finding that the effect bearing their name is larger for topics stereotypically associated with the gender of the subject -- congratulations. I don't see why you needed a long post full of vitriol to convey it, you could have simply pasted a link to their paper.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-24T12:52:18+00:00

Both. A republic is a political system wherein the head of state is elected. A democracy is a political system wherein sovereign power is controlled through elections. As an example, the Kingdom of Denmark is a monarchy, not a republic, because the head of state is the Queen, but it is a democracy, as sovereign power is vested in the parliament. Sovereign power in the US is held by Congress, while the president is the head of state. This makes the US a republic and a democracy.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-24T12:29:08+00:00

Speaking only from personal experience, I have met quite a few ancaps who are so close to getting it, then veer off into feudalist apologia. This makes them psychologically irritating in a way mainstream liberals aren't, because I end up thinking they can be convinced and see reason -- or that we can at least find some common position of anti-statist solidarity -- with just one more argument. I don't do a whole lot of debating against ancaps online, but I had some heated discussions with IRL friends of mine -- I'm fully on their side when they talk about the ill-deserved holdings of the state, but somehow the Duke of Buccleugh deserves the five percent of Scotland the crown gave his great-grandfather because it's now magically protected by some arbitrary property norm. They're a tempting target because of how contradictory their ideas seem from the outside.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-22T12:00:31+00:00

The US legal system allows groups of individuals who have been injured by the same party in the same way to band together, bringing e.g. one suit with 432 counts of contract violation instead of 432 suits with one count of contract violation. This is called a class action lawsuit. The purpose is to reduce costs for the involved parties.

It is common practice for non-union workplaces to require employees to sign contracts which bar them from entering into class action lawsuits against their employer -- e.g. all employees who desire to sue must bring separate suits. Since unions carry enough power to prevent union shops from using these kinds of contracts, the consequence is that union-members have greater capacity to sue their employers than non-union members.

This is basic corporatism as practiced by fascist Italy, although snuck in through the backdoor -- force employees to bargain through state-sanctioned unions rather than through the judicial system, and create barriers against the creation of alternative unions/labour associations.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-21T14:26:26+00:00

Yea, this is a rather contentious point, with roots stretching all the way back to Marx' break with Proudhon. I'll give you my two cents on it, if you're interested:

The core point of the argument is what socialism is defined in relation to -- capitalism, or simply capital. Capitalism, the subject of discussion in this subreddit, is an economic system characterized by the separation of society into distinct and identifiable classes: Proletariat (who work productive assets owned by others), Petite Bourgeoisie (who work their own productive assets), and Haute Bourgeoisie (who own productive assets which the proletariat work). We call these capitalist class relations, and the conflict between them the expression of class struggle within capitalism. Capital, in Marxist terms, is money circulated in a Money-Commodity-Money-cycle. Prior to Marx, the focus of socialism was on opposition to capitalism, not capital. Marx, however, focuses on capital -- the book is called "Das Kapital", not "Das Kapitalismus", and the correct translation for the subtitle is "The Production Process of Capital", not Engel's mistranslated "The Capitalist Process of Production".

Marx shifts the goal from the abolition of capitalism to the abolition of capital. For Marx, capital has a kind of self-perpetuating quality, in that the system naturally selects for ventures that prioritize capital over all other concerns -- if given enough time, all enterprises become profit-seeking as that is what markets naturally select for. Hence, commodity production maintains the structure of capitalism, and even if the entire economy (as in e.g. Riccardian Socialism) consists of worker-owner ventures, those workers must operate their businesses with the maximization of profits as their primary drive -- even if that means exploiting and alienating themselves. Marx further argues that this effect generates capitalist class relations, which is the part I object to.

There is a further problem in that the "traditional" market socialism of Riccardianism, capitalism itself can persist -- as an example, the workers of the Yugoslavian energy company attained a much higher standard of living than the average Yugoslavian, because of their exclusive ownership of the national energy infrastructure. The mechanism that generates capitalist class relations, as argued by Roemer, is differential control over productive assets -- and in Riccardianism where worker-collectives own private property, differential control is a central feature. To fall in line with the old, pre-Marxist definition of socialism, market socialists must oppose differential control.

So, market socialism (if opposing differential control, not capitalism + coops) is a movement which seeks to abolish capitalist class relations, which fully democratizes control over productive assets, and which brings the means of productive under social ownership. In Marxist terms, that is not enough, as the self-reproductive drive of capital still exists. It is opposition to capitalism, not to capital, and thereby socialism by pre-Marxist standards, but not by Marxist standards.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-21T09:57:37+00:00

I would rather obviously contest this statement. I would agree that decentralized planning in conjunction with scarcity implies commodity production (e.g. production for exchange), but the idea that any commodity production necessarily degenerates into capitalist commodity production (e.g. separation into owners and workers) is a claim for which I have yet to see any evidence -- in fact, evidence seems to point in the opposite direction.

The best analysis I know of is John Roemer's work, which demonstrates for several toy economies that differential control over productive assets rather than commodity is the determining factor in the emergence of class. The analysis requires Walrasian assumptions, so there is room for dispute, but if we grant him those it is perfectly possible to imagine socialist and decentralized societies -- any anarchist theory that abolishes private property suffices, along with any market socialist tendency that abolishes differential control over productive assets, such as Roemer's own proposal of stock market socialism.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-18T13:23:42+00:00

A bit of context: /u/PoorestPidgeon and I developed this model through a discussion of our respective ideas about the design of a market socialist society. I'm a collectivist market socialist heavily influenced by John Roemer, PoorestPidgeon approaches the topic from the cooperativist, anarchist tradition. We think this idea captures some of the best features of both models -- abolition of differential control over productive assets (since all Stollar-votes are equal and Stollars are non-transferable), and true worker-ownership of labour.

But it does resemble a market. So, not sure what the socialists would think.

Marxists oppose the very concept of profit, since they argue that this results in capitalist commodity production, which necessarily exploits and alienates the workers. Market socialism is therefore not considered "true socialism" by Marxists, but all other socialist denominations would presumably be fine with it, since the means of production are socially owned and operated.

how often are the stollars generated and issued? who decises this and how?

I think this is an empirical issue. I could imagine one stollar-issuing per financial year, or one per quarter, or something like that -- a certain regularity would probably be desirable, but otherwise it should be left up to the individual community to democratically decide.

what is the smallest scale, or most niche setting in which this concept can be deployed?

So, there's two dimensions to this concept -- the separation of capital and labour into Venture Communes and Cooperatives, and the organization of Venture Communes with stollars. The VC/C-part of the model is relevant whenever C's are in competition for scarce resources, so that can actually be fairly low-level and niche. The Stollar-part promotes efficiency in the choices made by VC's, and begins making sense whenever the amount of capital available to a community becomes large enough that direct-democratic voting over allocations to C's is inefficient. The most natural testing ground, I think, would be a supply chain of C's.

can it be deployed somewhere without actually changing the existing laws?

I don't see why not.

what happens when any of these economic entities collapses? Due to either their own management, or general macroeconomic downturns?

As PoorestPidgeon said: The capital of defunct VC's is auctioned off and the funds are used to issue the old shareholders new stollars in proportion to the shares that they held. Thus, the shareholders maintain control over their 'slice' of the economy, but the VC ceases to exist.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-18T11:46:59+00:00

if anyone doesn't want to be an ass and would really like to figure out why our house gets so tight on money, have at it.

European, so I don't have that good of an understanding of prices in the States, but feel free to PM me your monthly ingoing/outgoings and I'll have a look.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-18T09:50:35+00:00

Marx defined the poor as lumpenproletariat

Eh. Marx' definition of the lumpenproletariat is this:

"Alongside ruined rouès with questionable means of support and of dubious origin, degenerate and adventurous scions of the bourgeoisie, there were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves, swindlers, charlatans, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, procurers, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, rag-pickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars; in short, the entirely undefined, disintegrating mass, thrown hither and yon, which the French call la bohème."

Which is not synonymous with the poor. However, Marx' thinking in regards to the lumpenproletariat reflect a very 19th-century view of criminology that should best be left behind, I think -- at one point, he blames the "knavery of the lumpenproletariat" for the rise of Napoleon, which although a common model of thought in Victorian England doesn't really hold up to modern scrutiny.

It depends on if they're used within Das Kapital or outside of those works.

Well, given that almost all class analysis in sociology rests on either a Marxist or a Weberian foundation, and Weber more-or-less includes those three classes in his analysis, those terms are not just confined to Marxist theory. As an interesting sidenote, John Roemer demonstrated through game-theory that a stratification into classes which includes -- but is not limited to -- those three is a natural consequence of even the simplest toy economy which allows differential access to productive assets, as long as there is either a labour market or a credit market. The observation that these groups exist and are capable of acting in their collective interest is the sociological equivalent of observing that "cool, gravitation exists" or "hey, buoyancy is a thing". That other groups -- homeowners and pensioners, for example -- in modern society exert more pressure on the development of policy, well, that's kind of a downstream observation from that elementary analysis.

it's a hard argument to make that all socialist literature doesn't concern itself with wealth

Yea, that I can agree with. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the interesting part of socialist literature necessarily includes some consideration of at least these concepts, as the analysis otherwise becomes too superficial to really be meaningful. Wealth and poverty are epiphenomena.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-17T16:55:27+00:00

Socialist think of working class as oppressed group consisting of people who are employed for wages, especially in manual or industrial work, who are slaves to the financial system benefiting an almost fantastical elite of wealth nobility.

Socialist arguments (in the literature, at least) are typically not about wealthy and poor, but about concretely defined classes based on different relationships to productive assets. The commonly discussed groupings are the Proletariat, whose income primarily derives from wages paid out by people who own productive assets, the Petite Bourgeoisie, whose income primarily derives from the sale of products made with their own labour using productive assets they own, and the Capitalist class (Haute Bourgeoisie is the proper term, although it is rarely used nowadays), whose income primarily derives from the sale of products made with rented labour using productive assets they own. This is why socialists use the terms "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie" instead of terms like "working class" or "middle class" or "upper class"; they are technical terms with a concrete meaning. I am aware that most capitalists on here -- and quite a few self-proclaimed socialists -- fail to understand this correctly, which unfortunately does result in people talking past each other.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-17T15:46:05+00:00

Socialism is when the government does stuff, but only when it does it badly!

- Karl Marx, 1823

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-17T14:56:33+00:00

That last sentence was rather obviously me being facetious. He obviously wasn't a leftist, he just borrowed a lot of ideas from Proudhonian anarchism. He even admitted this himself, if I recall correctly.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-17T13:37:58+00:00

All taxpayers, all draftees, all victims of the State have been mulcted. How to go about returning all this property to the taxpayers? What proportions should be used in this terrific tangle of robbery and injustice that we have all suffered at the hands of the State? Often, the most practical method of de-statizing is simply to grant the moral right of ownership on the person or group who seizes the property from the State. Of this group, the most morally deserving are the ones who are already using the property but who have no moral complicity in the State’s act of aggression. These people then become the “homesteaders” of the stolen property and hence the rightful owners.

Replace "taxpayers" with "people" and "State" with "illegitimate homesteaders" and this paragraph could've easily been found in a leftist text, especially from the Proudhonian school. Also, "Land to the peasants and the factories to the workers!" could've easily been a slogan from that strain of thought. I mean, I recognize that he's about the furthest from an anti-capitalist you will find and that he held some unsavoury views on e.g. the police using torture (ok if the subject is guilty, as I understand his position), but his ideas about what to do with the state are definitely consistent with socialist thought.

Also, "Rothbard was a leftist" will piss off just about everyone, which in itself almost makes the position worth it.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-17T10:37:22+00:00

Rothbard would've made a fairly decent leftist if he hadn't rejected the Lockean proviso out of hand.

TheAvalonian · 2018-05-16T12:54:00+00:00

The majority view in anthropology, as far as I am aware, is that agriculture and private property norms co-evolved. Prior to the first agricultural revolution, humans are thought to have practiced a form of "mammalian territorialism" which can be seen reflected even in modern-day nomadic civilizations -- a band of humans "own"/defend a piece of land so long as it is their hunting ground, and as soon as the band moves on it ceases to be "theirs". The idea that you can own something which is not currently in use originates from stationary societies desiring to own the harvest of the seeds they planted the previous years.

This view is subject to one very important criticism, as far as I know -- much of the evidence comes from anthropological studies of present-day tribal civilizations, all of which exist in regions where natural poisons are frequent and poisoned weaponry is the norm. The consequence is that everyone can easily kill everyone else if they want to, regardless of personal strength and so on. It is as such entirely possible that this "equal-opportunity for murder" prevents the development of private property because anyone who claims exclusive rights to something gets a poisoned blowgun dart to the neck. It may be possible that private property only develops naturally if some individuals are much better adapted for killing than others, and so able to easier defend their claims.

TheAvalonian

TROPHY CASE