20
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by Lemmygradwontallowme@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net

curious-marx

Something something rent, profit of enterprise, and interest are surplus value under the rule of Capital

all 17 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] FuckyWucky@hexbear.net 21 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Among socialist countries, it's easily modern China but even then their finance sector is still mostly under Government control.

No socialist country would come even close to the kind of financial excess like the US.

[-] Lemmygradwontallowme@hexbear.net 8 points 2 weeks ago

Makes sense... IDC if its under govt control, finance is finance

[-] FuckyWucky@hexbear.net 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Ultimately there is always some financing. Erstwhile socialist countries also had a Ministry of Finance and a Central Bank (eg Gosbank). Workers have to be paid, they have to buy goods and services.

[-] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 6 points 2 weeks ago

There's a pretty big qualitative difference between privately controlled central banks that safeguard the interests of the international bourgeoisie, like the US Federal Reserve, vs China's state operated financial ecosystem. China is ultimately not in the business of making money out of money, they use finance as a means to an end of mutual development with their trading partners.

[-] Lemmygradwontallowme@hexbear.net 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

they use finance as a means to an end of mutual development with their trading partners.

Huh, that explains why. So finance under socialism, unlike Industry or Agriculture, is not really an economic sector as much as it is a tool, which explains the predominance of industry in socialist countries.

[-] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 3 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, exactly, because finance doesn't produce anything. Broadly speaking, any money a financier takes home is rent. A socialist country should understand that finance doesn't produce any value by itself, and is only capable of extracting profits by stripping the value away from industry in the form of rents. That phenomenon is the whole driving force of imperialism: where industrial capital is the centralizing force that socializes labor and unites it with capital to produce commodities at a large scale, finance capital goes backward and deindustrializes an economy by adding more friction between industrial capital and labor; eventually finance capital captures industrial capital completely and gains freedom of movement across the world, and when finance capital can freely move across the world it quickly starts to divide it and claim it for the interest of large capitalists.

I like this brief Yanis Varoufakis interview in China where he explains how China and the US are totally different in how they've managed financial crises.

[-] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It would also be China but if that answer is unsatisfying because China was already mentioned then probably Vietnam.

This is vibes based analysis though, I don't have any data

[-] Drewfro66@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I think the important thing to point out is that with Agriculture/Peasants and Industry/Proles, these represent a dialectic contradiction: within a mode of production there is an oppressing class and an oppressed class.

A "Finance Socialist" state would not be run by the oppressors within the Financial system - it would be run by the oppressed. Just as the PRC is not ruled by landlords and the USSR was not ruled by Capitalists.

Who exactly the oppressed class under the Public Finance mode of production (if it can even be considered a distinct mode of production) would be is the important question. I think as we transition deeper into a "Gig Economy" world, the answer is the Lumpenproletariat.

[-] Lemmygradwontallowme@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

Who exactly the oppressed class under the Public Finance mode of production (if it can even be considered a distinct mode of production) would be is the important question.

Huh, I never really thought of that

I think as we transition deeper into a "Gig Economy" world, the answer is the Lumpenproletariat.

Lumpenprole?

I think I'm kinda biased in that lumpenprole aren't exactly proles but a marginalized and totally disenfranchised chaotic wildcard class without much relation to the productive forces, that may ally randomly with proletarian and bourgeois forces, so I have my doubts...

I don't trust a mixed bag for something relating to the commanding heights of the economy

Personally, I'd rather go the Lenin route and fully restructure the financial sector to be more suited for conventional working class ranks; from peasants and proletariat...

Capitalist culture has created large-scale production, factories, railways, the postal service, telephones, etc., and on this basis {that socialism seizes, if not creates} the great majority of the functions of the old "state power" have become so simplified and can be reduced to such exceedingly simple operations of registration, filing, and checking that they can be easily performed by every literate person, can quite easily be performed for ordinary "workmen's wages", and that these functions can (and must) be stripped of every shadow of privilege, of every semblance of "official grandeur".

[-] Utter_Karate@hexbear.net 3 points 2 weeks ago

China again. Dedollarization will be very slow and very inevitable. There will never be a single moment for anyone to point to, just a gradual shift to where American sanctions have less and less of an effect. The Soviet Union would have made a very big deal out of reducing the influence of the dollar. China will shatter the dollar dependancy of the entire world and pretend like nothing happened. And no one else can point to it either, because if you point it out you make it worse. It is what I look forward to the most, even if I know I will never get a moment of triumph but instead at some point realize that this shift already happened years ago.

[-] btbt@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

Easily Yugoslavia

this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
20 points (100.0% liked)

askchapo

22814 readers
412 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS