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If this is Communism, where do I sign?
I've been debating over on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
raggedhalo's journal (again) about politics and economic theory. No surprises there; when one of the basic contentions being made is that the public sector is wildly corrupt and inefficient but it is better to raise taxes to cover the ensuing shortfall than to deal with the corruption and inefficiency you can expect my blood pressure to go up dramatically.
During the course of the debating, the old Communist Manifesto line about "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" was trotted out as 'basic social contract'. On the face of it, the statement seems quite unexceptionable - but when you try and pin it down, it becomes quite a slippy concept indeed. You see the question I ask is: whose definition of the word 'need' are we going to accept? Certainly nobody I asked in the debate who supported the idea that we have a moral requirement to support the needs of others was prepared to define 'need' in absolute terms, instead prevaricating furiously whenever I really asked the question.
So I set out to look elsewhere for definitions of human needs. What are human needs, and who defines them?
The United Nations defines poverty thus: They state that any person lacking any two of the following list is, according to the UN, living in poverty: Access to adequate food, access to potable water, access to shelter, access to healthcare and access to education. I think there's a basic definition of 'need' there which we can all get behind, although a definition of what level of education (am I in poverty if I can't get to postgraduate education?) counts is still needed.
Looking closer to home, I checked out Oxfam and the Government's Social Exclusion unit.
Oxfam make a big deal about how 1 person in 4 in the UK lives in Poverty. This is a staggering number - more than 15 million people. The front page of their website makes quite a to-do about eradicating poverty. But what is "poverty" in those terms? Digging through their website, we find that Oxfam defines poverty as: "Poverty is measured here as below 60 per cent of contemporary median net disposable income in 2000/01."
Go back and read that again, and think about what it means.
It means that, according to Oxfam, who are leading a poverty eradication campaign, poverty itself can never be eradicated. Simple maths tells us that a proportion of the population will always live under a set point of the median income, because that's what the median means. In other words, if you're working for Oxfam in poverty reduction, then you've got a job for life. I'm sure it's only the cynic in me that suggests this thought might have crossed the mind of whoever set this somewhat arbitary standard of 'poverty'.
But what of the Social Exclusion unit? They too are trying to end poverty - but finding how they define 'poverty' is bloody hard. Anyone would think they didn't want you to know. Eventually, I tracked down some studies (carried out by the Joseph Rowntree foundation) they were basing their statistics of poverty on, and found some of their definitions. They, like the UN, set a list of criteria of what poverty 'is'. However, their criteria differ quite markedly from the UN; their list includes things like 'Not owning or having access to a car' and 'not owning your own home'.
What is most striking about both the Oxfam and SEU definitions of poverty (and thus 'need') is that I, personally, meet their criteria for poverty. When Oxfam or government statistics are trotted out to tell you how many people live in poverty in this country, their criteria are so broad that they catch me in there.
So, the next time an Oxfam worker collars you in the street and demands you set up a standing order to help them eradicate poverty in the UK because (adopts meaningful and portentious tone of voice) "One person in four lives in poverty", just remember what the true face of poverty in the UK looks like. It looks like mine, and I'm stuffing a jammy Wagon Wheel into it whilst I'm typing this.
As I'm in poverty, can I have a handout now, please?
These catch-all, broad definitions of 'need' and 'poverty' only serve to undermine the genuine problems of a very small proportion of the population and instead all they tell me is that when people say 'from each according to his needs', those 'needs' are a very moveable concept indeed, and the definitions given seem more designed to keep the people doing the defining in comfy jobs than to actually solve any genuine problems.
What strikes me even more is that the definitions are being defined completely arbitarily; I can make up any definition to 'need' and 'poverty' and then tell you that I want to do something about them - and most people, because they never consider the assumtions being made and the definitions being used, will go along quite happily, unaware that they're being bilked.
So; if socialists can make up their own definitions of 'need', then two can play at that game:
it strikes me that what most people need is a firm kick up the arse and, thanks to my kickboxing, I have the ability to give it to them. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs indeed.
So if you'd all line up and bend over, I've got some percussive rectal encouragement to get on with.
Why did nobody ever tell me before that Communism could be this much fun?
raggedhalo's journal (again) about politics and economic theory. No surprises there; when one of the basic contentions being made is that the public sector is wildly corrupt and inefficient but it is better to raise taxes to cover the ensuing shortfall than to deal with the corruption and inefficiency you can expect my blood pressure to go up dramatically.During the course of the debating, the old Communist Manifesto line about "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" was trotted out as 'basic social contract'. On the face of it, the statement seems quite unexceptionable - but when you try and pin it down, it becomes quite a slippy concept indeed. You see the question I ask is: whose definition of the word 'need' are we going to accept? Certainly nobody I asked in the debate who supported the idea that we have a moral requirement to support the needs of others was prepared to define 'need' in absolute terms, instead prevaricating furiously whenever I really asked the question.
So I set out to look elsewhere for definitions of human needs. What are human needs, and who defines them?
The United Nations defines poverty thus: They state that any person lacking any two of the following list is, according to the UN, living in poverty: Access to adequate food, access to potable water, access to shelter, access to healthcare and access to education. I think there's a basic definition of 'need' there which we can all get behind, although a definition of what level of education (am I in poverty if I can't get to postgraduate education?) counts is still needed.
Looking closer to home, I checked out Oxfam and the Government's Social Exclusion unit.
Oxfam make a big deal about how 1 person in 4 in the UK lives in Poverty. This is a staggering number - more than 15 million people. The front page of their website makes quite a to-do about eradicating poverty. But what is "poverty" in those terms? Digging through their website, we find that Oxfam defines poverty as: "Poverty is measured here as below 60 per cent of contemporary median net disposable income in 2000/01."
Go back and read that again, and think about what it means.
It means that, according to Oxfam, who are leading a poverty eradication campaign, poverty itself can never be eradicated. Simple maths tells us that a proportion of the population will always live under a set point of the median income, because that's what the median means. In other words, if you're working for Oxfam in poverty reduction, then you've got a job for life. I'm sure it's only the cynic in me that suggests this thought might have crossed the mind of whoever set this somewhat arbitary standard of 'poverty'.
But what of the Social Exclusion unit? They too are trying to end poverty - but finding how they define 'poverty' is bloody hard. Anyone would think they didn't want you to know. Eventually, I tracked down some studies (carried out by the Joseph Rowntree foundation) they were basing their statistics of poverty on, and found some of their definitions. They, like the UN, set a list of criteria of what poverty 'is'. However, their criteria differ quite markedly from the UN; their list includes things like 'Not owning or having access to a car' and 'not owning your own home'.
What is most striking about both the Oxfam and SEU definitions of poverty (and thus 'need') is that I, personally, meet their criteria for poverty. When Oxfam or government statistics are trotted out to tell you how many people live in poverty in this country, their criteria are so broad that they catch me in there.
So, the next time an Oxfam worker collars you in the street and demands you set up a standing order to help them eradicate poverty in the UK because (adopts meaningful and portentious tone of voice) "One person in four lives in poverty", just remember what the true face of poverty in the UK looks like. It looks like mine, and I'm stuffing a jammy Wagon Wheel into it whilst I'm typing this.
As I'm in poverty, can I have a handout now, please?
These catch-all, broad definitions of 'need' and 'poverty' only serve to undermine the genuine problems of a very small proportion of the population and instead all they tell me is that when people say 'from each according to his needs', those 'needs' are a very moveable concept indeed, and the definitions given seem more designed to keep the people doing the defining in comfy jobs than to actually solve any genuine problems.
What strikes me even more is that the definitions are being defined completely arbitarily; I can make up any definition to 'need' and 'poverty' and then tell you that I want to do something about them - and most people, because they never consider the assumtions being made and the definitions being used, will go along quite happily, unaware that they're being bilked.
So; if socialists can make up their own definitions of 'need', then two can play at that game:
it strikes me that what most people need is a firm kick up the arse and, thanks to my kickboxing, I have the ability to give it to them. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs indeed.
So if you'd all line up and bend over, I've got some percussive rectal encouragement to get on with.
Why did nobody ever tell me before that Communism could be this much fun?
Re: To each according to her needs
The only way 'money' is increased is by people deciding that some services are more deserving of 'nesting tokens' than others
If your idea that money is simply a replacement for barter between people and nothing more is correct, then the above statement is plainly wrong because simply adding more people (and thus more barter) to the system increases the amount of money.
Not only this, but an increase in the resources within the system also increases the amount of money, because the amount of potential barter (money can exist in potentia, you see, and most of it does) is also increased. Resources not only are natural resources and manufactured goods, but they also exist in the form of 'ideas'. The economy of the UK is now a service-based economy based upon energy and idea trading. When an economy recognises the value of intangibles, such as ideas and concepts, and is willing to pay for them, it has moved beyond the basic barter economy which you outline above.
However, money is not simply a replacement for barter - it was 3000 years ago, but fiscal econmicis has developed a bit since then. Thus, not only is your basic contenion incorrect, but you're drawing incorrect conclusions from it.
Re: To each according to her needs
1. Medium of exchange
2. Store of Value
3. Unit of Account
Perhaps simplistically, I related my thoughts to the idea of Commodity money, which are (or at least used to be) related to the Gold Reserves of the UK. What we have now is a Fiat money system, which rather than being based on Italian cars, is more related to the performance of the country's trade against other nations. Money as a unit of account helps us gauge the differences between, say, a tin of beans and a house.
Now, I never said that 'barter' had to be a physical aspect. In fact, it's more of a promissory note. If you tell me a story that amuses me, then I will give you a note. Olaf the butcher owes me a piece of meat, but if you take that to him, he'll give you the meat instead.
No matter how many gypsies come to my door selling lucky heather, I'm not going to have any more money to give them. There's the possibility that I might end up giving them more money than I intended, but that money doesn't come from nowhere, and means that I have to restrict my spending on other things.
Despite interest rates and currency exchanges, and superannuation, it is, still just a fancy barter. There's not one concept extant in any degree of finance which doesn't have a correlation in the most basic exchange of goods and services.
But anyway, I haven't got time to open Keynes now - I've got slacking to get on with!
Re: To each according to her needs
Well, you could have more money to give them by getting a better paid job. That's my strategy and it's worked pretty well for me.
Flippancy aside, you do have more money to give them than you would have done in the past. This is due to the increased wealth of society meaning you personally have more than your ancestors did.
Re: To each according to her needs
Society isn't any wealthier than 'the past'. It is, however, more balanced. The excesses of the Aristocracy have been diffused and opened to the working man. Instead of sitting at a wooden table with his turnip, he now sits on his sofa with his pot noodle. We have more 'things', admittedly, but the production/marketing/sale of those things gives people more money to buy 'things'. It's a circle of perpetuity, and the only net loser or gainer is the earth, who we have to savage to find materials to make those 'things', whereas anything that pulls away from the circle has to pretend that a good is possessed of more value than it actually takes to create it.
Re: To each according to her needs
If having more money and things isn't wealth, then what is?
Re: To each according to her needs
I suppose I'd define it as security, comfort, earning more than you spend a month and being able to afford better quality items than those which are utilitarian.
Of course, those luxuries are only defined in relation to others in your society. Maybe that's it - you can only appreciate wealth if you're surrounded by those who are poorer than you.
Re: To each according to her needs
Re: To each according to her needs
I'm on less than the median and I'm blooming miserable about it.
Re: To each according to her needs
I just choose to look on the positive and remain cheerful in the face of adversity. Hopefully I'll make some money soon, mind.
Re: To each according to her needs