[duairc]

Why is socialism a top-down technocratic solution? What is top-down about the abolition of private property and workers owning the means of production?

Also, what is “human thriving”? I find that capitalists use vague terms like this to mean “good”, and when you push them for a definition, they give you a contrived one which makes capitalism look good, but no satisfying justification or explanation for why this is should be what the structure of society should be optimised for.

[nickff]

Abolition of property rights is usually down through coercive means by some agent of the state, hence it is top-down.

"Human thriving" can be defined any number of ways, including wealth, health, liberty (positive or negative), freedom, happiness, environmental factors, etc. Most capitalists define thriving as improvement in some or all of these areas. You are correct that a vague definition of "thriving" can be self-serving, but it is hard to find any factor which socialist countries have made more progress in than less socialist countries. Even a socialist country (i.e. China or India) which frees its markets and creates property rights sees a substantial gain in the rate of improvement of the lives of its citizens in almost every aspect.

[duairc]

> Abolition of property rights is usually down through coercive means by some agent of the state, hence it is top-down.

No it's not? Property rights themselves can only be enforced through some agent of the state, hence they are top down. Abolition of private property means abolition of the state.

I mentioned this in another post in this thread, but take the example of a house you rent from a landlord. Under capitalism, it's not your house, even though you use it. It's the landlord's, because ultimately the landlord can use the coercive power of the state to remove you if you stop paying rent. If you abolish the state, then it simply becomes your house, and the landlord can no longer claim ownership over that which they do not use.

[dragonwriter]

> If you abolish the state, then it simply becomes your house, and the landlord can no longer claim ownership over that which they do not use.

If you abolish the state, anyone can claim ownership over anything they want, they'll just have to muster their own force to enforce the claim since there is no state to impose force on behalf of any claimant.

[scarmig]

This isn't borne out, though, by actual experience.

Plenty of economic goods are not secured by codified property rights, defined and enforced from above. Communities are able to self-organize to define a reasonable set of behavioral norms. Local knowledge can be leveraged to generate better outcomes, and locality allows different communities to experiment with what actually works best, making the system as a whole more fault tolerant.

See the work of Elinor Ostrom for several deeply investigated examples of this kind of organizing.

[ameister14]

It actually is. While plenty of economic goods may not be secured by codified property rights and instead are secured through the application of community norms, when those norms are challenged community does have to apply force.

See: the majority of human history, particularly Pythagoras' attempt at community, every war for conquest, anarchic systems created in early Iceland/Scandinavia, normal people's experiences with bullies, etc.

[dragonwriter]

> This isn't borne out, though, by actual experience.

Yes, actually, the fact that, in the absence of a state (and, in fact, even in the presence of a de jure state but the absence of an effective state), people are free to claim whatever, but their ability to enforce a claim is dependent on their ability to muster force to press it is well established by experience.

> Plenty of economic goods are not secured by codified property rights, defined and enforced from above.

I don't disagree with that, but its not relevant to anything I said.

> Communities are able to self-organize to define a reasonable set of behavioral norms.

Again, I don't disagree (in fact, that's what a democratic state is.)

> Local knowledge can be leveraged to generate better outcomes, and locality allows different communities to experiment with what actually works best, making the system as a whole more fault tolerant.

And, yet again, I don't necessarily disagree with that in general (though I do think it is an overgeneralization), and, again, it doesn't contradict anything I said.

>

[dragonwriter]

> Abolition of property rights is usually down through coercive means by some agent of the state, hence it is top-down.

Creation of property rights is always done through coercive means by the State. In the absence of such action, there are no property rights.

[nickff]

This is not necessarily the case, and depends on your view of rights. If you believe in natural, self evident rights, (such as owning one's self,) then property rights can be derived in a number of ways. This is only one example, as there are a number of ways to establish property rights, some of which involve state coercion, and some of which do not.

[dragonwriter]

> If you believe in natural, self evident rights, (such as owning one's self,) then property rights can be derived in a number of ways.

Whether or not you believe in such rights, they are different kind of thing than legal rights and (notably) cannot be abolished. Confusing natural (i.e., moral) rights and legal rights is the fallacy of equivocation (and is equivalent to conflating a fact proposition with a value proposition.)

Creation of legal property rights is always a top-down action by the State. It may be justified by a belief in certain inherent, unalterable moral rights (as, equally, can the abolition of legal property rights -- which is simply the State declining to continue to impose coercive means to uphold certain property rights), but that doesn't change that the mechanism by which they imposed is top-down, coercive action by the State.

[ameister14]

It's not really the fallacy of equivocation, since legal rights follow natural rights and he's not confusing the two.

Property rights are not necessarily externally applied. As you can apply use to the area around you, you can use your natural rights in order to claim property and protect it through force. In this way you are innately a sovereign. When you join in a community, you give up some of your natural rights to the state, particularly as regards the application of force.

[dragonwriter]

> legal rights follow natural rights

Legal rights, as I said previously, may be motivated by beliefs about natural/moral rights, but they are, purely and simply, a decision by the State to use coercive measures to exclude some actions. And they may also not be motivated by any belief about "natural rights". Natural rights, except as a rhetorical device to claim the moral high ground in arguments about what decisions the State should make in terms of imposing coercive power on behalf of one or the other conflicting claimants in a class of actual or hypothetical disputes, don't actually have any direct bearing on, really, anything.

> As you can apply use to the area around you, you can use your natural rights in order to claim property and protect it through force.

You can use your physical capacity to exclude people from actions (whether or not they relate to an entity in which you claim a property right, and whether or not any "natural rights" exist or have any bearing on the situation). You belief about the existence and scope of natural rights might have an impact on where you choose to exercise that physical capacity, but, again, that's pretty much beside the point.

> When you join in a community, you give up some of your natural rights to the state

That's a rather controversial claim; many of those who believe in the existence of "natural rights" also believe that a fundamental distinguishing feature of "natural rights" is that they are inalienable -- that is, they cannot be transferred or surrendered.

[nickff]

I did not confuse anything, you left the type of right undefined. I assumed that the undefined right could be either moral or legal, whereas you interpret "right" to mean "legal right" unless explicitly stated otherwise. This has been an unfortunate misunderstanding.

[dragonwriter]

> you left the type of right undefined

No, the post I responded to was about the abolition of rights, which restricts it to the class of rights (legal, not moral) for which that phrase is meaningful.

Context matters.

> whereas you interpret "right" to mean "legal right" unless explicitly stated otherwise.

No, I interpret it to mean "legal right" when it is used in a context in which what is being discussed is only meaningful for legal rights.

[ahomescu1]

If I hold something in my hand, it's practically my property. The state doesn't have to come in and say "that which you hold in your hand is yours", it's pretty much a given fact.

[ameister14]

That's not accurate. Absent a state, I can still create property rights, and enforce them through the personal application of force.

[thatswrong0]

> What is top-down about the abolition of private property and workers owning the means of production?

What isn't? How could you get individuals to give up their property without the use of force, which would most likely come from the state?

[jahaja]

I would say that the enforcement of private property is what requires the top-down approach. Not the abolishment of private property.

e.g: If I would build my house at someones former vast private property (land). The property owner would somehow have to enforce he's or her's private property. Today this is done through the state.

[crusso]

And without the state I couldn't just have a few of my employees or friends burn your house down?

This whole argument of whether property rights or lack of property rights is due to a State is fundamentally misguided. The State is just force, and whether that force creates property rights or destroys common understanding of property rights depends upon how that force is applied.

[jahaja]

Of course. I agree with you, hence the "Today" in the last sentence. Tomorrow it might be other kinds of states or similar entities. The first sentence was however badly formulated.

So it's true that a stateless society would need to defend against groups of thugs or similar just as we do today. This would probably be done in a decentralized manner rather than a paid centralized institution like today. The idea is to build a society that people would want to defend.

So hopefully people would organise against thugs that claim private property rights, or also risk being exposed to them themselves.

[duairc]

You have it completely backwards. Private property itself can't exist without the use of force and the state. If you abolish the state, you abolish private property.

Let's say you're renting a house from some landlord. You live in this house, so it should be yours, right? The landlord already has another house that they live in. But it's not yours, it's the landlord's. Why is it the landlord's? Because if you stop paying rent, they can kick you out. How? Ultimately, by using the force of the state to remove you. If you get abolish private property (i.e., the state), then there is no “force” that makes the house the landlord's. It simply becomes your house.

Abolishing private property doesn't mean getting individuals to “give up” their property, it means people can no longer use force to claim ownership over that which they do not use.

[anoncowherd]

>> Private property itself can't exist without the use of force and the state. If you abolish the state, you abolish private property.

Really now? If the State ceased to exist tomorrow, do you think you and everyone you know would go on a killing spree, because no one would have "the right to live" anymore?

Without the State, would you and your friends go forcefully take everyone else's (non-)property because property rights would cease to exist? Or would everyone perhaps willingly part with all their belongings because they believed their property rights had vanished with the State?

Would you and your friends go rape all the women you could get your hands on, purely because without the State, people would no longer have the right to control their own bodies?

.. See what I'm getting at here? Perhaps you'd like to reconsider who's got it completely backwards?

[hackinthebochs]

Of course not many people will go on a rampage. But the right to life is an entirely different beast than the right to property. It seems obvious to me that private property (the "right" to sole use of property) exists merely by decree of laws and without it, it simply doesn't exist. In the natural state one can only own what they can successfully defend. The concept of private property outsources that defense to the state and thus one ends up capable of accumulating far more property than one could defend in the natural state.

>Without the State, would you and your friends go forcefully take everyone else's (non-)property because property rights would cease to exist

No, but in a scenario where a bank was attempting to evict me from my home and I had nowhere else to go, I would defend my claim to said property.

[anoncowherd]

>> But the right to life is an entirely different beast than the right to property. It seems obvious to me that private property (the "right" to sole use of property) exists merely by decree of laws and without it, it simply doesn't exist

Do you need a law to tell you you're allowed to defend yourself if someone attacks you? .. Do you not have that "right" by virtue of being a human being?

Are you only allowed to defend your property if there's a government that says you have property rights?

>> in a scenario where a bank was attempting to evict me from my home and I had nowhere else to go, I would defend my claim to said property

Presumably, you'd have voluntarily signed a contract with the bank, and voluntary assumed the risks involved in it, yes? If your contract with the bank says they get your home if you can't pay back your loan, then it's no longer your property after the clause has been triggered.

If you did forcefully defend "your claim to said property" even when it's no longer your property, that would be a job for some kind of "dispute resolution organization".

[hackinthebochs]

The talk of 'rights' are muddying the issue. A 'right' necessarily entails responsibilities onto other entities. These responsibilities must be agreed upon beforehand for a 'right' to be said to exist. I know, it is common for discussions of natural rights as in collective responsibility that exists outside of any agreed upon framework. But careful examination of such a claim reveals it to be impotent. I have no reason to acknowledge your right to the sole use of 1M acres of land unless there was some mutually agreed upon framework beforehand. Once we reach the level of mutual agreement (and some enforcement clause) we have just invented government.

The only 'natural right' I agree with is the right to life and non-interference. Everything else requires an agreed upon framework and thus are purely by decree.

[dragonwriter]

> If the State ceased to exist tomorrow, do you think you and everyone you know would go on a killing spree, because no one would have "the right to live" anymore?

You not having a right to something doesn't mean I don't have better uses for my time and effort than taking it from you.

[anoncowherd]

Government not existing wouldn't mean you don't have rights.

[jahaja]

You're confusing and wildy mixing basic human morality with politically/economically motivated laws.

[anoncowherd]

And he wasn't? :p

To be more accurate, I'm simply pointing out that we all have the exact same rights regardless of what a government does/says, or whether one even exists at all.

Our rights manifest themselves in the way people naturally behave.

[leot]

"... the way people naturally behave."

How is it that people "naturally" behave, exactly? Keep in mind that the way we behave in civilized society is a product of having been raised in civilized society. We have internalized social norms that have been codified into laws, and behave accordingly.

If you look at history, or at any place where the consequences of behavior are removed (e.g. the behavior of people to whom laws don't typically apply), you will find that for the most part, people often behave extremely poorly to each other. Indeed, you'll find that game theory and selfishness best predicts how people treat each other. Law of the jungle, and all that.

[ameister14]

Technically, we give up some of our rights to the state; the right to enter into a state of war, for example. There are notable exceptions to this but it's really dependent on community norms in those cases.

[jahaja]

Is your point that private-property is in line with how people naturally behave?

I'm not really sure what is meant by rights. It's surely so subjective that it loses it's purpose.

[icegreentea]

Well, strictly speaking, abolishing the state does not prevent the use of force - it simply removes a single arbitrator of force. If the state were abolished, then the landlord is free to use his own force to attempt to remove you. If this works or not / is a good idea or not for the landlord depends on the situation (ie does he believe that you can come back and retaliate with more force than he himself can muster).

[hkarthik]

yeah we tried that in the middle ages. It was called feudalism :)

[dragonwriter]

> What is top-down about the abolition of private property and workers owning the means of production?

Inherently? Nothing. But that's the goal, and socialism is more than the goal, its the means: if you do that through the State, its "socialism". If you do part or all of it within a community by non-state means, its something else (anarcho-syndicalism, for instance.)

Since capitalist states tend to impose structural disincentives or barriers to effectively altering relationships in this way, it may in practice to make changes through the State to achieve to goals even if those seeking them are not in favor of State action as an ideal (e.g., you can, within a community subject to a State with a capitalist view of property rights, perhaps restrict the impact of private property rights between members of the group, e.g., by contract, but you cannot force the State to withdraw from imposing certain models of property without exercising power through the State to make the change.)

[JackFr]

It's top-down, because to engage in any endeavor of size requires some sort of organization 1) to actually direct the organization and 2) to amass the necessary physical capital necessary for the enterprise.

Capitalism solves those two problems through the modern corporation which by selling tradeable claims on the profits (through shares) and the owners (shareholders) through an elected board hiring of directors hiring managers.

Other systems which we have seen through history solve those problems through taxation and either appointment from the political class or professional bureaucracy. That is why it's top down.

(While the latter system may seem appealing, it's feedback and informational characteristics are even worse than that for capitalist managers.)