Openness formula
First of all, I declare that I am a firm socialist and I firmly believe that socialism will be realized all over the world.
On the specific road, I am in favor of Europeanism, that is, through parliamentary elections and reforms, the capitalist society will be gradually transformed into a socialist society and the bourgeois government will be transformed into a government that serves the masses. In order to quantitatively evaluate the degree of socialism in a society, I hereby put forward a concept-the degree of social public ownership.
It does not take the traditional state's mastery of the means of production as the symbol of socialism, but takes the final distribution of social wealth as the research object. All the social wealth used by the whole people, I think, can be regarded as the part of social wealth, which has been made public. The social wealth ultimately used for the whole people mainly includes government expenditure, compulsory insurance for the whole people and social donations. Government expenditure is the most important part. Expenditure comes from income, mainly including taxes, debt income, deficit income, profits paid by state-owned enterprises, etc. But it is necessary to analyze a specific government expenditure. If the government has a high degree of integrity and little corruption and waste, it can include all expenses. If there is a certain degree of corruption and waste that is not used by the whole people, points will be deducted. This concept does not apply to a government whose expenditure is basically used to maintain its own operation and rarely used for the needs of the whole people. Especially the state-owned enterprises in China. China's state-owned enterprises have implemented enterprise autonomy, that is, they only pay taxes according to law and no longer pay profits, which is no different from ordinary enterprises. I don't think the profits of state-owned enterprises in China should be included in China for the social wealth of the whole people.
Formula of public ownership: social public ownership = social wealth ultimately used by the whole people/all social wealth multiplied by 100%.
Obviously, when the degree of public ownership reaches 100%, socialism will be realized.
Second, the evaluation of capitalist economic theory
From my point of view, any reform measures to improve the degree of social public ownership are promoting the realization of socialism, whether it is the socialist party or the capitalist party. However, the degree of public ownership should be compatible with the development level of productive forces. Too high or too low a degree of public ownership will hinder the development of production and social progress. The divergence of various economic theories in the past century is the relationship between production and consumption. From my concept, it can be divided into two categories: improving the degree of public ownership and reducing the degree of public ownership. I think we should confirm the following two points: 1 Capitalist private competition can effectively promote the development of production. However, whether in China, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe or the capitalist countries before the reform, state-owned enterprises are generally poorly managed and suffer serious losses. That is, public ownership of the means of production is not conducive to the development of production. The nature of the bourgeoisie's maximization of profits makes the initial distribution of social wealth always unfavorable to the working people, which will lead to the lack of consumption power of the broad masses of the people, that is, private ownership of the means of production is unfavorable to consumption. The role of the government is to promote the realization of consumption and build a bridge between production and consumption through the secondary distribution of social wealth that is beneficial to the working people when the means of production are privately owned. Classical capitalist economics and various neo-liberal economics emphasize the promotion of private ownership competition to production, and the specific measures are to reduce or completely stop government intervention in the economy and reduce government expenditure to promote production development. This is a theory to reduce the degree of public ownership. Modern liberal economics (including Keynesianism, welfare economics, etc. ) Emphasize the role of consumption in promoting production, and the specific measures are to strengthen government intervention in the economy, expand government expenditure, increase employment and increase the income of working people to promote consumption. It is a theory to improve the degree of social public ownership. The above two theories only emphasize one side of production and consumption, so they succeed when they are adapted to the development of productive forces and fail when they are not. Before Roosevelt's New Deal (1933), the traditional theory was always dominant, so social consumption could not keep up with the development of production, resulting in a cyclical economic crisis that lasted for a century (1825- 1933). Roosevelt's New Deal took promoting consumption as the main economic policy of the government for the first time, which achieved great success under the historical background of long-term insufficient consumption and quickly established the status of modern liberalism. Modern liberalism later developed into systematic Keynesianism, which promoted the great economic development of western Europe and the United States after World War II. However, Keynesianism has serious policy defects in promoting consumption. It mainly relies on the debt income from issuing public bonds and the deficit income from inflation to expand government expenditure and promote consumption. The traditional capitalist economic policy leads to overproduction and insufficient consumption, just as all the products needed tomorrow are produced today, resulting in products that cannot be sold; For example, Keynesianism borrowed money from today yesterday. Although it promoted yesterday's consumption, it led to no money available today, resulting in insufficient consumption power and difficult product sales, thus leading to a "stagflation" situation in which production stagnated and inflation coexisted in the 1970s. In this case, the neo-liberal economic theory has been adopted again. The concrete measures are to privatize a large number of nationalized enterprises after World War II, reduce the inflation rate and tax rate, reduce the deficit, and reduce welfare expenditure and public expenditure. It also achieved success in the 1980s. After the 1990s, governments all over the world stopped paying too much attention to a certain faction, but kept production and consumption in an appropriate proportion, which effectively promoted economic development and prevented economic turmoil.
Three intelligent robot revolutions and the completion of socialist revolution
After entering the 1990s, the economies of major developed countries operated relatively smoothly. I think this is because the degree of privatization required by the current level of productivity development is close to the upper limit. According to my formula, the degree of social socialization in developed countries (especially in northern Europe and Switzerland) should not change greatly in the past decade. The existing economic model may not promote the improvement of privatization. I predict that there will be a technological revolution in which intelligent robots will generally replace human labor in the future. This technological revolution will eventually bring mankind into the socialist society.
Looking back on human history since the industrial revolution, it is obvious that a new technology and new machine have been continuously developed and applied, and human labor productivity has been continuously improved. Almost all fields are constantly changing that machines replace human labor. It can be concluded that machines have incomparable advantages over human labor in production. With the continuous maturity of modern automated production, the continuous development and wide application of industrial robots, especially the continuous breakthrough of intelligent robot technology with biased thinking, I have a bold idea: if all human labor is replaced by robots in the future, what will happen to society?
Assuming that robot technology can really develop to this point in the future, I imagine that society will change in four stages.
Preparation stage: all kinds of highly automated production equipment are more and more perfect, the operation of the machine is easier and easier, and the manpower required is less and less.
The first stage: the wide application of industry, agriculture and robots. I think modern industry and mechanical agriculture are the easiest to realize robotization. Robots will first replace simple human labor in factories and agriculture.
The second stage: human work with certain technical content is replaced by robots. Technicians such as technicians, chefs and maintenance personnel will also be gradually replaced. Labor-intensive manufacturing will no longer exist, and industries that currently flow from developed regions to developing regions may flow back to developed regions because of tariffs. Industrial workers will almost disappear.
The third stage: the application of simulation robot. When the appearance is highly simulated and can communicate with people in daily thinking, simulated robots will generally replace human labor in the tertiary industry. This will form a comprehensive replacement for human labor.
The fourth stage: the technical design and application of management robots with highly developed logical thinking will eventually completely replace all human work except innovative research and interest decision-making, and may even include innovative work.
If the future world develops according to my vision, after the completion of the third stage, almost all human beings will be unemployed. Their lives can only be maintained by the welfare provided by the government. Because social products are consumed by all mankind, the unemployment of most people means that most social products are distributed to mankind for the second time by the government, which means that most national income will be taken away by the government in the form of taxes. Let me mention another concept: tax is the government's share of performance in enterprises and a form of state possession of means of production. The tax rate is the degree of public ownership of the means of production. According to Marx's theory that socialism is an advanced production relationship based on highly developed productive forces and should be realized in the most developed production field first, it is inferred that the socialist revolution should be realized in the most developed capitalist countries first. The success of the October Revolution seems to have broken this negative conclusion. Looking back now, the October Revolution only established the proletarian regime, but did not fully realize the economy. In my opinion, as long as it is not an enterprise whose profits are used by the whole people, it is not a state-owned enterprise. Ownership belongs to the collective economy of participants on average, which is a special form of private ownership. However, the state-owned enterprises owned by the state have generally fallen into the quagmire of poor management and loss after experiencing the frenzied development in the early stage of revolutionary victory. Instead of paying profits, they ask the state to pay subsidies and become parasites of the national economy. And all monopoly industries that can generate a lot of profits are important industries. They are, to put it bluntly, vampires of the national economy, squeezing the blood and sweat of the people of the whole country to enrich themselves. I found that "absolute power means absolute corruption" is a universal truth. Politically, a government whose power is not supervised by the people will inevitably infringe on the people. In international relations, relative advantage means relative strength, and absolute advantage means absolute hegemony. Economically, it means monopoly, that is, high fees and poor products and services. Quantitative analysis shows that the tax rate is the degree of public ownership of the means of production, and the degree of public ownership of the means of production in developed countries is much higher than that in China. I think Marx's conclusion is correct. The real economic socialist revolution has gone deeper in developed capitalist countries than in China. When robots generally replace human labor, and the government wants to take most of the profits of enterprises for welfare expenditure, it will inevitably make it unbearable for private enterprise bosses who take profits as their destination. Their ownership of the enterprise has lost its meaning, and the means of production have actually been nationalized. In the end, they will give up the ownership of the enterprise, the operation of the enterprise will be taken over by the state, and finally the means of production will be completely nationalized. The socialist revolution has finally been completed. The purpose of the taken-over enterprise is no longer to make profits, but to meet the needs of the people. The government will make production plans according to people's needs and hand them over to enterprises for implementation. At this time, the planned economy should become a suitable system. It is conceivable that the social and economic development will become extremely slow at this time, but as long as the current level is maintained, it will be enough to maintain the high living standard of mankind.
Four conjectures after the realization of socialism
According to my idea, after the realization of socialism, almost all human beings will not work, and all the work will be done by robots, so human beings just need to sit back and relax. How the human society will develop at this time is unpredictable. 1 optimistic guess. Man finally got rid of the bondage and oppression of his own existence, and no longer had to be forced by life to have all kinds of tragedies. Crime has basically disappeared. The spiritual realm of human beings has been greatly improved, and they can truly achieve perfection in all aspects and live a perfect and happy life.
2 pessimistic speculation. At last, human beings don't have to be busy all day for life, and their survival has a stable guarantee, but the meaning of life has become a huge question. What is the value of its own existence? What are you living for? Just to eat and sleep every day? It may lead to serious social and mental crisis and suicide wave. It may even lead humans to give up their own continuation.
Three alternative guesses. It is difficult for human beings to find the value of survival in reality, and they can only constantly pursue spiritual stimulation to anesthetize themselves. Perhaps, as written in some science fiction novels, the human brain accesses the infinitely wonderful virtual world and indulges in it, giving up real life, and everything in reality is managed by robots.
The above is the result of my thinking about socialism.
Zhang Mingjie, 3 April 2008