JerseyMike
Active Member
Alright, I’ll again give the disclaimer that the majority of you will ignore: I am not advocating for socialism, I do not believe it is something the US should adopt and I am not trying to defend socialism.
What I am trying to do is point out how stupid this economics class metaphor is in the hopes that you will abandon it and focus on critiquing socialism on its merits; there’s plenty to work with and some of you have even pointed out what I think are good critiques in this thread. I agree with the sentiment that is essentially “hey sounds good in theory but when has this not gone catastrophically wrong when its been applied in other parts of the world? Hard to respond to that argument and personally I’d rather work with tweaking our capitalist system than undergoing a transition that could destroy the country. It wouldn’t surprise me if a significant number of people who are supposed proponents of socialism don’t really understand it and simply think it is more “fair” than capitalism so they blindly support it.
Problems with this “thought experiment”:
1) A classroom is not a functioning economy and it looks nothing like a market economy. It is closer to an authoritarian/totalitarian system where the authoritative figure (professor) assigns tasks and then provides grades based upon their subjective assessment of the student’s performance.
2) Grades are not subject to scarcity. There are not a limited number of As and Bs, and it costs nothing to give As, Bs, etc
3) There is an artificial cap on grades; you can only obtain an A, there is no way a student who significantly over performs could earn greater than an A.
4) This thought experiment implies that the typical classroom is akin to capitalism, which is incorrect:
In a capitalist class, the means of production/learning (computers, pencils, paper, etc) would be owned by one student, we’ll call them the owner. The owner would require the other students (we’ll call them the workers) to give them all of their “points” from exams in order to use the owner’s means of production/learning. The owner would then determine how many points they needed to give back to the student in order to keep the student working for them. Thus, the owner would not need to do any academic work (Yes, you can argue they are contributing by allocating resources).
5) Since the means of production/learning would need to be limited to illustrate scarcity, some worker students wouldn’t be provided any and would simply fail. Oh, but the owner would only give them to the worker students who produced the best results and got the best grades because this would give the best return, right? Well, if there is an artificial cap of an A then what is the incentive? What incentive does the owner student have to increase the grades of the worker students, and if they control the means of production/learning what recourse do the worker students have to obtain those means elsewhere? In addition, how do the worker students ever “move up” to become an owner student? What happens when the owner finds a way to automate some of he tasks (i.e. research, writing) and no longer needs as many students? What happens to the students who had those skills that are now automated? Its a crap example, doesn’t work to depict either system and should be discarded. You want to describe capitalism you need to add many more details that can’t be assumed and it really destroys the value of the metaphor.
6) You’d get a bit closer to socialism if you let the students control the class, elect teachers for certain lessons, allow them ownership of the books and all other educational material, allow them to devise their own lesson plans, and to grade each other. In this "lesson," on the other hand, there's still a teacher with absolute control. Of course, this still isn't actually socialism, because socialism is an economic system, not a system of running a classroom. In a socialist system, there would still be teachers and there's nothing necessary about how to run a classroom. Metaphors are simplistic.
7) Socialism is worker ownership of productive property (factories, farms, workshops, the like). This lesson suggests that it is a boss telling the workers of a factory that they all get the same wage no matter what. This is inaccurate; in socialism, all of the workers own the factory, democratically direct its production, and either all share in its wealth or use its wealth to benefit the community. Or, that's one version of socialism. Another issue with this lesson is that it presumes that there is one system called "socialism," rather than a network of systems with radically different ideas of economics and the role of the state.
What I am trying to do is point out how stupid this economics class metaphor is in the hopes that you will abandon it and focus on critiquing socialism on its merits; there’s plenty to work with and some of you have even pointed out what I think are good critiques in this thread. I agree with the sentiment that is essentially “hey sounds good in theory but when has this not gone catastrophically wrong when its been applied in other parts of the world? Hard to respond to that argument and personally I’d rather work with tweaking our capitalist system than undergoing a transition that could destroy the country. It wouldn’t surprise me if a significant number of people who are supposed proponents of socialism don’t really understand it and simply think it is more “fair” than capitalism so they blindly support it.
Problems with this “thought experiment”:
1) A classroom is not a functioning economy and it looks nothing like a market economy. It is closer to an authoritarian/totalitarian system where the authoritative figure (professor) assigns tasks and then provides grades based upon their subjective assessment of the student’s performance.
2) Grades are not subject to scarcity. There are not a limited number of As and Bs, and it costs nothing to give As, Bs, etc
3) There is an artificial cap on grades; you can only obtain an A, there is no way a student who significantly over performs could earn greater than an A.
4) This thought experiment implies that the typical classroom is akin to capitalism, which is incorrect:
In a capitalist class, the means of production/learning (computers, pencils, paper, etc) would be owned by one student, we’ll call them the owner. The owner would require the other students (we’ll call them the workers) to give them all of their “points” from exams in order to use the owner’s means of production/learning. The owner would then determine how many points they needed to give back to the student in order to keep the student working for them. Thus, the owner would not need to do any academic work (Yes, you can argue they are contributing by allocating resources).
5) Since the means of production/learning would need to be limited to illustrate scarcity, some worker students wouldn’t be provided any and would simply fail. Oh, but the owner would only give them to the worker students who produced the best results and got the best grades because this would give the best return, right? Well, if there is an artificial cap of an A then what is the incentive? What incentive does the owner student have to increase the grades of the worker students, and if they control the means of production/learning what recourse do the worker students have to obtain those means elsewhere? In addition, how do the worker students ever “move up” to become an owner student? What happens when the owner finds a way to automate some of he tasks (i.e. research, writing) and no longer needs as many students? What happens to the students who had those skills that are now automated? Its a crap example, doesn’t work to depict either system and should be discarded. You want to describe capitalism you need to add many more details that can’t be assumed and it really destroys the value of the metaphor.
6) You’d get a bit closer to socialism if you let the students control the class, elect teachers for certain lessons, allow them ownership of the books and all other educational material, allow them to devise their own lesson plans, and to grade each other. In this "lesson," on the other hand, there's still a teacher with absolute control. Of course, this still isn't actually socialism, because socialism is an economic system, not a system of running a classroom. In a socialist system, there would still be teachers and there's nothing necessary about how to run a classroom. Metaphors are simplistic.
7) Socialism is worker ownership of productive property (factories, farms, workshops, the like). This lesson suggests that it is a boss telling the workers of a factory that they all get the same wage no matter what. This is inaccurate; in socialism, all of the workers own the factory, democratically direct its production, and either all share in its wealth or use its wealth to benefit the community. Or, that's one version of socialism. Another issue with this lesson is that it presumes that there is one system called "socialism," rather than a network of systems with radically different ideas of economics and the role of the state.