Political System Analysis: Communism VS Capitalism

[katy perry]

I am starting this thread because I have very little knowlege of these two systems of government and would like to learn more, in particular of communist Russia. Which system of government works better?

[Nekowolf]

Well, in my opinion, Communism and Marxism are good in theory, but fail miserably due to the need of strict adherence, which humans are simply incapable of. Essentially, they rely on the idea that an established transitional power will fade away peacefully as its need is negated. Bullshit. It relies on the truth of those of power, and it simply will not work.

While conversely, capitalism relies, again, on the truth of those of power, but for a different reason. Basically, it relies that they don't fuck everything up, which has clearly been seen as that is exactly what they will do, because under a true capitalism, there are no rules. Darwinism is inevitable. Those who are less fortunate struggle to survive while the wealthy use their influence to their own advantage, even to the detriment of everyone else.

In the end, they both suck, and you're stuck with tyrants. That's why I support a socialist democracy with a (NOT laissez-faire, EVER) capitalist economy.

[pinketamine]

In my opinion, when you read the Communist theory (Marxist, Leninist, Maoist or whatever) you think "shit, this is a good idea". I personally agree with the communist ideas, but the attempts of creating a communist political structure through History have failed miserably, for the reason Nekowolf said. I think that Communism might work if 99% (well, a very very big majority at least) of the world population wanted it to work; the problem is that powerful/rich people don't want to lose any of their privileges and power so they simply won't allow Communism to expand through various countries.

That was what happened in the Cold War, with very bad consequences all around the world.

[Oaktree]

I think the problem with Communism is that it goes against our nature. Humans are not designed to be invested in every other person everywhere. They care about themselves and those they deal closely with, and everyone else simply doesn't matter as strongly. We don't get that same feeling of strong connection to those who are halfway across the world who we've never talked to. We may care on some level, the level of social training. But it isn't the strong sort of empathy we naturally develop toward someone we live with on a daily basis. Communism relies on people feeling deeply about every other person in the system. This is why communism has been modestly successful on a small scale, but a miserable failure on a larger scale. People simply aren't willing to be so self-sacrificing for a sea of people they haven't met.

Capitalism partially addresses our inherent nature, though not fully, and not perfectly. Capitalism relies on people exchanging goods or services in a way that is beneficial to both parties. It also relies on monetary gain as an incentive. People are generally capable of working in their own self-interest when they are capable of understanding what is in their self-interest. This requires a certain level of intelligence/education. It doesn't require genius, but there are some people who find it difficult to understand what is in their best interests, which is one of the flaws in the system. Monetary gain is also not always the best motivating force. Money is an artificial concept that many people learn to treat as real, but others simply don't value as greatly. Also, there are non-material things that people value, such as autonomy and impact on the community. If a worker is offered a large sum of money to do a job, but the job is unimportant and requires him to report to a micro-managing boss, the worker is unlikely to be happy with that job. Capitalism does not address more psychologically fulfilling types of rewards. However, it does not hinder people from pursuing more psychologically fulfilling rewards and is one of the freer economic systems that exists.

[kiwi_tea]

Communism and Marxism are good in theory, but fail miserably due to the need of strict adherence, which humans are simply incapable of. Essentially, they rely on the idea that an established transitional power will fade away peacefully as its need is negated. Bullshit. It relies on the truth of those of power, and it simply will not work.

You appear to be talking about Stalinism and Maoism, not Marxism. In Marxism "those of power" are representatives of and held accountable by the community, under a robust democratic system.

Stalin and Mao were the ones suggesting a "two step" system so as to essentially become dictators (with an egalitarian society at some conveniently unspecified time, by some unspecified or implausible method, in the distant future). They undermined their society's attempts at socialism entirely, by doing away with the "communism" part of "communism", and let's not forget... ...they did so by killing all the socialist revolutionaries in bloody political coups. To suggest, as you do, that this was a failure of communism or Marxism seems an incredible stretch, given that Stalinism and Maoism were direct authoritarian attacks upon communism, Marxism, and democracy. (And it must be said, both Stalinism and Maoism also consciously laid the frameworks for a ruling elite to re-establish capitalist regimes with the dictatorial (and now rich) ruling class wielding power).

[Elyasis]

In a way communism did fail in both those cases, kiwi_tea, because not enough people were willing to do it the right way and not the way that led to more power for themselves. It's hardly a good economic system if no one is willing to use it properly. The good very rarely win in the real world. If you cannot trust everyone in the system to not be a back stabbing power hungry maniac than it simply will not succeed.

I think the most successful case of communism ever is in the TV show Star Trek. And it was mostly due to the influence of the Vulcans and their new, smaller place in the universe that allowed them to see the need for such an economy. However that is only fictional.

I've never been a big fan of either systems but can't think of a system myself that will benefit the masses and work to the majority of people's need to feel important and powerful. (And most importantly better than everyone "else").

[kiwi_tea]

I don't know that it had anything much to do with people being "unwilling" to do it the "right way". People were starved, intimidated, and massacred into doing it Stalin's way, quite against their wills, under a climate of scarcity due to wars. All the socialist leadership was murdered. Leon Trotsky was exiled, then assassinated. During the brief period of transition towards communism, before Stalin's rise to power and the beginnings of his murderous propaganda machine, it was clear there was a widespread democratic will to move towards a Marxist society.

It's a bit like saying that if George Washington's faction had formed a political coup, then killed Jefferson and Adams, and used the tools of the state to enforce a widespread authoritarian regime, then "not enough American people had been willing to do it the right way". The destruction of democracy by a few has very little to do whatsoever with what the bulk people want to do, pretty much by definition.

That will of the people was strong enough to motivate the Russian revolution itself. And there is historical writing, film, and literature that suggests it persisted for quite some time in spite of Stalin and the bureaucratic state's destruction of the Russian democratic process. Indeed, though, most of this writing, film and literature was suppressed by the Stalinist regime and has only come to light in more recent eras. Stalin feared the people, he feared democracy, and he feared socialism as it was still espoused by Leon Trotsky, hence why Stalin had Trotsky assassinated even though he was exiled so far from Russia.

At least under socialism proper democracy is possible. The same can't be said of capitalism. I fail to see how a system where a majority of voters routinely have less sway than a tiny minority of capital holders *who are the only ones financed well enough to present themselves as representatives* constitutes anything like a democracy. And I think low voter turnout (and the recent European riots) is a reflection of that as well.

Edit: And communism can't really be said to have "failed" in China. Communism was never attempted in China in the first place.

[pinketamine]

I think the problem with Communism is that it goes against our nature. Humans are not designed to be invested in every other person everywhere. They care about themselves and those they deal closely with, and everyone else simply doesn't matter as strongly. We don't get that same feeling of strong connection to those who are halfway across the world who we've never talked to. We may care on some level, the level of social training. But it isn't the strong sort of empathy we naturally develop toward someone we live with on a daily basis. Communism relies on people feeling deeply about every other person in the system. This is why communism has been modestly successful on a small scale, but a miserable failure on a larger scale. People simply aren't willing to be so self-sacrificing for a sea of people they haven't met.

Capitalism partially addresses our inherent nature, though not fully, and not perfectly. Capitalism relies on people exchanging goods or services in a way that is beneficial to both parties. It also relies on monetary gain as an incentive. People are generally capable of working in their own self-interest when they are capable of understanding what is in their self-interest. This requires a certain level of intelligence/education. It doesn't require genius, but there are some people who find it difficult to understand what is in their best interests, which is one of the flaws in the system. Monetary gain is also not always the best motivating force. Money is an artificial concept that many people learn to treat as real, but others simply don't value as greatly. Also, there are non-material things that people value, such as autonomy and impact on the community. If a worker is offered a large sum of money to do a job, but the job is unimportant and requires him to report to a micro-managing boss, the worker is unlikely to be happy with that job. Capitalism does not address more psychologically fulfilling types of rewards. However, it does not hinder people from pursuing more psychologically fulfilling rewards and is one of the freer economic systems that exists.

Some people (my boyfriend is one of them),work 13 hours a day and earn 800 euros, which isn't enough to even live on your own where I live. Honestly, I refuse to believe that that thing is beneficial for both parts and more inclined to think that the benefit goes to his employers and nobody else. Of course, people can't do other thing that work and earn this shit because they have to live somehow.

I don't think the problem with capitalism is that some people don't know what is best for them, I think it is more of some people being incredibly greedy and simply don't giving a damn about anyone else.

[kennyinbmore]

Communism in it's purest form has shown to not work, The Soviet Union, Cuba. Communism with a capitalist financial system has been shown to work. Vietnam, China.

[Nekowolf]

@kiwi_tea

I'm sorry? If you would please enlighten me then as the difference of Marxism and Communism in their ideas of transition, as I thought the end goal of both was the same, however Marxism thought violent revolution would have been a necessity in the overthrow of the original government; only then would there have been a democracy in which the power would slowly be phased out as the people grew to adapt greater power for themselves, eventually resulting in no real head of power but more like a blanket amongst the populace.

Though please do not confuse that I do not know the difference of Statism and Maoism from real Communism and Marxism; I do. I would never call them socialist, or Communist, or anything other than totalitarianism dictators. However, I still stand that true Communism would very likely fail, as it would still place power upon a few individuals. Without the proper structure, such as a solid constitution like the US Constitution, one that forces rotation of government leaders nor can any leader be above itself, power would eventually those elected individuals which would likely corrupt the system once again, and those few in power will likely try to keep that power during their phasing out, because power is like that. I'm not saying it couldn't work, just that, it likely won't, or at least not as a "true" Communism.

@Oaktree

It does not necessarily work on "benefit of both parties." You know what wold be a benefit? Lower gas prices. Gas is a necessity in today's America and in many other places in the world. The closest town, and that's a very small town, is fifteen minutes away from where I live by car; the nearest collage is twice that. I -need- gas to get around, just like a lot of people, however, gas prices keep going up indiscriminately, and clearly not based on the ideas supply-and-demand; because when it can drop ten, twenty cents overnight (and it HAS this summer), then clearly something is wrong. It is not to the benefit of the consumers, because it is so costly now, it is becoming a hindrance to their finances. This in turns drives up the food prices, which makes it more costly to buy food. Again, not to the benefit of the consumers, as it is outside the idea of "supply-and-demand." I keep saying that, but what do I mean? Well, gas prices are based on speculation. They are raised and lowered on an asinine idea of guessing what those prices may be like in the future so are adjusted now. Or in other words; "totally fucking bullshit just so we can make massive profits while ass-raping you dumbshits."

Freedom does always mean security, and here is a blatant case in which freedom has taken a piss on security. And then there was the loan industry which really? I just have to say one thing: Goldman-Sachs.

[katy perry]

Would I be correct in thinking that Capitalism means giving power to the corporations, and Communism means giving power to the people?

[Nekowolf]

It's a little more complex than that.

Capitalism is the idea of private ownership of business and profits, rather than being state-owned. I would say what you are thinking of is "laissez-faire" capitalism, a belief that there should be minimal or no government intervention, e.g. regulation. Some of those who believe in a laissez-faire capitalism argue that the markets will fix itself, or that corporations won't betray their best interest. You could say then that that is "power to the corporations."

Communism is the idea that, there are no classes or states, no private ownership of the means of production. Everyone owns the means of production, everyone is equal in power. Perhaps the best way would be thinking of it as a collective multi-celled body, where every person is a cell of a greater whole, with their own responsibilities to that body. However, the problem that I find with Communism, is that there's no good way to go about it. Either you have a revolution and establish a new, transitional government, which as it grows smaller by need, may try to fight for dominance as power is corrupting, or you establish it straight from the fall, in which case, I think may lead essentially to anarchical chaos, division, and finally isolationism, as communities may end up shutting themselves off in order to support their needs. The end result is great, but getting there is too dangerous and even then, it relies on the trust of others to not screw everything up afterward, which I think will eventually happen, because people are like that.

[simsample]

Would I be correct in thinking that Capitalism means giving power to the corporations, and Communism means giving power to the people?
I think you can boil it down to, do you want to be an individual or just the same as everyone else?

Communism says that everything (including your knowledge) belongs to the state.

Capitalism says that people are individuals, and if someone else wants what you have (an idea or a physical object) then they can buy it from you.

[kiwi_tea]

@katy_perry

In the simplest of terms, Capitalism takes the view that the best way to build wealth in an economy is for employers, who will in turn be investors, to pocket the surplus labour of their employees. You see, an employer doesn't actually compensate an employee for the full labour that they do, they pay them only enough that the worker may subside to continue working. All the rest of the value that a labourer creates is pocketed by the employer. This additional value is called "surplus labour", and it is what becomes profit under capitalism. If we are really, really charitable towards capitalism, we can say that the employer will invest their money and create more jobs, and often they do. But it is not in the capital holders' interest to have full employment. They need, to increase profits, to have a "reserve army of labour" - the unemployed - who will drive down general wages by their job hunting. This is a description in extremely simplified mechanical terms, the economics of capitalism beyond this are a whole field unto themselves, and there can be no doubt that capitalism was a great step forward over feudalism. It is just that, as capitalism tends to create an extremely small class of super wealthy who, through their wealth, have exorbitant control over society and the economy, and interests largely at odds with working people, the end result of capitalism is a hellish dystopia for the vastest majority of the human race. A Social-Democrat would argue differently, but this is largely an insignificant noise given Social-Democratic reformism offers no solutions to the problems, only some transparently vain methods for prolonging the trip to Hell.

Rosa Luxemborg has some very pointed and excellent commentary on the impotence of the Social-Democracy "movement", if it really can be said to constitute a "movement".

Socialism posits that a planned economy is possible, under the control of a robust representative democracy. All the means of making things - the means of production - would be in public hands. In the case of the Russian revolution, this took the form of "Soviets", who were groups of local producers who had representatives that they elected in turn. The guiding principle being that produce and profit should be distributed according to social need, rather than just being bought up in bulk and hoarded by one or two individuals. If attempted ever again this system would require quite a number of initial provisions, such as a strong constitution outlining rights and enshrining democracy under the protection of a legislature. There are definitely big issues that would crop up, although I certainly don't see why we should expect "anarchical chaos", provided the initial provisions are strong enough. The basic goal is a government for the people, by the people, and of the people, in a very literal sense: A government that IS the people.

@Nekowolf

If you would please enlighten me then as the difference of Marxism and Communism in their ideas of transition, as I thought the end goal of both was the same, however Marxism thought violent revolution would have been a necessity in the overthrow of the original government; only then would there have been a democracy in which the power would slowly be phased out as the people grew to adapt greater power for themselves, eventually resulting in no real head of power but more like a blanket amongst the populace.

Well, Marx, but especially Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg, took the perspective that violent revolution is pretty much inevitable due to the inequality that accrues exponentially by even the more "humane" formulations of capitalism. The riots in Greece or London, the social unrest, according to Marx or Trotsky this is all predicted by Marxism, and the theory goes that such unrest and violence will lead to revolution of some kind whether anyone likes it or not, (generally speaking: not) simply because working people won't - and indeed they can't - forever tolerate intolerable conditions in the face of more humane alternatives like socialism. The goal, therefore, is to use that revolution to transform towards a more humane society, rather than just reshuffling the wealth onto a different set of capitalists with each painful, bloody upheaval. The reason that Trotsky and Luxemburg took this stance was manifold: They were wedded to democratic ideals and wanted to see democratic control, they saw repeated failure and betrayal in attempts to tame Capitalism, and they saw a tendency for vicious opportunists to abuse such "transistional" theories as forwarded by Stalin, &c. Trotsky wrote of Stalin's regime that "The Soviet bureaucracy is like all ruling classes in that it is ready to shut its eyes to the crudest mistakes of its leaders in the sphere of general politics, provided in return they show an unconditional fidelity in the defense of its privileges."

I think it's perfectly defensible to state outright that Stalin and Mao had no intention of transitioning towards any form of socialism at all, and were only abusing the language of the system they sought to usurp and betray, the same way Obama or Bush use the language of "democracy" while at the same time gutting personal freedoms for US citizens, not to mention foreigners!

@simsample

Communism says that everything (including your knowledge) belongs to the state.

Capitalism says that people are individuals, and if someone else wants what you have (an idea or a physical object) then they can buy it from you.

Your first statement is plain incorrect. Communism doesn't posit a state that "owns everyone and everything", it only posits a communal control of public resources. There is no reason to extrapolate from that a lack of individualism or personal property. In many senses, it posits a system in which the bulk of people have substantially more personal liberty than they do at present.

Your second statement is ludicrously charitable to capitalism in its omissions. At a fundamental level, capitalism makes no provisions for an individual's right to survive, or own the basics of a comfortable life, or a basic education, or the means to creative license. And if someone has no original ideas, physical objects, etc, then the most charitable form of capitalism that exists - the welfare state - bids those individuals live in squalor and many forms of deprivation.

Put bluntly,

Communism says you matter, fundamentally, as part of our humane society.

Capitalism says you are expendable, and your most basic needs - food, housing, work - are privileges gifted to you by the gilted few.

[kiwi_tea]

Simsample seems to be implying/assuming an authoritarian bureaucratic regime by "state", katy_perry. Even setting that paradoxical assumption aside, communism doesn't say that "everything (including your knowledge)" belongs to the state. It only states that the means of production are under the democratic control of workers.

[simsample]

Your first statement is plain incorrect. Communism doesn't posit a state that "owns everyone and everything", it only posits a communal control of public resources. There is no reason to extrapolate from that a lack of individualism or personal property. In many senses, it posits a system in which the bulk of people have substantially more personal liberty than they do at present.
If you cannot own land and you earn the same as everyone else, whether you scrub the floors or invent the latest technology, then I would say that a communist government owns its citizens. Communism by definition attempts to suppress the individual and support the community.

Your second statement is ludicrously charitable to capitalism in its omissions.
Well, it was only a basic summary, in response to the original poster's basic summary.

At a fundamental level, capitalism makes no provisions for an individual's right to survive...

Put bluntly,

Communism says you matter, fundamentally, as part of our humane society.

Capitalism says you are expendable, and your most basic needs - food, housing, work - are privileges gifted to you by the gilted few.
On the contrary, 'hands off' capitalism empowers the individual to use his own means to survive, without having to be accountable for the rest of 'society'.

In a welfare state, you are expendable and your most basic needs- food, housing, work- are privileges gifted to you by those who work. (This is the situation in my own country at the moment, when I pay taxes on what I earn so that the girl down the road can live in her council house with her five Nike-bestowed kids, and go out each night to the club with money she gets from benefits which I have helped to pay for).

In capitalism, you are accountable to yourself and you earn your own food and housing through your own means. It is not taken from you to be gifted to someone else.

[katy perry]

I agree with what simsample said, but reading over everything, I have come to the conclusion that to a certain extent every country has communist and capitalist elements political and non-political. For example, schools are communist in that every child is required to go to school to have knowlege discovered by others shared via a teacher. This is an example how communism can be positive. The words 'communist' and 'communism' have a negative kind of implication. Hollywood is partly to blame for this because terrorist themed movies often depict the actions of communist extremists.

An example of a huge Communism V Capitalism argument that you see on forums all across the Internet is the filesharing rights argument. Is it 'right' to illegally download music and movies or not? I don't want to go too much into my own person belief on this but the people who say 'yes music and movies belong to everyone' are on the communist side of the fence while the people who say 'Noooo it's wrong and it's stealing' are on the capitalist side of the argument.

[kiwi_tea]

I think you can see, katy_perry, from the logical acrobatics in simsample's post above, the bankruptcy in present-day defences of capitalism.

One has to wonder, doesn't one, what kind of an edifying life that jewel-encrusted Queen of the Nightclubs down the road from simsample has had so far, in terms of education and work opportunities, and what the likelihood is that a working life could provide her with much at all under present circumstances? Her intellectual impoverishment and lack of security probably wouldn't be much worse even if she *was* in the workforce. Therein lies one of the problems with capitalism again - the conditions in workplaces compared with the remuneration mean a few people will opt for the dole simply to avoid the slog. Sure, I call that lazy too. But I can also see why it's happening, and also recognise that even that tiny number of beneficiaries abusing the welfare system are not very well off at all in many important ways. What happens when a kid is sick? How do you get your kid to school affordably? What happens when you need glasses? What happens when you need an operation? What happens when your friend dies and all you really want is a cup of coffee and a sit down in a cafe, but that means fore-going dinner tonight? There's no stability on a benefit, not a bearable amount of money, and a lot of torment.

Trust me, I'm about to end up on a benefit after months and months of subsisting on savings with the hopes of landing a job, and even with the benefit my hubby and are not going to be making ends meet. We'll probably have to give up our family cat, who - ask anyone - is basically our child. It's literally unbearable.

The mythology about beneficiaries and welfare fraud is kind of stunning. The NZ government is cracking down on welfare fraud right now as it's main election priority - because it's such a popular belief that there are lots of people defrauding the benefit - despite the very Ministry of Social Development reports showing that numbers-wise - both in the sense of how many people are doing it and in the sense of what it costs the country - it's a non-issue. Similar things seem to be happening all over the world as part of austerity measures to claw back money spent on bailouts from the working class.

simsample's appeal rests on the assumption that one has so much they would suffer losses under communism. This, however, is only true of a thoroughly microscopic number of people relative to the size of the human population. Most people - even in developed nations - would be making gains, given the adequacy of the world's resources measured against the needs of the people in the world. It's an argument that might have flown in the '50s, when there was a larger middle class, better work conditions, and active union memberships.

Edit: simsample also fails to address the exponential growth of a wage gap between the wealthy few and the struggling masses under capitalism, perhaps assuming that somehow a more laissez-faire approach would resolve (rather than worsen) this?

[kennyinbmore]

Would I be correct in thinking that Capitalism means giving power to the corporations, and Communism means giving power to the people?

The people in the Soviet Union had little power. The power was in the Politburo and the government.

[simsample]

One has to wonder, doesn't one, what kind of an edifying life that jewel-encrusted Queen of the Nightclubs down the road from simsample has had so far, in terms of education and work opportunities,
She was educated at the same school as me, and so was her mother who is currently banged up for shoplifting. That is a choice, I chose not to shoplift or have five kids when I couldn't afford it, so I should not have to pay for these people to survive.

Therein lies one of the problems with capitalism again - the conditions in workplaces compared with the remuneration mean a few people will opt for the dole simply to avoid the slog.
This is not capitalism- this person has arrived at this state under a socialist government. The UK was under the Labout Party from 1997 to 2010.


What happens when a kid is sick? How do you get your kid to school affordably? What happens when you need glasses? What happens when you need an operation?
She could have done what I always did when faced with these problems. I either had to take an unpaid day off or hire a child minder. She lives within walking distance of the kids' school, she can get glasses on the NHS (which is paid for by taxation) and likewise she can get operations on the NHS. None of which she has paid for, having never worked. If I was not forced to pay taxes then I would be able to afford to buy my own health insurance and pay for private schools for my own children, instead of helping to finance the rest of the country.


Trust me, I'm about to end up on a benefit after months and months of subsisting on savings with the hopes of landing a job, and even with the benefit my hubby and are not going to be making ends meet. We'll probably have to give up our family cat, who - ask anyone - is basically our child. It's literally unbearable.
But you have worked, you have paid into the tax system whereas the girl with five kids has not. Had you not had to pay taxes, you could have saved up or purchased insurance against your current situation, instead.

simsample also fails to address the exponential growth of a wage gap between the wealthy few and the struggling masses under capitalism, perhaps assuming that somehow a more laissez-faire approach would resolve (rather than worsen) this?
It would mean that girl with five kids would have to do what she could, instead of not bothering to do anything. She is not stupid, she is quite capable of working. She would also have thought twice before having five kids- or at least, she would have made sure of provision for them. The alternative is what we have now- it's really not worth bothering to work when you will be better off if you don't. Someone else will pay for it.

If you project that into the long term you can see that the world cannot continue in this way, where most people consume more than they produce.

@katy perry:
As you can see, there are a lot of nuances involved with different extremes of Capitalism and communism, and indeed most of us live in countries which have a mishmash of political systems. I quite like these definitions though:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=&q=communism+definition&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGLL_en-GBGB370GB370&ie=UTF-8&aq=0&oq=communism+definition#hl=en&rlz=1B3GGLL_en-GBGB370GB370&q=communism&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=ro9KTrXfHYG2hAf4nNmdCA&ved=0CBsQkQ4&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=1433ed02ab481eb4&biw=1280&bih=821
http://www.google.co.uk/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&site=webhp&q=capitalism&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=749KTsukK9GDhQfFzcCBCA&sqi=2&ved=0CBsQkQ4&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=1433ed02ab481eb4&biw=1280&bih=821

[kiwi_tea]

@kenny

The people in the Soviet Union had little power. The power was in the Politburo and the government.

Exactly. Stalinism was in that sense the antithesis of communism.

simsample

This is not capitalism- this person has arrived at this state under a socialist government. The UK was under the Labout Party from 1997 to 2010.

Really? The Labour Party put the means of production under democratic control of the workers?

Why wasn't I told?!

;)

The Labour Party are a capitalist party. They might also be a mildly reformist, Social-Democratic party, but they certainly aren't socialist!

She was educated at the same school as me, and so was her mother who is currently banged up for shoplifting. That is a choice, I chose not to shoplift or have five kids when I couldn't afford it, so I should not have to pay for these people to survive.

As I hope was clear, my defence of the girl is tinted with a hesitant sort of condemnation as well. There's a lack of moral fortitude in doing what she's done, but not - given the circumstances - a lack of sense. Beyond that, I don't really apprehend her circumstances, so there's a lot of taking your word here, and I do trust your word in general. But it does not necessarily give me an accurate understanding of her circumstances.

But you have worked, you have paid into the tax system whereas the girl with five kids has not. Had you not had to pay taxes, you could have saved up or purchased insurance against your current situation, instead.I have not yet been in a tax bracket where that's really liable to be the case. I don't know very many people who pay very much tax on their income, because I don't know many people who earn even the average wage. Most people I know earn a little over half the average, barring the odd baby boomer I know through my parents (I'm a Gen-Y kid). But New Zealand *is* a low wage economy, I have worked copy-writing primarily in low-waged corporations on top of that.

Moreover, as a regular library user and someone whose life has been saved for free in an emergency room (scarlet fever of all things!) I'm inclined to prefer to pay the small amount of tax that I did pay, seeing as it wouldn't get me very far compared with the services I (and others) gain from paying it.

[katy perry]

I agree with what you say about benefits and welfare, in the past the capitalist government of the UK seemed to just think throwing money at people who are unemployed and sick will make them go away. 'Just take this money from us.'

'Sit back, relax, don't worry about where it comes from.', but in the end they realised this made the country tilt toward bankruptcy, causing more unemployment.

The current government seems more intent on getting these people back into work, as benefits account for nearly a quarter of government expenses. But in my opinion their approach seems too drastic, genuine people who really would have benefited are going to suffer because of people who just want to live off benefits all their lives.

Edit: I think Stalinism was a dictatorship. Dictatorships are never good, it means basically 'You will do this...no buts or else.'

[simsample]

Really? The Labour Party put the means of production under democratic control of the workers?

Why wasn't I told?!

;)

The Labour Party are a capitalist party. They might also be a mildly reformist, Social-Democratic party, but they certainly aren't socialist!
No, they are a Democratic socialist party, kind of just left of centre. Introducing a national minimum wage is not a capitalist act, neither is setting up a myriad of quangos funded with public money.

The UK labour party also has a lot of affiliated trade unions and socialist societies, which doesn't sound very capitalist to me.

[katy perry]

No, they are a Democratic socialist party, kind of just left of centre. Introducing a national minimum wage is not a capitalist act, neither is setting up a myriad of quangos funded with public money.

The UK labour party also has a lot of affiliated trade unions and socialist societies, which doesn't sound very capitalist to me.

May I ask, how would you describe the conservative party?

[kiwi_tea]

Introducing a national minimum wage is not a capitalist act, neither is setting up a myriad of quangos funded with public money.

Well, these aren't socialist acts either, they're just mild reforms. That said, a set minimum wage is sort of one of the bare minimums for making capitalism somewhat less draconian, I mean... ...people need to be able to afford to eat, right? Trade unions are fairly hostile to socialism as well, as a rule, although they attract a startling number of Stalinists/Maoist types who would never like to be called as such. I mean, one of the reasons trade unions membership is so distinctly small these days is because unionism has pretty much died out across many decades of union leaderships betraying workers. When was the last time a union made a substantial gain mobilising the bulk of their membership?

Well, for a start they can't. Their memberships in this day and age are tiny. Unions avoid strikes most of the time, don't make substantial or feasible demands, don't represent working class interests, and for the most part are just engines for careerist junior politicians. Unions tend to be a bit like another arm of management for whatever employer they are "fighting", they'll sit down, and negotiate a slightly less damaging pay cut, while mostly keeping the workers from exercising their ability to strike.

Labour are a socialist party if they put the means of production under democratic control by the workers. That's sort of the lowest threshold constituting socialism.

[simsample]

Labour are a socialist party if they put the means of production under democratic control by the workers. That's sort of the lowest threshold constituting socialism.
Well they were opposed to the privatisation of the services, which was done under Thatcher. However, I think once done, that's a hard one to undo- and it would be tough for a government to take control of private companies and put them under democratic control.

Also, I know that 'New Labour' have been dubbed 'the Neo Thatcherites'; however they still seem to describe themselves in socialist terms- they are pro distribution of wealth, and pro social equality.

katy perry, I would describe the conservatives as being Unionist and conservative (no other word for that, sorry!), and for free-market economics. Just right of centre-ish. But, the current coalition is a strange thing, goodness knows how you would describe that!

[kiwi_tea]

Well they were opposed to the privatisation of the services, which was done under Thatcher. However, I think once done, that's a hard one to undo- and it would be tough for a government to take control of private companies and put them under democratic control.

I don't think that quite meets the threshold really. I mean, state ownership of businesses comes a lot closer to socialism than most things that might have the label affixed to them, but not when those businesses aren't under any kind of democratic control, either by the population at large, or by the workers who labour within the business. Just because a state owns a telco or a power company, doesn't quite make those companies under "democratic control", especially if the state itself isn't very democratic.

Hmmm, I just tried to have a look at what the UK spends on welfare, and it looks like the vastest majority of the Big Figures the media tends to give goes - understandably - into the elderly and disabled, with the unemployment benefit being quite a small figure by itself, around 6% of the spend in 1999, but probably a lot more than that now? Anyone have recent figures? I'm sure this media tendency to fudge public perception like that accounts to some degree for the myth of Dole-Bludgers Everywhere!

[Oaktree]

@Oaktree

It does not necessarily work on "benefit of both parties." You know what wold be a benefit? Lower gas prices. Gas is a necessity in today's America and in many other places in the world. The closest town, and that's a very small town, is fifteen minutes away from where I live by car; the nearest collage is twice that. I -need- gas to get around, just like a lot of people, however, gas prices keep going up indiscriminately, and clearly not based on the ideas supply-and-demand; because when it can drop ten, twenty cents overnight (and it HAS this summer), then clearly something is wrong. It is not to the benefit of the consumers, because it is so costly now, it is becoming a hindrance to their finances. This in turns drives up the food prices, which makes it more costly to buy food. Again, not to the benefit of the consumers, as it is outside the idea of "supply-and-demand." I keep saying that, but what do I mean? Well, gas prices are based on speculation. They are raised and lowered on an asinine idea of guessing what those prices may be like in the future so are adjusted now. Or in other words; "totally fucking bullshit just so we can make massive profits while ass-raping you dumbshits."

We've talked about this precise example before. The reason why gas prices keep going up is because of demand. If enough people stopped buying gas at its current price, the smart companies will lower their prices. Granted, there are some stupid companies nowadays that, instead of dropping their prices, raise their prices to try to make up lost profits from the few customers they have left, but those companies tend to not do very well. In any case, you are still receiving something beneficial to you when you buy gas, at whatever price. You need gasoline to get about, and that need is being met. You may not be completely happy with the cost of fulfilling that need, but you do have to keep in mind that you are not the only one involved in that transaction. The oil company also has to benefit in order to remain in business, and the demands and concessions of other consumers affect the price you pay. As companies get larger, it requires a larger number of disgruntled customers to sway them. This isn't necessarily good or fun for those minority disgruntled consumers, but I did say that Capitalism isn't perfect. But neither is any other politico-economic system.

Freedom does always mean security, and here is a blatant case in which freedom has taken a piss on security. And then there was the loan industry which really? I just have to say one thing: Goldman-Sachs.

I think freedom is more important than security. I'm willing to take some risks if it means I get to have more autonomy. I also think that a system that favors freedom over security strengthens personal responsibility. When people have a government taking care of them, they do stupid and selfish things because they know that they will always have mommy government to hold their hand and make everything better. When people are responsible for themselves, yes, they may still do some stupid things, but more people realize that they have to suffer the consequences of their stupidity.

[RoseCity]

We've talked about this precise example before. The reason why gas prices keep going up is because of demand. If enough people stopped buying gas at its current price, the smart companies will lower their prices.
Also the prices go up and down because of commodity speculation.

[Elyasis]

Hence why the gas prices go up without stimulus in a response to the perceived greater demand in the future. They play the Price is Right, and guess what? It always is. Good point, RoseCity.

[Nekowolf]

"I think freedom is more important than security. I'm willing to take some risks if it means I get to have more autonomy. I also think that a system that favors freedom over security strengthens personal responsibility. When people have a government taking care of them, they do stupid and selfish things because they know that they will always have mommy government to hold their hand and make everything better. When people are responsible for themselves, yes, they may still do some stupid things, but more people realize that they have to suffer the consequences of their stupidity. "

Goldman-Sachs. That is literally all I have to say.

It, along with the rest of the loan and bank industry, nearly annihilated the US economy. It helped cause problems over in Greece. People were told they were good investments, told by professionals in the financial industry. It turned out to be steaming bullshit. We suffer their bullshit, and hard. We bite the bullet while their executives continue to sponge in money and offer massive bonuses.

What you say is a naive lie.

[Oaktree]

Except that people trusted those companies precisely because they thought the government would hold their hands and make the bad companies go away. If people had to accept personal responsibility, they would be much more wary about their investments.

[Mistermook]

Right, because what we need for a sound economy is for everyone to not trust banking institutions or the market. Hiding your money under the bed and investing in gold coins to put in a hole in the ground in your back yard sounds like it's terribly healthy.

Your "personal responsibility" nonsense makes for a shitty, shitty economy. That so many people are performing exactly the lack of faith in market institutions when we're in a depression is an exact demonstration on why it's a shitty economic attitude, as people do exactly what you implicitly suggest and the markets crumble. One of the basic staples of a functioning modern economic system, regardless of how it's set up, is faith in the system. You're advocating people toss that, and you know what? When people toss their faith in an economy nations fall apart.

[kiwi_tea]

Except that people trusted those companies precisely because they thought the government would hold their hands and make the bad companies go away. If people had to accept personal responsibility, they would be much more wary about their investments.

This is a the classic neoliberal argument, right. And on a much smaller scale, aside from causing massive social ill, it works. What Oaktree seems to fail to comprehend here, is that simply letting Goldman-Sachs, Lehman Bros, General Motors, etc, etc, etc collapse and tut-tutting at investors and company execs for being reckless, would not lead to some big painful market correction, it would lead to an incredibly long, drawn-out depression that plunges millions and millions of people worldwide into abject poverty. A government that takes such a naive neoliberal posture against such enormous systemic failures in capitalism, really only ushers in capitalism's demise due to the riots and revolutions that would ensue to whatever ends, and no ruling elite wants to usher in its own demise: Bail outs are the only option they have.

Just as in England the capitalist state has neither the resources, nor by extension the tools to alleviate the conditions that foster the type of behaviour and unrest we've seen there, or in Greece for that matter. The only option the UK government really has, if it can be said to have any options at all, is to hit back at these communities with brute force and dehumanising propaganda, and probably also to extend the powers of their police. We're seeing that now, with the UK holding rioters who have no previous criminal record without bail, handing them custodial sentences, and actually evicting the accused's entire families from council housing before trials even start.

Edit: Also, wouldn't a laissez-faire approach towards business dealings have only made these companies biggerer, more powerfuller, more recklesser, and the collapse more worserer by far?

Bearing in mind that, laissez-faire or not, the punishment for the leaders of these failing companies is that they get off mildly less exorbitantly wealthy, without anything stopping them from continuing in the business world using their massive funds. (Indeed, all the great leaders of those corrupt companies that collapsed in the '80s in NZ are still very wealthy business-people at the heads of large companies around the world). One can preach that investors shouldn't trust these people, but the truth is investors can trust these people to ruthlessly rake in the profits right up until the precipice... ...and over it. Provided one pulls out before the precipice, these sorts of psychopathic individuals are the milk and honey of capitalism.

[Nekowolf]

"Except that people trusted those companies precisely because they thought the government would hold their hands and make the bad companies go away."

Fucking bullshit. That is not why and anyone who was paying attention should know it. People trusted these companies because they didn't think they would be so stupid as to detonate their own market with shitty deals and high-risk investments. Just about everyone thought that they were safe and good investments when in reality, they were playing with gas and fire. Those who did see what was going on were ignored. And everyone pays the god damn price; not just the people who put their investments into these companies, but those who didn't. The whole of the United States. Hell, even the whole god damn world.

It wasn't personal responsibility. It was abhorrent idiocy and nonexistent regard for the economy as a whole. They are retarded children playing with knives and cannot be trusted to do anything safely.

[katy perry]

katy perry, I would describe the conservatives as being Unionist and conservative (no other word for that, sorry!), and for free-market economics. Just right of centre-ish. But, the current coalition is a strange thing, goodness knows how you would describe that!

Personally I think the conservatives are sort of the equivalent of the American republican party.

[maxon]

Personally I think the conservatives are sort of the equivalent of the American republican party.
No - European politics on the whole is far less right-wing. Even Obama to us would be right-wing.

[kiwi_tea]

That's harsh. Even in a country as traditionally Right-leaning as England, there isn't really a party that is quite as hostile to science, foreigners and humanity - anything that smacks of reality or modernity - as the Republican Party of the US is.

[Nekowolf]

*could think of a few groups, but then that's getting into even worse places*

[katy perry]

The BNP are a load of nazi's anyway how can a party like that exist?

[Oaktree]

@Mistermook and kiwi_tea: Except that banks would have to use good business practices in order to compete in a society where the average person is more cautious about investing. And when you consider that there was some government pressure on banks to give those high-risk loans, it is unlikely that we would have a banking disaster nearly so devastating in a system where people don't expect the government to do everything for them.

@Nekowolf: My point is that, because people have gotten so complacent about the government taking care of them, they don't look as closely into investing as they should. People expect everything to be safe, when "buyer beware" should really be the standard operating procedure. When it isn't, companies can get away with playing dirty.

[Nekowolf]

Uh, I'm sorry? Isn't it the job of professionals to look into this stuff? If I wanted to invest, I don't know how the freaking market works. So you know what I'd do? I'd go talk to a professional. And those professionals are the ones who said it's all golden, when really, it was total shit. This has nothing to do with complacency. It has everything to do with cheating, with loopholes, with lies, with risky investments, with shitty deals, with just utter insanity and stupidity on the part of those corporations.

Complacency my ass. What you're advocating is total bullshit. No, the standard procedure should be, things are safe! You buy a car expecting its brakes to work! You buy a house expecting it to not collapse on you one night! You buy food expecting it to have been inspected and not diseased! You go to professionals and expect them to know to know what the hell they're talking about and what is going on in their fields of expertise! THAT is what you are asking of people! Corporations get away with it because of people like you who hold this farcical idea that the market fixes itself, that big business can be trusted, and so your ilk ripped away regulations, defunded government agencies, blocked appointments, while they hand out massive bonuses to their executives, while they continue to cram a dick up our sore and bleeding ass!

Fucking hell, I'm out for a while! /rant

[RoseCity]

@Mistermook and kiwi_tea: Except that banks would have to use good business practices in order to compete in a society where the average person is more cautious about investing. And when you consider that there was some government pressure on banks to give those high-risk loans, it is unlikely that we would have a banking disaster nearly so devastating in a system where people don't expect the government to do everything for them.

I think the only government pressure to give high-risk loans was on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - the private sector investment banks were doing it all on their own.
People aren't expecting the government to do everything for them, but they expect government to regulate the banking industry. Because whether you had investments or not, the house of cards came crashing down and everyone on the bottom suffered. The wealthy suffered here and there, but for the most part, their asses were bailed out. People who weren't involved at all have lost their jobs and then their homes in the second wave of foreclosures.

Corporations are not moral entities, and they don't usually concern themselves with the big picture. There's that Joe Strummer song - if you're after getting the honey, then you don't go killing all the bees. But they will kill the bees - which is why they need to be regulated. Regulations help to maintain civilized society, so that people with no hope and nothing to lose don't riot in the streets.

[kiwi_tea]

Except that banks would have to use good business practices in order to compete in a society where the average person is more cautious about investing. And when you consider that there was some government pressure on banks to give those high-risk loans, it is unlikely that we would have a banking disaster nearly so devastating in a system where people don't expect the government to do everything for them.

Except there's not really a reason to expect this utopian laissez-faire ideal to pan out the way you insist it would. And there's a LOT of reasons in recent history to expect banks and other companies would have only acted a lot worse, and more recklessly, had there been no oversight whatsoever.

[Oaktree]

Uh, I'm sorry? Isn't it the job of professionals to look into this stuff? If I wanted to invest, I don't know how the freaking market works. So you know what I'd do? I'd go talk to a professional. And those professionals are the ones who said it's all golden, when really, it was total shit. This has nothing to do with complacency. It has everything to do with cheating, with loopholes, with lies, with risky investments, with shitty deals, with just utter insanity and stupidity on the part of those corporations.

You go to a professional, but you also make sure that you have some knowledge of what he is telling you and you check customer reviews to make sure that that professional isn't ripping people off left and right. If you don't do your homework, even in a regulated market, you'll probably get screwed sooner or later.

Complacency my ass. What you're advocating is total bullshit. No, the standard procedure should be, things are safe! You buy a car expecting its breaks to work! You buy a house expecting it to not collapse on you one night! You buy food expecting it to have been inspected and not diseased! You go to professionals and expect them to know to know what the hell they're talking about and what is going on in their fields of expertise! THAT is what you are asking of people! Corporations get away with it because of people like you who hold this farcical idea that the market fixes itself, that big business can be trusted, and so your ilk ripped away regulations, defunded government agencies, blocked appointments, while they hand out massive bonuses to their executives, while they continue to cram a dick up our sore and bleeding ass!

Fucking hell, I'm out for a while! /rant

I didn't say that big businesses can be trusted, I said that buyers should beware. That means that people need to not automatically trust that every merchant is selling them a wonderful product and they need to do their homework before making a purchase. That isn't trust. That's thorough scrutiny.

[ElementMK]

In pure communism, the rich get shafted.
In pure capitalism, the poor get shafted.

Your opinion on either will depend on who you believe deserves such a shaft more.

[kiwi_tea]

Oaktree, you seem to be evading the broader thrust of people's criticisms with that reply: Remind us, again, why a laissez-faire approach might plausibly have made matters better, rather than worse?

And wouldn't a laissez-faire approach only make it that much easier for the business community to conveniently obfuscate the information an investor or customer is getting about them/their practices/the inherent risk?

[Oaktree]

A laissez-faire approach would take away the false security that leads people to make bad economic decisions. I'm not saying that all bad economic decisions are because of that false sense of security, but it certainly contributes. Additionally, when you make things difficult and expensive for a business, you aren't hurting the business so much as you're hurting it's customers. Any increased costs get passed on to them. A free market approach takes away the myth that trying to punish businesses does anything other than hurt its customers. Just about the only way to hurt a business is to affect public opinion and drive away their customers. Any other approach is folly.

[kiwi_tea]

Since when was regulation a "punishment"? Since when were taxes a "punishment"? Oh. Right. Since that they got in the way of the wealthy becoming exponentially more wealthy while nobody else does. I forgot, somehow.

And what of the myth that a free market economy can't self-destruct? And what of the myth that wealth trickles down to any great degree, given the exponential growth of the wage gape and the shrinking middle class? And what of the myth that there's anything much of value left to salvage in neoliberal utopianism with what we've seen over the past few years? Or what of the myth that there was ever much to admire in neoliberalism for anyone except the super-rich in the first place? And what of the cartels and corruptions and obfuscations and cheating and monopolies and sheer cruelties that the most free of markets would greedily endorse and thrive upon? That cesspool we get glimpses of already.

Neoliberalism is the myth. A whole feculent library of self-serving myths.

And for the love of goodness itself, Oaktree, what of HUMANITY? What of a humane outcome for the bulk of our society? What of decency, and hope for a better future, and what of surmounting the cruelties of such callous barbarism as capitalism demands of us?

Why wed oneself to an economic philosophy that mocks these ideals as foolish pipe-dreams for the sole sake of the fact that these ideals are a threat to the private profiteering of a microscopic few? Sure, the mythological history is that socialism is impossible or impractical. Any serious investigation of history itself suggests otherwise.

[ElementMK]

And what of the myth that wealth trickles down to any great degree, given the exponential growth of the wage gape and the shrinking middle class?That reminds me. Who can actually speak of the benefits of a "trickle-down" economy and keep a straight face (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2h8ujX6T0A)? People are greedy, and many have no intention of sharing their wealth (or lack thereof).

[Elyasis]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/16/communism-philosophy-communist-party

Regardless of what anyone thinks of The Guardian this is a pretty decent read that somewhat addresses the problems we've all been having with the current systems of economics. The comments are enlightening as well in their own ways. It's a very polarizing subject, that's for sure. But I don't think we are truly living in a pure capitalist state and even the social programs we do have aren't run in a intelligent and efficient manner.

But I don't believe Marxism is the answer. I liked some of the ideas he put forth but others weren't feasible.

The current corruption of the state should be addressed, that is something that has been obvious for quite some time now.

[kiwi_tea]

I don't know if it's really true that people - in general - are greedy. But certainly, our current social framework means the most greedy manipulative and ruthless individuals - psychopaths - are liable to wield an insanely disproportionate power over everyone else through their wealth and political influence. More generally, within some rather strict population limits, people are very altruistic, and have a strongly ingrained sense of "fairness" - at least if sociological studies and primatological research are reliable. Chimps, which seem to most closely resemble us behaviourally, are almost as peaceful as gorillas and bonobos up until the point where there is desperate competition for territory and resources, at which point they quickly become tribalistic and merciless. It's that altruistic drive, and that sense of "fairness", that makes so many people say, "Communism sounds great..." - and then that encultured false history kicks in and the sentence finishes in a demoralised tone - "...but it doesn't work."

Edit:

Even the BBC came to hear Slavoj Zizek
I have a policy to always stop reading as soon as there is any indication people are taking this hand-waving, pretentious lunatic seriously.

the current weakness of the left, even as capitalism is in crisis: what is to be done?
Oh, FFS! The current "weakness of the left" is that it's so Right-wing, especially given who the Guardian seem to consider "the left" - a cadre of Stalinists and Social-Democrats, by the look of things, all clambering over each other to be allies, with no indication at all of how they imagine they might marry capitalism with communism. It reminds of a passage from Trotsky about opportunism:

“You are perfectly right in saying,” Lassalle wrote to Marx in 1854, at a time of extreme world reaction, “that the present apathy cannot be overcome by theoretical means. I would go so far in extrapolating this thought as to say that apathy has never been overcome by purely theoretical means, that is, the theoretical overcoming of political apathy produced disciples, sects or unsuccessful practical movements, but has never yet produced either a real world movement or a universal mass movement of minds. The masses are drawn into the current of a movement, not only practically but also intellectually, by the dynamic force of real events alone.”

Opportunism cannot understand this. It may seem paradoxical to say that the principal psychological feature of opportunism is its inability to wait. But that is undoubtedly true. In periods when friendly and hostile social forces, by virtue of their antagonism and their interaction, create a total political standstill; when the molecular process of economic growth, by intensifying the contradictions, not only fails to disturb the political balance but actually strengthens it and, as it were, makes it permanent – in such periods opportunism, devoured by impatience, looks around for “new” ways and means of putting into effect what history is not yet ready for in practice. Tired of its own inadequacy and unreliability, it goes in search of “allies.” It hurls itself avidly upon the dung-heap of liberalism. It implores it, it appeals to it, it invents special formulae for how it could act. In reply, liberalism merely contaminates it with its own political putrefaction. Opportunism then begins to pick out isolated pearls of democracy from the dung-heap. It needs allies. It rushes from place to place, grabbing possible allies by their coattails. It harangues its own adherents, admonishing them to be considerate towards all potential allies. “Tact, more tact, still more tact!” It is gripped by a special disease, the mania of caution in respect to liberalism, the sickness of tact; and, driven berserk by its sickness, it attacks and wounds its own party.

Opportunism builds on relations which are not yet ripe. It wants immediate “success.” When oppositional allies fail to be of use, it rushes to the government, pleading, arguing, threatening. In the end it finds a place for itself inside the government (this is called ministerialism), achieving nothing thereby except to show that history cannot be overtaken by administrative means any more than it can by theory.

Opportunism does not know how to wait. And that is precisely why great events always catch it unawares. They knock it off its feet, whiz it around like a chip of wood in a whirlpool and sweep it forward, knocking its head now against one bank, now against the other. It tries to resist, but in vain. Then it submits to its fate, pretends to be happy, waves its arms to show that it is swimming, and shouts louder than anyone else. And when the hurricane has passed, it creeps ashore, shakes itself, complains of headache and painful limbs and, in the wretched hangover following its euphoria, spares no harsh words for revolutionary “dreamers.”

[Elyasis]

I'm not as versed in the issue as to know specific names so I didn't have that problem myself.

"Perhaps the true question is: why communism? It does no harm to remember that for Marx, communism was not something anachronistic and programmatic. Marx insisted on the simple idea that we and no one else are responsible for remaking the world. Communism can only be enacted from what really exists. The party-states attempted to bend society to match some abstract idea. A true philosophy of communism cannot provide all the answers, because it has not yet encountered the problems."

Yeah, don't know whether to agree or disagree here. I agree that any solution must take into account the current problems but I'm not sure a strict communist approach is quite the answer. I also agree that to enact positive change one has to actually act but... I'm not sure if on the whole a complete communist society is really what is needed in the present day. I'm still looking for palatable and easy to maintain and erect options. It just seems like everyone is only too keen to want strictly one way or the other and the middle ground we have somewhat made isn't working for the vast majority of people.

[kiwi_tea]

Here is everything you will ever need to know about the disjointed, pitiful Post Modern ejaculations of poor Zizek: http://youtu.be/DhDuYfZa5dE

I don't really mind him. I just feel sorry for him, because he really can't think in quite a literal sense. He just can't think. But his followers - people who treat him as an academic - they fill me with a kind of anger. Academics is hard work towards specific ends. It's not supposed to merely be a word-association game where everyone smiles at how smart they might sound to the uneducated. Zizek's followers are the worse kind of pointy-headed munters: the unintelligentsia.

[Elyasis]

What have you done?! My brain is hrghhhhhnnnnghhh

I like how he says some of the most disconnected things as if they are fundamentally connected. And he's so adamant about it too, you know at least he believes it 100%.

"Žižek points to the fact that consciousness is opaque. Taking his cue from Descartes' problem of the possible automaton in hat & coat and the Husserlian failure to fully account for the selfhood of the other (through resort to the metaphor of "empathy"), Žižek claims a primary characteristic of consciousness is that one cannot ever know if an apparently conscious being is truly conscious or merely an effective mime."

I got to about here on his wiki page. What is this man even trying to say? And why? :blink:

[ElementMK]

Ever get that feeling that someone you're listening to is just throwing large or archaic words together in a struggle to sound smart?

Hey, Zizek, I have some bad news ...

@Elyasis: What you quoted should barely qualify as English. The most obvious sign of a pseudo-intellectual is the way they muddle up their words so their weak points are masked with obscure references and important-sounding phrases.

For god's sake, you don't see people like Stephen Hawking talking like this, do you?

[RoseCity]

I don't know if it's really true that people - in general - are greedy. But certainly, our current social framework means the most greedy manipulative and ruthless individuals - psychopaths - are liable to wield an insanely disproportionate power over everyone else through their wealth and political influence.

Maybe it could also be that people aren't necessarily naturally greedy, but more to do with something like that Iron Rule of Oligarchy where all systems of organization drift in the end toward oligarchy.

This topic is confusing to me - because there's communism and capitalism as economic systems(?). And then there's things like democracy, oligarchy, monarchy. And then ideologies like fascism. But are communism and capitalism also ideologies? I get all tripped up.

[~Dee~]

It's scary to think that capitalism could be replaced with communism, I rather have high fuel prices than lose my free will.
Because that's what communism is, the government thinks and talks for you, you have no say in anything. If you disagree with the government and are foolish enough to say it out loud to someone and that someone reports you, they will come and take you away and throw you in prison.

If you are an ordinary citizen you are not allowed to leave the country, why do you think so many people went over the Berlin Wall to their death, they wanted to be free.

How do I know this?
My late husband came from East Germany when it was still under communist rule and went over the State border, it was Winter and he wore all white to blend in with the snow. He needed a special pass to get 5 kilometers to the border, he couldn't get any closer than that.
He walked and climbed fences and went through small rivers and when he heard a noise, he hid. He said he walked for hours West and had no idea how far he had gone.
He climbed another fence and suddenly he heard voices and saw soldiers running towards him, he told me that he thought his life would end that moment.

But they were West German soldiers and hugged him and told him he made it... he was in the West.
Why did he succeed and hundreds didn't? A lot of luck and not telling anyone he was going, not even his parents or brother.

When West and East Germany unified I got a letter from my brother-in-law saying that they felt lost, they didn't know how to live in a free country.
They had to start to think for themselves and found it very daunting.

That what communism does, it's a form of brainwashing and I for one like to say what I think without the danger of getting thrown into prison.

[kiwi_tea]

And again, the propaganda out of the US, via the Red Scare, and via the collapse of Stalinism: The word "communism" is widely used to refer to systems of rule totally antithetical to communism. How does one counter such a broad falsified history? Only, I suppose, by teaching about the Russian Revolution and that era. Only by learning about what Marx, Luxemburg and Trotsky (and to a degree Lenin) had to say then contrasting their work and ideas with opportunistic monsters like Stalin, Mao, Hugo Chavez, etc, does one come to the understanding that conflating these philosophies - so totally at odds with each other - makes no sense.

That one can easily conflate Stalinism/Fascism with socialism is one of the most profound and successful historical and political myths, and it is perpetuating in our media, and in our school rooms, across the world.

~Dee~, your late husband never lived in a country under communist rule, unless that country was a democracy. His story though, is still a powerful tale of life and survival under authoritarian rule. I'm am glad he lived to be a husband to you.

[ElementMK]

IIRC, Lenin warned against giving Stalin power shortly before he died. If Stalin never came to power, thus eradicating any semblance of a democracy, the USSR could have been a different beast entirely. I'd like to think that Gorbachev was (and is) evidence of this.

[Oaktree]

Since when was regulation a "punishment"? Since when were taxes a "punishment"? Oh. Right. Since that they got in the way of the wealthy becoming exponentially more wealthy while nobody else does. I forgot, somehow.

And what of the myth that a free market economy can't self-destruct? And what of the myth that wealth trickles down to any great degree, given the exponential growth of the wage gape and the shrinking middle class? And what of the myth that there's anything much of value left to salvage in neoliberal utopianism with what we've seen over the past few years? Or what of the myth that there was ever much to admire in neoliberalism for anyone except the super-rich in the first place? And what of the cartels and corruptions and obfuscations and cheating and monopolies and sheer cruelties that the most free of markets would greedily endorse and thrive upon? That cesspool we get glimpses of already.

Taxation is government-approved theft. It is sometimes well-meaning theft, but often it is just greed and thirst for power. Not all taxation has bad results, but heavy taxation certainly does. The increasing gap between the rich and the poor has occurred as taxation in the US has risen. It is because, when the government takes from the wealthy - the people who create jobs - and gives to the poor in a misguided attempt at ameliorating their situation, it hinders economic growth. A job is a better, more stable source of income than government hand-outs. But by taking the money necessary to create jobs to put into hand-outs, the government is taking away from the potential for companies to create jobs.

And corruption thrives most under a heavy-handed government.

Neoliberalism is the myth. A whole feculent library of self-serving myths.

And for the love of goodness itself, Oaktree, what of HUMANITY? What of a humane outcome for the bulk of our society? What of decency, and hope for a better future, and what of surmounting the cruelties of such callous barbarism as capitalism demands of us?

Why wed oneself to an economic philosophy that mocks these ideals as foolish pipe-dreams for the sole sake of the fact that these ideals are a threat to the private profiteering of a microscopic few? Sure, the mythological history is that socialism is impossible or impractical. Any serious investigation of history itself suggests otherwise.

Do you consider a pretty speech to be an argument? People are still human, regardless of what politico-economic system they live under. Capitalism is not all back-stabbing and greed. There is enough good in people that charity will still exist, and maybe even thrive more than it does under a government that takes away a huge chunk of people's earnings. And it would be money given freely, not taken under threat of punishment. It would be given out of the goodness of people's hearts, not out of fear. And, even better than charity, there would be job growth. Those looking to make a profit inevitably need workers and when they have more capital to invest in making a profit, they can put more resources, including more workers, into the pursuit.

[kiwi_tea]

You heard it here first: The cause of the monumental chasm between the tiny number of rich people and the magnificent majority of poor is the fault of taxes.

As if, Oaktree, that even begins to whiff of some plausibility. As if rich individuals and corporations don't already successfully evade tax in their droves!

All you have are words, empty words with so little connection to the realities of economics and politics - to say nothing of history - it is cringeworthy. "Tax is theft" - "corruption thrives under a heavy-handed government". FFS, corruption thrives under an undemocratic government, be it capitalist or Stalinist!

Tax gives those of us with nothing everything! It gives us (half) a breath of life that private profiteers couldn't give two shits about, unless it made them more profitable to pay lip-service to human kindness: the pretence of a heart being, in capitalism, apparently good enough to pass. If the library charged silver coins, in my present state I could not use it. Your utopia is a dystopia for everyone but a few.

Your economics are a pipe-dream. A utopian fairytale. They are utterly inapplicable to the real world, with its monopolies, its cartels, its wage gaps, its hopelessly piecemeal private charity efforts, and its starving masses yearning to be free. It will remain a ridiculous hand-waving theory until you explain how capitalism will or can prevent the self-interested tyranny of a tiny number of enfattened, out-of-touch capital holders over the rest of the human race: the workers. And you, with the deep and practical emptiness of your theorising, mock me for "pretty speeches"?!

Your pretences of this being about freedom are the worst thing - the most insulting thing by far. As if freedom was something that need only really apply to those who can pay for the luxury, rather than that it would be a mutually assured human right.

[Nekowolf]

"Taxation is government-approved theft."

Oh for the love of... And I ejaculate rainbows into the sea, giving birth to Nazi lesbian mermaids who plan on taking over the world through a recreated Frankenstein's monster of white Micheal Jackson.

[ElementMK]

You know, for whatever reason, I frequently confuse Oaktree and Nekowolf, leading me to believe they are one exceptionally bipolar person.

[kiwi_tea]

The other thing that bothers me about this "taxation is government-approved theft" line that bothers me is, if you're going to start making allegations like that... ...what is profit under capitalism except theft from workers? It's literally a private third party pocketing most of the productivity that a worker produces, paying them only to subside to continue making that private individual more money! It's literally unpaid labour. One hopes if you're going to rattle on about how "taxation is government-approved theft", you're also going to rattle on about how workers should be compensated the literal full amount that they earn for a company, thereby completely undermining capitalism altogether.

But no. Because you're only using this "taxation is government-approved theft" because it serves your own class allegiances, not because it has anything at all to do with logic or fairness, or because you have a consistent principle to apply, but because it allows the wealthy more wealth at the expense of the majority. And it protects a status quo you are presumably in the unlikely position of benefiting from.

I'm sure you confabulate that your system "works" somehow, and it very well might (must?) be working for you to allow you to make such pie-in-the-sky arguments. But look around. It's not working, generally. Neoliberalism - in fact, capitalism - is not working for the vastest bulk of humanity. You haven't proposed any way in which is might start working. And there are other options only rendered non-viable by the crudest of propaganda and ahistoricism, not by any inherent faults of their own.

[Oaktree]

You heard it here first: The cause of the monumental chasm between the tiny number of rich people and the magnificent majority of poor is the fault of taxes.

As if, Oaktree, that even begins to whiff of some plausibility. As if rich individuals and corporations don't already successfully evade tax in their droves!

The top 10% of earners in the US pay 70% of all income tax collection (Source (http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html)). Do you understand how skewed that figure is? Even if they are finding loopholes to get out of taxation, the rich are still burdened with the majority of the taxes. That is the money that would otherwise go into jobs and investments, that would be used to improve the economy.

All you have are words, empty words with so little connection to the realities of economics and politics - to say nothing of history - it is cringeworthy. "Tax is theft" - "corruption thrives under a heavy-handed government". FFS, corruption thrives under an undemocratic government, be it capitalist or Stalinist!

Tax gives those of us with nothing everything! It gives us (half) a breath of life that private profiteers couldn't give two shits about, unless it made them more profitable to pay lip-service to human kindness: the pretence of a heart being, in capitalism, apparently good enough to pass. If the library charged silver coins, in my present state I could not use it. Your utopia is a dystopia for everyone but a few.

You seem to have a dramatic interpretation of what capitalism is really like. Capitalism doesn't turn people into evil money-making machines. People are still people. They still have human emotions, including compassion. As I said earlier in the thread, money is also not the only thing that motivates people. People also want to feel some personal satisfaction, and many find satisfaction in helping others. And the library would never charge exorbitantly, nor would a slew of other services, should they be privatized; many businesses rely on the numbers of their customers over the amount of profit they make off of individuals. In many businesses, numbers will always overwhelm individual wealth.

Your economics are a pipe-dream. A utopian fairytale. They are utterly inapplicable to the real world, with its monopolies, its cartels, its wage gaps, its hopelessly piecemeal private charity efforts, and its starving masses yearning to be free. It will remain a ridiculous hand-waving theory until you explain how capitalism will or can prevent the self-interested tyranny of a tiny number of enfattened, out-of-touch capital holders over the rest of the human race: the workers. And you, with the deep and practical emptiness of your theorising, mock me for "pretty speeches"?!

Your pretences of this being about freedom are the worst thing - the most insulting thing by far. As if freedom was something that need only really apply to those who can pay for the luxury, rather than that it would be a mutually assured human right.

I would say that socialism is a utopian pipe dream. Yes, it's a wonderful idea to be able to provide everything that everyone needs out of hand, but it doesn't work. It doesn't account for actual economies. It doesn't account for where the necessary funds come from. Fiscal responsibility is the only pragmatic fiscal philosophy. Anything else it too unstable, and instability is what leads to riots and revolution. When you make people feel entitled to social programs, but then can't fund them because you haven't accounted for the workings of economy, you will see backlash. Avoiding that violence and giving people the respect and dignity of allowing them to support themselves and use the products of their labors as they see fit is the more humanitarian route.

[kiwi_tea]

It doesn't seem *that* skewed considering the top 10% of earners own over half of the US's wealth and climbing. Tax intake has to come from SOMEWHERE, and seeing as there's next to no income to tax from the working class. The rich pay a lot. Yeah. They also earn an insanely disproportionate amount too. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of the US has a pittance of all the wealth. (source1 (http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4?op=1)) (source2 (http://inequality.org/income-inequality/)) (some handy breakdowns)

To quote a little bird: "Do you understand how skewed that figure is?"

There is literally no way to express, in words, the disproportionate spread of wealth, freedom, and well-being that has formed due to capitalism.

Capitalism doesn't turn people into evil money-making machines.

I don't think capitalism turns people into evil money-making machines. I think it makes a lot of good people callous and cruel in quite kindly ways, but really the bulk of the problem is that capitalism (a) lets huge numbers of people suffer, struggle, and die for the sake of private profits (b) places great value on fostering some the worst of human behaviour (c) encourages the moderate amount of shit there is among humankind to float to the very top of society and thereby rule it (e) undermines any possibility of a functioning democracy.

Why do I think this? Enron. Microsoft. EA. Lehman Brothers. Hewlett Packard. Suzuki. AT&T. Rush Limbaugh. George W Bush. Barrack Obama. Ann Coulter. Ayn Rand. Alan Greenspan. Look. The. Fuck. Around. Man! We are literally ruled by callous, self-serving beasts who can comfortably wear an affable veneer, and who are also just as deeply human as they are deeply disconnected from the realities of working class life.

I would say that socialism is a utopian pipe dream. Yes, it's a wonderful idea to be able to provide everything that everyone needs out of hand, but it doesn't work. It doesn't account for actual economies. It doesn't account for where the necessary funds come from. Fiscal responsibility is the only pragmatic fiscal philosophy. Anything else it too unstable, and instability is what leads to riots and revolution. When you make people feel entitled to social programs, but then can't fund them because you haven't accounted for the workings of economy, you will see backlash. Avoiding that violence and giving people the respect and dignity of allowing them to support themselves and use the products of their labors as they see fit is the more humanitarian route.

(a) All the funds and then some are there, they're just hoarded in the hands of a tiny number of private individuals.

(b) There is no reason to say that a planned economy cannot account for actual economies. It would need tweaking, it would need work, but there's every evidence from the Russian revolution that socialism was viable. NOT, mind you, socialism in one country, but socialism on a broader and growing scale. There are reasons why some armies quickly defected to join the Soviets when sent to invade prior to the fall of the Soviet Union (which effectively happened in the 1920s/30s, not the 1980s).

(c) If we're all for fiscal responsibility, then do away with employers and capitalism, and let everyone be compensated in full for their labour, so that everyone actually has some finances to be responsible for.

(d) On what basis do you allege that socialism is by necessity unstable?

(e) People are entitled to social programmes under capitalism, because if they're not, they're only entitled the occasional alms and an early grave. And heck, under capitalism plenty get that even WITH the social programmes. They would be worse off under the pure strain of neoliberalism you endorse.

(f) Whoever suggested that people under socialism should not be allowed to use the products of their labours as they see fit? You seem to be assuming a climate of scarcity similar to the artificial climate of scarcity manufactured by capitalism.

[RoseCity]

I would say that socialism is a utopian pipe dream. Yes, it's a wonderful idea to be able to provide everything that everyone needs out of hand, but it doesn't work. It doesn't account for actual economies. It doesn't account for where the necessary funds come from. Fiscal responsibility is the only pragmatic fiscal philosophy. Anything else it too unstable, and instability is what leads to riots and revolution. When you make people feel entitled to social programs, but then can't fund them because you haven't accounted for the workings of economy, you will see backlash. Avoiding that violence and giving people the respect and dignity of allowing them to support themselves and use the products of their labors as they see fit is the more humanitarian route.

If socialism is a utopian pipe dream, then so is the kind of capitalism you're describing, because deregulated capitalism (which I suppose you would think is a purer form of capitalism) is right now not providing jobs in the U.S. to people that would allow them to support themselves, contrary to your belief about how capitalism ideally works. I've been hearing people say for a while now - there's socialism for corporations and the rich and capitalism for everybody else. What was the bank bail-out but a big welfare payment, and they all got their bonuses just the same, even after their abject failure. That's present day capitalism in action. If you say that the government shouldn't have bailed them out, remember that these banks and corporations are in control of the government - and they are the representatives of good old real world capitalism.This is what really happens, not what ideally happens. It was the banks who had the millions of dollars needed to lobby Congress to get the laws changed (laws put in place during the Great Depression because people had noticed that capitalism doesn't do such a good job of regulating itself and sometimes makes a big mess) so that they could start bundling ARMs and sell mortgage backed derivatives in the first place and it was all sunshine and lollipops until the shit hit the fan.

[kiwi_tea]

I don't think we should imagine Oaktree supports the bailouts. Oaktree imagines a hardline neoliberal economic model would have prevented the need for the bailouts.

Yes. Seriously.

How she thinks this might be the case is abundantly unclear, but she will no doubt repeat again to us the basic, naive mechanics of neoliberal economic philosophy as proof.

[RoseCity]

I don't think we should imagine Oaktree supports the bailouts. Oaktree imagines a hardline neoliberal economic model would have prevented the need for the bailouts.

Yes. Seriously.

How she thinks this might be the case is abundantly unclear, but she will no doubt repeat again to us the basic, naive mechanics of neoliberal economic philosophy as proof.

I was just thinking that socialism is possible and it's happening right now because the rich or the ruling classes or whatever term you want to use have put it in place for themselves. So if it works for them, why couldn't it work for everybody?

[simsample]

what is profit under capitalism except theft from workers? It's literally a private third party pocketing most of the productivity that a worker produces, paying them only to subside to continue making that private individual more money! It's literally unpaid labour. One hopes if you're going to rattle on about how "taxation is government-approved theft", you're also going to rattle on about how workers should be compensated the literal full amount that they earn for a company, thereby completely undermining capitalism altogether.
I'm not sure you really understand what Capitalism is. Under capitalism, if a worker is not paid fairly then they can choose to work for someone who does pay them fairly. How is that 'unpaid labour'?

Perhaps you should try looking at it from the top down, instead of the bottom up. How would you feel if you invented something that made millions, but everyone else got a chunk of that profit? Why should someone else get the inventor's wealth, just because they 'need' it or are not able to make their own inventions for whatever reason? Why should someone who owns a successful business have to pay a higher percentage tax than someone who works in a menial job?

A doctor or lawyer has to go through years of school, years of training. Why should they be penalised for earning more than someone who works in an unskilled job?

The head of a successful computer company had to spend years working to build up that business, years to develop the product and make it successful. Why should he now have to pay more tax in the dollar than the person who cleans his office?

If you're going to say, he should pay more because he makes more, the I ask you to think again. Because, by saying that you are saying that intellect and hard work have no value. You are also saying that no-one deserves to have more than anyone else, so I ask you to give me your car because it is better than mine. I need it, as mine broke down and I can't get to work. And, I'll have your house too, since mine is smaller yet I have more children than you.

In the UK, at least, anyone who makes money, anyone who actually produces, anyone who is intellectually above the norm, is penalised. And I'm not sure why society feels that these people are somehow 'evil' or 'greedy', because after all, I'm sitting on a chair designed by someone clever, and using a computer designed by someone clever, and communicating over the internet which was designed by someone clever. So why shouldn't these people be able to benefit from their designs, why should they be expected to freely give their ideas to us, the consumer, without themselves financially benefitting from them? The proletariat may not earn as much as the inventor, but they get to benefit from his expertise every time they use his product. So let the inventor benefit by being allowed to sell his product fairly and freely, without being financially penalised for his success.

[kiwi_tea]

I'm not sure you really understand what Capitalism is. Under capitalism, if a worker is not paid fairly then they can choose to work for someone who does pay them fairly. How is that 'unpaid labour'?

I'm talking in formal economic terms here when I speak of there being "unpaid labour". However one looks at it, whatever the economic model one subscribes to, the employer pockets the "surplus labour", that is the labour above that needed to keep the labourers alive and kicking. A great big chunk of any employed worker's labour goes literally uncompensated. In a literal sense, I'm not just throwing around a hyperbole. It's sort of the very basis of capitalism, that the labourers don't get compensated for the labour they do beyond roughly what is necessary for them to subside. All of that would-be compensation, created by that labour, becomes private profit.

And of course, the idea that one can find an employer who will pay them "fairly" is undermined by (a) capitalism's reserve army of labour (b) the fact that a large proportion of a worker's productivity is pocketed by the employer under capitalism by default (c) monopolies and cartels (d) the grossly disproportionate power capital holders wield over labourers.

I guess the difference between your philosophy, and mine, is that I don't believe "being clever" is what should define whether a person gets the fundamentals of a tolerable life. I think there is a basic material dignity we are probably perfectly capable of affording each other that capitalism would have us sacrifice so that a few can make gains at the expense of the many. Beyond that those basic dignities, which I would call human rights, let meritocracy and democracy reign. Reward cleverness. But not plutocracy, I'm having none of that. It's not like hard work has no value under socialism, and in fact it's not like hard work has that much value under capitalism - I know cleaners and factory workers who have laboured harder and more desperately on the minimum wage their whole lives than any of my admittedly very hard-working doctor friends, and who will still die in poverty. A labourer being compensated for the true value of their labour means exactly that, not that everyone would live in the exact same conditions, or all starving on some kind of rations programme. Some labourers most certainly work harder than others, and socialism could easily incorporate that fact, and competition, into its economics, without saying as capitalism "if you work harder you deserve to live where others die, to eat where others starve, to get heart-surgery where others do not". These are not the challenges to a planned economy you seem to think they are, possibly because when you think of a planned economy you're thinking of what you've witnessed under the likes of Stalin and Mao, where the economy is "planned" by a privileged bureaucracy not under democratic control.

Either way, given capitalism isn't sustainable (due to the growing wage gap and resultant instabilities) and is prone to boom and bust, we're in for unrest and possibly (more) violence. The state's burden under capitalism is too large for it to bear, and private profiteers can't and wouldn't be inclined to meet the basic needs of anything but a minority of the human race. There is nothing but a slow decline into bleakness in capitalism's future, even factoring in Social-Democracy.

Edit: I think this article, Equality, the Rights of Man and the Birth of Socialism (http://www.wsws.org/articles/1996/oct1996/lect-o24.shtml) would find an interesting seat in this discussion. I include the following excerpt to see if it meets with any interesting reaction from either Oaktree or simsample, as it seems to broach upon the ideas they either espouse, or seem to be implying. I recommend the full article, and I want to be clear, I am not accusing either of you of racism, only of mounting specious and rather interesting defences of gross inequality:

The new ideologists of inequality

The absence of a discussion of social inequality in the United States by the two political parties is hardly an oversight. Although the subject of inequality is largely ignored by the bourgeois candidates, it is the subject of a great deal of discussion in other circles. Indeed, one of the most significant "intellectual" trends of recent years—if that is the right way to describe this process—has been the attempt to develop a hard-nosed justification for inequality.

The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray achieved notoriety because of its unabashed racism. Notwithstanding their own lame denials, the authors certainly did write a racist tract. But, as a matter of fact, the racist arguments are introduced in support of a broader, utterly reactionary defense of social inequality.

The essential thesis of Herrnstein and Murray is that social inequality is the natural and legitimate expression and product of genetically-determined mental capacities. The rich are rich because they have superior genes. The socializing and intermarriage of the rich is preserving a gene pool that tends to guarantee wealth and success for their offspring.

The book concludes with a ferocious diatribe against the ideal of social equality and a general denunciation of basic democratic values. Its authors call for the revival of ancient values, in which there is no place for concepts such as the equality of man. They hold up as their model ancient civilizations in which "society was to be ruled by the virtuous and wise few" and in which "the everyday business of the community fell to the less worthy multitude, with the menial chores left to the slaves."

That is not all: "The egalitarian ideal of contemporary political theory," declare Herrnstein and Murray, "underestimates the importance of differences that separate human beings. It fails to come to grips with human variation. It overestimates the ability of political interventions to shape human character and capacities."

Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah is especially significant because it demonstrates the degree to which the defense of social inequality requires the explicit repudiation of the democratic foundations of the United States. This is a man who sat on the US Court of Appeals, was nominated by Reagan to the US Supreme Court in 1987 and came within two votes of being confirmed. The most important section of his book is chapter four, from which I wish to quote the first two paragraphs:

"Despite its rhetorical vagueness or because of it, the Declaration of Independence profoundly moved Americans at the time and still does. The proposition that all men are created equal said what the colonists already believed, and so, as Gordon Wood put it, equality became 'the single most powerful and radical force in all of American history.' That is true and, though it verges on heresy to say so, it is also profoundly unfortunate.

"The deep, emotional, indeed religious, appeal of equality is not, of course, a peculiarly American phenomenon; the ideal informs all of the West. Besides being a matter for regret, the appeal of equality, outside the context of political and legal rights, is puzzling. Neither of those thoughts is new; in fact, they are trite. Writer after writer has demonstrated the pernicious effects of our passion for equality and the lack of any intellectual foundation for that passion. If there is anything new in this book, it is the demonstration of the ill-effects of the passion in a variety of contemporary social and cultural fields."

Having decried the baleful influence of the Declaration of Independence and asserted, in the manner of a judge issuing a bench warrant, that the demand for social equality is without any intellectual substance, Bork gives us an astounding demonstration of his own mental virtuosity. There are simply no grounds, he proclaims, for condemning great wealth. Such condemnations are based on nothing but "envy," for, as Bork assures us, "It is impossible to see any objective harm done to the less wealthy by another's greater wealth."

"Nor," he continues, "is it clear why luxury should be morally repugnant. If luxury is inconsistent with the democratic ideals that have shaped our political culture, that only means that some of our democratic 'ideals' are the product of envy.... Envy certainly has shaped and continues to shape our political culture. That is probably why it is front-page news in the New York Times that the United States displays greater inequality in wealth than other industrialized nations. The unstated assumption that makes this worthy of the front page is that there is something morally wrong, even shameful, in having greater wealth inequalities than other societies.

"Nor does the contention stand up that the workings of democracy are impeded if there is too great a disparity in the wealth of citizens. There are many avenues to political power, and wealth is not the most significant."

To comment on these lines would be to diminish their comic effect. Bork, no doubt, would be included by Herrnstein and Murray in a list of their "cognitive elite." But he is hardly a good advertisement for the theory of The Bell Curve.

There are striking similarities between The Bell Curve and Slouching Towards Gomorrah. While the first purports to be a work of objective science and the second of serious political and cultural analysis, both are, in essence, ideologically-driven justifications for the growth of inequality. Moreover, embracing inequality as a positive social principle, both books openly call for the repudiation of the entire intellectual tradition—dating back to the Enlightenment—that provided for the past 200 years the theoretical and scientific foundation for the world-historic struggle of oppressed humanity for social emancipation and equality.

Bork puts the case most bluntly. Using the term "liberalism" as an all- purpose swear word—connoting virtually any form of social policy that places even the slightest restraint upon the exercise of property rights, the extraction of profits and the accumulation of personal wealth—he sees it as the expression of a dangerous egalitarian tendency "that has been growing in the West for at least two and a half centuries, and probably longer."

As far as Bork is concerned, the curse of egalitarianism has haunted the United States ever since Jefferson's Declaration was accepted as the new nation's founding statement of principles. Its "ringing phrases are hardly useful, indeed may be pernicious, if taken, as they commonly are, as a guide to action, governmental or private. The words press eventually towards extremes of liberty and the pursuit of happiness that court personal license and social disorder." The problem with Jefferson, Bork writes, was that he "was a man of the Enlightenment, and the Declaration of Independence is an Enlightenment document."

[Oaktree]

I don't think capitalism turns people into evil money-making machines. I think it makes a lot of good people callous and cruel in quite kindly ways, but really the bulk of the problem is that capitalism (a) lets huge numbers of people suffer, struggle, and die for the sake of private profits (b) places great value on fostering some the worst of human behaviour (c) encourages the moderate amount of shit there is among humankind to float to the very top of society and thereby rule it (e) undermines any possibility of a functioning democracy.

Why do I think this? Enron. Microsoft. EA. Lehman Brothers. Hewlett Packard. Suzuki. AT&T. Rush Limbaugh. George W Bush. Barrack Obama. Ann Coulter. Ayn Rand. Alan Greenspan. Look. The. Fuck. Around. Man! We are literally ruled by callous, self-serving beasts who can comfortably wear an affable veneer, and who are also just as deeply human as they are deeply disconnected from the realities of working class life.

How is improvement of one's condition of life "the worst of human behavior". Capitalism is about hard work and self-improvement. It also fosters innovation more than any other economic system. That isn't bad behavior and the innovation it fosters often improves the quality of life for a lot more people than just the inventor.

You want to know what lets people float to the top of society and rule over others? Government. Government is all about controlling the masses and anyone who runs for political office is specifically looking for a position of power. Those who get involved in business are generally just looking for profit.

(a) All the funds and then some are there, they're just hoarded in the hands of a tiny number of private individuals.

The wealthy don't generally hoard their money. They spend, they invest, and they store some of it in banks, which are a form of investment, as banks can then give out loans. The funds that are being used by the government are the funds that would have otherwise been put to some productive use in the economy.

(b) There is no reason to say that a planned economy cannot account for actual economies. It would need tweaking, it would need work, but there's every evidence from the Russian revolution that socialism was viable. NOT, mind you, socialism in one country, but socialism on a broader and growing scale. There are reasons why some armies quickly defected to join the Soviets when sent to invade prior to the fall of the Soviet Union (which effectively happened in the 1920s/30s, not the 1980s).

Government will be abused sooner or later, plain and simple. There are very few examples throughout history of governments voluntarily giving up power. Usually they gradually grow more and more restrictive and tyrannical until something gives.

Further, the Soviet Union did not prove that socialism is viable. Productivity and innovation were way down. Scarcity was the norm. And there was little motivation for people to do better. Even rampant starvation didn't make the farmers work any harder to produce good crops. But profit does motivate people to improve. Capitalism is the carrot, while socialism is the stick.

(c) If we're all for fiscal responsibility, then do away with employers and capitalism, and let everyone be compensated in full for their labour, so that everyone actually has some finances to be responsible for.

Part of fiscal responsibility is being responsible enough to pursue a job, thus allowing one to have finances. Simply giving people money in no way encourages responsibility, both because it makes people think that they don't have to do anything in order to live comfortably, and because people do not put as much value into things they do not work to achieve. It's human nature. The things we work hard for seem more valuable. Therefore, we are more careful and more responsible with them.

(d) On what basis do you allege that socialism is by necessity unstable?

People require resources to live. Resources must be created/utilized. This requires labor. If people do not labor, the resources that might have been available are not, but they still require resources. If resources are given freely to people who do not labor, the burden on those who do labor is increased. Not only is this unfair and unstable, as people tend to resent injustice, but it may in some cases not be possible for the workers to pick up the slack for those who don't work.

(e) People are entitled to social programmes under capitalism, because if they're not, they're only entitled the occasional alms and an early grave. And heck, under capitalism plenty get that even WITH the social programmes. They would be worse off under the pure strain of neoliberalism you endorse.[QUOTE]

The problem with entitlement is that the things that people feel entitled to do not just exist out in the world. Those things must be taken from others. When you take from others, you are infringing on their rights, because you think that some other class of people is somehow more deserving of something they didn't earn.

[QUOTE](f) Whoever suggested that people under socialism should not be allowed to use the products of their labours as they see fit? You seem to be assuming a climate of scarcity similar to the artificial climate of scarcity manufactured by capitalism.

Under socialism, a large chunk of the product of peoples' labor is taken from them, thus they cannot use it as they see fit.


And to the excerpt:

The Bell Curve is junk science. Intelligence is partly genetic, partly environmental. And even if it were purely genetic, that does not mean that those who were born with lesser intelligence should be treated as less than those born with greater intelligence.

I think "all men are created equal" is often misinterpreted. It is evident that not all people are born with the same talents and abilities. What the Declaration of Independence refers to is justice. All people should be equal under legal and moral considerations.

What this means is not that the government should take from some and give to others to try to equalize their living situations, - as profit is not the purview of government, but of business - but that both parties should hold equal footing. The government should cater equally to both, not punish one to "reward" the other. As our government stands, the wealthy are reviled, except when corruption and bribery occur in individual politicians, and the poor are treated as a privileged class. That is not equal.

Contrary to the popular interpretation of Libertarianism, I'm not saying that the poor should be left to rot. I am not a Randian; I don't believe that the poor deserve their suffering. But I think that people would be perfectly willing to help out their fellow man without a government holding a gun to their heads to do it. I also don't think that people who succeed deserve to be punished for it. If a person developed a useful skill and made a comfortable living off of it, that is a good thing, something to be encouraged. By taking from that person simply because he/she was successful, you are instead discouraging that sort of behavior.

[Nekowolf]

"Capitalism is about hard work and self-improvement." No. No it is not. Capitalism is about a private market and profit. Hard work? If that was the great solution, then we wouldn't have poverty, because maybe I'm almost terrorist-radical when I say, I think working two or even three jobs is a lot more "hard work" than working the one that many people have (those who are even employed, mind you). And yet they're doomed to poverty. And don't even bother going into "self-improvement." Some of those people have been in poverty for generations, well before they were born, through no fault of their own. When you barely make enough for food, bills, other expenses that may come up, unable to save money because it's almost all gone by the time the essentials are paid for, you cannot say "just improve!" It's like saying "walk it off" to a person with broken legs.

"You want to know what lets people float to the top of society and rule over others? Government. Government is all about controlling the masses and anyone who runs for political office is specifically looking for a position of power. Those who get involved in business are generally just looking for profit."

Not only are you now just getting conspiratorial, but also incredibly irrelevant. Tsk. Grasping at straw. Funny, though, that the same government you so deride, especially on the Right, is so heavily influenced by people like the Koch brothers. Many large industries hire an army of lobbyists to influence government, holy shit, influence government? Hell yeah. The fun thing is now, I get to do this again: just got to say one thing.

ALEC. A group very much in bed with Koch Industries, who practically write the laws with congressmen. But of course, I don't ever expect you to believe any of it. But here's another idea; what if, say, Shell, or Speedway, or Exxon, or some other company who produces gas decided, let's not sell in America. Or maybe they just decide to crank gas up to, say, $10 a gallon. What would happen? A LOT of people couldn't afford gas, a LOT of people would be stuck in their own homes, prices on everything, such as food, would skyrocket, a lot more people would end up going hungry. Controlling, not necessarily, but frightfully influence of our everyday lives.

Though please, on the topic of control, I would love to hear the last time the government forced you to do anything outside of paying taxes. Did they force you to vote? To vote a different way? Are they forcing you to praise Obama? Are they forcing you into manual labor? Are they forcing you to live where you do? Are they forcing you to go to school where you do/did? Are they forcing you into a specific education? Are they forcing you to watch a government-ran channel? Are they forcing you to pay attention to any media at all? Are they forcing how much time you can spend online? Are they forcing you in regards to your love life? Don't answer. I know. No. They are not.

"The wealthy don't generally hoard their money." Tax havens.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503983_162-20054892-503983.html

"Further, the Soviet Union did not prove that socialism is viable." Oh yay, one example out of many, good for you. I should figured you would have went to the big bad USSR, the place that was ruled for a time by one of the most brutal dictators the world had ever seen as a perfect example. Germany. All of Scandinavia. Various other European countries. Canada. They, however, are still standing, and still have various socialist policies, some being very socialist.


No. Just, no. I can't even finish. Because you are so full of shit. You don't know a damn thing about socialism, or how it works in the real world, outside of your warped, naive little mind. Good luck, Kiwi; no offense, sir, but I can tolerate you better than this.

[kiwi_tea]

@Oaktree

One cannot pick all the most noble formulations and implications of one's philosophies, and discard the troubling aspects. That is what you appear to be doing, laying great stress on the simple and appealing mechanics that capitalism builds upon, while omitting the crushingly destructive and inhumane world you wish to revise as being the fairest and most humane world that is economically possible. You would literally have us accept that the world's wealth circulating through the hands of a tiny few, with a minimal trickle down to the bulk of the human race, does not constitute "hoarding". You vaguely try to blame this on the power of government. Your entire endorsement of capitalism rests on your dismissal of socialism as an alternative, and yet you deal with socialism in a cursory, ahistorical wave of the hand:

You deliberately conflate undemocratic bureaucracies with all possible forms of governance, abusing a long history of anti-democratic rule to bolster a specious argument.You would have us ignore the historical circumstances surrounding the Russian revolution, ignore the implications of the capitalist-backed civil war and the massive working class casualities, to conclude that the problem was the economic model's alleged inability to motivate that led to reduced productivity and innovation in the early years of the Russian Revolution. More importantly, you would have us ignore the whole library of writings by Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky and others during these periods that analyse and deal explicitly with these economic concerns, not to mention Luxemburg and Trotsky's vehement opposition to (what would become) the Stalinist faction.

What we have is a whitewash. Your premptive conclusion: It doesn't work, therefore we need not thoroughly investigate its economics, its history, its politics.

There is an article, here, that deals in a very cursory manner with some of your questions and allegations, in accordance with that large library of Marxist theory you seek to ignore. I can't really say it as well, in such a short space, so I'm linking (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/corr-m30.shtml) and giving an excerpt again:

Socialist society, as Marxists have always explained, will not immediately be able to replace the market, or allocate resources on the basis of to each according to his need, while requiring only that they work according to their abilities or inclination. Incentives, in the form of higher wages, will be necessary for a period. But they will become increasingly less important under conditions where an increasing amount of goods and services are made freely available. And what if people are lazy? This question cannot be answered by setting down a series of prescriptions, but will be determined on the basis of a widely discussed economic plan. At any given period of time, out of a given population, there will be a certain number of people in the workforce, while others are studying or pursuing other interests etc. If it is found that insufficient labour is being undertaken, then society as a whole will have to make decisions to change this situation, in accordance with its needs, democratically decided on.

(PS: Your response to the previous excerpt raises some important points that are dealt with in the full article. For example, David North's unambiguous acknowledgement that it would be ahistorical to claim Jefferson was advancing a socialist agenda (although he was a revolutionary), alongside the very important point that Jefferson deliberately reformulated Locke's rights of man from "life, liberty, and property" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" because often exercising "property" rights conflicts with the ability of people to have lives and liberty. I recommend you read the full article.)

@Nekowolf

Germany. All of Scandinavia. Various other European countries. Canada. They, however, are still standing, and still have various socialist policies, some being very socialist.

"Socialist"? No. Social-democratic, yes.

And couldn't you just point out that Stalin didn't implement socialist policies, and was brutally opposed by many socialists that he consequently had murdered, rather than pander to the myth that his "Soviet Union" was an outgrowth of Marxism?

And it hardly needs saying: All these countries are in the midst of economic crisis, have large struggling working classes of their own (though not so immediately doomed as in the US), and in the case of the European economies you've listed... ...they're threatened by a major debt crisis and potentially will soon be the source of another world recession. Beyond that, all the decidedly capitalist countries you've listed have leaderships who have spent the past few years, and look to spend the near future, implementing bitter austerity measures against their workers.

It's distressing that you are putting these specific countries on a pedestal at this particular point in history. It allows Oaktree to lodge a brutal rebuttal blaming what you've mislabelled as "socialism" for the GFC and the debt crisis, and in case you haven't already noticed Oaktree plans by hook or by crook to blame a flighty abstract notion of "government" and "human nature" for the failings of capitalist economic mechanics. Better not to make her arguments easier for her.

[RoseCity]

The thing I'm not getting here is - right now, the forces of capitalism are in control in the U.S. - so it would seem to me to be a perfect time to observe the workings of capitalism when it's ascendant over other forms of social organization. You would think that at such a time you'd start to see people being rewarded for their hard work as Oaktree has stated, but instead you are seeing people put out of work because, no matter how hard they've worked and for how long, capitalism feels it owes them nothing. It does owe something to the shareholders, and if laying off 1000 people makes the bottom line look better that month, that's what they'll do.
I think we've already lived through something like this - it was the time of the Robber Barons. Read about the history of the labor movement if you want to know how great it is living in an age of unfettered capitalism. People were willing to die, and did, to achieve better working conditions and pay - that's how bad it was and how it will be again if laws are systematically dismantled. And why we need central governments, local, state and federal - to enforce these laws. What would take their place? - competing private armies and security forces, hired by random groupings of people? Thousands of Cosa Nostra style organizations, negotiating deals with each other and rubbing each other out? I think we've lived through that too - it was called feudalism. And yes in the time of the Robber Barons, there was private charity, but I don't understand why if the government helps you, it's a 'handout', but if a wealthy individual helps you, it's okay.
http://i1132.photobucket.com/albums/m561/Melinda1327/GimmeADime.jpg

Last week I was listening to On Point on the radio and the topic was the dismal job outlook in the U.S. Tom Ashbrooke, the host, asked one of the experts if corporations realized that by continuing to cut jobs and gut the middle class, there would be no one left to buy their products. And the expert said that corporations think globally now. See, that's how it works - if, for example, no one can buy your products in the US, you market them in China or Europe. And if labor costs are too expensive in one country, you move your operations to another country where people work for a dollar an hour, and there's no regulation and maybe the country gives you a big tax break to locate there. And then when the tax break runs out, you move along to the next country. And when it all goes bad, as gambling eventually always does, you stand there and ask, what happened? and wait for a government to bail you out, those governments you hate so much, that just exist to keep you down. Capitalism doesn't give one flying fuck about anyone's hard work and intelligence. If they corner a lot of capital, then they'll be someone to reckon with.
We are all in this together, but capitalism, by it's very nature, doesn't recognize that. It requires some other form of government as a balance. China and Japan hold a huge amount of U.S. debt. So it's all well and good for the Global Corporation to not care if the U.S. becomes destabilized, but the economies of other countries, other markets, will go down with us.
Edit: To summarize: if we're evaluating economic systems to see which one works best for the most people, I think capitalism has had its run, and has shown its true colors. People born after WWII were sheltered by all the regulations put in place by the FDR administration - they don't realize that that time was an aberration. It took them 50+ years, but now things are headed back the way they were before. I wish we could have socialism, but don't worry, Oaktree, we already know that's not going to happen. Discussions about capitalism vs socialism are just words.

[Nekowolf]

"'Socialist'? No. Social-democratic, yes." To be honest, I think it's a matter of opinion over semantics if we were to discuss it. That social democracy embraces the ideologies of socialism, therefore, they are socialist at least in part. That's how I see it. But, my point remains the same. The USSR was not socialist, Marxist, Communist, etc, under Stalin, who did a great deal of damage to the country. To use it as a shining example of the failures of socialism would, at best, be like saying, since one Ford car broke down, they are ALL bad. At worst, it would be like saying, since one Ford car broke down, all General Motors cars are bad.

But anyway, to get to the other point: let's face it. This world has become vastly interconnected, especially between America and Europe. While I'm not saying our crisis is a sole cause, it still did contribute to it. But, I will admit I should clarify; although they embrace socialism, they are still economically capitalist.

Now, for how I feel about capitalism, it's not bad if properly restrained in key areas where it is most dangerous. That is to say, kept fair, and kept safe, but while still keeping a healthy and competitive market. That there should be laws, regulations, and agencies that keep the playing field level without sacrificing the consumer, and with a great deal of transparency. Something I believe could absolutely work, and is not impossible. But unbridled capitalism is like a raging forest fire. It consumes everything to feed itself.

[Synthesis]

As a minor historical caviat, Stalin presided over the Soviet Union in a leading capacity between a bit after 1922 and his death in 1953.

Both in that time period, and for the rest of the USSR's history (you know, most of it), you had a number of different government policies that wavered somewhat around the political spectrum. Things like the New Economy Policy under Lenin could be considered moderate or capitalist from some perspectives. but the large majority of them were not only staggered to the political left, but promoted and enforced by the central state, indeed making them socialist--"socialist" is, practically, a blanket term anyway.

The actual disolution of the USSR had a lot less to do with any sort of "economic failure" or atrophe--the USSR had faced far worse economic scenarios in its +70 year history--and more to do with the August Coup and the fact that the Soviet Constitution allowed the constituent republics to withdraw the federation, and Moscow honored that compact by refusing to use military force to stop it throughout 1991. Practically all of the CIS countries still have a certain amount of state intervention in the economies--some to a point that largely resembles the Soviet period, with economic practices still commanded by the state but adjusted for the fact that the world economy has changed a lot in 20 years--without collapsing (and there are plenty of things they could collapse into--just look at what happened to Georgia, which has been entirely unable to force Ossetia and Abkhazia to remain within the country since it became independent).

If it were purely economic, it woul have happened decades earlier--for example, when the entire Soviet economy was destroyed during the Second World War, along with +25 million actual Soviet peoples, both by the Germans. And while there are plenty of failings to point to (for example, being unable to create a purely classless society, or rise to the highest standard of living in the world, or being the sole world superpower in the arms race), people in the CIS countries have plenty of accomplishments that, in actuality, are attributed to Soviet socialism and communism: the defeat of German fascism in the most violent war in history, the repelling of the entire industrial world during the Russian Civil War (in which France, the USA, Poland, Japan, Britain, and practically all world powers actually invaded Russia, Ukranie, and other parts of what would become the USSR to put down the revolution), beginning the Space Race and putting the first man and woman into space, having the longest manned space program in the world, and raising the literacy rate of one of the largest countries in the world from around 30% to 98% in about 2 decades.

Of course, as I said, there were plenty of failings, too. But I did want to supply some context as to what the USSR, as a council democracy (their self-identified form of government) with a state run economy, managed to do. However, this does NOT mean that all council democracies with socialist economies will do the same thing, like dominate space exploration or the like. The Soviet model could not be imposed necessarily on other countries (though they certainly tried) with success, as the United States' model could not necessarily (in France, China, India, Taiwan, Vietnam, Gutamala and, more recently, Russia and Iraq)--countries which have rejected an American-style economy the way Poland or Hungary would, ultimately, reject a Soviet-style economy.

The same thing usually happens: a country (or rather, its leadership) becomes adamant about deciding its own economic path, while capitalist or communist or socialist or fascist or whatever, and hardly feels indebted to follow the rules and practices of other nations to the 'T'.

Anyway, just offering some historic context.

[kiwi_tea]

I suppose my point is that the way the word "socialism" is used conflates a host of opposing tendencies, it has become quite Orwellian. The fact that it's nearly a blanket term is because modern analysts have a penchant for obscurantism. Likewise is the use of the word "democracy" in identifying the USSR's form of governance. To adopt such abuses of language ourselves - as modern political science positively encourages us to do - we begin to collapse our ability to seriously analyse the individual content of the theories and movements. I am more for calling a spade a spade, and to call the USSR or the United States "democracies" devalues to the very concept of democracy. Academic political science today is so... ...anti-intellectual! It bothers me. I have more time for historians.

The crucial thing to observe is that Stalin set up policies that ensured the failure of socialism. He was an arrogant, ignorant man who didn't even take his country's economics seriously at times. He refused to acknowledge that socialism in the Soviet Union under a nationalistic banner was impossible, that the economic circumstances made it impossible, and that the Soviet Union's success depended entirely on the international struggle of the working class. He expressed, primarily, interest in keeping the workers under his thumb for the gain of the bureaucracy his coup had built. His policies were insular, nationalistic, anti-Marxist, and in the sense that they could only ever have ushered in the degeneration of the socialist movement, anti-socialist. The Soviet Union's success depended on the success of revolutions which failed (for interesting and examinable - not unpreventable - reasons) in Germany, in China, across the world, and Stalin's policies neglected this fact.

Lenin, Trotsky, and although she died before Stalin's time, Luxemburg, saw this very clearly: Socialism in one country is impossible. Everything about the Russian Revolution depended on the internationalist and democratic perspective that Stalin crushed.

[Synthesis]

That's a fair opinion. I think. The "Agrarian question" of the Soviet Union--namely, that Marxist orthodoxy and others argue that socialism can only exist effectively in a country that has already long since become a capitalist state, over a century, and happening in a pre-capitalist society like that of Tsarist Russia isn't possible is a very long debate among Marxists, anarchists, and others. I personally am more swayed by Lenin and Gorky's arguments (which take a middle ground and are, ultimately, pragmatic), but not everyone feels that way--and you have extreme examples like Goldman and Berkmann, who believe a communist society could only exist without a state (they were anarchists, after all).

At the same time, contrary to what some would believe, Stalin was not alone in his skepticism of the concept of world revolution. Had he been, he would not have become party secretary before Lenin's death, nor would he have been able to win in the power struggle of the 20s over Trotsky. The fact that the entire (industrialized) world elected to use war to (attempt to) end the Russian Revolution had practical consequences, fortunately and unfortunately, as well as the urgency to keep the RSFSR and USSR from being economically and politically buried (with some limited success in the 1930s). It's an unending issue--the Chinese were confronted by the same issue a few decades later, and while they would reject the Soviet experience, ultimately they came to the same conclusion (that is, of the convenience of compromise). And, of course, the Second World War itself changed the context in which world revolution was examined--the subject of a worldwide proletariat revolution was replaced by the subject of the extermination of the Soviet Union itself by outside forces--with the successful extinguishing of the revolution in Germany immediately after the First World War suggesting that successes in Eurasia wouldn't be easily replicated, and while a successful revolution in China led to a decades-long debate about the next step for the ROC, which would end in Civil War similarly, swaying the revolution's leaders both ways.

I can appreciate the debate, though I'm not a Marxist myself. "Democracy", "communism", "socialism", "capitalism", "republic" can all be loaded terms anyway, so it's not really surprising. Those claiming that representative democracy as you see in the United States is not actually democracy are certainly entitled to their opinion as well. It's the same way you can get into a long debate about the democracy of nations like Singapore (or, until quite recently, Japan, with its one-party domination), of which the Singaporeans and Japanese have their case to make as well. In the case of Stalin, his overriding priority was the matter of industrialization and modernization--not wholly disimiliar some of the Tsars and many of his contemporaries, who believed that was the only answer to the agrarian question. I could certainly appreciate that it was an clear abandonment of the principles of the SDLP had vigorously addocated, and through that, the cause of the revolution, and even an betrayal in some respect, is quite convincing--though I have to also admit that the case that the industrialization of the 1930s, at its very high cost, was the single greatest factor in the prevention of the genocide of the Slavs a decade later, is quite persuasive. At the same time, there's a reason theorists on political economy do not consider "possible genocide" in their concerns, on the left or the right--that sort of industrialization is not for everyone.

(We may be drifting off topic too, I think.)

[kiwi_tea]

I think a lot of Stalin's power came from the decimation of working class revolutionaries throughout the civil war, especially due to widespread disease during the war, coupled with his murdering all the foremost socialist revolutionaries that he could. The most valiant of the actual demographic responsible for the revolution itself died in very large numbers, and despite that "side" winning the civil war in the end the nation's leading intellectual demographic had become much less working class, and more and more disproportionately managerial. Stalin found many allies in the formerly "middle class" demographic who wished to seize and maintain power, and who were wedded to many of the unpleasant nationalistic, greedy, small-minded ideologies that the revolution had sought to disestablish: many of them would have gladly endorsed a system like capitalism - which, mind you, is what the "Soviet Union" eventually got. I think it is among that crowd that such "skepticism" about an internationalist revolution reigned, because really, it was a way of preventing a successful revolution at all, and they would inherit the status quo. The "power struggle" that Stalin won, he won by the most inhumane and undemocratic means, clearly obsessively fearing Trotsky and the people. He allegedly kept a cabinet where he would deposit everything Trotsky wrote, he was that obsessed. It's amazing how conventional "history" glosses over the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky, makes out their differences to be largely cosmetic, rather than the difference between whether socialism is impossible or possible. Stalinism was completely unworkable, and surely even he - dim as he was, must have realised. And yet... One must imagine Stalin thought he could succeed, otherwise, why do as he did? But one thing about Stalin that need not be under-stressed is that he was quite remarkably stupid in some ways - in letters he literally scoffed at concerns about the future prospects for the Soviet economy, seeming to assume it would take care of itself - and one imagines he was a fan of that same kind of tribalistic irrational crony-ism as stupid authoritarians tend to be.

In either case, by stupidity or by malice, there was a "Revolution Betrayed". I'm inclined myself, due to the ruthlessness and murderousness of Stalin, to think more "malice" than mere "stupidity".

Edit: (Incidentally, the things that bother me about Leninism are all the same things that bothered Luxemburg about Leninism - hence my fondness of her. While, on the one hand, the transition towards socialism was always going to rocky due to the violent forces of capital and the impossibility of a nationalistic stance, Leninism embodied an intolerance of mere dissent that was at times quite disgusting. Luxemburg's championing of freedom for dissenting views being the essence of freedom itself, that sits very firmly in my book of admirable notions. I hate the way anarchists often try to coopt Luxemburg because of these side arguments. Luxemburg was a critic, but evenso she was also one of international socialist revolution's most ardent supporters, and not an anarchist.)

[Nekowolf]

"I suppose my point is that the way the word "socialism" is used conflates a host of opposing tendencies, it has become quite Orwellian."

Oh absolutely. I completely agree. And I think that is the hard part of such arguments; socialism has to be properly defined and put into its proper context, rather than it being interchangeable with Marxism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc. Basically, I don't think we should run from it, but try to break its misuse.

And perhaps, it is a bit of pride on my part. I consider myself a socialist, and I will not let that be a bad thing.

[Oaktree]

No. No it is not. Capitalism is about a private market and profit. Hard work? If that was the great solution, then we wouldn't have poverty, because maybe I'm almost terrorist-radical when I say, I think working two or even three jobs is a lot more "hard work" than working the one that many people have (those who are even employed, mind you). And yet they're doomed to poverty. And don't even bother going into "self-improvement." Some of those people have been in poverty for generations, well before they were born, through no fault of their own. When you barely make enough for food, bills, other expenses that may come up, unable to save money because it's almost all gone by the time the essentials are paid for, you cannot say "just improve!" It's like saying "walk it off" to a person with broken legs.

The hard work doesn't just come upon getting a job. The hard work also comes in preparing to get a job that will pay well. If a person does not work hard enough in school and in development of life skills, he/she will not be as successful as those who do. You can't simply skip a step and say it isn't fair because this person is working hard at 3 jobs and not getting paid a lot, when that person didn't work hard enough in school, or didn't go back to college to get a useful degree (something which many employers encourage and sometimes even help pay for).


Not only are you now just getting conspiratorial, but also incredibly irrelevant. Tsk. Grasping at straw. Funny, though, that the same government you so deride, especially on the Right, is so heavily influenced by people like the Koch brothers. Many large industries hire an army of lobbyists to influence government, holy shit, influence government? Hell yeah. The fun thing is now, I get to do this again: just got to say one thing.

ALEC. A group very much in bed with Koch Industries, who practically write the laws with congressmen. But of course, I don't ever expect you to believe any of it. But here's another idea; what if, say, Shell, or Speedway, or Exxon, or some other company who produces gas decided, let's not sell in America. Or maybe they just decide to crank gas up to, say, $10 a gallon. What would happen? A LOT of people couldn't afford gas, a LOT of people would be stuck in their own homes, prices on everything, such as food, would skyrocket, a lot more people would end up going hungry. Controlling, not necessarily, but frightfully influence of our everyday lives.

First off, if there weren't a government to influence, the problem wouldn't exist. Second, the government still looks to the people as voters, so avoids blatantly screwing over the average person to help out corporations. Third, when the government declares war on the wealthy, I think it is reasonable to try to protect oneself by trying to influence government. Some companies influence government in order to take advantage of people; Disney's copyright lobbying is a good example. Copyright is monopoly. Disney has continually lobbied to have copyright extended in order to prevent it's characters and films from falling into public domain. On the other hand, companies that call for deregulation may be experiencing financial hardship. This is not always the case, but it may be in some circumstances.

Though please, on the topic of control, I would love to hear the last time the government forced you to do anything outside of paying taxes. Did they force you to vote? To vote a different way? Are they forcing you to praise Obama? Are they forcing you into manual labor? Are they forcing you to live where you do? Are they forcing you to go to school where you do/did? Are they forcing you into a specific education? Are they forcing you to watch a government-ran channel? Are they forcing you to pay attention to any media at all? Are they forcing how much time you can spend online? Are they forcing you in regards to your love life? Don't answer. I know. No. They are not.

You shouldn't handwave taxation as a method of control. It is still forcing people to do something they probably would not want to do. Further, money is a means to increased choice and freedom, so the government is taking away freedom when it takes people's money. To add to the list of things the government forces people to do: people are forced to get an ID once they are over 18, to stay in school until they are 16, and, now, to have healthcare, among other things. These are things that I don't necessarily object to doing, but which I would not be able to avoid doing if I didn't want to do them. Further, control is not just a matter of forcing people to do things; it is also a matter of prohibiting people from doing things. I couldn't curse on local television, smoke weed, or, in many states, marry a woman. Again, not things I want to do, but things I am not allowed to do, regardless of my position on them. And none of those things is harmful to others. It makes sense to discourage people from harming others, as harming another infringes on his/her freedom. However, there are many things that aren't harmful, or are only harmful to oneself, that the government prohibits.

Tax havens.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503983_162-20054892-503983.html

And what are tax havens a response to? Taxes. If the rich weren't taxed so heavily, they would not feel the need to remove their wealth from the US economy. Yet another example of the government unwittingly using aversion therapy to discourage a positive behavior.

Oh yay, one example out of many, good for you. I should figured you would have went to the big bad USSR, the place that was ruled for a time by one of the most brutal dictators the world had ever seen as a perfect example. Germany. All of Scandinavia. Various other European countries. Canada. They, however, are still standing, and still have various socialist policies, some being very socialist.

If you had been following the conversation or reading what I had quoted, you would know that I didn't mention the Soviet Union until the second time Kiwi pointed to it as evidence that socialism could still work.

As an aside, Kiwi, from what I can tell from your assertion that the USSR may have shown that socialism can work, you are basically saying that, because certain figures believe factors not related to socialism to have been the problems that caused the decline of the USSR, you think that taking away those non-socialist factors would leave a functional government that does not face the same problems. The problem with this argument is that it lacks evidence. If it truly wasn't the problems with socialism that caused the problems with the USSR, it could simply mean that those problems were the first or most evident to appear. If the problems of the USSR could be fully attributed to non-socialist policies (which I doubt, but this is a hypothetical), the USSR would provide no basis for a statement confirming or denying that socialism is problematic.


One cannot pick all the most noble formulations and implications of one's philosophies, and discard the troubling aspects. That is what you appear to be doing, laying great stress on the simple and appealing mechanics that capitalism builds upon, while omitting the crushingly destructive and inhumane world you wish to revise as being the fairest and most humane world that is economically possible.

I have not discarded the troubling aspects. I have pointed some of them out. But I think that some of your ideas of problems with capitalism either do not actually manifest in capitalism or are the blame of some other factor. It is similar to the argument you have presented blaming other factors for the problems of the USSR, though you have failed to explain which factors you believe to be responsible in which ways.

You would literally have us accept that the world's wealth circulating through the hands of a tiny few, with a minimal trickle down to the bulk of the human race, does not constitute "hoarding". You vaguely try to blame this on the power of government. Your entire endorsement of capitalism rests on your dismissal of socialism as an alternative, and yet you deal with socialism in a cursory, ahistorical wave of the hand:

You deliberately conflate undemocratic bureaucracies with all possible forms of governance, abusing a long history of anti-democratic rule to bolster a specious argument.You would have us ignore the historical circumstances surrounding the Russian revolution, ignore the implications of the capitalist-backed civil war and the massive working class casualities, to conclude that the problem was the economic model's alleged inability to motivate that led to reduced productivity and innovation in the early years of the Russian Revolution. More importantly, you would have us ignore the whole library of writings by Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky and others during these periods that analyse and deal explicitly with these economic concerns, not to mention Luxemburg and Trotsky's vehement opposition to (what would become) the Stalinist faction.

What we have is a whitewash. Your premptive conclusion: It doesn't work, therefore we need not thoroughly investigate its economics, its history, its politics.

Vague references to "historical circumstances" and "implications" do not clue me in on your argument. I am not ignorant of the historical period, but you have yet to actually argue with me, instead seemingly urging me to simply go out and read the writings of these figures. Not only does that fail to serve as an argument, but it is time-consuming, and it unequally places the burden of the argument on my shoulders. Explain to me what these figures have said and why you think they are right, and we might be able to hold an argument. But please, leave the rhetoric on the cutting block.

There is an article, here, that deals in a very cursory manner with some of your questions and allegations, in accordance with that large library of Marxist theory you seek to ignore. I can't really say it as well, in such a short space, so I'm linking (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/corr-m30.shtml) and giving an excerpt again:

And what if people are lazy? This question cannot be answered by setting down a series of prescriptions, but will be determined on the basis of a widely discussed economic plan. At any given period of time, out of a given population, there will be a certain number of people in the workforce, while others are studying or pursuing other interests etc. If it is found that insufficient labour is being undertaken, then society as a whole will have to make decisions to change this situation, in accordance with its needs, democratically decided on.

What this says to me is that the author does not have any specific prescriptions for dealing with laziness and insufficient labor which fall within the ideals of socialism. If the society of the example is already practicing pure socialism, that decision to change the situation would necessarily change the society toward a less pure form of socialism, likely to a more authoritarian government (which socialism already contains elements of). If a labor shortage actually came to pass, it would then be admissible as a failure of socialism, because a change away from socialism would be implemented to fix the situation.



(PS: Your response to the previous excerpt raises some important points that are dealt with in the full article. For example, David North's unambiguous acknowledgement that it would be ahistorical to claim Jefferson was advancing a socialist agenda (although he was a revolutionary), alongside the very important point that Jefferson deliberately reformulated Locke's rights of man from "life, liberty, and property" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" because often exercising "property" rights conflicts with the ability of people to have lives and liberty. I recommend you read the full article.)

Jefferson may have had different ideas on the matter, but I believe that property is indelibly linked to life and liberty. Some property is necessary for survival: shelter, clothing, food, etc. Other property broadens one’s choices, thereby increasing one’s liberty. Property is not the only kind of thing that can broaden one’s choices, but denying a person the right to property certainly denies the person some degree of liberty, and maybe even life.

And while I cannot read Jefferson’s mind on the matter, I believe that he likely reformulated it to “the pursuit of happiness” because he did not want to imply entitlement. Simply stating that people have a right to property could be grossly misconstrued to mean that people are entitled to property they did not earn. The pursuit of happiness implies that people are not directly entitled to happiness, but must work for it themselves, earning whatever it is that makes them happy.

And finally, Jefferson may have realized that taxation itself is a seizure of property. Asserting the right to property while attempting to create a government that would likely collect taxes would be contradictory. In order to avoid hypocrisy, he would have to avoid an unmodified use of the concept of the right to property. I think this is a more reasonable interpretation of the reason for changing the phrase, rather than an interpretation that focuses on redistribution of wealth, as redistribution of wealth was not a great concern for the early United States government.

The thing I'm not getting here is - right now, the forces of capitalism are in control in the U.S.

No they aren't. The US government now is larger and more powerful than it has been in quite some time, possibly ever. And socialism is the way things are headed. Heavy taxation and regulation are the rule. A large portion of taxes go into social programs. That isn't capitalism.

And yes in the time of the Robber Barons, there was private charity, but I don't understand why if the government helps you, it's a 'handout', but if a wealthy individual helps you, it's okay.

It isn't the handout itself that is reprehensible. Private donations to charity are done freely on the part of the individual donating. Government handouts come from money taken without choice or consent.

[Mistermook]

Tax havens exist because the rich are too heavily taxed? Are you fucking serious? In the United States, with some of the lowest fucking taxes on the wealthy in the West? Oh, and you realize that "property" in the form of necessities is required for the whole "pursuit of happiness" bit, but you're apparently too dense to see how that quickly correlates with things like welfare?

I'm sorry, but your position is just...lazy. I mean, incredibly unsourced claims, outright contradictions, and shoddy logic? I do believe we've found your religion. Congratulations.

[kiwi_tea]

Mistermook gives the only response that feels quite possible at this point. :/ Maybe give a bit of time...

Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.

- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison, 1785

A conflicted man, as you can see, but you can't just make up speculation about his beliefs to suit your argument. He actually kinda wrote stuff down.

[Nekowolf]

"you can't just make up speculation about his beliefs to suit your argument"

Something a lot of people seem to be doing these days.

[kiwi_tea]

Fake Thomas Jefferson is one of US Libertarianism's (and also the Tea Party Christian-Right's) most outspoken heroes.

(Imagine. Just imagine how often the last sentence of that passage has been quoted out of its context.)


Edit: Hours later and I still don't have to energy to even know where to begin, but I just love this logic:

Government handouts come from money taken without choice or consent.

FFS. Private profit is "money taken without choice or consent" too, you know. Your moral strictures are so firm, but so entirely arbitrary!

[simsample]

FFS. Private profit is "money taken without choice or consent" too, you know.
And how do you work that out? The person who owns a widget factory only gets money when people buy his goods. He doesn't force people to buy his products, nor does he extract it from their pay packets.

However, the government takes quite a large chunk out of his earnings in tax, to pay for things which he doesn't need. Such as, benefits and a soup kitchen and a statue in some park he's never visited. All nice things maybe, but why does he have to pay for them?

Tax havens exist because the rich are too heavily taxed? Are you fucking serious?
I take it you are in a low tax band, then! :lol:

[kiwi_tea]

And how do you work that out?

See: Surplus labour.

The widget factory owner is not taking money from the consumer against their will, those with any money to spend are usually willing to spend it. He's taking money from his employees, and they are compelled to his (or his competitor's) service to survive. To quote a brilliant film, "It's fuck or walk."

I take it you are in a low tax band, then

The vastest majority of people in any country are.

[simsample]

See: Surplus labour.

The widget factory owner is not taking money from the consumer against their will, those with any money to spend at usually willing to spend it. He's taking money from his employees, and they are compelled to his (or his competitor's) service to survive. To quote a brilliant film, "It's fuck or walk."
If the employee does not want to work for the factory owner, he can choose to work elsewhere. That's freedom, which you get with capitalism. It's a fair exchange- the employer pays the employee a fair wage for his labour. If he doesn't, the employee can choose to work for someone else.

The employee/ consumer also gets to purchase and use the inventions that the factory owner has made, without having to have the expertise to understand how it works or how to make one. That's the trade off- if the employee was clever/ motivated/ educated/ able bodied enough to design his own widget then he would have, in a free world. Which a communist world is not.

[Oaktree]

Tax havens exist because the rich are too heavily taxed? Are you fucking serious? In the United States, with some of the lowest fucking taxes on the wealthy in the West? Oh, and you realize that "property" in the form of necessities is required for the whole "pursuit of happiness" bit, but you're apparently too dense to see how that quickly correlates with things like welfare?

Comparing the taxation to the taxation in other Western countries does not mean that taxation is low in the US. In reality, taxation is high in the West.

And I do understand that some property is required for survival, as I pointed out. However, in the US, there are damn few people who are actually starving, and private charitable donations could provide for our poor.

I'm sorry, but your position is just...lazy. I mean, incredibly unsourced claims, outright contradictions, and shoddy logic? I do believe we've found your religion. Congratulations.

And ad hominem is a lazy debate tactic.


- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison, 1785

A conflicted man, as you can see, but you can't just make up speculation about his beliefs to suit your argument. He actually kinda wrote stuff down.

As you'll notice, the date puts this letter after he traveled to France. His political views became more left-leaning after he traveled to France. He may have had concerns along these lines while writing the Declaration, but they weren't at the forefront of his political philosophy. I'm not saying he was right-wing beforehand, but his political views were less left-wing.

Fake Thomas Jefferson is one of US Libertarianism's (and also the Tea Party Christian-Right's) most outspoken heroes.

I don't hero-worship Thomas Jefferson. I don't hero-worship politicians in general, but some of his ideas were as fair as can be implemented under a government.

See: Surplus labour.

The widget factory owner is not taking money from the consumer against their will, those with any money to spend are usually willing to spend it. He's taking money from his employees, and they are compelled to his (or his competitor's) service to survive. To quote a brilliant film, "It's fuck or walk."


…Or get another job. Or go back to school so you can get another job. If you’re shrewd and hard-working, it really isn’t that difficult. And the employees who stay in that job are giving consent for the money they earn the company above and beyond their salary to be put to use for the company.

[Nekowolf]

"If the employee does not want to work for the factory owner, he can choose to work elsewhere. That's freedom, which you get with capitalism."

Ideally. However, you certainly could not say the same in modern times. While that may work during good times, during bad times like now, it is very much the opposite. You could quit, but you risk not finding another job for, well, who knows how long. A month? Two? Five? More?

[kiwi_tea]

If the employee does not want to work for the factory owner, he can choose to work elsewhere. That's freedom, which you get with capitalism.

Yeah, look at how that's working out, right? Scores and scores of people can work their whole lives for the lowest competitive wage - unable to adequately feed themselves and their families or to adequately keep their health, and with poor access to educational opportunities, let alone the kind of living stability that would constitute any sane definition of "freedom" - OR they can work for another such factory IF they see fit to offer workers a marginally less insignificant scrap of the money they actually earn for the company IF a capital holder has any use for them in the first place. Meanwhile, the cost of living rises, and capital holders like ABN AMRO can happily speculate in the safest commodities - things people will always need - such as rice and grains, thereby subjecting millions to famine and many to death.

And for most people, they live a variation on that theme, often to a less dramatic degree, but the middle class is shrinking and social mobility is in decline. As less and less wealth circulates among the vastest majority of humankind, concentrating more and more in the hands of the tiniest minority, the issue is getting progressively worse.

To call this freedom. To call this anything like freedom for anything but an insignificant number of people, you have got to be joking.

[RoseCity]

No they aren't. The US government now is larger and more powerful than it has been in quite some time, possibly ever. And socialism is the way things are headed. Heavy taxation and regulation are the rule. A large portion of taxes go into social programs. That isn't capitalism.
I think my confusion arises from the fact that you seem to be saying that our country could function without a federal government - and how that links to capitalism I'm not sure. A lot of the things that you seem to deplore, like social programs, were put in place during the Depression, and later, I guess, during LBJ's War on Poverty. Social programs are different from socialism - one is an economic system, the other is just basic human decency. I don't see how, for example, social security and medicare could be considered handouts. They are insurance programs that we all pay into, providing income and medical care to people who can't work anymore. Or at least that's what they're supposed to be. Not too far from where I live is the site of our city's almshouse which was the way the poor and elderly were dealt with in the 19th and early 20th century. It was illegal to be indigent within the city limits, so if you were broke they could put you in there - a plaque marks the site and calls the existence of the almshouse a particularly ugly chapter in our town's history. Edit: But maybe the almshouse will be rebuilt for all the elders with worthless 401k-invested pensions or pensions that got defaulted on because we wouldn't want to give them a handout, even though they paid into SS their entire lives.
It seems like kind of backwards thinking to say that if there was no government than corporations and the wealthy wouldn't be able to buy influence. Like saying that if you didn't have a store, no one could shoplift from it.
And let's say that the federal government did go away, then the States would just have to take over many of its functions, raising their own taxes in the process. Maintenance of roads and bridges, school systems, social services, drinking water, protecting the environment - it all costs money. Plus the federal debt - somebody has to pick up the tab for that, unless you're suggesting we default. I think we spend way too much on defense, but that's me.

However, the government takes quite a large chunk out of his earnings in tax, to pay for things which he doesn't need. Such as, benefits and a soup kitchen and a statue in some park he's never visited. All nice things maybe, but why does he have to pay for them?
Don't they still have universal healthcare or whatever it's called in the UK? Are you saying you aren't willling to pay for that? Because I sure wish we had it here.

[simsample]

Ideally. However, you certainly could not say the same in modern times. While that may work during good times, during bad times like now, it is very much the opposite. You could quit, but you risk not finding another job for, well, who knows how long. A month? Two? Five? More?
That situation is not brought on by capitalism, that situation is brought on by government interference. There are no free capitalist states currently existing (I suppose Hong Kong is about the closest, but even that has certain government interventions).


To call this freedom. To call this anything like freedom for anything but an insignificant number of people, you have got to be joking.
You're in New Zealand, right? The well known Laissez Faire Capitalist country?

ETA: Sorry RoseCity, didn't see your post!
Don't they still have universal healthcare or whatever it's called in the UK? Are you saying you aren't willling to pay for that? Because I sure wish we had it here.
I think the NHS is great, however people have no choice but to pay for it, even if they have no intention of using it. For example, someone may choose to take up private medical care, but in doing so they still have to pay for the NHS in taxes. They cannot opt out at all.

[kiwi_tea]

This is always the gambit right:

Capitalism isn't "pure" enough, and all the horrific things people attribute to it are caused by an abstracted spectre of "government". Some very vague speculation as to why it is government and not a systemic issue with the economic system itself - the omission of the fact that the most elegant and pure mechanics of the system allow no barriers to the kind of cruelties we see in capitalism and indeed it appears the mechanics of the system encourage a lot of it - so let's continue down the laissez-faire path because, really... ...it sounds so pure. And it must be the lack of purity fucking everything up.

Let's say it's because people expect too much of government, and that creates a culture of dependence and recklessness. Yes. Why... ...that would be sufficient to explain why there's this enormous and worsening inequality! I'm going to run with that.

This is getting embarrassing.

I think the NHS is great, however people have no choice but to pay for it, even if they have no intention of using it.

Great. So in a roundabout way, once most of the wealthy private users have withdrawn their contributions via tax, you're saying the poor and pensioned should be unable to have anything approaching adequate healthcare. Not that what they get is adequate now, mind you.

[simsample]

This is always the gambit right:

Capitalism isn't "pure" enough, and all the horrific things people attribute to it are caused by an abstracted spectre of "government".
Okay, let me use your method. The huge unemployment rate in the UK and New Zealand at the moment is a prime example of why communism cannot work. Does that sound wrong to you? Why yes, NZ and the UK are not communist countries. So, why do you say that the situation in the UK/ NZ is an example of the problems with capitalism?

At the moment, the government is taking a lot of money off the high earners (and the low earners), and mismanaging it. That is the problem, and that has nothing to do with capitalism.


Great. So in a roundabout way, once most of the wealthy private users have withdrawn their contributions via tax, you're saying the poor and pensioned should be unable to have anything approaching adequate healthcare. Not that what they get is adequate now, mind you.
If it's inadequate then why are people forced to pay for it at all?

[kiwi_tea]

Because the UK and New Zealand are both capitalist countries, not socialist. I mean, they work on a firmly capitalistic model with some tinkering around the edges. It's true, it's not neo-liberal "pure" capitalism, but then neo-liberal capitalism endorses worsening most of the pernicious tendencies of the moderated capitalism we have now: Corporates and wealthy private individuals wielding an even more undemocratic stranglehold over the minimal and largely powerless government they would like to have, not to mention the increase in power over the media, and conditions in workplaces. Government can't keep corporates and private individuals in line now, and you'd recommend we do away with the only soggy barrier there is to make matters worse still.

I blame capitalism because the basic mechanisms of capitalism seem abundantly responsible for the inequality in NZ and the UK, let alone the US. Private profit accumulates among a class who have little interest in helping the working class to greater social mobility - in fact their interests are by-and-large the opposite! To ensure that they have a continuing pool of labour from which to draw more profit, by whatever means they can. And let's not forget, there are millions and millions and millions of people that capital holders don't actually have any particularly pressing use for.

The fact that the government is not democratic and tends to be filled with rich out-of-touch politicians has everything to do with capitalism. Heck: A working-class Joe could not even run without endorsements and funding from incredibly wealthy benefactors, not that there would be much point because the moment a working-class Joe is in the halls of privilege they'll swiftly cease trying to represent working-class Joes, or otherwise commit to being face-stomped daily.

If it's inadequate then why are people forced to pay for it at all?

Think about what you've said here for a second. Healthcare for the working class is inadequate. Your solution: Fund it less so the wealthy who can already access private providers can be wealthier. Oh, and for good measure perhaps an adequate or at least "fair" healthcare system will bloom due to the sheer benevolence of the now even more substantially rich.

[Elyasis]

I'm going go ahead and guess you aren't a big fan of Ayn Rand, kiwi_tea.

Particularly of her book, really a collection of articles, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

[kiwi_tea]

I own that book. Rand is a bit embarrassing. Her brand of capitalism makes virtues of villainy, martyrs of monsters. She never actually substantiates her whole fumbling theory that a mixed economy is the cause of statism, and her theory that there can be a firm separation between state and economy under capitalism is unworkable at best, considering capital holders wield such exorbitant power over production and labourers under her model that they might as well be declared the state themselves, albeit an anarchic, anti-democratic, hostile and disorganised one as far as concerns the bulk of the human race. The differences between fascism and the end result of neoliberalism are mostly cosmetic.

But the thing about Rand is she was actually a deeply horrible, deeply selfish person, and her work reads largely as an attempt to redefine her callousness and tendency to dehumanise (both in her personal life and her politics) as indication of the highest moral character. Her defence of capitalism was deeply personal and self-involved, not very rational, and extremely short-sighted. I don't *think* you'll even find the neoliberal proponents in this thread would like to be associated too closely with such a prominent anti-intellectual and openly cruel neoliberal figure as Rand.

Most neoliberals are nothing if not affable and well-meaning. Rand was neither.

[Oaktree]

Ideally. However, you certainly could not say the same in modern times. While that may work during good times, during bad times like now, it is very much the opposite. You could quit, but you risk not finding another job for, well, who knows how long. A month? Two? Five? More?

If you go back to college and get a more in-demand degree, you can still find a job even in this market. If you have friends in other industries, you can use them as connections to get a job somewhere else. There are options. Yes, they are more limited right now, but there are still options.

I think my confusion arises from the fact that you seem to be saying that our country could function without a federal government - and how that links to capitalism I'm not sure. A lot of the things that you seem to deplore, like social programs, were put in place during the Depression, and later, I guess, during LBJ's War on Poverty. Social programs are different from socialism - one is an economic system, the other is just basic human decency. I don't see how, for example, social security and medicare could be considered handouts. They are insurance programs that we all pay into, providing income and medical care to people who can't work anymore. Or at least that's what they're supposed to be. Not too far from where I live is the site of our city's almshouse which was the way the poor and elderly were dealt with in the 19th and early 20th century. It was illegal to be indigent within the city limits, so if you were broke they could put you in there - a plaque marks the site and calls the existence of the almshouse a particularly ugly chapter in our town's history. Edit: But maybe the almshouse will be rebuilt for all the elders with worthless 401k-invested pensions or pensions that got defaulted on because we wouldn't want to give them a handout, even though they paid into SS their entire lives.

The government gets in the way of capitalism. The more involved in the economy the government is, the less capitalistic the country is, because pure capitalism is laissez-faire. Social programs are socialistic because they redistribute wealth. When the government takes tax money and gives that money to others through social programs, that is redistribution of wealth. Insurance is not the same because people choose to pay into insurance. The money isn't taken from people (except under our current government), but people choose to give it on the chance that something happens and they need a payout that is more than they can make at one time.

If the almshouse were run on charity, it would not be such a bad idea. People would be able to choose what to donate to it, and would likely be motivated to donate by a desire to not encounter homeless people on the streets while walking through town. Homeless people would have shelter and food and would not have to take their chances begging from passing strangers. I don’t agree with forcing the homeless to live in the almshouse, as public property should be open to the public, but the better the care in the almshouse, the more incentive there is for the homeless to live in it.

It seems like kind of backwards thinking to say that if there was no government than corporations and the wealthy wouldn't be able to buy influence. Like saying that if you didn't have a store, no one could shoplift from it.
And let's say that the federal government did go away, then the States would just have to take over many of its functions, raising their own taxes in the process. Maintenance of roads and bridges, school systems, social services, drinking water, protecting the environment - it all costs money. Plus the federal debt - somebody has to pick up the tab for that, unless you're suggesting we default. I think we spend way too much on defense, but that's me.

I'm not simply saying that we do away with government to avoid corruption, though, which is where the metaphor fails. I'm saying that government in and of itself is wrong.

While I think that government is bad, and I have been arguing about ways the world would be better without it, I am amenable to minimal government. Having state government alone might be one way to handle things. Those services that serve everyone equally, or nearly so, are the things that I think should be the purview of government. Roads, police, and other infrastructure are reasonable services for the government to handle. Social programs are not reasonable and are a large part of the federal budget. I also agree that defense spending is too high. It is not our government's job to interfere in other governments. Its job is to provide for the common good of its own people. Defense spending should be limited to defense.

This is always the gambit right:

the omission of the fact that the most elegant and pure mechanics of the system allow no barriers to the kind of cruelties we see in capitalism and indeed it appears the mechanics of the system encourage a lot of it

This is not only circular (“capitalism has no barriers to cruelties we see in capitalism”), but it is wrong about capitalism having no barriers to cruelty. Capitalism requires exchange between two or more individuals, and those individuals must both benefit for the exchange to occur. This is a barrier to cruelty, in that people are not likely to accept dealings that are clearly unequal and harmful to one party.

Let's say it's because people expect too much of government, and that creates a culture of dependence and recklessness. Yes. Why... ...that would be sufficient to explain why there's this enormous and worsening inequality! I'm going to run with that.

This is getting embarrassing.

I would be embarrassed, too, if I resorted to using straw men to argue.

Because the UK and New Zealand are both capitalist countries, not socialist. I mean, they work on a firmly capitalistic model with some tinkering around the edges.

That "tinkering around the edges" is a soft way of referring to socialist programs.

It's true, it's not neo-liberal "pure" capitalism, but then neo-liberal capitalism endorses worsening most of the pernicious tendencies of the moderated capitalism we have now: Corporates and wealthy private individuals wielding an even more undemocratic stranglehold over the minimal and largely powerless government they would like to have, not to mention the increase in power over the media, and conditions in workplaces. Government can't keep corporates and private individuals in line now, and you'd recommend we do away with the only soggy barrier there is to make matters worse still.

A largely powerless government would not afford corporations much power. No, those power-thirsty corporations want a large government, because then there are more ways they can stick their fingers into people's lives and make the market favor their interests. The government does very little to protect the media as it is. Our government does use some degree of censorship, but it mostly leaves the media alone. What we get through the media is what we ask for; people in general are more interested in sensationalism, so we get sensationalism.

I blame capitalism because the basic mechanisms of capitalism seem abundantly responsible for the inequality in NZ and the UK, let alone the US. Private profit accumulates among a class who have little interest in helping the working class to greater social mobility - in fact their interests are by-and-large the opposite! To ensure that they have a continuing pool of labour from which to draw more profit, by whatever means they can. And let's not forget, there are millions and millions and millions of people that capital holders don't actually have any particularly pressing use for.

Their interests are not the opposite. Happier workers are generally more productive. Corporations don't want competition, but their competition largely comes from other corporations that have big ideas and products that compete, not from the average person looking to make enough at a job to live comfortably. The middle class is an entirely unthreatening concept to the wealthy.

Further, the company's interests are served by having more workers, but those workers' interests are also served because they get paid for working. When companies are allowed to use their money to expand, they hire even more workers. Laissez-faire capitalism really is in the best interests of the working class.

The fact that the government is not democratic and tends to be filled with rich out-of-touch politicians has everything to do with capitalism. Heck: A working-class Joe could not even run without endorsements and funding from incredibly wealthy benefactors, not that there would be much point because the moment a working-class Joe is in the halls of privilege they'll swiftly cease trying to represent working-class Joes, or otherwise commit to being face-stomped daily.

You don't see how that's an inherent problem with democratic republics? When you have a government that is voted in by the populace, those who are most popular are those who will win. In order to be popular, you have to make yourself known far and wide. Other governments have other criteria for success; dictatorships are about personal power, monarchies are about heredity, etc. No government is perfect, and the fact that politics is a game of popularity in democracy is simply one of the imperfections of democracy.

Think about what you've said here for a second. Healthcare for the working class is inadequate. Your solution: Fund it less so the wealthy who can already access private providers can be wealthier. Oh, and for good measure perhaps an adequate or at least "fair" healthcare system will bloom due to the sheer benevolence of the now even more substantially rich.

If it is inadequate, people should be able to look elsewhere for more adequate insurance, rather than being forced to pay for inadequate insurance.

Further, under pure capitalism, insurance rates would have to reflect what people are able to pay, as would be the case with every other business. Insurance in particular is reliant on large pools of people paying in and smaller pools requiring handouts. If only a small number of people are able to afford insurance, the pool would be small and the variance in probability of payouts would be too great to be stable. Having a larger pool mean that the requirement of payouts would stabilize, for the most part. Of course, the rate would also be reliant on the cost of the payout, but that amount would also have to reflect what the majority of people are able to pay, as it is unstable for any section of the market to rely on a small number of customers.

[Nekowolf]

"If you go back to college and get a more in-demand degree"

Oh? You mean the colleges that have SKYROCKETED IN COSTS over the years?

http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/20/pf/college/college_price.moneymag/
http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.phtml

[Oaktree]

"If you go back to college and get a more in-demand degree"

Oh? You mean the colleges that have SKYROCKETED IN COSTS over the years?

http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/20/pf/college/college_price.moneymag/
http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.phtml

That's why you take out a loan. If you are reasonable in your choice of college and degree, you can easily pay back a loan. College loans are one of the best investments you can make.

[Mistermook]

Who gives out college loans by guaranteeing them, Oaktree? And without the government guaranteeing your loans, and guaranteeing your banks, and guaranteeing your currency, who do you imagine is giving you these college loans?

Or maybe we should be asking which colleges you'd be talking about in the first place, since the vast majority of colleges aren't fully private. Without government assistance your "easy" college loans would become prohibitive and the majority of colleges would simply cease to exist. Without government assistance, of course, you still get training, except you don't get any breadth of education. Liberal arts education before the explosion of education from government input was a clear hallmark of wealth in the past for a reason.

I guess that's one of those choices your way is improving though: You either choose to be born wealthy or choose not to.

[Mistermook]

But the thing about Rand is she was actually a deeply horrible, deeply selfish person, and her work reads largely as an attempt to redefine her callousness and tendency to dehumanise (both in her personal life and her politics) as indication of the highest moral character. Her defence of capitalism was deeply personal and self-involved, not very rational, and extremely short-sighted. I don't *think* you'll even find the neoliberal proponents in this thread would like to be associated too closely with such a prominent anti-intellectual and openly cruel neoliberal figure as Rand.
What's strange is that I've read Rand and in some ways I've agreed with some of her general principles of thought, but her conclusions are so willfully off, ignoring basic insights into human nature that I ended up throwing her into the same pipe dream category as Marx. Marx was probably a better person (not that it would be hard), but I don't see Marx as successful because of nuances of large group dynamics either.

But Rand led me to Marx, and Marx led me to my mixed position. Capitalism and socialism aren't means to an end in my view, they're both tools that should be used liberally to accomplish a successful society. Capitalism is wonderful how it accelerates industry and innovation, but socialism is necessary to curb the excesses of capitalism and maintain a base social order so that capitalism can thrive but not dominate. Capitalism is naturally sociopathic, but I think that as it enlists workers it's often a productive, good for progress sort of sociopathy. But like any sociopath, you're doing no one any good by not keeping it on a short leash and forcing it to not damage things in pursuit of that progress.

[Oaktree]

Who gives out college loans by guaranteeing them, Oaktree? And without the government guaranteeing your loans, and guaranteeing your banks, and guaranteeing your currency, who do you imagine is giving you these college loans?

Or maybe we should be asking which colleges you'd be talking about in the first place, since the vast majority of colleges aren't fully private. Without government assistance your "easy" college loans would become prohibitive and the majority of colleges would simply cease to exist. Without government assistance, of course, you still get training, except you don't get any breadth of education. Liberal arts education before the explosion of education from government input was a clear hallmark of wealth in the past for a reason.

I guess that's one of those choices your way is improving though: You either choose to be born wealthy or choose not to.

And the greater accessibility of college is what makes it nearly impossible to get a good job without a degree. If college again becomes prohibitive, the market will adjust and people without college degrees will be able to get jobs.

And banks still give loans when they aren't government guaranteed. They have to weigh the risk factor more, which means that they wouldn't be likely to give out college loans to philosophy and liberal arts majors, but students in in-demand fields would be capable of getting a job that would allow them to pay back a loan. College loans are among the more secure loans a bank can give, because they pay for themselves.

[RoseCity]

Who gives out college loans by guaranteeing them, Oaktree? And without the government guaranteeing your loans, and guaranteeing your banks, and guaranteeing your currency, who do you imagine is giving you these college loans?

Yeah, I'm not even sure if banks are making college loans to students anymore.

@Oaktree - Wasn't the 19th century pretty much an exercise in unfettered capitalism? Nothing on earth, no human endeavor can be perfect, so was that or was that not pretty close to perfect laissez-faire capitalism? Yes, there was some government involvement, but I don't think there was any labor regulation. So doesn't that kind of shoot down your thing that 2 entities, for example, a factory and its workers, exchange 'benefits'? Because the worker has no power in the equation - a worker who's working 12 hour days, 6 days a week for the bare minimum in wage is not on equal footing with the owner of the factory. And that's how people were treated by 'capitalism'. Workers then tried to make unions to get their contributions recognized, safer working conditions, living wages and capitalists fought the establishment of those unions tooth and nail. Labor is part of the equation in any definition of capitalism, but it's not seen in human terms - it's seen as numbers on a spreadsheet. Laborers are not seen as equals who meet to exchange 'benefits' - they are seen as an expense that should be kept to a bare minimum. This exposes the rotten core of capitalism - that most people are not human - they are cogs in the machine, numbers on the annual report. There will be no 'barrier to cruelty' unless one is legislated. Because part of the human condition is, you have to eat. You have to have shelter - or die of exposure. You can't put your body into stasis while your mind goes around shopping for a new job. Edit: A town near me called Willimantic, Connecticut was the home of American Thread, a company town. Now there's a little museum about life in the mills - very sad. There was one picture of girls who looked around 10 or 11 years old who worked in the mill - their faces were so full of life and yet you realized that they were just part of the machinery.
If the almshouse were run on charity, it would not be such a bad idea. People would be able to choose what to donate to it, and would likely be motivated to donate by a desire to not encounter homeless people on the streets while walking through town. Homeless people would have shelter and food and would not have to take their chances begging from passing strangers. I don’t agree with forcing the homeless to live in the almshouse, as public property should be open to the public, but the better the care in the almshouse, the more incentive there is for the homeless to live in it.
I think the problem for homeless people in my town is not so much that they have to stand on the street begging, because they can get meals at the Soup Kitchen every day of the week, but that jobs don't pay enough wages to afford an apartment. And then when you don't have anywhere to live and you make your home in a lean-to in the woods, you don't have anywhere to wash yourself and then you can lose your job or you can't get a job because you're dirty and you don't have an address. Capitalism is fun!

[RoseCity]

And banks still give loans when they aren't government guaranteed. They have to weigh the risk factor more, which means that they wouldn't be likely to give out college loans to philosophy and liberal arts majors, but students in in-demand fields would be capable of getting a job that would allow them to pay back a loan. College loans are among the more secure loans a bank can give, because they pay for themselves.

How do they pay for themselves when the student doesn't even have a job yet? How do they know they won't end up underemployed because their chosen field suddenly became overfull.
Do you think scientists are exempt from the vagaries of the job market? Someone I know just got laid off, a very smart, very hardworking scientist, but the company and the managers who laid him off don't have a clue what he does, they just know they have to lay someone off this week.

[girlgeek19]

And the greater accessibility of college is what makes it nearly impossible to get a good job without a degree. If college again becomes prohibitive, the market will adjust and people without college degrees will be able to get jobs.

I fail to see how fewer people with college educations would benefit society. The US is already falling behind academically compared to other countries. Not to mention, restricting education to the wealthy is just wrong...

And banks still give loans when they aren't government guaranteed. They have to weigh the risk factor more, which means that they wouldn't be likely to give out college loans to philosophy and liberal arts majors, but students in in-demand fields would be capable of getting a job that would allow them to pay back a loan. College loans are among the more secure loans a bank can give, because they pay for themselves.

I also fail to see how this would be ok.

[Mistermook]

College loans are among the more secure loans a bank can give, because they pay for themselves.
Except, of course, that they're not, since college loans are actually such a problem for defaulting that the government's actually struggled with making special rules to keep people from defaulting on them.

Another interesting figure for you, though: The default rate increase of student loans for students attending private institutions is six times the rate of the current increase in public institutions. So private colleges have increased risks for loan defaults.

The national cohort default rate is at 7%, and that's a figure that was specifically designed to demonstrate predatory lending practices designed to cause students to default. That's bad enough, the current recession high on credit card defaults is at around 9%. Except that the college loan default rate standard right now, at 6-12% (for community colleges versus private schools) is down by about half of it's all time high in the late 1980s. How did we fix that? Let me give you a hint: It was not through savvy business practices, and Congress was involved.

Just so we're clear on how absolutely and utterly confused about basic facts you are, mortgage defaults peaked at around 6%. 6% at the height of the recession, compared to the late 1980s when the wave of deregulation and Greed is Good was about to wave over to the lull that was the general apathy of the first Bush's presidency until Desert Storm. Student loans are not now and have never been "good investments" on the part of businesses. That's why there's nearly always strong government arm twisting and assurances to make certain that they're available, whether it's in the form of generic Pell Grants or specialized government supported scholarship programs. The higher than you obviously didn't bother to research cohort default rates are even after Congress changed the definition of such things ten years ago to make the numbers not appear so high. You don't know what you're talking about.

If college again becomes prohibitive, the market will adjust and people without college degrees will be able to get jobs.

Right, because having the markets adjust for a lack of specialized and expert labor is definitely something you want to have in your market. You're absolutely right it will adjust. They don't bother soliciting for jobs requiring college educations in much of Africa, for instance, because most of Africa simply doesn't have access to higher education. And when they do solicit for expert employment, they don't do it at home, because again, there's nobody there with those higher educations. Oh, and if you do manage to escape from these education holes you're promoting as good business practices, where do you seek employment? Right, not in Africa. That's how the market adjusts to prohibitive costs and access to specialized labor. It shrinks, ditches high paying jobs, exports requirements, reduces imports and exports, and basically shuts down. Basically you're just kicking it in the balls until it curls into a fetal position and fucking dies.

Good plan.

Post-colonial anarchy: An uneducated population, wealthy land and business owners, no laws or no enforcement because of weak government. You know, the sorts of places the inevitably collapse into left wing revolutions and dictatorships.

You want people to make these excellent decisions about everything without government involvement, but you want to kill their education that allows them to make better decisions? Which is it? This is the problem with Libertarianism, it's structurally dyslexic, pulling for a world view in lots of opposite directions based on premises that history and facts demonstrate to be just fucking bonkers.

The Libertarian ideal is good, the same way objectivism is fairly solid without Ayn Rand whispering evil, boring conclusions into the process. It is good to have self-reliance and self-determination in things. But the real world is entirely too messy and completely disagrees with the whole Libertarian process, in the same way that the real world gets in the way of large societies of Communism. People fuck things up, because human beings aren't the generally sweet, wonderful beings you keep propping up in your wonderfully naive implications.

Human beings are top line predators that succeed above other predators because we're also social. And part of the reason that social thing lets us thrive is because it insists that at some point groups of less able, or at least less empowered, people band together to put predatory pressures upon the top top line predators within our midst that would otherwise start preying upon ourselves. Politics, religion, economics, poetry? It's all about taking the metaphorical John Galt and kicking him in the balls before he fucks us all, while simultaneously promoting the sociopathic little bastard and patting him on the ass enough that he leads us all to the promised land. We can't share all the time because we're human, but we can't let people not share, because we're human. Whether you like it or not, you're part of the human race. If you don't care to be, there's only a few options for exiting that condition.

[Simsica]

Capitalism is wonderful how it accelerates industry and innovation.

Wonderful? What's so wonderful about a systematic abuse of planetary resources? In capitalism any production is considered necessary as long as it is profitable, *no matter* if it really destroys the future by depleting and/or polluting the resources. There's no regard for the future in capitalism, and there are no checks inherent in the system that would end such an abuse before it is too late.
"Free enterprise" of capitalist economy can only lead the world into an apocalypse, no where else.

In the meantime, the authority of science is fast disappearing, since it can no longer claim independence from the capital, if it indeed ever could, and the world is left wondering if indeed there's such a thing as global warming, for instance.
So the wonderful, free activities of capitalist production and distribution of goods, from oil to knowledge, has only led the world into a dead-end street where no important decisions can be made in the name of the good for all, where the future is nothing more than an empty, though shiny word from various constituions that only nominally protect our right to live safely, but thanks to the entrenched mores of insane resource managment under capitalism no one can actually do anything to stop the machine until it crumbles under its own weight.

[Mistermook]

Wonderful? What's so wonderful about a systematic abuse of planetary resources?
Are you suggesting Mike Tyson wasn't an excellent boxer?

In the future, if you're going to try to reply to something I've said I'd appreciate it if you bother to take the time to read the whole post instead of one little bit, taking it out of context, and trying to froth up a snippy rant against a position I've not taken.

Thanks in advance.

[Oaktree]

@RoseCity: I have a college loan through a bank, and I know others who have bank loans as well.

The 19th century saw leaps and bounds in innovation and improvement of the human condition. Some of the issues seen in the Industrial Revolution were caused by the rapid social change. Crowding was due to a lack of of housing available during a period in which people moved in droves to the city. Sanitation as a concept was in its infancy. Some of the other issues were unique problems with the capitalist model combined with a lack of social innovation to fix those problems. Yes, prior to labor unions, many workers worked in terrible conditions. Labor unions went a long way to fixing that. Businesses may have resisted the influence of labor unions, but they ultimately had to give in to certain demands in order to maintain a work force. It wasn't until later, when labor unions had achieved all of their reasonable goals, that unions became insane and started making unreasonable demands. The government backing those demands didn't help things. But labor unions without government backing are perfectly reasonable things. The average person isn't going to want to work in terrible conditions, so businesses hoping to find competing laborers are still going to have to make some concessions. And many businesses have discovered the benefits of keeping their workers happy. I think that many of the issues that people faced during the Industrial Revolution would not appear today due to the altered social climate and the availability of greater technology. Again, not saying it would be perfect, but I think it would be better than what we have right now.

An almshouse that the homeless could choose to live in would solve the problems you've outlined. They'd have an address and a place to bathe. It might be somewhat embarrassing if your boss knows you live in an almshouse, but if you have skills and a willingness to work, and you keep yourself properly groomed, most bosses will overlook it. And what's so strange about losing your job because you don't bathe? Society has certain standards of presentation, whether you live in a capitalist model, a communist model, or what-have-you. People make judgments about others based on their grooming. It's just how things are.

Job fields rarely become overfull overnight and, when they do, it's usually easy to predict. I am interested in biochemistry. I noticed the sea of biology majors, so I decided to go with the chemistry side to broaden my horizons and put myself in a field where I will have less competition. It's not the only reason, but it's what's relevant to the example. If your friend has a degree/experience in a field other than biology, I'd say chances are good he'll find another job soon. Chemistry, neuroscience, and physics are all fields that are in-demand and difficult to excel in, so, those who do, often have an easier time finding a job. If he has a degree in biology, work experience will at least give him an edge over the fresh college students.

@girlgeek19: There are two different purposes to college education, depending on which degree you choose. One is to simply learn for the sake of learning, maybe dabbling in a variety of subjects, but not really developing any skills. That is for the liberal arts degrees (to clarify, I don't mean humanities, I mean the degree called "liberal arts", although philosophy pretty much falls into this category, as well). The other is to develop a foundation in a field that you plan to pursue a job in. That is for pretty much every other degree. If you are going to college to get a liberal arts degree, you're either bored and wealthy, or aimless and unaware of the worthlessness in the job market of the degree you are getting.

Most people go to college because they want to be able to get a job later on. But the training you get in college can be done in technical school, or even on the job. It really doesn't take 4 years and thousands of dollars to train people for most jobs. Further, by going to college for a certain subject, you basically lock yourself into that field. Because many places require a specialized degree, the degree you get determines what your job options are. What happens if you chose the wrong field? What if you'd be better at something else? Well, then you have to go back to college and spend another several thosand dollars and a few more years of your life. If we relied on on-the-job training, people would be able to more easily change professions if they find they are not suited to the profession they have chosen, and are more suited to another. It would also mean that employers would not have to account for college loans in the salary they have to pay their employees. With the money they save, they might be able to hire more employees, giving more people jobs.

There's nothing wrong with being a philosophy or liberal arts major, but those majors aren't really useful, except as a means to broaden your mental horizons, and maybe improve your debate skills, if you're a phil major. If you are interested enough in broadening your mental horizons, you probably don't really need college to do it. Go find the philosophy section in your local bookstore and start reading. Study art on the internet. There are much cheaper options than college if you want to broaden your horizons.

@Mistermook: Don't you think it wouldn't be such an issue if people didn't feel obligated to go to college in order to get a job? If the market did shift back to apprenticeships and technical school being the norm, there wouldn't be so many aimless teenagers majoring in the first thing that looks interesting and finding that they can't pay for it later on.

For jobs that do require specialization, yes, college should still be a requirement. But office work doesn't take a special degree. In fact, the things that many office employees do can't be taught in college because those skills are simply too specialized for it to be worth it for colleges to teach them. On-the-job training is the only way to learn those skills. The office my mother works in, for example, does lots of special research and reports on telecommunication companies. There aren't many businesses that do that, so it's not something that is a priority for colleges to teach. The skills she has picked up for that job, she picked up through years of experience working there. Writing is another skill that is best improved through exercise. All that a class can do is teach you the fundamentals; you have to work at it to improve. And you probably already know the fundamentals by the time you get to college. Not only that, but there are many different types of writing, and the writing skills you exercise in a creative writing or business writing class may not be the style of writing you end up needing later on. What you really need is to learn on the job what type of writing you are doing, and then get better through practice.

I don't think that college is necessary for people to be educated. What is necessary is a drive to learn, whether it originates early in life or later. If you don't have a drive to learn, no matter how much school you go through, you won't become educated, because nothing will stick. And if you do have the drive to learn, you are the sort who will pick up books and read informational articles and books online, regardless of whether you have taken classes in those subjects. We are in a technological era where people can be educated very cheaply if they just have the desire to be educated.

[girlgeek19]

@Oaktree

I don't think you realize what a philosophy major encompasses. This is probably OT, but I have to address it. Philosophy isn't a bunch of stoners sitting around staring at their hands. It's pretty much the basis for everything including science, politics, psychology, linguistics, mathematics...you name it. Philosophy majors go on to become politicians, lawyers, and lobbyists. So I wouldn't be so quick to write it off. Are you even familiar with what a philosophy degree program is like? (And no, I'm not a philosophy major.)

Also, your declared major doesn't necessarily lock you into anything. Obviously, if you don't have a medical degree, you won't be getting hired as a doctor, but having a degree in psychology doesn't mean you can't have a career in computers, or business, or education, etc. Your future depends on more than just what your expensive piece of paper says. You could have majored in the most wanted field in the country, but if you don't have marketable life skills, you're still going to find yourself unemployed.

You can't get rid of college. I at least don't want an amateur surgeon removing my appendix. Nor do I want the government deciding what is and isn't worthwhile to study.

[Oaktree]

I know what a philosophy major is. I have a minor in philosophy and many friends who are philosophy majors. But there really aren't many jobs that are looking for a bachelors, or even a masters or doctorate, in philosophy. If you major in philosophy as an undergrad, you'd better do something else in grad school, or else you're either going to have a lot of competition when you enter the job market, or you're going to have to get a job in something that isn't philosophy. One of my philosophy professors told me that there's actually a service that annually lists available positions in philosophy across the country, and the most recent listing had 50 job positions. That's 50, in the entire country. And I'd bet most of those were teaching positions, as teaching is just about the only thing you can do if your only degree(s) are in philosophy.

I'm fully aware that science and many other areas of human knowledge arose from philosophy. But, the thing is, those areas are now no longer under the purview of philosophy. Now, when you want to study nature, you don't go to the natural philosophers, you go to the scientists. For that reason, there is little practical usage for philosophy in any area other than ethics, logic, and maybe philosophy of mind.

If you major in psychology, yes, you could get a job in computers, business, or education, but you couldn't get a job in chemistry unless you either went back to school or had a friend with great connections who could vouch for you. What I'm trying to say is that there are some positions that don't require a degree for a person to be able to do the job, even if they look for a degree, and those positions are generally open to people who have any sort of degree. Those positions probably shouldn't require a degree. Then there are other professions that are a little more specialized, that someone without a degree might be knowledgeable enough to work in if they are dedicated to the subject, but which you must have a specialized degree in in order to work in the field. It's generally not the best idea to hire someone with no experience and no degree to work in chemistry, but if a person can demonstrate enough knowledge of the subject, or can be trained specifically for a position, there's no harm in giving that person a job.

And I'm not suggesting that we get rid of college. As I said to Mistermook, there should certainly still be college for positions that require a high degree of specialization and training. Medical school should definitely be required before a person begins practicing medicine. But office workers, lab assistants, secretaries, and the like really don't require a degree, so much as they simply need a bit of training that could be provided on the job.

[kattenijin]

EDIT: Why bother. She can't see the forest for the trees anyway.

[simsample]

EDIT: Why bother. She can't see the forest for the trees anyway.
But on the debate forum, you are meant to try to persuade people that the forest is, in fact, there. So why not post it again?

[kiwi_tea]

I tend to agree with kattenijin, as deeply as I also agree with simsample. There really is no debate happening, or to have, with such a blinkered zealotry in play. I do not see in Oaktree's arguments a second's consideration of her opposing side's argument, only verbose ideological parroting, hence I've bowed out.

One could do just as well to debate an oak tree itself. This isn't a debate, it's a deeply theoretical treatise on neoliberalism with some practical objections bouncing off it ignored, or just rationalised away.

[RoseCity]

But debating doesn't really have any point because it's a game for people who like to argue (maybe that's a flip way of putting it, but I couldn't think of a word for what it is - skill? ). And in a classical? (I don't even know if that's the correct word) debate, 2 sides would present their arguments and rebuttals and then one side would be judged the winner. It wouldn't be judged on who was 'right', but who presented their arguments the most logically or clearly and used emotional appeal the most skillfully. Whereas there's no end to the debates on here; they could go on forever. Which is fine, I guess, if you like to argue.

[kiwi_tea]

Online debate always has a point provided the participants are engaging without dogmatic commitments. I'd be neither a vegetarian, nor an atheist, if not for numerous online (and IRL) debates that I eventually had to recognise I had lost as a meat-eater/theist.

The fault of the format is that if you're just arguing to get a sense of how right you are - which is too easy a mode to slip into - then you're not really debating. And in those cases there really is no point.

Edit: @Mistermook - I would be interested in hearing the specific group dynamics that supposedly render a socialist democracy impractical, though. I certainly hear this a lot, but most of the time the solution seems to be the same as under capitalism only more likely to succeed: A robust democracy, and a solid constitutional and good legislative framework. A robust democracy being paramount.

[RoseCity]

Online debate always has a point provided the participants are engaging without dogmatic commitments. I'd be neither a vegetarian, nor an atheist, if not for numerous online (and IRL) debates that I eventually had to recognise I had lost as a meat-eater/theist.

The fault of the format is that if you're just arguing to get a sense of how right you are - which is too easy a mode to slip into - then you're not really debating. And in those cases there really is no point.
I was just responding to the 'why bother?' comment. Any closely-held set of opinions or beliefs can be seen as dogmatic, and you probably didn't change your opinions about vegetarianism and atheism the first time you engaged in debates about them. (And, yes, I understand where the frustration in this thread was coming from.)

I think you can debate for the fun of arguing and building a case - that's what I suppose I was trying to say. But it seems like so few people really want to argue or debate, and carry it to some logical conclusion. It's the Debate Forum, not the Agreement Forum, but some people get angry that you don't agree, and act like you're an idiot who doesn't deserve consideration, say mocking things or make personal attacks without presenting any evidence, argue by asking mocking questions and then flounce when they've had their say.

[kiwi_tea]

Well, part of that frustration, right RoseCity, is something you already picked up on. This persistent misuse of the term "socialism" as a mere pejorative for social programs. A complete collapse of terminology, so that Medicaid and the like are suddenly "socialism". Um... ...not unless all the doctors and nurses have democratic control over the hospitals and their pay and conditions. But there's no acknowledgement of this conflation, it just continues.

No distinction is made between things that are socialism - workers having democratic control over the means of production - and things that aren't socialism - progressive taxation of substantive private profits to provide a more equitable social landscape than the market is willing to afford people. That's nothing *like* socialism, it's just a supposedly "humane" variant of capitalism. The term "socialism" is just being used to obfuscate the history of socialism, and to taint such programs with the lingering hysteria of the Red Scare. Calling the NHS or similar programs "socialism" is a deliberate misrepresentation. We aren't even speaking the same language in this "debate".

I think perhaps the one important thing that Oaktree and simsample and I agree on is that a "mixed" economy doesn't prevent inequality from rising. We agree, that far, definitely. Other than that, our solutions are diametrically opposed, and our understandings of history probably quite remote from each other as well. I absolutely agree that a mixed economy doesn't prevent burgeoning inequality, it only slows it - that's where we part company entirely. Oaktree and simsample would have us accept, through ample theorising and careful omissions, that a free-market solution would perhaps lessen or even dissolve inequality because the markets will allegedly adjust to some "fair" medium. How that "fair" medium automatically provides all people with the fundamentals of a good and free life: food, shelter, healthcare, education, material artistic license, this is all unclear. But there is plenty of theorising about wealth trickling down as the rich get richer and, in theory, create more jobs, with more money flowing around altogether. There's just no reason to expect any of these theories to work anywhere close to enough given that the rich have been getting progressively and exponentially richer for decades - while wages stagnant below inflation - and conditions seem pretty ripe for some of these theories to actually be happening in practice if they are veridical. But they're not happening, and not merely because of regulation and taxation, after all, tax avoidance is a national past time of the rich.

And it shouldn't surprise anyone that in a lot of the industries with the least regulation (at least in NZ) - the most market freedom - we also see much more anti-consumer behaviour and outright corruption. It is in their interests, because in reality without regulation workers and consumers of many industries have very little power, and when industries are trusted to self-regulate they have very little interest in actually doing so. Cartels form quickly and naturally, due to shared interests. Yes, it's also in their interests to have happy consumers...there's always that facile and appealing response to trot out ...but happy free consumers aren't necessarily as lucrative as unhappy trapped ones. New Zealand's phones companies are a good example: Once a pretty functional nationally-owned business with services people could comfortably afford, this was privatised in the '80s to give us more "choice". Now we have a cooperating duopoly that happily charges much more than most people can comfortably afford, but that people must pay because cellphones are pretty much an essential commodity in a developed nation - for social lives, for business, etc. Worse still, one of these companies - the one that was once government-owned - owns the bulk of NZ's landline business and charges dramatically more than in overseas markets for that, too. International competitors do enter the market, but only with marginally less ludicrous pricing plans, and with none of the capital or technological power that the major telcos have ensured they have the bulk of access to. Likewise, trusting New Zealand's real estate business to self-regulate led to decades of leaky, self-destructing housing that - for the first few years - looked very nice. Hundreds of thousands of people out of pocket, but it was all legal. These are just *some* of the results of NZ's hardline neoliberal policies under the Labour government of the 1980s - aka "Rogernomics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogernomics)" - and the National government of the 1990s - aka "Ruthanasia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthanasia)" (after finance minister Ruth Richardson). This is what businesses DO given the lack of governmental oversight that they would like: They get very rich, doing very anti-competitive and anti-consumer things. And even when it's illegal, police can't get cooperating witnesses because there's seldom any reason why anyone would cooperate: The potential cooperating witnesses are rich and can set themselves up all over again and/or they want to continue getting richer using the same methods.

Neoliberal policies caused NZ and working New Zealanders a world of hurt from which we have never fully recovered. They made a few of our millionaires into billionaires, though. :gjob:

Which brings us to the question of quite what "fair" means in a neoliberal's mind. It's unclear, but it seems pretty remote from what "fair" means in the minds of most working people. Does "fair" mean everyone gets ample food, healthcare, housing, because the world certainly has ample resources and productive power to provide these for everyone who currently lives.

The main issue here - and the most crucial - is that if neoliberalism works the way current circumstances suggest it will - ie, with inequality rising as it is now only faster - then the end result on a wide scale you might as well *call* fascism, albeit replacing the authoritarian state with a small anarchic group of exceedingly powerful capital holders who are ostensibly "competing" against each other in a little world-owning cartel. At what point, with the resultant poverty and crime, does the ruling class usher in their "minimalist" police state to defend the interests of capital?

[simsample]

This persistent misuse of the term "socialism" as a mere pejorative for social programs.
I don't think I misused the word 'socialism', I referred to the UK Labour Party as a Socialist Government.

They are an affiliate member of Socialist International, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_International) and both Tony Blair (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tony_Blair) and Ed Milliband (http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6493828/ed-miliband-yes-i-am-a-socialist.thtml) have said that they are socialists.


Calling the NHS or similar programs "socialism" is a deliberate misrepresentation. We aren't even speaking the same language in this "debate".
Nye Bevan, the politician who spearheaded the formation of the NHS, described the NHS as 'Pure Socialism'.

A free health service is pure Socialism and as such it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan
http://www.labour.org.uk/andy-burnhams-speech-to-labour-party-conference,2010-09-29

But beside all that, the way I was using the word 'Socialist' was to illustrate to you that the problems you were outlining were not due to capitalism, as this debate is about Communism and Capitalism, not socialism.

[kiwi_tea]

The distinction between socialism and communism is mostly cosmetic, though. Socialism only really exists as an economic system as a means to communism. Whether communism ever actually happened, or socialism of some kind lingered on, is up for debate I suppose - it's all untried thanks to Stalin.

If Tony Blair called himself a parrot, I don't think that would make him one. I will have to read more about "Socialist International" to see if it is, in any sense, advocating socialism, or if it's just another one of these groups symptomatic of the aforesaid conflation of terms. Edit: It's not at all clear that many affiliates of Socialist International (that I've found) advocate workers taking democratic control over the means of production as their primary policy. Some seem to vaguely oppose capitalism without proposing any clear or feasible route to an alternative, others are social democratic capitalists. It looks like a big vague grab-bag of political tendencies, only a few of which are particularly socialistic, and those that are only opportunistically so. Correct me if I'm wrong.

A free health service is NOT pure socialism, anyway. A health service under democratic control of its workers is socialism, although not pure if its confined dismally to the world of healthcare, and totally unsustainable in such isolation.

[RoseCity]

Well, part of that frustration, right RoseCity, is something you already picked up on. This persistent misuse of the term "socialism" as a mere pejorative for social programs. A complete collapse of terminology, so that Medicaid and the like are suddenly "socialism". Um... ...not unless all the doctors and nurses have democratic control over the hospitals and their pay and conditions. But there's no acknowledgement of this conflation, it just continues.

No distinction is made between things that are socialism - workers having democratic control over the means of production - and things that aren't socialism - progressive taxation of substantive private profits to provide a more equitable social landscape than the market is willing to afford people. That's nothing *like* socialism, it's just a supposedly "humane" variant of capitalism. The term "socialism" is just being used to obfuscate the history of socialism, and to taint such programs with the lingering hysteria of the Red Scare. Calling the NHS or similar programs "socialism" is a deliberate misrepresentation. We aren't even speaking the same language in this "debate".

Well, okay, I agree - that is very frustrating.

[Oaktree]

@kiwi_tea: I'm still waiting for you to make an argument. You've used assertion and rhetoric, and you've made vague reference to the writings of other people, but you've said very little of substance, yourself. You haven't even given me theory, which is, admittedly, a significant portion of what I am arguing with. Most of what I have been arguing to this point have been defenses against potshots at capitalism. You won't even give me the opportunity to consider and/or criticize your view of how socialism works. Is it because you are unable to formulate your view, or unwilling?

[kattenijin]

Perhaps you should try looking at it from the top down, instead of the bottom up. How would you feel if you invented something that made millions, but everyone else got a chunk of that profit? Why should someone else get the inventor's wealth, just because they 'need' it or are not able to make their own inventions for whatever reason? Why should someone who owns a successful business have to pay a higher percentage tax than someone who works in a menial job?

The head of a successful computer company had to spend years working to build up that business, years to develop the product and make it successful.

Let's say we are talking about Steve Jobs here (simply because he's been in the news lately). He currently has a net worth of 8 billion dollars, and an annual income of around 42 million a year from Apple alone(He also owns about 7% of Disney). Sure, he had to work hard to develop a product that would attract investors; but eventually there had to be people to make the product, and sell the product. The factory workers in China make an average of $2400 a year. In the US, if you make minimum wage as a retail clerk and work a full 40 hours a week you'd make just over $15,000 a year.

How much money do you think he'd have if he was still making each unit in his garage by hand? Obviously those so-called "menial" jobs are quite necessary, yet somehow don't "deserve" better wages, benefits, etc. Would Steve's life be substantially affected if he only made 5 million a year, and had a net worth of 1 billion? I doubt it. Yet, the lives of those so-called "menials" could be greatly improved, and, since they are making more money, guess who could pay a larger part of taxes?

I'd like to see what happens in your economy when the manufacturing and retail "menials" decide they've had enough and start staging mass protests. It would probably make today's economy look like a Sunday Picnic.

[kiwi_tea]

Oaktree, forgive me if I'm wrong, but so far we've only really been arguing about neoliberalism vs other models of capitalism. We really haven't needed to go into socialism at any great depth because, as far as you're concerned, capitalism isn't inherently incapable of providing the basics of a good life, and socialism isn't needed. Before dealing with the potential alternatives to capitalism, don't I first need to establish that there is, indeed, a problem with capitalism not only in its "mixed" incarnations but also in its neoliberal ones? If there is no problem, there is no need for alternatives.

Now usually, when I argue with a neoliberal, they are very quick to adopt a drastic redefinition of "fairness" to encompass things that aren't remotely "fair" - like saying it is fair to pay workers below subsistence wages because without capital holders they would be worse off still, that sort of thing - the whole "people don't deserve anything they haven't earned/can't afford" mentality. The argument generally goes that what the market decides is - setting aside all "sentimental" philosophical notions - "fair". Of course, this makes a mockery of centuries of moral philosophy, but there you have it. You, however, have conspicuously not endorsed this line of argument, which is extremely interesting. You seem to believe, quite differently from most neoliberals I've argued with, that neoliberalism can work out for everyone - that, once the market is freed up, loads more wealth will come tumbling down. Even though you've given us mechanisms by which some more wealth and jobs might crop up presuming that employing lots more staff on better pay would be in capital holders' interests, you've never given us any indication of how this trickle or, indeed, this tumble would be anywhere near sufficient to provide a tolerable standard of living for the entire human race. In fact, it seems most implausible, given the effects of neoliberal policies throughout the '80s and '90s, which saw essential services gutted in many countries and placed into private hands, leaving workers and consumers demonstrably worse off, while increasing private wealth by many magnitudes, and generally NOT creating more jobs or better wages. Already insufficient, wages in NZ have been stagnating below inflation - going DOWN - thanks in large part to the huge power capital holders gained over labourers and (to the degree that unions are ever useful or effective, trade unions) in the 1980s, and again in the 1990s. Your stance places us at a sort of deadlock, with you seeming to maintain that neoliberal capitalism could solve what appear to be inherent problems of the capitalistic model - mainly growing social and material inequality - solve problems that appear to have been substantially worsened by neoliberal policies in the past (as under Rogernomics and Ruthanasia).

NZ neoliberals tend to argue that it all would have got better if the policies had only continued, but that raises two questions: (a) How much deepening poverty, desperation and instability are we willing to tolerate to implement this neoliberal utopia? (b) What basis is there to think it will work in people's interests, given the policies don't seem to do what is claimed of them even over roughly two decades?

Certainly I need to present my alternative as well, and I freely admit I haven't done too much of that. It hasn't seemed the focus of things so far - we've merely been bickering about whether capitalism can operate in working people's interests or not - under a neoliberal or third way sort of model. I don't think I've merely harped on with rhetoric and assertion, I've spoken of some solid historical issues - like issues surrounding Stalin's betrayal of the Russian revolution and his reign, like Trotsky and Luxemburg's formulations on the economic necessity of an internationalist rather than nationalist revolution, like the self-serving redefinitions of "fairness" that plague capitalism as much as they plagued feudalism. So far, I don't think we've really been arguing about socialism, because we're still trapped in this argument that capitalism could potentially work. My "potshots" at capitalism are in response to this interesting deadlock, where what you say seems to imply a dystopia, but you're trying to control the narrative around it so that, for example, restricting people's education and work opportunities to trade and apprenticeships is a good thing rather than a social and cultural ill.

Edit: Perhaps, Oaktree, you'll read this entire comment as a deflection. That's how I read your last comment, certainly.

[Oaktree]

Oaktree, forgive me if I'm wrong, but so far we've only really been arguing about neoliberalism vs other models of capitalism. We really haven't needed to go into socialism at any great depth because, as far as you're concerned, capitalism isn't inherently incapable of providing the basics of a good life, and socialism isn't needed. Before dealing with the potential alternatives to capitalism, don't I first need to establish that there is, indeed, a problem with capitalism not only in its "mixed" incarnations but also in its neoliberal ones? If there is no problem, there is no need for alternatives.

As I have stated before, no system is perfect. There are certainly issues that arise in capitalism. Different systems have different problems. Every system has trade-offs. This debate should be less about establishing a "perfect", ideal systems, and more about looking at what the weaknesses and strengths of each system are. It is what the OP is about, and it is the best way to approach a debate about political systems, as none are perfect.

Now usually, when I argue with a neoliberal, they are very quick to adopt a drastic redefinition of "fairness" to encompass things that aren't remotely "fair" - like saying it is far to pay workers below subsistence wages because without capital holders they would be worse off still, that sort of thing - the whole "people don't deserve anything they haven't earned/can't afford" mentality. The argument generally goes that what the market decides is - setting aside all "sentimental" philosophical notions - "fair". Of course, this makes a mockery of centuries of moral philosophy, but there you have it. You, however, have conspicuously not endorsed this line of argument, which is extremely interesting. You seem to believe, quite differently from most neoliberals I've argued with, that neoliberalism can work out for everyone - that, once the market is freed up, loads more wealth will come tumbling down. You've never given us any reason why this would be the case, or how any trickle or, indeed, any tumble would be anywhere near sufficient to provide a tolerable standard of living for the entire human race. In fact, it seems most implausible, given the effects of neoliberal policies throughout the '80s and '90s, which saw essential services gutted in many countries and placed into private hands, leaving workers and consumers worse off, while increasing private wealth by many magnitudes, and generally NOT creating more jobs or better choices. Your stance places us at a sort of deadlock, with you seeming to maintain that neoliberal capitalism could solve what appear to be inherent problems of the capitalistic model - mainly growing social and material inequality - solve problems that appear to have been substantially worsened by neoliberal policies in the past (as under Rogernomics and Ruthanasia).

I am not arguing a full-on trickle down approach. I'm saying that capital holders provide jobs and more jobs mean fewer people left with no source of income. But once there is a system in place where the majority of people have a source of income, it doesn't mean that everyone will be equally well-off. Yes, there will still be class distinctions. But what I am arguing is that, so long as people have some income, they will be able to subsist. An unregulated market adjusts to what people can pay. That means that prices tend to go way up on luxuries, but are moderated on necessities. If a large percentage of the work force would be considered working class, the market for necessities would have to adjust to what they are capable of affording. Maybe not all providers of necessities would, but some enterprising businessman would see the vast untapped ocean of consumers and would start a business to provide for their needs because they have money, too.

Certainly I need to present my alternative as well, and I freely admit I haven't done too much of that. It hasn't seemed the focus of things so far - we've merely been bickering about whether capitalism can operate in working people's interests or not - under a neoliberal or third way sort of model. I don't think I've merely harped on with rhetoric and assertion, I've spoken of some solid historical issues - like issues surrounding Stalin's betrayal of the Russian revolution and his reign, like Trotsky and Luxemburg's formulations on the economic necessity of an internationalist rather than nationalist revolution, like the self-serving redefinitions of "fairness" that plague capitalism as much as they plagued feudalism. So far, I don't think we've really been arguing about socialism, because we're still trapped in this argument that capitalism could potentially work. My "potshots" at capitalism are in response to this interesting deadlock, where what you say seems to imply a dystopia, but you're trying to control the narrative around it so that, for example, restricting people's education and work opportunities to trade and apprenticeships is a good thing rather than a social and cultural ill.

It's more that I'm arguing that apprenticeships are a more sustainable approach to education. When most people need to go to college in order to get a job, it raises the cost of employees because businesses must pay more in order to compete when employees are looking for a salary that will allow them to pay off their college debt. The extra money going toward college debt could instead be put toward hiring more workers. To put it more bluntly, this is a contributing factor in the gap we see between the classes. There are fewer jobs than there might have been because that money that would have gone to more jobs is instead going to those who were able to get a college education, who are then passing it on to whatever agency gave them a loan, at least, until the loan is paid off. So, instead of more money making its way into the hands of those who struggle to find work, that money is instead going into the hands of the middle class, the banks, and the government. Maybe it is a social ill to make higher education less available, but until we can establish a society where the social goods are more available to all, maybe it's best to take that hit.

I will admit that maybe I've been too quick to defend certain flaws, but I still believe that capitalism really can work for the good of everyone.

You have made reference to Trotsky and Luxemburg, but you haven't really explained what they said or what effect you believe their positions would have. I'd like to hear your view of why socialism works. I can't promise I won't be critical, but I've really never heard a well-thought-out defense of socialism and I think that you are an intelligent and thoughtful debater capable of providing such a stance.

[kiwi_tea]

Reading your reply, I'll put together a summary of the arguments about socialism as an economic model over the next couple of days. One of the issues with some of these theories is that socialism is loaded with many the problems that democracy is. One can forward theories, but one cannot dictate the end result of a democratic process. A commitment to democracy can start to sound like a commitment to vagueness. That is where the oft-cited threat of "human nature" enters, in the sense that there is this alleged tendency towards authoritarian rule. There is a perfectly legitimate debate as to whether democracy is sustainable under a robust enough model or not, and I think Mistermook and others, perhaps yourself, tend toward the "not" side based mostly on - what I would call ahistorical - understandings of Stalinist/Maoist movements.

[RoseCity]

Job fields rarely become overfull overnight and, when they do, it's usually easy to predict. I am interested in biochemistry. I noticed the sea of biology majors, so I decided to go with the chemistry side to broaden my horizons and put myself in a field where I will have less competition. It's not the only reason, but it's what's relevant to the example. If your friend has a degree/experience in a field other than biology, I'd say chances are good he'll find another job soon. Chemistry, neuroscience, and physics are all fields that are in-demand and difficult to excel in, so, those who do, often have an easier time finding a job. If he has a degree in biology, work experience will at least give him an edge over the fresh college students.

Actually my friend is a chemist, but whether he will find another job in that field is uncertain. Because he wasn't laid off because there was no job for him to do. He was laid off because he worked at that company for many years and was at the top of his pay grade. Don't know how easy it will be for someone in their 50s to get a new job as a chemist. All the people laid off in that wave were highly paid, middle aged employees.

I think a lot of the people who've lost their jobs in the past 4 years fit that profile - people with good salaries and benefits. Because the rules have been changed and for a lot of people they were changed in midstream. Now those jobs will be filled by contract workers with no benefits at all beyond what they can possibly purchase themselves. Or the work will be sent to some other country. I don't think we're anywhere near the end of this. For example, I've heard that U.S. hospitals are having x-rays and scans read by radiologists in India. And maybe when someone became a radiologist they thought, 'People will always need to have test interpreted and I'll just need to keep up with technology.' And they were right about the first part - where they went wrong was thinking that the tests would necessarily be interpreted by them, a highly paid professional.

But to get to the other reason I posted - the first part of this clip offers another take on the 10% pay 70% of taxes talking point (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/44651624#44651624)

[kiwi_tea]

I have a half-drafted reply to this in notepad on my desktop, but I've scored a full time temping job until at least the 1st of October. I will get there. Promise.

[RoseCity]

Looking forward to reading it.

[zigersimmer]

Communism in it's purest form has shown to not work, The Soviet Union, Cuba. Communism with a capitalist financial system has been shown to work. Vietnam, China.

The Soviet Union and Cuba have never been communist. The Soviet Union was, and Cuba, China and Vietnam still are, socialist. There never has been an actual communist country on our planet.