Two Questions for Marxists

The soviet bloc and china made up 1.5 billion people and an abundance of natural resources. Russia is one of the worlds biggest oil and gas producers. They were a market unto themselves.

But that lie is only a lie built on two other lies, one of which is that they were locked out of markets, which they weren't, and two you can't say that lack of trade made them poor when trading countries could be poor too. So you piled lies upon and inconsistent and incoherent argument.

But they weren't locked out, no more than capitalist countries were locked out of their markets.

Your claim that consumer debt, besides the fact that it keeps shifting in terms of when it "saved" capitalism, is backed up by nothing other than the fact that you say so. US households have a positive net worth. Their assets are greater than their liablities. Consumer debt is far smaller than their net worth. http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p70-88.pdf So again, you are making up bullshit you cannot back up.

They produced consumer goods, and it didn't save their economy. Therefore no difference.

Exactly, he "couldnt have foreseen the use of debt". Well if he couldn't foresee something that already existed in the century BEFORE he was born, how smart does that make him? And how smart does that make you? How many other aspects - which are plain to everyone else - do you and Marx fail to "foresee"? You may have too little understanding of finance and economics to understand debt, but others aren't. Debt is not bad. Debt is normal. Countries and companies can be in debt forever, there is nothing illogical about that.

Then why do capitalist countries see rising prosperity? Where did all the wealth that brought Taiwan and Korea and post war Germany and Japan to prosperity from smoking ruins or subsistence agriculture come from? It was created by capitalism. Where did all the wealth that was in the Czech Republic go in the 50 years they were ruled by a communist party? It was destroyed by socialist economics. You are simply repeating empty slogans.

 

It is still a fraction of the global market and the USSR needed a huge defence buget to deter the US and China from invasion.

Most of what was exported to the west was just raw resources, true this was partly due to the USSR for various reasons but also due to them being locked out alot of markets.

Those assets are based on the confedence of the market, meaning you can only exchange them for real wealth but are not real wealth, they have zero value during a depression.

You don't know what the fuck consumerism is, the USSR was NOT fucking consumerist, consumerism does not just mean there are consumer goods, how fucking stupid are you? Consumerism is the theory that a ever greater consumption of goods is economically beneficial.

Yes debt existed back then but he didn't know of economic theories based on consumerism and Keynesianism theory that completly change debt.

No it was created by the workers, capitalism did have a goddam thing to do with it.

Argentina was a very rich socialist country, till they turned capitalist and within a few years had a crashed economy, Chile was a poor socialist nation that turned capitalist and their economy had a slight improvement in a time when the whole region had a upswing, yet Chile underperformed the region and eventualy too had its economy crash.

 

You just got through telling us how cold war defence spending saved capitalism, now you are telling us that the USSR failed because they needed to defend themselves from the US. You contradict yourself constantly, and it is becoming very boring.

Canada and Australia became rich exporting natural resources. Again, you seem totally ignorant of the world economy and are just making up bullshit excuses as you go along.

Really? Houses are not real wealth? Do houses sell for zero during a depression? Or are you just making up bullshit again? Even stocks and bonds didn't go to zero during the depression.

Reading through the pages and pages of unsupportable bullshit you have been stuffing into this thread, who's fucking stupid? Consumerism is a bogus concept that can mean whatever you want it to. It certainly isn't a part of any serious school of economic thought, and you haven't in any way supported it other than repeating it. Maybe you think people should still be watching black and white televisions, washing their clothes by hand, using telegraphs, and listening to 8-tracks, because consumerism is somehow false. Who knows, to you it seems to be nothing more than one item on a long list of empty slogans you throw around.

Marx was an economist. Why would he need other economists to invent theories for him to understand economics properly? Isn't that what economists are supposed to be doing BY THEMSELVES? First you blame history for not going as Marx said it would, now you blame other economists for not explaining to him how the world works. You have what is essentially a religious view of Marx - he is god, god cannot be wrong, we just do not understand his ways.

Teen rebel slogans. Why did workers in the USSR and other non-capitalist economic systems never manage to create any wealth then? Living standards rose under capitalism for all classes. That's what matters. Marx thought the proletariat would get poorer and the rich would get richer. In reality, everyone got richer. Capitalism worked, which is why you need to lie and bullshit to criticise it.

Argentina did not "turn capitalist" a few years before their economy collapsed. As for your example of Chile, it is so incoherent I can't even respond.

 

In the short term yes defence spending helped both the USA and USSR but USSR superior economic growth peaked their economy much faster, by the 1970s the USSR found it increasingly difficult to maintain its high rates of growth in the industrial sector, as the USSR could not add much new production to their economy more and more new production would have to come from increasing efficiency, from that point on how production was used become far more crucial.

USSR had a huge industrial base and was a super power, Canada and Austrialia was not even in the same leage.

I was talking about stocks and bonds, during the great depression there was a number of stocks and bonds that become worthless.

Marx explained how economics worked THEN, it has changed a bit thus some of Marx is a bit off.

USSR had no problem with production, it had unsurpassed growth rates till the 1970's, it was a problem of what that production was used for, the USSR had goverment issues not so much economic, if the USSR allowed the people to have far more say then USSR could easily have been on the road to kick USA's ass in living standards.

 

First you said the only reason US capitalism survived was because of cold war defence spending. Then you said the reason the USSR failed was because of cold war defence spending (a perfect example of Psy Fox bullshit make it up as you go along logic). Now you are unable to reconcile these views so you want to change the subject and talk about the USSR "peaking faster". Well why did it peak at such a shit level of development? Korea and Taiwan had massive growth for decades, but they didn't peak, they kept growing, and are still growing. And again, why would East Germany peak but not West Germany? Why did the Czech Republic mysteriously peak as soon as communists took over, while poorer neighbors kept growing and surpassed it?

First you said the USSR couldn't grow because they couldn't export, then it was because they could only export natural resources, now you've abandoned the argument completely and are talking saying Canada isn't in the same league. Your point is what? What does this have to do with exports? Again, since you've contradicted yourself so many times you just want to wander off on some tangent. Of course they aren't in the same league, they prospered and grew far richer under capitalism. They both have economies that are twice as large as Russia's with a quarter the population. What league are you talking about - the league of heavily armed totalitarian states which leave their entire nations in poverty?

Yes but household wealth isn't made up of stocks and bonds, as my link showed. So again, a sneering made up answer backed up by nothing which proved nothing. Remember, this was a bullshit argument to back up your theory of consumerism. Not only could you not back up your theory that consumerism drove growth, you've made an irrelevant sidetracking argument which you can't back up either. Lame.

First Marx couldn't have known about debt (even though it had existed for long before he put pen to paper) then he couldn't be expected to know how it worked (not his fault you see, apparently that was some other economist's job) now you say he was talking about "then" and "maybe" was "a bit off". Well when you're predicting the future, you're not talking about "then", you're talking about the future. People who make forecasts about the future which turn out to be wrong are not considered good forecasters, although since you worship Marx like a god you can't see that.

Well no actually, Soviet growth was not unsurpassed until the 1970s, that is a lie. At best the "good years" (of a totalitarian drive for rapid industrialisation) ended in the 1950s. Unless you are awed by Soviet factories increasing production of cars based on decades old Fiat designs, you'd be hard pressed to find anything glorious about the Soviet economy's "growth".

 

As I said defence spending is a short term fix, you throw that much money at a economy it should grow but by the 1970 USSR economy was at a point where throwing money at the economy did mostly nothing.

First off the USSR was not a shit level of development, the USSR had alot of output but that output mostly went to creating more output and to the goverment for stuff like police, intelligence, military and foreign aid. By 1970 the USSR found that its growth was rapidly slowing, the problem was a shortage of manpower, before 1970 the USSR was growing with farmers moving to urban areas to work in factories by 1970 the migration stoped as the USSR had a shortage of food production due to the migration of farmers to factories, due to the cold war alot of production and manpower was tied up in defence that ment the huge Soviet military complex was making things worse. The USSR needed to trade for food, China was at odds with them and Vietnam, Vietnam had problems of its own and Cuba couldn't meet the food needs of the USSR, meaning the USSR couldn't look to fellow communist nations to trade with to make up for the short fall in food production, leaving the west but the west didn't take very much USSR machinary or millitary equipment that USSR used to trade with other communist nations, the USSR couldn't sell high margin MiGs to the west to make quick bucks instead they had to sell low margin resources, that didn't give the USSR enough to cover the cost to import food to make up for its short fall.

No one can be totally accurate when making forecasts about the future.

The USSRs means of production greatly increased till the 1970's, their economy supported the 2nd largest space program and huge military. Yes the USSR put a token effort into looking after its people and it was totaly incompetent for the USSR to ingore their people like that, if instead of showing off to the Americans they used their industrial might towards imporving the lives of their citizens the USSR could have easily surpassed the USA.

 

I really enjoy how you can keep lying and making up excuses, ignoring most of what I ask because you can't answer it, and abandoning arguments right and left. You'd have done well in the USSR.

Actually, you said defense spending saved the US economy from the great depression and then kept it going all through the cold war. That's several decades and hardly short term. In any case you have, typically, contradicted yourself in a number of ways. First of all, capitalist societies with much lower defense spending also prospered. Secondly, the USSR's economy in the 1970s was nowhere near the level of prosperity in Western Europe or the US. Why did the USSR peak while it was still poor? Finally, you constantly ignore the example of other countries in the Soviet Block. The Czech Republic started out as one of the richest countries in Europe, and after the communists took over it slowly fell behind and eventually was one of the poorest countries in Europe.

The USSR was at a shit level of development. You talk like a 1920s communist. Output! Steel quotas! Production! But countries don't get rich by building the biggest steel mill, this is one of the lessons of the Soviet experiment. What "output mostly went to more output means" is a mystery, presumably more investment. Well, other countries invest too, otherwise they wouldn't grow. Other countries also have police, intelligence, military and foreign aid. Another list of irrelevant made up excuses.

You keep going back and forth between saying defense spending is a way of cheating to get economic growth (USA) and an unfair burden (poor little USSR). I have given up hope of you ever becoming coherent on this argument, it is too useful for you to have it both ways. Anyway the rest of it is all made up bullshit too, so it makes no difference.

Anyway, the USSR had about 15%-25% of its population working in agriculture, yet could not feed itself, while the US is a major exporter with 2% of its population in agriculture. Yet you make excuses for the USSR being over-industrialised.

Lies. As I pointed out before, Canada and Australia got rich trading "low margin" resources, so your excuse is lame and only gets more lame the more you repeat it. This shows how programmed you are, you just keep repeating the same excuses even after they have been proved wrong. You are practically robotic. In any case, exporting oil and buying food it perfectly adequate, the US doesn't need to trade F16s for wheat to survive.

As opposed to forecasts about the past? Tough luck. Marx predicted capitalism collapsing, and it prospered. Economists predicted the failure of countries run by communists, and were right every time. But you still believe Marx, however looking over the last few pages of this thread anyone can see that you do this based on religious faith rather than any understanding of history or economics.

Greatly increased means nothing, they were still poor and had paid a terrible price for the sake of big factories and steel quotas. The US can afford a space program and a huge military without enslaving and impoverishing its population, because capitalism works. The USSR needed to sacrifice everything to compete on ego projects and still failed.

 

I said short term as down the road the maintance of the debt would drag down the US economy.

Other capitalist societies prospered by trading with the USA that was and is prosperous due to all the money thrown at it, USSR economy did not react this way past the 1970's due to other factors limmiting USSRs growth, meaning everything they threw at the economy was just wasted as the problems needed to be fixed first.

USSR and the USA was different economies, for the USA the huge military complex ment jobs and flow of capital, for the USSR it ment those resources could not go elsewere.

I'm sorry when was Canada and Austrialia a military superpower? Like I said the USSR had a large military complex, capitalism also would have failed to give the USSR a military large enough to spook the Americans without the weight of the military complex crushing the economy.

It did at the great depression, it just got rebuilt.

What communist countries? Lenin even admited Russia was not communist as definded by Marx so Lenin used the term Socialism that Marx used as a synonym for communism and Lenin took the word and redefined it to mean a state in-between capitalism and communism, this Socialism as defined by Lenin is what these "communist" nations were and are.

Also China still has a state run economy (they were Socialist as befined by Lenin like the USSR was), China was able to open up trade with the west for manufactured goods, if USSR could have supplied US stores with goods like China is now then the USSR would still be around and be able to hold onto a large military like China currently does.

big factories was not the USSR problem, the people was the USSR tried to compete with the USA that had a much larger economy, France would fail too if they tried to have a arms race with the USA.

 

So now several decades is short term? Keep in mind you are still pretending defence spending is good for the US and bad for the USSR, simply because you can't come up with a coherent argument.

Debt to GDP in the US is about one third of Japan and half of Italy, neither of which have fallen into economic disaster. So military spending is hardly going to sink the US economy. For what seems like them millionth time, you are just making things up which cannot be supported by any comparative study of economic evidence. Why do you think that debate means making up bullshit about things you don't understand?

Money "thrown" at it? This means nothing. You mean the US and all capitalist countries got rich by trading and investing with each other. No kidding. You are trying to make this sound like some sort of devious form of cheating.

This is too meaningless to bother responding to, even compared to the low standard of your other comments.

Laughable. Jobs and capital cannot be in two places at once in the United States either. Can't you do better than this?

I'm sorry, when were Hungary and the Czech Republic superpowers? You have deliberately ignored these countries at least five times in this debate because you can't think of an excuse for them. Lame.

Marx didn't predict a rebuilding, he predicted a collapse. So he, your god, was wrong, which means we don't understand his ways because He cannot be wrong.

I said countries run by communists, not communist countries, and I said that specifically so you wouldn't try to use that tired on evasion. Guess it was futile.

China prospered exactly at the time it started allowing capitalism, and is prospering the most in the regions with the most capitalism. Remember, you're supposed to be arguing that capitalism doesn't work.

The reason the US has a much larger economy is because capitalism works which takes us back five pages to the beginning of this thread.

Having now watched you argue in a complete circle and being unable to support any one of your dozens of made up bullshit rationalisations, I doubt I can be bothered to respond to you any more.

 

You guys can't stop now! This is the most entertaining thread in this forum.

If I produce something as the result of my labor, then that product cannot fail to be valuable, right? Labor is where the vaule is, not usability.

C'mon, that claim alone should be enough for at least 3 more pages.

 

I am talking long term, eventually the growth of the US will level out and the debt will catch up with, when will it happen is hard to tell due to too many variables but the finite nature of our universe and trends of how capitalist markets reacts to slowing growth points to another global depression.

No, what I ment was the US throwing money at its military effects its trading partners, it is not cheating but it does mean when looking at nations that have little military spending that you have to take into account that the US's defence budget effects these nations economies.

But the USA had a shortage of jobs and surplus of capital thus it economy reacted differently.

You asked why the USSR couldn't survive on exporting resources, Czechoslovakia was dependant on USSR resources so kinda hard for Czechoslovakia to get rich of selling something they need to import, infact Czechoslovakia over reliance on imports got them in debt.

It was still a collapse.

The USSR could easily have supplied Wal-Mart as the USSR was heavily industrialized and had more technology then China, while China was not as industrialized.

The US has a much larger economy because it is the market leader of the global economy.

 

Under Labour Theory of Value yes.

 

My claim is consistent with the labor theory of value, but is my claim true?

 

File sharing kinda proves that, effort to copy movies and musics, nill thus the value of a bootleges has crashed to nil, because the labour of the artist is taken out of the equation, also you have to remeber it is not just your labour, the value of a painting is not just the labour of the artist but the labour that went into the manufature of the artist's supplies and the labour to educate and support the artist.

Lets not forget that price and value are different, volunteer labour still hold value even though the price for that labour is nill.