Why capitalism?

"However, let us suppose in a commune everyone is taught the ideals of communism and equality. Naturally, because of the social reinforcement, everyone is a communist. Now suppose one person rebels against the group. We will call him Neo-Socrates. Suppose Neo-Socrates is a capitalist who despises commie propaganda or social engineering. Let us suppose he is a skillfull debater. He may not even believe what he is saying, but he wants to stimulate new thinking. Because of his rhetorical skills, he draws a following of young people who rebel. Like the counterculture, they become a mass movement. Mass movements, as we know, can fundamentally change the values of a society. Just like a virus, capitalist ideas can thus spread in this commune, for good or bad, ultimately subverting it as people become "greedy" or self-centered. The only way to suppress these ideas would be by using force or totalitarian methods."

Yes, the usual concept of capitalist sociology; Lenin succeeded by virtue of his skill as a politician, not the dominant material conditions. Oh, I recently heard that if queen victoria had been a man, the first world war wouldnt have happened because someone would have been king of england and germany. What bullshit. Ideas do not float, they are dependent upon the material conditions. By your logic, feudal ideas should have "spread like a virus" and killed capitalism. But no. And so the emancipated billions, free from starvation, will succumb to the genius of one rebel...

"This is completely false, it is something that leftists who have no understanding of capitalism say to each other because it sounds like what they want to hear."

The goal of production is exchange in capitalist society. The goal of exchange is profit.

The goal of production is profit.

In communist society the goal of production is to make useful things....

which is more "natural" for fulfilling human needs?

The ideas of Marx were necessitated by historical condtions. The ideas of communism are upon us, capitalism has developed them. In communist society there will be no appeal for capitalist ideas and there will be no motivation for a revertion to the old society. Capital, once liquidated, means that the only return to capitalism could be through primitive accumulation of capital which was bloody and murderous when it felled feudalism, it will not get a second chance though. The ideas of capitalism will come to be antiquated by the same logic which destroyed the ideas of feudalism, slave society and barbarism.

 

Um... you have proven you're an idiot. You have a dictionary? Miriam-Webster will do just fine. Collegiate edition (would that be leftist to you?) works as does any. Now, real slowly, buddy... look up the word "capital" and, um... make sure you look up "capital" which is defined as concentrated wealth and not "capitol." Thanks, bro.

 

Most people know this even if the Census Bureau doesn’t say it. A 2003 Gallup poll found that 31 percent of the population believes that it is very likely, or somewhat likely, that they will become rich. No doubt, an even higher fraction believes that their children have a good shot at it.

1996 Reader’s Digest poll found that while 18 percent of people consider themselves to be in the lower class as children, only 6 percent put themselves in that class as adults. Both From: www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/ bartlett200408300834.asp

and the one I stated
Time Magazine survey done for the 2000 election "revealed that 19 percent of Americans believe that they have incomes in the top 1 percent, and a further 20 percent believe they will someday." From http://www.calicocat.com/2003_10_12_archive.html

K, so, LIKE I SAID, many, MANY more people than ever could be possible believe themselves to be rich. BTW, ever read Death of a Salesman. by that guy... oh whats his name, that wierd (was he leftist?) playwrite. Oh yea, Arthur Miller... great writer, huh? He wrote about that effect back in the 50's. That idealist SENTIMENT is what is needed to accept the possibility of a capitalist society working to their advantage.

And I'm not saying that poor people can't get rich. They can, they can work for it, ever so hard. Work the shirt off their back (and even then its definetley not garanteed) or they can do what most do: get lucky. Got a good idea? YOU'RE PRETTY LUCKY or at least clever. STock market payoff? its a longshot, but hey, it can happen.

 

So you think I'm an idiot. That's a major drag man.

The thing is though I looked capitalism up in Merriam-Webster (http://www.m-w.com), like you so helpfully suggested. Although its funny that you would give me spelling tips, since you can't seem to spell Merriam-Webster.

That's odd, there's no mention of the "goal" of capitalism or anything about wealth concentration. So, bro, maybe you should check your own sources before calling other people idiots?

They're is short for they are, not their. Just another handy tip for ya bro. But anyway, your backup data showed only 19% believe that. So you're wrong again.

Better luck next time.

 

OK, well, as for your argument for concentration of wealth... are you seriously going to argue that capital is not concentrated wealth? Are you going to say that capitalists do not try to concentrate wealth? Cite me something that can prove that. Maybe Miriam webster was a bad example. Maybe I should've cited I don't know... Max Weber? You know, the mastermind behind Weberian sociology? Read page 278 of "General Economic History." OR how about Stephen K Sanderson's Social Transformations? even better, get ANY F-CKING ECONOMICS TEXTBOOK YOU CAN POSSIBLY FIND. and tell me it does not mention concentrated wealth. If the goal of capitalism is not to concentrate wealth.... WHAT IS IT? Is it to stick your thumb up your ass? or maybe to give away your wealth and um... deconcentrate it?

Oh and about my backup data, it showed that 39 per cent of people believe they will be in the top 1 percentile, and even so, the fact that 19 percent of people believe they are the top 1 is still pretty absurd, correct? Is it not? Tell me, are you in the top 1 percentile? Or do you just think it.... wait, wait, better question. Will you ever be in the top 1 percentile? Thanks, man. BTW I do have a suggestion for you, its called an education. Its useful. It allows you to think.

 

Main Entry: 3capital
Function: noun
Etymology: French or Italian; French, from Italian capitale, from capitale, adjective, chief, principal, from Latin capitalis
1 a (1) : a stock of accumulated goods especially at a specified time and in contrast to income received during a specified period; also : the value of these accumulated goods (2) : accumulated goods devoted to the production of other goods (3) : accumulated possessions calculated to bring in income b (1) : net worth (2) : CAPITAL STOCK c : persons holding capital d : ADVANTAGE, GAIN <make capital of the situation>

Tell me this: if you have accumulated goods that are supposed to produce more goods and allow you to accumulate income (follow me here?) how is that not concentration of wealth? What is a capital gain, bro? do you know what the stock market is? I need to find my Emile Durkheim book somewhere, but I'll be able to give you a pretty simplified version (or a less simplified version if you make me)
You should probably get some help by the way because your refutations are very tit-for-tat and what I would like to call infantile. Just because I might have exaggerated a statistic, hell I was going off the top of my head. And you point out it isn't QUITE as drastic as i made it AFTER you make me cite my sources??? WTF? Won't accept the point as is? And by the way, I asked you to look up Capital, not Capitalism because you went nowhere in defining what "capital goods" are. Thats necessary to define what "capitalism" is. At least you didn't try to look up "Capitolism" or did you?

 

So I am "infantile" and need to get "some help" and "an education" because I was right? Interesting theory.

It is not really a question of "might have" exaggerated at this point, wouldn't you say? Anyway, if this is your approach to facts, fine. My approach is to get them right, which apparently is an infantile and uneducated approach.

With regards to the meaning of your statistic, two thirds of people think they are above average drivers and 83% of statistics are just made up. So what? So what if people aspire to succeed? Should we teach them not to? Should we tell aspiring golfers to stop playing golf because 99.999% of them will never be Tiger Woods? Should we tell people they shouldn't support capitalism because they might - perish the thought - only make it into the top 2% instead of the top 1%? As for me, I have no idea what percentile I am in. I don't know what the annual income would be for a top 1% person.

So I checked your sources and there was no mention of concentrating wealth being the GOAL of capitalism. Amidst a lot of angry ranting, you still haven't provided any such evidence. If something is so absolutely, positively true that you feel justified in insulting anyone who disagrees, then why can't you back it up?

I'm not sure that there is a goal of capitalism. Capitalism is not an economic system invented by somebody, certainly not Adam Smith. The origins of capitalism were not in a revolution nor was it imposed by anyone or any group on a society. It evolved naturally. Modern economics is the study of capitalism, and consists of numerous theories which attempt to undererstand how various parts of this thing which already exists actually work. In that sense economics is observational, no different than scientists trying to understand the atom. What is the goal of the atom?

Capitalists, or people who have capital, on the other hand, have a goal, which is to get the best trade off between the highest possible return on their capital and the lowest risk.

 

Lenin succeeded in a country that was agrarian rather than industrial. Meo Zedong, the Chinese communist leader, also succeeded in an agrarian and backwards country.

According to Marx, communism was supposed to result from the oppression of masses in an industrial society, where wealth is gradually accumulated by a smaller and smaller portion of society.

In the industrialized nations Marxism/communism lost its appeal very gradually, because living standards improved over time and because of a rise in the middle class. His predictions did not bear fruit.

He was right about a number of things, but wrong in how to resolve them. There were plenty of abuses of workers and children in the 18th and 19th centuries, and they needed to be addressed. And for the most part, they were addressed without resorting to the toppling of governments.

You mentioned starvation, but I am not aware of anyone starving in the U.S. On the other hand, I have heard of people starving in North Korea.

 

Have you ever been to the US?

Take San Francisco for example. Beggars are literally EVERYWHERE. I've never seen so many beggars in my whole life, perhaps with the exception of Pakistan.

 

Are those beggars in San Francisco starving? No. Most beggars in the United States choose to be beggars because of mental illness of some kind, not because of an oppressive income disparity. No one starves to death in the United States because they can't afford food. Period.

 

"Lenin succeeded in a country that was agrarian rather than industrial. Meo Zedong, the Chinese communist leader, also succeeded in an agrarian and backwards country.

According to Marx, communism was supposed to result from the oppression of masses in an industrial society, where wealth is gradually accumulated by a smaller and smaller portion of society.

In the industrialized nations Marxism/communism lost its appeal very gradually, because living standards improved over time and because of a rise in the middle class. His predictions did not bear fruit."

Lenin succeeded in an agrarian thather than industrial society, however the vanguard of his support was founded within the growing proletariat. The peasants were radicalised by their participation in WWI which was a war involving capitalist imperialism, so to suggest that such revolutions were not the result of concrete economic situations is just as silly even in this case. Lenin would not have succeeded in Russia 100 years earlier. The great failures of these revolutions also was sparked by the involvement of the proletariat (or the lack of). In China, the revolution was damned as soon as Mao made clear the fact that he expected the embryonic proletariat to play a back seat role. In Russia the failure of a German revolution to materialise lead to
bureaucratic degeneration there.

However, scientific socialism has quite clearly not lost appeal to the western proletariat. In Germany the failure of the proletariat to take power after WWI was not for lack of radicalism but the congealed nature of the party apparatus. Lets not delude ourselves that this period was not a revolutionary one. Then, post WWII, the west was obliged to adopt a new keynesian policy to quell radicalism. Then in Britain there has been a high period of working class radicalism in the seventies, my knowledge of the european struggle is lacking in this case. Certainly there was Europe wide unrest in 1968, from paris to prague to london.

Since Marx observed the birth pains of capitalism a mere 150 years ago, you claim that it is now time to wrap up history. And yet, I feel compelled to tell you, you have failed to attack my criticisms in the previous post of your so-called "Neo-Socrates" and his absurd idea of reverting to capitalism by the power of his arguement (or did you mean greed, as your arguement seems to have involved the mincing of words). The fact is, that when capital is socially owned, there is no means by which an individual can come to commandeer a factory from the overwhellming majority who have no interest in this "Neo-primitive accumulation" and, with the concentration of capital such as it is NOW, there is no saying how much capital will need to be made in an investment needed to merely compete with the considerably more efficient communistic form of organisation.

 

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance
when the need for illusion is deep."

Obviously, they've done a good job brainwashing you.


I'll post some pictures of some US citizens, and perhaps you will change your mind.

 

Here it is. Sorry for calling you "brainwashed", but uhm...


This is the United States:



















I recommend looking at these pictures, and read the story behind these people living in poverty (yes, poor people ARE humans, too):

http://www.american-pictures.com/gallery/index.html

 

You think everyone should be forced to give their earnings to others who may or may not have done the same amount of work for it and you are calling us selfish? I lived under the USSR, I was born in the Czech Republic, you don't want to go down that road.

 

Nobody starves in the US. They starve because of it.

 

Really? Then how come the poorest countries in the world are those that do the least trade with the United States (and other economic powers)?

 

I'm not going to answer this simply because we already had this very same discussion some 15 pages ago.

 

Well you brought the subject up again, and I'm not seeing an answer to that question 15 pages ago. Looks to me like you never answered it at all (in fact, I don't see any point in this thread where I even asked it).

I'll ask again: If wealthy countries "exploit" poorer ones, why are the poorest nations the ones with the least trade with the rest of the world?

 

Well, take for example the war with Iraq and Afghanistan. Considering of how much private American corporations benifited from the war, how America as a nation and a people suffered from it, and how much damage it brought to Iraq (I don't buy the liberation story. No true democracy is going to come out of it). This is American capitalism harming other nations.

Or look at China, for example. They trade with the US all the time and have many rich people, but at the same time also have plenty of people under the poverty line. Sweatshop owners employing children sure do benifit from this trade with the great United States.

And what about the diamond industry in Africa? Sure, certain South African men became rich because of it, but what of the rest? What of all the violent conflicts that started because of the gem's value in the developed Capitalist world?

 

That's not a fault of capitalism, because not even the biggest stretch of accounting principles could justify the cost of the war. The war simply costed much more than the oil is worth, so economics was clearly not the main reason for the war. There were other factors that had nothing to do with capitalism: American hegemony, control of the Middle East, perhaps a desire to spread democracy (or perhaps not).

Do you think it's just a coincidence that China wallowed in poverty for centuries under a collectivist and xenophobic mentality, then suddenly started experiencing the greatest economic expansion in the history of human civilization when they allowed themselves to be "exploited" by the wealthy nations?

Yes, China still has plenty of people under the poverty line...but that's simply because they've only had a free market since 1979 and haven't yet had enough time to pull nearly 2 billion people out of poverty.

That's mainly because DeBeer's has a monopoly on the diamond market. If the governments of the world (especially the British government) would focus more effort on breaking up that monopoly to allow competition, the blood diamond problem would be mitigated, by competitors who could advertise their more ethical business practices.