History Greatest debate in modern history? Socialism(not Stalinism) vs Capitalism

[Max Faust]

Socialism needs to feed off of producers; it needs producers so it can redistribute wealth.

You need to remove your head from your colon.

Do you seriously think that "producers" are some kind of demigids that just emerge?

 

[calculusrocks]

You need to remove your head from your colon.

Do you seriously think that "producers" are some kind of demigids that just emerge?

Dude, if that's what you got from my comment then I apologize. I'm a poor communicator. But, there is no reason to be rude. You can just ask for a clarification.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Dude, the USA is neither rich nor educated - and certainly not advanced. Yeah they have some gadgets here and there to scare the peasants, but all in all it's nothing but a 3rd world banana republic. They haven't got ****. Just debt.

Mind that you are in fact telling this to a person who actually lives in a "third world" country presumably while you are on a computer that just about anyone here could have access to and perhaps drinking coffee that you just nipped down to the store to buy.

Maybe you are right, but watching all those USA problems, and that's USA the richest nation in the world and one of the most advanced and educated, now how the hell will capitalism work in countries like mine in which the capitalist buy every politician, military, death squads, gangs so they can be richer plus people is very ignorant. Plus climatic change, and maybe the beginning of a new ice age. So yea for you guys in the 1st world, is fine if you go capitalism, socialism or wathever, you have the tech, money, scientist and everything, but for us, maybe we or are just gona pass to history as millions of deads or fight to change things.

This is often referred to as Corporatism. In a capitalist society there are (theoretically) no protection schemes. If a company can not survive on its own, without any government intervention, then it fails. Of course this is not the way it usually happens in reality as you can see in your own country and even here in the US. The danger is in corporations that become to big and wield too much power. When the government protects the interests of corporations, especially over the interests of individuals, then you are dealing with something not exactly capitalism any more. There are similar dangers in socialist systems where there are theoretically no bribes, black marketeers, or greedy politicians.
It seems to me that regardless of the system it all comes down to people and the choices of various individuals. We have systems that can work, we just don't have very many people we can trust to run them the way they are intended.

"Few people end up being United States senators by accident; at a minimum, it requires a certain megalomania, a belief that of all the gifted people in your state, you are somehow uniquely qualified to speak on their behalf; a belief sufficiently strong that you are willing to endure the sometimes uplifting, occasionally harrowing, but always slightly ridiculous process we call campaigns." Barak Obama - The Audacity Of Hope

To believe that any politician is a normal well grounded individual is a bit of wishful thinking.

 

[AlexES16]

Mind that you are in fact telling this to a person who actually lives in a "third world" country presumably while you are on a computer that just about anyone here could have access to and perhaps drinking coffee that you just nipped down to the store to buy.


This is often referred to as Corporatism. In a capitalist society there are (theoretically) no protection schemes. If a company can not survive on its own, without any government intervention, then it fails. Of course this is not the way it usually happens in reality as you can see in your own country and even here in the US. The danger is in corporations that become to big and wield too much power. When the government protects the interests of corporations, especially over the interests of individuals, then you are dealing with something not exactly capitalism any more. There are similar dangers in socialist systems where there are theoretically no bribes, black marketeers, or greedy politicians.
It seems to me that regardless of the system it all comes down to people and the choices of various individuals. We have systems that can work, we just don't have very many people we can trust to run them the way they are intended.

"Few people end up being United States senators by accident; at a minimum, it requires a certain megalomania, a belief that of all the gifted people in your state, you are somehow uniquely qualified to speak on their behalf; a belief sufficiently strong that you are willing to endure the sometimes uplifting, occasionally harrowing, but always slightly ridiculous process we call campaigns." Barak Obama - The Audacity Of Hope

To believe that any politician is a normal well grounded individual is a bit of wishful thinking.

I think you are right, so maybe is better to have a mixed economy with democracy so the socialist criticize the capitalist and viceversa and that will keep both in its place. And that guy who says that USA is a banana republic is crazy or something, i have traveled 2 times to LA and its like traveling to another planet. Their homes, streets. laws, etc.

 

[AlexES16]

Dude, the USA is neither rich nor educated - and certainly not advanced. Yeah they have some gadgets here and there to scare the peasants, but all in all it's nothing but a 3rd world banana republic. They haven't got ****. Just debt.

Dude I've traveled to USA and they are not a banana republic, USA is like another planet compared to mine, they are ligth yeas ahead of us.

 

[Max Faust]

they are ligth yeas ahead of us.

Ahead? In which direction?
I advice you to pay attention to what is going to happen over the next 10 years.

 

[calculusrocks]

Dude I've traveled to USA and they are not a banana republic, USA is like another planet compared to mine, they are ligth yeas ahead of us.

All we have is a really big credit card. When the rest of the world figures it out, our credit card is going to get declined.

Corporatism is one of the biggest untold stories in America. Bank bailouts, GM, GE, Microsoft, FED, etc. . They all collude with Washington.

ADD: Okay maybe that's not all we have, but you get the point.

 

[Al68]

The only involuntary work ever performed in the U.S. is demanded by government.

Have you forgotten about slavery?

No, I meant currently. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

 

[mheslep]

This is often referred to as Corporatism. In a capitalist society there are (theoretically) no protection schemes. If a company can not survive on its own, without any government intervention, then it fails. Of course this is not the way it usually happens in reality as you can see in your own country and even here in the US.

Yes, too-big-to-fail news hogs aside, usually that is exactly what happens here in the US when a company can not survive on its own - companies fail at the rate of ~55,000 businesses per year.
http://www.uscourts.gov/Press_Releases/2009/bankrupt_f2table_jun2009.xls

 

[Al68]

The Libertarianism Socialism is good and communism is an ideal. Striving for a better tomorrow is not a bad thing sounds like "eyes on prize". At the end i think the healthy thing do in life is find happiness and money helps to ensure the basic need and not being poor, after that money doesent have impact on happiness.

For many people, happiness is impossible without individual liberty, which precludes any government imposed economic system, including socialism and communism.

Are you advocating the use of force to take away the liberty (happiness) of some to make others (who don't value their liberty as much) happier?

If socialism/communism is so great, why the need to force it on anyone? Plenty of people in the U.S. and elsewhere practice voluntary socialism/communism. It's not like there's some law against it. The objection isn't to practicing socialism/communism, the objection is to forcing it on people against their will.

 

[calculusrocks]

For many people, happiness is impossible without individual liberty, which precludes any government imposed economic system, including socialism and communism.

Are you advocating the use of force to take away the liberty (happiness) of some to make others (who don't value their liberty as much) happier?

I think what he's saying in regarding libertarian socialism is that libertarians voluntarily join a socialist society. Yes I know, it seems like a contradiction in terms, but I guess it's possible to make a libertarian socialist society. Although I remain a capitalist.

 

[calculusrocks]

Yes, too-big-to-fail news hogs aside, usually that is exactly what happens here in the US when a company can not survive on its own - companies fail at the rate of ~55,000 businesses per year.
http://www.uscourts.gov/Press_Releases/2009/bankrupt_f2table_jun2009.xls

If corporate welfare wasn't bad enough, you have companies that seek legislation to ban their competitors products. You also have companies that seek legislation to gain funding for projects by government. This isn't true competition.

 

[AlexES16]

For many people, happiness is impossible without individual liberty, which precludes any government imposed economic system, including socialism and communism.

Are you advocating the use of force to take away the liberty (happiness) of some to make others (who don't value their liberty as much) happier?

If socialism/communism is so great, why the need to force it on anyone? Plenty of people in the U.S. and elsewhere practice voluntary socialism/communism. It's not like there's some law against it. The objection isn't to practicing socialism/communism, the objection is to forcing it on people against their will.

Yeah i was wrong, you can still make co-op companies in capitalism right? Mixed Economy for the win xD

 

[CRGreathouse]

If corporate welfare wasn't bad enough, you have companies that seek legislation to ban their competitors products. You also have companies that seek legislation to gain funding for projects by government. This isn't true competition.

No, and it should be banned. Same for senators and representatives lading bills with pork for their districts -- it's bad for everyone but a small group.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Yes, too-big-to-fail news hogs aside, usually that is exactly what happens here in the US when a company can not survive on its own - companies fail at the rate of ~55,000 businesses per year.
http://www.uscourts.gov/Press_Releases/2009/bankrupt_f2table_jun2009.xls

In a corporatist system certain few corporations receive preferential treatment by the government because it is seen as being in the best interest of the country to keep these corporations from failing. I apologize if my wording implied that it happened for more than just the lucky few.

 

[russ_watters]

Is it too late to argue against the title of the thread? "Greatest debate in modern history..."? Really? The debate about which side of the center is better was largely settled decades ago, even if we're still moving to the left...and that's if I even concede that there ever was much of a debate at all, beyond the limited inroads it made without violence in a few countries 75 years ago. Later, perhaps at the height of the cold war in the 1960s there was a legitimate question if the Soviet system was/could be viable (whereas the early debate was before it was tested), but that's only because that side of the debate lied about how well things were going there - and very often still does lie about it! Today, it exists only as Stalin envisioned it: as a morphing of seemingly unrelated concepts: a fascist dictatorship mixed with pseudo-Marxisim.

I think that the reality of what it Is is evidence of what it is capable of. Marx had an intriguing and to some people vaguely appealing idea, but he did not develop it into a workable system of government and the current incarnation is as close as can really be gotten to his vision.

 

[AlexES16]

Is it too late to argue against the title of the thread? "Greatest debate in modern history..."? Really? The debate about which side of the center is better was largely settled decades ago, even if we're still moving to the left...and that's if I even concede that there ever was much of a debate at all, beyond the limited inroads it made without violence in a few countries 75 years ago. Later, perhaps at the height of the cold war in the 1960s there was a legitimate question if the Soviet system was/could be viable (whereas the early debate was before it was tested), but that's only because that side of the debate lied about how well things were going there - and very often still does lie about it! Today, it exists only as Stalin envisioned it: as a morphing of seemingly unrelated concepts: a fascist dictatorship mixed with pseudo-Marxisim.

I think that the reality of what it Is is evidence of what it is capable of. Marx had an intriguing and to some people vaguely appealing idea, but he did not develop it into a workable system of government and the current incarnation is as close as can really be gotten to his vision.

Yes, but what about the 3rd world? How will capitalism give the tools to starving people to develop?

 

[AlexES16]

Hey and the 3rd world, i need a explanation of how capitalism give the tools to starving people??

 

[calculusrocks]

Hey and the 3rd world, i need a explanation of how capitalism give the tools to starving people??

By teaching people how to fish rather than giving fish. By teaching people to stand, not to bow or to kneel.

 

[mheslep]

Yes, but what about the 3rd world? How will capitalism give the tools to starving people to develop?

See, e.g., China. From the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China" :

China has been the most rapidly growing economy in the world over the past 25 years. This growth has led to an extraordinary increase in real living standards and to an unprecedented decline in poverty. The World Bank estimates that more than 60% of the population was living under its $1 per day (PPP) poverty line at the beginning of economic reform. That poverty headcount ratio had declined to 10% by 2004, indicating that about 500 million people have been lifted out of poverty in a generation.

 

[mheslep]

The history of totalitarian collectivism sentiment goes much further back than the Cold War in the US. FDR's administration was loaded with people who were gaga over both the USSR and Mussolini. The fact that the USSR and Italy were on opposite sides in WWII doesn't make fascism and USSR socialism idealist opposites. After the war, US intellectual opinion was nearly all collectivist:

In 1945, 1950, at the end of the war, intellectual opinion [in the USA] was almost wholly collectivist. Everybody was a socialist. They may not have used the term but that's what they were. However, practice was not socialist. Practice was free enterprise.

The role of government at that time was such smaller than it has since become and from 1945 on to 1980, what you had was galloping socialism. Government took over more and more control. Government spending went from about 20 percent of national income—government federal, state and local—to about 40 percent of national income until Reagan came along.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2006/Friedmantranscript.html

 

[mheslep]

1919 Socialist Party of NY - Manifesto:
http://www.marxisthistory.org/history/usa/parties/spusa/1919/0500-lw-manifesto.pdf

Program.
1. We stand for a uniform declaration of principles in all party platforms, both local and national, and the abolition of all social reform planks now contained in them.
2. The party must teach, propagate, and agitateexclusively for the overthrow of Capitalism, and the establishment of Socialism through a Proletarian Dictatorship.
3. The Socialist candidates elected to office shall adhere strictly to the above provisions.
4. Realizing that a political party cannot reorganize and reconstruct the industrial organizations of the working class and that that is the task of the economic
organizations themselves, we demand that the party assist this process or reorganization by a propaganda for revolutionary and industrial unionism as part of its general activities. We believe it is the mission of the socialist movement to encourage and assist the proletariat to adopt newer and more effective forms of organization and to stir it into newer and more revolutionary modes of action.
5. We demand that the official party press be party-owned and controlled.
6. We demand that officially recognized educational institutions be party-owned and controlled.
7. We demand that the party discard its obsolete literature and publish new literature in keeping with the politics and tactics above mentioned.
8. We demand that the National Executive Committee call an immediate emergency national convention for the purpose of formulating party policies and tactics to meet the present crisis.
9. We demand that the Socialist Party repudiate the Berne Congress or any other conference engineered by “moderate Socialists” and social patriots.
10. We demand that the Socialist Party shall elect delegates to the International Congress proposed by the Communist Party of Russia (Bolsheviki); that our party shall participate only in a new International with which are affiliated the Communist Party of Russia (Bolsheviki), the Communist Labor Party of Germany (Spartacus), and all other Left Wing parties and groups.

 

[mheslep]

Another early US socialism party factoid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs" of the popular vote in the 1912 presidential election.

 

[russ_watters]

Yes, but what about the 3rd world? How will capitalism give the tools to starving people to develop?

I'm not sure I understand the question. If we assume that all people are roughly equally genetically, then setting them up with the same government and economic system will enable them to reach a similar level of deveopment.

Consider the leap forward that East Germany took after re-unification. All it took for them was a proper government. Admittedly, not a perfect example - the Africans will have cultural issues to overcome, which will take generations, but they can still do it.

Is that what you were asking?

 

[AlexES16]

I'm not sure I understand the question. If we assume that all people are roughly equally genetically, then setting them up with the same government and economic system will enable them to reach a similar level of deveopment.

Consider the leap forward that East Germany took after re-unification. All it took for them was a proper government. Admittedly, not a perfect example - the Africans will have cultural issues to overcome, which will take generations, but they can still do it.

Is that what you were asking?

Well in my country there was a cold war proxy war in the 80s, 80000 killed and a lot of damage to infrastrcuture, now the problem is criminality, gangs are everywhere and a lot of enviromental damage, the principal river of my cuntry could be depleated and poverty is still high, corruption is also a problem. So in this situtation, i really don't know what the country needs, what's the role of government in capitalism? to be honest history says that capitalism is the most succesfull, but i really don't know if tis apliable to my country, to be honest i feel ignorant.

 

[AlexES16]

PS: the peace come in 1992

 

[vici10]

The problems in Africa are not cultural. The problem that it has a lot of natural resources. And it is well known that US will support any dictator in third world country if it means profit for its corporations. This is an interesting link about Congo: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Africa/Business_War_Congo.html

 

[mheslep]

The problems in Africa are not cultural.

How would you know this?

The problem that it has a lot of natural resources. And it is well known that US will support any dictator in third world country if it means profit for its corporations. This is an interesting link about Congo: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Africa/Business_War_Congo.html

That's a 2001 article from Dollars and Sense magazine, about which wiki says:

Dollars & Sense is a magazine dedicated to providing left-wing perspectives on economics.

Published six times a year since 1974, it is edited by a collective of economists, journalists, and activists committed to the ideals of social justice and economic democracy.

It was initially sponsored by the Union for Radical Political Economics, but as of 1996 it is no longer affiliated with that organization. Today, the magazine is published by the independent Dollars and Sense, Inc., a non-profit foundation based in Boston, Massachusetts. Circulation is about 7,000.

Everything in that article may be factual. But I decline to accept any of as such with more references, and the article provides zero.

 

[Al68]

So in this situtation, i really don't know what the country needs, what's the role of government in capitalism?

None, directly. Capitalism is just something most people engage in when free to do so. It's not even very accurate to call it an economic system. It would be more accurate to describe it as what happens in the absence of any economic system.

Of course government plays an indirect role by outlawing robbery, theft, murder, etc. But capitalism itself is just the voluntary exchange of goods and services, and has nothing to do with government at all, except to the extent that government restricts individual liberty.

 

[vici10]

Since mheslep demanded references, I provide some references. They show that war in Congo was mostly fueled by desire of corporations to make profit from mineral resources of Congo, that it is not about culture.


The references:

Friends in high places; Richard C. Morais, Forbes Magazine 08-10-1998
http://www.forbes.com/global/1998/0810/0109038a.html

Congo: Business as usual?; Lokongo, Antoine; New African 06-01-2001
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5391/is_200106/ai_n21473473/?tag=content;col1

"Blood Diamonds" and Africa's Armed Conflicts in the Post-Cold War Era; Orogun, Paul; World Affairs 01-01-2004
www.gpia.info/files/u16/OrogunBloodDiamondsAfricasArmedConflicts.pdf[/URL]

A Call to Arms, The Industry Standard, June 11, 2001 v4 i23 p55
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HWW/is_23_4/ai_75669917/

Coltan Trade Finances War, Says Report, Africa News Service, Jan 14, 2002 p1008014u3204

Coltan Traders Contribute to DRC War, Africa News Service, Jan 17, 2002 p1008017u7351

Coltan, Materials World, June 2004 v12 i6 p18(1)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200201170440.html

Guns into copper: Zaire's rebel chief savvy in business. (mining deal between America Mineral Fields and government of Laurant Kabila) Victor Ozols. American Metal Market, April 17, 1997 v105 n74 p1(1),

African and American connivance in Congo-Zaire; Ngolet, Francois Africa Today 01-01-2000

Lokongo Bafalikike, "4.7 million dead, and nobody cares?" New African, 05/2003 p20(2)

Heritage Oil's Fight in Africa, Sunday Monitor (Uganda) 19/8/07

War: Arms and the Child: Kids have been fighters in the Congo, but can they survive peace?; Maclean's 02-09-2004

How America ran, and still runs, the Congo war; New African 09-01-2001
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5391/is_200109/ai_n21477105/

CNN Diplomatic License, Should War Be Privatized?, 13/07/2002
[url]http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0207/13/i_dl.00.html[/url]

Investors Speak Out Against Fueling Of Congo War By Conflict Minerals
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 11 /CSRwire 2010
[url]http://www.csrwire.com/press/press_release/28446-Investors-Speak-Out-Against-Fueling-Of-Congo-War-By-Conflict-Minerals[/url]