Why I Cautiously favor Capitalism over Communism

reply to post by ANOK

when you admitted this ... "Communism and socialism mean the same thing BTW" ... here -> www.abovetopsecret.com...
i missed it on the first read.

now, why would you continue to infer they are different, when you've already stated they are the same ?

from one of your links, you casually blow by the obvious ...

www.eurekalert.org...
Cooperation isn't just a byproduct of competition

no kidding ?
so, cooperation IS a byproduct of competition, glad they admitted it.

now, they also go on to state "Rather, altruism and cooperation are inherent in primates, including humans."
funny thing is ... inherently possesses does not mean it is EVER exercised in any given social structure.

Capitalists incorporate to protect their interests

they do now, they didn't use to.
you can thank the lawyers for that one.

you cannot consciously compare corporatism to capitalism.
while one is designed to benefit the individual/worker (capitalism), the other is designed to benefit the shareholders by exploiting the worker as capital goods.

and, after reviewing this link ... resurgence.opendemocracy.net... ... i'm beginning to wonder if you have a clue about what you're promoting.

According to Braudel, the first identified use of the term capitalist was in 1633. By the late 1700s it had come into use as a name for private handlers of money for private financial gain.

[color=amber] and then it says in the same section

Adam Smith published his seminal thesis The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Clearly the term capitalism was unknown to him.

now, for a term that was supposedly widely accepted since 1633, why would it be unknown to Smith when it was supposedly the focus of his thesis ????

from the same link ...

An economic system in which private ownership is broadly distributed such that almost every person has an ownership stake in in his or her home and the business on which his or her livelihood depends is one thing.

at least someone understands the principle behind capitalism

An economic system in which ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few thousand people is quite another.

which is what Corporations brought to America, courtesy the Rockefellers.

ahhh, so this is the 'aim', eh?

Capitalism, understood as a concentration of economic power,

which capitalism isn't, never was and shouldn't be mistakenly blamed for the damages corporatism has brought upon societies everywhere.

i've reviewed several of your links and they are as bad or worse than what is quoted above.
i am not picking them apart, anyone with a brain can do that successfully without assistance.

this is no different than the linguistic gymnastics used to equate self interest with selfishness ... only a fool would fall for it.

reply to post by ANOK

ah yes, those worker-owned companies ... where are they located again ??
oh yeah, the United States ... in a capitalist environment ... with capitalist start-ups.

oh and btw, i've been a Publix employee (90s) and left due to rampant discrimination ... so don't tell me it's all sunshine and roses, i know better.

reply to post by ANOK

Real self-ownership must mean that the worker keeps all that they produce

capitalists know this, that's why corporatism has become so popular.

when workers volunteer themselves to be exploited, what else would you expect ?
any reasonable capitalist would take advantage of that opportunity.
you'd be lying if you said you wouldn't.

The problem with throwing your weight (however tentatively you approach the subject) behind either of the two, communism or capitalism, is that this is like selecting the shiniest and most emphatically wonderous turd, when asked to choose which you would like to be forced, at gun point, to mash to a fine paste using only your face.

And for anyone who thinks that thier favoured method is surely the most beloved of those who love freedom, I say to you this. No one, no man woman or child who has EVER lived under governance, has lived free. Therefore, none are worthy or qualified to recognise freedom when they see it.

reply to post by TrueBrit

then define self-governance or would that be a concept so foreign that nothing anyone else says can or will allow you to accept the possibility ?

And for anyone who thinks that thier favoured method is surely the most beloved of those who love freedom, I say to you this. No one, no man woman or child who has EVER lived under governance, has lived free. Therefore, none are worthy or qualified to recognise freedom when they see it.

reply to post by TrueBrit


In economics there are two polarities which constitute the two extremes in which individuals can interact and they are total freedom and command economy... One is ruled by total force and the other is the absence of all force. Real laissez-faire capitalism the ideal of the completely free economy existing with the initiation of force not being permitted.

To say that because nobody has yet experienced this it cannot be recognized is akin to saying that before we went to the moon it could never be done. The fact that we have not achieved this yet is irrelevant.

The free market is the ideal of a free society. It is indeed recognizable and it is indeed the very description of free individuals interacting in the absence of coercive force.

reply to post by crankySamurai


CrankySamurai, with the best will in the world, and the deepest respect, you have misunderstood what I said, and indeed misunderstood the meaning of freedom.

Freedom is being able to build your house as big as you like, no matter who you are or what your bank balance looks like, without refering to a government body, local or central, and without requiring vast quantities of irrelevant tokens of wealth to pay for it all. Essentially, freedom is freedom from both communism and capitalism, because freedom is either absolute or absent. One cannot be governed at all, and be truely free.

reply to post by TrueBrit


I agree with most of what you are saying. In my view governments have no place other than the protection of private property and liberty. Most likely this would never exist because a government as such would have no way of attaining revenue other than voluntary donations.

With this being said it seems like you might be equating our current system of banking and fiat money with a capitalistic or a semi capitalistic system. I will tell you that they are no where close.

Currency is a reoccurring phenomenon of the free market. Fiat money is a product of people using force. They could not be any more different.

reply to post by Honor93


Why the hostile response Honor93? All I am suggesting is that parliaments, governments, none of these are actually required by mankind. In fact they stand in the way of people who can fend for themselves, and promote weak, pathetic mewling people who cannot do anything for themselves.

reply to post by crankySamurai


Every time a man goes to live on the streets, who could have built himself a house, but for the law, and the money, that proves you wrong. Every time a families children are taken away because the family is in such poverty that they cannot feed themselves, that proves your standpoint invalid. It happens in every ecconomy, in every political landscape.

Every time a man or woman goes hungry, who should be free to hunt rabbits and pheasant, and gut and cook the fruits of thier labours themsleves, but is not, there is evidence that something is wrong with "freedom" as we in the western world have known it. I cannot abide it.

You seem to think that our property and liberty ought to be protected, and I agree with you. I just believe that each and every person in the nation should be responsible for doing that, and that we have no need of isolated bands of men, paid to die for us. If we are willing to pay a man to die for his country, then we really ought to do the dying ourselves, and save ourselves some pointless expenditure of worthless tokens of wealth, which have no real value in and of themselves anymore anyway!

reply to post by TrueBrit


I think this time you missed my point. I am not in favor of governments. They are groups of individuals who claim a power over others. They use force to violate mens freedom and take his property. I am not for governments.

I was merely stating the roll of a moral government. I agree that I do not think this would take place, for it would be more of a voluntary organization than a government, but none the what I stated would be a morally acceptable role of a government.

The free market does not need a government to exist and quite frankly can really only exist in the absence of one.

In the absence of initiative force and private property rights acknowledged what you indeed have is a free market and it means no government.

reply to post by crankySamurai


Being free from a government, just to make yourself a slave to an economy is insane. Wether you are governed by men or numbers, it is still a tyranny in all by name. Surely you understand that if one finds oneself unable to source money, one is in exactly the same boat as if they had been prevented from gaining a good life by thier government ?

Unless we abandon governments, markets, and all and any measure of control, that one group, no matter if thier power be elected or by dint of collecting vast amounts of money, could exert on his fellow man, we will STILL be under control.

No money, no government. We must live off the land, account for our own needs and those of our families, using our bodies and minds, and not the efforts of economy or indeed any organised system.

reply to post by TrueBrit


You are still laboring under a false idea of money. Economics is the study of human action in a social environment. It is nothing more and nothing less. To say that you are a slave to economics is simply an impossibility.

What we are a slave to right now is a system of fiat money, controlled by the banks and enforced by the government. This has nothing to do with a free market or people interacting in a free environment. It is the very antithesis of a free society has nothing to do with real currency.

Real currency arises from widely tradable items such as tobacco, spices, precious metals, even cattle. It can be any item that is widely traded and it does not have to be exclusive.

This is what happens when people are free to trade the products they produce. These interactions are a natural progression in a free society where the individual keeps what he produces and does not initiate force against other.

IMHO you shouldn't favor either, they are both designed to enslave you and incidently capitalism will eventually make the entire planet uninhabitable...the commies? Probably line us all up against the wall and shoot us. "There is no government like no government" (man I'm just a ray of sunshine today aren't I?)

reply to post by HUMBLEONE


I agree with no government. I also agree with self ownership (private property) and non initiation of force. These two concepts along with no government equal free society. The type of economy which would grow out of this is called laissez-faire capitalism. It means free people... that simple...

Originally posted by HUMBLEONE
IMHO you shouldn't favor either, they are both designed to enslave you and incidently capitalism will eventually make the entire planet uninhabitable...the commies? Probably line us all up against the wall and shoot us. "There is no government like no government" (man I'm just a ray of sunshine today aren't I?)

Communism/socialism was a working class movement for worker ownership, it had nothing to do with governments.

Ultimately it is a stateless, classes, moneyless system. The term was hijacked by those seeking state power like Lenin and the Bolsheviks who had no intention of implementing a communist economy.

Marxism is not the only form of communism. There is also Anarchism. Learn to understand what it actually is, and you won't be fooled by those in power who lie to you.

"Communist" state, "communist" government, are oxymoron.

Originally posted by crankySamurai
I agree with no government. I also agree with self ownership (private property) and non initiation of force. These two concepts along with no government equal free society. The type of economy which would grow out of this is called laissez-faire capitalism. It means free people... that simple...

Private property is not self-ownership.

In the context of economics "private property" does not mean your personal property, it means economic property. The property, buildings, machinery, capital, that is used to exploit labour to make profit for private owners, capitalists. It is not your personal property.

Capitalism is not possible without government. It is government/state that gives capitalists the right to use property economically by hiring wage labour and investing the wealth created, for personal rather than social gain. Without government why would people remain wage slaves? Why would people do without when we could simply take over and produce for ourselves?

What would stop capitalists from using force to monopolise the market?

Capitalism requires government, and we also require government under a capitalist economy. The state system we have is a result of capitalism.

The only way we could have a stateless society is if the means of production are owned in common by all workers. That would be true liberty as you would be free to produce and reproduce for your needs and desires.

Originally posted by Honor93
when you admitted this ... "Communism and socialism mean the same thing BTW".
i missed it on the first read. now, why would you continue to infer they are different, when you've already stated they are the same ?

I have never said they were different. Yes they means the same thing.

Marx and Engels used the terms Communism and Socialism to mean precisely the same thing. They used “Communism” in the early years up to about 1875, and after that date mainly used the term “Socialism.” There was a reason for this. In the early days, about 1847-1850, Marx and Engels chose the name “Communism” in order to distinguish their ideas from Utopian, reactionary or disreputable movements then in existence, which called themselves “Socialist.”

www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/socialist_equality.htm

I use the terms interchangeably depending on the context, but I have never inferred they mean different things.

The words themselves ultimately mean worker ownership, because that is the common goal of all communists/socialists. There have been many different movements calling themselves communist or socialist, all with different ideas of how to change society and how to govern it.

In the anarchist, Marxist and socialist sense, free association (also called free association of producers or, as Marx often called it, community of freely associated individuals) is a kind of relation between individuals where there is no state, social class or authority, in a society that has abolished the private property of means of production. Once private property is abolished, individuals are no longer deprived of access to means of production so they can freely associate themselves (without social constraint) to produce and reproduce their own conditions of existence and fulfill their needs and desires.

Free association (communism and anarchism)

Still haven't seen your answer to this question, maybe I missed it in all your other ranting? Maybe a reply with just your answer so I don't miss it?

How can anarchists be socialists using your definition of socialism?

reply to post by ANOK

In the context of economics "private property" does not mean your personal property, it means economic property. The property, buildings, machinery, capital, that is used to exploit labour to make profit for private owners, capitalists. It is not your personal property.

There is no difference in the property described. If you actions produce a house or a factory it still belongs to the producer.

If I build a machine in my garage which powers my house I own it. If this machine requires someone to operate it and I trade food for a persons time to work it then it is a voluntary exchange. The power produced by the machine is still mine and the food I traded the man is still him per the terms of the exchange.

If I am able to in my free time build more machines and engage in more trades with people or are willing to operate them the situation has not changed. They do not have to operate the machines and I do not have to give them my food. It is a voluntary exchange.

The size or scale of operation does not matter, only in that the larger the operation the more people are able to benefit. If it becomes large enough that I have excess power then I may begin to trade the extra power to others.

This is the essence of private property. There is no distinction simply based on the scale of the object owned.

Originally posted by crankySamurai
There is no difference in the property described. If you actions produce a house or a factory it still belongs to the producer.

Yes there is.

Property, like a factory, that is used to hire labour, and make profit for a private owner, is economic property.

Your house that you live in is your personal property.

I agree that if you produce something it should fully belong to the producer (the worker). It should not belong to someone else because they are lucky enough to own property, and the law allows property to be used for private economic gain. All the means of production should be owned in common by all workers in order for the producer to own what they produce.

Workers produce, owners exploit.