Why capitalism?

The problem is there is no winner under the current system since the same incentives to get people to work gets them to consume. Waste alot of your time and energy just to have a bigger house and car then someone else.

I say fuck it, focus on quality of life instead of personal wealth. Meaning instead of busting your butt competing to get wealth in order to consume you co-operate in order to free your time for better persuits like the opposite sex (or same if you go that way) :H

To date most if not all the technological advances has been used to increase production instead of increasing free time for wokers. Look how much crap we produce, the capitalist system just turns resources into junk. Under Marxism this will change, going from a produce for profit system to a produce for use system.

So while opportunity is taken away in Marxism far more is created, opportunities for love, freindship, ect

 

I don’t know if I can agree. I suppose I could if the conclusion was based on a legitimate premise that material wealth can not produce a higher quality of life (spiritual wealth) for someone.

But, and without meaning any offense, who are you to say that someone can’t be truly happy solely because they are more profitable, have a bigger house, a faster car than those around him? That may not be the ideal life for you, but can you legitimately deny that it can’t be the way of life for someone?

I don’t think we should be so presumptuous.

The real question is which system places fewer limits on how one can live? There is no limit on the qualitative worth of friendship and connection with the opposite sex, neither is there a quantitative one. You can work the bare minimum amount of hours necessary for maximization of those things that ‘you’ desire. I assure you that this amount is in the ballpark of the amount of hours you ought work under a communist system. As well, the man who desires money can work 24 hours a day to do so.

Under a marxist system you will have the time to make love and friendship, but you doom the profit driven man (regardless of whether or you agree with how he seeks happiness) to a depressed life.

Again, that is tyranny. It also causes a great deal of confusion directed at those who claim to be libertarian marxists!

 

While you may be happier but what about there person with a small house and no car? What about the QofL of the community?

Marxism makes workers praise automation instead of fear it since automation means more freetime without comprimising output, this leave more time for the people to be FREE. 9 to 5 is tyranny, what I'm talking about is actully getting time to enjoy the short lives they have. I bet if you asked people, if they rather be at work or spending time with their lover very few would pick work.

 

Are you sure you meant to ask this? It seems to be in defense of a capitalist way of life. There is an inherent suggestion made that the person (small house and no car) would be happier with a big house and fast car. In that instance, only in a capitalist system does that person have the ability to get those things. No one is saying that they are going to get those things without a lot of effort. You must earn prosperity. There is no ethical argument that can be made to suggest that you are owed prosperity. It is there for you to take if that is what makes you happy.

What about the community? A community is only a group of self interested individuals. A social group has no rational agency. They have no common voice. To suggest that the individual should be squashed in order that the community is bettered is nothing more than suggesting that the guy who ran the 100m faster than you should not be allowed to run because all the other racers will feel bad if they can’t beat him next time.

Marx himself would disagree with you about automation. Marx’s economic theory suggests that value added = time added. Time taken away (from worker, by automation) means less value added and therefore less pay.

Have you not read Capital?

Capitalists praise automation for the reasons you suggest only because the labour theory of value that Marx offers is complete bullshit! It just isn’t the way the world works. Anyone who has worked a trade knows that.

Putting that gross misappropriation aside, 9-5 is the way it is done because it is safe. It is not done because it is the only way to make money. You can sit at your computer for three hours a day and trade stocks making millions, if you are willing to take that risk.

 

Yet you end up with one person with a monster home, 10 cars while another person is living in the slums starving. Currently a small minorty current have control the world resources that gives them a unfair advantage.

Currently communities suffer so the rich elite can be the rich elite. For example car companies don't have to pay the pollution and traffic jams caused their products we do.

You forget communism is profitless, thus it doesn't matter if you pay workers the same for less work since it is just a way to prevent GROSS abuse of the system. Meaning in profitless money doesn't circulate it terminates once used. Also you have to remeber the is also "wageless communism" where we don't even have money, everything is free in the idea that in a sysem abundance people won't bother taking more then they need since it would be a waste of energy since they can just go and get it from the resource pool when ever they want. Meaning if there is more then enough food, why take it all? It would be far too much work and effort when you can leave it with the community and take what you need from it.

 

You make it sound like a zero sum game. Like the man with a large home, number of cars, and likely a very hot wife is the reason that the person is starving in the slums. As if the reason he is starving is because that rich man is hoarding all the wealth. It is certainly the case that the fortunate are going to have an advantage. An unfair one? Hardly. You can not call fortune as a result of hard work unfair. Nor can you call fortune of inheritance unfair. As for the idea that communities suffer, you can not say that communities suffer. It is not a logical possibility unless you can prove to me that a social group has agency. As I said before, social groups do not have agency.

 

The Earth only has so much wealth since the Earth is finite. Land and resources used for a large home could be used to house many.

Not wealth, resources. The starving person can't farm on the huge tracks of land the rich man hoards for him self.

What about Bill Gates he cheated so did General Moters and most of the ruling class by anti-compeditive means.

The communities do suffer since its memebers suffer.

 

You obviously don't have a clue what I'm talking about. It's called DEMOCRACY (self-management...) - workers control the production themselves & participate in decision making ("the boss needs you, you don't need the boss", as that nice graffito during the Paris rebellion in May '68 stated-proved once more when the workers and engineers alone organized the production of oil in Venezuela as the capitalists went on strike in support of the coup, stealing most of the data also)

The right to own the means of production does not, as you and Marx contend, deny people the right to have property.

I'm talking about de facto right, not de jure.

As for whether or not having private control of the means of production is a poverty trap, the state of the world disagrees with you. The United Nations has a term called “medium development”, it describes people that are not exactly amoung the rich, but are definitely not in poverty. How do you explain the fact that during the last twenty-five years the number of people that have gone from below poverty to medium development is 1.9 billion? That the number of people in that ‘class’ has grown from 1.6 billion to 3.5 billion? That is over half of the world’s population. That is what having private ownership of the means of production has done.
Feel free to spout marxist theory about how the way ‘they’ do things is going to create more poverty.

It is all myths, gentle revolutionary, just myths.

Stop preaching and start learning - read an article I wrote in my next post:sunglasse :


"who are you to say that someone can’t be truly happy solely because they are more profitable, have a bigger house, a faster car than those around him?"



That’s the happiness of a well-fed boar. I thought we were talking about humans.



"Under a marxist system you will have the time to make love and friendship, but you doom the profit driven man (regardless of whether or you agree with how he seeks happiness) to a depressed life. "



Oh, he could compete with others in making life better and happier for him and his comrades Besides, under a just system which wouldn’t be based on exploitation many more entrerpreneurs from all over the world could indulge in a great variety of activities (libertarian socialism means MORE freedom and choice, both quantitatively and qualitatively).


“A community is only a group of self interested individuals.”



“There is no society”, as Margaret Thatcher said. What a great role model.



“Putting that gross misappropriation aside, 9-5 is the way it is done because it is safe.”



Have YOU read Das Kapital? Either you are just boasting with it in conversations, or you didn’t understand it, or you’re just a plainly manipulative chap. THE REASON WE HAVE A “9-5” WORKING DAY IS BECAUSE THE CAPITALIST ONLY PAYS THE WORKER FOR ABOUT 2 HOURS Of HIS WORK AND TAKES THE VALUE THAT THE WORKER HELPED CREATE IN THE NEXT 6 HOURS (obviously this isn’t exact, just an illustration of the appropriation of the surplus value). Under communism, people could work in shifts of, say, 2 hours every day (some economists say it would already be viable today), and there would also be no profit-driven NEED for unemployment.



You can not call fortune as a result of hard work unfair.



And what about fortune as a result of exploitation, colonialism, dozens of wars (23 US military interventions since the end of WWII), crushing of dissent, economic espionage, industrial sabotage, protectionism…generally cunning and a deep disregard for the underdogs?

Finally, I always symphatized with the cricket in that well-known story “The Cricket and the Ant”. What a fucked-up moral it has.

 

Here's my article:​

THE EFFECTS OF GLOBALIZATION ON WORLD INEQUALITY​

As an important field of ‘’ideological warfare’’ (though by no means crucial, due to efforts primarily made by mass media to marginalize this question), the debate on world inequality, apart from being scientifically complex, necessarily also reflects opposing political agendas. I will begin by presenting the “official” (mainly World Bank) data and interpretations concerning inequality from which I will move to differing opinions and a short overview of the main economic, cultural and political forces affecting global inequality.

The World Bank’s research concluded that “the number of people in absolute poverty (with incomes less than about $1 per day) was roughly constant in 1987 and 1998, at around 1.2 billion. Since world population increased, the proportion (my italics) of the world’s population in absolute poverty fell sharply from around 28 per cent to 24 per cent in only 11 years.”(1) However, the methods by which the number (1.2 million) was calculated are disputed, with the true numbers concerning poverty probably being understated.(2) Different (even more positive) data acquired by World Bank economist David Dollar “shows a decline since 1980 of 200m people in the category of the absolutely poor. This is a fall from 31 per cent of the world’s population to 20 per cent (not 24 per cent, which is the proportion in developing countries alone)”.(3) This World Bank data therefore indicates not only a decline in the proportion of the global population living under the poverty line, but a decline in absolute poverty (living below the basic, subsistence level – defined by Worldwatch Institute as “a state in which income is too low to meet basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter”) as well. This is primarily attributed to the accelerated growth of the two (initially poor) most populated countries in the world: India and China. “Indian data gives a decline of about 100m in absolute poverty between 1980 and 2000. China uses a lower poverty line but reports that the number of extreme poor in China declined from 250m in 1978 to 34m in 1999”.(4) This progress is primarily seen as a result of liberalized foreign trade and investment accompanied by institutional reform focused around the abandonment of the old system of planned economy (state-“socialism” in China, state-capitalism in India – China, however, hasn’t dismantled the powerful “Maoist” state itself). In any case, it would be hard to dispute that China’s dynamic growth also signifies a historically unprecedented “conquest of poverty” (of course it hasn’t been eradicated).

According to the neoliberal alphabet, “free trade” markets enhance the expansion of trade, which in turn creates growth. As it is with all dogmas, the story is quite simple and easy to learn by hearth: both sides are bound to reap benefits from corporations moving in less-developed countries with cheaper labour, cheap raw materials and other resources and less strict regulation. The poorer country gets foreign investment and increases its industrial growth and output, which it then sells to a bigger market. The richer country gains from importing less technologically sophisticated products (that were also cheaper to produce then they would be at home), thus also freeing resources needed for developing and advancing its “post-industrial”, more sophisticated production at home. The numbers provided by the World Bank economists seem to confirm this optimistic scenario. “World growth topped 4.6 percent in 2004, its most robust in over 30 years. Growth is expected to exceed 4 percent this year despite risks of a further fall in the U.S. dollar and rising energy costs.”(5)Noam Chomsky, on the other hand, points out that “global economic growth has declined (…) quite considerably” over the past 25 years.(6) At this point, lacking expertise, I would like to adopt Mark Twain’s general conclusion.(7)

It should be noted that Marx and even Lenin (before writing “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism”) in his debates with the Narodniks favoured free trade over protectionism and more centralized capitalist economies (such as Germany at the time). As Marx noted in his speech on free trade in Brussels in January 1848: “The whole line of argument amounts to this: Free Trade increases productive forces. If industry keeps growing, if wealth, if the productive power, if, in a word, productive capital increases the demand for labour, the price of labour and consequently the rate of wages rise also. The most favourable condition of the worker is the growth of capital. This must be admitted. If capital remains stationary, industry will not merely remain stationary, but will decline, and in this case, the worker will be the first victim. He goes to the wall before the capitalist."(8)

Certain achievements cannot be denied: “If length of life can be taken as a crude measure of potential well-being, a billion people living, say, forty years on average in 1800 compared to six billion people living sixty years today speaks volumes for the success of capitalism. In 1800, perhaps two thirds of that billion were poor: today, at most a quarter of the six billion are poor. Yet the reduction of poverty is neither automatic, nor to be taken for granted.”(9)

Meanwhile, nobody in his right mind would try to deny the “sheer magnitude of poverty and inequality on a world scale.”(10) The uneven standard of living and the uneven distribution of opportunities is happening on a global scale, between countries as well as people. In contrast with the World Bank statistics, “the UNDP extract (Patterns of Global Inequality, UNDP Report 1999 – my remark) produces evidence to show that the numbers of people living in absolute poverty, according to some estimates, have increased over the last decades of the twentieth century. Moreover, it asserts that the gap between the richest and the poorest in the world is now at historic levels.”(11) The richest fifth of the world’s population in 1960 received 70% of global income while the the poorest 20% got 2.3% of the global income. In 1997 the richest 20% had their share increased to 82.7 % while the world’s poorest 20% saw their income shrink from 2.3% to 1.4%. This means that the ratio of rich versus poor (income gap between the fifth of the world’s people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest) was 30 to one in 1960, and it went up to 74 to 1 in 1997! (12)

Even if the neoliberal premise which sees a simple causal relationship between deregulation, expansion of trade and the (supposedly) resulting economic growth was completely correct (13), it still wouldn’t say anything about the distribution of wealth. Even the industrialization of the Third World wouldn’t put an end to the polarization which is inherent in the global system and intensified through various forms of control - notably financial, technological, cultural and military monopolies.

The mass of floating capital (the vast majority of capital is speculative financial capital) shows only a marginal interest in the Third World (14). Most of the investments that do take place in the Third World are financial investments rather than being investments in production. In the meanwhile, under trade liberalization domestic production is often replaced with increased imports. While the Third World countries are flooded with foreign products (often unable to sell their own), EU is self-sufficient in food and has even become a food exporter by delinking their prices from those of the world market (a practice that is forbidden to the Third World countries).(15) Political inequality (unequal decision-making power) is based on deeply undemocratic economic and political institutions (so, for instance, the number of voting members in WTO, IMF and World Bank depends on the amount of money invested into the organization which petrifies the dominance of G7/8, in whose interests, or the interests of the transnational oligopolies, Bretton Woods institutions have been established in the first place). The conduct of these international institutions with regards to the debt crisis is quite illustrative. There has been a five-fold increase of debt in 1970s for non-OPEC underdeveloped countries, and a steep rise in interest rates through the US anti-inflation policy. Following the re-negotiation of loans in the 1980s, the interest rate came out much higher. In six of the eight years from 1990 to 1997 underdeveloped countries paid out more in debt service than they received in loans (usurious interest rates) – total transfer of money from the poor South to the rich North was $77 billion (the poor are giving to the rich). Under the IMF “structural adjustment programmes” the underdeveloped countries are paying back the debt rather than being able to concentrate on development.(16)

Even if the ruling elites in poor countries could do more - tradition, religious, nationalist and similar conflicts (again largely based on poverty), lack of know-how and resources, corrupt elites etc. (the elites usually belong to the opportunistic comprador bourgeoisie), all these factors and many more perpetuate their condition.

There are also those who believe that the polarization of the world directly serves the economic and political interests of the ruling elites, and that the capitalist society and economy are not just a blind reflection of abstract market laws, since capitalism cannot be separated from the state (so for instance chronic unemployment is partly also a way of fighting the workers’ movement and, to name just one of its social functions, creating divisions and competition between the workers and the unemployed). A prominent example of this is the pivotal role that was assigned by global economic institutions to privatization in the “structural adjustment reforms”, especially in Eastern Europe, which has undergone ‘’adjustments’’ that some on the Left sometimes refer to as “Latin Americanization”(17). In Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, apart from the fact that organized (and even non-state) mafia largely took over the country, there has been “a complete reversal of historical trends: the life expectancy of men has dropped by ten years over the last decade, and a large part of the economy has been reduced to subsistence agriculture.”(18). OECD countries, especially the United Kingdom, the United States and Sweden (once famous for its somewhat egalitarian culture) have also experienced great increases in inequality in the 1980s and early 1990s.(19) “The countries in the European Union, according to André Gorz, have become richer over the last twenty years by around 50 to 70 percent. In spite of this, the EU now has twenty million unemployed, fifty million poor, and five million homeless.”(20)

Can everyone win in a competitive system? Long-term effects of capitalist globalization are unknown, but what seems obvious is that the concentration of capital has reached unprecedented levels – “in 1994 the assets of the world’s 358 billionaires (in US dollars) exceeded the combined annual incomes of countries which stand for 45 percent of the world’s population.(21) Meanwhile, every year 6 million children under the age of five die of hunger.(22)







(1) Robert Wade & Martin Wolf, Are Global Poverty and Inequality Getting Worse? in David Held & Anthony McGrew (ed.), The Global Transformations Reader, Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishing Ltd, UK, 2004, p. 440.

(2) Ibid., p. 440.

(3) Ibid., p. 441.

(4) Ibid., p. 446.

(5) Natsuko Waki & Thomas Atkins, Officials Take a Look at World Economy, Reuters Ltd, January 9, 2005 -www.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050109/bs_nm/economy_g10_dc_1

(6) Jeremy Fox, Chomsky and Globalisation, Icon Books, Cambridge, 2001., p.32.

(7) “…lies, damn lies and statistics.”

(8) Marx in Meghnad Desai (ed.), Lenin’s Economic Writings, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1989, pp. 134-5.

(9) Meghnad Desai, Marx’s Revenge, Verso, London, 2002, p.314.

(10) Robert Wade & Martin Wolf, loc.cit., p. 441.

(11) Divided World, Divided Nations? in David Held & Anthony McGrew (ed.), op.cit, p. 421.

(12) UNDP Report 1999, Patterns of Global Inequality in David Held & Anthony McGrew (ed.), loc.cit., p.425.

(13) Samir Amin, for instance, writes: “Supporters of GATT-WTO base their arguments on the simple yet erroneous idea that free trade favours the expansion of trade and that this expansion, in turn, favours growth. History fails to demonstrate the truth of these propositions.” (Samir Amin, Capitalism in the Age of Globalization, Zed Books, London & New York, 1997, p.26.).

(14) “…most of this capital seeks investment by roaming from one financial metropolis to another, only rarely paying a visit to Third World financial systems.”(Ibid., p.26.)

(15) Samir Amin, op.cit., p.30.

(16) Wayne Ellwood, The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization, New Internationalist Publications in association with Verso, Oxford & London, 2001., p.47.

(17) “As for Russia, the CIS countries, and Eastern Europe, a report issued by the World Bank in April 1999 calculated that there were 147 million people living below the povert line of four dollars a day. The equivalent figure for 1989 was 14 million.”(Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Fourth World, David Held & Anthony McGrew (ed.), op.cit., p.436.)

(18) Eric Hobsbawm with Antonio Polito, On the Edge of the New Century, The New Press, New York, 1999, p.74.

(19) UNDP Report 1999, loc.cit., p.425.

(20) Ibid., p. 88.

(21) Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Fourth World, David Held & Anthony McGrew (ed.), op.cit , p. 434.

(22) FAO, State of Food Insecurity in the World 2002 – www.fao.org/docrep/005/y7352e/y7352e00.htm

 

My initial reaction, as I think should have been yours (hindsight is 20/20), was to look for the processes behind the numbers. It makes little sense to post these skewed stats or those skewed stats and have that be the end of it. We have two sets of data, one from McGrew and Hill, the notorious editors of introductory texts (not that there is anything wrong with introductory texts, per say) and the World Trade Organization, an organization constantly embroiled in controversy, indeed the object of many right wing conspiracy theories. You, as the author of that ‘article’, know all too well the desire for legitimate statistics, as they tend to serve as a great weapon in this ‘ideological war’. It is always going to be the case, in the system in which we currently operate (democracy), that statistics will be produced to show both sides as legitimate. This isn’t to say that one side is more accurate than the other, it is to say that the truth is not valued as highly as is evidence designed to sway opinion. Further, and more perilous, is the fundamental idea that truth ‘is’ indeed what 50.1% of the people opines. Frightening thought. No doubt a product of democracy. The truth of the matter can not be known unless you and I both know exactly what economic indicators are being used and, more importantly, how they are being employed. On top of that we must come to an agreement on the humanitarian values that are being represented by those indicators. An agreement that has not been come to. I have no access to those indicators from a reliable source, I only know what the world bank says. You can use your organizations or basic texts, but I can not admit them as reliable, just as you might refuse the numbers from the WTO. A reliable source would be a non-partisan, benign outsider. Else we fall prey to Kissinger over and over again.
Fortunately for us, the inevitably agnostic and apparently moot discussion can be continued. In my search for those oddly elusive indicators I came across a striking problem with this discussion, at least from my point of view. We ought not be basing our discussion on such ends. I can not see a point in beginning a discussion according to which what is best for people is already decided upon (more accurately, curiously agreed upon to be) money.
I argue, to put it quite crudely, the numbers, regardless of whether they prove a premise for your argument or mine, don’t matter.
In this perhaps Psy Fox was closer to the goal in suggesting we look a little deeper than dollars and cents.

What say you?

 

There is unrest in the forest,
There is trouble with the trees,
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas.

The trouble with the maples,
And they're quite convinced the're right
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light.

But the oaks can"t help their feelings
If they like the way they"re made.
And they wonder why the maples
Can"t be happy in their shade?

There is trouble in the Forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the Maples scream "Oppression!"
And the Oaks just shake their heads

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights.
"The oaks are just too greedy;
We will make them give us light."

Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.

 

In a sentence:

Capitalism is so successful because human greed is one of the only things that can be counted on in this world.

 

the answer couldnt be any simpler...

Because it allows man to fulfill the urge to have everything he owns made out of gold.

But then he's miserable because he realizes how useless a gold toothbrush is...

 

socialism beats them all.

 

Whatever, socialism is evil, what we need is less government, not more.

 

just had to add something that's neither capitalism nor communism. That way ( I thought) I would've gotten the last word....

 

Hehe threads like this never die, no one ever get's the last word. Except maybe a mod.

 

.....
Skip.

 

Hahaha trying to be shiesty I see.

 

sorry....I'm to stupid to know what "Shiesty" means
...please enlighten my superior ranked IQ....