Why Capitalists are Capitalists...

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Riiiiiight.

Let's ask Vladya ("Terror is a legitimate instrument of state policy") Ulyanov. Or how about that standup duo of Feliks Dzherzhinski and Lavrenti Beria?

Maybe you could explain why the greatest scientist in Soviet history, Lev Davidovich Landau, a dedicated communist and Jew, was essentially shattered and unproductive the rest of his career after a year in the Gulag on ridiculous charges of being a Nazi spy. Only the fact that Landau was the first Soviet Nobel laureate in physics allowed his supporters to intervene with Stalin on propaganda grounds to avoid what was an effective death sentence.

Maybe we can dig up Uncle Joe and Leon Trotskii and let them discuss the notion of the value of the individual. Let's move east a bit and talk about letting a hundred flowers bloom so they could be weed-whacked in the Cultural Revolution, or about the Great Leap Forward - so far forward, we went backward and starved a few million, but let's not suggest the Great and Powerful Wizard of Mao might not know **** when he wasn't plagiarizing for his little red book.

Or we could go west a bit and ask the residents of Budapest in 1956 or the residents of Praha in 1968, or the residents of anywhere in Romania under Ceausescu.

Let's interview some dying former DDR female swimmers overdosed on steroids to steal medals for the glory of German Communism - the same brand of glorious Communism that brought us the ****ing Trabant.

Or let's ask former east Germans what they thought about all those Stasi files on everyone. Good way to achieve full employment - make sure almost half the country is either a paid or coerced informer for the state intelligence apparatus.

Shall I go on, or do you want to just go for the rote "but that wasn't real communism, that was corrupt, and we're all going to be different, trust us, when we get into absolute power, we'll show you how different we'll be" party line?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Shall I go on, or do you want to just go for the rote "but that wasn't real communism, that was corrupt, and we're all going to be different, trust us, when we get into absolute power, we'll show you how different we'll be" party line?

I'm not big on the 'that's not real communism' argument. I don't think that China was ever very communist the way I define communism, but the USSR under Stalin was communist, not in the absolute sense, but none the less. Some of the things done were necessary and some weren't.

I doubt if all your facts are straight, but someone else can judge that.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Find one you dispute.

Lenin's quote? From his own writings, sorry, I just have Russian versions bought at Znanie bookstore in San Francisco, but USSR published.

Landau? Very well known and well documented case, documented both by dissidents (Sakharov et al) and lifetime party loyalits (Zel'dovich et al) from the top of the Soviet physics community.

Pick some you dispute? And for everyone I mentioned, there's thousands more. Stalin was a worse mass murderer than Hitler. That's who you admire?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
That's who you admire?

Of course not, I hate him. You didn't really think I did, did you?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Kidicious
the USSR under Stalin was communist, not in the absolute sense, but none the less. Some of the things done were necessary and some weren't.

You describe yourself as communist, and justify "some of the things done" by Stalin...

[Ted Striker]

Communist apologizers are like the little neighborhood kids who strike out playing softball but want a few more pitches until they hit it.

"That pitch didn't count, it was too high, I want a do-over!!!"

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
You describe yourself as communist, and justify "some of the things done" by Stalin...

Ok, what's the big deal? Stalin was a communist so all communists are bad, huh? That's no different from the rest of your inferior logic used in this thread.

[Az]

The things Stalin has done were NOT needed. His clampdown on the young Soviet democracy was bad, his cleansing of the party ranks were evil, and his forced starvation of people, and their sending to camps is diabolic in nature, and mind boggling in proportions.

The Soviet economy started growing rapidly after Stalin's rise to power, but it did so before the mass "labour camps". It was utterly unnessecary.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Commies like to play the "not a real communist" game. You cited Stalin's USSR, one of the most inept, ruthless, despotic regimes in history, as an example of a communist state. Unless you want to come up with some lovey-dovey, benign, enlightened model of a modern communist state (and oh please, spare me handwringing over the Paris Commune ), then I'll assume the working example is the only one you've cited so far.

It's up to you to demonstrate a better example. It's not my logic that's faulty here.

BTW, not all communists are bad, some are just naive and misguided. It's communism itself that's bad, but that's kind of OK now, because it's really more of a footnote in history and a novelty depending on faith in a mythical "second coming" than a real threat.

[GePap]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
BTW, not all communists are bad, some are just naive and misguided. It's communism itself that's bad, but that's kind of OK now, because it's really more of a footnote in history and a novelty depending on faith in a mythical "second coming" than a real threat.

(we really need a sigh smiley)

Communism (to speak of the modern economic and political ideology derived from Marx and then modified by Lenin and others) did fail, for a whole host of reasons. The great mistake made by you MtG is to think that that somehow validates Capitalism. It does not, for there are more then two choices. All this freedom to move and such you and Vel speak about: that is only partly the result of Capitalism, and also part of Democracy, a purely political force that need not live alongside capitalism. In fact Capitalism has no need of democracy whatsoever, as we have seen elsewhere.

But then there is another issue, and that is to what exten should people's lives depend on the market. You keep calling people who want a certain measure of socialistic policies (and the US has many of them, as do ALL modern liberal democracies) "whinners and losers". At the same time you, earlier in this thread were talking to me about the evils of slavery. But if you can speak of "whinners and losers", then what is wrong with slavery? Is not a slave someone so weak and spineless as to let themselves be enslaved? Would not any self-respecting person just grab the whip out of the hands of the master and kill him with it? If a slave is not "man" enough not to be one, why should he NOT be one? That is the end logic of this notion you and Vel keep pointing too, that it is all from internal sources, that only ambition and drive matter, and anyone with them will be successful. Well, the is true, but the inverse is not true. People wo want to succeed will do anything in any system to use it to gain an advantage within it. But most people do not have a huge drive and ambition. They whish to live a certain way, and whether they sink or swim has more to do with what system they are trying to swim in. It is fine and valid to say that if they cant swim in the current economic waters they should be allowed to sink and drown, who needs them, not the market. But those who sink also vote, becuase we are at heart a democracy, not a capitalist state (I see references to pirvate property in the constitution, not capital, not capitalism, and a lot of refferences to democracy). Now if you care to convince those sinking that its 100% their fault and that they should sink, becuase todays waters are the best ever, try to. But there are some of us who think that todays waters are not the best, for a host of reasons.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Velociryx
The reason I'm against "compensating" those with relatively fewer opportunities is because those with relatively "more" opportunities weren't given them by society. They MADE them, by virtue of hard, smart work.

That's a joke, and you know it. Tell me, if GWB's father weren't GHWB, would he have gotten into Yale, met up with the Skull and Dagger, made his connections, so he ended up with being the President of United States?

Originally posted by Velociryx
So, if a person is out there busting his a$$ to make something of himself and succeeds at it, why SHOULD he compensate those that won't do the same? Just because he has "more"? That is not a sufficient reason.

Snooze. You are implying that those who failed didn't work hard enough or weren't smart enough. I like to see you establish that.

Originally posted by Velociryx
If BECAUSE he has more, these others have less, of course, but economics is not a zero-sum game.

Says who? It can be a zero-sum game.

Originally posted by Velociryx
Bill Gates' wealth did NOTHING to deny you wealth.

Tell that to Bristol Technology, or Digital Research. Now don't get me started on that one.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
It's up to you to demonstrate a better example. It's not my logic that's faulty here.

Yes it is. Without the central planning, the USSR was highly unlikely to industrialise in a very short time, thus fending off the Nazi invasion in WWII.

Tell me, which country sent the first satellite and the first man into space? The US caught up by channelling efforts through NASA, ironically the sort of central planning you seem to dispise so much.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Yes, and Soviet productivity was legendary. Let the state decide what is "unnecessary" - much better than the market.

I don't think this invisible hand of the market is as magical as some people make it out to be. First of all, "the market" can fail in many different ways. Secondly, "the market" does not allocate resources optimally or even reasonably, in fact, a lot is wasted in competition. For example, if a country has a demand of 100 cars, would 100 cars be produced in a capitalistic system? You bet it won't. If there is a monopoly, less than 100 cars will be produced. If there is a sort of a free market competition, a lot more than 100 cars will be produced.

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
USSR and PRC, anyone? Oh, but that was in response to reactionaries and counterrevolutionary elements. The biggest difference in your chosen system is that anti-system agitators like you would be off counting trees if they're lucky, dead if not. In this system, we tolerate competing ideas.

That has nothing to do with capitalism vs communism.

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Let's pick someplace nice, like Congo, Liberia, Somalia or birthrates in Sub-saharan Africa in general. Do you think giving people free medicine is going to cure everything? Medical care and humanitarian issues in the worst of the third world needs to be addressed, but that isn't market failure primarily.

No, it's the greed of the giant multinational pharmaceutical companies who refuse to sell their medicine cheaply. Which is, of course, yet another failing of capitalism.

[GePap]

Let's pick someplace nice, like Congo, Liberia, Somalia or birthrates in Sub-saharan Africa in general. Do you think giving people free medicine is going to cure everything? Medical care and humanitarian issues in the worst of the third world needs to be addressed, but that isn't market failure primarily.

It isn;t a market failure, it is the market acitng normally. they have little money to spend on drugs, so they get no drugs. The reason for that lack of money is internal political strife. But here again MtG you make the mistake of attributing some sort of morality to the market. All the market is is a set of rules about how to conduct interactions. It does not legislate the choices made, only makes some of them "more rational" or "less rational" as far as maximizing your returns. But the system works even with the "irrational" choices being made.

[GePap]

Bill Gates' wealth did NOTHING to deny you wealth.

As UR said, if I am trying to compete direlty with Bill gates, it just very well might. On top of that, not everyone can be wealthy: if everyone is wealthy, no one is wealthy, since "wealthy" is a subjective marker. So while it is true that Gate's wealth does not deny me wealth, not everyone can be wealthy, even if everyone were some crackerjack worker and real honest of goodness gogetter.

There will always be somehting to separate the outcomes of two individuas, and it is absurd to think that amount of work involved will be the deciding factor all the time. In a very few fields, it will be just the one to have one very good idea, or brand new innovation. In most fields, it will be the vagueries of life that will decide between a doctor making 100,000 and one making 600,000.