Rage against the Machine - Communism Vs. Capitalism (again!)

[David Floyd]

First of all, with regards to the assertion that Hitler came to power because of the failings of capitalism, that is absolutely incorrect. You might argue that the economic state of Germany led to Hitler's rise, but that economic state was due to the Treaty of Versailles, which had nothing to do with capitalism - capitalism, by its nature, implies freedom.

Now,

When the capitalists of Germany wanted something, the Nazis delivered. Far from being in total control of Germany, Hitler served at the pleasure of his bosses. Had the capitalists felt that Hitler was dangerous to their interests, the Army would have deposed him in a heartbeat.

No, sorry, that isn't correct. There were many officers who were very anti-Hitler - Canaris, Oster, Stauffenberg, Beck, Stuelpnagel, etc. Other officers, such as von Kluge, were opposed to the Nazis, yet felt constrained by their oath of loyalty. I won't bother to delve much deeper into the anti-Hitler movements and Nazi-military relations, except to say that the Army was not controlled by capitalist power brokers, as you seem to imply.

The capitalists wanted the unions crushed, the unions were crushed and replaced with subserviant unions.

Hitler and the Nazis were anti-communist, this had a lot to do with their rise to power. The "capitalists" - which weren't actually true capitalists to begin with - didn't make them do anything, Hitler already wanted to.

The capitalists wanted slave labor, the Nazis rounded up Jews, Gypsies, and anyone else they could get away with taking.

You're again putting the cart before the horse. Hitler and the Nazis were anti-Jew for a variety of reasons, but none of these reasons were that the "capitalists" ordered it.

And by the way, why would capitalists want the Holocaust? Why should people who want slave labor also want the government to kill millions of their slave laborers? We're talking 6 million Jews, plus millions of other "undesirables" and Russian POWs. That argument just doesn't hold water.

Now, I grant you that there were some exemptions made for Jews in vital war industries, but these were few and far between, and amounted to no more than a drop in the bucket.

The capitalists wanted Markets, the Nazis conquered them.

Hitler's conquests had more to do with the concept of Grossdeutschland, lebensraum, racial superiority, revenge for WW1, and resources to solidify the gains of all of the above than anything else.

The capitalists wanted competition destroyed, the Nazis bombed them.

The Nazis bombed the "competition" as a part of their conquests, which, again, the "capitalists" were not ultimately behind.

The capitalista wanted fat government contracts, the Nazis gave them.

Well duh. Every country that fought in WW2 gave out fat government contracts for military spending. I suppose you're gonna argue that WW2 was fought so that capitalists could enrich themselves, right?

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Velociryx

Capitalism only innovates when it is profitable to do so Which of course, explains why the Genome project occurred in a capitalist system, right? (and the Internet too). Yeah, I know, I know, they were funded by government research dollars. And the government GOT those research dollars from? Show of hands? Could it be.....taxing the fruits of the capitalist system? EUREKA!!

And that's exactly the point. The government funded NASA, the internet, the genome and the private sector jumped in once they say the opportunity to make a buck.
Dennis Kucinich has a great article on this very subject here].

What I AM belittling is the notion that communism will work "next time" when no one has laid out a comprehensive action plan that is ANY different from previous efforts.

The very problem I have in mind. Capitalism has gotten better by learning from the past. The great depresion lead to greater regulation of the financial sector. A social safety net was added. Antitrust legislation was enacted as a safeguard against the market destroying itself.

Lets look at rule of law issues. Lets look at scalability, lets look at organizational structures. Let's think about communal property regimes and communal/private hybrids like open source. But lets not say "capitalism has won the day and lets go home."

Capitalism is proven, as Vel said many posts back. But proven for what? Proven that it generates more prosperity than feudalism. Sure. But also proven that distributional justice can only be ensured by heavy governmental regulation.

The profit motive has limited application towards innovation - but innovation is suborned to profit under capitalism.

One of the surest signs of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again the same way and expecting different results.

so stop praising capitalism.

And I still haven't heard from the communist crowd about why nobody has bothered to set up a company along communist lines (that is to say, start a company, and pay each employee the full measure of his productivity....you know, so there's no exploitation. See how it works.

You are asking that someone use a paradigm that is foriegn to capitalism inside capitalism so that it can prove its merits by capitalist standards. Gee, I woder why no one wants to play that game ...

[GePap]

Originally posted by Velociryx
In your example, yes. If your son is weak-minded and weak-willed enough that he believes absolutely everything that dear old dad tells him, despite of compelling evidence to the contrary, then yes. He will likely do as you say, and not buy a car, even when it is clearly advantageous to do so.

However, if he is confident in himself and in his abilities as an INDIVIDUAL, he will continually question the world around him. He will see other people driving cars that he once thought were evil (your influence), realize that they are not being corrupted by the automobile, and then reach the conclusion that the old man was off his rocker! At that point, he will buy a car whether you like it or not.

Really big fallacy here. There is nothing innately indvidual about questioning the world. Most INDIVIDUALS are happy doing what they are told and not rocking the boat. Why? Becuase doing so brings stability and security, and the ability to continue their lives with few starts and jumps. You also say "clearly aventageous to do so". How so? From an economic standpoint it might be. What about a moral standpoint? What does the market tell us about abortion? You confuse capitalism with individualism. It sin;t. Sometimes indivudalism is good for the market, other times it is not. The maret is a means to an end, and as such the only values that matter to it are those that further the end. The end is greater wealth, not individual enrichment, like you for some reason seem to think.

In your second example, yes….it is true that choice (and the perceived range of choices) CAN be manipulated. Basic psychology bears this out, and it helps your argument….how again?

Becuase you could always change the percieved good of any action, and thus this notion that man in inherently greedy and "bad" and so forth, and only capitalism is the system that can harness this is bollocks. Man can himself be molded, becuase man is not set in stone.

Had to laugh at your third point though. Individuals define their self worth all kinds of ways. Partly by their economic standing, it is true, but that is not the sum-total of the definition for the vast majority of people. The “supply” of individuals is not dictated by market forces, nor are their worths as individuals determined by economic mechanisms.

This isn;t a seminar on "self-worth", and self-worth is utterly immaterial to the capitalist system. A hard working doctor who thinks he is sh1t is worth moe to the system than some construction workers who thinks he is the greatest thing in the world and is tterly happy. I don;t know were you came to confuse the capitalist system with some sort of self-helkp seminar to make people feel happy about themselves. If anything, capitalism does no thrive too well among a bunch of self-contended people. They are less likely to want more and more goods, which is critical to mantain the capitalist economy. Unhappy people craving for things to make them finally happy are far better for capitalism that a bunch of self-actualized folks who think they are happy already.

I have written three books. Are they “worth” only what the market says they are worth? In terms of their economic impact on my life, yes. But for me personally, they are worth far more than any amount of money I will ever receive from them. I set the goal. I accomplished the goal, and it has value to ME, regardless of what the market might think (of course, there’s no denying that if the market liked them too, I would not be complaining!)

-=Vel=-

And what you, or any other indvidual "thinks" is not very important, unless it pertains to your buying habits or your overall productivity. Its great that you are so happy in your life and self-contended. That is not asn argument though for anything other than you did good in your life.

If you buy an island in the south pacific a thousand miles from anybody and want to build a nuke plant, nobody would raise an eyebrow

But hardly any such Islands are left, and in time, none will be. And then were will this plant go? 9beyind the fact that a power plant in the middle of nowhere it utterly useless).


Also, when the hell did this turn out about HItler?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by GePap
Also, when the hell did this turn out about HItler?

It was che. I believe that he got tired of the thread and wanted to hijack it.

[David Floyd]

He hijacked it onto the wrong subject, at least for his argument.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by GePap
Also, when the hell did this turn out about HItler?

Capitalist boosters like to forget utterly about history, except the history of Communism. For the latter, however, they like to act as if it happened in a vaccuum, and was utterly unrealted to other forces in the world. They need reminding, periodically, that capitalism wouldn't still be here without WWII and the monsters who started it.

[David Floyd]

They need reminding, periodically, that capitalism wouldn't still be here without WWII and the monsters who started it.

Come again?

[Berzerker]

War is caused by the competition for resources. That is a capitalist idea.

Communists don't compete? Well...inside their country I guess they don't have to since they own everyone and everything, but outside their domain they'll run into people who do compete.

[Berzerker]

Templar -

The government funded NASA, the internet, the genome and the private sector jumped in once they say the opportunity to make a buck.

The first has been a waste, the second was invented by Al Gore, and the Genome was accomplished first by a private company. The government then "asked" the private concern to join forces with the government project. But yes, once the genome is identified, other private concerns will start the R&D to advance medicine to a new level.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Communists don't compete? Well...inside their country I guess they don't have to since they own everyone and everything, but outside their domain they'll run into people who do compete.

Communism is an alliance of all the people of the world. Competing with capitalist nations for resources is not the vision of communism, but it should be done to benefit the people suffering under the capitalist states. The fight against the capitalist is a struggle for all the world's people. After it is won, war will be a thing of the past.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

The biggest problem between the communist theory and the practice is the allocation of consumer items. The state needs to make sure that there is enough toilet paper, food, utensils, wood, etc in a supply center (like a supermarket) in order to satisfy the needs of local population. Unfortunatly, it is very hard to predict what an 'average' person, couple, or family will need in a given time. If they ship too little food, then the people will be starving. If they ship too much utensils, then no one will buy them. Instead of wasting resources on making utensils, some of the factories could have converted into making cars for example.
The misalocation of resources, and the difficulty of figuring out what an average person consumes of each consumer item (remember, there are thousands, if not millions of items which a person could buy, and each one needs to have an average calculated, so it will be avaiable) is the first reason why there is no way they will not be able to compete with capitalist societies. Secondly, it will also result in less innovation (because there is no need for new goods, or better way of creating goods since there is no competition)
Another problem in communist socieites is that there will be an overdemand for low skill jobs. People look primairly at prices and wages to determine what they will buy or what job they will pursue. A large proportion of the people will then not bother getting and education, or going to college because there is no additional benefit since PhD.'s, MD.'s, MA.'s, and managers all get paid the same as the lowest worker. Being a low level worker means less time spent studying, hence longer time working, so they are making money, even while people are studying for the higher positions, which will pay the exact same.

[Velociryx]

There is nothing innately indvidual about questioning the world. Most INDIVIDUALS are happy doing what they are told and not rocking the boat.

Absolutely brilliant argument, Gepap! Guys, check this out! None of the following was invented by, or done by individuals questioning the world around them! (I suppose then, that leaves the borg collective or some other sci-fi construct...yep....surely)

Polio vaccine
Light Bulb
Cotten Gin
The Airplane
Splitting the atom
etc. etc, to infinity.....

What kind of threadbare argument is that? Individuals are not inclined to question the world around them? So....none of the folks who did any of the above actually existed. Nor did DaVinci or any of the other great thinkers from his age.

Newton? An aberration, at best. A statistical anomoly.

You'd best thank your lucky stars that INDIVIDUALS do invent and question the world around them. We'd not be having this conversation otherwise....

But hey! Let's forget all that. Let's chuck the system that rewards innovation in favor of the Borg Collective, shall we? As Kid (a person arguing for the revolution put it Innovation isn't really all that important anymore anyway

-=Vel=-
(and I'm the one dealing in fallacy )

[Berzerker]

Templar -

Efficiency has jack squat to do with this. NASA overcomes the initial capital outlay problem. GUess what? Satellites are very profitable right now. Why do you think Rupert Murdoch is buying up all the world's satellite networks. But, satellites have become more and more profitable over the years. In the beginning, they weren't, and the initial capital outlay to do satellites (an entire private space program!) would have prohibited the private sector from fooling around with them. Satellites turned out to be a good thing.

Who launches most of the world's satellites? Not NASA. So we wasted all that money and life just to launch our own satellites when those billions could have been spent on more "efficient" endeavors. Btw, private companies do have satellites built and pay to have them sent up. You see government jump in to monopolise the space industry and just assume private industry wouldn't produce satellites. Did this happen with cars?

Just like satellites once were. Again, this sort of research is best funded in the public sector and in a non-corporate academia.

Why? According to kidicious, communists don't compete?

Here we go again. This would be like me objecting to contemporary capitalism using Dickens or Sinclair examples. Oh wait, if you go to the south Bronx it does look like a damn Dickens novel.

These guys saw the inefficiencies and immorality of a caste system, not capitalism. Now, if we cannot look at how the world's few communist countries behaved, with killing off millions of non-comformers, then why are the "capitalists" asked to defend rare anti-capitalist practices from the past?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
The biggest problem between the communist theory and the practice is the allocation of consumer items. The state needs to make sure that there is enough toilet paper, food, utensils, wood, etc in a supply center (like a supermarket) in order to satisfy the needs of local population.

Creating shortages of things like toilet paper is a choice that the USSR made. The USSR really didn't have the production possibilities to produce all of those war goods without sacrificing consumer goods. That was unfortunate, but you really shouldn't judge a communist system with greater production capabilities by the experience of the USSR.

[Berzerker]

Kid -

Communism is an alliance of all the people of the world. Competing with capitalist nations for resources is not the vision of communism, but it should be done to benefit the people suffering under the capitalist states. The fight against the capitalist is a struggle for all the world's people. After it is won, war will be a thing of the past.

Sorry, but that's really funny. It's us poor souls under capitalism that needs liberating by all those affluent communists? And people don't fight under communism? Well, if they're overwhelmed with tanks, discretion is the better part of valor.
But what happened when the N Vietnamese won the war? They went in and kicked the butts of the Khmer Rouge ending yet another glorious attempt at communism. And they told the Red Chinese and Russians, thanks for the help, now leave. Yeah, once y'all have conquered (peacefully of course ) the world, war will end.