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Capitalism versus Socialism


Jamie_B

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Dont get me wrong I think the mixed system we have is the best, but this is food for thought.

[url="http://www.mises.org/mmmp/mmmp13.asp"]http://www.mises.org/mmmp/mmmp13.asp[/url]

[quote]Most of our contemporaries are highly critical of what they call "the unequal distribution of wealth." As they see it, justice would require a state of affairs under which nobody enjoys what are to be considered superfluous luxuries as long as other people lack things necessary for the preservation of life, health, and cheerfulness. The ideal condition of mankind, they pretend, would be an equal distribution of all consumers' goods available. As the most practical method to achieve this end, they advocate the radical expropriation of all material factors of production and the conduct of all production activities by society, that is to say, by the social apparatus of coercion and compulsion, commonly called government or state.

The supporters of this program of socialism or communism reject the economic system of capitalism for a number of reasons. Their critique emphasizes the alleged fact that the system as such is not only unjust, a violation of the perennial God-given natural law, but also inherently inefficient and thus the ultimate cause of all the misery and poverty that plague mankind. Once the wicked institution of private ownership of the material factors of production will have been replaced by public ownership, human conditions will become blissful. Everybody will receive what he needs. All that separates mankind from this perfect state of earthly affairs is the unfairness in the distribution of wealth.

The essential viciousness of this method of dealing with the fundamental problems of mankind's material and spiritual welfare is to be seen in its preoccupation with the concept of distribution. As these authors and doctrinaires see it, the economic and social problem is to give to everybody his due, his fair share in the endowment that God or nature has destined for the use of all men. They do not see that poverty is "the primitive condition of the human race." [1] They do not realize that all that enables man to elevate his standard of living above the level of the animals is the fruit of his planned activity. Man's economic task is not the distribution of gifts dispensed by a benevolent donor, but production. He tries to alter the state of his environment in such a way that conditions become more favorable to the preservation and development of his vital forces. He works.

Precisely, say the superficial among the critics of social conditions. Labor and nothing but labor brings forth all the goods the utilization of which elevates the condition of men above the level of the animals. As all products are the output of labor, only those who labor should have the right to enjoy them.

This may sound rather plausible as far as it refers to the conditions and circumstances of some fabulous non-human beings. But it turns into the most fateful of all popular delusions when applied to homo sapiens. Man's eminence manifests itself in his being fully aware of the flux of time. Man lives consciously in a changing universe; he distinguishes, sooner and later, between past, present, [2] and future; he makes plans to influence the future state of affairs and tries to convert these plans into fact. Conscious planning for the future is the specifically human characteristic. Timely provision for future wants is what distinguishes human action from the hunting drives of beasts and of savages. Premeditation, early attention to future needs, leads to production for deferred consumption, to the intercalation of time between exertion and the enjoyment of its outcome, to the adoption of what Böhm-Bawerk called round-about methods of production. To the nature-given factors of production, man-made factors are added by the deferment of consumption. Man's material environment and his style of life are radically transformed. There emerges what is called human civilization.

This civilization is not an achievement of kings, generals or other Führers. Neither is it the result of the labors of "common" men. It is the fruit of the cooperation of two types of men: of those whose saving, i.e., deferment of consumption, makes entering upon time-absorbing, round-about methods of production possible, and of those who know how to direct the application of such methods. Without saving and successful endeavors to use the accumulated savings wisely, there cannot be any question of a standard of living worthy of the qualification human.

Simple saving, that is, the abstention from immediate consumption in order to make more abundant consumption at a later date possible, is not a specifically human contrivance. There are also animals that practice it. Driven by instinctive urges, some species of animals are also committed to what we would have to call capitalistic saving if it were done in full consciousness of its effects. But man alone has elevated intentional deferment of consumption to a fundamental principle of action. He abstains temporally from consumption in order to enjoy later the continuous services of appliances that could not have been produced without such a postponement.

Saving is always the abstention from some kind of immediate consumption for the sake of making an increase or improvement in later consumption possible. It is saving that accumulates capital, dissaving that makes the available supply of capital shrink. In acting, man chooses between increasing his competence by additional saving or reducing the amount of his capital by keeping his consumption above the rate correct accountancy considers as his income.

Additional saving as well as the non-consumption of already previously accumulated savings are never "automatic," but always the result of an intentional abstention from instantaneous consumption. In abstaining from instantaneous consumption, the saver expects to be fully rewarded either by keeping something for later consumption or by acquiring the property of a capital good.

Where there is no saving, no capital goods come into existence. And there is no saving without purpose. A man defers consumption for the sake of an improvement of later conditions. He may want to improve his own conditions or those of definite other people. He does not abstain from consumption simply for the pleasure of somebody unknown.

There cannot be any such thing as a capital good that is not owned by a definite owner. Capital goods come into existence as the property of the individual or the group of individuals who were in the position to consume definite things but abstained from this consumption for the sake of later utilization. The way in which capital goods come into existence as private property determines the institutions of the capitalistic system.

Of course, today's heirs of the capitalistic civilization also construct the scheme of a world-embracing social body that forces every human being to submit meekly to all its orders. In such a socialist universe everything will be planned by the supreme authority and to the individual "comrades" no other sphere of action will be left than unconditional surrender to the will of their masters. The comrades will drudge, but all the yield of their endeavors will be at the disposal of the high authority. Such is the ideal of socialism or communism, nowadays also called planning. The individual comrade will enjoy what the supreme authority assigns to him for his consumption and enjoyment. Everything else, all material factors of production, will be owned by the authority.

Such is the alternative. Mankind has to choose: on the one side—private property in the material factors of production. Then the demand of the consumers on the market determines what has to be produced, of what quality, and in what quantity. On the other side—all the material factors of production are owned by the central authority and thus every individual entirely depends on its will and has to obey its orders. This authority alone determines what has to be produced and what and how much each comrade should be permitted to use or consume.

If one does not permit individuals to keep as their property the things produced for temporally deferred utilization, one removes any incentive to create such things and thus makes it impossible for acting man to raise his condition above the level of non-human animals. Thus the anti-property (i.e., socialist or communist) authors had to construct the design of a society in which all men are forced to obey unconditionally the orders issued from a central authority, from the great god called state, society, or mankind.


II

The social meaning and the economic function of private property have been widely misunderstood and misinterpreted because people confuse conditions of the market economy with those of the militaristic systems vaguely labeled feudalism. The feudal lord was a conqueror or a conqueror's accomplice. He was anxious to deprive all those who did not belong to his own cluster of any opportunity to make a living otherwise than by humbly serving him or one of his class comrades. All the land—and this means in a primitive society virtually all the material factors of production—was owned by members of the proprietary caste and to the others, to those disdainfully called the "villains," nothing was left but unconditional surrender to the armed hereditary nobility. Those not belonging to this aristocracy were serfs or slaves, they had to obey and to drudge while the products of their toil were consumed by their masters.

The eminence of the inhabitants of Europe and their descendants who have settled in other continents consists in the fact that they have abolished this system and substituted for it a state of freedom and civic rights for every human being. It was a long and slow evolution, again and again interrupted by reactionary episodes, and great parts of our globe are even today only superficially affected by it. At the end of the eighteenth century the triumphal progress of this new social system was accelerated. Its most spectacular manifestation in the moral and intellectual sphere is known as the Enlightenment, its political and constitutional reforms as the liberal movement, while its economic and social effects are commonly referred to as the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of modern capitalism.

The historians dealing with the various phases of this up-to-now most momentous and weighty period of mankind's evolution tend to confine their investigations to special aspects of the course of affairs. They mostly neglect to show how the events in the various fields of human activity were connected with one another and determined by the same ideological and material factors. Unimportant detail sometimes engrosses their attention and prevents them from seeing the most consequential facts in the right light.

The most unfortunate outcome of this methodological confusion is to be seen in the current fateful misinterpretation of the recent political and economic developments of the civilized nations.

The great liberal movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries aimed at the abolition of the rule of hereditary princes and aristocracies and the establishment of the rule of elected representatives of the people. All kinds of slavery and serfdom ought to be abolished. All members of the nation should enjoy the full rights and privileges of citizenship. The laws and the practice of the administrative officers should not discriminate between the citizens.

This liberal revolutionary program clashed very soon with another program that was derived from the postulates of old communist sects. These sects, many of them inspired by religious ideas, had advocated confiscation and redistribution of land or some other forms of egalitarianism and of primitive communism. Now their successors proclaimed that a fully satisfactory state of human conditions could be attained only where all material factors of production are owned and operated by "society," and the fruits of economic endeavors are evenly distributed among all human beings.

Most of these communist[3] authors and revolutionaries were convinced that what they were aiming at was not only fully compatible with the customary program of the friends of representative government and freedom for all, but was its logical continuation, the very completion of all endeavors to give to mankind perfect happiness. Public opinion was by and large prepared to endorse this interpretation. As it was usual to call the adversaries of the liberal [4] demand for representative government the parties of the "right" and the liberal groups the parties of the "left," the communist (and later also the socialist) groups were considered as "more to the left" than the liberals. Popular opinion began to believe that while the liberal parties represent only the selfish class interests of the "exploiting" bourgeoisie, the socialist parties were fighting for the true interests of the immense majority, the proletariat.

But while these reformers were merely talking and drafting spurious plans for political action, one of the greatest and most beneficial events of mankind's history was going on—the Industrial Revolution. Its new business principle—that transformed human affairs more radically than any religious, ethical, legal, or technological innovation had done before—was mass production destined for consumption by the masses, not merely for consumption by members of the well-to-do classes. This new principle was not invented by statesmen and politicians; it was for a long time even not noticed by the members of the aristocracy, the gentry, and the urban patricians. Yet, it was the very beginning of a new and better age of human affairs when some people in Hanoverian England started to import cotton from the American colonies; some took charge of its transformation to cotton goods for customers of modest income; while still others exported such goods to the Baltic ports to have them ultimately exchanged against corn that, brought to England, appeased the hunger of starving paupers.

The characteristic feature of capitalism is the traders' unconditional dependence upon the market, that is, upon the best possible and cheapest satisfaction of the most urgent demand on the part of the consumers. For every kind of production human labor is required as a factor of production. But labor as such, however masterfully and conscientiously performed, is nothing but a waste of time, material, and human effort if it is not employed for the production of those goods and services that at the instant of their being ready for use or consumption will best satisfy in the cheapest possible way the most urgent demand of the public.

The market is the prototype of what are called democratic institutions. Supreme power is vested in the buyers, and vendors succeed only by satisfying in the best possible way the wants of the buyers. Private ownership of the factors of production forces the owners—enterprisers—to serve the consumers. Eminent economists have called the market a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote.


III

Both the political or constitutional democracy and the economic or market democracy are administered according to the decisions of the majority. The consumers, by their buying or abstention from buying, are as supreme in the market as the citizens through their voting in plebiscites or in the election of officers are supreme in the conduct of the affairs of state. Representative government and the market economy are the product of the same evolutionary process, they condition one another, and it would seem today that they are disappearing together in the great reactionary counter-revolution of our age.

Yet, reference to this striking homogeneousness must not prevent us from realizing that, as an instrument of giving expression to the genuine wants and interests of the individuals, the economic democracy of the market is by far superior to the political democracy of representative government. As a rule it is easier to choose between the alternatives which are open to a purchaser than to make a decision in matters of state and "high" politics. The average housewife may be very clever in acquiring the things she needs to feed and to clothe her children. But she may be less fit in electing the officers called to handle matters of foreign policy and military preparedness.

Then there is another important difference. In the market not only the wants and wishes of the majority are taken into account but also those of minorities, provided they are not entirely insignificant in numbers. The book trade publishes for the general reader, but also for small groups of experts in various fields. The garment trades are not only supplying clothing for people of normal size, but also merchandise for the use of abnormal customers. But in the political sphere only the will of the majority counts, and the minority is forced to accept what they may detest for rather serious reasons.

In the market economy, the buyers determine with every penny spent the direction of the production processes and thereby the essential features of all business activities. The consumers assign to everybody his position and function in the economic organism. The owners of the material factors of production are virtually mandatories or trustees of the consumers, revocably appointed by a daily repeated election. If they fail in their attempts to serve the consumers in the best possible and cheapest way, they suffer losses and, if they do not reform in time, lose their property.

Feudal property was acquired either by conquest or by a conqueror's favor. Once acquired, it could be enjoyed forever by the owner and his heirs. But capitalistic property must be acquired again and again by utilizing it for serving the consumers in the best possible way. Every owner of material factors of production is forced to adjust the services he renders to the best possible satisfaction of the continually changing demand of the consumers. A man may start his business career as the heir of a large fortune. But this does not necessarily help him in his competition with newcomers. The adjustment of an existing railroad system to the new situation created by the emergence of motor cars, trucks, and airplanes was a more difficult problem than many of the tasks that had to be solved by enterprises newly started.

The fact that made the capitalistic methods of the conduct of business emerge and flourish is precisely the excellence of the services it renders to the masses. Nothing characterizes the fabulous improvement in the standard of living of the many better than the quantitative role that the entertainment industries play in modern business.

Capitalism has radically transformed all human affairs. Population figures have multiplied. In the few countries where neither the policies of the governments nor obstinate preservation of traditional ways on the part of the citizens put insurmountable obstacles in the way of capitalistic entrepreneurship, the living conditions of the immense majority of people have improved spectacularly. Implements never known before or considered as extravagant luxuries are now customarily available to the average man. The general standard of education and of material and spiritual well-being is improving from year to year.

All this is not an achievement of governments or of any charitable measures. More often than not it is precisely governmental action that frustrates beneficial developments which the regular operation of capitalistic institutions tends to bring about.

Let us look upon one special case. In the precapitalistic ages, saving and thereby the betterment of one's economic condition was really possible, apart from professional money-lenders (bankers), only to people who owned a farm or a shop. They could invest savings in an improvement or expansion of their property. Other people, the propertyless proletarians, could save only by hiding a few coins in a corner they considered as safe. Capitalism made the accumulation of some capital through saving accessible to everybody. Life insurance institutions, savings banks, and bonds give the opportunity of saving and earning interest to the masses of people with modest incomes, and these people make ample use of it. On the loan markets of the advanced countries, the funds provided by the numerous classes of such people play an important role. They could be an important factor in making the operation of the capitalistic system familiar to those who are not themselves employed in the financial conduct of business affairs. And first of all—they could more and more improve the economic and social standing of the many.

But unfortunately the policies of practically all nations sabotage this evolution in the most disgraceful manner. The governments of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany, not to speak of most of the smaller nations, were or are still committed to the most radical inflationist policies. While continually talking about their solicitude for the common man, they have without shame, again and again through government-made inflation, robbed the people who have taken out insurance policies, who are working under pension plans, who own bonds or savings deposits.


IV

The authors who in Western Europe at the end of the eighteenth century and in the first decades of the nineteenth century developed plans for the establishment of socialism were not familiar with the social ideas and conditions in Central Europe. They did not pay any attention to the Wohlfahrtsstaat, the welfare-state of the German monarchical governments of the eighteenth century. Neither did they read the classical book of German socialism, Fichte's Geschlossener Handelsstaat, published in the year 1800. When much later—in the last decades of the nineteenth century—the nations of the West, first among them England, embarked upon the Fabian methods of a temperate progress toward socialism, they did not raise the question why continental governments whom they despised as backward and absolutist had long before already adopted the allegedly new and progressive principles of social reform.

But the German socialists of the second part of the nineteenth century could not avoid dealing with this problem. They had to face the policies of Bismarck, the man of whom the pro-socialist Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences says that he was "with reason regarded as the foremost exponent of state socialism in his day." [5] Lassalle toyed with the idea to further the cause of socialism by cooperation with this most "reactionary" paladin of the Hohenzollern. But Lassalle's premature death put an end to such plans and, very soon, also to the activities of the socialist group of which he had been the chief. Under the leadership of the disciples of Marx, the German socialist party turned to radical opposition to the Kaiser's regime. They voted in the Reichstag against all bills suggested by the government. Of course, being a minority party, their votes could not prevent the Reichstag's approval of various pro-labor laws, among them those establishing the famous social security system. Only in one case could they prevent the creation of a government-supported socialization measure, viz., the establishment of a governmental tobacco monopoly. But all the other nationalization and municipalization measures of the Bismarck age were adopted in spite of the passionate opposition of the socialist party. And the nationalization policy of the German Reich that, thanks to the victories of its armies, in those years enjoyed all over the world an unprecedented prestige was adopted by many nations of Eastern and Southern Europe.

In vain did the German socialist doctrinaires try to explain and to justify the manifest contradiction between their fanatical advocacy of socialism and their stubborn opposition to all nationalization measures put into effect. [6] But notwithstanding the support the nationalization and municipalization policy of the authorities got from self-styled conservative and Christian parties, it very soon lost its popularity with the rulers as well as with those ruled. The nationalized industries were rather poorly operated under the management of the administrators appointed by the authorities. The services they had to render to the customers became highly unsatisfactory, and the fees they charged were more and more increased. And, worst of all, the financial results of the management of public servants were deplorable. The deficits of these outfits were a heavy burden on the national treasuries and forced again and again an increase in taxation. At the beginning of the twentieth century, one could no longer deny the obvious fact that the public authorities had scandalously failed in their attempts to administer the various business organizations they had acquired in the conduct of their "state socialism."

Such were conditions when the outcome of the First World War made the socialist parties paramount in Central and Eastern Europe and also considerably strengthened their influence in Western Europe. There was in those years in Europe practically no serious opposition to most radical pro-socialist plans.

The German revolutionary government was formed in 1918 by members of the Marxian social-democratic party. It had no less power than the Russian government of Lenin and, like the Russian leader, it considered socialism as the only reasonable and possible solution to all political and economic problems. But it was also fully familiar with the fact that the nationalization measures adopted by the Imperial Reich before the war had brought unsatisfactory financial results and rather poor service and also that the socialist measures resorted to in the years of the war had been unsuccessful. Socialism was in their opinion the great panacea, but it seemed that nobody knew what it really meant and how to bring it about properly. Thus, the victorious socialist leaders did what all governments do when they do not know what to do. They appointed a committee of professors and other people considered to be experts. For more than fifty years the Marxians had fanatically advocated socialization as the focal point of their program, as the nostrum to heal all earthly evils and to lead mankind forward into the new garden of Eden. Now they had seized power and all of the people expected that they would redeem their promise. Now they had to socialize. But at once they had to confess that they did not know what to do and they were asking professors what socialization meant and how it could be put into practice.

It was the greatest intellectual fiasco history has ever known and it put in the eyes of all reasonable people an inglorious end to all the teachings of Marx and hosts of lesser-known utopians.

Neither was the fate of the socialist ideas and plans in the West of Europe better than in the country of Marx. The members of the Fabian Society were no less perplexed than their continental friends. Like these, they too were fully convinced that capitalism was stone dead forever and that henceforth socialism alone would rule all nations. But they too had to admit that they had no plan of action. The flamboyantly advertised scheme of Guild Socialism was, as all people had to admit very soon, simply nonsense. It quietly disappeared from the British political scene.

But, of course, the intellectual debacle of socialism and especially of Marxism in the West did not affect conditions in the East. Russia and other Eastern countries of Europe and China turned to all-round nationalization. For them, neither the critical refutation of the Marxian and other socialist doctrines nor the failure of all nationalization experiments meant anything. Marxism became the quasi-religion of the backward nations which were anxious to get the machines and, first of all, the deadly weapons developed in the West, but which abhorred the philosophy that had brought about the West's social and scientific achievements.

The Eastern political doctrine asking for immediate full socialization of all spheres of life and the pitiless extermination of all opponents gets rather sympathetic support on the part of many parties and influential politicians in the Western countries. "Building bridges to the communist sector of the world" is a task rather prevalent with many governments of the West. It is fashionable with some snobbish people to praise the unlimited despotism of Russia and China. And, worst of all, out of the taxes collected from the revenues of private business some governments, first of all that of the United States, are paying enormous subsidies to governments that have to face tremendous deficits precisely because they have nationalized many enterprises, especially railroads, post, telegraph and telephone service, and many others.

In the fully industrialized parts of our globe, in the countries of Western and Central Europe and North America, the system of private enterprise not merely survives, but continually improves and expands the services it renders. The statesmen, the bureaucrats, and the politicians look askance upon business. Most of the journalists, the writers of fiction, and the university teachers are propagating various brands of socialism. The rising generation is imbued with socialism in the schools. Only very rarely does one hear a voice criticizing socialist ideas, plans, and actions.

But socialism is for the peoples of the industrial world no longer a living force. There is no longer any question of nationalizing further branches of business. [7]

None of the many governments sympathizing with the socialist philosophy dares today seriously to suggest further measures of nationalization. On the contrary. For example, the American government as well as every reasonable American would have reason to be glad if the new Administration [8] could get rid of the Post Office with its proverbial inefficiency and its fantastic deficit.

Socialism started in the age of Saint-Simon as an attempt to give articulation to the ripeness of Caucasian man's Western civilization. It tried to preserve this aspect when it later looked upon colonialism and imperialism as its main targets. Today it is the rallying cry of the East, of the Russians and the Chinese, who reject the West's ideology, but eagerly try to copy its technology.[/quote]
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Guest bengalrick
socialism gives too much power to the gov't... they are depended on the give everything to the people, in return for working and getting taxed all to hell... a good mix (like jaime said) is good, but the closer to socialism we get, the more corruption and the worse off we will be... germany and france are glowing examples imo...

"History is full of examples, where in contests for liberty, a jealousy of power has either defeated the attempts to recover or preserve it in the first instance, or has afterwards subverted it by clogging government with too great precautions for its felicity, or by leaving too wide a door for sedition and popular licentiousness. In a government framed for durable liberty, not less regard must be paid to giving the magistrate a proper degree of authority, to make and execute the laws with rigor, than to guarding against encroachments upon the rights of the community. [b]As too much power leads to despotism, too little leads to anarchy, and both eventually to the ruin of the people. . . .[/b] " - thomas jefferson
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Guest BlackJesus
[img]http://www.heathenhandbook.com/images/peeing.gif[/img][img]http://www.turtletrader.com/images/ludwig-von-mises.gif[/img]

[i][b]As someone with an Economics degree who has read the works of Von Mises, Hayek, Adam Smith, etc....

most of it is over simplistic Bullshit.

If you want to read an Economist that understands the way that an economy works - Read Marx (who was also an economist)[/b][/i]
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Guest bengalrick

[quote name='BlackJesus' date='Aug 10 2005, 10:12 AM'][img]http://www.heathenhandbook.com/images/peeing.gif[/img][img]http://www.turtletrader.com/images/ludwig-von-mises.gif[/img]

[i][b]As someone with an Economics degree who has read  the works of Von Mises, Hayek, Adam Smith, etc....

most of it is over simplistic Bullshit.

If you want to read an Economist that understands the way that an economy works - Read Marx (who was also an economist)[/b][/i]
[right][post="127892"][/post][/right][/quote]


:mellow: marx... the father of communism, which lead to mass murderers lenon and stalin... forgive me if i don't think that he is a good "role model" to look up too....

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Guest BlackJesus
[quote]marx... the father of communism, which lead to mass murderers lenon and stalin... forgive me if i don't think that he is a good "role model" to look up too....[/quote]

[i][b]Marx never murdered anyone... he also can't help it if assholes later used his brilliant theories, distorted them and then killed people. 100 % of the time I hear someone talk bad about Marx, the next question is always (have you read any of his work? and the answer is always no.

To blame deaths as a result of communist revolution would be the same as holding Adam Smith responsible for all the deaths from starvation (since in people that don't understand eyes Capitalism has won out now) .... even though it hasn't ....

The United states is an example of Corporate Commnism mixed with LaizzeFaire socialism.

--> The United States has adopted every single facet of the 1917 Socialist platform. -- Social security, food stamps, medicaid, farm subsidies, minimum wage, etc etc etc

Also Marx will eventually be proven right... he even predicted that for a time people would believe that Capitalism won out, however that would only be until it eats itself from the inside out, and eventually crashes. [/b][/i]
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Guest bengalrick
[quote name='BlackJesus' date='Aug 10 2005, 10:24 AM'][i][b]Marx never murdered anyone... he also can't help it if assholes later used his brilliant theories, distorted them and then killed people.  100 % of the time I hear someone talk bad about Marx, the next question is always (have you read any of his work?  and the answer is always no.

To blame deaths as a result of communist revolution would be the same as holding Adam Smith responsible for all the deaths from starvation (since in people that don't understand eyes Capitalism has won out now) .... even though it hasn't ....

The United states is an example of Corporate Commnism mixed with LaizzeFaire socialism. 

--> The United States has adopted every single facet of the 1917 Socialist platform.  -- Social security, food stamps, medicaid, farm subsidies, minimum wage, etc etc etc

Also Marx will eventually be proven right... he even predicted that for a time people would believe that Capitalism won out, however that would only be until it eats itself from the inside out, and eventually crashes.  [/b][/i]
[right][post="127903"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right][/quote]

he didn't murder anyone, and he probably had great intentions.. which doesn't make him a bad person... but his teachings lead to communism which was taken advantage of, BECAUSE of the power that is given in that type of system... and marx is thought of as the father of communism... why would i follow someone, that taught an economic system that lead to so many people dying... too much power ALWAYS leads to corruption... its as simple as that... we are humans and we thrive w/ power...

if communism is so great, then why has it NEVER worked through out history... the closest that it has, and that is in China... and that is b/c they moved more towards capitalism...
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Guest BlackJesus
[quote]if communism is so great, then why has it NEVER worked through out history...[/quote]

[i][b]It has never been implemented as Marx describes... they used the name Communism but never followed what is was supposed to be.

Just as the only nations that have true Capitalism now are the 3rd world shitty ones for the most part that have huge wealth disparities, starving populations, famine, etc etc etc

The US and the IMF requires 3rd wolrd economies to be closer to Capitalism (our Captialist Guinea Pigs, like E Europe was the Soviet Unions) however the US is not even close to the capitalism Von Mises and Hayek describes and if it were it would crumble into revolution and chaos. [/b][/i]

[quote]too much power ALWAYS leads to corruption... its as simple as that... we are humans and we thrive w/ power...[/quote]

[i][b]Capitalism gives much more power to wealthy individuals as well (Govt is just a collection of individuals)

--> The top 3 wage earners in the world have as much wealth as the bottom 48 countires combined.... that gives Bill Gates and Co a lot of power as well. [/b][/i]
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Guest bengalrick
[quote name='BlackJesus' date='Aug 10 2005, 10:39 AM'][i][b]It has never been implemented as Marx describes... they used the name Communism but never followed what is was supposed to be. 

Just as the only nations that have true Capitalism now are the 3rd world shitty ones for the most part that have huge wealth disparities, starving populations, famine, etc etc etc

The US and the IMF requires 3rd wolrd economies to be closer to Capitalism (our Captialist Guinea Pigs, like E Europe was the Soviet Unions) however the US is not even close to the capitalism Von Mises and Hayek describes and if it were it would crumble into revolution and chaos.  [/b][/i]
[i][b]Capitalism gives much more power to wealthy individuals as well (Govt is just a collection of individuals)
--> The top 3 wage earners in the world have as much wealth as the bottom 48 countires combined.... that gives Bill Gates and Co a lot of power as well.  [/b][/i]
[right][post="127909"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right][/quote]

big difference in having rich people have power (and make no decisions) and the gov't having too much power... bill gates doesn't have the power to go to war, nuke anyone, no power to change legislative measures, etc... the difference between communism and capitalism/democracy is that communism has no checks and balances... maybe marx's work isn't being implemented in the right way, but other very smart (but crazy mofo's) took it one way, and it worked out pretty shitty in the long run, for their country...

[i]--> The top 3 wage earners in the world have as much wealth as the bottom 48 countires combined.... that gives Bill Gates and Co a lot of power as well. [/i]

you act this is a bad thing... those top 3 wage earners, EARNED it, instead of getting it handed to them...
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Guest steggyD
Where Russia's communism went wrong is when they took individual freedoms away from the people. Otherwise, communism would be a perfect society. It would probably work best in small communities of people with the same interests.
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Guest BlackJesus
[quote]bill gates doesn't have the power to change legislative measures[/quote]

[img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/24.gif[/img] [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/24.gif[/img] [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/24.gif[/img] [i][b] Ok [/b][/i]

[quote]you act this is a bad thing... those top 3 wage earners, EARNED it[/quote]

[i][b]How does one Earn something ???? If I offer water to a man dying of thirst in the desert and he pays me everything he has for it, have I earned it? What if I develop a product and have the sole right to sell it (something that is not in line with Adam Smiths capitalism) and thus people have to buy my product if they also want an equal oppurtunity to succeed. What if I inherit a whole shit load of money that I didn't earn, and then let that sit in a bank account and make millions of interest... Did I earn that ????[/b][/i]
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Guest BlackJesus
[quote]It would probably work best in small communities of people with the same interests.[/quote]

[i][b]Since I had the oppurtunity to live in Tanzania I specifically studied the African Socialist System of Tanzanian President Julius Kambarage Nyerere..... (Ujamaa) Tanzania no longer has this system.... and the IMF is now shredding the country and causing mass misery but.... I think Ujamaa as a system is good for Westerners to understand because we get so rigid in our thinking that it must be either A or B, without thinking about C. Also Ujamaa Socialism is not just an economic system but rather a personal philosohpy and a way to bring about a new kind of man.... [/b][/i]

[quote][u][b]Ujamaa
The Basis of African Socialism
By Julius Kambarage Nyerere[/b][/u]

Socialism, like democracy, is an attitude of mind. In a socialist society it is the socialist attitude of mind, and not the rigid adherence to a standard political pattern, which is needed to ensure that the people care for each other's welfare.

The purpose of this paper is to examine that attitude. It is not intended to define the institutions which may be required to embody it in a modern society.

In the individual, as in the society, it is an attitude of mind which distinguishes the socialist from the non-socialist. It has nothing to do with the possession or non-possession of wealth. Destitute people can be potential capitalists--exploiters of their fellow human beings. A millionaire can equally be a socialist; he may value his wealth only because it can be used in the service of his fellow men. But the man who uses wealth for the purpose of dominating any of his fellows is a capitalist. So is the man who would if he could!

I have said that a millionaire can be a good socialist. But a socialist millionaire is a rare phenomenon. Indeed he is almost a contradiction in terms. The appearance of millionaires in any society is no proof of its affluence; they can be produced by very poor countries like Tanganyika just as well as by rich countries like the United States of America. For it is not efficiency of production, nor the amount of wealth in a country, which makes millionaires; it is the uneven distribution of what is produced. The basic difference between a socialist society and a capitalist society does not lie in their methods of producing wealth, but in the way that wealth is distributed. While, therefore, a millionaire could be a good socialist, he could hardly be the product of a socialist society.

Since the appearance of millionaires in a society does not depend on its affluence, sociologists may find it interesting to try and find out why our societies in Africa did not, in fact, produce any millionaires--for we certainly had enough wealth to create a few. I think they would discover that it was because the organization of traditional African society--its distribution of the wealth it produced--was such that there was hardly any room for parasitism. They might also say, of course, that as a result of this Africa could not produce a leisured class of landowners, and therefore there was nobody to produce the works of art or science which capitalist societies can boast. but works of art and the achievements of science are products of the intellect--which, like land, is one of God's gifts to man. And I cannot believe that God is so careless as to have made the use of one of His gifts depend on the misuse of another!

[b]Defenders of capitalism claim that the millionaire's wealth is the just reward for his ability or enterprise. But this claim is not borne out of the facts. The wealth of the millionaire depends as little on the enterprise or abilities of the millionaire himself as the power of a feudal monarch depended on his own efforts[/b], enterprise, or brain. Both are users, exploiters, of the abilities and enterprise of other people. [b]Even when you have an exceptionally intelligent and hard-working millionaire, the difference between his intelligence, his enterprise, his hard work, and those of other members of society, cannot possibly be proportionate to the difference between their "rewards." There must be something wrong in a society where one man. however hard-working or clever he may be, can acquire as great a "reward" as a thousand of his fellows can acquire them.[/b]

Acquisitiveness for the purpose of gaining power and prestige is unsocialist. In an acquisitive society wealth tends to corrupt those who possess it. it tends to breed in them a desire to live more comfortably than their fellows, to dress better, and in every way to outdo them. They begin to feel they must climb as far above their neighbors as they can. the visible contrast between their own comfort and the comparative discomfort of the rest of society becomes almost essential to the enjoyment of their wealth, and this sets off the spiral of personal competition--which is then anti-social.
 

Apart from the anti-social effects of the accumulation of personal wealth, the every desire to accumulate it must be interpreted as a vote of "no confidence" in the social system. For when a society is so organized that it cares about its individuals, then, provided he is willing to work, no individual within that society should worry about what will happen to him tomorrow if he does not hoard wealth today. Society itself should look after him, or his widow, or his orphans. This is exactly what traditional African society in doing. Both the "rich" and the "poor" individual were completely secure in African society.

Natural catastrophe brought famine, but it brought famine to everybody--"poor" or "rich." Nobody starved, either of food or of human dignity, because he lacked personal wealth; he could depend on the wealth possessed by the community of which he was a member. That was socialism. That is socialism. There can be no such thing as acquisitive socialism, for that would be another contradiction in terms. Socialism is essentially distributive. Its concern is to see that those who sow reap a fair share of what they sow.

The production of wealth, whether by primitive or modern methods, requires three things. First, land. God has given us the land, and it is from the land that we get the raw materials which we reshape to meet our needs. secondly, tools. We have found by simple experience that tools do help! So we make the hoe, the axe, or the modern factory or tractor, to help us to produce wealth--the good we need. And thirdly, human exertion--or labor. We don't need to read Karl Marx or Adam Smith to find out that neither the land nor the hoe actually produces wealth. 

And we don't need to take degrees in Economics to know that neither the worker not the landlord produces land. land is God's gift to man--it is always there. but we know, still without degrees in economics, that the axe and the plough were produced by the laborer. Some of our more sophisticated friends apparently have to undergo the most rigorous intellectual training simply in order to discover that stone axes were produced by that ancient gentleman "Early Man" to make it easier for him to skin the impala he had just killed with a club, which he had also made for himself!

In traditional African society everybody was a worker. there was no other way of earning a living for the community. Even the Elder, who appeared to be enjoying himself without doing any work and for whom everybody else appeared to be working, had, in fact, worked hard all his younger days. The wealth he now appeared to possess was not his, personally; it was only "his" as the elder of the group which had produced it. He was a guardian. the wealth itself gave him neither power nor prestige. the respect paid to him by the young was his because he was older than they, and had served his community longer; and the "poor" Elder enjoyed as much respect in our community as the "rich" Elder.

When i say that in traditional African society everybody was a worker, I do not use the word "worker" simply as opposed to "employer" but also as opposed to "loiterer" or "idler." One of the most socialistic achievements of our society was the sense of security it gave to its members, and the universal hospitality on which they could rely. But it is too often forgotten, nowadays, that the basis of this great socialistic achievement was this: that it was taken for granted that every member of society--barring only the children and the infirm--contributed his fair share of effort towards the production of its wealth.

Not only was the capitalist, or the landed exploiter, unknown to traditional African society, but we did not have that other form of modern parasite--the loiterer, or idler, who accepts the hospitality of society as his "right" but gives nothing in return! Capitalistic exploitation was impossible. Loitering was an unthinkable disgrace.

Those of us who talk about the African way of life, and, quite rightly, take a pride in maintaining the tradition of hospitality which is so great a part of it, might do well to remember the Swahili saying: "Mgeni siku mbili; siku ya tatu mpe jembe"--or, in English, "Treat your guest as a guest for two days; on the third day give him a hoe! In actual fact, the guest was likely to ask for the hoe even before his host had to give him one--for he knew what was expected of him, and would have been ashamed to remain idle any longer. Thus, working was part and parcel, was indeed the very basis and justification of his socialist achievement of which we are so justly proud.

There is not such thing as socialism without work. A society which fails to give its individuals the means to work, or having given them the means of work, prevents them from getting a fair share of the products of their own sweat and toil, needs putting right. Similarly, an individual who can work--and his provided by society with the means to work-- but does not do so, is equally wrong. He has no right to expect anything from society because he contributes nothing to society.

The other use of the word "worker," in its specialized sense of "employee" as opposed to "employer," reflects a capitalistic attitude of mind which was introduced into Africa with the coming of colonialism and is totally foreign to our own way of thinking. In the old days the African had never aspired to the possession of personal wealth for the purpose of dominating any of his fellows. He had never had laborers or "factory hands" to do his work for him.

But then came the foreign capitalists. they were wealthy. they were powerful. and the African naturally started wanting to be wealthy too. There is nothing wrong in our wanting to be wealthy; not is it a bad thing for us to want to acquire the power which wealth brings with it. But it most certainly is wrong if we want the wealth and the power so that we can dominate somebody else.

Unfortunately there are some of us who have already learned to covet wealth for that purpose, and who would like to use the methods which the capitalist uses in acquiring it. That is to say, some of us would like to use, or exploit, our brothers for the purpose of building up our own personal power and prestige. this is completely foreign to us, and it is incompatible with the socialist society we want to build here.

Our first step, there fore, must be to re-educate ourselves; to regain our former attitude of mind. In our traditional African society we were individuals within a community. We took care of the community, and the community took care of us. we neither needed nor wished to exploit our fellow men. 

And in rejecting the capitalist attitude of mind which colonialism brought into Africa, we must reject also the capitalist methods which go with it. One of these is the individual ownership of land. To us in Africa land was always recognized as belonging to the community. Each individual within our society had a right to the use of land, because otherwise he could not earn his living and one cannot have the right to life without having the right to some means of maintaining it. But the African's right to land was simply the right to use it: he had no other right to it, nor did it occur to him to try and claim one.

[b]The foreigner introduced a completely different concept, the concept of land as a marketable commodity. According to this system, a person could claim a piece of and as his own private property whether he intended to use it or not. I could take a few square miles of land, call them "mine,' and then go off to the moon. All I had to do to gain  a living from "my" land was to charge a rent to the people who wanted to use it. If this piece of land was in an urban area I had no need to develop it at all; I could leave it to the fools who were prepared to develop all the other pieces of land surrounding "my" piece, and in doing automatically to raise the market value of mine.

Then I could come down from the moon and demand that these fools pay me through their noses for the high value of "my" land; a value which they themselves had created for me while I was enjoying myself on the moon! Such a system is not only foreign to us, it is completely wrong. landlords, in a society which recognizes individual ownership of land, can be, and usually are, in the same class as the loiterers I was talking about: the class of parasites.[/b]
We must not allow the growth of parasites here in Tanganyika. The TANU government must go back to the traditional African custom of land holding. That is to say, a member of society will be entitled to a piece of land on condition the he uses it. Unconditional, or "freehold," ownership of land (which leads to speculation and parasitism) must be abolished. We must, as I have said, regain our former attitude of mind--our traditional African socialism--and apply it to the new societies we are building today. TANU has pledged itself to make socialism the basis of its policy in every field. The people of Tanganyika have given us their mandate to carry out that policy, by electing a TANU government to lead them. So the government can be relied upon to introduce only legislation which is in harmony with socialist principles.

But, as I said at the beginning, true socialism is an attitude of mind. It is therefore up to the people of Tanganyika--the peasants, the wage-earners, the students, the leaders, all of us--to make sure that this socialist attitude of mind is not lost through the temptations to personal gain (or to the abuse of positions of authority) which may come our way as individuals, or through the temptation to look on the good of the whole community as of secondary importance to the interests of our own particular group.

Just as the leader, in our former society, was respected for his age and his service to the community, so, in our modern society, this respect for age and service will be preserved. And in the same way as the "rich" elder's apparent wealth was really only held by him in trust for his people, so, today, the apparent extra wealth which certain positions of leadership may bring to the individuals who fill them, can be theirs only in so far as it is necessary aid to the carrying out of their duties. It is a "tool" entrusted to them for the benefit of the people they serve. it is not "theirs" personally; and they may not use any part of it as a means of accumulating more for their own benefit, nor as an "insurance" against the day when they no longer hold the same positions. That would be to betray the people who entrusted it to them. If they serve the community while they can, the community must look after them when they are no longer able to do so.

In tribal society, the individuals or the families within a tribe were 'rich" or "poor' according to whether the whole tribe was rich or poor. If the tribe prospered, all the members of the tribe shared in its prosperity. Tanganyika, today, is a poor country. The standard of living of the masses of our people is shamefully low. But if every man and woman in the country takes up the challenge and works to the limit of his or her ability for the good of the whole society, Tanganyika will prosper; and that prosperity will be shared by all her people.

But it must be shared. The true socialist may not exploit his fellows. so that if the members of any group within our society are going to argue that, because they happen to be contributing more to the national income than some other groups, they must therefore take for themselves a greater share of the profits of their own industry than they actually need; and if they insist on this in spite of the fact that it would mean reducing their group's contribution to the general income and thus slowing down the rate at which the whole community can benefit, then that group is exploiting (or trying to exploit) its fellow human beings. It is displaying a capitalistic attitude of mind.

[b]There are bound to be certain groups which, by virtue of the "market value" of their particular industry's products, will contribute more to the nation's income than others. But the others may actually be producing goods or services which are of equal, or greater, intrinsic value although they do not happen to command such a high artificial value. for example, the food produced by the peasant farmer is of greater social value than the diamonds mined at Mwadui.[/b] But the mine-workers of Mwadui could claim quite correctly, that their labor was yielding greater financial profits to the community than that of the farmers. If, however, they went on to demand that they should therefore be given most of that extra profit for themselves, and that no share of it should be spent on helping the farmers, they would be potential capitalists!

This is exactly where the attitude of mind comes in. It is one of the purposes of Trade unions to ensure for the workers a fair share of the profits of their labor. but a "fair" share must be fair in relation to the whole society. If it is a greater than the country can afford without having to penalize some other section of society, then it is not a fair share. Trade Union leaders and their followers, as long as they are true socialists, will not need to be coerced by the government into keeping their demands within the limits imposed by the needs of society as a whole. Only if there are potential capitalists amongst them will the socialist government have to step in and prevent them from putting their capitalist ideas into practice!

As with groups, so with individuals. There are certain skills, certain qualifications, which, for good reasons, command a higher rate of salary for their possessors than others. But, here again, the true socialist will demand only that return for his skilled work which he knows to be a fair one in proportion to the wealth or poverty of the whole society to which he belongs. He will not, unless he is a would-be capitalist attempt to blackmail the community by demanding a salary equal to that paid to his counterpart in some far wealthier society.

European socialism was born of the Agrarian Revolution and the Industrial Revolution which followed it. The former created the "landed" and the "landless" classes in society; the latter produced the modern capitalist and the industrial proletariat.

These two revolutions planted the seeds of conflict within society, and not only was European socialism born of that conflict, but its apostles sanctified the conflict itself into a philosophy. Civil war was no longer looked upon as something evil, or something unfortunate, but as something good and necessary. As prayer is to Christianity or to Islam, so civil war (which they call "class war") is to the European version of socialism--a means inseparable from the end. Each becomes the basis of a whole way of life. The European socialist cannot think of his socialism without its father--capitalism!

Brought up in tribal socialism, I must say, I find this contradiction quite intolerable. it give capitalism a philosophical status which capitalism neither claims nor deserves. For it virtually says "Without capitalism, and the conflict which capitalism creates within society, there can be no socialism!" This glorification of capitalism by the doctrinaire European socialists, I repeat, I find intolerable.

African socialism, on the to her hand, did not have the "benefit" of the Agrarian Revolution or the Industrial Revolution. it did not start from the existence of conflicting "classes" in society. Indeed I doubt if the equivalent for the word "class" exists in any indigenous African language; for language describes the ideas of those who speak it, and the idea of "class" or "caste" was nonexistent in African society.

[b]The foundation, and the objective, of African socialism is the extended family. The true African  socialist does not look on one class of men as his brethren and another as his natural enemies. He does not form an alliance with the "brethren" for the extermination of the "non-brethren."[/b] He rather regards all men as his brethren--as members of his ever extending family. that is why the first article of TANU's creed is "Binadamu wote ni ndugu zangu, na Afrika ni moja." If this had been originally put in English, it could have been "I believe in Human Brotherhood and the Unity of Africa."

[u][b]"Ujamaa," then, or "familyhood," describes our socialism[/b][/u]. It is opposed to capitalism, which seeks to build a happy society on the basis of the exploitation of man by man; and it is equally opposed to doctrinaire socialism which seeks to build its happy society on a philosophy of inevitable conflict between man and man.

We, in Africa, have no more need of being "converted" to socialism than we have of being "taught" democracy. Both are rooted in our own past--in the traditional society which produced us. Modern African socialism can draw from its traditional heritage the recognition of "society" as an extension of the basic family unit. But it can no longer confine the idea of the social family within the limits of the tribe, nor, indeed, of the nation. For no true African socialist can look at a line drawn on a map and say, "The people on this side of that line are my brothers, but those who happen to live on the other side of it can have no claim on me." Every individual on this continent is his brother.

It was in the struggle to break the grip of colonialism that we leaned the need for unity. We came to recognize that the same socialist attitude of mind which, in the tribal days, gave to every individual the security that comes of belonging to a widely extended family, must be preserved within the still wider society of the nation. But we should not stop there. our recognition of the family to which, we all belong must be extended yet further--beyond the tribe, the community, the nation, or even the continent--to embrace the whole society of mankind. this is the only logical conclusion for true socialism.[/quote]


[color="blue"][i][b]Nyerere has a brilliant anology where he talks about Capitalists..... For Capitalists they can buy a huge swath of land, then fly to the moon for 2 years, and then return and sell the land for a profit.... having never added any value to society..... IE see the current housing market, where fruits are created without any added value or labor. [/b][/i][/color]


[quote]The foreigner introduced a completely different concept, the concept of land as a marketable commodity. According to this system, a person could claim a piece of and as his own private property whether he intended to use it or not. I could take a few square miles of land, call them "mine,' and then go off to the moon. All I had to do to gain  a living from "my" land was to charge a rent to the people who wanted to use it. If this piece of land was in an urban area I had no need to develop it at all; I could leave it to the fools who were prepared to develop all the other pieces of land surrounding "my" piece, and in doing automatically to raise the market value of mine.[/quote] = So True




[img]http://tinypic.com/ab5wgg.jpg[/img]

[i][b]Von Mises, couldn't comb out Nyereres Asshole[/b][/i]
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Guest steggyD
Understood, but there is another factor left out there. Especially when you reference making a product and selling it, which others need to succeed. Well, with communism, someone may have never created that product, we could very well still be working on computers as advanced as windows 3.1. Or we could be up to date, it's hard to tell, but I would go with the former. Now the question would be, is all of this technology even necessary? Of course it isn't, it's only a luxury. Capitalism thrives off of creating new luxuries every year that people want so bad that they go into debt just to have them.

We could live without these luxuries, but I think it is too late to go backwards. Everyone knows that they are there and it would be too tough to take them away. The only thing that could change our society now is a cataclysmic event.

Also, one must think that these luxuries are needed for the people so that those in power can remain in power without fear of uprising. People are content when they have their two story house and SUV in the driveway.
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Guest bengalrick
[quote name='BlackJesus' date='Aug 10 2005, 10:59 AM'] [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/24.gif[/img]   [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/24.gif[/img]   [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/24.gif[/img] [i][b] Ok [/b][/i][/quote]

did i miss something... does bill gates have a vote in congress?? can he send us to war?? even if he did buy his way into congress, does his vote override the other 99 senators? even if he somehow managed to be president, can he make decisions solely off what he wants and override everyone elses opinions... too much power IN GOVERNMENT leads to bad things for all of the consitiuents... too much power for an indiviual will lead to corruption in his life... how do these even closely relate?

[quote][i][b]How does one Earn something ????  If  I offer water to a man dying of thirst in the desert and he pays me everything he has for it, have I earned it?  What if I develop a product and have the sole right to sell it (something that is not in line with Adam Smiths capitalism) and thus people have to buy my product if they also want an equal oppurtunity to succeed.  What if I inherit a whole shit load of money that I didn't earn, and then let that sit in a bank account and make millions of interest... Did I earn that ????[/b][/i]
[right][post="127917"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right][/quote]

if you inherit a shit load of money, then your ancestors made it... do you earn it... no... but are any of the 3 people you mentioned there b/c they were given it?? hell no... does someone in a communist system have the freedom to make new inventions in general?

the last i remember, there is apple as a product... there is no monopoly as you want to imply... that would be communism btw... wasnt apple out before microsoft too?? i guess we should hate bill gates b/c he made something out of his life, and made a product that we all use... fucking bill gates... what an asshole...
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Guest BlackJesus
[quote]did i miss something... does bill gates have a vote in congress??[/quote]

[i][b]individuals can donate any amount of $$$ to politicians (despite window dressing campaign finance reforms)..... All 100 Senators are bought and paid for... [/b][/i]


[quote]if you inherit a shit load of money, then your ancestors made it[/quote]

[i][b]Really??? you are sure of that. Every rich person in America that was rich 100 hundred years ago earned it..... Do you realize how far back wealth goes in families.... your parents could have been successful because they also inherited, then their parents also inherited... one of the downfalls of wealth is once you have it, it stays in a family and allows generations of parasites.... Bill Gates problems are not going to present now... it will be his great grandkids, who will be buying senators, and doing nothing with their billions that will be the problem with his wealth. Hence why their should be caps of how much one can pass down. [/b][/i]

[quote]the last i remember, there is apple as a product... there is no monopoly as you want to imply...[/quote]

[i][b]Don't just look at Computers ... look at Medications or drug companies with patents on Aids drugs, or drugs for illnesses. What about Natural monopolies, energy companies, water companies etc where competition is not allowed. open up your thought process.... [/b][/i]
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Guest bengalrick
[quote name='BlackJesus' date='Aug 10 2005, 11:53 AM'][i][b]individuals can donate any amount of $$$ to politicians (despite window dressing campaign finance reforms)..... All 100 Senators are bought and paid for... [/b][/i]
[i][b]Really??? you are sure of that.  Every rich person in America that was rich 100 hundred years ago earned it..... Do you realize how far back wealth goes in families.... your parents could have been successful because they also inherited, then their parents also inherited... one of the downfalls of wealth is once you have it, it stays in a family and allows generations of parasites.... Bill Gates problems are not going to present now... it will be his great grandkids, who will be buying senators, and doing nothing with their billions that will be the problem with his wealth.  Hence why their should be caps of how much one can pass down.  [/b][/i]
[i][b]Don't just look at Computers ... look at Medications or drug companies with patents on Aids drugs, or drugs for illnesses.  What about Natural monopolies, energy companies, water companies etc where competition is not allowed.  open up your thought process.... [/b][/i]
[right][post="127987"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right][/quote]

w.out those patents, then some company that did nothing, can sell there product for alot less (considering they didn't research, nor will research new products)...

i have opened up my thought process... and i stick by my guns, when i say that monopolies don't exist in american... are there more tahn one energy company? how about water companies? like i said, go to a communist country, and is there monopolies there?

what you said about "inheriting money" is an unfortinate downfall of capitalism.... but what should we do, tax the hell out of them to get their money to the gov't?? fuck that... should we take it from them, unless they earned it? no...

its almost impossible to argue logic w/ emotion.... and that is what almost all of your arguements are, is based on emotion... for example: [i]"If I offer water to a man dying of thirst in the desert and he pays me everything he has for it, have I earned it? What if I develop a product and have the sole right to sell it (something that is not in line with Adam Smiths capitalism) and thus people have to buy my product if they also want an equal oppurtunity to succeed. What if I inherit a whole shit load of money that I didn't earn, and then let that sit in a bank account and make millions of interest... Did I earn that ????"[/i]

that is you using our emotions against us... lets use logic instead... we do live in the real world...

has there ever been a success story from marx's teachings?
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Guest steggyD
A couple of things here. If I work hard and make millions of dollars, I would definitely want to hand my money down to my children. I would want them to go to the best colleges money can buy. That's my right. My money, I earned it. I would still raise them the best that I could and hope that they learned something from me and use the money they receive as wisely as possible. If they don't, I don't see how it's anyone's right to take it away from them, just because they might pay off a senator.

Another thing... in communism, wouldn't everything be a monopoly?
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Guest BlackJesus
[quote]are there more tahn one energy company? how about water companies?[/quote]

[i][b]Not in the same area no[/b][/i]

[quote]what you said about "inheriting money" is an unfortinate downfall of capitalism.... but what should we do, tax the hell out of them to get their money to the gov't?? fuck that... should we take it from them, unless they earned it? no...[/quote]

[i][b]Tax them fairly.... = much higher than the current 33%.... I favor a 49 % rate, also limit that they can only hand down 1 million per person.... thus if you have a billion dollars you need to find 1,000 people to make millionaires by giving them 1 mill a piece.[/b][/i]


[quote]its almost impossible to argue logic w/ emotion.... and that is what almost all of your arguements are, is based on emotion... for example:[/quote]

[i][b]That argument isn't about emotion, it is rooted in the diamond water paradox of economics. The structure is set up so that you can enrich yourself off of others. Also their is only the illusion of choice not real choice. Thus the same people get rich, and many companies own most of their competition as well. (mcdonalds also owns taco bell, pizz hut etc as an example)


[quote]lets use logic instead... we do live in the real world...[/quote]

Define logic for me, so I can be sure of what you are talking about.... Like many other perverted words, most people form their own meaning of logic, what is it to you?


[quote]has there ever been a success story from marx's teachings?[/quote]

Yes.... governments in fear of Marxs correct teaching have been slowly adopting policies to appease populations ever since. For instance the US has has slowly adopted socialist tendancies, under the assumption that it would be better for the rich than what Marx talks about.

Also the Same Evil communism of Russia in WWII is what saved the World. Americans like to say that we defeated Nazi Germany but an educated historian would point out to you that the Rusians spilt the blood,,, they were the ones that took over 6 million casualties fighting Nazi Germany, and in most cases we were supplying them the guns and they did the fighting. Americans do not have the heart to experience those kind of casualties (we had 250,000 casualties in WWII in compaison)....

Also many groups have rose up and thrown off the colonial govts that ruled them, partially based off of Marxs writings. North Vietnam defeated the United States partially based off of Marxs teachings. the Cuba revolution I believe can be called a success story when compared to other nations in the region. FOr instance CUba has a higher literacy rate than the U.S.... when yo compare CUbe to Haiti or Jamaica, both nations that the experience the bubble of misery from Americans policies it is much better off. Americans say but Cubans are jumping boats to come here.... that is more a result of it being close (90) miles ... and if Haiti were the same distance we would see 10 times the amount of people trying. Cuba isn't even marxist now, but cronyist but like with most people that claim Marx, it is hard to make judgement on the theorie because they usually only claim it in name. [/b][/i]


[b]equally one could pose the question.... name a success story of true capitalism ???[/b]
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Guest bengalrick

[quote name='steggyD' date='Aug 10 2005, 12:18 PM']A couple of things here. If I work hard and make millions of dollars, I would definitely want to hand my money down to my children. I would want them to go to the best colleges money can buy. That's my right. My money, I earned it. I would still raise them the best that I could and hope that they learned something from me and use the money they receive as wisely as possible. If they don't, I don't see how it's anyone's right to take it away from them, just because they might pay off a senator.

Another thing... in communism, wouldn't everything be a monopoly?
[right][post="128000"][/post][/right][/quote]

:headbang: :headbang: :headbang:

:thumbsup:

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Guest BlackJesus
[quote]A couple of things here. If I work hard and make millions of dollars, I would definitely want to hand my money down to my children. I would want them to go to the best colleges money can buy. That's my right. My money, I earned it. I would still raise them the best that I could and hope that they learned something from me and use the money they receive as wisely as possible. If they don't, I don't see how it's anyone's right to take it away from them, just because they might pay off a senator.[/quote]

[b]I edited your statement to be more accurate

A couple of things here. If I inherit millions of dollars and make millions of dollars off of interest or by doing nothing, I would definitely want to hand my money down to my children so that they could disproportionatley also be parasites and have yachts while not working. I would want them to go to the same IVy league colleges that all billionaire kids go to so that they could meet fellow rich who also stay rich for not working, and hell if they are C students they could even be President. That's my right as a rich white guy. My money, I was handed it. I would still have hired nannies raise them the best that I could and hope that they learned something from me and use the money they receive to make them even more money off of so called investing, where I call some guy, and buy fictional stocks, and then walla they have more money. If they don't, I don't see how it's the workers right to take it away from them, just because they will pay off a senator to make shitty work regulations .[/b]
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Guest bengalrick

[quote name='BlackJesus' date='Aug 10 2005, 12:21 PM'][i][b]Not in the same area no[/b][/i][/quote]

exxon, ashland, chevron, shell, mobil, sunoco... i'm sure there are more...

[quote][i][b]Tax them fairly.... = much higher than the current 33%.... I favor a 49 % rate, also limit that they can only hand down 1 million per person.... thus if you have a billion dollars you need to find 1,000 people to make millionaires by giving them 1 mill a piece.[/b][/i][/quote]

so we should take almost 50% of people's PROFITS b/c they made so much... try selling that to the average american :D

[quote][b][i]That argument isn't about emotion, it is rooted in the diamond water paradox of economics.  The structure is set up so that you can enrich yourself off of others.  Also their is only the illusion of choice not real choice.  Thus the same people get rich, and many companies own most of their competition as well.  (mcdonalds also owns taco bell, pizz hut etc as an example)[/i][/b][/quote]

communsim doesn't even try to hide it... you have no choice whatsoever, and if you were poor in the first place, you WILL die poor... if you are rich in the first place, you WILL die rich... the only difference is you would have been in the gov't to be rich, so you children wouldn't have the money you may have had, but they would have the golden brick road to be in a similar position in gov't that you had... and yes you were using emotion to use argue your point... talking about ripping off a man in the desert for all of his money for a glass of water, is definately using emotion...

[quote][b][i]Define logic for me, so I can be sure of what you are talking about.... Like many other perverted words, most people form their own meaning of logic, what is it to you[/i][/b]?[/quote]

logic to me, is putting things into perspective, to be used int he real world... you can argue that we should go to a socialist nation, but when put into context, it doesn't work... argueing that 49% tax rates on the rich is not logical, b/c all you are doing is stealing from the rich, to pay for more programs (like welfare)... logically raising taxes like that makes people want to stay in the middle class, so they can keep what they make... and its not like the gov't is going to spend their money w/ fiscal disipline... the more they make, the more they spend... the more money that people make, the more that we can tax (at a lower rate) and allow people the choice of what to buy or donate w/ their own money...

[quote][i][b]Yes.... governments in fear of Marxs correct teaching have been slowly adopting policies to appease populations ever since.  For instance the US has has slowly adopted socialist tendancies, under the assumption that it would be better for the rich than what Marx talks about.[/b][/i][/quote]

and look at france and germany when looking at implementing these policies... it leads to high UE, which is horrible for the countries... why you may ask? b/c when your off work for 2 months a year, and you can NOT work and still get paid, why strive to be better?? hense the double digit unemployment...

[quote][i][b]Also the Same Evil communism of Russia in WWII is what saved the World.  Americans like to say that we defeated Nazi Germany but an educated historian would point out to you that the Rusians spilt the blood,,, they were the ones that took over 6 million casualties fighting Nazi Germany, and in most cases we were supplying them the guns and they did the fighting.  Americans do not have the heart to experience those kind of casualties (we had 250,000 casualties in WWII in compaison).... [/b][/i][/quote]

very true... we would have lost twice as many people on d day, if it weren't for the russians getting crushed to the north as a sort of decoy... but we're not talking about this... we were talking about business... communist can put together one hell of an army... noone can dispute that... and of course the russians could sustain so many deaths, and we couldn't... that is the medias fault... why? b/c of freedom of speech in democracy, compared to dying to speak freely in oppressed countries... we are seeing what the media can do to war right now as a matter of fact...

[quote][i][b]Also many groups have rose up and thrown off the colonial govts that ruled them, partially based off of Marxs writings.  North Vietnam defeated the United States partially based off of Marxs teachings.  the Cuba revolution I believe can be called a success story when compared to other nations in the region.  FOr instance CUba has a higher literacy rate than the U.S.... when yo compare CUbe to Haiti or Jamaica, both nations that the experience the bubble of misery from Americans policies it is much better off.  Americans say but Cubans are jumping boats to come here.... that is more a result of it being close (90) miles ... and if Haiti were the same distance we would see 10 times the amount of people trying.  Cuba isn't even marxist now, but cronyist but like with most people that claim Marx, it is hard to make judgement on the theorie because they usually only claim it in name. 
equally one could pose the question.... name a success story of true capitalism ???[/b][/i][/b]
[right][post="128001"][/post][/right][/quote]

vietnam didn't beat us... we beat ourselves w/ the media.. we didnt' know how to handle so much bad news... cuba a success story... now thats a laugh [img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons//24.gif[/img] ... i wonder if jza would consider cuba a success story... yeah, if you compare cuba to haiti, then your right... it is successful... but compare it to the US and its a joke...

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Guest BlackJesus
[quote]exxon, ashland, chevron, shell, mobil, sunoco... i'm sure there are more...[/quote]

[i][b]I think we are talking about different things... when I say energy... I mean utilities, it seems like you are talking about Gas companies.... I mean Natural monopolies that result from having a natural monopoly. Water companies, land line phone companies, electric utilities.. those are nautral monopolies and the govt doesn't allow competition.[/b][/i]


[quote]so we should take almost 50% of people's PROFITS b/c they made so much... try selling that to the average american [/quote]

[i][b]It would be extremely easy to sell to the average American because it would only apply to people making over 10 million dollars a year.... not the average American.[/b][/i]


[quote]talking about ripping off a man in the desert for all of his money for a glass of water, is definately using emotion...[/quote]

[i][b]you must see emoition because you know it is wrong.... well so is taking kids picking through trash in S asia and paying them 10 cents a day and then saying "noone forced them to work for Nike"[/b][/i]

[quote]vietnam didn't beat us... we beat ourselves w/ the media.. we didnt' know how to handle so much bad news...[/quote]

[i][b]Denial.... N Vietnam won the Vietnam War... are you fucking kidding me? The US feld Siagon like a gay man in Wyoming. [/b][/i]


[quote]cuba a success story... now thats a laugh  ... i wonder if jza would consider cuba a success story... yeah, if you compare cuba to haiti, then your right... it is successful... but compare it to the US and its a joke...[/quote]

[i][b]Well of course you can't compare it to the U.S. we are the ones making some of those nations poor.... As for Cuba, they have higher literacy than the U.S. a well educated population, and they have done far better than every Caribbean nation.... Without those changes they would be Haiti.... which it 100 times worse... The US is just mad that we weren't allowed to rape them like the other nations in the region. As for Jza.... not sure what he would say... his family fled Cuba and his dad fought against Castro.... However he has admitted to the fact that for whiter looking Cubans (Jza is one) things were terrible because they were forced to share their wealth with the majority black cubans who love Cuba.... The only ones you see fleeing on Boats are whiter looking Cubans. [/b][/i]
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