As I stated in my post, I am not trying to prove that poor people in Nigera etc. are worse off than Americans. I believe that samarm asserted that Americans were better off. I was asking him/her for a cite, and demonstrating that the truth of the assertion is not as self-evident as s/he suggests.
Fair enough, but I think the question depends on which Americans you survey. If you are willing to narrow down some criteria, I bet I can dig up some cites.
Which Americans - Which Nigerians? Every country has people who are very well off, and people who are very badly off. I am asking for a defense of the statement that
(emphasis mine)
Questioning the relevance of my statistics, or saying ‘Oh, sure, some Americans are badly off’ is not a defense of that statement.
By now I should know better than to get involved in this particular kind of thread, but I just can’t resist.
I will, however, try to keep this one short.
Neither socialism nor communism can be built in one country. Both are based on international cooperation and coordination of production on a global scale. Until capitalism is finally overthrown, individual countries - even revolutionary Russia - will ultimately be forced to compete with other countries on the global market, thus violating one of the fundamental principles of socialism. Therefore, any individual country’s claim to socialism or communism (with the exception of the Soviet Union under Lenin, but that claim, if made at all, was footnoted with the recognition of the necessity of further working-class revolution in Europe and America) is inherently false, and they cannot be held up as examples of the failure thereof.
What if, theoretically, the country was completely autarchic and closed?
So, does that mean that according to Marxist theory, the existence of a capitalist society anywhere in the world will bring the whole communist world society crashing down?
No, Lemur, it does not. The only thing I’m arguing here is that you can’t call it socialism unless it’s global.
Captain Amazing, almost anything is arguable theoretically. On the other hand, we could take a real-world example and see what happened there. I’m thinking pre -1991 Albania is probably the closest we can get to something like that. Not exactly a land of milk and honey there - so no, autarchy and a completely closed economy don’t make for a firm basis for socialism.
What is it then? Does the entire world have to overthrow capitalism at once or can this process be gradual?
Gradual, but not in the sense that there’s some sort of smooth road between what we have now and what I as a socialist am working towards. Gradual in the sense that a working-class revolution will come sooner in some countries and later in others due to circumstances within each country.
All right. So do you think there is any merit at all in comparing inchoate “socialist” states to established capitalist ones?
On a side note, why would any country want to be the first to instigate such revolution if the effects won’t actually be realized until the entire world converts? It seems like this system delays itself, as every rational workers’ revolutionary movement would want their own people to suffer the least and spend the least amount of time in some form of transition communism, waiting for the rest of the world to follow suit and throw off capitalism.
I don’t mean to turn this into another round of Ask the Communist, nor am I trying to veer the debate into an attack on communism. I just think this further clarification is relevant with respect to the comparison that the OP asks us to make.
Good word.
Sounds like an idea for an interesting paper. “Wealth Accumulation, Second Mover Advantage, and Optimal Timing of the Workers Revolution: A Game Theoretic Analysis”. Need a co-author?
I thought George Orwell’s Animal Farm answered this argument almost 60 years ago.
In general, no, because every state that today calls itself “socialist” (and those that did before 1991) fails the acid test laid out by Marx - with the exception of Russia, there was no working-class revolution that established the new regimes. The Eastern European countries were founded on the point of Russian bayonets; Cuba’s and China’s revolutions were staged by a handful of guerrillas with little to no working-class involvement - in China the CCP went out of its way to make sure the workers weren’t involved - and God only knows what happened in North Korea, although either Russia or China certainly had a hand in it.
I said nothing about the effects - working-class control of one country will certainly give people a taste of what socialism could be like. But the whole process has to start somewhere, and it will start when working people realize there is no other way out of the political and economic crises they find themselves in than to overthrow the old system and replace it with something entirely new and different.
Nobody ever said a successful workers’ revolution would sit idle waiting for the rest of the world to follow suit. Exporting the revolution - propaganda work, fostering international contacts with foreign revolutionary groups, and so on and so forth - is a vital part of waging the battle against capitalism when the challenge is finally staged.
I certainly don’t think you’re trying to - I know you better than that.
The question “Do communist countries provide positive proof of the ultimate implausibility of communism” begs the question “Are those countries in fact communist?”. A negative answer (the correct one, IMO) and an analysis of why they aren’t leaves the greater debate on an abstract and theoretical foundation, at least until a working-class revolution in one of the more economically developed countries provides a real-world example to discuss.
How does the fact that Orwell was a lifelong Socialist fit into your pithy explanation?
That should read “when working people of one or more countries…”
Did I hit a nerve jerk? Go back and read it if you really don’t know.
I have read it, several times. I’ve also read Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia” in which he admits that, although he doesn’t like everything he sees in Barcelona 1936, he recognizes in it something definitely worth fighting for. “Animal Farm” is a criticism of Stalinist Russia, same as “1984”. But it is in no way a criticism of communism as a whole.
Also, please note that the Great Debates forum is not a place for name-calling, as a Moderator will no doubt soon be along to tell you. The BBQ Pit is the forum for that.
a minor detail is that Adam Smith, the godfather of capitalism, disapproved of what he called joint-stock companies. a joint-stock company is what we now call a corporation. in 1886 the US Supreme Court declared that a corporation is a “person.” Marx died in 1883, Smith died in 1790, neither of them knew about corporations being persons.
the 1st gasoline powered cars weren’t built until 1885. the concept of GNP wasn’t developed until the 1930’s because of the Depression. the term planned obsolescence wasn’t coined until 1940.
therefore the concepts of capitalism and communism were obsolete before most of us were born. technology changes faster than society changes its thinking.
capitalism is stupid antisocialism.
long live Sun Tzu antisocialism.
do a search on “Economic Wargames” if you don’t know what i’m talking about. if you know, flame away. see how much i care. ROFL!
the incorrigable, Dal Timgar
By your own example its clear that capitalism has not only adapted to and survived all the social & technological changes of the past 200 years, its flourishing in them!
Communism OTOH, after over 100 years, never even took hold.
Hey, dal_timgar, come back in here!
Cite please?
The car wasn’t invented until 1885 therefore capitalism is obselete? What has the invention of the internal combustion engine got to do with the validity of capitalism?
Oh, and:
Care to expand a little?