[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chumpsky * This just doesn’t make sense. What are you saying? That people looked over and saw how good it was in the U.S. and revolted? This is quite childish.[/choice]
Well, call me “Mister Baby” because that’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m amazed that you’re amazed at this. Isn’t social change normally triggered by a desire for what could be, or for one’s own society to emulate others? If anything is childish, it’s the belief that communist serfs will sit down, shut up, calm down and be happy forever with a system even you admit was oppressive.
There were no Soviet analogues? cough Cuba cough Nicaragua. The bullshit is strong in your statement, Grasshopper.
Huge natural advantages? Russia is almost twice the size of the United States and their populations were comparable in size before the USSR collapsed. As for putting up a fight, they certainly purt up a massive effort against the Germans, but their biggest casualties were taken in the name of collectivization; 20 million of their own people starved to death. Way to fight, commies! Go! Go! Go! Choke the enemy’s rivers with your dead! Or choke your own rivers, if that’s easier!
At its most decadent, the Americans never killed nearly as many people as the Soviets did casually in the name of their socialist revolution. Maybe you feel killing people in huge numbers doesn’t count when you evaluate a political system, but it’s reasonably important to me. And evidently the people living in the USSR thought it was pretty important, too.
Whoops, bad format (“choice” ? Must have been Freudian). The first part of that post should read:
Well, call me “Mister Baby” because that’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m amazed that you’re amazed at this. Isn’t social change normally triggered by a desire for what could be, or for one’s own society to emulate others? If anything is childish, it’s the belief that communist serfs will sit down, shut up, calm down and be happy forever with a system even you admit was oppressive.
There were no Soviet analogues? cough Cuba cough Nicaragua. The bullshit is strong in your statement, Grasshopper.
i can’t say that communism is preferable to capitalism, but it seem that a hybrid of the two may be preferable to what we have now.
as far as nationalized health care being worse as a result of long waiting periods for treatment, i’ll have to make an uneducated statement (because i really don’t know anything about how it works), and say that people would likely wait extended time periods if they’re not paying for any of it. most people would still have insurance that pays for some, is that incorrect?
All we have to do is build robots that’ll do everything for us. Since robots don’t need to be paid, we won’t have to worry about incentive, and communism will work! We can distribute the resources these robots create evenly amongst the people. We’ll have robots to fix robots, robots to direct robots, and robots to make robots. We’ll have artificial intelligence, which will allow robots to make better robots, in turn bringing the people more resources. If people want to work, it’ll be a hobby. Emotions are out of the question, though, because we don’t want robots who think they’re slaves of men, causing a revolution and human-robot war.
And on the teacher/athlete argument… most schools are run by the government, hence the term ‘public school.’ If schools were part of the capitalistic society we live in, they would be privately owned and people would pay to go to them (though I’m sure the government would financially help those families who couldn’t afford it, and would require parents to send their kids to school, as parents are required to feed their children). If a school hired good teachers, the school could build a reputation of teaching children better than others, increasing demand for said school, allowing them to charge higher prices, allowing them to pay their teachers better and provide even better resources for the children. Being able to better pay their teachers, they would attract more prospects, could be more selective, and in the end the better teachers would make more money.
better employees ----> better job performance ----> better supply -----> higher demand ----> more resources ----> ability to incentive employees ----> better employees
yay capitalism
Of course, there’s a big difference between free trade, and corporatism, and neo-colonialism, which was practiced in Latin America-it was the government and the corporations controlling the economy and the state.
Let’s take a look at one of your quality-of-life indicators, infant mortality, with some real numbers.
From data from the CIA’s 2002 World Factbook, I’ve selected the top 25 countries by infant mortality. The first number is after the country name is the number of deaths in infancy per 1000 live births. Lower is obviously better. The second number is taken from the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, and is the overall country’s rank on that index. Note that those guys are right-wingers, fiercely dedicated to unfettered capitalism, and far more right-wing than am I, a good bleeding-heart liberal. Lower numbers are higher ranks, hence indicating more Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal style laissez-faire capitalism.
Here are the bottom 25 countries by infant mortality, with the Index of Economic Freedom rankings:
Angola, 191.66, not ranked
Afghanistan, 144.76, not listed
Sierra Leone, 144.38, not ranked
Mozambique, 138.55, 76
Liberia, 130.21, not listed
Guinea, 127.08, 101
Niger, 122.23, 118
Somalia , 122.15, not listed
Malawi, 119.96, 118
Mali, 119.63, 60
Rwanda, 117.79, 108
Tajikistan, 114.77, 137
Swaziland, 109.43, 79
Guinea-Bissau, 108.54, 142
Bhutan, 106.79, not listed
Burkina Faso, 105.3, 93
Central African Republic, 103.81, 76
Djibouti, 99.7, 79
Ethiopia , 98.63, 121
Congo, Democratic Republic of the, 98.05, not ranked
Congo, Republic of the, 97.91, 134
Gabon, 93.5, 97
Chad, 93.46, 125
Haiti, 93.35, 136
Cote d’Ivoire, 92.23, 60
(There’s a bunch of irritating gaps in the Heritage Foundation’s ranking, especially at the top of the list. It seems fair to say that Angola, Afghanistan, and Sierra Leone are not pillars of the capitalist community, though.)
Looking at these lists, there’s not a perfect correlation; as an American liberal, I wouldn’t expect there to be. There’s plenty of room for disagreement over the best way to run a society in the broader context of industrialized capitalist democracies with respect to more laissez-faire or more social democratic policies. (The United States is in about 40th place out of 220-odd entities, and is tied for 4th place on the Index of Economic Freedom.) Clearly, though, the countries with better infant mortality stats are generally capitalistic, and the countries with lousy infant mortality states also do pretty badly with respect to free market indicators as well. The countries with the best infant mortality stats on the planet are a bunch of Scandinavian or other Western European states, Japan, and Singapore. Those countries may be “socialist” by the standards of Republican Congressmen, but not by anybody else’s.
Uhh, no, but I do remember them parking nuclear missiles in Turkey, on the border with the USSR, poised to destroy Russia’s major cities at a moment’s notice.
I suppose I will have to wait to hear how Russian involvement in Cuba and Nicaragua had any resemblance whatsoever to U.S. imperialism’s role in southeast Asia.
I don’t see how this is clear at all. I mean, you just showed that the countries with the lowest infant mortality rates are the more socialistic countries. In fact, these countries, Norway, Sweden, etc., are really not socialistic, but welfare states. There is a difference.
The point is, though, that by standards of human welfare, capitalism is not efficient. Like I have been saying, the U.S. should have the healthiest population in the world by far, due to its enormous natural advantages, but it doesn’t. Other interesting stats in the page you linked to were:
Cuba: 7.27 deaths/1,000 live births (2002 est.)
United States: 6.69 deaths/1,000 live births (2002 est.)
In fact, the infant mortality rates in Cuba and the U.S. have been close for some time now, which is really amazing. Cuba is a country that has been under an embargo for some 40 odd years, and doesn’t have anything even remotely close to the resources the U.S. has. Yet, somehow they are able to take care of their people.
Well, are they “socialistic” or ain’t they? If the countries with the lowest infant mortality rates are basically capitalist countries with well-developed welfare states, this indicates that capitalism is efficient, if it’s paired with a well-developed welfare system. Which is all well and good, but it’s not exactly a radical critique of the foundations of the U.S. politico-economic system. You could practically get a column at The New Republic saying that sort of thing.
First, you try to undermine the legitimacy of the cite by calling the author a “bourgeoise hack.” Next, you claim that the author and I “shouldn’t have the right to live in a civilized society.” Finally, at the end of the post, you have the audacity to tell me that my opinions and words are “disgusting.” I certainly did not deserve this.
But, to respond to your points:
The cause of many problems in Africa is that there aren’t very good enforcement of laws, either through ineffectiveness or by design. Once the governments can be stable, and can command the respect of their armies, and when peace deals are struck to end the massive numbers of wars. (This is already beginning to happen in Sudan and DRC/Rwanda.) I’m very optimistic about the future of Africa.
One of the many causes, I believe, of this civil unrest, is the lack of investment into these countries, precipitated by the US and EU trade barriers. Once the average African farmer has the ability to sell crops compeditively on the world stage, money will flow in because of the cheaper goods, and the economies will grow.
I partially blame US/EU policies, not capitalism itself. If anything, the West isn’t being capitalist enough with Africa.
Also, to curb disease, we need to send more humanitarian aid their way, and someone needs to stop the trade in “blood diamonds,” which is a scourge upon the continent.
Back to Communism…
Do you also remember the Soviet Union blockading Democratic West Berlin?
The Jupiter Missiles in Turkey were specifically to counteract a possible Soviet invasion of West Berlin. All of the Allies, save the US, post-WWII, had sustained heavy losses on the continent. The Soviet Union had amassed a huge land army, and there was no way we could defend our ally, West Berlin, through conventional means. Thus, we had to deter them, same as the USSR tried to deter the US in Cuba. Quid pro quo. Many people believe that the Cold War wasn’t a conflict between Communism and Democracy (no matter what the politicians tell you.) It was a conflict between two superpowers. Nothing more, nothing less.
Sorry, my bad. I meant to say that these countries are not socialist. They are socialistic, in that they have some socialist ideals, but they are not socialist in the sense of worker control over the means of production. Thus the term “welfare state.”
While I agree that these states are a significant improvement over U.S.-style capitalism, in their priorities, I still think we can do much better. They still have wage-slavery and the institutionalization of greed, with all of the bad effects that flow from that, but, yes, they do do a better job at taking care of their citizens.
Of course, everything any state wants to do is justified as “defense.” I do think that Russia sustained some losses in WWII also…
The USSR tried to deter the U.S. in Cuba? It wasn’t Cuba trying to defend itself against a U.S. attack?
In fact, the U.S. immediately began attacking Cuba after the 1959 revolution, long before there was any Cuban-Soviet relationship. Cuba has always had a special place in the hearts of U.S. imperialists, going back to the Founding Fathers, and they were very distraught to lose this gem in 1959. The desire to eliminate Castro had nothing to do with the Soviets, but everything to do with what Arthur Shlessinger called the “Castro idea of taking matters into your own hands.”
And, in fact, this is something we can actually test. We can simply look and see what happened with U.S. policy toward Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union. What happened? Well, the policy toward Cuba became harsher, more restrictions were placed on Cuba. Oh, sorry we’ve been lying to you for 40 years about the Soviet threat in Cuba, but now we have to tighten the noose on Cuba because of… our love for democracy!..yeah, that’s it…our love for democracy! I mean, this is just a joke.
You are right, though, that the Cold War had nothing to do with Communism or democracy. In fact, the prime objective of the U.S. in the Cold War (and after) was to prevent democracy from arising. The Cold War was a great pretext for carrying out policies that benefitted U.S. imperialists. Notice that these policies did not change after the Cold War was over. So, NATO still exists, and in fact gets more powerful, we still station troops all over the world, we continue to pay for a massive war budget, etc. The only thing that has changed are the pretexts for carrying out the same policies.
Of course they did. However, they still managed to amass the largest land army in Europe.
The United States and her allies were trying to prevent an attack on a key ally. What’s so bad about that? Imagine the outcome had we not detered the USSR. West Berlin would have been in shambles, just as East Berlin was during Soviet occupation. The Berlin Wall was for the express purpose of keeping the East Berliners in East Berlin. Had the Soviet system been superior, there wouldn’t have been a need for the wall.
So, in this case, the missiles in Turkey were justified, as were the USSR putting nukes into Cuba. After all, the Bay of Pigs was pre-Cuban Missile Crisis, and Khruschev had no way of knowing that the US had no intention of attacking again.
The missiles were Soviet missiles. They were shipped on Soviet boats. The people building the emplacements were Soviet. The soldiers prepared to fire the nukes were Soviet…
Yeah, I’d say that the Crisis was caused by the USSR trying to thwart US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. Either that, or Khruschev was doing this in an attempt to remove the missiles in Turkey, which he got.
But, unless you are arguing that Sweden, New Zealand, France, Canada, et al. have high infant mortality rates, unhealthy populations, or ruined environments*, your statement “When measured by quality-of-life indicators, like infant mortality, health of the population, health of the environment, etc., capitalism is an utter failure” doesn’t hold water. Some capitalist societies do better than others at dealing with those things (usually by injected non-capitalistic means into a basically capitalistic system–I’m certainly jno believer in agoralatry). But clearly, by the measureable statistical indicators, capitalist societies have done better than any other society in history at providing a good quality of life for their citizens. You are reduced to much vaguer and more subjective criticisms like “the institutionalization of greed”. Or perhaps you are arguing that in your ideal society no one will ever die, and no one will ever have to work for a living, either. Sounds great, but I think we’ll want to know the details before we all beam aboard.
*Gauging that one is going to be trickier. If you look at “health of the environment” as a “quality of life” factor, I’d have to say the advanced industrialized nations have done as well as or better than anyone, looking at clean air, clean drinking water, etc. If you want to look at less human-centered factors like biodiversity and protecting other species, I’d still have to say the Western nations do as well as anyone–it’s not like any other system hasn’t done its share of damage to the natural ecosystems, from the Easter Islanders to the Soviets.
Anyway, your last observation, concerning the injection of “non-capitalistic” means into a basically capitalistic system, is really the crux of the issue, which is fundamentally an ideological one. By that, I mean that most of those who promote a neo-classical version of capitalism (as I understand it) would disagree with your claim above, as well as with Numb (Chumpsky, that is). In fact, they argue the exact opposite: that free-market, lazze-faire capitalism is the only possible route open to a society in pursuit of freedom, democracy, and a decent standard of living.
If their claims were correct, one would expect to see a significantly higher quality of life in societies that practice that form of capitalism than in societies that do not. In fact, we see no such thing. On the contrary: to the extent that countries like Sweden and Norway rate higher on a scale of “quality of life” indicators, I submit that this is due to the imposition of redistributive economic policies that run directly counter to the ideological demands of capitalism. Sweden, for example, has one of the largest public sectors of the developed world, measured per-capita, supported by some of the most exorbitant tax rates. I read recently that one worker of three is employed by the Swedish state. These are policies that run directly counter to the demands of the market, as the Swedish Moderates (political right) are often wont to point out.
As any economics freshman could explain, the reason behind this contradiction is quite simple. An economy accomplishes three tasks: it determines what gets produced, how much gets produced, and who gets it. In other words, supply, demand, and distribution. While “capitalism” has historically proven to be superior in the first two categories, it is in fact a complete failure at the third, as is generally admitted by virtually all serious economists. This is, in fact, the dialectical contradiction at the heart of a capitalist system: to effectively create wealth, it must also create (and maintain) poverty. Market competition constrains economic actors in such a way that they must reduce the costs of production (in particular, wages) as far as is feasibly possible. In the case of the US and other highly developed industrial societies, this is accomplished to a great extent by “exporting poverty:” production facilities are relocated to developing countries, where wages are low (often below subsistence level), work conditions unregulated, and labor unions practically non-existent.
The increasingly broad redistribution of wealth that occurred during the 20th century in the US is also often cited as an example of the superiority of capitalism as a system of social organization. However, inspecting the historical record, we discover that capitalism certainly did not promote wealth redistribution during its early beginnings: if anything, the reverse occurred. Certainly, more wealth was produced, but it was also concentrated in the hands of a very small group of entrepreneurs – the majority of whom, by the way, were members of the aristocracy supposedly swept away during the liberal revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. Heard of sweat-shops? That’s capitalism in its purest form. It was not until workers organized themselves and began a bloody campaign for their rights that the wealth produced by industrialization began to trickle down to the masses. Again, these organizations were distinctly leftist in political orientation, inspired by communism or anarchism (like the Wobblies). The US was the scene for some of the worst, and most extensive, labor unrest/violence in the Western world, a fact that is often conveniently forgotten in mainstream histories. After all, May 1st, the official, world-wide day of socialist celebration, is in fact a commemoration of the Haymarket riot in Chicago.
There are many factors at work in the current standard of living enjoyed by the developed world. Effective resource use, industrialization, scientific development, colonialization, and free markets all played a role, as did capitalism and social the movements that opposed it. Assuming that Chumpsy is essentially anarcho-syndicalist (i.e., what Chomsky refers to as “libertarian socialism”), then the central problem he addresses would be resource ownership. In capitalism, such ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy persons, supported by a legal and ideological system that maintains and justifies the rules of the game. This system is in fact horribly inefficient – when viewed from an alternative perspective – and wasteful, etc; arguably, “an utter failure.” That matters are not worse is really the result of popular movements which have acted like brakes on a locomotive, slowing down the process of capitalist exploitation and forcing economic redistribution. That can hardly be construed as evidence that “capitalist societies” (whatever that term might imply) “have done better than any other society in history at providing a good quality of life for their citizens.”
Nonsense. Corporations that are publicly traded are accountable to their stockholders. Corporations are beholden to laws that regulate them, everything from the Taft-Hartley Act to OSHA to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Large manufacturers like General Motors are accountable to labor unions.
But most importantly, corporations are accountable to the public through the marketplace. If they don’t produce goods and services the public wants, at the quality and price the public wants, they fail.