Hold on, I think that’s pulling a fast one there. The Kibbutz may be communal internally (to some extent), but produces for a commercial market in a national community. That’s not much different than a corporation, in the end.
Oh, absolutely. A kibbutz is basically a company town, with each resident an equal shareholder. They were never intended to form a model for country-wide communism.
BTW, I apologize for not making clear that I was talking about American collectives, which is what I’m familair with. Barring two exceptions to my knowledge, they all fell apart quite rapidly - most within a few years.
I have heard of a company in California today which is collectively run, with no managers whatsoever AFAIK. Does faiirly well and is reasonably large for a single-shop enterprise. If you want a raise you just have to convince people of it, and everyone just pitches in and does whatever’s needed.
And hey, I’m perfectly in favor of it. My point is simply that this isn’t even anti-capital.*
*And without trying to be obnoxious, I hate the term “Capitalism,” which combines inaccuracy with incompleteness. Free Markets are far more than big-capital enterprises. I find “Socialism” to be a reasonably accurate descriptive term, though it’s often better to use a more specific one.
There weren’t any. The Inca expanded quickly to their maximum extent and then stopped. Nobody could attack them, and there was no government we know of in the area to do anything to them. They were almost completely isolated from the world, one of the reasons that as far as we know, they had effectively no technological progress.
The Inca did not expand primarily by colonization of unsettled territory. They extended their empire over several neighboring nations with different language and cultures – some of whom had been civilized far longer – and who were able to put up some military resistance. Chimor, for instance. As to “stopped,” when the Spanish arrived the Inca were, AFAIK, still continuing with their policy of unlimited gradual expansion (mainly by diplomatic missions to tribes and nations on the borders – they were able to persuade many tribes to join the Empire without conquest, just by showing off the economic benefits).
As for technological progress, I don’t think their empire lasted long enough to judge its potential there. But, China was a pretty damned high civilization, despite limiting itself to one or two new inventions per dynasty.
I suppose that depends on how you define civilized.
Indeed, but they failed to get beyond the mountains as I understand it, and thus were pretty limited, and their expansion was almost dead in the water and limited to much smaller gains. The tribes off the hills were too different to assimilate and uninterested in the first place. Granted, the records are so sparse that we may simply be interpreting things differently. There’s a factor of ten difference in the more reasonable population estimates alone.
Uh… no comment, but I think you underestimate the Chinese. Their problem was in implementing new discoveries, not inventing them.
Well, whatever definition the Incas can meet, Chimor meets.
They are sparse – all these civilizations/cultures being non-literate.
For an interesting literary portrait of life in Tiwantinsuyu, see The Scarlet Fringe by Susan Alles Blom. (An AH novel, actually – the POD is that Atahualpa does not rebel against Huascar, thus the Spanish do not face an Empire weakened by civil war.)
My evil point exactly.
I might take a look at the book, though I don’t read much fiction anymore.
Tiwantinsuyu certainly qualifies on the core elements and several of the secondary elements.
We don’t know what it might have become; it was a young empire when it was destroyed. A young and rising one, I’m fairly sure.
Also check out the chapter on Machu Picchu in de Camp’s Ancient Ruins and Archaeology.
Why would that be?
Trust. Much as I dislike it, I have to acknowledge that it’s there. While I don’t hold Buchanan’s apparent pessimism that it can’t be got around with time, you have to see that it exists. It’s what’s behind “welfare queens in Cadillacs” and “young bucks buying T-bone steaks with their food stamps” and “illegals coming to soak up welfare”. Yes, those are right-wing memes and lies designed to discredit social welfare programs, but they wouldn’t take hold so easily without the xenophobia. It’s disgusting, but it exists, and it’s a major impediment to a higher level of social support in the US.
Deeper than pessimism. Going by his posting history so far, Buchanan seems to think it’s not just a matter of cultural prejudice/mistrust, but that different racial groups actually have different levels of hereditary mental ability; so that socialism or “any highly-taxed environment” in a multiracial society would involve the superior races subsidizing the inferior, that woudn’t be a myth.
A couple of things have amused me in this thread:
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those who equate socialism with communism, and bring the former USSR and Cuba into the discussion.
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those who come up with an 80% tax rate for folks in Denmark, and when confronted by factual information to the contrary, seem to disappear into the aether.
I’m glad you are amused. In what way were/are the systems in the former USSR/Cuba not a form of socialism? Perhaps you could step down from your ivory tower and tell us what your definition of socialism is and why it is the one and only correct one?
I should have said, “those who equate ONLY communism (like USSR and Cuba) with socialism”, as seems to be the case with some folk, since those are the only countries they bring up. Of course I would agree that the systems in the former USSR/Cuba are a form of socialism.
I’m glad you think I’m in an ivory tower. That means you think I smart, rite?
When has capitalism without a little socialism “toppled into ruin”?
Who?
Korekt.
I don’t know if there is an end product for the progressive movement, but I couldn’t call it “socialism” with a straight face, it requires the tolerant bemusement of nostalgia. “Socialism” is Norman Thomas, Bertrand Russel, H.G. Wells and the Fabian Society. It belongs to a time when you could argue about the proletariat because there really was such a thing.
A true Marxist doesn’t really believe in freedom of choice, not so much that he might forbid it, but that he believes it doesn’t actually exist, that history is an inexorable and utterly predictable force. the illusion of choice doesn’t enter into it. Progressives believe very firmly in choice, without it, we don’t have much of a chance. And we believe that a better persons is more likely to make better choice, to be a valuable citizen, if protected from the pointless miseries and suffering of poverty, ignorance and want. Perhaps they cannot be solved, perhaps the exercise is futile. But why not find out? Perhaps perfection will always elude us, tough titty, we can still do a damn sight better than we have.
Its taking a lot longer than we thought, and we could use your help, if you’ve nothing better to do.
An interesting thought. How does that tell us what conditions allow socialism to be effective? Or am I in the wrong thread?
As a resident and citizen of one of those countries, I’d just like to mention that according to my (firsthand) experience, that is pretty far from reality. Especially the claim that an increase in ethnic diversity in itself rather than an increase in non-productive/unemployed members of society regardless of ethnicity should cause a decline in social services.
As has been mentioned upthread, the Scandiavian countries sport a 30-something % income tax (as calculated from your total income) for the average citizen and a 10-25% sales tax. Plus some special taxes on stuff like fuel, tobacco and alcohol. For that we get (almost) free health coverage, unemployment coverage and social security sufficient to keep almost everyone off living on the street. To me, that looks like a decent argument for social democracy or whatever you want to call that particular flavor of socialism (or capitalism).