Why my mind is closing towards Capitalism

Originally posted by Skyfloating

Originally posted by eboyd

By that logic America provides the world with freedom, but anyone with half a sense knows that our government makes freedom impossible for people elsewhere in the world and instead imposes our values on their society and tells them if they don't like it they can leave when in reality it is nowhere near that easy.

Marxist polemics hold that America is responsible for the ills of various countries in the world, rather than the countries themselves. At the core of socialist mentality you find the motto "blame others".

Says you, genius. Link?

Actually we don't look for anything to blame, we're all to blame, we just understand what capitalism has done, and how things could have been different.

The irony is the right blames the left and the poor for everything. 'It's their own faulty 'cause they're lazy, they're communists, they're different to us!'

Originally posted by SimultaneousFinal

Originally posted by Skyfloating

Originally posted by eboyd

By that logic America provides the world with freedom, but anyone with half a sense knows that our government makes freedom impossible for people elsewhere in the world and instead imposes our values on their society and tells them if they don't like it they can leave when in reality it is nowhere near that easy.

Marxist polemics hold that America is responsible for the ills of various countries in the world, rather than the countries themselves. At the core of socialist mentality you find the motto "blame others".

Says you, genius. Link?

he doesn't give links or evidence. he just makes bold assertions with no basis in reality. we've been through this already. he seems to have skipped out of the thread anyways, before i posted a link to all of the U.S. interventions that have gone on around the world since the late 1800's.

Originally posted by eboyd
can you link that film again for me here please? i wouldn't mind watching it.

Here it is. It's something that I think anyone who considers freedom important, should watch. It definitely doesn't conform to the usual Socialist ideology, but I think it is still something that Trotsky very much could have appreciated.

Got to stop thinking in terms of capitalism and socialism. That's 19th century economics. These ~isms don't have any meaning these days. A Fair distribution of wealth and and Equal distribution of political autonomy!

You guys looking to the past for solutions need to wake up and smell the 21st global democracy.

Originally posted by SayonaraJupiter
Got to stop thinking in terms of capitalism and socialism. That's 19th century economics. These ~isms don't have any meaning these days. A Fair distribution of wealth and and Equal distribution of political autonomy!

You guys looking to the past for solutions need to wake up and smell the 21st global democracy.

But that is not really true, those isms are just as relevant now as they've ever been. It's very important to understand that otherwise you won't change anything.

The only way to secure [a more] equal distribution of wealth is for workers to own the means of production. Unless you can come up with a better way to do it? Obviously private ownership doesn't meet that criteria.

Whatever economic system you come up with it's going to be a form of either capitalism, or socialism. Unless you want moms to own the means of production, momism lol. But then of course it would be the same as capitalism, ownership and control by a minority group, exploiting the rest of us. So back to socialism, workers owning the means of production is the only way to ensure a more fair distribution of the wealth labour creates.

Originally posted by ANOK
Actually we don't look for anything to blame, we're all to blame, we just understand what capitalism has done, and how things could have been different.

The irony is the right blames the left and the poor for everything. 'It's their own faulty 'cause they're lazy, they're communists, they're different to us!'

Yeah, it's not like communism/socialism are to be blamed for the murder of over 116-120+ million people in what 100 years?...

But we don't like you just because "you are different"...

socialists/communists don't like anything different than what they want, but of course you blame us for what you yourself and your ideologies have done to the world...

Originally posted by SayonaraJupiter
Got to stop thinking in terms of capitalism and socialism. That's 19th century economics. These ~isms don't have any meaning these days. A Fair distribution of wealth and and Equal distribution of political autonomy!

You guys looking to the past for solutions need to wake up and smell the 21st global democracy.

Your global democracy is nothing more than global socialism/communism, but you want to make up a new name just so unfortunately ignorant people fall for your scheme once again...

"fair distribution and equal distribution" does not allow for "political autonomy" since people have to be FORCED to do "fair and equal distribution"...

Leftwingers most of the time don't seem able to even understand what they are saying...

Originally posted by eboyd

he doesn't give links or evidence. he just makes bold assertions with no basis in reality. we've been through this already. he seems to have skipped out of the thread anyways, before i posted a link to all of the U.S. interventions that have gone on around the world since the late 1800's.

Evidence that socialists/communists ALWAYS blame the west?... First of all you are doing it yourself... Second of all you just have to look at what castro and Chavez keep claiming to see that sky is telling the truth. Not to mention that it is the first thing you find in EVERY socailist/communist website...

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse

Originally posted by eboyd

he doesn't give links or evidence. he just makes bold assertions with no basis in reality. we've been through this already. he seems to have skipped out of the thread anyways, before i posted a link to all of the U.S. interventions that have gone on around the world since the late 1800's.

Evidence that socialists/communists ALWAYS blame the west?... First of all you are doing it yourself... Second of all you just have to look at what castro and Chavez keep claiming to see that sky is telling the truth. Not to mention that it is the first thing you find in EVERY socailist/communist website...

edit on 26-2-2012 by ElectricUniverse because: (no reason given)

we blame the west when the blame is applicable. for example, during the crisis in Egypt early last year i actually commended the U.S. for handling the situation so well, especially since Egypt under Mubarak was our second most important ally behind Israel and we have allowed them to revolt without interfering even though that meant that the new regime would oppose Israel and the U.S. i give credit where it is due. there are plenty of other examples as well. however, the U.S. and other similar (and allied) watchdog nations such as Great Britain have a long history of interventions in other nations, many of which they try to cover up, and there is proof of this, which i have linked above. the U.S. has been involved in more foreign interventions than any other nation in the past 150 years or so, some of which i do not necessarily oppose, but most of which i do as they often involved the CIA secretly funding groups that we would now consider terrorists, or funding coups of democratically elected leaders, such as Salvador Allende, who was replaced by General Augusto Pinochet, a ruthless dictator who implemented concentration camps in Chile after he was put in power. this is just one small example. i could cite hundreds.

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse

Originally posted by ANOK
Actually we don't look for anything to blame, we're all to blame, we just understand what capitalism has done, and how things could have been different.

The irony is the right blames the left and the poor for everything. 'It's their own faulty 'cause they're lazy, they're communists, they're different to us!'

Yeah, it's not like communism/socialism are to be blamed for the murder of over 116-120+ million people in what 100 years?...

But we don't like you just because "you are different"...

socialists/communists don't like anything different than what they want, but of course you blame us for what you yourself and your ideologies have done to the world...

the "socialist/communist" ideology that was utilized by people like Stalin/Lenin as a tool to commit atrocities was nothing more than propaganda perpetuated by 1. the dictators of those nations using those terms, which were popular at the time, as tools to basically enslave the people of those countries, and 2. the western propaganda mill that used these countries as examples of socialism/communism in order to demonize these terms.

in reality these nations much more closely resembled capitalism than they did a true representation of socialism/communism as the control of the means of production were not controlled by the workers. here's a quote from Emma Goldman, a communist, speaking against Russian communism back before Stalin and the atrocities of that system were fully revealed:

In Russia there is no socialization either of land or of production and distribution. Everything is nationalized; it belongs to the government, exactly as does the post-office in America or the railroad in Germany and other European countries. There is nothing of Communism about it.

www.hartford-hwp.com...

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse
Yeah, it's not like communism/socialism are to be blamed for the murder of over 116-120+ million people in what 100 years?...

I've already said that I do not want the body count troll used in this thread.

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse
Yeah, it's not like communism/socialism are to be blamed for the murder of over 116-120+ million people in what 100 years?...

C'mon we've been over this, communism and socialism has killed no one. Those people were dictators, not socialists. Socialism is a system of the people, not politicians, or anyone who wants personal power and control.

Now capitalism HAS killed millions and continues to kill millions around the world right now. Wars in the ME, starving children in Africa. Yes caused by capitalism, because capitalists took their land and resources and the wealth created by them didn't help Africa but helped YOU. The reason the west got so wealthy was the exploitation of third world countries. Just like in Europe during feudalism Africans lived off the land, until that land was appropriated by capitalists.

Tribalism, colonialism and capitalism

A study of West Africa shows that the festering of tribalist, nationalist and racist sentiment are nurtured and sustained by the capitalist system...
...Colonialism whether it was of the British, Belgian, French or German variety was not meant to be a benign enterprise. The motive behind its establishment was one: the exploitation of labour and the accumulation of economic surplus. Consequently, the driving force behind it, capitalism, did not spare the exploitation of labour in both the metropolis and other lands even if it meant spilling blood to fulfil this sordid agenda...

www.worldsocialism.org...

JOHANNESBURG, March 21—On April 22 national elections will be held for the fourth time in South Africa since the end of white-supremacist apartheid rule in 1994. That “political breakthrough,” which put the bourgeois-nationalist African National Congress (ANC) in power, did not bring about social and economic equality for the brutally oppressed black, coloured (mixed-race) and Indian masses. The rigid, legally enforced segregation and subjugation that defined apartheid are no more. But behind the “liberation” rhetoric of the ANC and its Tripartite Alliance partners, the reformist South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) bureaucracy, and the democratic trappings of “one man, one vote,” the economic and social foundations of white supremacy based on the superexploitation of overwhelmingly black labour remain intact. Neo-apartheid has benefitted the white capitalists and the emerging black elite.

www.icl-fi.org...

Due to the slave trade, and the raping of land and resources, Africa was unable to develop in the extremely competitive global capitalist economy. It left the continent with waring tribes and adverse poverty.

When are you going to stop being so naive, and learn that people in power lie? Or is it that you don't want to learn and just want to argue?

socialists/communists don't like anything different than what they want, but of course you blame us for what you yourself and your ideologies have done to the world...

Nonsense. Name one instance that the workers ownership of the means of production has done anything bad.

What a waste this has been, you have not learned a thing from what you've read here. You are still confused about what socialism is, and the negative effects capitalism has had on the world. It hilarious you try to blame socialism, a system not practiced anywhere, when we have 200 years of evidence of the negative effects of capitalism. Such is the power of state conditioning.

The “poverty summit” that concluded at the United Nations Wednesday served to expose capitalism’s responsibility for the poverty and hunger confronting billions of people across the planet. Despite vows by the UN and the major powers over the past decade to ameliorate these conditions, the desperation and misery of the world’s most oppressed layers have only deepened as a result of imperialist predations and the shocks arising from the global financial crisis....

UN “poverty summit” exposes failure of world capitalism

Originally posted by AwakeinNM

I showed a couple of my friends your Beeronomics pics.

A few days later I received this in an email from one of them.



I guess he thought you shouldn't have left this one out.

Originally posted by ANOK
What a waste this has been, you have not learned a thing from what you've read here. You are still confused about what socialism is, and the negative effects capitalism has had on the world. It hilarious you try to blame socialism, a system not practiced anywhere, when we have 200 years of evidence of the negative effects of capitalism. Such is the power of state conditioning.

ANOK, the problem is that even when we try and have truly altruistic, compassionate, and/or mutually beneficial intentions, the system always finds a way to subvert them and turn them against us. If you get into any sort of collective organisation these days, chances are that it has already been hijacked and is serving interests counter to those that you actually want.



This is what they've done to Occupy and Anonymous. The subvert, divide and conquer strategy works every single time.

reply to post by petrus4


you're really going to post a film made by Andrew Breitbart (i honestly have no remorse to the fact that scumbag died the other day) and David Horowitz as evidence that Occupy is becoming whatever you claim it is becoming?? the same Andrew Breitbart that presented a heavily doctored video to get ACORN shut down and another heavily doctored video to get a government employee fired?? and the same David Horowitz that has been on a crusade to get university professors fired for merely being left-wing (usually this term is used to refer to liberals in this context, though there are some truly left-wing professors) and not being afraid to teach historical facts that go against conservative opinion? if that is your evidence, and considering i've been involved in Occupy protests and can say from experience that they are very organic gatherings, then i'm going to have to call bull# on you.

reply to post by petrus4

ANOK, the problem is that even when we try and have truly altruistic, compassionate, and/or mutually beneficial intentions, the system always finds a way to subvert them and turn them against us. If you get into any sort of collective organisation these days, chances are that it has already been hijacked and is serving interests counter to those that you actually want.

Is that your underlying argument? Do people really believe that each the choice is either "go with the flow" or to "# with the system"? It then comes down to a very personal decision about how to live ones own life. This is something that everyone person should consider promptly, the status of their own existenz.

Perhaps you are the leader in all of this, petrus4! Are you able to take your decision on capitalism to the next level? Do you aim to destroy it completely or merely alter it?

reply to post by eboyd


I am not saying that Occupy are either 100% organic, or 100% astroturf, eboyd. It's not as simple as that. I'm saying that I think there is a fairly high degree of both. I also do think that, for better or worse, Occupy are no longer bipartisan. While they originally seemed to be unaffiliated with any particular group, they have now been almost completely co-opted by socialists.

I remember reading a little about the Tea Party before it was hijacked by the Republican Party, as well. Yes they were conservative, or at least in the older sense of the word; but they weren't necessarily like Rush Limbaugh, etc.

The system is doing this to both sides. That is the point. Both originally started out as relatively innocent, politically agnostic movements, (if having a *little* gravity towards each side) but then the system moved in. Hell, if you want an analogy from your own side of the political fence, look at it as being similar to what was done to the Russians by the Bolsheviks. The people want their own thing, and then the psychopaths move in and hijack it, and force feed the people the opposite of what they actually wanted to begin with.

The Tea Party was hijacked. Anonymous and Occupy are largely being hijacked as well. I understand that we're trained to view conservatives as baby eating demoniacs, but I honestly don't believe all of them are; or that just because someone calls themselves a Socialist, that that automatically means they're a saint. A big part of the reason why I started using this site more regularly, was because I realised that there was enough that I didn't like about the Left, that was causing me to want to become less hostile towards the Right.

There are idiots like Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly, sure; but the Left has people like Ellen Degeneres or Mike Adams as its' own media morons. Neither are purely innocent, but neither are exclusively evil, either. I come across a lot of conservatives online who have intentions which are just as positive as anyone who self-identifies with the Left; they just can be mentally screwed up (in my own opinion) as to how to turn said positive intentions into meaningful reality.

Originally posted by SayonaraJupiter
Perhaps you are the leader in all of this, petrus4! Are you able to take your decision on capitalism to the next level? Do you aim to destroy it completely or merely alter it?

edit on 3/3/2012 by SayonaraJupiter because: (no reason given)

I don't claim to know what the answer is, Sayonara. That's entirely the problem.

The only thing I've ever found, which I think goes remotely close to being any kind of answer, was something that the Chinese philosopher Confucius advocated, which he called the Doctrine of the Mean. In other words, you try and look at pretty much anything as an entire spectrum, which exists between two poles, and then aim for the center between the two. Buddhism talks about the Middle Way, as well.

I'm trying to find that position right now. That is what the purpose of this thread has been. I don't want to be single mindedly Communist or Capitalist; I want to find a way to take the positive elements of both, without going to the exclusive extreme of either. If I can somehow do that, then I think that is where the answer will be.

reply to post by petrus4


There is a way to bring balance within a system,and that system what I've personally found is a Resource Based Economy.

This is why I advocate that humanity as a hole adopt a more sustainable approach to the world,where we all have access to resources,since that's what's important not money,and which in the lack of thereof it causes needless suffering in the world.

Today we have the technologies to build a system that actually takes care of the hole of humanity and not just a few like in capitalism.

I'd like to recommend anyone interested in such a system to check out the following videos:

www.zeitgeistmovingforward.com... - A great presentation of the flaws of today's system and the bad influence it has in our values,society and education as a hole.

While this following video brings a good summary of what a Resource Based Economy is all about.


As well as this one:



These videos offer a basic education of the problems of our world and how we may have a choice to change all that.

Also a brief presentation of what education in a Resource Based Economy would be like:

tzmeducation.org...