-Caveat Lector-
> The differences between capitalism (monopoly or otherwise) and communism
are profound.
>Oh they are, huh? Then list these differences, please, so we can have
cogent discourse that rises above the puerile level of "love it or leave it."
Capitalism: private ownership, supply and demand orientated economy, private
property.
Communism: state ownership, state economic planning, centralised political
control, single party state.
Forgive this apparent sparseness. I'm sure there are better words, but this
will have to do for the moment. But if you can't see the differences between
the US and the USSR then I'm stumped.
>>This "state monopoloy capitalism" is the sort Orwellian wordplay which
seeks to obfuscate the real differences between capitalist economies where
consumer demand, private ownership and profit
incentives guide the economy delivering the society of plenty that most of
us live in,
>To confuse "capitalism" with free enterprise is itself an "Orwellian" word
play. Without the armed might of the state to enforce their monopoly the
capitalists are nothing but a pack of cards. This is a fascist economy, by
definition. "Fascism," stated Mussolini so ever concisely, "is corporatism."
Sorry, Nessie but you continue to confuse. Thus far we have according to you:
Capitalism=Communism=State Monopoly Capitalism=Corporatism=Fascism
=Crypto-Fascism. The only common thread seems to be the existence of state
power. You really need to go to college to sort yourself out.
>Most of us do not live in a "society of plenty." Half of humanity is
malnourished, That means three billion people went to bed hungry last
night and couldn't do anything about it. Capitalism did that to them.
Prove that statistic. Prove that "Capitalism did that to them."
>Is that what you condone? Is this how you want the rest of us to live so that
you personally can wallow in your own creature comforts? If so, sir, you
are morally bankrupt.
No. I think you're intellectually bankrupt.
>You're also not paying attention. Even here in America one out of five,
perhaps even one out of four, children grow up in poverty. The typical
American family needs two, or even three, jobs to break even and is only
a couple of pay checks from being out in the street. Real wages have gone
steadily downward for decades. In 1968, when I was twenty I lived on
Manhattan. I paid $80 a month for a one bedroom apartment. I made $100 a
week working twelve hour shifts in the back office of Walston & Co, 54
Wall St., a brokerage that no longer exists. My wife stayed home with my
infant son. We could afford to eat out a couple times a week. A good steak
cost two bucks. Gasoline was $.29. Try that today.
>Society of plenty? Gimme a break. Business may be booming, but labor is
taking it up the butt.
>This is a sick society. Paper sleeps in a palace and people sleep in the
street. In a place like that it's immoral to stand around and do nothing
about it. We have a moral duty to change things. To defend such a system
is morally remiss. In Christian terms, it is a "sin."
>>and communist economies where state planning, state ownership, and state
direction, delivers shortages, sloth and apathy.
>As opposed to what? In a capitalist society poverty delivers the
shortages, only the rich can indulge in "sloth" and apathy is a way of
life.
>>Of course, if you think you can convince someone who has lived in a
Communist country that the material reality of their lifestyle was no
different from life in the "state monopoly capitalist" US go ahead.
>Well let's see. They had free education, token rent and universal health
care.
And free speech, plenty of food, the right to travel where they liked, watch
they wanted, not to vote, they don't have to join any political parties if
they don't want to, multi-party elections, to own a house, car, various other
goods. Oh sorry, that's the capitalist world. For a moment I actually
believed you said they were the same. I'm over it now.
>We graduate functional illiterates,
You didn't once. And isn't that limited to the state education system?
>pay through the nose for the "privilege" of living indoors
It's a free country. If you want to sleep under the stars it's not illegal.
>and forty million of us have no health care coverage at all while the rest
of us are the victims of a corrupt health care system that has been bought
and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry.
Yes, people used to wax lyrical about how brilliant the Soviet health care
system was. But some people associate the application of such measures to the
US a little too much with state interference and state planning.
>The only real substantive difference between the USA Inc. system and the
USSR Inc. system is one has better pay and the other has better benefits.
In both systems a handful of ruthless villians live in luxury and the rest
of the people work to support them. Both systems corrupt the soul by
commodifying time. Time is the very stuff of life itself. To put a price
on time is to put a price on life. It makes commodities of us all. It
makes human beings, you and I included, into things to be bought and sold
an hour at a time.
Now that's profound nessie.
>>And another thing, the use of the term "state monopoly capitalist" reeks
of the sort of backsliding wordplay one even gets from my favourite
bugbear, Noam Chomsky, who in his socialist idealism, regularly redefines
the former Communist bloc as "state capitalist",
>On this point, at least, Chomsky is 100% correct. Where his reasoning
fails is when he discounts the fascist crypto-coup of 1963 as a factor in
shaping American life today. But, hey, nobody's right about everything.
>>thus freeing his preferred way of life
>This is a gross misrepresentation on your part. I dare you to produce a
single sentence from Chomsky's work in which he says he "prefers" state
monopoly capitalism. Be sure to include the ISBN and the page number.
"State monopoly capitalism"? No, you won't find him saying that. But you will
find him saying Communism was in fact "state capitalism" and he supports
"socialism", of the "anarcho-syndicalist" variety.
>>from the burden of its profound & demonstrable failure
>Seventy five years of embargo,
So Soviet central-planning would have been a rip-roaring success without this
apparent embargo?
>a crippling invasion that destroyed the best part of the country and killed
between twenty and fifty million people,
Now it's the Nazis fault. But did not the Communists in agreement with the
Nazis invade Poland together?
>a burdensome defence budget forced upon them for forty years by
the US,
And now you say it's America's fault.
>and the disaster at Chernobyl destroyed the Soviet economy. I
sincerely hope that a stunning revelation, typically fifty years late,
wont someday reveal that Chernobyl wasn't the work of a Stealth plane and
a smart bomb. If it was, it was the single most successful sortie in the
history warfare.
And now you still want to believe that it could be America's fault.
>Either way it was an atrocity, and the fault of
bureaucrats. It doesn't really matter whose.
Now it could be anybody's fault.
>>and further damning the demonic capitalist society of the US which,
funnily enough, he just can't
bring himself to leave....
>"Love it or leave it." Now there's a cogent argument, isn't it? What are
you, a ditto-head or a sophmore?
No. A lapsed fellow-traveller. The point is people like Chomsky rail against
the system, but their lifestyles demonstrate that they are not waylaid by any
qualms about exploiting its many benefits... A form of chardonnay socialism
in which there is an unwillingness to put their money where their mouth is.
>In point of fact, Chomsky spends a great deal of time out of the country
on his seemingly endless speaking tour. It's his country, I might add,
every bit as much as it is yours or mine. He has just as much right and
just as much responsibility to stay here and reform the place as do you or I.
Good for him. The point is not that he should leave. I'm not saying that. But
rather that for all his anti-US rhetoric he does not find conditions in the
US so intolerable that he hasn't scooted off to Europe or some other workers
paradise from where he can attack the US as a dissident-in-exile.
>>But I digress.
>Indeed you do. You were going to explain the differences between working
for a boss called a commissar and working for a boss called a CEO. A boss
is a boss is a boss, I say. What say you, besides "love it or leave it"
(in so many words).
Of course. A commissar's job is to rigidly follow the party-line. To ensure
that the government enterprise you work for produces the precise number of
whatever product it is supposed to put out irrespective of the quality. A
commissar is responsible to the Party. A CEO is responsible to shareholders
who want dividends. They include ordinary people like me, maybe even you
(although I doubt it). If a CEO stuffs up they can be dismissed by the board.
If a commissar stuffs up, well, they might be shot, or sent off to camps, or
if they've worked the system well enough, be home free. But as you say a boss
is a boss.
> Please get back to the subject and quit with the jingoistic excuses for
the grievous faults of our system. If you are going to tell me I'm wrong
because of reasons that are "profound" and then not list the reasons,
you're not going to convince anybody whose mind is not already made up
that you are even intelligent, let alone that I'm wrong.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realise that state ownership of everything, every
factory, store, and in fact every conceivable component of the economy, was
indistinguishable from capitalist society with all its private ownership. I
was also unaware that Washington planned US economic output down to the nth
degree, including determining how much to produce of all product irrespective
of actual demand causing innumerable shortages. And then there's all there's
all the government committees around the place to ensure that we all follow
the five year plans and produce what we're supposed to. I must have been
blind. You weren't. But you're obviously a lot smarter than me.
>Personally, I recommend that you resign graciously before you make an even
greater fool of yourself. As a debater you're greatly outclassed.
My aren't you modest. But, nope, I'm not bowing out. You're wrong.
>Besides, you are defending an untenable position.
Really? Go to Cuba or North Korea buddy, and tell us all here how much like
capitalism it is there.
> But if you insist on continuing, at least do our audience the common
courtesy of not insulting their intelligence with this sophmoric bandwidth
waste.
No, I think you are with your gross oversimplifications of the supposed
similarities between capitalism and communism.
OK, your turn.
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