-Caveat Lector-
>Capitalism: private ownership, supply and demand orientated economy,
private
property.
>Communism: state ownership, state economic planning, centralised political
control, single party state.
Capitalism: A few people hold the power, make the decisions and live in
luxury.
Everybody else works to support them.
Communism: A few people hold the power, make the decisions and live in
luxury.
Everybody else works to support them.
>But if you can't see the differences between the US and the USSR then I'm
stumped.
Of course I can see the differences. They are glaring and obvious. They
are also
superficial. The basic structure of both systems is the same. Both are
hierarchies, and as such iniquitous. This fundamental similarity is just as
glaring, and ought to be just as obvious, as are the differences. If you
refuse to
cease permitting the differences to blind you to the similarity, then I
can't
help you. Sorry, I tried.
>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.
Yup. You got it. Very good. You're not as dumb as I thought you were.
Maybe
there's hope for you after all. The state is the enemy, and the people who
run
it, be they the communist party or the corporations. Either way, they
aren't us.
>You really need to go to college to sort yourself out.
I work for a living all of my life. That's all I need to know this is an
iniquitous system. College teaches the ideology of the ruling class.
Ideology is
what idiots have instead of ideas. I'd rather think for myself.
If you doubt I can, read <http://www.sfbg.com/nessie/>
>Prove that statistic.
That's a WHO stat. I'm fairly skeptical of the WHO, and their ilk, for a
variety of reasons.
But, they'll collecting the stats and you're not, so I'm gonna go with them
with this proviso: the real number is probably higher.
>Prove that "Capitalism did that to them."
Nobody ever goes hungry for lack of food. This a bountiful planet. There's
plenty of food. They go hungry for lack of money to pay for it.
>No. I think you're intellectually bankrupt.
How so?
>And free speech,
You can say pretty much anything you want. Try to actually DO something
about
the status quo, and just see what happens.
>plenty of food,
If you have the money to pay for it.
> the right to travel
If you have the money to pay for it.
>watch they wanted,
If you have the money to pay for it.
> not to vote,
If voting could change anything, it would be against the law.
>they don't have to join any political parties if they don't want to,
Big deal. It doesn't put food on your table or shoes on your kids' feet.
>multi-party elections,
America is a one party state, the capitalist party. The Reps and the Dems
aren't
even wings. Their lines are virtually identical, i.e. they're on the side
of the
bosses, the landlords, and the bankers behind them, and against tenents
and workers.
>to own a house, car, various other goods.
If you suffer from the delusion that you own your house stop paying your
mortgage and see who the cops side with when the bank comes to evict you.
>>We graduate functional illiterates,
>You didn't once.
Irrelevant. It proves nothing about anybody except myself. Besides, that
was
1966. It's much worse now.
>And isn't that limited to the state education system?
Yes indeed. See, we do agree on something.
>It's a free country. If you want to sleep under the stars it's not
illegal.
As Voltaire so succinctly put it, "The law, in its magnificent equality
prohibits both the rich and the poor from sleeping under bridges and
begging for
bread in the streets."
Ever done it? No? Then you don't know what you're talking about, do you?
>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.
I doubt if any of them are among the forty million Americans who have no
coverage at all. Any society that allows sick people to die from lack of
money to
buy medicine is a sick society. Anybody who condones it is evil.
>Now that's profound nessie.
Yer damn tootin it is. How typical of me. Watch closely; you may learn a
thing or two.
>>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.
Then don't put words in his mouth. It's dishonest. It's rude.
>But you will find him saying Communism was in fact "state capitalism" and
he
supports "socialism", of the "anarcho-syndicalist" variety.
State-capitalism, state-anything, is fundamentally and diametrically
opposed to anarcho- anything, particularly anarcho-syndicalism.
>So Soviet central-planning would have been a rip-roaring success without
this
apparent embargo?
We'll never know, will we?
And I ask, would America be the wealthy state it is today were it not
built by
slaves on stolen land?
>Now it's the Nazis fault.
They killed between twenty and fifty million people and trashed the best
part of
the country. If that had happened to America, where would we be today?
>But did not the Communists in agreement with the Nazis invade Poland
together?
Irrelevant. The Nazis laid waste to the Soviet Union. They're still
rebuilding.
>And now you say it's America's fault.
And you're saying it's not? Who then drove them to go hungry to be able to
afford to defend themselves?
>And now you still want to believe that it could be America's fault.
Chernobyl? We'll never know. I never suspected Stealth and a smart bomb
till the
Gulf War. Then I saw on CNN buildings with holes in their roofs that
looked
exactly like Chernobyl and a bell went off. I only suspect, of course, but
consider this: if it wasn't a Stealth and a smart bomb, the US military
passed
up the opportunity of a lifetime.
>>Either way it was an atrocity, and the fault of bureaucrats. It doesn't
really
matter whose.
>Now it could be anybody's fault.
That's not what I said. I said it was bureaucrats' fault. To initiate
fission
inside the biosphere is an atrocity no matter who does it.
>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.
His "rhetoric," as you call it, isn't anti US, it's anti capitalist.
Capitalism sucks. Communism sucks. Anarcho-syndicalism is the way to go.
Read <Collectives in the Spanish Revolution> by Gaston Leval. Leval was a
trained economist from France who toured the workers' (not state)
collectives of
Anarchist Spain. They ranged from tiny rural gardening collectives to
locomotive
factories and the telephone exchange. He attended their meetings and went
over
their books. He found that without exception, after a few months of
adjustment,
the cost of production went down, the rate of production went up, the
quality of
goods improved, and most important, the quality of life for the workers
improved. Amazingly, this took place in the midst of a bloody war while the
Anarchists were surrounded and under blockade by the "free" world. In part
this
can be attributed to not having to pay the lion's share of profits to the
boss
any more. Also, worker owned, worker self managed, collectives are just
plain
more efficient. We Anarchists have a saying, "If you want to know how many
widgets to order for next month, don't ask the boss; he doesn't know. Ask
the widgeteer."
I belong to a worker owned collective business, Bound Together Anarchist
Collective Book Store, 1369 Haight St, SF CA. We're twenty four years old
and
doing just fine, thank you. We belong to a federation of such places
called the
Network of Bay Area Worker Collectives, NoBAWC (pronounced "no-boss"). The
smallest has six members and the largest has over a hundred. We're all
doing
just fine without bosses, thank you.
Then there's Mondragon, a multi-billion dollar, multi-national conglomerate
based in northern Spain, and comprised of enterprises ranging from string
of gas
stations, drugstores and department stores to agriculture, broadcasting and
manufacturing. It is owned by the workers. It is run by the workers.
They're
doing just fine without bosses, too, thank you
State owned "collectives," incidentally, are not collectives. They are
cynically
misnomered slave plantations. Screw the state. It sucks on our neck.
>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.
Either way, a handful run everything and live in luxury and the rest of us
work
to support them.
>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.
I didn't say that. Don't put words in my mouth. It's dishonest. It's rude.
>But you're obviously a lot smarter than me.
Indeed. More honest and polite, too.
>My aren't you modest.
I have cleverly eluded the trap of false modesty and pursued instead a
course of
frank honesty. And you?
> Go to Cuba or North Korea buddy, and tell us all here how much like
capitalism
it is there.
"Love it or leave it" again? How boring. How shallow.
OK, your turn.
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