The real sharp end of Capitalism

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/881136-married-couple-driven-to-commit-suicide-by-utter-poverty

This story is horrendous, and this suicide was absolutely avoidable. RIP :(

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

email that story to any fucker who tells people on the lower end of the social strata that they need to just work harder and get a job.

edit-or any american leftist/liberal who thinks european style social democracy is the "answer"

[Black_Rose]

email that story to any fucker who tells people on the lower end of the social strata that they need to just work harder and get a job.

edit-or any american leftist/liberal who thinks european style social democracy is the "answer"

Do you think those reactionary "fuckers" will ever learn rudimentary morality and sympathy? They will only learn if other people who lack basic virtue are murdered or tortured during a struggle session (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session) by the restive masses.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't really think advocating retributory violence, or Maoist 'mob justice', is really helpful, either.

We shouldn't resort to their level, no matter what our initial emotive response is. By resorting to their level we become just as bad as them. Our first instinct shouldn't be violence for the sake of violence.

[Zealot]

What a tragedy but romantic in some sense as well.

And why are there so many hippy pacifists around. Honestly, revolution most probably won't be peaceful so you guys need to get over that. With stories like this and the way our world is, I would say violence is the bare MINIMUM that they deserve at the moment. This isn't an isolated case and these events will only increase in the future.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Who said anything about pacifism?

Violence is only to be utilised when we (inevitably, perhaps) come under physical attack by the state. I don't really think you can really claim to build a peaceful society if Capitalist politician Mr.XYZ is strung up by his bootlaces behind you as you declare the revolution or whatever.

[Black_Rose]

Who said anything about pacifism?

Violence is only to be utilised when we (inevitably, perhaps) come under physical attack by the state. I don't really think you can really claim to build a peaceful society if Capitalist politician Mr.XYZ is strung up by his bootlaces behind you as you declare the revolution or whatever.

Peaceful? If I remember correctly, I recall that a poll showed that about ~30% of the populace in Great Britain supported using live ammunition against the London Rioters. Also, see the Tea Partiers here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/tea-partiers-mock-t161676/index.html), verbally assaulting a Parkinson's Victim. These people are our enemies; they lack basic sympathy! We should show little compunction if a few of the immoral were slain by the fervor of the revolutionary masses; these people usually do not show any qualms about executing prisoners either or the torture in Guantanamo Bay.

The wealthy should not be punished merely because of their wealth and lifestyle; they were merely successful participants in a barbaric game, which does not necessarily mean they endorse or perpetuate the system. They should be punished if they supported the continuation of the game, propagandized its alleged redeeming aspects, or demonstrated contempt for the peasants and the proletariat. It would seem that the threat of force is satisfactory enough, although that would require the exercise of force; best if the force came from the revolutionary masses, not executive orders from the vanguard, who have palpable grievances against the system.

--
I have more Confucianist than Legalist (http://www.commonwealthprotection.org/AncientChinaLaw.pdf) tendencies; I believe better to govern by virtue, morality, and benevolence, than by force, except, of course, during revolutionary. The catabolism of revolution may involve the physical liquidation of some reactionaries; this period of "catabolism" would preclude the anabolism of a socialist (Marxist-Leninist) government from ruling according to the principles of benevolence, amity, dignity, sympathy, and compassion. I am indeed sincere about ruling according to those principles, but I remember Mao's truism: political power comes from the barrel of a gun.


Mao's maxim about political power coming from the barrel of a gun is correct, but it should not be interpreted as Mao endorsing Machiavellian principles to secure political power nor Mao's affirmation of contemporary libertarian criticism of government. In fact, the maxim was his criticism of Western imperialism influencing China through military superiority enabled by advanced weapons technology. One poignant example of Western Imperialism was Commodore Matthew Perry's insistence of Japan to open to markets to trade by threatening the Tokugawa shogunate with their military superiority (which is the standard textbook example of "gunboat diplomacy".)


Gunpowder remained unknown in the West until the late 10th century. However, Europeans abandoned outmoded rules of chivalry after the Middle Ages and enthusiastically incorporated firearms and artillery into the lexicon of their military arts after the late 15th century. In contrast, thanks to the Confucian aversion to technological progress, Chinese military planners did not modernize their martial code, basing foreign policy on the principle of civilized benevolence. They continued to suppress development of firearms as immoral and dishonorable up to the 19th century, much to China's misfortune.

As a result, European armies arrived in China in the 19th century with superior firearms. They consistently and repeatedly scored decisive victories with their small but better-armed expeditionary forces over the numerically superior yet technologically backward, sword-wielding Chinese army of the decrepit Qing Dynasty (1636-1911).

China's most influential revolutionary, Mao Zedong, proclaimed in modern times his famous dictum: "Political power comes from the barrel of a gun." He was in fact condemning the obsolete values of Confucianism (ru jia) as much as stating a truism in barbaric modern realpolitik.

Confucian ethics notwithstanding, morality and honor failed to save China from Western imperialism, because morality and honor require observation from both opponents. It was not a clash of civilizations, but a clash between civilization and barbarism. Militarism is a race toward barbarism camouflaged by technology as modernity.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/EG09Ad01.html

[dodger]

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/881136-married-couple-driven-to-commit-suicide-by-utter-poverty

This story is horrendous, and this suicide was absolutely avoidable. RIP :(

Yes indeed.....Stammer..during the last 2 recessions I noticed on reading local papers from all over the country left on my train. As the recession started to bite there would be more suicides, often with mention of 'financial problems.' Not considered newsworthy for national press and frankly an embarrassment to be trumpeting the light at the end of the tunnel..whilst people throwing themselves under a train. Yes sad on all counts...what a waste...a child mixed up too. tragic. Support could and would have made all the difference.....we know.

[RadioRaheem84]

Yes indeed.....Stammer..during the last 2 recessions I noticed on reading local papers from all over the country left on my train. As the recession started to bite there would be more suicides, often with mention of 'financial problems.' Not considered newsworthy for national press and frankly an embarrassment to be trumpeting the light at the end of the tunnel..whilst people throwing themselves under a train. Yes sad on all counts...what a waste...a child mixed up too. tragic. Support could and would have made all the difference.....we know.

Plus there would be that one reactionary expert on TV that would try to debunk the new stories on suicides by comparing the number of suicides stemming from various orgins to today mostly stemming from hard financial times. He'd say there is no news here, just "liberal" bias.

[Erratus]

I hope the bourgeois are enjoying the finer things in life, they have come at a great price.

[ckaihatsu]

Confucian ethics notwithstanding, morality and honor failed to save China from Western imperialism, because morality and honor require observation from both opponents. It was not a clash of civilizations, but a clash between civilization and barbarism. Militarism is a race toward barbarism camouflaged by technology as modernity.


While 'Asia Times' is always a good source of information, its analysis consistently falls just short of what a materialist perspective requires.

'Civilization versus barbarism' is a good go-to shorthand to remind of the political stakes at hand, but is *not* precise-enough a tool to use when examining history and historical forces.

Capitalism, in its never-ending quest for markets, will prefer technological developments of a militaristic nature over many other kinds of developments since military advantage *can* very likely confer a material advantage over rivals for market share.

This technological dynamism, while driven by an acquisitive force, *can be* -- or has been -- a springboard to spin-off technological advancements that benefit consumers and humanity as a whole. This isn't to make an argument for *retaining* this default method of incidental advancement at the price of systematic destruction, but rather merely to note it.








Looking back today we can see that what happened in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries was to transform the world. It would enable a few European powers to carve out empires which encompassed virtually the whole of Asia and Africa, and lead the whole world to be drawn into a new way of organising production, industrial capitalism.




[[The end of the 16th century]] was a period of economic growth despite continued poverty among the lower classes. After falling by almost half to around 70 million in the 14th century, the population rose to an estimated 130 million in the late16th century and to as high as 170 million by the 1650s.138 Then the empire ran into a devastating crisis similar in many ways to those of the 4th century and the 14th century—as well as to that occurring simultaneously in much of 17th century Europe. There were a succession of epidemics, floods, droughts and other disasters. Famines devastated whole regions. The population stopped growing and even declined in some regions.139 Once-flourishing industries shut down. By the 1640s reports from northern Chekiang (the hinterland of Shanghai) spoke of ‘mass starvation, hordes of beggars, infanticide and cannibalism’.140




By 1642 the great city of Soochow [on the lower Yangtze] was in visible decline, with many homes vacant and falling into ruin, while the once-rich countryside had become a no man’s land which only armed men dared enter.141

Historians often explain this crisis, like the earlier ones, in terms of overpopulation or harvest failures due to global changes in climate.142 But ‘rice was available in the Yangtze delta even during the terrible “famines” that plagued the country during the early 1640s... People simply lacked sufficient funds to pay for it’.143

The crises were, in fact, rooted in the organisation of Chinese society. The state and the bureaucratic class which staffed it had encouraged economic expansion in the aftermath of the crisis of the 14th century. But they soon began to fear some of the side-effects, particularly the growing influence of merchants. There was a sudden end to the great naval voyages to India and Africa in 1433 (so ensuring it was ships from Europe which ‘discovered’ China, rather than the other way round).144 ‘The major concern of the Ming empire was not to allow coastal trade to disturb the social life of its agrarian society’.145 Its rulers could not stop all overseas trade. What today would be called a ‘black economy’ grew up in coastal regions, and there were bitter armed clashes with ‘pirates’ controlling such areas. But the state measures cramped the development of the new forms of production.

Meanwhile, the ever-growing unproductive expenditure of the state was an enormous drain on the economy. Under emperor Wan-li, for instance, there were 45 princes of the first rank, each receiving incomes equal to 600 tons of grain a year, and 23,000 nobles of lesser rank. More than half the tax revenues of the provinces of Shansi and Honan went on paying these allowances. A war with Japan for control of Korea ‘completely exhausted the treasury’.146

Harman, _People's History of the World_, Chapter 4, 'The last flowering of
Asia’s empires', p. 219, pp. 222-223