The Sloth
11th August 2006, 20:17
some people might dismiss this as "banter".. oh well, soon enough, i'll get tired of responding to insults.
Tigerman: The people of Africa starve because they chose Marxist idoelogs to lead them.
there are no marxist ideologues. there are half-hearted marxist ideas, and political opportunists, but no serious marxist ideologues. there was nothing even close to resembling a socialist state, so i'm not sure where that argument comes from. well, actually, i do know where it comes from.. i just happen to think it silly that people still repeat it. and i'll show you why.
regardless, africa is generally far too weak for any serious experiments in socialism or capitalism. africa has a bit of capital, but no capitalist relations. there is no real investment in the un-profitable sectors of the african economy, which makes sense in terms of corporate self-interest, but not in terms of stimulating african growth. i'd love to see independent capitalism thriving in africa, with typical bourgeois elections modeled after europe and america, temporarily. problem is, the big-shot capitalists don't. intensive capitalist investment from the late 1800s into the mid-late 1900s in, say, rhodesia, aggravated the un-even development which eventually shaped the economy there. profits dropped for a while, then, after a time, usually a couple of decades in between, continued and, ultimately, created profits in the sectors that were not exactly beneficial to real structural development. today, rhodesia is now zimbabwe, and isn't doing too well (more reasons for this will be given later on in my post), as your post noted.
this is fairly typical, even in countries that are doing relatively better now. capital is shuffled from place to place, without taking the time, nor the consideration, to develop actual capitalist relations that would sustain development in the region.. until, of course, it would cease to be socially progressive.
but, i'd like to get back to those pesky african marxists. besides the obvious patrice lumumba, there are many other african leaders that are labeled "communist," sometimes (or, rather, usually) quite illegitimately. the little pool of marxists includes the later-liberal ahmed sekou toure, the religious traditionalist julius kambarage nyere, kawme nkrumah, and leopold sedar senghor, among others. i'd hesitate to label most of these anything more than nationalists, some with leftist leanings, most with traditionalist approaches. some won economic stability, others did nothing. still others helped destroy the economy, for more reasons than one. regardless, their "contributions" were rather insignificant, and, in the greater scheme of things, in the context of the later-economic readjustment programs, in the context of un-even capital investment, and so on, they were pretty marginal as people, and even more so as politicians. exceptions exist, but they tend not to be marxist, but reactionary. robert mugabe, for one. more on him later on.
the majority of the so-called "marxist" leaders are either not leftists at all, or simply pan-african "traditionalists" that incidentally incorporated socialist ideas into their programs. those that were commited marxists either forgot about marxism, failed to bring about any real communist changes, or, in the rare case that communist programs were introduced, failed them. generally, however, marxism was and is a rather minor point there.. it's not so much that the attempts were unsuccessful, they simply never got off the ground, and for very good reasons. in a region where there's no development, expecting socialist progress is a bit much, especially in the wake of those forced neoliberal policies.
anyway, janus made a good point:
Are there any socialist states in Africa? There were some Marxist-Leninist based movements but few of them actually gained power except in Angola.
Africans are more concerned with food and their own lives than with political ideologies. Politics and promises mean nothing if you're caught in a famine.
Zimbabwe, a country with cotton and maize production and natural resources of coal has suffered greatly under President Robert Mugabe. He recently declared all farmlands to be nationalized, removing private property from its citizens for growing their crop. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced out of their home and the land bulldozed leaving behind a wasteland of starvation. Urban areas are no longer allowed to grow their own food forcing the prevention of illegal trade of desperate people. This recent tragedy reminds us of history that took place during Stalin’s reign in 1928-29, a period known as the collectivization. Nearly five million Soviet citizens were starved intentionally in the process in which the state forcefully removed the private ownership of the farmland.
the fact that mugabe is even mentioned in the context of marxism or even moderate leftism is absurd. mugabe was, at one point, a more or less enthusiastic wannabe-politician with some rather confused ideas on marxism. that's pretty much indisputable. today, that's not the case any longer, except for the politician part.. he's certainly that, and more. he's despised by the zimbabwan left, and has been pretty much from the beginning. his politics include the capitulation to structural adjustment programs, anti-homosexual legislation, participation in the second congo war (during which he hoped to, along with kabila, line his corporate pockets with congo's natural wealth), concessions to the elite land-owning minority, the systematic destruction of poor people's homes, neighborhoods, and towns, and, finally, that "nationalization" project you quoted -- the land nationalization. realistically, it had nothing to do with empowering the poor.. it had to do with bringing the old anti-colonial war veterans of the 60s and 70s to his side. after they were given the land, they became mugabe's personal paramilitary force. if he genuinely cared about leftism, he would have addressed the anti-colonials during the 80s and 90s, when they needed help the most, instead of turning them into mercenaries the second he faced severe and popular resistance to his dictatorship. whatever state-concessions he gave, whatever land reforms he introduced were nothing but ploys.. they were, at bottom, a sham like mugabe's entire career. and, whatever the shortcomings of mugabe, the structural readjustment programs were probably just as bad.. a year after they were introduced to zimbabwe, the nation fell into economic disaster, and hasn't recovered since. all of these programs failed to meet their growth goals by large margins, pushing zimbabwe further and further into debt, finally degenerating the economy pretty much completely. to say that zimbabwe's failure is created by socialism would be less than accurate, to say the least. ZAMU adhered to the structural adjustment programs, resulting in unprecendented and fantastic problems. that rather predictable outcome has been pretty much universal.. all of sub-saharan africa suffered similarly with structural readjustment, and some places are even worse off.
those structural adjustment programs virtually controlled many african governments, and still do so to this day.. and, again, the exploited are in no position to change that democratically. the IMF and the world bank are outside their jurisdiction, after all. states were insulated, rather than developed, and those closer to the suffering, such as nigerian economist bade onimode, are able to deal with the situation critically. john saul: "The situation in which Africa finds itself, shaped both by its long established weaknesses and by the terms of its current subordination, makes it a mere taker of global capitalist signals, forced at least for the moment merely to slot into the role... that has been defined for it by capital and its functionaries beyond the continent's borders."
and, another note on ESAF:
Developing countries worldwide implementing ESAF programs have experienced lower economic growth than those who have been outside of these programs. African countries subject to ESAF programs have fared even worse than other countries pursuing ESAF programs; countries in Africa subject to ESAF programs have actually seen their per capita incomes decline. It will be years before these populations recover the per capita incomes that they had prior to structural adjustment.
While African countries urgently need to increase spending on health care, education, and sanitation, IMF structural adjustment programs have forced these countries to reduce such spending. In African countries with ESAF programs, the average amount of per capita government spending on education actually declined between 1986 and 1996.
Neither IMF-mandated macroeconomic policies nor debt relief under the IMF-sponsored HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) Initiative have sufficiently reduced these countries' debt burdens. Total external debt as a share of GNP for ESAF countries increased from 71.1% to 87.8% between 1985-1995. For sub-Saharan Africa debt rose as a share of GDP from 58% in 1988 to 70% in 1996. IMF debt relief has not sufficiently reduced the debt service burden of Uganda or Mozambique, the two African HIPC countries that have proceeded furthest under the HIPC initiative. Poor countries continue to divert resources from expenditures on health care and education in order to service external debt.
again, these policies are not the fault of socialism.. nor are they the fault of politicians (although, of course, quite a few of those bastards can be blamed for many things, as outlined above in my post).
Economics is not about justice.
it doesn't have to be, although it certainly can. your arbitrary preferences are your arbitrary preferences.. just don't confuse them for facts. remember, ethics are never a priori.
It is about man as an economiser.
a non-factual conclusion taken from a metaphysical premise. again, nothing wrong with that, because my ethical conclusions move through the same non-factual, creative argument.
There is nothing just about stealing from some to give to others.
it depends on your conception of theft, and the metaphysical premises that accompany it. mine just happen to be different. i don't know how to discuss something so specific without lengthening this already-long post.. you should bring up a more general point, as that would reveal much about our respective premises and conclusions.
Social justice will have to be for the people to decide without the help of their government. Government is all about oppression.
absolutely agreed.
Coercive force is the only tool.
well, i don't know how to take this point philosophically. coercion is inevitable, anywhere and everywhere, unless you're able to prevent a reaction to physical and social circumstances. just as rocks are coerced in space, we'll continue to be coerced by physical demands and necessities. hunger coerces us to eat in the same way that gangsters coerce us to give up our wallets.
If you chose to give your time to your girlfriend then it is a choice. You are making a voluntary donation. I have no problem with any of that.
indeed, but my example was prompted by your discussion of entitlement to another person's life.
Someone else has claimed the fruits of my labor and they are taking them by force.
the marxist understanding is that some labor is compensated too much or too little. and, depending on your ethics, certainly a manufacturer of torture-devices should not be rewarded. or a rapist that labors to build his body up so he can easily take advantage of his victims.. rape may be labor, indeed, but the sexual or possibly monetary compensation certainly isn't justifiable. now, i know you'll go into the "initiation of force" and such, proving that such things should not be compensated. however, that implies that your philosophy, just like communism, is a philosophy is stipulations.
the only difference, however, is that i extend these stipulations a lot further. and, given the fact that you offer at least a little leeway to keep your ideas from becoming reprehensible to your sensibilities, there's no reason to not take these ethical considerations to their logical conclusion.
When parents "sexually abuse" their children that is called a crime and we put those people in jail and hand the children over to the relatives first and the church if the family fails to act.
again, this comes down to stipulations. i simply have more of them in my philosophy.
of course, i find putting children into the custody of the church a little nauseating, to put it lightly. the fact that these kids might grow up to be teenagers afraid of their own bodies is tragic, if not outright criminal. i'd put religion, if imposed on children, in the same category of psychological abuse as i would put a parent teaching his kid to scream at the sight of carton boxes, plastic bags, silk curtains, and blue-ink pens.
Tigerman: The people of Africa starve because they chose Marxist idoelogs to lead them.
there are no marxist ideologues. there are half-hearted marxist ideas, and political opportunists, but no serious marxist ideologues. there was nothing even close to resembling a socialist state, so i'm not sure where that argument comes from. well, actually, i do know where it comes from.. i just happen to think it silly that people still repeat it. and i'll show you why.
regardless, africa is generally far too weak for any serious experiments in socialism or capitalism. africa has a bit of capital, but no capitalist relations. there is no real investment in the un-profitable sectors of the african economy, which makes sense in terms of corporate self-interest, but not in terms of stimulating african growth. i'd love to see independent capitalism thriving in africa, with typical bourgeois elections modeled after europe and america, temporarily. problem is, the big-shot capitalists don't. intensive capitalist investment from the late 1800s into the mid-late 1900s in, say, rhodesia, aggravated the un-even development which eventually shaped the economy there. profits dropped for a while, then, after a time, usually a couple of decades in between, continued and, ultimately, created profits in the sectors that were not exactly beneficial to real structural development. today, rhodesia is now zimbabwe, and isn't doing too well (more reasons for this will be given later on in my post), as your post noted.
this is fairly typical, even in countries that are doing relatively better now. capital is shuffled from place to place, without taking the time, nor the consideration, to develop actual capitalist relations that would sustain development in the region.. until, of course, it would cease to be socially progressive.
but, i'd like to get back to those pesky african marxists. besides the obvious patrice lumumba, there are many other african leaders that are labeled "communist," sometimes (or, rather, usually) quite illegitimately. the little pool of marxists includes the later-liberal ahmed sekou toure, the religious traditionalist julius kambarage nyere, kawme nkrumah, and leopold sedar senghor, among others. i'd hesitate to label most of these anything more than nationalists, some with leftist leanings, most with traditionalist approaches. some won economic stability, others did nothing. still others helped destroy the economy, for more reasons than one. regardless, their "contributions" were rather insignificant, and, in the greater scheme of things, in the context of the later-economic readjustment programs, in the context of un-even capital investment, and so on, they were pretty marginal as people, and even more so as politicians. exceptions exist, but they tend not to be marxist, but reactionary. robert mugabe, for one. more on him later on.
the majority of the so-called "marxist" leaders are either not leftists at all, or simply pan-african "traditionalists" that incidentally incorporated socialist ideas into their programs. those that were commited marxists either forgot about marxism, failed to bring about any real communist changes, or, in the rare case that communist programs were introduced, failed them. generally, however, marxism was and is a rather minor point there.. it's not so much that the attempts were unsuccessful, they simply never got off the ground, and for very good reasons. in a region where there's no development, expecting socialist progress is a bit much, especially in the wake of those forced neoliberal policies.
anyway, janus made a good point:
Are there any socialist states in Africa? There were some Marxist-Leninist based movements but few of them actually gained power except in Angola.
Africans are more concerned with food and their own lives than with political ideologies. Politics and promises mean nothing if you're caught in a famine.
Zimbabwe, a country with cotton and maize production and natural resources of coal has suffered greatly under President Robert Mugabe. He recently declared all farmlands to be nationalized, removing private property from its citizens for growing their crop. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced out of their home and the land bulldozed leaving behind a wasteland of starvation. Urban areas are no longer allowed to grow their own food forcing the prevention of illegal trade of desperate people. This recent tragedy reminds us of history that took place during Stalin’s reign in 1928-29, a period known as the collectivization. Nearly five million Soviet citizens were starved intentionally in the process in which the state forcefully removed the private ownership of the farmland.
the fact that mugabe is even mentioned in the context of marxism or even moderate leftism is absurd. mugabe was, at one point, a more or less enthusiastic wannabe-politician with some rather confused ideas on marxism. that's pretty much indisputable. today, that's not the case any longer, except for the politician part.. he's certainly that, and more. he's despised by the zimbabwan left, and has been pretty much from the beginning. his politics include the capitulation to structural adjustment programs, anti-homosexual legislation, participation in the second congo war (during which he hoped to, along with kabila, line his corporate pockets with congo's natural wealth), concessions to the elite land-owning minority, the systematic destruction of poor people's homes, neighborhoods, and towns, and, finally, that "nationalization" project you quoted -- the land nationalization. realistically, it had nothing to do with empowering the poor.. it had to do with bringing the old anti-colonial war veterans of the 60s and 70s to his side. after they were given the land, they became mugabe's personal paramilitary force. if he genuinely cared about leftism, he would have addressed the anti-colonials during the 80s and 90s, when they needed help the most, instead of turning them into mercenaries the second he faced severe and popular resistance to his dictatorship. whatever state-concessions he gave, whatever land reforms he introduced were nothing but ploys.. they were, at bottom, a sham like mugabe's entire career. and, whatever the shortcomings of mugabe, the structural readjustment programs were probably just as bad.. a year after they were introduced to zimbabwe, the nation fell into economic disaster, and hasn't recovered since. all of these programs failed to meet their growth goals by large margins, pushing zimbabwe further and further into debt, finally degenerating the economy pretty much completely. to say that zimbabwe's failure is created by socialism would be less than accurate, to say the least. ZAMU adhered to the structural adjustment programs, resulting in unprecendented and fantastic problems. that rather predictable outcome has been pretty much universal.. all of sub-saharan africa suffered similarly with structural readjustment, and some places are even worse off.
those structural adjustment programs virtually controlled many african governments, and still do so to this day.. and, again, the exploited are in no position to change that democratically. the IMF and the world bank are outside their jurisdiction, after all. states were insulated, rather than developed, and those closer to the suffering, such as nigerian economist bade onimode, are able to deal with the situation critically. john saul: "The situation in which Africa finds itself, shaped both by its long established weaknesses and by the terms of its current subordination, makes it a mere taker of global capitalist signals, forced at least for the moment merely to slot into the role... that has been defined for it by capital and its functionaries beyond the continent's borders."
and, another note on ESAF:
Developing countries worldwide implementing ESAF programs have experienced lower economic growth than those who have been outside of these programs. African countries subject to ESAF programs have fared even worse than other countries pursuing ESAF programs; countries in Africa subject to ESAF programs have actually seen their per capita incomes decline. It will be years before these populations recover the per capita incomes that they had prior to structural adjustment.
While African countries urgently need to increase spending on health care, education, and sanitation, IMF structural adjustment programs have forced these countries to reduce such spending. In African countries with ESAF programs, the average amount of per capita government spending on education actually declined between 1986 and 1996.
Neither IMF-mandated macroeconomic policies nor debt relief under the IMF-sponsored HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) Initiative have sufficiently reduced these countries' debt burdens. Total external debt as a share of GNP for ESAF countries increased from 71.1% to 87.8% between 1985-1995. For sub-Saharan Africa debt rose as a share of GDP from 58% in 1988 to 70% in 1996. IMF debt relief has not sufficiently reduced the debt service burden of Uganda or Mozambique, the two African HIPC countries that have proceeded furthest under the HIPC initiative. Poor countries continue to divert resources from expenditures on health care and education in order to service external debt.
again, these policies are not the fault of socialism.. nor are they the fault of politicians (although, of course, quite a few of those bastards can be blamed for many things, as outlined above in my post).
Economics is not about justice.
it doesn't have to be, although it certainly can. your arbitrary preferences are your arbitrary preferences.. just don't confuse them for facts. remember, ethics are never a priori.
It is about man as an economiser.
a non-factual conclusion taken from a metaphysical premise. again, nothing wrong with that, because my ethical conclusions move through the same non-factual, creative argument.
There is nothing just about stealing from some to give to others.
it depends on your conception of theft, and the metaphysical premises that accompany it. mine just happen to be different. i don't know how to discuss something so specific without lengthening this already-long post.. you should bring up a more general point, as that would reveal much about our respective premises and conclusions.
Social justice will have to be for the people to decide without the help of their government. Government is all about oppression.
absolutely agreed.
Coercive force is the only tool.
well, i don't know how to take this point philosophically. coercion is inevitable, anywhere and everywhere, unless you're able to prevent a reaction to physical and social circumstances. just as rocks are coerced in space, we'll continue to be coerced by physical demands and necessities. hunger coerces us to eat in the same way that gangsters coerce us to give up our wallets.
If you chose to give your time to your girlfriend then it is a choice. You are making a voluntary donation. I have no problem with any of that.
indeed, but my example was prompted by your discussion of entitlement to another person's life.
Someone else has claimed the fruits of my labor and they are taking them by force.
the marxist understanding is that some labor is compensated too much or too little. and, depending on your ethics, certainly a manufacturer of torture-devices should not be rewarded. or a rapist that labors to build his body up so he can easily take advantage of his victims.. rape may be labor, indeed, but the sexual or possibly monetary compensation certainly isn't justifiable. now, i know you'll go into the "initiation of force" and such, proving that such things should not be compensated. however, that implies that your philosophy, just like communism, is a philosophy is stipulations.
the only difference, however, is that i extend these stipulations a lot further. and, given the fact that you offer at least a little leeway to keep your ideas from becoming reprehensible to your sensibilities, there's no reason to not take these ethical considerations to their logical conclusion.
When parents "sexually abuse" their children that is called a crime and we put those people in jail and hand the children over to the relatives first and the church if the family fails to act.
again, this comes down to stipulations. i simply have more of them in my philosophy.
of course, i find putting children into the custody of the church a little nauseating, to put it lightly. the fact that these kids might grow up to be teenagers afraid of their own bodies is tragic, if not outright criminal. i'd put religion, if imposed on children, in the same category of psychological abuse as i would put a parent teaching his kid to scream at the sight of carton boxes, plastic bags, silk curtains, and blue-ink pens.