A few words

[Imperial Power]

There is no social system more rational, benevolent, or just than laissez-faire capitalism; no social system which can bring to man as much freedom, prosperity, and peace as laissez-faire capitalism; and ironically, even with socialism in its death throes all over the world, there is no social system which is still more misunderstood than laissez-faire capitalism. This ignorance has lead well-meaning people to believe that capitalism is the system of exploitation, monopoly, and class warfare. Yet without exception, all accusations that are made against capitalism rest upon a flawed moral theory or an economic fallacy, or in other words, to condemn capitalism is to misrepresent capitalism.

[libereco]

oh thats great.
Now you can exchange a few words and use the same text for: Fascism, Communism, Anarchism or whatever else you choose.

[Jurhael]

laissez-faire capitalism...1/3 of the populace living in poverty, especially the elderly. Company towns, shantytowns, gunboat diplomacy, Boss Tweed, a punishing business cycle, union busting goons...wowowow...how benevolant.

[vox]

Imperialist,

Your post lacks content. You've stated conclusions without any support. It's a typical tactic by those who are desperate, but it doesn't wash here, see?

Your bold claims have the weight of a feather. Without supporting arguments, it's just more capitalist propaganda, yes? Yes.

Your claim that capitalism brings peace is especially suspect. Please start by supporting that outrageous claim, or keep your mouth shut.

vox

[peaccenicked]

Imperial, friend, I thought I had you pegged, but I really don't want to get personal. Now, I believe your purpose
on this site is to bring amusement. Your not just trying to teach your granny to suck eggs but to swallow poisoned mushrooms. None of what you are saying is new to me except " to condemn capitalism is to misrepresent it." There is so much distorted thinking here. It is difficult to begin but even so, Let me try to untangle some of the knots in your mind.
Yet you say there can be no valid criticism of capitalism a priori because to do so would be to misrepresent it.
It is a little like Descarte's ontilogical proof of gods existence. For to prove God exists, you have to predicate god exists a priori or beforehand. So what you have done is predicated capitalism, with qualities
and features that must be valid because any other discription that oppose your own (and is condemning) is necessarily untrue. You have not shown this but merely inferred that your statements are undeniable.
you do this to pre-empt any questioning of your position. This was a favourite method of Stalin who we both dislike.
When it comes to your 'undeniable' propositions about capitalism. You have made an ideal out of laissez faire capitalism. All of which are highly contentious and to be
blunt vacuous based on no empirical evidence other than your own deluded thoughts about the nature of the world.
Here is a reasonable definition I hope you agree from a modern encyclopedia.
laissez-faire

Pronounced As: lesa fâr [Fr.,=leave alone], in economics and politics, doctrine that an economic system functions best when there is no interference by government. It is based on the belief that the natural economic order tends, when undisturbed by artificial stimulus or regulation, to secure the maximum well-being for the individual and therefore for the community as a whole.
There it does sound agreeable, if its tenets were based on rational assumptions. However, it is not. To begin.
Libertarian philosophy proceeds with the presumption that “human rights” are intrinsic to a self-evident and moral “human nature” (a nature abstracted from its interconnections with social relations). It was using these ideological grounds that the American ruling class—having been endowed by their creator “with certain inalienable rights” which had been violated by the King of England—declared its independence. It is with this understanding that libertarians posit rights and freedoms as ideals which, in the corrupting milieu of actual society, are “deviated” from.
To continue the history lesson.
The Bill of Rights was to guarantee the maintenance of private power against the State, should the State fall into the hands of “the people.” What this meant in practice was keeping the State apparatuses out of the hands of the vast majority. It was easy to generate widespread popular support for this solution to the problem of freedom because bourgeois revolutions (like that of the United States) are made possible in part by a popular distrust of the (feudal) State. Once this private power is organized by the bourgeoisie and directed against the majority of the population, the relatively disorganized resistance of the majority cannot brake the consolidation of the bourgeois order. Thus the revolutionary leadership during the American revolution was distrustful of the common people, but had to organize, mobilize, and arm them (excluding slaves, American Indians, and women, whom they did not dare arm) to fight the British without risking that they might take the power of governance into their own hands. While there were numerous attempts to do just that, the common soldiers were successfully demobilized after the victory. The Constitution and Bill of Rights formalized the victory of the bourgeois revolution over not only English capital with its vestiges of the feudal order, but over the mass of people as well.
To understand further, you should be acquainted with our own roots.
First of all, though, we have to determine the means of carrying out such a critical explanation. Contrary to dominant understandings, the Marxist method is a materialist one. This means that we base our critique and explanation not on what people (and especially leaders) think or say, but upon their practices and the effects of those practices. That is, we begin by asking what kinds of relations do individuals and groups enter into, what kinds of needs, capacities and interdependencies get formed on the basis of these relations, and what kinds of possibilities for action and change follow from these needs, capacities and interdependencies. Only within this framework can one discuss the consciousness and intentions of individuals and groups, that is, the “ideas” which guide social agents in their struggles to transform reality. In other words, ideas represent and advance specific interests, in conflict with other interests; they do not form these interests out of some abstract “moral” principle.
Hence we look beyond your 'moral' principles and look at the conflicts involved. You see no conflicts. Yet the reality and not your delusions of capitalist reality are felt
everywhere.
A look at the industrialized countries shows that the path to riches came not from the unilateral opening of borders, but from closing borders in order to protect emerging industries from bigger rivals. Only when these industries became strong did the appetite for free trade gain strength.

Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and other European nations pursued such strategies historically, as have the most successful Asian economies in recent times. The experiment of imposing free market reforms via the IMF and World Bank in the past two decades, on the other hand, has been an unmitigated disaster for regions like Africa and Latin America. Simply put, no country has gotten rich by leaving the process of development to market forces alone.

Interestingly, even the corporations pushing free market globalization do not really want true free trade. They want to get rid of those regulations that in any way inhibit profits (like environmental regulations), but will go to the wall to defend structures that enhance profits (like intellectual property laws).

Of course, opening up borders may provide benefits to certain segments of the population of a poor country. In every poor country, there is always some 5-10% who enjoy very high standards of living. When this group benefits, this may even bring up the country's GDP per capita, but the gains remain illusory for those at the bottom.
Your world view is eclectic, you bring things together to
to fit a preconcieved theory, your answers are always tit for tat . you always defend by attacking and so you never prove any of your own statements.
Here is a christrian evaluation of socialism for you to read.
Socialism’s Obituary Is Premature

by Philip Wogaman

J. Philip Wogaman is professor of Christian social ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. This article appeared in The Christian Century, May 30-June 6, 1990, pps. 570-572. Copyright by The Christian Century Foundation; used by permission. Current articles and subscription information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. Article prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The new conventional wisdom has pronounced socialism dead. Economists of the Austrian and Chicago schools (von Mises, Hayek, Friedman) long ago announced that it would and should die. In the 1970s a number of influential neoconservatives embraced capitalism with the enthusiasm of new converts. Now even committed socialists like Robert Heilbroner have conceded defeat. In a celebrated New Yorker article, Heilbroner put it dramatically: "Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over; capitalism has won" (January 23, 1989). The experience of the socialist countries, he acknowledged, makes clear that the marketplace distributes goods better than "the queues of a planned economy." While Heilbroner issued somber warnings about the possible effects of the apparent victory of capitalism, his remarks helped symbolize the intellectual disarray of the socialist movement.

The revolutionary changes of 1989-90 in Eastern Europe, and their echoes on other continents, have helped provoke the speculation about the bankruptcy of socialism. In more and more Eastern European countries, freely elected legislatures are initiating economic reforms based on free-market principles. The scope of this development dawned on me last fall while I participated in a Christian-Marxist dialogue in Washington, D.C., with visitors from Hungary, Yugoslavia and East Germany. Most of the Eastern Europeans were ostensibly Marxist, but it quickly became evident that they were distancing themselves from previous ideological commitments. In an effort to draw their views out further, I asked whether we were likely to see something like the "socialism with a human face" to which the 1968 Czech reform movement had aspired. "It is already too late for that," one of them replied. The movement toward capitalism would go much further. Others agreed.

In the West, Reaganites and Thatcherites—whether old conservatives or neoconservatives—think they are entitled to dance a bit on the grave of socialism. Economic recovery is in full swing here; socialism is dead there. It only remains to be seen how quickly and how well the whole world can be transformed in accordance with free-market principles.

Nevertheless, we do well to pause for a moment before joining the celebration. Things have a way of reversing themselves, particularly ideological perspectives. We may, ironically, be instructed by the extraordinary comeback of laissez-faire capitalism itself. I must acknowledge that I never expected this. Indeed, when writing a book on comparative economic ideologies in the 1970s I seriously considered eliminating laissez-faire capitalism as wholly obsolete. That would have been quite a mistake. It would be a similar error to eliminate socialism from such a study today.

Though the Eastern European situation will remain in flux for some time, ordinary citizens in East Germany and elsewhere are objecting to the abandonment of such socialist protections as guaranteed employment and medical care. Even in the West, economists are nervous about the vulnerability of the economic recovery of the 1980s and about the economic marginalization of many people. So to the extent that repudiation of socialism entails confidence in the virtues of laissez-faire capitalism, we do well to pause before accepting the new conventional wisdom. We need, at least, to know what we are abandoning and what the consequences of doing so might be.

The history of Christian thought on socialism can shed light on the question. There are. as many varieties of socialism as there are of capitalism, and Christian socialism is among the most difficult to catalog. F. D. Maurice’s mid-19th-century British movement may have been the first to use the name. He adopted it apparently to respond head-on to the critics who considered any movement in behalf of working people to be socialist. Some (though not all) of the leaders of the American Social Gospel movement were socialists—including W. D. P. Bliss, George D. Herron and Walter Rauschenbusch. In Europe, religious socialists Christoph Blumhardt and Leonhard Ragaz influenced Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. Tillich’s interwar "religious socialism" is particularly noteworthy. Today a number of liberation, black and feminist theologians are socialists.

No precise economic conception holds these various forms of Christian socialism together. Maurice aimed to engage the "unsocial Christians and the unchristian Socialists." A measure of his success is the recognition his movement gained in The Communist Manifesto, in which Marx and Engels announce that "Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat." Marx and Engels would, no doubt, have rendered the same judgment on the Social Gospel socialists’ vague formulations. Tillich’s religious socialism, which took class struggle more seriously, was also more precise in its criticism of capitalism—though he also accepted a limited place for a regulated free-market mechanism. The liberation theologians also vary in the degree of their economic precision, though a number of their leaders have been substantially influenced by variants of Marxism.

Taken as a whole, the legacy of Christian socialism may appear too ambiguous to be useful, especially in what appears to be a postsocialist world. But a consensus among Christian socialists endures in three emphases. First, they have all cared about socially and economically marginalized people. The phrase "preferential option for the poor" is the recent invention of the Latin Americans, but the idea is characteristic of all Christian socialisms. They believe that Christians have a special responsibility to those who have been excluded from decision-making in the economic sphere. Second, they all have criticized the notion of the "invisible hand"—that the unrestrained market can be trusted to care best for the public good and the well-being of the poor. Third, they have affirmed the collective responsibility of society to deal with economic problems. Human life in society is not simply the intersection of producing, consuming, trading and competing individuals. Life is more communal than that. People can work together to provide for the common good.

The fact that the Christian socialist vision has generally been theologically well grounded may have contributed to its ideological vagueness—for all ideological commitments are relativized by the element of religious transcendence. The idea of transcendence has also influenced the democratic political commitments of most Christian socialists. Christian socialist formulations of economic norms have had to be provisional and pragmatic, but their pragmatism has usually been informed by human caring and by commitments to unity and justice within the community.

Obviously, the collapse of Eastern European socialism—if indeed it is collapsing—cannot be taken as a judgment upon Christian socialism. That collapse is, if anything, precisely what many Christian socialists would have wanted and expected. The Christian socialist vision was not of an atheistic, paternalistic, totalitarian state that does not uphold the creative dignity of every person as an accepted member of the community. Christian socialists have generally understood that there cannot be genuine community without freedom, just as there can be no genuine community without transcendent responsibility.

The ultimate irony could be that the "last socialists" to remain in Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. might be Christians. Conceivably, the only socialism that could work would be that which develops in a society deeply bonded by religious values. By that standard, Marxist-Leninist "scientific socialism," whatever its past usefulness as a vehicle for maintaining totalitarian power, could not endure.

But what about the economic consequences of Christian socialism? Though capitalism now appears to be more productive, Christian socialists would remind us that an economy exists for more than production. Economics must be the servant of the good community, not its master. The market principle can be incorporated within socialism (as the socialist economists Oskar Lange and Ota Sik noted years ago) if its subordinate role is maintained. But even the best gross national product cannot compensate for social demoralization and the exclusion of the poor from economic benefits.

These emphases prevent a facile dismissal of the recurring Christian socialist criticism of bourgeois civilization. Unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism has predictably yielded a class-divided society with vast gulfs between rich and poor. Recent figures on the growing gap between rich and poor in America offer disquieting confirmation of this point. In such a society, the market mechanism (or "discipline") has also tended to reward unethical attempts to secure competitive advantage. It has overemphasized materialistic values and subordinated public goods to private consumption. It has thus demoralized the people, rich and poor alike, and disintegrated the community. It is no accident that we in the West face the social breakdowns represented by drug abuse, murder, unethical business practices, family breakups and homelessness. Such pathologies bespeak self-centeredness and the loss of common values and purposes.

Some argue that only capitalism harnesses humanity’s inherent greed to social purposes in such a way that one advances one’s own desires by serving others. Thus, economist Walter E. Williams argues that "to get along with and serve one another doesn’t require caring about each other." Williams illustrates his point forcefully:

Take Texas ranchers who trek through the snow and blizzards each winter herding cattle just so we in Cincinnati, New York, or Detroit will have beef. Does anybody think they make these sacrifices because they care about you and me? I suspect they don’t give a damn about us; they only care about themselves. But, in the process of caring about themselves (earning money), they provide for us. I shudder to think how much beef would get to market if it depended only on love and human kindness [Frazer Forum, March 1990].

But the Christian socialists would remind us that a system that harnesses greed this way also has great power to destroy. Recalling the Wall Street and the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s, they might also question its economic credentials. It seems that even capitalism cannot be made to function in the human interest without a little love and human kindness. Can any system allow us to put our moral sensitivities on hold and automatically confer needed benefits?

The question remains, however, whether any form of socialism can be made to work economically. I have avoided designating myself a socialist, largely because that term is so often taken to mean monolithic public ownership and operation of the means of production. I am not persuaded that government on a large scale can be sensitive enough to human freedom, creativity and needs to justify a public monopoly over economic institutions. Many self-styled Christian or religious socialists express the same concern. This may, finally, come down to a question of agreeing upon labels. But it also suggests a possible point of convergence between Christian socialists and those who prefer to call themselves capitalists in the mixed-economy or social-welfare capitalist sense.

Clearly, such a convergence requires overall public accountability of whatever market institutions are desired, in a society where government is itself democratically responsible. The market system should serve the community, not vice versa. Government has a redistributive responsibility, ensuring that class differences do not become too great and protecting the more vulnerable members of the community. Government is also responsible for the creation of many of the public goods that serve the community.

One of my concerns about capitalist triumphalism is that in rejecting socialist totalitarianism people may reject useful public enterprises of various kinds. By arguing that socialism doesn’t work, free-market ideologues may enforce the misguided notion that no publicly owned and operated venture can possibly succeed.

If an all-encompassing socialism has proved too cumbersome, inefficient and corruptible, that does not mean that disaggregated forms of socialism are unworkable. There is a long history of successful governmental ownership and operation of enterprises delivering goods and services. Our own country pioneered the development of the vast socialistic enterprise of public education from kindergarten through college. In Britain the national health service is sufficiently successful that even the deeply capitalistic Thatcher government could not muster enough support to privatize it. (Meanwhile, our own system of health care delivery is in crisis.)

Public institutions are not necessarily corrupt or inefficient. That ideological assertion is outrageously unfair to the dedicated teachers, public health nurses and doctors, foresters, highway engineers and other public servants who work creatively, competently and with devotion to the common good. We have a Christian responsibility to pray for such public servants and help in whatever way we can to sustain them in their calling.

Thus, it is premature to dismiss Christian socialism. Its critique of the excesses and brutalities and idolatries of the free market still needs to be heard. Its reminder that human beings can work together for the common good is still compelling. Its insistence that no economic system is good enough to be workable without reference to moral values remains true. Its endorsement of specific ventures in "disaggregated socialism" will continue to merit serious debate.









(Edited by peaccenicked at 1:22 pm on Jan. 28, 2002)

[Imperial Power]

So basically all your going to say is "No your wrong"

[Imperial Power]

I think many of you do understand why I am here. Every thread is a victory for me. I'm obviously not going to convince socialist drones like vox and peace that Capitalism is the key to protecting the free world. But many people look at these threads without responding and every person that reads and learns of truths of capitalism. Who thinks for himself and not from ill thought leftist propaganda will be a victory for me. The longer I stay, the more I post, the more will see the light.

Capitalism is the ultimate form of government!

[MJM]

Sorry to tell you this IP but you're delusional if you think you're showing anything other than blind ignorance and the need to force your beliefs on others.
If you believe so strongly why waste your time on us, you aren't even a capitalist for starters, when was the last time you made a profit?
Every thread is a victory to you LOL.
You should be thankful some people spend there time debating with you. Frankly I couldn't be bothered.

[peaccenicked]

well you are here to spread libertarian propaganda and I am here to spread anti libetarian propaganda and spread the news of capitalisms decline. you are just someone to heap ridicule on. Any reasonable minded
person can see that your behaviour on this site is disreputable. In principle it is bad manners to join a
a political group just to spout the propaganda of the enemy. It is rude. And anyone with the slightest bit of sense would question your integrity as human being.
Now that this particular message board is up. You
are here not to listen but to spout by your own admission. Who is going to be impressed by your inability to take on the commies on a simple thing like capitalist exploitation.
You used to argue but because you have lost the argument you are here to distort the argument .
How mant people come to Che-lives to hear long discredited libertarian ideas.
Try typing libertarian on a search engine. where are we.
You are not giving supply and demand.
you are supply a shoddy version of shoddy product aimed at hoodwinking the general public.
The libertarian party is finished and your ideas will go down in history with the ideological garbage of slavery
in all of it forms.
now for the cartoon
http://www.attackcartoons.com/lmvigilant.GIF

(Edited by peaccenicked at 3:47 pm on Jan. 29, 2002)

[Moskitto]

Read the bible

"Thou Shalt not be Greedy"

Self Interest=Greed
Self Interest=Greed=Evil
Capitalism=Self Interest=Greed=Evil

[Imperial Power]

You read the bible.

Although I don't think it is ethical to bring the bible into political debates I feel it is appropriate now.

Christianity does not command us to give to the government so it can give to the poor; it does not command us to give to the church so it can take care of the needy; it commands us as individuals. "Give to all those who beg from you" does not invoke any civil magistrate; it is a direct command to each of us.- Brent Baccala

How Christianity Created Capitalism
By Michael Novak

Capitalism, it is usually assumed, flowered around the same time as the Enlightenment–the eighteenth century–and, like the Enlightenment, entailed a diminution of organized religion. In fact, the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was the main locus for the first flowerings of capitalism. Max Weber located the origin of capitalism in modern Protestant cities, but today’s historians find capitalism much earlier than that in rural areas, where monasteries, especially those of the Cistercians, began to rationalize economic life.

It was the church more than any other agency, writes historian Randall Collins, that put in place what Weber called the preconditions of capitalism: the rule of law and a bureaucracy for resolving disputes rationally; a specialized and mobile labor force; the institutional permanence that allows for transgenerational investment and sustained intellectual and physical efforts, together with the accumulation of long-term capital; and a zest for discovery, enterprise, wealth creation, and new undertakings.

The Protestant Ethic without Protestantism
The people of the high Middle Ages (1100—1300) were agog with wonder at great mechanical clocks, new forms of gears for windmills and water mills, improvements in wagons and carts, shoulder harnesses for beasts of burden, the ocean-going ship rudder, eyeglasses and magnifying glasses, iron smelting and ironwork, stone cutting, and new architectural principles. So many new types of machines were invented and put to use by 1300 that historian Jean Gimpel wrote a book in 1976 called The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages.

Without the growth of capitalism, however, such technological discoveries would have been idle novelties. They would seldom have been put in the hands of ordinary human beings through swift and easy exchange. They would not have been studied and rapidly copied and improved by eager competitors. All this was made possible by freedom for enterprise, markets, and competition–and that, in turn, was provided by the Catholic Church.

The church owned nearly a third of all the land of Europe. To administer those vast holdings, it established a continent-wide system of canon law that tied together multiple jurisdictions of empire, nation, barony, bishopric, religious order, chartered city, guild, confraternity, merchants, entrepreneurs, traders, et cetera. It also provided local and regional administrative bureaucracies of arbitrators, jurists, negotiators, and judges, along with an international language, "canon law Latin."

Even the new emphasis on clerical celibacy played an important capitalist role. Its clean separation between office and person in the church broke the traditional tie between family and property that had been fostered by feudalism and its carefully plotted marriages. It also provided Europe with an extraordinarily highly motivated, literate, specialized, and mobile labor force.

The Cistercians, who eschewed the aristocratic and sedentary ways of the Benedictines and, consequently, broke farther away from feudalism, became famous as entrepreneurs. They mastered rational cost accounting, plowed all profits back into new ventures, and moved capital around from one venue to another, cutting losses where necessary, and pursuing new opportunities when feasible. They dominated iron production in central France and wool production (for export) in England. They were cheerful and energetic. "They had," Collins writes, "the Protestant ethic without Protestantism."

Being few in number, the Cistercians needed labor-saving devices. They were a great spur to technological development. Their monasteries "were the most economically effective units that had ever existed in Europe, and perhaps in the world, before that time," Gimpel writes.

Thus, the high medieval church provided the conditions for F. A. Hayek’s famous "spontaneous order" of the market to emerge. This cannot happen in lawless and chaotic times; in order to function, capitalism requires rules that allow for predictable economic activity. Under such rules, if France needs wool, prosperity can accrue to the English sheepherder who first increases his flock, systematizes his fleecers and combers, and improves the efficiency of his shipments.

In his 1991 Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II points out that the main cause of the wealth of nations is knowledge, science, know-how, discovery–in today’s jargon, "human capital." Literacy and study were the main engines of such medieval monasteries; human capital, moral and intellectual, was their primary economic advantage.

The pope also praises the modern corporation for developing within itself a model of relating the gifts of the individual to the common tasks of the firm. This ideal, too, we owe to the high medieval religious orders, not only the Benedictines and the Cistercians, but the Dominicans and Franciscans of the early thirteenth century.

Jump-Starting a Millennium of Progress
The new code of canon law at the time took care to enshrine as a legal principle that such communities, like cathedral chapters and monasteries before them, could act as legal individuals. As Collins points out, Pope Innocent IV thereby won the sobriquet "father of the modern learning of corporations." In defending the rights of the new Franciscan and the Dominican communities against the secular clergy and lay professors at the University of Paris, Thomas Aquinas wrote one of the first defenses of the role of free associations in "civil society" and the inherent right of people to form corporations.

The Catholic Church’s role helped jump-start a millennium of impressive economic progress. In ad 1000, there were barely two hundred million people in the world, most of whom were living in desperate poverty, under various tyrannies, and subject to the unchecked ravages of disease and much civic disorder. Economic development has made possible the sustenance now of more than six billion people–at a vastly higher level than one thousand years ago, and with an average lifespan almost three times as long.

No other part of the world outside Europe (and its overseas offspring) has achieved so powerful and so sustained an economic performance, raised up so many of the poor into the middle class, inspired so many inventions, discoveries, and improvements for the easing of daily life, and brought so great a diminution of age-old plagues, diseases, and ailments.

The economic historian David Landes, who describes himself as an unbeliever, points out that the main factors in this great economic achievement of Western civilization are mainly religious:


the joy in discovery that arises from each individual being an imago Dei called to be a creator;
the religious value attached to hard and good manual work;
the theological separation of the Creator from the creature, such that nature is subordinated to man, not surrounded with taboos;
the Jewish and Christian sense of linear, not cyclical, time and, therefore, of progress; and
respect for the market.

Capitalism Infused with Caritas
As the world enters the third millennium, we may hope that the church, after some generations of loss of nerve, rediscovers its old confidence in the economic order. Few things would help more in raising up all the world’s poor out of poverty. The church could lead the way in setting forth a religious and moral vision worthy of a global world, in which all live under a universally recognizable rule of law, and every individual’s gifts are nourished for the good of all.

I believe this is what the pope has in mind when he speaks of a "civilization of love." Capitalism must infused by that humble gift of love called caritas, described by Dante as "the Love that moves the Sun and all the stars." This is the love that holds families, associations, and nations together. The current tendency of many to base the spirit of capitalism on sheer materialism is a certain road to economic decline. Honesty, trust, teamwork, and respect for the law are gifts of the spirit. They cannot be bought.

[peaccenicked]

I still don't trust you
here is a cartoon
http://www.attackcartoons.com/weirdness.GIF
Here is another one
http://zena.secureforum.com/cartoons/show_...dex=display.cfm (http://zena.secureforum.com/cartoons/show_toon.cfm?toonID=85&toonList=85&index=display.cfm)

(Edited by peaccenicked at 11:27 pm on Jan. 29, 2002)

[Moskitto]

If you really want to see how the bible being related to politics talk to my brother.

He's got loads of quite right-wing looking leaflets like "What does god expect from a man?" "Does the bible contradict itself?" "What will the anti-christ be like?" which claims that the anti-christ will be a north african homosexual or something like that.

[Imperial Power]

So moskitto you agree that the bible does not say to support a socialist government?

[peaccenicked]

"the meek shall inherit the earth"
souds like a world for the poor
and
'it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a camel than to live in the kingdom of god"
There it is in black and white.

[Imperial Power]

peace that does not mean to support a socialist form of government. Giving to the poor should be done individual with thought behind it. Not by mindlessly functioning in a socialist state.

[peaccenicked]

I think it implies it. Socialism is for giving the meek
the earth and if you want the earth to be had one by one thats a pretty slow way of doing it. Are you sure you are not a mindless bureaucrat in disguise

[Moskitto]

Actually, I was talking about the hardline right-wing (traditionalist, not capitalist) literature that churches sadly distribute.

[pce]

"I'm obviously not going to convince socialist drones like vox and peace that Capitalism is the key to protecting the free world. But many people look at these threads without responding and every person that reads and learns of truths of capitalism. Who thinks for himself and not from ill thought leftist propaganda will be a victory for me."

those "drones" do more to change my mind than you. they back themselves up. you're the one who's spreading propoganda, not them. you're the one giving praise for your system without support. that is prop. to me.

[Supermodel]

The anti-christ is a north african homosexual?

OMG he works in our mailroom at the office.....

[Xvall]

Capitalism is most certainly NOT the ultimate form of government.

Well, this is my first post. I would like to give a little explemation about myself before I start going around making comments. I don't feel like telling you my racial heratige, because I personally don't think it's important. I am currently fourteen years old, and attending high school. I am basically a Communist Revolutionary, and I have no problem with Anarchists, Socialists, and most other Left-Wingers. I believe that we all have the same goals in common, which are to make the world a much better place than it is. I have not personally attended any demonstrations or Left-Wing Protests, but I am a member of several communist webpages. I am not a "Die Hard Stalinist" and respect most Communist, Socialist, and Arachist revolutionaries. I believe that we must work together, and that these seperate groups of ours are seeming to make us squabble among each other, instead of faceing the real problem at hand. If we unite instead of argueing about 'who was the greates revolutionary' or 'which side is right', we will be able to accomplish anything that obstructs our path to true peace and unity.

- Drake Dracoli

[Imperial Power]

Drake maybe you could explain why communism is the best? I'd like to know how you believe it.

[Forever capitalism]

IP, communism is great because one man has the right to rule without consent over a population. He exploits the people and sends them to work and toil in fields and factories whilst he accumulates the benefits of their labour. Meanwhile no elections, no freedom of speech or press, no change, no individuality, no money, no food and no hope are all wonderfully manifested through communism. Fortunately most people in the world escaped it, my heart goes out to those who still are suppressed and exploited under communist/totalitarian regimes.

[peaccenicked]

FOREVER illiterate.
http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/top...rum=22&topic=41 (http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/topic.pl?forum=22&topic=41)