Idealism indeed

[Schrödinger's Cat]

All nations operating around capitalism have their governments infiltrated by the capitalist class: regardless of what country you visit, corporations are subsidized, tax loop holes are made present, and unfair business restrictions targeted at smaller businesses are present. This has been true for decades - over a hundred years, if talking about such examples as Britain.

To say that this class will somehow "lose" power when you grant them the privilege of property is pure idealism. :thumbup1: Utopians.

[RGacky3]

infilrated is the wrong word, Economic power trumps political power when it comes to real authority, they don't need to infiltrate, they have the money, they have the power, the political powers MUST bow to the corporations.

Porperty makes class, not the other way around. If there was no property, there would be no class.

[Bright Banana Beard]

If there was no property, there would be no class. Best quote I have ever seen for a while.

[Self-Owner]

All nations operating around capitalism have their governments infiltrated by the capitalist class: regardless of what country you visit, corporations are subsidized, tax loop holes are made present, and unfair business restrictions targeted at smaller businesses are present. This has been true for decades - over a hundred years, if talking about such examples as Britain.

To say that this class will somehow "lose" power when you grant them the privilege of property is pure idealism. :thumbup1: Utopians.


It's not so much the privilege of property that is the root of all the things you're talking about, it's the privilege of government.

The real idealists are the people like you who think that abolishing property is the way to eliminate the dominance of one class over the other(s).

If you don't have private property, you need another system which determines how people get stuff and how much stuff they should get. Every time private property has been abolished in practice, the system replacing it is inevitably a highly centralized one - in which, of course, it is a group of people who make the distributive decisions. And as history has shown time and time again, such a class of people (say, the Party in the USSR or China) is usually a) very well entrenched and b) able, for various reasons, to abuse its power to an even larger extent than the ruling capitalist classes you hate so much.

Of course, you're probably going to say that this wasn't 'real' communism - but unless you can demonstrate how a system with no private property is going to avoid collapsing into totalitarianism, I think the point stands.

[Frost]

Of course, you're probably going to say that this wasn't 'real' communism - but unless you can demonstrate how a system with no private property is going to avoid collapsing into totalitarianism, I think the point stands.

I think that in the terms of state poltics, having a highly centralized government is the only way to ensure that property stays in the hands of the people, so to speak.

However, as Marx pointed out himself, there have been historical examples in which systems with no private property worked. Communes and Native American systems have gone without resorting to totalitarianism.

[RGacky3]

It's not so much the privilege of property that is the root of all the things you're talking about, it's the privilege of government.

The privilege of government is the privilege of violence, in essance thats all the state is, a monopoly on violence. That violence, for the most part, came about to propect the privilege of property. Violence is'nt any good unless your getting something out of it, robbers use threat of violence to steal, the state uses threat of violence to protect class structures.


I think that in the terms of state poltics, having a highly centralized government is the only way to ensure that property stays in the hands of the people, so to speak.

Historically that has NEVER worked.
However, as Marx pointed out himself, there have been historical examples in which systems with no private property worked. Communes and Native American systems have gone without resorting to totalitarianism.


However, as Marx pointed out himself, there have been historical examples in which systems with no private property worked. Communes and Native American systems have gone without resorting to totalitarianism.

And there are many many more examples, modern and old, they have been one over many many times before.


Best quote I have ever seen for a while.

Thanks man, I appreciate it.

Heres another thing, why is idealism neccesarily a bad thing, idealism by itself may by naive, but idealism I think is positive, you need to have ideals and principles and goals, if anythings killed more revolutions it has'nt been idealism its been extreme pragmatism.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Of course, you're probably going to say that this wasn't 'real' communism - but unless you can demonstrate how a system with no private property is going to avoid collapsing into totalitarianism, I think the point stands.
Kof. The EZLN. Kof.

That's an incorrect statement. There are plenty examples of 'real' socialism, but you choose to ignore them.


It's not so much the privilege of property that is the root of all the things you're talking about, it's the privilege of government.Private property and the state are practically identical. They're both social constructs that third parties are forced to accept. The fact you don't realize this is startling.


If you don't have private property, you need another system which determines how people get stuff and how much stuff they should get. Every time private property has been abolished in practice, the system replacing it is inevitably a highly centralized oneThat's backwards. A highly centralized order is required for private property. The United States is one example: the centralization of the federal government came when American industry took off and started to branch out of the home states.

Native American tribes in the North were very decentralized and without private property. Not-so-coincidentally, when you look at the Aztec Empire, private property did exist for a substantial part of the population, turning your analysis on its head: http://www.crystalinks.com/azteculture.html

[JimmyJazz]

There is a reason no CEO is a libertarian. Big corporations are BY FAR the biggest donors to both the Republican and Democratic parties.

The right-wing libertarians that strongly oppose imperialism are the biggest fantasizers of all, though. The motive for military expansionism is to make the world safe for economic expansion: cheap labor, new consumer markets, and raw materials. There is a secondary motive of establishing military bases and installing governments which are militarily cooperative, but the desire to do this is directly contingent upon the economic motive--if it weren't there, we wouldn't care about maintaining the ability to strike quickly at any government around the globe. There was (during the cold war) another secondary motive, and that was to fight communism, however (1) much more often than not this was merely a public justification for more immediate economic interests, and (2) even when fighting communism was a genuine motive of those pulling the strings of imperialism, it only was so because communism presents a general threat to the ability of Western capital to expand.

Just look at the examples of U.S. imperialism and you'll confirm this with ridiculous ease. Arbenz was overthrown because he tried to pass land reforms which would hurt United Fruit; Allende was overthrown because he tried to nationalize some American copper mines and the nations American-owned telephone system; etc. Some people accuse leftists of pathologizing the U.S. as an "evil" empire, but that's a strawman. Leftists who understand what they're talking about recognize that U.S. military expansionism is as amoral as the free market. Nobody in the U.S. wanted genocide in Guatemala or wanted a murderous fascist dictator in Chile; they just didn't care. Much like no businessman wants to put people out on the street in order to build a shopping mall, he just doesn't take it as any of his concern (after all, it's all legal).

But back to the topic of the OP, which is free market operation within a single nation: Gene you should check out Law and the Rise of Capitalism (http://www.amazon.com/Law-Rise-Capitalism-Michael-Tigar/dp/1583670300/ref=ed_oe_p), you would probably like it.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

It's not so much the privilege of property that is the root of all the things you're talking about, it's the privilege of government.
There is no difference between the two. A landowner with absolute property rights over a patch of land, able to charge rent and impose rules on the people living on his land, is in practice identical to a government with sovereignty over the same patch of land, able to charge taxes and impose laws on the people living on his land.

Governments evolved out of private landowners, and they are still basically the same thing.

[Green Dragon]

infilrated is the wrong word, Economic power trumps political power when it comes to real authority, they don't need to infiltrate, they have the money, they have the power, the political powers MUST bow to the corporations.


Hugo Chavez has the political power in Venezuala and he has spent the last several years making offers corporations cannot refuse. They can't refuse because the country takes them over if tey refuse.
Indeed, throughout the mid-20 century, nationalisations were the rage. Corporations always folded to political power

[JimmyJazz]

^Good point. And furthermore, corporations exist as legal entities, and their vast amounts of private property are protected by the state--perhaps most of all ideologically, by giving a "rule of law" sheen to a level and scale of exploitation that people would not otherwise be inclined to put up with. Modern capitalism is totally dependent upon the physical and ideological protection of the state.

Then again, big money men created the original impetus for the modern legal system and the highly centralized state--the continual centralization of laws and currency made it easier for continually concentrating capital to sell its products in continually expanding markets.

Modern corporations also continue to fund politicians' campaigns in order to ensure the government's desire to protect them.

It's a chicken/egg thing, and as with most chicken/egg things, there is no definitive right answer, just an ongoing historical interplay of the two factors (economic and political power).

[IcarusAngel]

Excellent points, JimmyJazz. It seems capitalism is nothing more than a government program; things do not have to be this way.

[RGacky3]

Hugo Chavez has the political power in Venezuala and he has spent the last several years making offers corporations cannot refuse. They can't refuse because the country takes them over if tey refuse.
Indeed, throughout the mid-20 century, nationalisations were the rage. Corporations always folded to political power

Hugo Chavez is an exception, he's trying to inpliment a type of socialism, and he's doing it very well, many people have tried what he's doing before it, and failed, i.e. coups or assasinations or folded with pressure, many of them, many of those countries that did also suffered from Capital flight (which happens a lot with the governments that try the social-democrat route). What Hugo Chavez is doing is a type of revolution, most western Capitalist governments must bow to Capital because the capital controls the money, and they can't nationalize the way Hugo Chavez is doing (and would'nt want too, almost all politicians are Capitalists themselves).


It's a chicken/egg thing, and as with most chicken/egg things, there is no definitive right answer, just an ongoing historical interplay of the two factors (economic and political power).

Your right, although economic power, especially in a situation where governments are stable, will in my view generally have the bigger hand, that being said, its not like the 2 are competing for power, not at all, they support each other, and the have power in different ways.

[Self-Owner]

There is no difference between the two. A landowner with absolute property rights over a patch of land, able to charge rent and impose rules on the people living on his land, is in practice identical to a government with sovereignty over the same patch of land, able to charge taxes and impose laws on the people living on his land.

Sure, they're the same thing if you ignore all the relevant aspects. A landowner is someone who legitimately appropriated the land by working on it, or obtained it via someone who did. A government has no such legitimacy.


Governments evolved out of private landowners, and they are still basically the same thing.

Not really, at least not Western governments. More like governments evolved out of roving bandits who realized they could extort more if they stayed in one place.

[Self-Owner]

Excellent points, JimmyJazz. It seems capitalism is nothing more than a government program; things do not have to be this way.

Of course it doesn't have to be this way - do you spend all your time refuting strawmen arguments that no one made? Anyone with a history book can see that private property does not have to be respected. But they'll also be able to see how catastrophic the consequences are.