Capitalism is better suited to human nature.

[sattvika]

[WARNING: LONG POST]Hi revleft, hopefully some of you can direct me towards thought-provoking answers to the arguments I'm about to pose, as I'm sure none of them are unique and that you've all had plenty of experience deflecting/avoiding/counter-arguing against them. If some sentences appear illegible, incomprehensible or riddled with grammatical errors, please excuse my English as it is not my first language.

Ok so here's my background: I was born in Moscow while it was still the USSR, moved to Canada in 90s, grew up in Toronto and am currently an undergraduate studying Commerce (50% Economics, 50% Accounting & Finance) at a top b-school with a minor in Poli Sci. I am politically active; I was arrested and detained in a compound for 16 hours at the G20 protests in Toronto last year because I protested our Prime Minister's ridiculous expenditures on jails and jet fighters; it was a double slap in the face for me as I voted Conservative in 2008. No doubt I saw some revleft'ers (or associated persons) at the protests/riots. I have read Marx's Communist Manifesto and Das Capital, as well as Hitler's Mein Kampf, several of Chomsky's books, Hobbes, Veblen, Locke, Machiavelli, and some other political works although I admit that I am far more well-read on economics and history than I am on politics. However, I choose to focus on reality and history as opposed to theory and pseudo-praxis.

First question: why have far-left leaning economic policies failed so miserably in the major countries that adopted them? I am specifically referring to the USSR, PRC, DPRK, Vietnam, etc. These supposedly "developed" countries weren't even able to prevent famines in the 20th century. Eastern Europe and China still have amongst the lowest levels of "national happiness" (whatever that is, and whether it can be trusted). My grandparents had to stand in line for hours just to get some toilet paper. My father was completely brainwashed, marched in the Red October parades, collected stamps and pictures of astronauts, idolized scientists, became an aerospace engineer "for the benefit of the nation and people" and was subsequently paid one third of that which my mother made selling shoes at a shoe store, a sequence of events that accrued profound psychological impact over the years prior to his fleeing the USSR.

That was a personal anecdote, but by no means an isolated or unique story. People died from hunger, were taken away and shot in the middle of the night, sent to the Siberian gulags for simply daring to express a contrary political opinion. My relatives can name unfortunates who they personally knew who fell into all of those categories. China had it even worse.

I visited Russia (Moscow) in 2006 as a young teenager and EVERYONE who was old enough told me how much better it was. A lot of kids my age had better cell phones than me (some even had two), girls looked sexy in proper looking clothes, expensive cars rolled down the streets at night while glowing advertisements lit them up, diverse music poured from all sides, a group of goth kids were discussing different brands of Japanese MP3 players on the subway, my grandparents were finally able to get their own car and cottage up north; everyone looked happier and healthier, in short.

The greatest example of the failure of communist economics is undoubtedly North Korea, a country who can't even feed its own people without literally begging for food from its Southern neighbors, despite being propped up and heavily supported by China.

The REASON behind all of this mainly stems from the fact that humans are strongly selfish beings who usually act in their own self-interest and strongly resent being told exactly what to do at all times by a central authority. Humans are social, but their interactions derive from each individual's desire to maximize his or her social utility in order to gain what he or she wants from the collective. Through doing so, but not through a generally conscious effort, a social hierarchy is established amongst groups and dictates what sorts of material indulgences and respect from other humans one commands. This social hierarchy has been seen throughout literally all of history: there have ALWAYS been social classes, and there will ALWAYS continue to be social classes, in much the same way that racism, drug use and prostitution have never been and will never be eliminated, no matter how much legislation or regulation is thrown at the problem, as they cannot counter-act the forces of human nature. Ex: I regularly speak to a friend in Singapore who works as a banker for a large financial institution there; he tells me that he can easily obtain a hooker or some drugs within minutes of ending the conversation (and, apparently, has done so with pictures included) even though the penalty for the provision of such goods/services is death. Ex: CCP elites live MUCH better than the average Chinese serf, even though millions died in the name of equality.

Second question: how is human equality feasible, on ANY level? We are all born different, with different strengths and abilities. I am not implying any sort of racial overtones here, but some humans are clearly superior to their peers in all respects. Example: two kids I knew in high school are both the same age, coming from similar socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. One plays team sports, has a 3.8 GPA in computer science, contributes to open source software projects, volunteers his time at the Salvation Army (even though he's an atheist), works out, writes eloquently, speaks gracefully, has a part time computer repair business, and generally contributes much to the happiness of all who know him. Although I'm happy with my life, he's the sort of man I look up to and want to be more like, even though we're roughly the same age. The other guy lives at home, smokes weed, plays guitar all day, and steals money/weed from his friends (I've been a victim) to finance his habits. All three of us used to hang out and get high together back in high school, now the differences between us are amazing. What can the shut-in possibly contribute to society? He is an addict, beyond rehabilitation, had an "accident" at work and now collects medical as well as employment welfare, making him a net DRAG on society instead of a benefit like my other friend, the one I strive to emulate. So why should these two men be treated as "equals" in ANY regard? Why SHOULDN'T the productive one be compensated more and allowed to live a more luxurious lifestyle? Why should the hippie even have a home?

At the risk of making this post too long too read, I'll cut it here, but I have more questions provided people are willing to engage in serious intellectual debate instead of "lol idiot"/"your questions have already been asked"/"please acquaint yourself with the search function"/etc. In closing, I'll state that I am by no means against government, that I believe a mix of government/free markets is ideal, and that I'm primarily concerned with what that mix should be, and that I believe in less socialism and more capitalism.

[Ostrinski]

[WARNING: LONG POST]
The REASON behind all of this mainly stems from the fact that humans are strongly selfish beings who usually act in their own self-interest and strongly resent being told exactly what to do at all times by a central authority.

This is absolutely right. And it's why people can't stand working all day for the profit of someone that isn't them. Under this premise, a system in which the manufacturer receives the full exchange value for their labor seems quite suited to humans with this nature, no?

[ComradeGrant]

I'll think you'll find that very few people here advocate what the USSR had late in its days. There are quite a few who don't advocate what it had at any point in time.

[Koba1917]

In my honest opinion the whole 'Human Nature' thing is overblown. Humans are naturally
born with many aspects and characteristics, but we are also products of our environment. If you a born in a society which tells you that self want and individuality is a good thing you are more likely to accept that philosophy on life. But if you are born in a society which co-operation and helping others is promoted and and individuality and self want are frowned upon is it not right to say that people are more likely to accept that philosophy on life? In my honest opinion I think 'Human Nature' has both characteristics of self want and co-operation. We see this in nature as well.
But what is better? Think about it. As a Marxist I look for a society in which the all the people hold the power and decide for themselves how they want to live. A society in which people help each other for the better cause. I do not want a society where people compete for food, shelter and other needs of a human being. I think Capitalism was needed to replace feudalism. Our technology was not yet well developed enough to produce the amount of food and other needs that we need. As technology rises the living standards of the people is most likely going to too. This is one reason USSR, China and many others had problems. The last true Communist leader which had power and was transforming a country was Hoxha in my opinion. He died in the mid 1980's and Albania was still wasn't a nation which had mass needs of the people. Life was much much better in Communist Albania than pre-Communist Albania and post-Communist Albania for the majority(working class). But it would be dumb to say Albania had no problems. I think it shares the same problem with all "Communist Nations" and that is they were isolated. They were cut off from world trade and the supplies they could not get from their nation were not available for them. This is why a Revolution NEEDS to happen in a world super-power (USA, England, ect). Marxism has always been brought about in underdevoleped countries which had mass starvation and disease. When Marxism was brought into these countries their living standards rose highly. But where do you see this with Capitalism? Where do you see a country that is in horrible condition in just a few decades become a much better country? You don't. My main point in this whole thing is that Marxism has never been tried in a super power. Capitalism has shown to help the minority and Socialism has been shown to help the Majority. I haven't read the whole post of yours. I will be honest with that.


BTW: North Korean isn't Communist. It never was and never will be. I agree with Hoxha on his view of Kim Il Sung.
Third Edit: Neither is modern China.

[Tim Finnegan]

First question: why have far-left leaning economic policies failed so miserably in the major countries that adopted them? I am specifically referring to the USSR, PRC, DPRK, Vietnam, etc. These supposedly "developed" countries weren't even able to prevent famines in the 20th century. Eastern Europe and China still have amongst the lowest levels of "national happiness" (whatever that is, and whether it can be trusted). My grandparents had to stand in line for hours just to get some toilet paper. My father was completely brainwashed, marched in the Red October parades, collected stamps and pictures of astronauts, idolized scientists, became an aerospace engineer "for the benefit of the nation and people" and was subsequently paid one third of that which my mother made selling shoes at a shoe store, a sequence of events that accrued profound psychological impact over the years prior to his fleeing the USSR.

That was a personal anecdote, but by no means an isolated or unique story. People died from hunger, were taken away and shot in the middle of the night, sent to the Siberian gulags for simply daring to express a contrary political opinion. My relatives can name unfortunates who they personally knew who fell into all of those categories. China had it even worse.

Well, the obvious answer is that the systems in question constituted no "socialism" or "communism" as the terms are traditionally underside of those circles who make it their rather pathetic mission to defend festering despotates such as those. Both terms imply the ownership and operation of the means of production by those who work them- and, in most expanded conceptions, some form of wider social organisation which includes those otherwise effected by them- while what we find in the USSR, the pre-reform PRC, and so forth, is in fact an elite bureaucratic class, the "nomeklatura", a term with you may be familiar, calling the shots. Now, understandings vary as to whether this system is defined as "state capitalist"- in essence, a society in which the state forms a giant corporation, or in some understandings a cartel of heavily interlinked corporations- or "bureaucratic collectivism", a system theoretically distinct from capitalism but similar in so far as it retains an exploitative ruling class and exploiting worker class, but that's all getting a bit theoretical, so I'll just leave it at this: outside of a the Stalin-fetishists, who in the Western world sit beyond the fringes of the broader left, nobody thinks that the Soviet model is anything to aspire to, and even most of them seem to lose interest after the early fifties.
Thus, criticisms of the USSR, while potentially able to contribute useful insights into the potholes faced by any post-capitalist economic system, must pay rather more reference to what is actually discussed and proposed by contemporary leftists if it has to act as a solid challenge to their ideas, rather than simply being proclaimed as is. If that was how things worked, I could simply nod meaningfully at the Irish Potato Famine- which, for the record, killed more than any Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese or North Korean famine, despite the fact that Ireland was growing more than enough food to feed its population for its entire duration- and dismiss capitalism as a self-evidently hopeless charade.

I visited Russia (Moscow) in 2006 as a young teenager and EVERYONE who was old enough told me how much better it was. A lot of kids my age had better cell phones than me (some even had two), girls looked sexy in proper looking clothes, expensive cars rolled down the streets at night while glowing advertisements lit them up, diverse music poured from all sides, a group of goth kids were discussing different brands of Japanese MP3 players on the subway, my grandparents were finally able to get their own car and cottage up north; everyone looked happier and healthier, in short.

And that's great, if you're upper-middle class, but given that most people in my town- a fairly average mid-size British town- don't have access to such luxuries, I'm hugely sceptical that what you offer me here is a day in the live of the average 21st century Muscovite.

The greatest example of the failure of communist economics is undoubtedly North Korea, a country who can't even feed its own people without literally begging for food from its Southern neighbors, despite being propped up and heavily supported by China.

Probably worth noting that even North Korea doesn't consider itself to be a Marxist state at this point. It's pretty much it's own sad, strange little beast, and has little bearing on anything beyond its own borders.

The REASON behind all of this mainly stems from the fact that humans are strongly selfish beings who usually act in their own self-interest and strongly resent being told exactly what to do at all times by a central authority.

Right, which is why we propose communism, which represents the liberation of humanity to collectively pursue the interests of all, rather than capitalism, which represents the subjugation of the masses to a property-owning elite who call the shots.

But you probably mean that middle-class North Americans c.1985 were better off than middle-class Russians of the same period, which is largely accurate, but also largely irrelevant.

Humans are social, but their interactions derive from each individual's desire to maximize his or her social utility in order to gain what he or she wants from the collective. Through doing so, but not through a generally conscious effort, a social hierarchy is established amongst groups and dictates what sorts of material indulgences and respect from other humans one commands. This social hierarchy has been seen throughout literally all of history: there have ALWAYS been social classes, and there will ALWAYS continue to be social classes, in much the same way that racism, drug use and prostitution have never been and will never be eliminated, no matter how much legislation or regulation is thrown at the problem, as they cannot counter-act the forces of human nature.

Well, this is simply nonsense. An introductory anthropology class would tell you humans originally lived in simple, classless, effectively communistic hunter-gatherer bands, and only developed the distinct social strata, let alone "classes" in the economic sense, as agricultural and pastoral developments allowed a significant surplus to develop, and so an exploiter-class to appropriate that surplus. How could a tribe of Cro-Magnons, exactly, support a distinct ruling class, numbering only a few dozen and surviving at only a little above subsistence level?
Furthermore, a look at the history of various communist, anarchist and otherwise communitarian movements would demonstrate that social class is not the inevitably you declare. While it is certainly true that all generalised modes of production since the emergence of tributary societies in the neolithic have been class based, that does not suggest that the economic and political hegemony of a particualr class over another or others was a given. Who were the ruling class among the free workers of Anarchist Catalonia, I wonder? Who among the citizens of the Paris Commune, the inhabitants of the Israeli Kibbutzim, the 17th century English "Digger" communes? You need to read more, if you are to think about making such declarations.
But let me ask you, lover of the class system, even if we accept your claim that class divisions are "natural", why should we infer from that the idea that they are necessary or desirable, rather than merely being the odious condition in which we find ourselves? Surely, you see the current form of class division, one based upon property ownership, control of capital, and so forth, as preferable to that present in pre-modern societies, which consisted largely of an armed aristocracy that spent its time beating up peasants and taking their crops? So why stop there? What it is about this particular incarnation of class society that makes you feel it to be the culmination of human social development?

Oh, and racism, in the proper sense, is more or less unrecorded before the 15th century. Ethnic bigotry, certainly, but the formalisation of human beings into monolithic biological blocs, rather their division in quasi-biological, quasi-cultural, quasi-linguistic groupings- "black and white", rather than "Saxon and Celt"- is a novelty which emerged alongside European colonialism. So that's another thing to read up on.

x: I regularly speak to a friend in Singapore who works as a banker for a large financial institution there; he tells me that he can easily obtain a hooker or some drugs within minutes of ending the conversation (and, apparently, has done so with pictures included) even though the penalty for the provision of such goods/services is death. Ex: CCP elites live MUCH better than the average Chinese serf, even though millions died in the name of equality.

So capitalist allows the development of a grotesquely wealthy over-class who are in a position to both support obscenely powerful, authoritarian regimes, while simultaneously declaring themselves above the law- and let's not pretend that your dear banker friend stops at (in themselves, if not necessarily in practice) innocent things like drugs and prostitutes -and we're all supposed to tumble onto our backs, delirious with enthusiasm at the offer of such a system?
Well, I suppose that, as you've so helpfully pointed out, it's either that or a system in which a grotesquely wealthy over-class who are in a position to... support... err... Ok, I'm sorry, but I'm losing track: what exactly is the difference between contemporary Singapore and Soviet Russia?

Second question: how is human equality feasible, on ANY level? We are all born different, with different strengths and abilities. I am not implying any sort of racial overtones here, but some humans are clearly superior to their peers in all respects. Example: two kids I knew in high school are both the same age, coming from similar socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. One plays team sports, has a 3.8 GPA in computer science, contributes to open source software projects, volunteers his time at the Salvation Army (even though he's an atheist), works out, writes eloquently, speaks gracefully, has a part time computer repair business, and generally contributes much to the happiness of all who know him. Although I'm happy with my life, he's the sort of man I look up to and want to be more like, even though we're roughly the same age. The other guy lives at home, smokes weed, plays guitar all day, and steals money/weed from his friends (I've been a victim) to finance his habits. All three of us used to hang out and get high together back in high school, now the differences between us are amazing. What can the shut-in possibly contribute to society? He is an addict, beyond rehabilitation, had an "accident" at work and now collects medical as well as employment welfare, making him a net DRAG on society instead of a benefit like my other friend, the one I strive to emulate. So why should these two men be treated as "equals" in ANY regard? Why SHOULDN'T the productive one be compensated more and allowed to live a more luxurious lifestyle? Why should the hippie even have a home?

I'm confused; what exactly do you think is proposed by the phrase "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", exactly? Neither literal material equality nor equality regardless of contribution is something that communists advocate, because that is quite evidently a stupid idea. Rather, what we pursue is the liberty of all to realise their full potential as individual human beings, something for which we see the necessity not of some abstract individual liberty, as declared sufficient by capitalist utopians of both left and right, but of a social liberty, a general liberty founded upon a concrete base of material security for all.

At the risk of making this post too long too read, I'll cut it here, but I have more questions provided people are willing to engage in serious intellectual debate instead of "lol idiot"/"your questions have already been asked"/"please acquaint yourself with the search function"/etc.

Shoot. I don't claim to be an expert, here, but I think I have a handle on the basics at least well enough to flesh out our position.

In closing, I'll state that I am by no means against government, that I believe a mix of government/free markets is ideal, and that I'm primarily concerned with what that mix should be, and that I believe in less socialism and more capitalism.

Socialism and capitalism are modes of production and therefore generalised. You can't have a "mix of both", as I would've thought anyone whose read Capital would be aware. (I suspect that you may have read more of Marx than you've actually learned from him...) Capitalism is a system of generalised commodity production, that is, a system in which the vast majority of people spend the majority of their productive time producing commodities to be traded on the market, while socialism is a system of communist production, in which all people spend all their productive time producing goods and offering services to fulfil the needs of themselves and others. The two cannot co-exist. What you mean refer to, rather, is a scale of more or less regulation within capitalism, which, I assure you, nobody here supports as anything more than an immediate measure.

[#FF0000]

The REASON behind all of this mainly stems from the fact that humans are strongly selfish beings who usually act in their own self-interest and strongly resent being told exactly what to do at all times by a central authority. Humans are social, but their interactions derive from each individual's desire to maximize his or her social utility in order to gain what he or she wants from the collective.

I think most of us here would, sort of, kind of, in a way, agree with this. People are self-interested to an extent, and they're certainly social animals.

But to be clear, I wouldn't say people are "selfish", since, I think, selfishness implies an overemphasis on perceived self-interests to the point that it actually harms that person and/or others.

But, eh, what you're saying isn't necessarily at odds with socialism, I don't think. We don't want socialism because we're just nice people who want everyone else to be happy. We're socialists because we recognize that capitalism does not serve our best interests in the long run, and we recognize that workers like us everywhere are, in a general sense, in the same boat.

Last point here: We don't advocate for one person or some central authority ordering people around.

Through doing so, but not through a generally conscious effort, a social hierarchy is established amongst groups and dictates what sorts of material indulgences and respect from other humans one commands. This social hierarchy has been seen throughout literally all of history: there have ALWAYS been social classes, and there will ALWAYS continue to be social classes

This isn't true. Class systems came about after the Agricultural revolution. Prior to that, human societies were organized in a plethora of ways. Most, though, were largely egalitarian.

in much the same way that racism, drug use and prostitution have never been and will never be eliminated, no matter how much legislation or regulation is thrown at the problem, as they cannot counter-act the forces of human nature.

We don't believe that legislation can get rid of these issues either. They are social issues based on an economic foundation.

[Kamos]

Second question: how is human equality feasible, on ANY level? We are all born different, with different strengths and abilities. I am not implying any sort of racial overtones here, but some humans are clearly superior to their peers in all respects. Example: two kids I knew in high school are both the same age, coming from similar socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. One plays team sports, has a 3.8 GPA in computer science, contributes to open source software projects, volunteers his time at the Salvation Army (even though he's an atheist), works out, writes eloquently, speaks gracefully, has a part time computer repair business, and generally contributes much to the happiness of all who know him. Although I'm happy with my life, he's the sort of man I look up to and want to be more like, even though we're roughly the same age. The other guy lives at home, smokes weed, plays guitar all day, and steals money/weed from his friends (I've been a victim) to finance his habits. All three of us used to hang out and get high together back in high school, now the differences between us are amazing. What can the shut-in possibly contribute to society? He is an addict, beyond rehabilitation, had an "accident" at work and now collects medical as well as employment welfare, making him a net DRAG on society instead of a benefit like my other friend, the one I strive to emulate. So why should these two men be treated as "equals" in ANY regard? Why SHOULDN'T the productive one be compensated more and allowed to live a more luxurious lifestyle? Why should the hippie even have a home?

Human equality =/= every human being a carbon copy of everyone else.

It is not the weed addict's fault that he is in that situation, for one. For one, you say he plays guitar all day? He may be a born guitarist for all I know, but capitalism doesn't care about the "substandard" people. Maybe he was born with the wrong genes for capitalism, maybe the stress-filled atmosphere of the capitalistic life just overcame him. But of course, as an upstanding upper middle class citizen (or above), how could you understand the problems of those who are less fortunate and do not just take everything as granted?

We, as humans, have evolved way further than any animal. One part of this is that we are responsible for each other, like a pack of animals who always live and hunt together. We do not let the outcasts just die.

And did you seriously just use "hippie" as an insult? I thought you wanted serious discussion?

My father was completely brainwashed, marched in the Red October parades, collected stamps and pictures of astronauts, idolized scientists, became an aerospace engineer "for the benefit of the nation and people" and was subsequently paid one third of that which my mother made selling shoes at a shoe store, a sequence of events that accrued profound psychological impact over the years prior to his fleeing the USSR.

Funny how you talk of brainwashing when it still happens in every "civilised" (capitalist) society today. Again, you, as the "cream of the crop" needn't worry - millions of poor people who have trouble getting their daily bread work for you so that you can live every day of yours in luxury. If they weren't brainwashed, they'd rise up and say, "Screw it, we want a fighting chance for ourselves as well. Give us some true democracy!".

The REASON behind all of this mainly stems from the fact that humans are strongly selfish beings who usually act in their own self-interest and strongly resent being told exactly what to do at all times by a central authority.

And yet you support a strong central authority who tells them exactly what to do at all times. Does not compute.

Humans are social, but their interactions derive from each individual's desire to maximize his or her social utility in order to gain what he or she wants from the collective.

Thanks to the system that specifically promotes this. Thankfully, an actual social feeling and compassion for others hasn't died out yet.[/QUOTE]

Through doing so, but not through a generally conscious effort, a social hierarchy is established amongst groups and dictates what sorts of material indulgences and respect from other humans one commands. This social hierarchy has been seen throughout literally all of history:

False. This has already been explained above.

Ex: I regularly speak to a friend in Singapore who works as a banker

This is your problem. Find a metalworker or a cleaner who can do the same. The upper class can get away with almost anything.

And a few more gems:

Eastern Europe and China still have amongst the lowest levels of "national happiness" (whatever that is, and whether it can be trusted).

Wouldn't this mean that it is the new system, the "free and democratic society" (in practice, rampant neo-nazism) that makes them unhappy? If the system worked, they would be, you know, happy. I'm from Hungary myself, so I should know. Our current prime minister violates every ideal of the Western parliamentary system, and from what I see, the biggest difference between us and the west is that he does so openly and without shame, only covering himself up with populist demagogy.

I visited Russia (Moscow) in 2006 as a young teenager and EVERYONE who was old enough told me how much better it was. A lot of kids my age had better cell phones than me (some even had two), girls looked sexy in proper looking clothes, expensive cars rolled down the streets at night while glowing advertisements lit them up, diverse music poured from all sides, a group of goth kids were discussing different brands of Japanese MP3 players on the subway, my grandparents were finally able to get their own car and cottage up north; everyone looked happier and healthier, in short.

And do you think this applies for the average as well? Because if you didn't know, the average person doesn't live on the level where he or she could afford this, in any capitalist country. I don't care what some rich kids who get $100 from their parents every day as pocket money can afford.

Finally, if "capitalism is better suited to human nature", how come that while the first societies on Earth were quite communistic (again, explained above about the hunter-gatherer societies), capitalism took thousands of years to achieve and there are still many dissenters? Not just from the left, also from the right (although for different and quite wrong reasons).

[RedSunRising]

Humanity lived under communism, albeit primitive communism, for far longer than it has lived under capitalism.

[Toppler]

Great, a reactionary Muscovite. How does it feel that around 1/3 of your countryman cannot afford food every time while you enjoy your luxuries? When you were born, late 1980s? I love these "I remember cummunism i was 6 when it fell i remember my mommy waiting for toilet paper then when i gone to school they taught me about gulags ans stuff" types. The same applies here in Slovakia. Old people who have grown up under Gottwald love communism while the biggest anticommunists are those who are like "I NOW ABOUT TEH HORRORS OF COMUNISM BECAUSE I SAW MY MUM WAITING FOR MEAT 5 MONTHS BEFORE THE COLLAPSE WHEN I WAS 4 YEAR OLD. IT WAS LIKE 1984!!!!!!!!!!" Like you've got any idea what the Soviet Union was for most of its existence.

Also, nice calling your parents brainwashed. You're a respectful kid for sure.

You Muscovites sure have it easy blabbering about young beautiful people with iphones and throwing shit at communism when the HDI of Moscow is higher than some Western European countries. I am from Slovakia, which is much richer than Russia, yet many old people have to eat trash from garbage bins to survive. Fuck off, reactionary. Try writing your little essay to Rasyte or Born in the USSR. Those countryman might say something to you.

[danyboy27]

The reason of the inneficiencies of the state capitalist governement was dirrectly linked to the contentration of power, and in that sense yea they didnt understood human nature at all.

but capitalism isnt suited by human nature either for the same reason and we currently witness worldwide the utter failure of this concentration in the hand of a fews landowner and property owner.


the best way to have a functionnal and stable economy is to share the power trought the population , and that why we must do away with economic monarchy and focus on a more modern, model.

Dictatorship, just like free market economics ignore human nature and the inherent risk it pose to society to concentrate power into the hand of the fews.

And that why power must be shared, beccause we understand human nature and know verry well that if we allow some sociopath to have that much power they will fuck up real bad, fuck up living conditions, fuck up the ressources, fuck up everything.

[graymouser]

The REASON behind all of this mainly stems from the fact that humans are strongly selfish beings who usually act in their own self-interest and strongly resent being told exactly what to do at all times by a central authority. Humans are social, but their interactions derive from each individual's desire to maximize his or her social utility in order to gain what he or she wants from the collective. Through doing so, but not through a generally conscious effort, a social hierarchy is established amongst groups and dictates what sorts of material indulgences and respect from other humans one commands. This social hierarchy has been seen throughout literally all of history: there have ALWAYS been social classes, and there will ALWAYS continue to be social classes, in much the same way that racism, drug use and prostitution have never been and will never be eliminated, no matter how much legislation or regulation is thrown at the problem, as they cannot counter-act the forces of human nature.

Social class, if you understand Marx - which you clearly don't - does not come from individual selfishness or self-interest, but from the social conditions of production. This whole screed fails on that alone. Capitalists don't exploit workers because they are greedy bastards - although, on the whole, the system certainly rewards and encourages greed. They do so because they are engaged in social relations that require them to exploit workers. If they fail to do so, then others who are willing to exploit will step in and take their place.

You are viewing diseased societies and making assumptions based on them how a healthy society, without the impersonal machinery of capitalism grinding most down and turning a select few into billionaires, would act. People in feudalism made assumptions that there would always be a nobility, that this was God's plan and the best it could possibly get - but they were wrong. And you will be as well.

Second question: how is human equality feasible, on ANY level? We are all born different, with different strengths and abilities. I am not implying any sort of racial overtones here, but some humans are clearly superior to their peers in all respects. Example: two kids I knew in high school are both the same age, coming from similar socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. One plays team sports, has a 3.8 GPA in computer science, contributes to open source software projects, volunteers his time at the Salvation Army (even though he's an atheist), works out, writes eloquently, speaks gracefully, has a part time computer repair business, and generally contributes much to the happiness of all who know him. Although I'm happy with my life, he's the sort of man I look up to and want to be more like, even though we're roughly the same age. The other guy lives at home, smokes weed, plays guitar all day, and steals money/weed from his friends (I've been a victim) to finance his habits. All three of us used to hang out and get high together back in high school, now the differences between us are amazing. What can the shut-in possibly contribute to society? He is an addict, beyond rehabilitation, had an "accident" at work and now collects medical as well as employment welfare, making him a net DRAG on society instead of a benefit like my other friend, the one I strive to emulate. So why should these two men be treated as "equals" in ANY regard? Why SHOULDN'T the productive one be compensated more and allowed to live a more luxurious lifestyle? Why should the hippie even have a home?

What does this have to do with capitalism? What will your clean cut friend even be able to do that will "contribute" to "society"? Write some programs for money to make other people rich? In a socialist society, he could do the open source programming and Salvation Army work as a full time gig. He wouldn't have to chip away at programs for other people to figure out how to more efficiently exploit workers for eight hours a day and come home not wanting to be arsed with programming. I'm a computer programmer and I hate the shit I have to do all day, so this one hits close to home for me.

And your friend - why shouldn't he have a home? Society can decide that values like everybody having a home are worthwhile. That's something worth fighting for, damn it.

[Revolution starts with U]

I'm just saying, the line "they had better cell phones than me, sometimes TWO" just screams of someone not wanting to take the issue seriously.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Human nature is a capitalist myth, like scarcity.

[danyboy27]

Human nature is a capitalist myth, like scarcity.

i beg to differ with you on that.

One of our main goal in life is to aquire power and control over things, that how we evolved, by creating a plethora of ingenious device to master and control our surronding and environnement, and one of the product of this is surplus. our primitive state at the time unfortunately allowed a fews individual to appropriate this surplus for themselves and thrive on it for thousand of years.

Economical system are nothing more than human inventions to control the surplus.

Nietzche was right when he was saying that life is will to power, beccause without that we would still be chased in the jungle by wild annimals.

Communism to me is the most viable option to harness human nature so that everyone could truly be in control of their environnement, their work, and their spare time, finally being master of our own world.

[sattvika]

Thanks for your responses. Although I'd really like to debate everyone here on every single point made, due to time constraints I'll obviously be unable to, so please bear in mind that I've read and carefully considered all of your posts.

So, most of you (and with good reason) consider the USSR, China, and N. Korea to be incompatible with your idea of socialism/communism, claiming that they were all despotic bureaucracies. The point remains, however, that all of these societies vehemently rejected capitalism and strived to develop a society that at least somewhat paid homage to Marx's/Lenin's ideas of how a society should function. Apparently, along the way, all of them somehow strayed from the path.

This is absolutely right. And it's why people can't stand working all day for the profit of someone that isn't them. Under this premise, a system in which the manufacturer receives the full exchange value for their labor seems quite suited to humans with this nature, no?

Most people actually profit directly from their work, which endows them with the monetary resources necessary to purchase food, water, clothing, shelter, etc. Presumably you mean "excess" profit. Isn't it logical that the people who organized and enabled the entity of production in the first place gain the excess profit or suffer any losses? Without them, it is doubtful that the goods/services in question would have materialized to begin with. Laborers do not spontaneously organize to prospect and develop gold mines or refine the ore, much less assemble in multinational supply chains that trascend linguistic and cultural barriers for the commercial purpose of efficiently assembling modern automobiles and electronics. A central authority, be it the government or a private corporation, must arise to direct the progress of any complex industrial endeavor from stage one.

Well, this is simply nonsense. An introductory anthropology class would tell you humans originally lived in simple, classless, effectively communistic hunter-gatherer bands, and only developed the distinct social strata, let alone "classes" in the economic sense, as agricultural and pastoral developments allowed a significant surplus to develop, and so an exploiter-class to appropriate that surplus. How could a tribe of Cro-Magnons, exactly, support a distinct ruling class, numbering only a few dozen and surviving at only a little above subsistence level?
Furthermore, a look at the history of various communist, anarchist and otherwise communitarian movements would demonstrate that social class is not the inevitably you declare. While it is certainly true that all generalised modes of production since the emergence of tributary societies in the neolithic have been class based, that does not suggest that the economic and political hegemony of a particualr class over another or others was a given. Who were the ruling class among the free workers of Anarchist Catalonia, I wonder? Who among the citizens of the Paris Commune, the inhabitants of the Israeli Kibbutzim, the 17th century English "Digger" communes? You need to read more, if you are to think about making such declarations.
But let me ask you, lover of the class system, even if we accept your claim that class divisions are "natural", why should we infer from that the idea that they are necessary or desirable, rather than merely being the odious condition in which we find ourselves? Surely, you see the current form of class division, one based upon property ownership, control of capital, and so forth, as preferable to that present in pre-modern societies, which consisted largely of an armed aristocracy that spent its time beating up peasants and taking their crops? So why stop there? What it is about this particular incarnation of class society that makes you feel it to be the culmination of human social development?

My analysis of human social organization began with the advent of the neolithic revolution. I am aware that "humans" lived in "tribes" for millions of years before that, though I disagree with the assertion that they were communistic. I don't dare to claim that they were capitalist, feudalist, or anything else, merely that they were "tribalistic" and that to attach any modern political doctrine to groups of humans and proto-humans that lived millions of years ago is a rather futile exercise in anachronism. How were decisions made on which location to journey to next in search of food, for example? Which animals to hunt? Who takes what bones? Somehow, I doubt that such decisions were made democratically. In all social mammals there exists an alpha male, a natural leader. Humans were no different in this respect, and in the same introductory anthropology teachings you proposed, we hear of tribal chieftains, shaman, medicine men, and other elevated social positions, even within small tribes.

I also vociferously disagree with your thoughts on racism, which you claim is different from "ethnic bigotry." I claim that such classification of discriminatory practices is deliberate obfuscation through semantics. How is racism different from ethnic bigotry? From the accounts I've read, Enlightenment and Renaissance sailors often discussed the discrepancies in social development of the people they met, wondering why, for example, the Chinese and Japanese were more advanced than North American natives and indigenous Caribbeans. Racism is the logical simplification of such observations. There were obvious differences between the Scots and the Slavs, the Hmong and the Han, the Bantus and the Tutsis, however, the considerable anthropoligic and cultural differences between these subgroups were far eclipsed by the differences between their respective supergroups, namely whites, asians and blacks.

Speaking of discrimination, I notice that a poster in this thread has a less-than-amicable opinion of Muscovites. That's ok, the truth is, even throughout the rest of Russia you won't find too many people who like us. The point is you are disciminating against me based on my geographic origin, and stating that I know nothing of the country I was born in. That's a bit arrogant, is it not? I have spoken at length with my great-grandfather, who is still alive and fought as a teenager in the second world war. He travelled around the country frequently (visiting Riga, Tallinn, Kyryzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Vladivostok, and Archangelsk amongst others) as a civil engineer afterwards (my entire father's line were engineers dating back to the 1900s). You say you are from Slovakia? My mother's father was posted there as a diplomat for a period of time, and almost married a Slovakian woman. I don't seem to recall him mentioning anything enviable about the place or its people.

Anyways, doesn't left-wing ideology teach against such discrimination? For the record, I don't consider myself a Muscovite, a Russian, or even a Canadian. If there was a war, I wouldn't support (much less fight for) either side, opting to flee to one of our properties in a small, capital-friendly nation south of the equator.

Socialism and capitalism are modes of production and therefore generalised. You can't have a "mix of both", as I would've thought anyone whose read Capital would be aware. (I suspect that you may have read more of Marx than you've actually learned from him...) Capitalism is a system of generalised commodity production, that is, a system in which the vast majority of people spend the majority of their productive time producing commodities to be traded on the market, while socialism is a system of communist production, in which all people spend all their productive time producing goods and offering services to fulfil the needs of themselves and others. The two cannot co-exist. What you mean refer to, rather, is a scale of more or less regulation within capitalism, which, I assure you, nobody here supports as anything more than an immediate measure.

My bad bro, I should have defined the context in which I was using the word socialism. In this particular case, I was implying any sort of redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor. Please keep in mind that I am a realist and sometimes have difficulty thinking in terms of pure idealistic abstraction. I disagree that the two systems cannot co-exist. As a superficial example (don't go too in-depth into this), consider the Canadian health care system, which is not-for-profit and exemplifies socialized medicine. You can have a capitalist mode of production for some goods and a socialist mode of production of other goods within the same society.

Again, you, as the "cream of the crop" needn't worry - millions of poor people who have trouble getting their daily bread work for you so that you can live every day of yours in luxury.

Oh man. When my father arrived in Newfoundland, he came as a political refugee with less than $20 in his pocket. Worked as a fisherman for a couple of years. Brought us over to Newfoundland. Lived in a cockroach-infested apartment with an even worse infestation of particularly tasteless and unskilled crust-punks three rooms over. Went FAR into debt because he had to RETRAIN as an engineer. I won't bore y'all with any more of my life story, but suffice to say I know poverty, as I have lived through it. I am grateful every day for my newly acquired status as socially elite neo-bourgeoisie. My parents couldn't even afford school field trip activity fees when I was a child, much less an electronic wristwatch, playstation, n64, gameboy, decent tv, pokemon cards, new sneakers, pizza days, or anything else I wanted. Now I have several laptops, drive a 2011 bmw, go to the best business school in the country, and aspire to become an international financier. I am very grateful every single day for the system that enabled this transformation.

My main point in this whole thing is that Marxism has never been tried in a super power.

Please, tell me more

If that was how things worked, I could simply nod meaningfully at the Irish Potato Famine- which, for the record, killed more than any Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese or North Korean famine, despite the fact that Ireland was growing more than enough food to feed its population for its entire duration- and dismiss capitalism as a self-evidently hopeless charade.

Market failures sometimes happen. Overall though, it's a good system. Some must be sacrificed for the betterment of others

Ok, I'm sorry, but I'm losing track: what exactly is the difference between contemporary Singapore and Soviet Russia?

One was a relatively obscure city-state that embraced capitalism from the very beginning and is now an advanced nation with a very high standard of living, contributing far above its weight to the global economy, especially in the fields of finance and consumer electronics, while the other was a global superpower that forcefully rejected capitalism and ended up with an oppressive, authoritarian regime which ultimately bankrupted the country and sent it down the path of collapse, fragmentation and degeneration into irrelevancy.

And did you seriously just use "hippie" as an insult? I thought you wanted serious discussion?

Where did I use the term "hippie" as an insult? One who engages in the recreational consumption of narcotics, wears long hair, has strong socialist tendencies, advocates peace and love while peacefully resisting the system (through not working or other means) and has specific musical tastes can reasonably be referred to as a hippie, can he not? Perhaps this a freudian slip? :P

And yet you support a strong central authority who tells them exactly what to do at all times. Does not compute.

If you don't like it, you are free to find a new job or, better yet, create your own. In a realistic communist system, you traditionally would be severely punished.

Social class, if you understand Marx - which you clearly don't

Understanding Marx does not mean advocating his ideas, or even agreeing with them. What I posted was an amalgamation of my own opinions mixed with theories espoused by several libertarian economists (I am not a libertarian).

You are viewing diseased societies and making assumptions based on them how a healthy society, without the impersonal machinery of capitalism grinding most down and turning a select few into billionaires, would act.

Personal connections will always influence human decision.

People in feudalism made assumptions that there would always be a nobility

The nobility still exists, under a different name. What has changed are the entrance requirements. People have a shot at making it. We attained status through my father's careful saving and investing in financial markets, “educated gambling,” if you will.

but they were wrong. And you will be as well.

How prophetic. Unfortunately, unlike yourself, I am cynical realist, not a revolutionary idealist.

What does this have to do with capitalism? What will your clean cut friend even be able to do that will "contribute" to "society"? Write some programs for money to make other people rich?

He contributes more to society than most other people, and is thereby blessed with a higher standard of living and more happiness. Writing programs contributes directly to society. Somebody wrote the code that enables forums such as this one, somebody wrote the game I played last week, somebody wrote the inventory systems that keep track of merchandise and facilitate/expedite global trade. The bum is a drag on society, using up resources that others deserve more. He should be a given a chance to amend and rectify his lifestyle, or material support (food/shelter/clothing) should be withdrawn by the state and he should fend for himself or die. Sounds brutal, but through the death of men such as him society benefits, becomes more competitive, and progresses. What if this man has children? The Canadian taxpayer will be forced to not only monetarily subsidize him in addition to the mother of his children and the children themselves but will also be subject to the negative externalities of crime and community degradation, as it is statistically proven that children born to those like him are much more likely to become uneducated criminals or drug addicts and thus perpetuate the cycle. Only the socialistic redistribution of income is keeping him alive.

Once again I'm forced to cut this short, but I have enjoyed reading your responses and responding in turn to them. I type exceedingly quickly, so the entire procedure of producing this post only takes around 15 to 20 minutes, time well spent as I enjoy debating and am getting a better picture at where you guys are coming from.

[Kamos]

So, most of you (and with good reason) consider the USSR, China, and N. Korea to be incompatible with your idea of socialism/communism, claiming that they were all despotic bureaucracies. The point remains, however, that all of these societies vehemently rejected capitalism and strived to develop a society that at least somewhat paid homage to Marx's/Lenin's ideas of how a society should function. Apparently, along the way, all of them somehow strayed from the path.

Khrushchev introduced capitalism to the USSR. Khrushchev, the 3rd of the General Secretaries of the USSR. That doesn't mean he just did a bad job of realising communism, he abolished it in all but name.

Most people actually profit directly from their work, which endows them with the monetary resources necessary to purchase food, water, clothing, shelter, etc. Presumably you mean "excess" profit. Isn't it logical that the people who organized and enabled the entity of production in the first place gain the excess profit or suffer any losses? Without them, it is doubtful that the goods/services in question would have materialized to begin with.

There is a saying for this... "A thousand workers can replace one capitalist but one capitalist cannot replace a thousand workers."

Laborers do not spontaneously organize to prospect and develop gold mines or refine the ore, much less assemble in multinational supply chains that trascend linguistic and cultural barriers for the commercial purpose of efficiently assembling modern automobiles and electronics.

Oh yes, they do. Workers can organise themselves just as well as anyone else can organise them. Why couldn't they? Think about the Paris Commune, a less-known but much better variant of communism. They organised themselves, and had it not been for the German counterrevolutionaries helping out France, the Commune would have been the first true manifestation of communism on Earth.

I am aware that "humans" lived in "tribes" for millions of years before that, though I disagree with the assertion that they were communistic. I don't dare to claim that they were capitalist, feudalist, or anything else, merely that they were "tribalistic" and that to attach any modern political doctrine to groups of humans and proto-humans that lived millions of years ago is a rather futile exercise in anachronism.

That's the point - the idea of communism is not modern. The name, more so, but it's not about the name.

How were decisions made on which location to journey to next in search of food, for example? Which animals to hunt? Who takes what bones? Somehow, I doubt that such decisions were made democratically. In all social mammals there exists an alpha male, a natural leader.

That's quite an impressive statement to make, especially since it's false.

Oh man. When my father arrived in Newfoundland, he came as a political refugee with less than $20 in his pocket. Worked as a fisherman for a couple of years. Brought us over to Newfoundland. Lived in a cockroach-infested apartment with an even worse infestation of particularly tasteless and unskilled crust-punks three rooms over. Went FAR into debt because he had to RETRAIN as an engineer. I won't bore y'all with any more of my life story, but suffice to say I know poverty, as I have lived through it. I am grateful every day for my newly acquired status as socially elite neo-bourgeoisie. My parents couldn't even afford school field trip activity fees when I was a child, much less an electronic wristwatch, playstation, n64, gameboy, decent tv, pokemon cards, new sneakers, pizza days, or anything else I wanted. Now I have several laptops, drive a 2011 bmw, go to the best business school in the country, and aspire to become an international financier. I am very grateful every single day for the system that enabled this transformation.

So you are happy that you are no longer poor, but ignore the plight of all those who suffer the same fate as you? Well, that means you're just completely selfish. Which, in turn, means that there is no point discussing, is there?

Please, tell me more Market failures sometimes happen. Overall though, it's a good system. Some must be sacrificed for the betterment of others

When you are on line to be sacrificed, will you still hail the system?

Where did I use the term "hippie" as an insult? One who engages in the recreational consumption of narcotics, wears long hair, has strong socialist tendencies, advocates peace and love while peacefully resisting the system (through not working or other means) and has specific musical tastes can reasonably be referred to as a hippie, can he not? Perhaps this a freudian slip? :P

Good call doctor, unfortunately you're wrong. You didn't mention that your friend has long hair, has socialist tendencies, advocates peace and love, resists the system and has specific musical tendencies so there was no way for me to discern that he was a "hippie". The first two aren't even requirements, and I don't think the last one is, either. Finally, "hippie" is a pretty stupid word to use since today it's just used in a derogatory way for the most part.

If you don't like it, you are free to find a new job or, better yet, create your own. In a realistic communist system, you traditionally would be severely punished.

No. Why would I be severely punished? I might not be able to find a new job either (the worker class faces quite large problems in many of the big countries), and creating one's own job is rarely an option.

The nobility still exists, under a different name. What has changed are the entrance requirements. People have a shot at making it. We attained status through my father's careful saving and investing in financial markets, “educated gambling,” if you will.

Not a great chance though. Not enough to raise a significant percentage of poor people out of poverty. Sounds like the wrong mindset for a "cynical realist".

He should be a given a chance to amend and rectify his lifestyle, or material support (food/shelter/clothing) should be withdrawn by the state and he should fend for himself or die. Sounds brutal,

Sounds like social darwinism. And we don't have anything to say to that kind of people here.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

I tell you one thing thats not part of the human nature, and that is to be chained towards a assembly line for 10 hours in a night shift doing the same monotomous tasks for somebody elses profit, just to survive.

[Technocrat]

I'll think you'll find that very few people here advocate what the USSR had late in its days. There are quite a few who don't advocate what it had at any point in time.

People frequently point to the Soviet Union as an example of how socialism doesn't work.

The simplest answer to this argument is that the USSR and states like them were never really socialist, except in name. People always point to the soviet union as an example of how socialism doesn't work, but the soviet union was not really socialist.

How many dictatorships have there been with the words "democracy" or "republic" in their name? Just because something is called "democratic" doesn't make it so. The same is true for socialism.

As far as the "human nature" argument goes, Marx answered that with the concept of "Enlightened self-interest."

One also has to look at how the "human nature" argument is established. Capitalists argue that people are naturally greedy and competitive, but then our society actively rewards greed and competition. People are raised in an environment that rewards greed and competition, and then it is concluded that greed and competition are human nature. Seems like a circular argument to me.

We know from anthropological studies that there exists groups of people that have almost no hierarchy of power or wealth. In some groups there is no identifiable leader at all. This was probably the most common form of social organization prior to the invention of agriculture. Agriculture was developed about 10,000 years ago. Humans have existed for more than 200,000. In other words, the amount of time in which humans have lived in stratified societies is a tiny blip compared to the stretch of time under which humans lived in egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers.

[#FF0000]

Human nature is a capitalist myth, like scarcity.

No.

[Tim Finnegan]

Most people actually profit directly from their work, which endows them with the monetary resources necessary to purchase food, water, clothing, shelter, etc. Presumably you mean "excess" profit. Isn't it logical that the people who organized and enabled the entity of production in the first place gain the excess profit or suffer any losses? Without them, it is doubtful that the goods/services in question would have materialized to begin with. Laborers do not spontaneously organize to prospect and develop gold mines or refine the ore, much less assemble in multinational supply chains that trascend linguistic and cultural barriers for the commercial purpose of efficiently assembling modern automobiles and electronics. A central authority, be it the government or a private corporation, must arise to direct the progress of any complex industrial endeavor from stage one.

You do realise that this an argument against democracy in all its forms, rather than just as it pertains to the workplace, don't you? After all, it's not as if the common people spontaneously organise nation-states, no, so why should they be given a say in their running? Better to leave it to a political elite, free of the burden of accountability to those they dominate... Right?

My analysis of human social organization began with the advent of the neolithic revolution.

Wait, I thought you were talking about "human nature"? That's biologically inherited, surely, not something that emerges alongside agriculture?

I am aware that "humans" lived in "tribes" for millions of years before that, though I disagree with the assertion that they were communistic. I don't dare to claim that they were capitalist, feudalist, or anything else, merely that they were "tribalistic" and that to attach any modern political doctrine to groups of humans and proto-humans that lived millions of years ago is a rather futile exercise in anachronism.

In this case, "communism" is not used to suggest a particular political ideology, but simply as a description of the material form that society took, which is to say, a propertyless, classless system in which material goods were distributed on an as-need basis. It's a well documented aspect of anthropology, not some romantic invention on our part.

How were decisions made on which location to journey to next in search of food, for example? Which animals to hunt? Who takes what bones? Somehow, I doubt that such decisions were made democratically. In all social mammals there exists an alpha male, a natural leader. Humans were no different in this respect, and in the same introductory anthropology teachings you proposed, we hear of tribal chieftains, shaman, medicine men, and other elevated social positions, even within small tribes.

You're conflating two distinct forms of social organisations. Early "band" organisations lacked formal leadership, instead organising themselves in what is called an "adhocratic" manner, in which no individual held consistent power, but was deferred to in matters in which they were understood to be a superior mind, e.g. the best hunter took the lead when hunting. To the extent that consistent positions of authority they emerge, they follow the "Big Man" model, in which one or more senior tribe-members- sometimes exclusively male, sometimes of both genders, depending on the society in question- possess an informal position of leadership, one which is based on leadership skills and intellect, rather than hereditary or propertarian right, and in which they act more notably as an arbiter of internal discussion and a mediator of other bands, than as a "chief" in the usual sense of the word. A detailed comparison is offered by the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in his landmark 1963 essay "Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia", in which he compares the "Big Man" systems of the Papuan hunger-gatherers with the more sophisticated, authoritarian systems of chieftainship found among the Polynesian agriculturalists.

(And while we're on Sahlins, a recently read an essay of his that observe that the one seemingly universal aspect of pre-modern human society is what he called " kinship groups", relationships in which humans are "members of one another", experiencing the world in a social, intersubjective fashion, rather than an individual, purely subjective fashion. What would you make of that?)

I also vociferously disagree with your thoughts on racism, which you claim is different from "ethnic bigotry." I claim that such classification of discriminatory practices is deliberate obfuscation through semantics. How is racism different from ethnic bigotry? From the accounts I've read, Enlightenment and Renaissance sailors often discussed the discrepancies in social development of the people they met, wondering why, for example, the Chinese and Japanese were more advanced than North American natives and indigenous Caribbeans. Racism is the logical simplification of such observations. There were obvious differences between the Scots and the Slavs, the Hmong and the Han, the Bantus and the Tutsis, however, the considerable anthropoligic and cultural differences between these subgroups were far eclipsed by the differences between their respective supergroups, namely whites, asians and blacks.

Firstly, those "supergroups" are themselves novel constructs, dating back no further than the 16th century, and illogical even today. The delineations are inevitably clumsy- where do "South Asians" end and "East Asians" begin? When does a "white European" become a "Middle Easterner"?- and based entirely on the colonial experiences of European nations, not on any objective biological distinctions. To see this one only needs to look at the knots that Victorian "race scientists" tied themselves in trying to figure out which "race" peoples like the Tuaregs, Armenians or Burmese were, sitting as they did at the borders between the declared monoliths.
Secondly, the generalisations made in regards to these are almost universally dishonest, again based on certain limited- often self-conciously limited- colonial experiences, rather than anything approaching even the most amateur anthropological survey. There were technologically advanced, highly literate civilisations in Africa, and backwards tribal societies in Europe; my own country, for example, was mostly inhabited by illiterate tribesmen until the late 18th century, while by the 13th century Timbuktu in modern-day Mali was home to the University of Sankore, the single largest educational institution in the entire world at that time.
You should read texts such as How the Irish Became White or The Invention of the White Race that further explain the development of these conceptual constructs.

My bad bro, I should have defined the context in which I was using the word socialism. In this particular case, I was implying any sort of redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor. Please keep in mind that I am a realist and sometimes have difficulty thinking in terms of pure idealistic abstraction. I disagree that the two systems cannot co-exist. As a superficial example (don't go too in-depth into this), consider the Canadian health care system, which is not-for-profit and exemplifies socialized medicine. You can have a capitalist mode of production for some goods and a socialist mode of production of other goods within the same society.

No you can't. "Modes of production" are, as I said, generalised. What you're dealing with is a state monopoly, which is something that exists entirely within the terms of capitalism.
Now, two systems can co-exist to an extent, in a revolutionary period (e.g. the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe), but that's not at all what you're talking about. Such system are oppositional, generating a social conflict that can only be resolved by the destruction of one or the other, not a pair that can amble along in nominally perpetual harmony, as in the case of the welfare state.

Oh man. When my father arrived in Newfoundland, he came as a political refugee with less than $20 in his pocket. Worked as a fisherman for a couple of years. Brought us over to Newfoundland. Lived in a cockroach-infested apartment with an even worse infestation of particularly tasteless and unskilled crust-punks three rooms over. Went FAR into debt because he had to RETRAIN as an engineer. I won't bore y'all with any more of my life story, but suffice to say I know poverty, as I have lived through it. I am grateful every day for my newly acquired status as socially elite neo-bourgeoisie. My parents couldn't even afford school field trip activity fees when I was a child, much less an electronic wristwatch, playstation, n64, gameboy, decent tv, pokemon cards, new sneakers, pizza days, or anything else I wanted. Now I have several laptops, drive a 2011 bmw, go to the best business school in the country, and aspire to become an international financier. I am very grateful every single day for the system that enabled this transformation.

And you never think to wonder why you were so very poor in the first place? That would've been my starting point.

Please, tell me more Market failures sometimes happen. Overall though, it's a good system.

But the Irish Potato Famine wasn't a market failure. It was capitalism working normally. That was the whole problem.

Some must be sacrificed for the betterment of others.

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others?"

One was a relatively obscure city-state that embraced capitalism from the very beginning and is now an advanced nation with a very high standard of living, contributing far above its weight to the global economy, especially in the fields of finance and consumer electronics, while the other was a global superpower that forcefully rejected capitalism and ended up with an oppressive, authoritarian regime which ultimately bankrupted the country and sent it down the path of collapse, fragmentation and degeneration into irrelevancy.

Well, your hopelessly reductive non-analysis aside, that doesn't really answer my question. All it illustrates is the respective success of each national ruling class, rather than any fundamental distinction between the two.