Dude, this is rhetoric. I wouldn't attempt to back up my argument with NOTHING but the sentiments of high standing figure who preached the opposing side of an argument. That's like saying that China doesn't have a human rights problems because Mao said they don't.
Let's get one thing straight. Soviet communism was NEVER capitalism. You also spend to much time reading books and not enough following real world politics. Socialism, as you define it, is not socialism as the world defines it. The utopian society that you describe can not exist. The flaw that my earlier quote pointed out with a pure democracy is valid whether or not applied to the Athenian system. Look at American politics: All you have to do to win is promise tax credits for the poor and and tax hikes for the rich. Say you're going to expand the corrupt social security system and make poor poeple not have to pay their benifits. Our politicians have even gone so far as to attempt to convince us that we ARE a democracy. That makes it that much easier to trample the constitution...... **** I'm ranting. Back to topic.
Let's not call the Soviets a failed capitalism again. American capitalism is a far cry from true capitalism, but it is the closest major nation to true capitalism. In regard to the "people" owning business in socialism, that's what they called it in the USSR. That's what they've called it in every oppresive regime fascist or communist. In a modern nation with millions of people you can't have any order without some tangible body of government to hold the mess together. It doesn't HAVE to be an oppressive regime, but it's the nature of government to progress toward one. The only way a state is going to allow "the people" ownership of business is through state ownership. You've breathed the rhetoric too deeply in your study.
So you want to play the semantics game? In that case, most of the world views capitalism as totalitarianism, a system made to exploit the working people. Therefore, capitalism is evil.
Sound stupid? So is your semantics argument. You are trying to say that Marx wanted totalitarianism because some people
today define it differently from what he did. According to
you, if I say I like to eat pizza, and a hundred years from now the word pizza means dog ****, I like to eat dog ****.
How about I use some definitions to your liking, then. Would you rather I call myself a Marxist? Since your definition of socialism is different from Marxism, apparently I have to.
And stop trying to desperately pretend like the Soviet Union was not capitalist? I find it humerous you claim to know more about early Soviet history than Lenin did.
28 April 1918, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government
Unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of labour processes that are based on large-scale machine industry . . . today the same revolution demands, in the interests of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process.
(p. 342)
5 May 1918, Left wing childishness and petit-bourgeois mentality
economically, state capitalism is immeasurably superior to the present system of economy
(p. 364)
At present, petty-bourgeois capitalism prevails in Russia
(p. 366)
If we introduced state capitalism in approximately 6 months' time we would achieve a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold and will have become invincible in our country.
(p. 360)
Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Socialist Soviet Republic implies the determination of the Soviet government to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the new economic order is a socialist order.
... the precise nature of the elements that constitute the various social-economic forms which exist in Russia at the present time. ... Let us enumerate these elements:
1) patriarchal, i.e., to a considerable extent natural, self-sufficing peasant economy;
2) small-commodity production (this includes the majority of those peasants who sell their grain);
3) private capitalism;
4) state capitalism, and
5) socialism.
While the revolution in Germany is slow in "coming forth," our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to do this even more thoroughly than Peter* hastened the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, and he did not hesitate to use barbarian methods in fighting against barbarism.
(p. 365)
[* Peter the Great]
In order to convince the reader that this is not the first time I have given this "high" appreciation of state capitalism and that I gave it before the Bolsheviks seized power I take the liberty of quoting the following passage from my pamphlet The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It, written in September 1917.
". . . But try to substitute for the Junker-capitalist state, for the landlord-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state (i.e., such as will destroy all privileges in a revolutionary way without being afraid of introducing in a revolutionary way the fullest possible democracy), and you will see that, in a truly revolutionary-democratic state, state monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably means progress towards socialism!
". . . For socialism is nothing but the next step forward after state capitalist monopoly.
". . . State monopoly capitalism is the fullest material preparation for socialism, it is its threshold, it is that rung on the historical ladder between which and the rung called socialism there are no intervening rungs."
Please note that this was written when Kerensky was in power, that we are discussing, not the dictatorship of the proletariat, not the socialist state, but the "revolutionary-democratic" state. . . . Is it not clear that from the material, economic and productive point of view, we are not yet "on the threshold" of socialism?
(p. 367)
You seem to not even understand what capitalism is. Capitalism is
any economic system in which capital exist. That system does not have to free from government interference to be capitalist. State capitalism is just as much capitalism as free market capitalism, and just as bad.
Pure rhetoric. The only freedoms I lack right now are civil liberties that have been trampled in recent history. I don't have the right to injest the substances that I find acceptable (not that I do drugs, but if I wanted to I should be able to). If I get "caught" with over $10k in cash it can be confiscated.. why? I don't know, but it's law. As far as freedom to work and live, I have that. I also have the freedoms of expression... hmm what basic freedoms am I lacking? Not that I think those freedoms are out the door, but their being conspired against by leftists.
Civil liberties are negative freedoms, which exist in socialism as well. The U.S. has more negative freedoms than most countries on earth. You do not have freedom to work because that requires a civil right (not to be confused with natural right). You
can work, but you do not have the right to. That right can be denied to you at any time. If we had freedom to work, there wouldn't be any unemployed. Freedom to work cannot be achieved within the capitalist system (like the reformists welfare staters want). When attempts are made to establish freedom to work in a capitalist system, it only makes things worse. The people must take back the means of production to establish that.
What? Everyone can't work in this country as it stands now? Could have fooled me. The people I'm talking about are lazy losers. It doesn't matter if we're capitalist, socialist, or an anarchist's utopia, these people will still be lazy swine. I believe they are a product of the welfare system, but they're too far gone to do ANYTHING about. The only solution is to pull the rug out from under them, watch them fall on their faces, and hope their children can adapt to the real world. I would like to know how you define capitalism because I think you have a scewed view. I'm speaking of classic Lassaiz-Faire(not french so don't diss the spelling) capitalism. No state involvement, let the system control itself. Government social programs are NOT capitalist. Capitalism is an ecconomic system only. How is a free ride at the expense of workers a representation of capitalism?
Not all unemployed people are lazy. In capitalism, you often cannot find a job even if you are willing to work. In socialism the distribution of labor is such that all people who want to work can. That means that in socialism, all people who arn't working are doing so out of laziness. Because they arn't working, they will not be paid and they can starve. If you work, you live, if you don't, you die. That is very different from capitalism, where, in order to pacify the people, you must give free money to the lazy (because you don't know if they are lazy or actually want to work but cannot find a job yet), and the wealthiest are those who do not work themselves but only rent out the means of production.
Here is a true definition of capitalism (not our current semantic-degraded version that holds that capitalism is always free market):
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/a.htm#capitalism
The reason that most of the world "goes hungry"(which is defined as feeling hunger without food at ready by a study I read. One that claimed 10 million americans went hungry every year. In other words, I'm hungry. Oh need to get groceries... Ill just wait 'till tomorow) is that they are third world countries by despots that don't give a flying f*ck about their people. You can't expect American companies to just suck up a loss because they could provide enough food to feed the world. They are motivated by profit and would fail otherwise. Those people are starving because they can't/won't establish a good government. Even a socialist one, something's better than nothing.
Many, if not most, of those despots are the result of imperialism, the spread of capitalism. But that is of no concern to this argument, because it is wrong anyway. Despotism is a plague upon those people, but that is not the source of their hunger. Even if those despots would distribute their money amongst the people (socialism anyone?) they would not have enough. Do you believe that these few rulers are consuming food for 54 billion people themselves? The British and American governments
pay farmers to underproduce because the laws of supply and demand would kill their pricers if we produced all we could.
And no, those last two sentences wern't rhetoric, it was an observation from the experience of the Paris Commune.
