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What is better than Capitalism?
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necropolist
necropolist
1689 posts

Re: The real question is
Sep 10, 2003, 09:48
you seem to be dodging along and shifting the question as people answer it here Dog. So much to come back on...

an unreconstructed leninist? please! actually read some of the rest of my comments and you will see i am far from it.
marx is outdated??!! roflmao. this from someone defending frigging capitalism? how the hell can anyone criticise any system for not working and being unpopular when there alternative is what we have now! In case you hadn't noticed, it doesnt work, and isn't very popular. The billions, yes, you read it right BILLIONS without access to decent water, sufficient food, clothes and shelter, they really dont like it you know.

Bollocks, boss comes in...better get off his computer....more shortly!
necropolist
necropolist
1689 posts

marx & the internet
Sep 10, 2003, 09:58
"Marx would have called the Internet a tool of the ruling class. The circus part of "bread and circuses" at best."

now i'm sorry but this quote shows you understand nothing of marxism. yes he would have said it was a tool of the r-c at the moment (which it is, in case you hadnt noticed, it's major function was to allow governments to have communications post nuclear war, it is still mainly used for official business and commerce), but it is clearly a massive technological advance which marxists welcome. You know, thats rather the point abpout marxism, as oppossed to some kind of zen anarchism, we dont want any of this 'back to nature' crap, we want to explore and exploit (in a sustainable way of course) the resources technology and abilities of this planet and its occupants. So the interent is cool - or would be if it was really in the 'right hands'

shit, boss back again...wish they'd just bloody well sit still.....
necropolist
necropolist
1689 posts

Re: The real question is
Sep 10, 2003, 10:14
the relation of supersturicture to base is clearly still very valid - indeed it actually underpins much of the 'critique' you are trying to put forward.
ditto materialism, you strongly assert that it is nonsense but offer no argument for your opinion. personally, I totally disagree, i think the past few years, since the fall of the old stalinist empire, proves that admirably. The gulf wars, new labour, bush, all explicable by applying materialist (indeed dialectical materialist) concepts and models, not by applying idealist ones (which is, a Im sure you know, the only alternative).

By the way, Marx NEVER said he could predict the future.

You sure you've read the man?
necropolist
necropolist
1689 posts

o bugger, another final point
Sep 10, 2003, 10:51
knew i'd forget summat

one of the points marx wrote about capitalism was how it was (as i think i've said elsewhere in this thread) constantly revolutionising the means of production, creating new and innnovative commodities. The problem is (or at least, one of the problems is) that these commodities are not created for human need, but for individual/company/state profits. so we get cool things like the net or (arguably) playstations etc, but at what freaking cost? and who really benefits?

in a society where the mahjority of the population (what nmight be called the working-class) are actually in control for the first time we can produce things based on self-identidfied NEED. We have the materials and technology today to provide everyone in this country with a decent education, home, health, basic security. On a world scale there is much more than enough food to feed the planet, wealth redistribution would save millions of lives a year, the wiping out of appaling, but SIMPLE, diseases like measles are very very easilly achievable. But they dont happen. Why? because of the profit system. Ther is no proifit in doing so, so fuck it, let em die.

It is a sick, evil systewm ,that means all but a very very lucky few get absolute shite all the time. It very very simply does not work, and needs to be changed.
necropolist
necropolist
1689 posts

3rd world birth rates
Sep 10, 2003, 11:02
"Of course most of the babies being born live in the "third world" where birth rates are very high (for cultural reasons) "

totally and utterly wrong. they are not high for 'cultural reasons' (what cultuiral reasons? is there a bit i've missed in the koran/bhagavad gita/whatever that says 'go forth and fuck like rabbits, we will outbreed our enemies'? I think not - or at least no stronger a statement than can be found in the bible')

High birth rates are - as they always have been - due overwhelmingly to poverty. Just as they were in Britain and all across western eurpoe one or two hundred years ago. large families are necessary so that hteir are lots of children to look after the parents in old age. Most of the youngsters will be practically self-sufficient (in terms of earning more than they cost) by the age of 5! assuming they libve that long of course - another reason for large families, the tragedy of early death
Toni Torino
2299 posts

The Purple Age Of Moon Cat.....
Sep 10, 2003, 11:12
I wanna be a disciple, can I, huh?
shamanic miner
184 posts

Re: What is better than Capitalism?
Sep 10, 2003, 13:27
The kind of super advanced post-economic techno hedonist society that Iain M Banks describes in his Culture novels. A billion people exploring the universe in a vast space vehicle full of rivers and mountains and trees and stuff, with nothing to do but ponder the mysteries of the cosmos and endulge in ludicrious amounts of guilt-free sex.

That'll do for starters, anyway. :)
Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Marx again
Sep 10, 2003, 19:11
I didn't want to get too deep into criticizing Marxism cuz it's such a huge and complicated topic.

Clearly the Internet is not simply a "tool of the r-c" since it's given birth to thousands (millions?) of "countercultural" websites, file-sharing which is breaking the back of the record industry (and soon movies and other forms of media) etc. It's totally decentralized and therefore resists top-down control. To view it in "materialist" terms (a bunch of hardware manufactured for profit) is to miss the whole point.

As for Marx predicting the future -- he said more or less "the contradictions of capitalism will cause it to fall and be replaced by socialism" -- that sounds like he's saying he knows how the future will turn out to me. At least many of his followers use this idea to claim that the fall of capitalism is "inevitable," which it isn't, unless you think he could predict the way "history" is going to turn out.

At any rate as I said earlier, "capitalism" is a loaded term that comes straight out of Marxist analysis. I really don't think it exists anymore than you think "communism never existed because Lenin-Stalin-Mao didn't really implement Marx's ideas." And the idea that billions are starving because of "capitalism" is a stretch since most developing countries aren't even close to "capitalist" (some of the worst starvation on earth is in N. Korea.)

What we DO have in most of "the first world" is a system where market forces determine prices and distribution. No, it's not a "free" market in the absolute sense, but such things are relative. It is "freer" than state-centric "communism" or whatever you want to call the systems that base themselves in Marxist ideology.

I am basically a believer in individual choice above all. "Market driven systems" allow for the most freedom of choice. And as I also noted earlier, "markets" and "profits" have been a feature of human society since the beginning of civilization -- long before Marx declared "the age of capitalistm."

Bottom line: if you don't like the choices people make, then that is basically a problem with humanity itself, not caused by some anthropromorphized boogeyman "system." If you want to change it, as someone else here put it you have to "educate" and "be a role model." The only alternative is force, which defeats the purpose.
Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Re: 3rd world birth rates
Sep 10, 2003, 19:21
"large families are necessary so that their are lots of children to look after the parents in old age. . . . assuming they live that long of course - another reason for large families, the tragedy of early death."

That sounds cultural to me -- in "old fashioned agrarian cultures" people want to have a lot of kids because, as you said, a lot of them die young so you play the odds and have more babies. A couple hundred years ago in Africa a couple might have 8 babies hoping that 2 or 3 would survive to adulthood. Today if you have those 8 babies maybe 5 or 6 will survive til adulthood. Having 8 babies is no longer a good idea, but the cultural imperitive to have big families persists anyway. In the "first world" the drive for big families has gone away for the most part, and that's a cultural change as well. "Religion" has nothing to do with it.

And before you go on about high death rates in the "third world" -- yes they are higher than in the "first," higher than they should be, etc. -- but the life expectancies in the "third world" have jumped by a huge amount in the last century due to medicine & technology. There is absolutely no doubt of this, just look at the demographics. That's whats driving the overpopulation problem.
morfe lux
301 posts

Re: Marx again
Sep 10, 2003, 19:21
"If you want to change it, as someone else here put it you have to "educate" and "be a role model." The only alternative is force, which defeats the purpose."

Which is why the 'free' world start wars? Force is a marvellous tool for profit.
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