What do Socialism, Libertarianism and Chumbawamba have in common?

[The Last Conformist]

From your link


Actually the US ambassador only knew of the coup when he saw the tanks. Sure he guess something was coming, but so did everyone else.
Not to mention that Goulart was more pro-american then the military regime.
There was no military, logistic or financial support for the revolution of 1964 coming from the US.

Your link is little more then angry anti-american propaganda, with no basis in reality whatsoever.

If you want to convince me that Mark Rosenfelder's page is "anfry anti-american propaganda", you'll have to do alot better than flatly deny his description of one of dozens of incidents.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Luiz - please don't use terms you don't understand.

That's pretty rich coming from the guy who used WWII slavery as an example of capitalism.

 

[Richard Cribb]

I just want to announce that I am stepping out of this thread, so further wisecracks on my posts will not be answered. Life is to short and has too many sweet things to offer, besides I want to use these foras for improving my skill as a civ3-player , I badly need that.
Just as it would not hurt certain people here to gather at some knowledge to back there opinion.
Conformist - you might like it our not, but Nazi Germany used slave labour. Slave labourers has even filed complaints against German companies like BMW. What's so strange about a capitalistic society using slave labour when attainable?. After all, what is today's sweatshops anyway.And yes, Nazi Germany was a capitalistic society.A capitalism without the velvet glove.
If you had cared to read all of it, you would surely have got the point. But the important thing is to post some wise little quip, right? I wish you a good recovery.
Newfangle - in my opinion it is rather free markets that corporations fear, they love capitalism.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Conformist - you might like it our not, but Nazi Germany used slave labour.

And now he's accusing me of revisionism? I'm getting the distinct impression it's he not reading my posts ...

 

[luiz]

Luiz - please don't use terms you don't understand. To explain how the capitalistic system works is not about conspiracy theories at all. Unfortunately somebody always seems to bring it up. Get yout terms right and learn by heart the difference between system critics and conspiracy theories once and for all.
It is completely new to me and probably the rest of the world that Stalin was funded by German heavy industry. Now this is a conspiracy theory.

By the same people, I didn´t mean the same individuals, but rather the same group(the whole population of their nations, that basically worked to support the state)

Hitler's "vast" control over the state seemed to curiously benefit big business.

Some business, yes. Most business, no. It´s the same thing with ALL Big Governments. Special interests are taken care of, the rest is left to rot(and pay taxes).

The fundamental problem with your logic is that people need food, clothes, shelter. In a capitalistic society most people, to aquire those basics, must sell their labour to those intereste, and if the power balance is in the capital owners favour, not so much can be expected. But you are right, they are free to starve.

The "balance", if you mean Elasticity, is purely determined by basic laws of Supply and Demand.

Workers are free to sell their labour to whoever pays more, or to try to start their own business, or to join the army, or a church, or to starve.

You are also right in that corporations recognize no obligations, so much better to get rid of them. Brecht: in the system they have created, humanity is an exception".

Who created the system? And why should we get rid of enetities that break no law, even moral laws?

Stalin has nothing to do with this. If you want to to say that Stalin's Soviet was an awful place, anytime! I never said that capitalism did all the bad things in the world.

My point was that those things are not product of Capitalism, but rather totalitarianism. Hence they happened in the USSR just like Germany.

And yes, I forgot extraction can also be a source of value. But now you explain to me how much that diamond is worth before it is chipped out of the mountain. Ever heard about diamond-mines. What sort of activity is mining?

If I find a raw diamond in the top of a hill, what is rare but possible, there will still be value even though no labour was involved.

The Labour Theory of Value is so full of holes that it looks like swiss cheese.

If you check your history books, you will be surprised.HITLER DECLARED WAR AGAINST USA, NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND.

Indeed, but only because the USA had a hostile attitude towards the Reich. Hitler would be more then happy to make a non-aggression pact or even an alliance with the americans, but Roosevelt always sided with the British.

You seem to not understand this at all. Big business funded Hitler, but they were unable to control him.

Everybody funded Hitler because he was an absolutist.

Geopolitical interests is such sweet words that melts on the tongue, but there are always somebody or something behind those interests.Those are not houseviwes or assembly line workers. I am sorry, but they are corporate interests.

Not necessarily. Sometimes it´s as simple as preventing a perceived enemy from gaining ground in your perceived backyard.

And about Kosovo. Germany had already influence in Croatia and Slovenia, France in Romania. For USA it was important to get a stronghold in Serbia. If you bother (I am afraid not) read Michael Parenti's studies.

Except that there is no american stronghold in Serbia right now.

Japan was occupied after the second world war and forced to conduct a more reasonable economical politics than the occupier itself. If anything, that just shows the superiority of plan economy. As Johan Galtung once wrote, a high Soviet official told him: "Those darned Japanese. They are better in plan economy than we are!

Japan is an exemple of how corporation can work within the countries´ interests. I don´t know if you are aware of this, but Japan is Capitalistic AND has very powerful corporations.

And about media. Must of the media today is owned by a few, very powerful corporations. Or do you want to tell me that you have never heard of people like Murdoch, Maxwell, Berlusconi, Turner?

I heard of them, but they are not a single entity and they don´t have single interests.

I am sorry, but in your whole argumentation, not only to me, but in your posts in general, I sense more than a whiff of contempt for other peoples opinion and a cocksurednes that only ignorance can create.

OK, I´ve had it.
You´re the one fighting for a dead ideal. I don´t know if you´re aware, but the Berlin Wall fell. Anyone with half brain knows that Communism and marxism are failed and intellectually bankrupt ideologies.

If you cared to read some economic literature instead of pure marxist propaganda, you´d know as well(because you´re not stupid).

That luiz doesn't know simple facts about his own country's history is a bit sad. Almost everybody else are aware of the role CIA played in that coup too.

Everybody brainwashed my marxist propaganda seem to know stuff that the rest of the world doesn´t.

Interestingly, the uncensored diaries of Lincoln Gordon are published, and they have precious information on the american role in the coup(that is, none at all).

 

[luiz]

If you want to convince me that Mark Rosenfelder's page is "anfry anti-american propaganda", you'll have to do alot better than flatly deny his description of one of dozens of incidents.

To be honest, I really didn´t read all incidents.

I went straight to 1964, because that is a subject that I know plenty about.

However, the description that this guy gave to the coup was one that is not compatible with that of a serious historian. So I don´t trust that link - if he posted such blatent lies about an incident, how can I trust the others?

 

[Aphex_Twin]

Not likely, given that they probably have completely opposite premises (I say "probably" because I find it more and more often that certain corporations are enemies of capitalism).

People are completely unbounded by a state authority. Could they not be as free to form a Communist "collective" as they would to build a private company? The borders of the collective could act as well as the borders of a private proprety and therefore be as "sacred" as one.

 

[insurgent]

Well, in the anarcho-capitalist society, a collective of individuals could voluntarily create any kind of collective. I don't think it'd last in the competition against profit-motivated corporations. But if it's a collective in the sense of a group of people living together sharing everything - sure there's no reason people couldn't do that. They could even start their own social systems and pay for them themselves. That's the idea of liberty.

In a left-anarchist society, this does not apply. Their vision of a stateless society is at best just a question of definitions. Indeed the collectives would need to employ coercion to prevent individuals from placing their own interests above those of others. Also, private property would not exist, and so private corporations could not exist.

In other words, a free capitalist society would tolerate collectivism, but in a left-anarchist society, free enterprise would not be tolerated.

 

[insurgent]

As for the idea of collectivist groupings acting as private corporations, I don't think that is the left-anarchist concept. You'd have to ask one of them how that is supposed to be hindered.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

@insurgent

I'm not so sure anarcho-Communism would seek to employ the means of coercion used in classical Communism. One of it's proponents (Chomsky - so far as I've read) does not support it. The idea would be that people would be willing to live in this collective on their own mind and leave it at will.

I have a feeling luceafarul is a proponent of this doctrine... perhaps he would explain better

 

[The Last Conformist]

(Left-)Anarchists tend to be hopeless romantics and idealists in my experience.

 

[insurgent]

I'm not so sure anarcho-Communism would seek to employ the means of coercion used in classical Communism. One of it's proponents (Chomsky - so far as I've read) does not support it. The idea would be that people would be willing to live in this collective on their own mind and leave it at will.

I know. That just isn't possible. So I have to assume that coercion would have to be employed by the collective.

 

[Mise]

People voluntarily join cults and live in communes in the woods on a subsistence diet of fruits and berries. So I don't see why coercion is necessary for ANY particular doctrine.

And most intellectual proponents of Anarchy tend to look at things from a far more utilitarian point of view than their followers, who do tend towards romanticism. I for one view Proudhon as particularly cold, rational and logical in his famed, "What is Property?"

 

[Red Threat]

Luiz, after my long struggle against G-Men about Israel, Iraq and democracy I'm starting to hate long quoting posts... they're difficult to be read also because readers don't ever know what the quoted statements refer about...

Returning on-topic.

As luiz correctly posted, the first social-anarchism or anarcho-socialism or however you want to name it comes from the ideals of Proudhon and Bakunin, but in the first time it worked together with the marxist socialists, 'cause they both were on the workers' side. Their alliance was broken in 1872, when in a congress of the First International Workers' Association (1864-'76) it was realized that Marxism and Bakuninism were incompatible. Bakuninians were repealed.

In the Second International (1882-1914) there were no social-anarchists: the struggle was now between the revolutionaries and the social democrats. The first ones will become the Communists after 1917 (when the Third International was founded), the others are the modern european left wing and they all belong to the modern Socialist International.

I think that history has shown how the communist faith in the State is wrong. The future socialism must be libertarian, or, if you prefer, liberal. Always on the workers side, but it must fully accept the free trade that is different from capitalism. So, the ideals of Proudhon should be revisited...

 

[Mise]

^In the form of unions, I believe. Repeal all anti-union laws, and the workers will be free, and rich.

Man that's like the 4th thread I've posted something pro-union. One of these days, I'll make a proper thread about it...

 

[Red Threat]

What kind of unions?

 

[Mise]

Oh sorry I meant trade unions, i.e. trade unions running the company with the best interests of the workforce at heart, with the trade union being directly democratic, voted (balloted) by the workforce.

 

[Red Threat]

Oh sorry I meant trade unions, i.e. trade unions running the company with the best interests of the workforce at heart, with the trade union being directly democratic, voted (balloted) by the workforce.

Oh sure - aren't your trade unions just so?

 

[Mise]

Not anymore

I don't know about the rest of Europe, but Margaret Thatcher spent 3 terms as Prime Minister systematically rendering Trade Unions impotent. Basically, she passed laws making strikes almost impossible, and workers' jobs were under threat if they struck, and the Unions themselves could be taken to court for going on strike, if it wasn't done "lawfully", as defined by Thatcher. Indeed, many Trade Unions lost thousands of pounds from lawsuits against them following supposedly "unlawful" industrial action.

The new European Constitution is opposed by many big businesses and industry, and also Jack Straw, because it would mean repealing the anti-trade union laws Thatcher passed.

But anyway, I was talking about the Trade Unions actually RUNNING the company, i.e. workers owning the company, and running it via the union. I think it was you in another thread who said about the workers owning AND running the company themselves? Well personally, I think they would be better run via unions. The workers would still OWN the company, but the actual management would be the Trade Unions.

 

[Red Threat]

I agree.

Indeed, the workers situation in the UK is worst than in all the other European countries, and the actual Labour party doesn't do anything to change this situation. You say Jack Straw wants to mantain the actual anti-strike and anti-unions laws??? I hope in the Brighton congress, there the scenario could change.

M. Tatcher has been the worst to Europe than every other non-totalitarian government.