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mikelepore
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 Posted:
17 Sep 2004 04:09 pm Post subject: Debate Capitalism
Versus Socialism
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This is my humble opinion:
Feasible arguments for keeping capitalism:
It will require a an enormous amount of effort and
uncompromising patience to persuade the majority of the working class to
reverse their present opinions and to organize politically and
industrially for a socialist reconstruction.
Some of the reasons for choosing socialism:
Class divided society is the principal causes of
all social problems, including war and militarism, poverty and
deprivation, periodic recessions and depressions, involuntary
unemployment and underemployment, air and water pollution, dangerous and
unhealthy working conditions, regimented workplaces without individual
rights, inadequate resources for education and medical care, subsistence
wages and the rising cost of living, the increasing gap between a few
billionaires and the rest of the population, racism and sexism in the
availability of jobs, bankruptcy and foreclosure, such corporate frauds
as false advertising and false product labeling, such disruptions to the
family as long work hours and forced relocations, the astronomical waste
of such useless "industries" as advertising, media censorship
and trivialization, street crime caused by poverty, the distortion of
democracy by means of corporate-bought elections and political bribery,
and behavioral problems which are correlated with financial insecurity and
low income, such as domestic violence, school dropout, teenage pregancy
and drug addiction.
Just to name a few.
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Social Greenman
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Posted:
16 Mar 2005 10:52 am Post subject:
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Judging from what I read Socialist are good critics of
Capitalism. You have the writings of Marx and Engles, Daniel De Leon and
other writers. There are even models of Socialist economies. On the other
hand, the propaganda that is spewed over the airwaves, in print both
paper and electronic form always proclaim that either Socialism will not
work, or be inefficient, or will not cause working people to be motivated
as they are under Capitalism. People also say that Socialism looks good
on paper but will not function in the real world. People always look at
the U.S.S.R. as an example on how Socialism did not work. China has taken
on State Capitalism, so to speak, which has infuriated many a Communist
in the West. Yet, non Marxist will say that China needed Capitalism to
build wealth and improve its citizenry lively hood. Without Capitalism
China would have abolished the State system.
Concerning the above, how in the world can
Socialist agitate workers for Socialism? Far to many workers are
convinced that Capitalism is the only thing that works.
Social
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davesearles
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Posted:
16 Mar 2005 09:46 pm Post subject:
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Mike said:
This is my humble opinion:
Feasible arguments for keeping capitalism:
It will require a an enormous amount of effort and
uncompromising patience to persuade the majority of the working class to
reverse their present opinions and to organize politically and
industrially for a socialist reconstruction.
Dave asks:
What the hell are you on drugs boy?
Dave continues:
This is not an argument for keeping capitalism. It
is a reason why captialism is still here. "Mankind is more disposed
to suffer evil while evil is sufferable."
The burden is not upon us to convince anyone that
capitlaism should be scrapped. Don't we believe that capitalism will do
that part all by itself? If we don't I must be in the wrong church.
Dave
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davesearles
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Posted:
16 Mar 2005 09:52 pm Post subject:
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Social wrote:
Concerning the above, how in the world can
Socialist agitate workers for Socialism? Far to many workers are
convinced that Capitalism is the only thing that works.
Dave responds:
Redefine your mission. Find something in the
struggle that you are good at and do it. That is plenty enough for any
revolutionary to do.
Dave
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Social Greenman
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Posted:
17 Mar 2005 12:04 am Post subject:
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Dave responds:
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Quote:
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Redefine your
mission. Find something in the struggle that you are good at and do it.
That is plenty enough for any revolutionary to do.
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Writing is my strong point Dave. Even though I have
a lot more to learn I can put things in perspective when I write unless I
am upset. Right now I am not at my best. My wife is in a nursing home on
a wound vac. She was originally operated on to remove colon cancer. I
know I did not share this with any of you earlier. The reason she was put
on the wound vac was because the doctor had to open her back up due to an
infection. She is a kidney transplant patient (1980), her medications to
supress her immune system is keeping her in the nursing home because
those medicines restrict her healing. Though she has made imrovement, the
hole in her stomach is still large.
Anyways, thanks for the advice and you know I am
trying to do what I can. I even gave a co-worker a copy of the alogrthims
of SIU and he was impressed by it. I don't know if he is convinced but
time will tell.
Social
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mikelepore
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Posted:
17 Mar 2005 05:28 am Post subject:
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Social Greenman wrote:
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People always
look at the U.S.S.R. as an example on how Socialism did not work.
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And they would have a point if the USSR had a
democracy for a while and then it fell apart, but, the fact is, they
never had a democracy for a single day -- they went directly from the
czar's police state to the bolshevik's police state -- so there wasn't
anything of socialism for us to either see it work or to see it not work.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
17 Mar 2005 05:39 am Post subject:
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Social Greenman wrote:
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Concerning the
above, how in the world can Socialist agitate workers for Socialism?
Far to many workers are convinced that Capitalism is the only thing
that works.
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One thing I think we need but don't have yet -- a
rather complete body of writing that takes each social problem, one at a
time, and show how they are caused by class division and class rule. For
example, let's suppose it's the section on environmental hazards -- list
as many of the big cases as we can think of -- Occidental Petroleum
dumped dioxin at Love Canal, General Electric dumped PCB into the Hudson
River, etc. -- point out the lessons to be learned -- how capitalism
really works. Do this for all the serious social problems -- war,
poverty, prejudice, loss of civil liberties, and more. Just start
anywhere and keep adding more data. Collect anything we can use from news
clippings. We could all collaborate on this. Nice thing about such a
project is that the volunteers who participate would probably agree on
much of it, since we're not philosophizing there about a new
"perfect" world, but instead criticizing in a practical way the
miserable reality that's presently around us.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
17 Mar 2005 05:54 am Post subject:
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davesearles wrote:
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not an
argument for keeping capitalism.
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In the sense that human behavior is conditioned
much by psychological payoffs. A person could say that, if they identify
themselves as a conservative instead of a supporter of change, then they
have freed themselves up to lose themselves in various kinds of escapism.
No pangs of conscience. No thought of justice -- too busy dancing,
playing poker, or reading about Michael Jackson. This is a real strong
attractor. Of course I'm stretching the point so that the column for
listing the advantages of capitalism won't consist solely of the word
"none." I don't think I'm stretching it too far, because, I
think, for some people, the Epicurean lifestyle of sex, drugs and
rock'n'roll is really a motivator for choosing to be a conservative.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
17 Mar 2005 06:05 am Post subject:
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davesearles wrote:
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The burden is
not upon us to convince anyone that capitlaism should be scrapped.
Don't we believe that capitalism will do that part all by itself?
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Baloney, I say. Marx thought that only because he
never recovered fully from having started out as a Hegelian. Nothing is
inevitable. No matter how many crises capitalism has, no matter for how
long, and no matter how severe, this alone will never persuade the people
to build a new system. The logic of socialism has to be presented in new
ways which we will need to discover. It may come when the internet
becomes advanced to the point that anyone can have their own TV station.
It may come when a popular youth genre of music or poetry conveys
socially-conscious lyrics. Whatever it will be, it will have to be a gradual
learning process. Capitalism will never "collapse."
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mikelepore
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Posted:
17 Mar 2005 06:21 am Post subject:
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Social Greenman wrote:
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that either
Socialism will not work, or be inefficient, or will not cause working
people to be motivated as they are under Capitalism
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Hmmm .... We reach the age of automation and
robotics, we finally get to the point where we can let machines do most
of the work, and the critics still want people to be
"motivated." I think people are too damn "motivated"
and they should cut it out. People should stop wishing they could just
spend more hours at the office, a goal which is impeded by the nuisance
factor of their children wanting to see them. People should stop thinking
that the goal in life is to fill a rec room with gadgets and then have a
heart attack. Slow down. Write a haiku about a flower. The "work
ethic" is nothing but an old Biblical superstition that was
promulgated somewhere between stoning adulterors and burning witches.
We're going to have to find a digital copy of Paul Lafargue's excellent
pamphlet, "The Right to be Lazy."
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kenellis
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Posted:
17 Mar 2005 01:14 pm Post subject:
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Since private messaging has been disabled on this
board, allow me to direct the following to Social, about his wife: Go on
line and find some homeopathic Pyrogen, 30c potency. It is excellent for
treating post-op infection. For more on this topic, e-mail me at kenneth
ellis at earthlink dot com. I have no investments or financial interests
in homeopathic meds. -KE
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davesearles
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Posted:
17 Mar 2005 05:36 pm Post subject:
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Mike, you are on drugs and I am full of baloney.
Thesis and antithesis!
Well, trying to tell people that capitalism needs
to be scrapped isn't contrary to telling people about how to constuct the
next form of civilization. Of course I tend more to the ideal. If SIU is
an option, I don't think it's even necesarry to tell people that
capitalism needs to be scrapped as opposed to that it should be scrapped
if only because SIU is better than capitalism. Of course it's one of
those arguments that goes on and on.
I also happen to believe that capitalism is the
great demotivator. I think people would be far more productive in their
personal and civic lives if it meant something. But that's just me.
Dave
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mikelepore
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Posted:
17 Mar 2005 08:08 pm Post subject:
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There used to be a magazine called The Western
Socialist. I copied the following sentence from an old issue that was
labeled Number 5 - 1968 ...
"They want capitalism because they
have cockeyed notions about the way it works, which lead them to suppose
that their problems can be solved within capitalism, or, alternatively,
could not be solved under any other system."
I believe this sentences summarizes exactly what we
need to remember whenever we act to educate the working class.
It explains everything. It helps us in deciding
what subjects to speak and write about. I explains why we must avoid
"leadership" vanguardism and why we must avoid proposing
gradual reforms. It doesn't use any unproven assumptions about
"human nature." It shows respect for the principles of
democracy. It's all there.
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Social Greenman
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Posted:
18 Mar 2005 09:28 am Post subject:
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Thanks Ken for your concern.
Most if not all the infection is gone. However, the wound vacuum has to
remain on her until she closes up. Like I wrote before, the various drugs
that she is on slows down the healing process. The wound vac pulls fresh
oxygenated blood though the wound which helps speed up the healing
process.
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Quote:
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"They
want capitalism because they have cockeyed notions about the way it
works, which lead them to suppose that their problems can be solved
within capitalism, or, alternatively, could not be solved under any
other system."
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That pretty much hits the nail on the head. I don't
think it is cockeyed notions considering that mostley everyone has been
conditioned to think that society cannot function without capitalism, or
that their livelyhood is dependent on the capitalist class.
Yes, we can critisize capitalism to our fellow
workers and I know socialism would not create a perfect world because it
would have to deal with various problems that arises such as major
accidents, disasters, crop failures and so on and so forth.
Social
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mikelepore
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Posted:
18 Mar 2005 10:00 am Post subject:
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Social Greenman wrote:
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accidents,
disasters, crop failures and so on and so forth.
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In a socialist system, disasters would be just what
they are, no more and no less. But in a capitalist system, someone
generally appears to take advantage of the suffering of others, which
increases the suffering. For example, when major hurricanes occur in the
U.S., it's very common for advertisements to appear right away ... dry
blankets for sale - $500 ... lodging available - sleep on bare floor -
$500 per night ...
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davesearles
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Posted:
18 Mar 2005 03:05 pm Post subject:
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Most of what are called accidents are usually preceded
by a stage called "an accident waiting to happen." Then these
are not true accidents, anymore than if you roll a pair a dice and it
wipes out all that you have can be termed an accident. Under these
circumstances the negligent bring in their attorneys to get the court to
declare that there in fact is a god, and that big son of a bitch caused
the accident - in other words, an act of god. 50,000 a year die on the
streets and highways in just the US every year - sure some are
legitimately termed accidents but we as a society seem quite willing to
suck this statistic up as a necesary resultant of having to get from here
to there.
Disasters, ditto. The Bhopal disaster. And
disasters seem to be a disaster if only given that status by the media.
The entire North East has been poisoned by mercury - not a fish caught in
nature anywhere in New York/New England is free from contamination of
mercury. It's a terrible neuro-toxin. It seems to cause autism, a hideous
disease. But this apparently does not qualify as a disaster.
Don't get me going on crop failure: pesticide,
monoculture and genetically engineered seeds are taking us right to the
brink.
The revolution will not be televised.
(Who remembers this line?)
Dave
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Social Greenman
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Posted:
18 Mar 2005 05:00 pm Post subject:
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Did it have something to do with the elections in
Venezuela?
Social
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mikelepore
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Posted:
19 Mar 2005 12:49 am Post subject:
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Here are the exact lyrics to the song.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Gil Scott Heron (1975)
You will not be able to stay home brother
you will not be able to plug in, turn on and drop
out
you will not be able to lose yourself on skag and
skip out for beer during commercials
Because the revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be televised
the revolution will not be brought to you by xerox
in 4 parts without commercial interruption
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog moss confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary
The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Wood and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner because The revolution will not be
televised brother
There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mays
pushing that cart down the block on the
dead run
or trying to slide that color television into a
stolen
ambulance
NBC will not be able to predict the winner at 8:32
or the count from 29 districts
The revolution will not be televised
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay
There will be no pictures of young being
run out of Harlem a rail with a brand new process
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a red, black and
green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
for just the right occasion
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies and
Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day
The revolution will not be televised
there will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Engelbert Humperdinck or The
Rare Earth
The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be right back after a
message
about a white tornado, white lightning, or white
people
You will not have to worry about a germ in your
bedroom, the tiger in your tank, or the giant in
you
toilet bowl
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight germs that can cause
bad breath
The revolution WILL put you in the driver's
seat
The revolution will not be televised, will not be
televised
will not be televised
The revolution will be no re-run brothers
The revolution will be live
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Social Greenman
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Posted:
20 Mar 2005 12:50 pm Post subject:
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I never heard of the song but
the lyrics are a interesting read.
Mike wrote:
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Quote:
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In a socialist
system, disasters would be just what they are, no more and no less. But
in a capitalist system, someone generally appears to take advantage of
the suffering of others, which increases the suffering. For example,
when major hurricanes occur in the U.S., it's very common for
advertisements to appear right away ... dry blankets for sale - $500
... lodging available - sleep on bare floor - $500 per night ...
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Considering I live in the North I was not aware of
that. However, it makes sense that Capitalism would increase the
suffering of victims of disaters. I bet that a lot of them are going to
take insurance companies for a ride to get as much money as they can ring
out of them plus charge exrtra money to those victims. Especially the
elderly who are a target for swindlers. Since my wife lives in a nursing
home the powers that be are trying every angle to take what little income
she has (SSI because she is totally disabled and that is no exageraton).
I am fighting them and have gotten some help from a social worker. If
they succeed then she will not have a home to return to.
I can imagine what the elderly and their families
has to endure. I believe the elderly has to sell off everything that is
own by them to get low quality care. The same is true with those on the
dole that any personal properties they have has to be sold before they
can get any sort of help. The selling or the declaring of bankruptsies of
the personal properties such as houses, lands and other items actually benefit
the Capitalist class who resell them at a profit. So, Capitalism will try
its damn hardest to make a profit off human sufferings no matter if it is
a $100.00 or more.
Another thing that concerns me is the Libertarian
fad. I don't accept their vauge rhetoric of free markets make free minds.
Basically these people want unbridled Capitalism which they think will
cure all of societies ills cough, cough. Freedom and democracy will only
belong to the few Capitalist while many, many workers would have to endure
cuts in wages and continuing rising prices of goods and services. I bet
they won't address those issues or they will just come up with a few more
vauge phrases. Libertarian propaganda, which is Capitalist propaganda,
has indoctrinated people to think it is wrong that society should take
care of its citizenry because it takes their hard(?) earn money from
them. But yet these people are willing to buy into a health insurance
plan, or any other type of plan, even though those companies make a
profit off of their money and demand that they pay out-of-pocket for
expenses. They call it a choice but it is a contradiction.
Social
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Social Greenman
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Posted:
21 Mar 2005 01:45 pm Post subject:
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The
above post was a rant. Anyways, I was sent home from work due to lack of
work. Third shift was brought down to first so I don't know if there will
be any work on the morrow. I notice that we were pushed to produce as
fast as possible and now orders are almost non existant until things pick
up again. However, the owner has already reaped his profits from our
labor.
On the other hand, To help solve over production
and under production I think a vast network of computers that are
connected to each industry, services and farms could help in this matter
since each geographic region would know what each others needs are. We
are technologically advanced enough for SIU to be implemented. Since the
advent of the internet Socialist can talk to each other over long
distances.
Social
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