Forum Post: What is Capitalism? This is what we are fighting against.
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 8, 2011, 2:52 a.m. EST by colorsworld
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Many of the pervasive social problems that we see around us--inequality, alienation, racism, sexism, militarism, destruction of the environment,consumerism, imperialism, ect.-- are significantly and systematically related to the economic institutions that make up a capitalistic society. It is the production relations of a society which is the key taht unlocks the nature of that social system. In a capitalist society the social relations of production are characterized by seperation of the producers (laborers) from the means of production. The land, factories, machines, offices, ect. are owned privately by a small group of people who use their control to organize the work process and selll goods and services in order to make profits for themselves. The workers sell their labor-power to the owners of the means of production (capitalist) in exchange for a wage. Modern society is characterized by the relationship between worker and capitalist which takes a purely contractual form, and which is indistinguishable in appearance from any of the other manifold free-market transactions of an exchange society......................It has brought a form of compulsion to labor for another that is purely economic and "objective"; thus laying a basis for that peculiar and mystifying form whereby a leisured class can exploit the surplus labor of others which is the essence of the modern system that we call Capitalism. (excerpt from The Capitalist System: A radical look at american society, this book would be very useful to everyone protesting it gives you a good look at what we are dealing with) Augier- "if money comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore with blood and dirt." Capitalism is not "free market exchange" It is the exploitation of man by man. It is sick, evil, and completely destructive. Are only hope is Anarchy which is self governance from the bottom up. Stay tuned next post will be about that!!!!!!!
SLAVERY MAY SEEM NICE—UNTIL YOU GET THE NOOSE By Robert LeFevre
Orange County Register Sunday Feb 6th. 1983 I would like to set forth the proposition that this nation is filled with people who have slave mentalities. That is, these people prefer slavery to a state of freedom. They find freedom repulsive, frightening and permissive. Obviously, a slave is a human being who is owned by another human being. Slavery can exist in a one-on one relationship (an individual person owns another individual person) or it can exist as a group condition. That is, a single individual might own a number of slaves. Or a group of persons might pool their resources and own one or more slaves in concert. Whether a person is enslaved as an individual or with a group does not alter the character of slavery. What is the character of slavery? This vital point should be considered with care. The conditions of slavery are thought to be so repugnant that no individual would ever seek them voluntarily. Thus, there has grown up insensibly the idea that a slave is a kind of prisoner, kept in durance vile by force or the threat to bring force to bear. While this has sometimes been true, it is frequently untrue. The most destructive kind of slavery is not the kind imposed by a Simon Laegree. The most destructive kind is that maintained by generous, gentle souls, who make slavery so comfortable that their slaves find life attractive. To glimpse this point more clearly, consider the fundamental difference between a slave and a prisoner. The former is viewed as an asset, the latter as a liability. If you are the jailer and you have a prisoner, you must feed, house, clothe and provide medical care for him or run the risk of losing him. Meanwhile, the prisoner loafs and produces nothing. The more prisoners you must care for, the higher your costs. Now consider the slave. In this country as well as others, when slavery was backed by legal sanction, people paid a great deal of money to buy slaves. They would surely have paid nothing whatever to buy a prisoner. The reason the slave was so costly was precisely because he would not be a prisoner, whiling away the hours. Rather, he was viewed as a kind of pre-mechanized piece of equipment. The slave was going to work and produce a great deal. To buy a slave was to buy an asset. The more it would produce the better. What distinguishes the work performed by a slave from the work performed by a free man? A free man works for himself; a slave works for his owner. This means that the product of the worker, if the worker is free, is managed and disposed of by the worker himself as he sees fit. He may spend it on others or on himself. He can save it, blow it on a good time or throw it away. It's his. Also his are the management of his own energies and the result coming from the use of those energies. There is nothing that says the free men will also be a wise man. But his self-ownership is recognized and he is a burden to no one but himself or those who choose to contract with him voluntarily. When a slave works, he has zero to say about his production. His owner can take it all. Practically speaking, however, no owner of any slave has ever taken all. The slave, like any other piece of expensive equipment, must be maintained. The slave must eat, wear clothing, be housed and be treated medically or his value diminishes or vanishes altogether. The slave has nothing to say about his standard of living; his owner makes those decisions. But survival is always a trade-off to some degree. Nothing is without cost. If the slave owner is kindly and generous, the slave's quarters, food, clothing and medical care will be more than adequate; if the slave owner is harsh, these will be less than adequate. But they cannot be totally lacking or the slave soon will be dead and the expensive asset will be a corpse. It follows that even in a condition which we think of as "total slavery," the key factor relates to the question of who controls what the worker produces, not to the question of owner take-all. The owner of slaves considers the production of his slaves in terms of what the owner's situation is, not what the slave's condition may be. Let's put this into perspective with percentages. A slave whose upkeep takes 10 percent of his total output 'for maintenance would be a valuable asset. One whose upkeep takes 90 percent of his total output would be an asset only marginally. It doesn't take a college degree to see that if a worker has half of his production taken from him by another, but is allowed to keep the remainder, then he is enslaved 50 percent.
Now, let's put this into focus in these United States today. Who decides how your income is to be divided? Do you? You do not. The U.S. government and its subordinate satrapies (state, county and city governments) have first claim on whatever you produce. The government will decide what you may keep for your own maintenance. Taxes, the part going to your owner, come first. In addition, the government decides what your work is worth by setting wages. It determines hiring practices, demands that you pay for various "benefits" such as Social Security, auto insurance, unemployment insurance and so on. And like any astute slave owner, it decided long ago to pose as kindly and generous to its flock. The result is that there has grown up in this once great America, land of the free, a slave mentality. More and more people ask the government to provide jobs, to give them money, food stamps, housing, medical care, education and comfort in their old age. And now, when the government - your owner - is in trouble, it simply turns around and says, in effect: "We've run up a lot of bills, but you are obligated to pay them!” The government, like any owner, thinks of its own problems first. After that, you get to keep what's left - if there is anything. It follows that you are a free individual only to the degree the government will tolerate. Columnist LeFevre lives in Orange.
You guys don't know anything. Sorry but this is capitalism and it is the tool that created the corporations. If we want change in this world and for it to be beautiful then we need to end capitalism.
I totally disagree with you. Capitalism and globalization are the way to a world free from poverty and hunger. What is going on today in Wall Street in NY and "Wall Streets" around the world is not capitalism. It is cronyism , or crony-socialism. The government bails out inefficient financial institutions who have bribed them to the hilt with money, jobs for their relatives, insider stock-market profits, etc.
Classic American capitalism is a fantastic way to universal prosperity. Fight to bring it back.
colorsworld, you might be interested in the following:
https://sites.google.com/site/politicalreading/home/analysisofwelfaresociety
nope. capitalism does not exist. we are fighting against corporate oligarchy. capitalism is merely the carrot the oligarchs put in front of the conservatives to keep them working at the bit against their own better interests- the GAME that is played in the rigged corporate oligarchy casino- fake capitalism and fake democracy.
to get serious requires a few things they don't have. like chat admins who aren't ego serving propaganda tools, a wiki, 1001 sub forums, an actual game plan, a straight up political platform... you know.. basic organizational things sane people do BEFORE protesting.. like figure out a diplomacy and logic centered metaprocess to give their chatadmins so that they don't really just drive out even more people than the trolls. Adminatrolla. trollaAdmin. Whats the difference to somebody whos got the truth facing a propaganda tool abusing admin powers to push their agenda? how can you prevent such a thing? Metaprocess. did i mention metaprocess? and science diplomacy science psychology science sociology and all those textbooks to read B4 protesting?
you can't have capitalism without a free(SLAVE) market. but you can have a free market without capitalism. And thats strangely the only way it CAN work.
Marketing 101 was fascinating. I admit thats a lot less than a bachelors but its sure more than enough to see whats really going on given the other things I know. Capitalism is not the problem since it does not exist. corporate oligarchy is the problem. capitalism has never been tried. I am a democracy guy. in order for real democracy to function a free market system is required. Thats not capitalism. thats a free market system. there is a subtle difference there which most people would miss. I will again repeat. Neither capitalism nor marxism nor communism nor socialism has ever existed. All of those governments were oligarchy pretending to be something as a con scam. Telling that simple truth gets one banned out of the Chat by either a capitalist or a socialist whos pissed you just said their pet ideology isn't real. It isn't. anybody who thinks that it is is accidentally playing for team corporate oligarchy as a tool. the ONLY system worth talking about is DEMOCRACY. how democracy HANDLES a FREE MARKET system is dynamic and interesting and NOT capitalism.
o. yes. no. yes. what? making change is not reliant on changing the money system one tenth as much as it is on changing the informational ecology. Going to a gold standard as an idea is a proof of ignorance, not a solution. Really the end game is we evolve out of money. To do that we evolve first new currencies and new economic strategies. this leads to economic singularity in about 50 years. If everyone is a millionaire how much you get depends on exactly the material valuation of that money. Which is to say that by the time money becomes obsolete everyone will live like the current millionaire. Tangible items to other tangible items? the real economy is about ideas, change the ideas and everything changes. the problem with the tangible economy is it does not change; its a static reality. you can't make a meaningful gold standard with only enough gold to represent on millionth of the economy. You can make a purely imaginal money system work; but it has to be subject to moral and ethical laws. This is about pinning down those moral and ethical laws and implementing them in new currencies; not trying to imagine a control freak impossible non solution because of the simplicity with which you go about thinking over the problem.
once again. there has never been a socialist or capitalist economy. in all instances such nations were oligarchies. using a mask and a con scam and telling their dupes and pwns that they were something other than oligarchy. the big hump to get over is that the USA oligarchy and the Soviet oligarchy are in on this lie against the rest of us TOGETHER. Neither of them was ever anything other than an oligarchy. both claimed some other system in order to have US fight over the ideals of THAT system while they secretly shafted us all playing a completely different game.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/stop-playing-the-devils-games/
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150343790359248&set=a.10150264906064248.348293.511989247&type=1&theater