A message from the young thinkers of the University College London Union:
This Union resolves to… struggle against fascism and the far-right… with the perspective of fighting the root cause of fascism – capitalism.
Apparently fascism is “far-right” – a claim that Mussolini and Hitler, avowed socialists, might have found puzzling – and is caused by capitalism. And not caused by, say, dogmatic collectivism and its endless justifications for authoritarian urges. Urges not unlike those of the Union itself, with its intent to ban student groups that it deems both “sexist” and “anti-Marxist,” and which therefore must be met with “unconditional resistance.” To say nothing of the Union’s somewhat ambitious plan to bring about “a socialist transformation of society.”
Via BenSix.
Speer lied. His decentralization program was brilliant and very effective. Bombing techniqes of the time were ham-fisted and uneffective. However, the German people were a main target of the Allied campaign. I cannot fault that strategic decision in hindsight. Given the evil done by that German nation the action was more than justified.
I don’t know. Speer was slippery and a criminal but he made some interesting points. Bombing railways was pointless for example, and he couldn’t work out why the allies couldn’t work that out. Bombing a ball bearing factory on the other had was a disaster – he couldn’t move production elsewhere because it was so specialised – but they left them alone. As he said, the allies only need ask themselves ‘what would hit us hardest if the situation was reversed?’, but they didn’t
Can’t agree that the campaign was justified either, all those dead, deformed and damaged for no practical gain.
You might take a trip to Shenzhen and ask them. Except they are not allowed to speak to you about work conditions.
Well, I have asked the Chinese I work with and the answer is: better, much fucking better. Even if we accept as true your bullshit claim that the Chinese in Shenzhen are not allowed to discuss their work conditions.
“However, we must understand that amongst the many causes of slavery, the most prominent was capitalism.”
Really? That’s stretching the definition of capitalism rather a lot, isn’t it? The Ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, the Arabs, the Aztecs, the Incas, the Zulus, etc, etc, etc… all really capitalists?
“Well, I have asked the Chinese I work with and the answer is: better, much fucking better.”
I am guessing these aren’t factory workers?
I will agree to disagree on the campaign justification. As for target priority of the bombing campaign, that one is a little different. Ball bearings were considered a choke point of the German arms industry and bombed. The problem was assessing the damage effectively, so follow up bombing didn’t take place. Also, bombing railways mostly took place in France in the run-up to D day and were extremely effective. The Normandy campaign (which was a near-run thing) could have failed without that effort. It was not a strategic aim of the Army Air Corps, it was a strategic aim of the Normandy invasion. Anyways, this is off topic so I’ll shut up now.
“I really don’t know why anyone feels the need to stick up for the Nazis.”
I don’t think anyone is. I think people are trying to point out that the Nazis and the Fascists were actually closer to the Communists than to, say, Conservatives. Conservatives tend to believe in small government and maximum personal freedom, whereas those other ideologies… don’t.
Which makes a bit of a nonsense of the common belief, among leftists, anyway, that Fascists and Nazis are really right-wing – that they essentially believe in the same things as Conservatives, but go just a little bit further.
It’s the left-to-right continuum that is being questioned. I can see why people think of Communists as basically believing the same things as the more moderate socialists (the Labour party, if you like), only taken to extremes. But I can’t see any way in which Nazism or Fascism can be described as taking mainstream right wing ideas (found in, say, the Conservative party) to extremes.
“You missed out ‘the slave trade, empire, and genocide (especially in the US)’ which were pretty salient features of the period of early capitalism too. You are not the only one, those things generally do get left out but we could make a bit more effort not to forget.”
This is a common complaint, and a place where Socialists don’t get the fundamental differences between Capitalism and Socialism.
Socialism is, by nature, totalitarian, and I’m using that word in a specific sense: socialism as a theory concerns itself with all aspects of human behavior as they are all to be subverted to the common good. Socialism includes an economic, a political and a values framework (amongst others), and all three are intricately linked. Capitalism is purely an economics framework, only concerned with politics where it relates specifically to economic transactions between consenting individuals, and is amoral with respect to values.
A capitalist doesn’t care what form the government takes as long as it provides a minimal method of contract enforcement and protection against theft by fraud or force, and some capitalists have argued that even that can be provided without a political framework. Capitalism is as possible under an authoritarian autocracy that doesn’t intrude into the economic realm (Singapore or Hong Kong) as it is under a representative Democracy. The government can be evil or good, capitalism doesn’t care. Capitalists themselves likely do care as much as anyone else does, but one can hold the economic theory either way. Blaming the acts of government on capitalism makes no sense, as the government permits capitalism yet the government is not predicated on capitalism.
On the other hand, Socialism, whether an ideal structure of workers communes or the real-world totalitarian dictatorships we see, concerns itself with everything. Entertainment, art, sport, leisure, the most minute detail is the business of socialism because it is a part of the common good, therefore it is the government’s business. Therefore when a socialist government does something good or bad, that can be attributed to socialism.
I am guessing these aren’t factory workers?
They’re engineers, who work in factories. Presumably they are not considered genuine factory workers because they don’t subscribe to Marxist dogma held nowadays only by the privileged western middle classes?
Even supposing they were the lowest workers on an assembly line, how are they faring under Capitalism compared to the Socialism of yore? A lot fucking better, however you cut it.
Tom Foster – I get where you’re going with this, but ask yourself; what did a slave represent to a Roman? Wealth. How were slaves distributed? Mostly by sale. Why were the majority of slaves, throughout history, taken? To sell and profit from. Were there other reasons? Of course – religion, cultural conflict, control of means of reproduction, etc. But the primary benefit was capitalistic. That doesn’t mean that those societies were capitalistic, it means that the motivations of those engaged in the slave trade were capitalistic, by and large.
Put it this way; how many slaves would have been taken if there was no monetary gain? The answer is clearly a lot less, even if some slaves would still have been taken.
“Well, the Nazis didn’t nationalise German industry. Which is a pretty major part of what the socialist states did. I really don’t know why anyone feels the need to stick up for the Nazis.”
Was German industry any less nationalized that that by the post-war Socialist governments in Europe? The fact that he didn’t nationalize everything makes him an imperfect socialist, but it’s no less socialist than pre-Thatcher Britan, or the Scandanavian ‘socialist’ countries, or many other Socialist countries that don’t get written off as non-Socialist for not being perfect.
Pointing out that the USSR or the PRC were in many ways as bad as the Nazis and worse than Mussolini’s fascists isn’t minimizing the horrors of the Nazis or the Fascists, if anything, it’s a response to your minimizing the horrors of the Gulags and Laogi. (Pointing out that Hitler was an environmentalist vegetarian doesn’t indict all environmentalists or vegetarians). An honest socialist could admit that Hitler was a socialist, but his implementation was bad like Lenin’s. An honest opponent would say that if Hitler was the only bad Socialist it wouldn’t be enough to indict Socialism in general. But the fact that ALL self-proclaimed Socialist leaders have been horrible leaders to at least some degree, with several reaching a comparable level is a much stronger argument.
I’d forgotten how much fun it is to wield a stick against a piñata.
I’ll need to remember to hit up your tip jar, David.
“Even supposing they were the lowest workers on an assembly line, how are they faring under Capitalism compared to the Socialism of yore? A lot fucking better, however you cut it.”
I don’t deny that some people are making a lot of money from the misery of the others Tim. The Party higher-ups are doing especially well!
“Was German industry any less nationalized that that by the post-war Socialist governments in Europe? The fact that he didn’t nationalize everything makes him an imperfect socialist, but it’s no less socialist than pre-Thatcher Britan”
Seriously? You are saying that Nazi Germany was not just socialist but socialist in the same way as pre-Thatcher Britain? At least you follow your argument where it leads I suppose: nothing to choose between Hitler and Harold Wilson.
Anyway, it seems almost rude to mention it, but didn’t Hitler actually lead off with a massive series of privatisations in the 30s? Shouldn’t the analogy really be with Thatcher if so?
Minnow,
Well, I’m a little surprised to hear that, but that’s very kind of you to say so, thank you.
However, it wouldn’t be a discussion proper if I didn’t respond to your assertions so …
Hitler was not a socialist, he was a fascist
I have no problem in describing Hitler as a Fascist (though as Jonah Goldberg puts it, ‘Hitlerist’ might be a more accurate description). However, I also recognise – correctly – that Fascism is a scion of Socialism and certainly not its opposite.
We should not let the fact that it was politically expedient to both Hitler and Stalin to overexaggerate the differences and downplay the similarities between the two ideologies. To use an analogy, the distance between them is closer to the one between Sunni and Shia Islam than between, say, Sunni Islam and Hinduism. Fascism and Communism/Socialism are not opposites but brother and sister. To deny this is to be obstinately dogmatic.
the aim of socialism historically has been to liberate workers from the state as well as the capitalist, the state being, as Marx said, a committee for the management of bourgeois affairs
I appreciate space on a blog is limited, but this is far too broad a generalisation to be believable. For one thing, you need to make a distinction between the various socialisms that have existed as ideas and then again to look at the actual living socialists such as Lenin, Guzman, Mengistu, Sar (i.e. Pol Pot) and others who have ‘applied’ their various interpretations on the poor unfortunates in their countries.
A counter-argument I often hear is something along the lines of ‘Ah! But the USSR wasn’t real socialism, but a perversion of it’. But the USSR is just one of dozens of attempts to bring socialism down to Earth and not one of them – literally, not a single one – has ever succeeded. Not only that of course, but they have invariably resulted in misery, murder and oppression on an industrial scale.
How many times do we have to experience these tragedies before it finally clicks that it is the ideal itself that is fundamentally flawed, not the individual circumstances under which it has been introduced?
the progressives of the 60s did change everything.
No matter how often I hear this asserted, it bears no more of a resemblance to the facts than sympathetic magic does to being able to bend the universe to human will.
It even strikes me as slightly delusional to make such grandiose claims that social acceptance of e.g. unmarried mothers, LGBTQ people etc. all comes down to the marches and leafleting of upper and middle class students from the 1960s.
It also seems to me to be supremely arrogant to appropriate someone else’s grassroots efforts to change their lives and the lives of the their communities as a victory for Socialism. For example, I understand that there was a British grassroots gay movement which set up gay pubs and cafes from the early 1910s – about 50 years before homosexuality was decriminalised – and that bill was introduced not by the Labour government of the late 1960s (though they were in office when it was eventually passed) but by a Liberal Democrat MP and a Conservative Lord. Which shows that it was a cross-party issue and not a simplistic case of socialists/liberals/progressives on the side of the Angels against capitalists/conservatives/reactionaries.
Chuffing hell. I see you’ve been busy.
I’ll need to remember to hit up your tip jar, David.
That does tend to brighten my mood.
My hair looks great, by the way.
I don’t deny that some people are making a lot of money from the misery of the others Tim.
Nice try, but that’s not what I asked. You’e trying to deflect attention from your idiotry, as usual. I asked how are the factory workers faring under Capitalism compared to the Socialism of yore? And the answer is: a lot fucking better. And that hurts you, deep down, doesn’t it? Even the exploited masses are better off under Capitalism than Socialism. Ouch, that’s gotta hurt!
“Seriously? You are saying that Nazi Germany was not just socialist but socialist in the same way as pre-Thatcher Britain? At least you follow your argument where it leads I suppose: nothing to choose between Hitler and Harold Wilson.”
I’m saying that there is no such thing as a perfect socialist economy, something you have admitted has not happened yet. We can look at a number of factors. As far as industrial policy goes, some Socialist countries (North Korea) fall much farther along the spectrum of state control than others (Sweden). In North Korea, the Soviet Union and China (immediately after the revolution), the state directly ran all industries. In others, the state only directly ran vital industries (usually either defense or the big export industries) or left the industries nominally independently owned but controlled their operation through an industrial ministry. In all cases, some or all of the economy is subordinated to the ‘common good’ as defined by the people running the country, which turns out to be ‘for the benefit of the people running the government’. Saying that US World War 2 industrial policy was very much like Nazi German industrial policy is not to say that the two governments were alike in other ways. To say that the US during WW2, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and North Korea directed Art towards propaganda, censored speech, association and communications, and conscripted people into the military and into industry (all Socialist) is not to say that all three are equivalently moral, just that all had a similar rationale for similar policies.
*Smashes piñata with sledgehammer*
“We should not let the fact that it was politically expedient to both Hitler and Stalin to overexaggerate the differences and downplay the similarities between the two ideologies … To deny this is to be obstinately dogmatic.”
Why would it be expedient? Surely it would have been much more expedient for the leaders of the two great socialist revolutions to work together to promote world ‘socialism’, as Hitler was more than happy to do with Mussolini and Franco who are also, presumably, socialists? Occam suggests that after all the two things, fascism and socialism were not alike. And it is not dogmatic to say so when the only thing they have in common is the use of the word ‘socialism’. But a word is just a word.
Goldberg has a bee in his bonnet about this but he doesn’t argue for it, he just asserts it and points to the ‘socialist’ bit of ‘national socialist’.
“But the USSR is just one of dozens of attempts to bring socialism down to Earth and not one of them – literally, not a single one – has ever succeeded.”
It depends on where you draw your boundaries. Finland would have appeared socialist to Marx, do we include that?
” I asked how are the factory workers faring under Capitalism compared to the Socialism of yore? And the answer is: a lot fucking better.”
Well neither of us knows, we are not allowed to ask them. But if your defence of capitalism is ‘the misery it inflicts could be worse’ I at least know where you stand.
Well neither of us knows, we are not allowed to ask them.
No, I said I did ask them. You claimed we are not allowed to, which was bullshit.
But if your defence of capitalism is ‘the misery it inflicts could be worse’ I at least know where you stand.
Yes, my defence of capitalism is that no matter how bad it is, it is *always* worse under Socialism. Which is true. The problem is?
“I’m saying that there is no such thing as a perfect socialist economy”
there is no such thing as a perfect economy of any kind. But you were saying a bit more than that. Your claim was, as far as I can tell, that pre-Thatcher Britain was a fascist (because it means the same as socialist) state. This despite the fact that Hitler privatised more industry than Thatcher.
Your habit of patting yourself on the back is unbecoming, by the way, and may put your shoulder out.
“No, I said I did ask them. You claimed we are not allowed to, which was bullshit.”
You asked factory workers in China? Or the privileged cadre that are allowed to work outside?
“Yes, my defence of capitalism is that no matter how bad it is, it is *always* worse under Socialism. Which is true. The problem is?”
The problem is: who, whom?
“Anyway, it seems almost rude to mention it, but didn’t Hitler actually lead off with a massive series of privatisations in the 30s? Shouldn’t the analogy really be with Thatcher if so?”
Oh no! Thatcher was a closet socialist! Gasp! *Faints on couch*
I don’t know the extent of Hitler’s privatizations in the early 30’s, but I’d suggest that the People’s Car (standardized and produced in the people’s factory for the common man) was much closer to the heart of Nationalist Socialist economic policy than was a one-off privatization as he was consolidating his power.
However, even Socialists get hit in the face with reality every so often, especially when they actually have to run a country filled with people. Both the Soviet Union and China eventually realized that the Socialist dream wasn’t working out perfectly, as things like food were a lot scarcer than the system said they would be. So both decided that rather than spending resources to fight the natural economic behavior of man, they would allow a little openness. The Soviets, for example, allowed people to produce and sell (capitalistically) a little bit of food from small private plots to supplement the food produced from the big collective farms. Exactly as a capitalist would predict, those small private plots ended up producing a lot more food for their size than the big central Soviet farms, because humans respond to incentives. The Chinese leadership did the same thing on a much bigger scale; as long as they retained their grip on the power of the state, the people could do what they liked. And that factory worker, as lousy as his job is by Western standards, probably has it better than his contemporaries did during the Great Leap Forward. Heck, even the Socialist Workers Paradise of North Korea needs to work with filthy South Korean companies to make money to get what it needs that it can’t produce itself.
Look up in the thread and see what I said about Black Markets and Socialist systems breaking down. *smashes piñata with bigger sledgehammer*
Oh, and since we’re being pedantic, Hitler was less a Fascist than he was a Socialist. Only Mussolini was a Fascist. Unless you want to sit down and tell me how Hitler’s economic policies were like those of Mussolini’s Fascist party? (hint: it’s a trap).
You asked factory workers in China? Or the privileged cadre that are allowed to work outside?
Right, it’s evidence time.
1) Where is the evidence that Chinese factory workers (all of them, not just a handful mentioned on some obscure website) are not allowed to discuss their conditions?
2) Where is the evidence that only the privileged cadre of Chinese are sent overseas to work (by the way, an awful lot of the Chinese working in Africa, where I lived for 3 years, are from the prisons)?
3) On what measure do you consider Chinese workers to be worse off under Capitalism?
The problem is: who, whom?
Ah, so no problem then. You just can’t stomach the fact that the oppressed Chinese peasants vote with their feet and flock to the factories in droves rather than remaining on their farms and dying, like they did when your ilk was in charge.
I have to go I am afraid, sorry I can’t respond to the last. I will have to take the image of the Chinese peasant running to work in a factory to stave off starvation with me on the train. With defenders like that, capitalism doesn’t need enemies.
Minnow, this whole thing is a lot more interesting when you debate on merits instead of resorting to word twisting. Debate, don’t defame. Please.
as far as I am aware, share the goal of liberating the worker from the state as well as capitalist exploitation,
You really do need to work on that “awareness” thing. It’ll save you some embarrassment.
Minnow,
Why would it be expedient? Surely it would have been much more expedient for the leaders of the two great socialist revolutions to work together to promote world ‘socialism’ …
Why? Why did the USSR almost come to blows with PRC in the Sino-Soviet disputes? Why did Lenin devote vast amounts of his energy to defeating socialists from factions different from his own but who were nevertheless ostensibly working toward the same socialist Utopia? Why did Stalin have Trotsky liquidated?
Going back to the analogy I drew before, you could ask why was Shia Iran – even before the US proclaimed an interest – sending commando brigades to support Alawite Assad against Sunni insurgents? You may just as well ask why they don’t “work together to promote” the Islamic Umma as why Hitler and Stalin didn’t join forces.
[Jonah Goldberg] just asserts it and points to the ‘socialist’ bit of ‘national socialist’.
I really don’t know what else to say about this – how much more evidence do you need in addition to what you’ve already had posted up here by others on this site that Hitler and the NSDAP belonged to a species of Socialism?
Finland would have appeared socialist to Marx …
Finland? Finland?
This is the same Finland that produced the International Telecoms Giant Nokia? That Finland?
This again seems to be an example of Marxism appropriating achievements quite unrelated to its influence because of certain passing similarities. According to this, any nation with a Welfare State is a evidence of a win for Marxism?
“This despite the fact that Hitler privatised more industry than Thatcher.”
Show your work. Sources, please. You started with ‘Hitler privatized some businesses at the start of his term in office’ (plausible) to ‘Hitler privatized more industry than Thatcher’.
At any rate, Hitler also took explicit control of the German education system at all levels and established central control of art, media and entertainment, all away from individuals and into the service of the common good of the people of Germany. All are moves in a more socialist direction. And all similar to moves undertaken by other Socialist regimes. (Seriously, ‘Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda’?)
I’m hungry, and it’s lunch time. Can you come up with any definitions for socialism and capitalism that don’t put Hitler significantly closer to socialist than capitalist?
However, we must understand that amongst the many causes of slavery, the most prominent was capitalism.
Yowzer, that is so grossly, historically inaccurate as to make one ask what the color of the sky is in the world of the utterer.
“Well, the Nazis didn’t nationalize German industry.”
No, they just used the force of the State to tell the industry what to do, which might as well be the same thing.
I have to go I am afraid, sorry I can’t respond to the last.
Yes, being asked to provide evidence for repeated, bullshit claims is difficult, isn’t it?
Darleen, I absolutely assert that it is accurate. Slavery was primarily economic. It was also many other things, but it was primarily economic.
What other things was slavery? It was a clash of cultures. It was a method of controlling reproduction (and still is today in Islam – sex slavery). It was an adjunct to conquest. But the existence of slave markets was endemic to the slave trade. In other words, wherever slaves were, there were slave markets. This is well supported in the historical record, back to ancient Greece and Persia. The other aspects/causes of slavery were not endemic. So clearly, the capitalistic aspect of slavery was a prime motivator. I am certain that no person with at least some familiarity with history would debate that the massive slave trade of the late 17th and early 18th centuries was overwhelmingly capitalistic.
The point here is twofold; capitalism isn’t perfect and doesn’t pretend to be. Communism pretends to be perfect and is horror. Furthermore, capitalism understands its own faults and works to remedy them, where Communism doesn’t. Ignoring the weaknesses of capitalism weakens our argument and hides one of its greatest assets; the ability to improve. Communism is supposed to be a ‘worker’s paradise’, and so can’t be improved, which may be its greatest weakness. The whole system is ossified.
Lastly, how many slaves would have been taken if they couldn’t be sold?
AG
Do you want to discuss capitalism or stuff that just maybe, if you squint while tilting your head and clenching your jaw, looks slightly “capitalist” cuz MARKETS!
Slavery is ubiquitous in history, back to roaming tribes who captured rival tribe members. Slavery is a diverse an “institution” as the cultures it was a part of. Some of it was via conquest, some of it was because a person’s labor was the only thing of value they owned – so if one defaulted on an agreement with another person, then they owned your labor (& body) for X number of years.
Slavery is not a “weakness” of capitalism by any means because it has existed long before capitalism (with the rights of property as inherent in individuals) came into being. Indeed, the slave trade of the 17/18th century you cite was a product of the same Otherism as most historical slavery; e.g. not one European ever entered into Africa to capture slaves. It was war & capture of rival tribes (ethnic others) that made for slaves.
Not that African chattel slave trade was the only one occurring at the time. See: Cromwell
Capitalism assumes property rights belong to individuals. Socialism assumes property rights belong to The State.
Capitalism fails when individuals seek The State’s power to subvert the voluntary nature of free markets and interactions between individuals.
“But the existence of slave markets was endemic to the slave trade.”
The slave trade isn’t the be-all and end-all of slavery. Throughout history, I would wager that slavery has primarily taken one of two forms: feudal serfdom, the idea that one is the property of a noble class structure, which is an artifact of feudal politics rather than capitalism, and captives taken by force, which is the starting point for the slave trade and is still seen (insert Boko Haram reference here).
If you want to describe a slave as “1.somebody forced to work for another: somebody who is forced to work for somebody else for no payment and is regarded as the property of that person” than the definition would apply to workers in a true Socialist state as well, if you take the state to be a person (or, more usually, for the tyrant that rules the socialist state). What’s the difference between returning a fugitive slave to it’s master and returning a Cuban struggling to reach freedom to Castro?
First off, Darleen and Civilis, thank you for the debate; I am enjoying it.
Next – I think that we have to define capitalism. Our friend Minnow would certainly have a different definition than ours, but I’m going to go with owning the fruits of your labours, and being able to freely trade those fruits. Based on that, ultimate socialism is absolutely slavery, as you noted, Civilus. If you contend that capitalism is a political system, then our debate stops here, because we are comparing apples and oranges.
We are debating what drives slavery throughout most of history. I believe that the desire for material gain (which is part and parcel of capitalism) is generally the cause of slavery in history. There are exceptions, especially in early stone age tribalism, but without material gain, why feed a slave? Why clothe a slave? Why house a slave? These things consumed scarce resources. Certainly, in the main, slaves were ill-fed, clothed and housed, but even that effort cost. The infamous slaving ships of the 19th century packed them in like sardines, but the ship wasn’t free. These costs and efforts were borne so that slavers and slave owners could benefit materially, not because of some cultural imperative.
Certainly, few or no Europeans actually went out and caught slaves. But without those markets that activity would not have existed in that form and to that extent. To deny that fact is the same as blaming the drug trade solely on a bunch of Columbian drug lords. No nasty activity without a demand…
In the end, I will rest my argument on the statement that, without the desire for material gain which is capitalistic, slavery throughout history would have been a shadow of the scourge that we have seen.
Now tear my argument apart and have fun doing it!
“In the end, I will rest my argument on th statement that, without the desire for material gain which is capitalistic, slavery throughout history would have been a shadow of the scourge that we have seen.”
1. The desire for material gain is human, whether or not one is capitalistic. Capitalism as an economic philosophy is built around the brilliant idea of harnessing man’s natural impulses rather than trying to fight them. Just because slavery can be tied to material gain doesn’t mean it’s entirely the province of capitalism.
2. Slavery can also be tied to a lot of non-material impulses. The origins of the practice, back at a tribal level, tie to a lot of baser human impulses, such as the drive for dominance over the other (by enslaving the defeated members of rival tribes). In a sense, the dominant tribe is the alpha of the human pack, pushing it’s will down on to the subservient beta. As long as humans have engaged in conflict, there has been the struggle to take what is primarily a wasteful effort and get something back. When all that the defeated tribe has is its people, then taking them as slaves is the only way to get something out of your victory. Slavery has it’s origins out of conflict/warfare, not trade, and up until very recently continues to be more of a product of warfare. The slave trade we know from American history is an exception to the norm.
The origins of slavery are not materialist; absolutely agreed. Mostly they were tribal – defeat your enemy, kill him and take his women and children. Your tribe grows, his shrinks. That was the motivation.
I think the disagreement here is based on how slavery has changed over time. Early on it was about other things. It then slowly morphed into an economic activity. So which represents slavery? When our socialist/communist debate opponents talk about slavery, they’re talking about the US south in 1850 – or perhaps other places that supported slavery in that fashion. We can respond with ‘that was an aberration’, and that slavery wasn’t created by Capitalism and we would be correct. We can even argue that the majority of slavery, throughout history, was not inherently an economic activity (I believe that it was, but that is debatable). But if we deflect the argument that slavery and capitalism are linked, we give our opponents grist for their mill. Better, to my mind, is to face it and say that we fixed that. Clearly, there is still slavery in the world but it is no longer primarily an economic activity. Then we can ask what ills inherent to socialism/communism have been fixed.
Anyways, when the average person thinks about slavery, they think about the US south in the 19th century and slave ships. MAYBE they think of Romans and gladiators, but probably not. You may argue that doesn’t represent the bulk of slavery throughout history – and from a time perspective, you’re probably right. But from a ‘volume’ perspective, slavery was on average an economic activity. More slaves were taken for economic reasons than any other.
Anyways, I think we can agree to disagree and I have to sign off now. I really enjoyed the debate and I’ll certainly be back to this site. Thank you.
May I interject one question?
How does ANY economic theory, especially the collectivist ones, account for the fact that some human beings are predatory, and many of them are so charming and charismatic that the populace begs them to save them from whatever awful state they’re in?
It really doesn’t matter what Marx and Engles said or what Mussolini or Hitler purported to believe: in every case where a centralized, planned economy is attempted, the entire works is taken over by a cadre of charming psychopaths who accrue such awful power unto themselves that only death and horror result.
I have never at any point heard anyone on the left propose a remedy for this. Neither the student movements nor the union-backed nor any other revolutionary movement (slow or fast) attempts to eject the psychopaths from amongst them.
First, such people are so charming and engaging it’s difficult to believe that they are actually sadists, and second because the psychopaths are already in charge — they gravitate to revolutionary movements like MRSA to surgical wounds — and would always thwart any attempt to diagnose and remove them.
The fact that a socialism such as we see in Europe got there incrementally instead of by violent overthrow does not absolve it of its sadistic tendencies — innovation can be stymied as easily by a Byzantine web of red tape as a life-long gulag sentence. Eventually, the whole mess grinds to a halt under its own weight.
THAT, I warrant, is what’s inevitable. Not the worker’s paradise.
“It really doesn’t matter what Marx and Engles said or what Mussolini or Hitler purported to believe: in every case where a centralized, planned economy is attempted, the entire works is taken over by a cadre of charming psychopaths who accrue such awful power unto themselves that only death and horror result.”
It’s just as bad if they honestly believe they know what is best for everyone. What’s worse is that having that power will both attract psychopaths AND bring out the worst impulses of anyone given that power.
“Eventually, the whole mess grinds to a halt under its own weight. THAT, I warrant, is what’s inevitable. Not the worker’s paradise.”
And what’s worse is, it will inevitably grind to a halt under its own weight whether the people running it are psychopaths or saints, because it requires preventing other people from making free decisions.
The only reward in the system, and it’s a massive one, is the ability to make decisions for other people. Of course it will attract psychopaths. Of course the ability will corrupt anyone that’s corruptible (ie, everyone); that’s what it means to be human.
What’s worse is that having that power will both attract psychopaths AND bring out the worst impulses of anyone given that power.
That the originators of Marxoid theory – along with its enactors and so many of its key thinkers – showed such marked narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies might give a person pause. You’d think. Not least when those inclinations are given monstrous license and scope by the philosophy in question. And not, I think, by accident.
I’d also like to observe that the fruit of gradual socialism in Europe has been high unemployment, low productivity, below-replacement birth rates, and cultural stagnation.
Already immigrants from more confident cultures are out-reproducing y’all to the point where you haven’t got enough gumption among the lot of you to resist the anti-Enlightenment incursions of Islam.
Sharia has a long track record of ensuring that the societies under its rule are of the old-fashioned prime-divider kind: a minority holds all the power and wealth while the rest eat dirt and die.
Just like our feudal ancestors, n’cest pas?
At least in the U.S. our out-of-control immigration comes from Latin America, which has its problems but Sharia ain’t one of them.
without the desire for material gain which is capitalistic
Whoa. Full stop.
Are you saying there is no difference between John Dillinger and Andrew Carnegie?
The desire for material gain is human
Correct. From enough food to make it to another day to a 10,000 square foot mansion on the hill overlooking the ocean – “desire for material gain” is not a qualifying characteristic of any economic system.
It is the how of acquisition, with its attendant foundation of principles and assumptions, that defines the system.
Capitalism is not a political system, but it is the only economic system not a principle contradiction with a free people.
“it is the only economic system that is not in contradiction with the principles of a free people.”
sheesh … I wonder if it’s too early to start drinking? (3:47 pm California time 80 degrees outside)
BTW … and OT … but I didn’t realize WWII was fought to make the world safe for interpretive dance
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4500179/d-day-interpretive-dance
(start at about 3 min mark)
The Jesuits had a term for Minnow’s blatherings: invincible ignorance. If anyone is still of the opinion that Bolshevism and Fascism do not share a common wellspring in 19th C. Prussian authoritarianism, do not share substantial parts of their taxonomy and are not in most respects operationally indistinguishable, then he is simply incorrigible and further debate is superfluous.
As for the utterly ludicrous People’s Front of Judea or UCLU or whatever: one of the best bits of doing my degree at Imperial lo these many moons ago was that it refused to affiliate to the NUS (thus saving dues that could then be spent on wizard feeds with lashings of beer). It strongly reduced the influence of Marxist simpletons on campus life, to much good effect. It wasn’t until I went oop North to do my Master’s that I encountered the echt SWP types, donkey-jacketed wastes of skin that they were. They were all as stupid as a big bag full of stupid things and spectacularly easy to run rings round in debate, but ultimately trying to reason with them was like trying to teach Lie algebra to a border collie. They had that mixture of general and specific ignorance so common on the Left. To the extent they were actually students they were all studying something utterly meretricious, but that at least kept them quarantined away from anything important. It was rather pathetic, really.
“The Jesuits had a term for Minnow’s blatherings: invincible ignorance.”
While I would love to have the people I debate online persuaded by my arguments, I realize that this is not likely to be the case. Mainly, I argue to lay the arguments out for unpersuaded listeners, because they are more likely open to persuasion.
That the originators of Marxoid theory – along with its enactors and so many of its key thinkers – showed such marked narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies might give a person pause. You’d think.
Not if you’re a narcissist or sociopath.
Ouch. My alma mater – still, back in time immemorial the Union were an odd bunch.
Presumably the poster about equality being a false god was deemed sufficient proof of unspeakable intent
er, but equality is a false God, that’s the first thing they should think about…
I’m sure this nonsense about “perspectives” is an old leftwing cliche – but it’s apparently back in fashion. Someone rather pompously told me last year that I should be thinking of “different perspectives” of history – by which they presumably meant one particular perspective.
I think calling Hitler a “socialist” is going a bit far – surely an extreme political opportunist.
It’s true enough, however, that all this very popular nonsense about “the far right” is just so much hot air. It’s hard to know what “right-wing” means these days – in the UK, it’s used as a shorthand for those who oppose unlimited immigration and the EU. They’re all the same as Anders Brevik, you know.
UKIP have certainly been demonised as far-right, and – while I don’t really support them or consider them a serious political group – I think it’s clear that some of our betters on the left think that politics is simply the sophisticated game of accusing the other side of racism/xenophobia (and probably misogyny too, while we’re at it..) Saves a lot of time, probably
Minnow, you seem to suffer badly from that narcissism of the left, that strange belief that as long as you profess to do “the right thing”, the outcomes don’t actually matter. Marxism has led to the largest death toll of any concept of human organisation yet put into practice, it is evil beyond imagining and all who profess it are simply making excuses for death, genocide, and slavery while fooling themselves they wouldn’t themselves practice it as enthusiastically as they could given the opportunity.
And you also have this strange wish to associate that modern most hideous of crimes, racism and slavery with capitalism. Slavery is as old as we have any knowledge of human civilisation, and flourished under all political arrangements until modern democracy. It flourished in all of the soviet states for example, only you refuse to see the state of differing nationalities under Stalin as slavery, yet that is what is was.
Nazism and indeed classical fascism (which is different in degree, Mussolini had quite a different approach to Hitler) and communism as essentially enacted differ in two major aspects; one is that they co-opt the capitalist “class” rather than eliminate but the economic effect is approximately the same; the other is that they profess different lies about their intentions, but they are still,lies. And they are knowing lies by those who actually hold power, but perhaps, to be generous, unknowing in they refuse to accept the truth that lies before them, by those useful idiots in I think Lenin’s phrase (or attributed to but not found in his extant writings) who go along with and enable the horrors to occur.
Minnow, you seem to suffer badly from that narcissism of the left, that strange belief that as long as you profess to do “the right thing”, the outcomes don’t actually matter.
Oh, it’s worse than that: people like minnow – wealthy, western, middle class, but rather dim – couldn’t care two figs about anyone other than themselves (and especially not starved Indians or Chinese factory workers). What they crave is power, control, and recognition but have found that in a capitalist system to get any of those you usually need to possess merit; they have none, hence the need to demonsie the system which stubbornly refuses to give them what they want. The exception lies in the public sector, which is why so many dickheads like minnow gravitate towards it. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking they care about anyone other than themselves, the tears eyed “think of the poor” speeches are merely vehicles for their own ambitions.
“Well, the Nazis didn’t nationalise German industry”
Not 100% of it, no. Just large chunks of it. But they nevertheless controlled 100% of it, so the result is de facto the same.
But then the National Socialists were always more pragmatic than the Bolsheviks – why shoot industrialists and then try to run industry yourself, when you can force the people who already know how to do it to do it for you at the muzzle of a pistol metaphorically held to the nape of the neck? Why keep a dog and bark yourself?
And re. comments on slavery – it, and de facto serfdom, were a major part of the then “actually-existing Socialist” economy in the USSR.
Nobody is “sticking up” for any kind of murdering socialist scum. Which is exactly what the Nazis were. All your sanctimonious talk about what socialism is supposed to be is nonsense. The self-serving self-congratulatory tripe of evil, murdering, arrogant, authoritarian posers.
As for your attempts to claim “crimes” for the West–well most of those crimes were committed by western government scum–not by businessmen. Yeah, some hangers on profited–just as a few businessmen profit from the state’s wars–while most lose business and custom(inc customers) because of those same wars. The west is far less a capitalist society that it is corporate socialist. That is a much better way of putting it than fascist–a word whose meaning(a variation of socialism caused by the failure of Marx’s idiot ideas about the poor inevitably getting poorer leading to “revolution”) has been distorted by 60 years of leftist lying.
Late here, but I’m reminded of a German newspaper interview Hitler once gave circa 36-38 (iirc) in ans to the question as to the difference between Nazism and Communism: “Oh, I think they will eventually end up where we already are,” he answered. And history surely proved him a prophetic political analyst. The SU of the 70s and 80s being almost indistinguishable from Nazi Germany–Fascist in all but name and above all Nationalist, having all but given up on the “internationalist” aspect of Communism..
PS: Someone here made the statement tat Il Duce was a Fascist but NOT a socialist. I would respectfully take issue with that statement. First, it is a historical fact he was a card-carrying member of the Socialist party early in his career and was an editor of Italy’s largest and oldest Socialist newspaper, La Stampa.
To be honest, this is an argument predicated on the idea that a very narrow slice of Marxist theory has the monopoly on the term “socialist” that is so narrow as to exclude all of the “actually existing socialist states” that various western socialists spent 50 years defending and shilling for.
It also proves that anything is permitted if your regime is at least nominally Marxist
“Notice that part about ‘staying in business’. Not that Misses is the most reliable historian. Business did have an alternative to supporting Hitler: opposing him.”
Big talk from a blog troll commenting under a pseudonym.