Capitalism has shown that it's war

the socialist should be the atheist/materialist who after finally recognizing the absence of any moral teleology or purpose for man’s existence, sets before himself the task of creating a morality from the bottom up. so he’s basically attempting to do a missing god’s work; finding and establishing a foundation for any possible complete morality to follow. this is to say, if there is going to be a morality, it has to start here, or it cannot become anything substantial. as long as the class conflict exists between bourgeois and proletariat, they are morally incompatible because they are enemies at the most fundamental level. so i don’t think most really fully understand the implications of what capitalism creates in terms of deeper, more philosophical problems.

now i’m okay with all this, but i’m afraid that most others who would also claim to be okay with this, would in fact be horrified by some of the things that might rationally follow the logic of this problem taken to its greatest extreme. they don’t quite understand what it means to say ‘we are fundamental enemies who can have no moral obligations to each other’, and it is not enough to get around this by simply saying ‘ah but that’s what we have laws for’. fuck those laws. let me repeat: THERE IS NO MORAL CONTRACT between bourgeois and proletariat, regardless of what artificial rules society comes up with (to preserve the present order of things). this conflict precedes any of this law making and invalidates all of it.

so usually a capitalist is someone who hopes these artificial and ethically exempt civil laws will stall the proletariat’s violent revolt long enough for him to make a little money for free before he dies. and the proletariat is the one who is looking blankly at all the other proletarians and asking himself ‘why are we still allowing this to happen?’, to which the other proletarians respond ‘because we can’t seem to get organized, get our shit together yet’.

but you can’t understand the logic of the socialist unless you are able to switch perspectives and observe the capitalist from the point of view of the worker. only then will the thesis begin to make complete sense… something so obviously true that it needn’t even be called philosophical. you don’t need an IQ of even 100 to be able to ask the question; what is this guy doing here, and what is he needed for? forget the fact that he can be here… we’re asking why does he have to be here… and we find, after some closer examination, that he couldn’t be less important in the chain of production. but not only that. in addition to being nothing, he’s actually something like a black hole that sucks in and consumes all energy around it without giving any return. in this sense the capitalist is a negative balance. not just useless in the way of just ‘being there’ and not affecting anything. this guy actually absorbs the productive life force of everyone around him and depreciates the value of all of it. like a metaphysical parasite that creates nothing and consumes everything.

" so he’s basically attempting to do a missing god’s work"

Is there something lower than contempt?

Look, as long as the anti-socialists here are complaining about corporate and banking behavior, we can find something new, rather than just bleating the old sentences and playing our parts like it’s all in the Bhagavad Gita and doesn’t really mater.

The problem with capitalism is that like all hierarchies it favours those at the top but this is a rule of nature not of man
Eradicating it is therefore not viable because whatever replaced it would just be another hierarchy by a different name
So modifying the existing system is the most practical option here because idealistic Utopian ideals dont work in reality

Demonstrably false.

Read this thread (it’s not too long yet)

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194939

Is direct democracy going to overthrow capitalism then Ecmandu ?
Do you think that those that benefit from it will let that happen ?

No. Contradiction is what women look for in a mating partner as one of the many sexual signals in the species.

Men will not give up sex to be logically consistent, except for me.

The women are going to have to change to end this tyranny on this plane of existence.

But women hate me.

By hating me, they bury their heads in denial and hate themselves.

The question is, will women change.

That’s out of my hands.

As a transcendent human, I’m not required to stay in this earth. I’m doing it to be kind.

I’m not a free ticket though. My ability to send you to a 100% consensual reality depends on you.

This argument could be used against democracy, against the abolition of slavery, for eating the heads of our mates after sex, for war, for not giving medical treatment…and so on.
Nature has a very complicated set of hierarchies. I don’t know if bacteria or humans are on top and in which contexts. Or worms.
You argument would also have worked, if it works, as an argument against ending feudalism or monarchies. We should just reform them, what are these colonies thinking with their ideas of democracy.
Further modern capitalism is idealistic and would have seemed that way to societies before its arrival.

i dunno, but i have a natural proclivity to turn disorganized messes into well oiled machines. i guess the marxist in me is an archetypical extension of my abilities as a crew-leader, which i’ve been for quite some time. through my eyes, the world looks like seven billion disorganized mexicans who spend more time fighting and arguing with each other than getting anything done. what i see is a macrocosm of the microcosm i’ve been experiencing for decades, and it might as well be that kaufmann translation WTP book four chapter four master of the earth legislative instinct in me that lives and breaths here. i’ve done good to keep the archon in me quiet recently, but i cannot deny that it’s still there. once in a while it gets out when i speak of global orders and stuff, and yeah, i understand it’s all in a strange and unfamiliar language to most. this is why i’m quick to silence the voice again and continue telling jokes instead. everybody can understand a joke, so imma stick with what works.

shoukders.

knickers.

The question is why are you so obsessed with them and why is your answer completely unrelated to the questions which I actually asked
You cannot restrict yourself to the relevant threads but now have to talk about them when the subject matter is something else entirely

Political discussions are just lovely false dichotomies and excuses for making angry finger pointing loyalty moves that do not address points made.

So many people seem to think pointing out that free will is very hard to justify is a defense against any criticism of arguments for determinism. Nope argument rest on their own merits.

It gets even sillier with politics: Here if one system is attacked, socialism or capitalism, so many people think that defending their choice is somehow miraculously done well by labeling their opponents or by attacking what both teams seem to think are the only two options or even meaningful terms.

Socialism has the floppier definition since it includes the option of merely meaning that government regulates industry. Well, by that definition the US has always been socialist and so has Europe. A corporate charter, which actually used to have some real meaning, gave privileges to corporations and could be revoked. Apart from a whole mass of other regulations and oversight over various industries.

Both definitions suffer nowadays because there are no countries anymore and further the corporations are not in countries.

We also cannot say that there is a limit on the degree of regulation, not with good old capitalist China chugging away without even the pretense of democracy and a mass of regulation (though also less regulation in many areas, ironically)

An honest discussion would look at what the problems are of each, rather than pointing fingers and saying that is worse, or these are the emotions you people have, as if that was remotely a defense of anything. Ad homs have their place but they shouldn’t be confused with rebutting criticisms of practical real world effects.

Yes, let’s all show our team loyalty. Keep the discussion very abstract as if all capitalisms are the same and have been over time and as if all socialisims are the same and have been over time.

Let’s not notice that today we have neither.

Let’s not consider that we are being handed a false dichotomy and someone is laughing as we find yet another way to hate other individuals who don’t have much power.

I think one can easily conclude from an objective perspective that capitalism is vastly superior to communism

When Germany was not one country but two it was the capitalist West that was more successful than the communist East and significantly so too
This was why when the Berlin Wall came down in I989 some West Germans did not want to be integrated with their countrymen on the other side
And when it was up the majority of defections were from East Germans trying to ecsape communism not West Germans trying to escape capitalism

Capitalism is not perfect - no man made institution is - but it is still vastly superior to communism
Just as democracy is not perfect either but it is still vastly superior to all of its many alternatives

Utopia is an impossible ideal so the next best thing is to choose the least imperfect system - whatever it may be - political or economic
And through trial and error attempt to make that system as fair as possible while recognising that it will be an eternal work in progress

Frank Zappa once said that communism would never work because people like owning things - such a simple yet profound truth in those words
The irony here is that this includes so called communists as well - a true communist would be someone who doesnt like owning anything at all
Capitalism may be a dirty word to some - not me - but we are all capitalists whether we like it or not simply because we all like owning things
Until that desire is removed from the human condition - good luck with that - then capitalism will carry on existing regardless of anything else

Well, surreptitious, first you could respond to…
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=194884&p=2728060#p2727887

But also capitalism being better than communism is not really a response to criticisms of capitalism. It might be a kind of excuse, and one that assumes we can only have one of two systems and further it acts as a way of not addressing the problems, since it seems to say, in your version, Oh, well, there are problems but less than communism. And since the problems are not addressed - here in the thread for example - it is as if we must simply accept them.

and then in my response I made to your earlier post…
this is in part based on a very weak argument based on ‘nature’

Uncle Frankie was many things, but a philosopher he was not.

But who told you people can’t own things in a communism? Rhetorical question; I know how the idea was put into your head.

Can I change that assertion to: people are not allowed to purchase, and therefore own, other people’s labor? This is essentially what a private business is. A legal means to possess labor other than your own. And that’s the only thing you wouldn’t be able to buy in a Marxism proper. You can still own all the same crap you buy in the free market.

I will correct the middle line which now seems out of place

I think that eradicating capitalism is viable only if whatever replaces it is a significant improvement or maybe any improvement at all
I dont know of a radical alternative to capitalism that has yet to be tried so am somewhat sceptical but I support the idea in principle

I think the real problem with capitalism is not the principle but the application
I think it is therefore necessary to emphasise the distinction between these two

A more equitable distribution of wealth would make it more acceptable as a viable economic system

For the pro-capitalist crowd

How do we stop, what I think has already happened, corporations from having so much power over government and media and election finance that we have an oligarchy?

How do we deal with the particular threat of the surveillance monopolies like Google and Facebook, including dealing with their plans for the internet of things, which is essentially a Panopticon which they are planning to use not just for data collection to sell, but also for behavior modification and enforcement?

By electing Trump.

Seriously, that exactly what happened. A wrench in the cabals wheels.
Of course, as I said then, he has 40-60 trillion opposed to him, so he would either be killed or compromised, and it has been a miracle of bravery and intelligence how he has done so far.
But the 40-60 trillions are really doing their work.

If we had an answer to that, we would not be living under fascism but under a benign form of capitalism.

Capitalism is simply what will always endure. It is not an ideology but the reward system of nature herself, where the combination of creative genius, exorbitant effort and determination is rewarded. It harbours all ideologies.

To the corporate monopoly question:

Make more money than them with less evil products. Daunting, I know, but doable. It would not be doable in, say, feudalism or communism, where what you could do about it is tremble in fear and thank God for your limbs.