"Just because Communisim LOST...doesn't mean Capitilisim WON..."

[No1]

@The Real and others kinda got it right on the first page...a statement such as this one (saying that Capitalism won, or that Communism fell, or that just because Communism fell, Capitalism won) is totally irrelevant because it speaks in vast generalities, and ignores nuances and situations where the two modes have melded into one another (Social Democracy, aspects of Eurocommunism, Welfare State politics, hell, the Soviet Union still participated in the global economy, which was avowedly Capitalist). There's just no point to arguing the merits and lack therof of such a statement without making delineations:

Which Capitalism? Which Communism? Did Communism really ever exist?

I admit that I haven't read through the entirety of the thread, but I actually saw it (yes, I do still read the forum every day, more or less) when it was first made and stayed away from it, largely because the statement was too general.

Beyond that though, determining what is Capitalist and what is Communist, and (more relevantly to the quote) whether the two are actually as incompatible in practice as Cold War derived ideologies would like to see them is vitally important to answering the question. It's much less simple than most would like to believe.

How about you start editing some shyt for the front page again

Hopefully you're better at SEO than me.

 

[throughthefire]

I'm talking about the late 80 and the 90s they basically had a housing bubble like america did in 2008. nationalized one of the big ones.

please further explain why you think nationalizing banks = causes of housing bubbles and liquid traps..fyi i'm not for nationalizing banks..just want to hear your opinion..and which one of these banks was nationalized

 

[TrueEpic08]

America is VERY socialist and communist in a lot of ways, except the money gets redistributed from the working class to the top. Giving trillion dollar bailouts is NOT true capitalism is any way, shape or form.

I'm FOR socialism that benefits the working poor and middle class, I'm not for socialism that benefits the wealthy.

You've made great points in here, but I wanted to make special note of this, due to how prescient it is (and not just in the American sense either. As a matter of fact, it probably applies more to places like London and Singapore more than the US, if at all possible).

I actually deleted a Baudrilard quote that addressed this exact issue in more abstract terms from my first post. It stated (heavily parsed and manipulated by myself):

"Are we still in a capitalist mode...perhaps we are really already within a socialist mode? Perhaps this metamorphosis of capital...is merely its socialist outcome."

Given the transformation of making money over the last 30 plus years, where value can literally be produced more or less out of thin air or stock market perception then distributed wherever those who have the ability to manipulate that capital see fit for it to go, even within the sight of the media, which is historically supposed to be the equalizer for the less elite, speaks to this point.

The capital is socialized within that circle in the form of accumulated wealth, and you could say that it is socialized within the rest of society in the form of media, objects bought and sold, and perceptions about wealth and its affects on an individual's quality of life.

You may not have been thinking of all of this, but it's a very good point in and of itself.

 

[TrueEpic08]

How about you start editing some shyt for the front page again

Hopefully you're better at SEO than me.

I'm a busy man (I teach now) and that takes work and thought...but I might be able to do it if needed since it's the summer.

We'll see.

 

[Domingo Halliburton]

please further explain why you think nationalizing banks = causes of housing bubbles and liquid traps..fyi i'm not for nationalizing banks..just want to hear your opinion..and which one of these banks was nationalized

Im not saying that was the cause. The guy I quoted originally made a point about how the japanese work hard and they still have had a recession for basically the last 20 years. The central bank fukked up multiple times. They cut interest rates multiple times and pumped money in the economy trying to lower the value of the yen. all this did was pump up asset prices and created a bubble. so they tried to raise interest rates back up and markets collapsed. they tried about 10 stimulus packages in the 1990s including nationalizing some of their banks (maybe they're public now again) and many argue that the packages weren't big enough.

 

[theworldismine13]

soviet style communism clearly lost to american style capitalism, north korean communism clearly lost to south korean capitalism and chinese communism clearly lost to chinese capitalism and even cuba and vietnam are turning to capitalism to stay afloat

you can argue about how strongly these countries adhere to their stated ideology but the trend is very clear that communism lost

 

[No1]

I'm a busy man (I teach now) and that takes work and thought...but I might be able to do it if needed since it's the summer.

We'll see.

Breh, I'm only saying it because I don't do it either

I'm about to be ghost on here in like a couple of weeks when my job starts up. Like one post a day status.

 

[Nascimento]

You got a narrow definition of "winning" if you subscribe to the idea that American capitalism "won". Since the US achieved its status as global hegemon there has been a steady decline and by now you're degenerating back to straight up feudalism. Look at the facts and figures in this post and tell me with a straight face you aren't. And in Europe we're following in your footsteps.

There was a brief moment in history when the increases in productivity led to a fair distribution of wealth to all participants in the economy. All that shyt ended when the Soviets could no longer compete, which precipitated a shift from maximizing wealth in the aggregate to wealth concentration at the top.

http://exopermaculture.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/526916_10150870575016275_36774245_n.jpg
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/13/opinion/13greenhousech/13greenhousech-popup-v4.png
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/130305161550-chart-productivity-hourly-compensation.gif

I don't think it's merely incidental that the divergence in these charts coincides with the fall of the Soviet Union. Obviously other things also played a factor in this, like opening up international capital markets in the 1980s and 90s, which enabled access to low-cost labor for corporations while laying off American workers. But I posit that this would not have happened earlier in the first half of the 20th century when there was a real fear that Soviet Communism might win economically and technologically, and when there was the realization that it was better to treat workers fairly, as Henry Ford had shown.

Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers.[27] Ford's policy proved, however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing and be good for the economy. Ford explained the policy as profit-sharing rather than wages.

I can talk at length about how the increased productivity should've lead to decreased working hours, which would free up time for people to further augment the service sector but this post is too long already.

So yeah, let's dead the talk about winning because, as we have seen with American capitalism, greed is not some magic rocket-fuel that automatically propels society toward greater prosperity. That shyt still needs addressing. Any system that is designed to allow individuals to accumulate wealth in the billions of dollars is fundamentally broken, and as we've seen before, the end-game of the current trend is:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jguIhiy7mD8/T2iTwuQWGkI/AAAAAAAABak/qLPSDdGkouc/s1600/guillotine.jpg

You can go read Karl Marx for a comprehensive analysis of the problems with capitalism but for the misguided folks here, at least consider the following.

A smart person who applies himself might be able to save half a million dollars in their lifetime on average. A top level scientist can win a Nobel Prize and get another million. But a top level capitalist can somehow accumulate billions. Did they 'earn' it? Are they so smart that Nobel laureates pale in comparison? Hardly. They merely took part in a system that is designed to allow the rich to disproportionately accumulate wealth.

US GDP per capita: $49,922
Bill Gates net worth: $67 billion

This means he has 1.34 million average man-years of wealth. Assume average worker works 35 years, then he has the entire lifetime earnings of 38,000 people.

Is he that brilliant? Or did he get lucky and happen to participate in a system that allows 10 million people to have more wealth than the other 300 million?

File:U.S. Distribution of Wealth, 2007.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Everything that you accomplish today is based off of thousands of years of human civilization and investment, not to mention the security and infrastructure that your current government provides. Being part of a society means that you acknowledge the investments of the past and then you invest in the future as compensation. There is no such thing as a self-made man--if you can show me how a person who was raised by wolves and never had contact with civilization who independently invented technology worth billions of dollars to us today, then maybe I'll change my mind. Otherwise you need to acknowledge that our great capitalists are just people who put the final brick in a product that was developed and made possible by all of humanity. They deserve credit for the brick, but they don't get to treat other humans like worker-slaves nor amass insane fortunes.

On a final note and just to provide a little more historical context... People like to lend great credence to ideas, such as capitalism, and to think of the contemporary as the pinnacle of human achievement. But really we're just seeing a blip in time. Let's see:

History of World GDP | The Big Picture

Once the industrial revolution came along, followed by the information revolution, mere size mattered less. First the Europeans, then the Americans leveraged technology to blow out GDP on a per capita basis. Steam engine, internal combustion engine, silicon makes up for size.

Now, India and China are using industrial leverage, and are moving up in the world on a GDP per capita basis.

The chart hints at the fact that pretty much all of the aggregated Gross World Product through human history has come from India and China. And with the Chinese resurgence we are seeing a return to, if you will, the natural order of things in times past. Posters have made the claim that it is because they have adopted capitalism, and perhaps they are right. What does that really mean though? Capitalism is the allocation of capital where it will give the best return on investment, or just using common fukking sense, to put it bluntly. Technology is really the key factor, and China, in all its glory at the time, fell behind in that regard because the country became closed off, xenophobic and eschewed knowledge in favor of indulgence and decadence. (Any bells ringing?).

Whether the Chinese succeed in overtaking the economic and technological lead remains to be seen but they are well on their way. The infrastructure projects in Africa are not only about getting access to natural resources. With a developed Africa you create new markets and new opportunities to generate wealth all around. This rational is substantiated by the fact that China is undertaking massive infrastructure in Europe as well, mostly in the old Eastern bloc, and why the fukk else would they be doing that, keeping in mind that they are also providing the financing for many of these projects since Europe is basically going broke?

Who knows, if you buy my logic from earlier in the post then maybe in the long run China's rise will make Americans better off too?

 

[mbewane]

I'm not sure how any of that makes it a competition, with a "winner" and a "loser"

has there ever been a "true capitalist state"?

Nope, that's already been answered though.

it is impossible to have a pure 100% of everything but the US is pretty close to about 80% capitalism.

In communist countries the leaders live better than the people...so that system is not 100% pure either

I'm not even sure the US is 80% capitalism...with the massive bailouts and the military-industrial complex being a driving force in the economy

Truth is the most successful countries have been able to find a balance between all the economic systems. No one system is the "winner"

We like to draw lines and pick sides but in reality the truth usualy lies somewhere in the gray area

Indeed, it's too omplex for many to process tho.

I'm only in here trying to defend Marxism as it is in it's strictly philosophical terms.

I'm much more in favor of a hybrid system, and you're right, every country is a mixture of some sort. I'm more more inclined to be for the stance of Social Democrats.

America is VERY socialist and communist in a lot of ways, except the money gets redistributed from the working class to the top. Giving trillion dollar bailouts is NOT true capitalism is any way, shape or form.

I'm FOR socialism that benefits the working poor and middle class, I'm not for socialism that benefits the wealthy.

Only partially true. The population was not willing to pay for the consequences of their lifestyle. Look at Greece. Those people nap in the middle of the work day.

You don't need these generalizations breh. It's not the numbers of hours you work, it's how you work. Greece's problems are not linked with not working

 

[mbewane]

And actually, since the very essence of capitalism is concurrence, how can it "win" now that they're no alternative? People are SO convinced that there is no other way than capitalism that there is also no need for capitalism to better itself. By "winning", it might really have lost.

 

[Chris.B]

You don't need these generalizations breh. It's not the numbers of hours you work, it's how you work. Greece's problems are not linked with not working

Something someone who lives in Europe would say.

 

[mbewane]

Something someone who lives in Europe would say.

Guess what? I'm wrong. Greeks actually work MORE than most of the OECD countries, including the US

Average annual hours actually worked per worker

As you can see for yourself, some of Europe's top economies (Germany, France, Austria, Netherlands, UK, Luxemburg, Belgium) are countries where the average annual hours worked are the lowest

 

[The Real]

soviet style communism clearly lost to american style capitalism, north korean communism clearly lost to south korean capitalism and chinese communism clearly lost to chinese capitalism and even cuba and vietnam are turning to capitalism to stay afloat

you can argue about how strongly these countries adhere to their stated ideology but the trend is very clear that communism lost

You're still missing the point. A discussion at that level of generality is impossible. You're getting a little more specific, but ultimately, you have to start even lower to the ground.

 

[DEAD7]

"Just because Communisim LOST...doesn't mean Capitilisim WON..."

Last man standing is the winner in my book

 

[DEAD7]

Something someone who lives in Europe would say.