Democracy: crap/not crap

[nardy]

I'm off to bed now, but will answer tomorrow.

 

[DotCommunist]

Marxist claptrap. Profit is the reward for risk and enterprise.

capitalist mealy-mouthism. If you didn't have a state to be bought to protect you we'd string you up from the lamposts and we'd be right to do so. Remember that when you fake sleep in your fake richman bed. We won't even spare the dogs.

 

[DotCommunist]

I'm off to bed now, but will answer tomorrow.

we wait with bated breath for the wisdom you are sure to bring to the table.

 

[mojo pixy]

Eight pages in and Democracy Under Capitalism still looks pretty crap. Let's see what the next round brings...
I bet there'll be some good old Protestant Work Ethic. Industry is Virtue!
Or as others put it elsewhere, Arbeit Macht Frei

 

[yield]

Totally disagree. In my view, capitalism IS democracy -- and freedom.

I can hear the howls of dissent now ... "capitalism is working in shitty jobs paying peanuts" ... "capitalism means people will always be unemployed, some on the scrap-heap" ... "capitalism means no-one is paid in full for their labour: the surplus is profit for the bosses" ... and all the rest. I've heard the lot.

No system is perfect. But I'd prefer to live in capitalism than any alternative system. And so would the vast majority of everyone else, otherwise an alternative model would have arisen, and we'd be living in it due to popular demand.

"Oh, the media lie to us!" is another chant. Well, fewer and fewer people read newspapers, and even less people believe what they see on TV.

To me, capitalism is the freedom to chart your own course, assuming health and reasonable mental capacity (as I said, no system is perfect).

I do feel sorry for some dissenters of capitalism. They seem to spend their lives railing against it, yet achieving nothing.

Positive or negative freedom?

You're right no system is perfect. Democracy and Capitalism are in opposition to one another though.

Under Capitalism the wealthy have more power and opportunites. The vast majority of the elite are those who have inherited wealth and privilege. Social mobility is unfortunately rare and getting rarer.

Privately educated elite continues to take top jobs, finds survey
24 February 2016

Privately schooled people still dominate law, politics, medicine and journalism despite signs of progress, says Sutton Trust

There are of course a few exceptions like those self-made billionaires you spoke of.

You said "I do feel sorry for some dissenters of capitalism. They seem to spend their lives railing against it, yet achieving nothing."

What things are worth achieving? Is it good or worthwile that I look after my sick and elderly parents? Or that I work for the council trying to help those who can't help themselves. Virtue *spits* signaling. Is that as worthwhile as the accumulation of capital?

But you know I'm just full of bitterness and resentment.

Should hundreds of billions, yes billions, have been spent on quantitiative easing to support the assets of the already wealthy? Or instead should they have invested in infrastructure, social care, the NHS and welfare state...

 

[Pickman's model]

we wait with bated breath for the wisdom you are sure to bring to the table.

that's if he makes it to the table

 

[Pickman's model]

Marxist claptrap. Profit is the reward for risk and enterprise.

if that's the case then people who do dangerous things like mining ought to be enjoying vast profits: not the wankers in the boardroom but the people literally at the coalface (or [mineral]face).

 

[Pickman's model]

I’ve never said that democracy and capitalism always go hand in hand. I’m saying that I support capitalism in the UK for reasons given in post 169 (page 6).

yeh. but surely you recognise you can't have capitalism in the uk without capitalism in e.g. france and ireland. and you can't have capitalism in the uk without effective slave labour in e.g. bangladesh or india. so what you're really saying is 'i, nardy, support slave labour as it offers opportunity'. which even you ought to recognise isn't a sensible position to advocate.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Marxist claptrap. Profit is the reward for risk and enterprise.

Not "Marxist claptrap" but basic classic economics.
As for profit being the reward for risk and enterprise, that's true some of the time, but not all, and as a "justification" for capitalism, it has no legs because of that.

 

[gorski]

The kind of rewards you are talking about are rare. Most of it happened thanx to state funded innovation, given away to (American) corporations, without any risk involved whatsoever. Socialised risk, private profiteering.

Add on top of that clientelism and all manner of monopolies etc. whereby the executive powers/lawmakers involved were directly funded by the recipients of those "risk taking exercises" etc. etc.

Free market never existed, even at the very beginning, at the time of classical liberal theory formation...

Long time ago "self-made crap" was debunked. Just look at the numbers - dangling a sausage on a stick to dumb dogs pulling your cart...

"Nothing succeeds like success" was always just a myth - but for most it works, hence Capitalism managed to "motivate" a lot of people to go out and perform every day with 105% of their abilities, unlike "Real Socialism", for instance or Feudalism or... This is just one of its aspects, of course. As Marx stated long ago, its capacity to invest and so on is unsurpassed. But nowadays, with "monopolistic capital" on the scene - things are very bleak in so many ways...

 

[nardy]

Far too many points to answer in the limited time I have, but if any points anyone raised convinced me towards socialism, rest assured that I'd say so. As far as I'm concerned, socialism is a busted flush -- and I'm talking about everything from Corbynism to communism.

The further left you move, the worse the economy gets, and without a strong economy everyone's stuffed. Also (in the UK at least) the further left you go, the less the voters like it.

So talk among your socialist selves on this board till the cows come home, but it won't make a jot of difference in the outside world. Your ideas are NOT accepted by the general populace.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Far too many points to answer in the limited time I have, but if any points anyone raised convinced me towards socialism, rest assured that I'd say so. As far as I'm concerned, socialism is a busted flush -- and I'm talking about everything from Corbynism to communism..

Personally, I don't believe that socialism is some sort of magical panacea; but that's beside the point. The issue under discussion is the efficacy [and flaws] of capitalism. And in my opinion, it is flawed. Whether or not some alternate system also has flaws, isn't relevant.

 

[DotCommunist]

Far too many points to answer in the limited time I have, but if any points anyone raised convinced me towards socialism, rest assured that I'd say so. As far as I'm concerned, socialism is a busted flush -- and I'm talking about everything from Corbynism to communism.

The further left you move, the worse the economy gets, and without a strong economy everyone's stuffed. Also (in the UK at least) the further left you go, the less the voters like it.

So talk among your socialist selves on this board till the cows come home, but it won't make a jot of difference in the outside world. Your ideas are NOT accepted by the general populace.

funny that, I too can speak for the general populace...actually wait I can't because it would be foolish of me to speak for an electorate of around 30m

But it is kind of you to note the economy which is in the throes of its worst crises since the 1930s. Alls good if your good eh jack?

 

[seventh bullet]

Communism will win eventually, and the corpses of many nardies will act as signposts.

 

[Pickman's model]

Far too many points to answer in the limited time I have, but if any points anyone raised convinced me towards socialism, rest assured that I'd say so. As far as I'm concerned, socialism is a busted flush -- and I'm talking about everything from Corbynism to communism.

The further left you move, the worse the economy gets, and without a strong economy everyone's stuffed. Also (in the UK at least) the further left you go, the less the voters like it.

So talk among your socialist selves on this board till the cows come home, but it won't make a jot of difference in the outside world. Your ideas are NOT accepted by the general populace.

Well, when your little world collapses in the aftermath of the next banking crisis or recession you can comfort yourself that it's the logical outcome of your preferred mode of production

 

[DotCommunist]

Communism will win eventually, and the corpses of many nardies will act as signposts.

Sic semper tyrannis

 

[gorski]

I hope not, SB, for we would have stayed the same, in that case of violence unleashed...

Nardy, Social Democracy (Scandiland)is far superior to anything Social Darwinism (US and co.) can possibly throw at the world, in just about every respect.

Find Gosta Esping-Andersen's "Politics against markets" and learn about a very real, viable option that most Americans today can only drool over...

EDIT: https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Soc924-2011/924-2011-book-project/Esping-Andersen.pdf

 

[Shechemite]

So talk among your socialist selves on this board till the cows come home, but it won't make a jot of difference in the outside world. Your ideas are NOT accepted by the general populace.

Why not have just made this your op, given that this is what you were leading up to?

 

[DotCommunist]

I hope not, SB, for we would have stayed the same, in that case of violence unleashed...

Nardy, Social Democracy (Scandiland)is far superior to anything Social Darwinism (US and co.) can possibly throw at the world, in just about every respect.

Find Gosta Esping-Andersen's "Politics against market" and learn about a very real, viable option that most Americans today can only drool over...

soc/dems all well and good where and when and how it works but it is subject to constant erosion attempts by people who really should be mining salt at gunpoint and the internal contradictions of the moralist/fabian sort who never got over the prod work ethic hangover.

 

[seventh bullet]

The potentially transformative violence of the lower orders is always warned against, the terrible worse future if the current order is threatened, but the present violence of the ruling class with its monopoly on the legitimacy of who can be killed and how and for what (and they get to define what is legitimate), and its vast capabilities to do just that if you dare to get in the way, well it's all just the natural order of things, the 'way it is.' Good luck with everyone just, you know, being really nice to one another.

 

[gorski]

No, they can only define what is legal.

No one can possibly have the monopoly on what is legitimate.

 

[seventh bullet]

It can mean the same thing. What is lawful.

 

[gorski]

Not in this sense!

Political Legitimacy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[seventh bullet]

I love semantic games. Let's play, but not too many pages.

 

[gorski]

Nothing to do with semantics, you just don't understand it.

Legitimacy is connected to fairness, Naturrecht and so on. See Ernst Bloch.

Legality is anything in line with the current laws. See legal positivism, as well, like Kelsen.

 

[seventh bullet]

Name-dropping.

 

[gorski]

Obstinacy, not thinking, not willing to learn. Suit yourself.

 

[mojo pixy]

There is no ''natural law'', natural law is kill or be killed, eat or starve, procreate or die out. We've risen above that .. umm haven't we?

Anyway, no answer to this yet:

...I wonder if there will come one? nardy ?

 

[DotCommunist]

The potentially transformative violence of the lower orders is always warned against, the terrible worse future if the current order is threatened

always fascinating to watch them react historicaly and currently to such a vile threat. They are scared, and they have every reason to be scared.

 

[nardy]

If you didn't have a state to be bought to protect you we'd string you up from the lamposts and we'd be right to do so.

Of course you would. I'd expect nothing else from a communist, dot or not.

((( carin', sharin', killin' commies )))