What does it have to do to qualify as ?successful??
Quote:
Originally posted by aquafire
Provide a sustainable socio-economic alternative to capitalism..One that proports to provide the working class with their marxist equivilant of " heaven on earth " based on the fruits of their own labours.
If sustainability in itself, qualifies for success, then Cuba and North Korea managed to sustain themselves ans so could be called ?successful?.
The objective of ?heaven on earth? or whichever equivalent is self-defeating since it is by defintion not-of-this-world.
If providing a reasonably acceptable alternative to the modern liberal model currently in use in advanced democracies, is what qualifies, I'd say they failed.
Quote:
But it interests me, how many "psuedo marxists " their are in AI..I won't mention names, but their pretty obvious.
They are perpetually bagging capitalism..& quoting marx of late...but ironically, when asked to put up a marxist model to counter the capitalist model, they usually fall back on such lame excuses as there has never been one because everyone of them has been flawed up till now.
Many good things, notably for capitalism itself, have come from ?bagging? capitalism. The Nineteenth century model, the source of literary inspiration for a Dickens or a Zola, was later amended by an injection of more civil and social rights.
No country gone down that path had since returned to ninteenth-century laissez-faire (Thatcherism and Reaganomics were timid short-lived attempts at that), and a country today which seems to live in somewhat Dickensian settings is China. And I don't see huge movements of people leaving the socio-demo-morass fo the West for the golden opportunities of the Middle-Empire.
The many shortcoming s of the industrial Victorian age, caused an accumulation of resentment and dissent on which Marxism fed. The early failure of capitalist countries to adeqately address those shortcoming caused the rise of Marxist-Leninist states. But the cure they offered was more toxic than the ills they claimed to address, and by the second half of the twentieth century, they were adequately addressed by none other than those same capitalist countries.
Quote:
Why is it that it never occurs to marxist's to acknowledge that the same could be said of pure capitalism..?
Capitalism has never worked properly either..But at least it provides more economic benefit to the working class than does the least so called " flawed " marxist states that have ever existed...
The ?-ism? suffix is misleading, capitalism is not, in itself, an ideology, but an economic system which developed without big-name prophetic leaders.
There are those, of course, who turned capitalism into ideology (?pure capitalism?) but they are unimportant, since they never got to put their idelogy to practice. This is one thing the Marxists have over the capital-ideologists, is that they tried (and as we know, failed) to implement their ideas in the real world.
Quote:
Maybe Anders & de Kopf are right..or hiding...
in saying there are no Marxists as such..just a lot of lame socialists...
To me they seem more like liberal-centrists with an affection for ?righteous causes?.
Their predecessors of my generation would come for a few months to a kibbutz, work for little bogus internal volunteer-intended currency, only accepted in the one local village store, get pissed on cheap vodka and stupp the local ethnics. Most came back to their temperate affluent lands with the feeling of having done a righteous good deed for the working people of lesser or no income; yet a few of them would get hitched with a local ethnic and spend their adult lives in the sticks (and often, that trade-off was harsh).
But enough reminescing.
Quote:
Originally posted by Harald Me?
Oh, Kerala by the way. Full of happy people, but socialist rather then Marxist.
A delightful place to visit.
But then Kerala is not an actually sovereign state, more like a Bavaria, a Kansas, or a Yukon. The actual sovereing entity in this case is India.
In that Indian state the Communist Party won successive free election, but since it never did so in the Indian Republic itself, it never got to abolish private property of the means of production, to convert to a fully planified economy, or to a single-party political apparatus, which are a few signs useful for identifying regimes founded on the ideologies developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao.
Sweden is not socialist. Never were. Who owns the means of production? The state? No.
GB and France have been so much closer to being socialist than any of the scandinavian countries.
Yes, and in many ways if the idea of a strong economy is to make sure that those that live there somewhere don't have to work as hard and yet most of them have a good standard of living ...
... well, if standard of living means good healthcare for more people, good cheap travel, long holidays (more time to be yourself and persue happiness), low crime, food in the shops more people can afford, clean air then Scandinavia pisses on America "socialist" or not.
If it means you're "worth" more and that fewer people can drive bigger cars then America is "successful" ...
And wouldn't Sweden and other such essentially socialist countries Marxist?
The very existence throughout the the ?Swedish model? from inception to present time, of such capitalist home-grown corporations as Saab-Scania, Ericsson, or ASEA (now ABB), is enough to show that Sweden has never ceased to be a capitalist country.
There's a misconception in the USA according to which any country with some form of universal health-care or tuition-free university is Marxist or socialist.
It's like saying that any automobile with an engine of a displacement lesser than 3000cc is a motorcycle.
There's a misconception in the USA according to which any country with some form of universal health-care or tuition-free university is Marxist or socialist.
It's like saying that any automobile with an engine of a displacement lesser than 3000cc is a motorcycle.
I have been trying to say this to the AI crowd for years. But will they listen? Nooooo....
What about body count....I think they have had outstanding success in that department. Do mass graves count? Slave labor camps----number of "dissidents"---positive articles in Time magazine?
The very existence throughout the ?Swedish model? from inception to present time, of such capitalist home-grown corporations as Saab-Scania, Ericsson, or ASEA (now ABB), is enough to show that Sweden has never ceased to be a capitalist country.
Sweden, and the other scandinavian countries actually have a system of "mixed economy" wich cannot be described as purly "capitalist". Ofcourse there are no such things as "pure-capitalist" states. But in scandinavia the mixing of state and market economy has been ideological.
The whole concept of a "welfare-state" is in itself sort of anti-capitalist.
And this is the main reason why it is now on "its way out",
What about body count....I think they have had outstanding success in that department. Do mass graves count? Slave labor camps----number of "dissidents"---positive articles in Time magazine?
interesting how quickly this topic derails into non-econmic arguments. It's like marxism is a four-letter word for some, for others, it's the pie-in-the-sky alternative to whatever the US does. Niether is right of course, but that's beside the point. Just another excuse to argue the same old shtuff.
interesting how quickly this topic derails into non-econmic arguments. It's like marxism is a four-letter word for some, for others, it's the pie-in-the-sky alternative to whatever the US does. Niether is right of course, but that's beside the point. Just another excuse to argue the same old shtuff.
Speak for yourself. I'm not arguing for Marxism. I'm a capitalist who just wants to see his successful system survive.
Sweden, and the other scandinavian countries actually have a system of "mixed economy"?
And so does the USA, although the dosage of the mix is slightly different.
Quote:
Ofcourse there are no such things as "pure-capitalist" states. But in scandinavia the mixing of state and market economy has been ideological.
Much of the motive was indeed ideological, but the same could be said about Roosevelt's ?New Deal? or Johnson's ?Great Society?, but the practical element was just as present, and to my opinion, more determinant.
Quote:
The whole concept of a "welfare-state" is in itself sort of anti-capitalist.
The only place where the welfare-state has been implemented is in capitalist countries. To me it seems capitalism is rather pre-requisite for a welfare-state of the kind you enjoy.
Quote:
And this is the main reason why it is now on "its way out",
regretably.
I think you're too anxious here, the wlefare-state is certainly changing as the situation of full development as it is today, is very different from that of develplemt/reconstruction of the nineteen-fifties, and requires change.
In the UK, the only Western-European country to have actually challenged the welfare-state model (and let's not forget the impact at the time, of the oil crises and the subsequent recession suffered in many rich economies), they wouldn't even dismantle the NHS. That's rather pathetic as a return to laissez-faire.
Countries on the Continent did not go as far as to challenge the model itself, some reformed it, often successfully (it's not like you Nordics have so much to cry about), some others alas were more reluctant (pour ne pas les nommer).
A mix of nostalgia and ideology may see some of the changes undergone by social-democracies as ?the end of the wold as we know it?, but they're just that, changes, and incremental ones at that.
What we do have, is the increased drumming of the tam-tams of the ?market ideology?, which for some reason seems threatening to many (but then it's not like they took over Russia, privatised the state, declared war to all statist states while crowning some oligarch as ?supreme individual?, and started rounding up the lesser individuals for slave labour touted as the next economic miracle).
The fact remains that all First-World democracies remain mixed economies (though in different dosage) for reasons which are now rather pragmatic than ideological.
To the delight of some, and the dismay of others, the welfare-state is not going anywhere.
The political ideologies which brought about the model of mixed economy and welfare-state are, on the other hand, done for: strangled by their own success; they wasted themselves to death in post-68 hippy post-rationalist, new-left babbling and alter-reality tercermundismo.
Comments
Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
What does it have to do to qualify as ?successful??
Originally posted by aquafire
Provide a sustainable socio-economic alternative to capitalism..One that proports to provide the working class with their marxist equivilant of " heaven on earth " based on the fruits of their own labours.
If sustainability in itself, qualifies for success, then Cuba and North Korea managed to sustain themselves ans so could be called ?successful?.
The objective of ?heaven on earth? or whichever equivalent is self-defeating since it is by defintion not-of-this-world.
If providing a reasonably acceptable alternative to the modern liberal model currently in use in advanced democracies, is what qualifies, I'd say they failed.
But it interests me, how many "psuedo marxists " their are in AI..I won't mention names, but their pretty obvious.
They are perpetually bagging capitalism..& quoting marx of late...but ironically, when asked to put up a marxist model to counter the capitalist model, they usually fall back on such lame excuses as there has never been one because everyone of them has been flawed up till now.
Many good things, notably for capitalism itself, have come from ?bagging? capitalism. The Nineteenth century model, the source of literary inspiration for a Dickens or a Zola, was later amended by an injection of more civil and social rights.
No country gone down that path had since returned to ninteenth-century laissez-faire (Thatcherism and Reaganomics were timid short-lived attempts at that), and a country today which seems to live in somewhat Dickensian settings is China. And I don't see huge movements of people leaving the socio-demo-morass fo the West for the golden opportunities of the Middle-Empire.
The many shortcoming s of the industrial Victorian age, caused an accumulation of resentment and dissent on which Marxism fed. The early failure of capitalist countries to adeqately address those shortcoming caused the rise of Marxist-Leninist states. But the cure they offered was more toxic than the ills they claimed to address, and by the second half of the twentieth century, they were adequately addressed by none other than those same capitalist countries.
Why is it that it never occurs to marxist's to acknowledge that the same could be said of pure capitalism..?
Capitalism has never worked properly either..But at least it provides more economic benefit to the working class than does the least so called " flawed " marxist states that have ever existed...
The ?-ism? suffix is misleading, capitalism is not, in itself, an ideology, but an economic system which developed without big-name prophetic leaders.
There are those, of course, who turned capitalism into ideology (?pure capitalism?) but they are unimportant, since they never got to put their idelogy to practice. This is one thing the Marxists have over the capital-ideologists, is that they tried (and as we know, failed) to implement their ideas in the real world.
Maybe Anders & de Kopf are right..or hiding...
in saying there are no Marxists as such..just a lot of lame socialists...
To me they seem more like liberal-centrists with an affection for ?righteous causes?.
Their predecessors of my generation would come for a few months to a kibbutz, work for little bogus internal volunteer-intended currency, only accepted in the one local village store, get pissed on cheap vodka and stupp the local ethnics. Most came back to their temperate affluent lands with the feeling of having done a righteous good deed for the working people of lesser or no income; yet a few of them would get hitched with a local ethnic and spend their adult lives in the sticks (and often, that trade-off was harsh).
But enough reminescing.
Originally posted by Harald Me?
Oh, Kerala by the way. Full of happy people, but socialist rather then Marxist.
A delightful place to visit.
But then Kerala is not an actually sovereign state, more like a Bavaria, a Kansas, or a Yukon. The actual sovereing entity in this case is India.
In that Indian state the Communist Party won successive free election, but since it never did so in the Indian Republic itself, it never got to abolish private property of the means of production, to convert to a fully planified economy, or to a single-party political apparatus, which are a few signs useful for identifying regimes founded on the ideologies developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
What the hell is Kerala?
And wouldn't Sweden and other such essentially socialist countries Marxist?
Sweden is not socialist. Never were. Who owns the means of production? The state? No.
GB and France have been so much closer to being socialist than any of the scandinavian countries.
Originally posted by Anders the White
Sweden is not socialist. Never were. Who owns the means of production? The state? No.
GB and France have been so much closer to being socialist than any of the scandinavian countries.
Yes, and in many ways if the idea of a strong economy is to make sure that those that live there somewhere don't have to work as hard and yet most of them have a good standard of living ...
... well, if standard of living means good healthcare for more people, good cheap travel, long holidays (more time to be yourself and persue happiness), low crime, food in the shops more people can afford, clean air then Scandinavia pisses on America "socialist" or not.
If it means you're "worth" more and that fewer people can drive bigger cars then America is "successful" ...
Originally posted by BuonRotto
And wouldn't Sweden and other such essentially socialist countries Marxist?
The very existence throughout the the ?Swedish model? from inception to present time, of such capitalist home-grown corporations as Saab-Scania, Ericsson, or ASEA (now ABB), is enough to show that Sweden has never ceased to be a capitalist country.
There's a misconception in the USA according to which any country with some form of universal health-care or tuition-free university is Marxist or socialist.
It's like saying that any automobile with an engine of a displacement lesser than 3000cc is a motorcycle.
Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
There's a misconception in the USA according to which any country with some form of universal health-care or tuition-free university is Marxist or socialist.
It's like saying that any automobile with an engine of a displacement lesser than 3000cc is a motorcycle.
I have been trying to say this to the AI crowd for years. But will they listen? Nooooo....
Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
The very existence throughout the ?Swedish model? from inception to present time, of such capitalist home-grown corporations as Saab-Scania, Ericsson, or ASEA (now ABB), is enough to show that Sweden has never ceased to be a capitalist country.
Sweden, and the other scandinavian countries actually have a system of "mixed economy" wich cannot be described as purly "capitalist". Ofcourse there are no such things as "pure-capitalist" states. But in scandinavia the mixing of state and market economy has been ideological.
The whole concept of a "welfare-state" is in itself sort of anti-capitalist.
And this is the main reason why it is now on "its way out",
regretably.
Originally posted by ena
Seriously, on the Sweden thing, IIRC, they have a an absentee rate that is nearly comical.
Don't be a troll or I'll bring up the very un-comical homicide rate where you come from. I know what I'd rather face.
Originally posted by ena
What about body count....I think they have had outstanding success in that department. Do mass graves count? Slave labor camps----number of "dissidents"---positive articles in Time magazine?
In Sweden?
Originally posted by BuonRotto
What the hell is Kerala?
It's a state in south western India. It's in better shape than most of the rest of India as far as I could tell. Very cool.
Originally posted by Harald
In Sweden?
Murder rate in Detroit --OUCH!!
...no, the other one, that was what the serious post was for.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
interesting how quickly this topic derails into non-econmic arguments. It's like marxism is a four-letter word for some, for others, it's the pie-in-the-sky alternative to whatever the US does. Niether is right of course, but that's beside the point. Just another excuse to argue the same old shtuff.
Speak for yourself. I'm not arguing for Marxism. I'm a capitalist who just wants to see his successful system survive.
Originally posted by New
Sweden, and the other scandinavian countries actually have a system of "mixed economy"?
And so does the USA, although the dosage of the mix is slightly different.
Ofcourse there are no such things as "pure-capitalist" states. But in scandinavia the mixing of state and market economy has been ideological.
Much of the motive was indeed ideological, but the same could be said about Roosevelt's ?New Deal? or Johnson's ?Great Society?, but the practical element was just as present, and to my opinion, more determinant.
The whole concept of a "welfare-state" is in itself sort of anti-capitalist.
The only place where the welfare-state has been implemented is in capitalist countries. To me it seems capitalism is rather pre-requisite for a welfare-state of the kind you enjoy.
And this is the main reason why it is now on "its way out",
regretably.
I think you're too anxious here, the wlefare-state is certainly changing as the situation of full development as it is today, is very different from that of develplemt/reconstruction of the nineteen-fifties, and requires change.
In the UK, the only Western-European country to have actually challenged the welfare-state model (and let's not forget the impact at the time, of the oil crises and the subsequent recession suffered in many rich economies), they wouldn't even dismantle the NHS. That's rather pathetic as a return to laissez-faire.
Countries on the Continent did not go as far as to challenge the model itself, some reformed it, often successfully (it's not like you Nordics have so much to cry about), some others alas were more reluctant (pour ne pas les nommer).
A mix of nostalgia and ideology may see some of the changes undergone by social-democracies as ?the end of the wold as we know it?, but they're just that, changes, and incremental ones at that.
What we do have, is the increased drumming of the tam-tams of the ?market ideology?, which for some reason seems threatening to many (but then it's not like they took over Russia, privatised the state, declared war to all statist states while crowning some oligarch as ?supreme individual?, and started rounding up the lesser individuals for slave labour touted as the next economic miracle).
The fact remains that all First-World democracies remain mixed economies (though in different dosage) for reasons which are now rather pragmatic than ideological.
To the delight of some, and the dismay of others, the welfare-state is not going anywhere.
The political ideologies which brought about the model of mixed economy and welfare-state are, on the other hand, done for: strangled by their own success; they wasted themselves to death in post-68 hippy post-rationalist, new-left babbling and alter-reality tercermundismo.
Originally posted by ena
Murder rate in Detroit --OUCH!!
...no, the other one, that was what the serious post was for.
In Kerala?
Uh ... no. Only mass graves dug by the Brits (if there are any).
Originally posted by BuonRotto
interesting how quickly this topic derails into non-econmic arguments.
Someone asked about Kerala. I responded. I think the commies are out of power there now anyway.
Originally posted by Harald
In Kerala?
Uh ... no. Only mass graves dug by the Brits (if there are any).
......no no no.....the thing about the absentee rate in Sweden.
Marxism isnt a state doctrine. Nor for that matter is straight socialism.