[kj] politics

[GregSlawson at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/6/2004 12:46:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
saulomar1 at yahoo.com writes:

>  Can you give an example of where true-form capitalism has been in place 
> (without having been distorted, as true-form "communism" was )?

     I think you're arguing about a pure form of capitalism that was written 
about many years ago, and is kept alive by groups like the "Objectivists" (I 
think). This would involve basically no government, in order to maintain pure 
free markets. This pure form has obviously never existed anywhere, because it 
is actually beneficial for capital to have some sort of gov. regulations. For 
example, in the US the Sherman Anti-Trust Law was passed in the 1890s, to 
prevent people like Rockerfeller and Andrew Carnegie from completely controlling 
the oil land steel industries, respectively. Similar laws are used today to keep 
Bill Gates from controlling the whole software industry (although I think he 
owns about 90% of it). It is useful for governments to have some capitalist 
competition out there.
     I think you have to look at a society to see if it is primarily 
capitalist or socialist (remember, communism hasn't existed yet). Extreme 
right-wingers will argue that the US is socialist, because we have Social Security, taxes, 
public shcools, etc. But normal people would agree that it is mainly 
capitalist, because we have profits, private property, and the rich in control. Pavel 
and I have argued that the USSR was primarily capitalist after a period of 
socialism (and later China too), because they also had a ruling class (in the 
communist party), and elite group in charge, and the state ran industry from the 
top down and made a profit (to be returned to the state). These errors, (i.e., 
the communists parties of Russia, China, and Cuba) building some sort of 
class society out of a socialist revolution) were based on a literal 
interpretation of Marx--that you needed a capitalist phase before communism would emerge, 
and that people were not ready for real equality and had to go thru phasese 
like nationalism ("communist" governments in Africa and Latin America, for 
example), socialism, etc. I think that communists can learn from the errors of the 
past, and not just use Marx and others' writings as gospel. I want a society 
with no classes, collective decision making, no money or wages and instead 
distribution based on need, and where everyone becomes a "leader". It would require 
the participation of millions in running society. I bet others would like 
this too.
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