[kj] politics

[P]

       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.

  Exactly these people are called objectivists. They organise every year the march for capitalism in december. Last year in Prague it was attended by as many as 4 people.
  I dont believe any pure forms exist in real world, even not "pure form" of communism. what i was arguing is that Communism not even socialism existed in any form, even not impure, yet. that system in USSR and elsewhere was not impure form of it but rather a negation of it. 

       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. 
  Well, I would not argue that USSR was capitalist, since it has kept the planned property relations. But ruling caste (not the class!) had no intention to progress towards socialism whatsoever since it would take away their privilige, which is bit different, but what we would certainly agree with Greg is that caste must have been overthrown completely in order to progress towards socialism and communism.

  I will not comment on "these errors were based on a literal interpretation of Marx" cause I do not want to bother this e-group with more of the Marxist debate. -)))

  PAVEL

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://four.pairlist.net/pipermail/gathering/attachments/20040905/14671daf/attachment.html