The ONLY thing that can destroy that which has developed into the most diverse, powerful and free nation in the world is our own ignorance of what it is that makes it so great; it wasn't political correctedness and it certainly wasn't creation of a Government that is the people's nanny.
That's similarly untrue. The government is an integral agent in the capitalist economy, as a means of providing macroeconomic stabilization, promoting growth through strategic trade policy that involves the protection of infant industries and thus the maximization of dynamic comparative advantage, the utilization of welfare state policies to maintain the physical and psychological efficiency of the working class, etc. The empirical literature on this matter certainly affirms this reality; for example, we could refer to Yu's
A new perspective on the role of the government in economic development, the abstract of which notes that
"the government possesses certain unique features that allow it to restrict competition, and provide stable and reliable conditions under which firms organise, compete, cooperate and exchange. The coordinating perspective is employed to re-examine the arguments for industrial policies regarding private investment decisions, market competition, diffusion of technologies and tariff protection on infant industries. This paper concludes that dynamic private enterprises assisted by government coordination policies explains the rapid economic growths in post-war Japan and the Asian newly industrialising economies." Later elaboration is provided by this:
[The government] possesses some unique features that distinguish it from the firm. Such features allows the government to regulate competition, reduce uncertainty and provide a relatively stable exchange environment. Specifically, in the area of industrial policy, the government can help private enterprises tackle uncertainty in the following ways: first, locating the focal point by initiating projects; providing assurance and guarantees to the large investment project; and facilitating the exchange of information; second, reducing excessive competition by granting exclusive rights; and third, facilitating learning and diffusion of technologies, and assisting infant industry firms to build up competence. The history of developmental success indicates that the market and the state are not opposed forms of social organisation, but interactively linked (Rodrik, 1997, p. 437). In the prospering and dynamic nations, public-private coordination tends to prevail. Dynamic private enterprises assisted by government coordination explain the successful economic performances in the post-war Japan and the Asian newly industrialising economies. It is their governments' consistent and coordinated attentiveness to the economic problems that differentiates the entrepreneurial states (Yu, 1997) from the predatory states (Boaz and Polak, 1997).
Unfortunately, with the advent of the "government = socialism" myth (a brutal distortion of political economy, as it were), few anti-socialists sufficiently familiar with empirical research to comment intelligently exist.
I am always amazed how easily the gullible, uninformed, uneducated are willing to give up their freedoms to some political ideal that promises nothing more than to take away choice and reduce everyone to the same mediocre outcomes. Then allowing these political leaders, who are only interested in maintaining their political power, to turn them into slaves working for more than six or even eight months of the year to send their paltry wages to this vast Government bureaucracy in the FALSE belief that ONLY a huge and vast Government can provide for man's well being when all along it is us as individuals given the freedom and legal framework to decide for ourselves what it is WE think is in our own best interests that can do it.
This is mere inanity. I advocate the abolition of the state; do I fall into your crude categorizations? What you don't seem to understand is that my anarchism enables me to oppose the state bureaucracy that robs the public of their right to self-governance far more strongly than you do, and by extension, capitalism, considering the aforementioned role of the state in the capitalist economy. Moreover, I'm also able to logically extend this principle to a realm which you ignorantly defend: the authoritarian and hierarchical internal structure of the firm that characterizes wage labor in the capitalist economy. As Bob Black notes:
The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phoneys and hypocrites. . . You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. . . A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called 'insubordination,' just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. . .The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or -- better still -- industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are 'free' is lying or stupid.
What he speaks of is a reality. Noam Chomsky notes this reality similarly astutely when he remarks that
"[c]apitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward."
Right now thanks to a lack of education, but in many cases thanks TO a poor education, we are watching the United States become that which the founders feared the most; a Community Organizing States of America where the differences between the major political parties become blurred and where the citizens are actually gullible enough to want to believe that politicians can solve all their societal and economic needs. I rue the day that I should live long enough to see this occur. But at the pace we have recently seen, it might actually occur during my generation and not my children’s.
This is merely redundant; I've addressed your misrepresentation of both the education system and the founders above.
Unlike you I did not need to READ someone's ideas about what I believe in or cut and paste them here; these are my own thoughts based on my experience, knowledge of history and education which fortunately at the college level occurred when I was more mature and experienced so that I could put my lessons in context of REALITY.
That's laughable. Your commentary is little more than the regurgitation of the standard rightist talking points easily found on the Heritage Foundation's website. Unfortunately, you have a very crude grasp of political theory and economy, and were thus unprepared to deal with libertarian socialism and the realities of its practical implementation.
Sorry for the treatise, but you asked for it. I close with this; show me ONE REAL instance where Communism has or is actually working better than the system we have in the United States. If we honestly look at Fascist regimes along side of Communist regimes in the historical sense, what we see is little difference in the real outcomes of both extremes.
Certainly. I'd refer to the Spanish Revolution --- that is, the social revolution that occurred during the Spanish Civil War. As noted by Gaston Leval:
In Spain, during almost three years, despite a civil war that took a million lives, despite the opposition of the political parties . . . this idea of libertarian communism was put into effect. Very quickly more than 60% of the land was very quickly collectively cultivated by the peasants themselves, without landlords, without bosses, and without instituting capitalist competition to spur production. In almost all the industries, factories, mills, workshops, transportation services, public services, and utilities, the rank and file workers, their revolutionary committees, and their syndicates reorganised and administered production, distribution, and public services without capitalists, high-salaried managers, or the authority of the state.
It is estimated that eight to ten million people were directly or indirectly affected by the Spanish anarchist collectives. Leval has estimated 1,700 agrarian collectives, with 400 for Aragon, (although other estimates have been above 500), 900 for Levant, 300 for Castile , 30 for Estremadura, 40 for Catalonia, and an unknown number for Andalusia. He estimates that all industries and transportation were collectivized in the urban areas of Catalonia, (and indeed, 75% of all of Catalonia was estimated to have been collectivized in some way), 70% of all industries in Levant, and an unknown percentage in Castile.
The victories and social and economic benefits promoted in the Spanish Revolution through the implementation of libertarian socialist ideals, such as the establishment of syndicalism, voluntary association, and workers self-management strongly suggests that anarchist and libertarian socialist theories and practices are of a practical nature.
Other broadly successful examples of libertarian socialism include the Paris Commune, the Free Territory of Ukraine, the Zapatista municipalities of Chiapas, the Israeli kibbutzim (which I saw ignored earlier in this thread), etc. Successes of democratic socialism may be found in the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela, as well as through microeconomic analysis into the superior efficiency of worker-owned enterprises, since although they obviously do not and cannot constitute socialism by themselves, such data can be extrapolated to a prospective socialist economy.
There are other examples that can be referred to, such as Cuba and Titoist Yugoslavia, though I'm personally not of the opinion that they exemplify the libertarian social values that ought to be a critical component of any socialist revolution and political and economic order.
Regardless, it is undeniable that socialism has been been implemented successfully in the past, and empirical evidence has borne out the superior efficiency of participatory, collective management. Laissez-faire capitalism, on the other hand, has never been successfully implemented, and the shoddy forms of capitalism that exist cannot claim the same efficiency record as socialism, to say nothing of their deleterious social consequences.