Record numbers go hungry in the US

ruggedtoast

bendix wrote: »

You just don't get it, do you? It's nothing to do with a country's political system. Capitalism even operates (unofficially) in countries like North Korea (black economy), Cuba and other totalitarian states. And thank god it does - if it didnt their misery there would be compounded.

By capitalism, I mean the all embracing desire of the human spirit to innovate and create to get ahead of others - to succeed and prosper.

In that regard, every significant advance has come about through those means.

The political hue of the governing classes is irrelevant.

What do you think is happening in China today? For decades the political elite tried the egalitarian socialist ideal, forcing literally tens of millions of people to be equally destitute and hungry.

Free things up - introduce the capitalistic principle (or what they laughingly call socialism with a chinese face to save their embarassment at how wrong they were) - and what has happened to living standards of hundreds of millions of people?

Here's a simple truth for you, ninky. People might pontificate about the equality of all human beings at BBC-staff dinner parties where they can all moralise at how terrible it all is, as they sip their wine, but in the real world people don't want to be equal. They want to be better than their neighbours. And quite right too - it is what human progress has been predicated upon for thousands of years.

I would say that human progress owes as much to co-operation as it does to competition.

And if there is to be any future for us as a species that is what we need to work on.

Not a popular view amongst dyed in the wool 'me first' neo-liberals, but more accurate in an anthropological context.

bendix

Cooperation is an essential part of competition and capitalism. It's called trade.

ruggedtoast

bendix wrote: »

Cooperation is an essential part of competition and capitalism. It's called trade.

Haha - next time you're ill in bed and need looking after I'm sure you're significant others will remember that.

Honestly - what a tiresome mechanistic view of society you lot have.

Generali

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Haha - next time you're ill in bed and need looking after I'm sure you're significant others will remember that.

Honestly - what a tiresome mechanistic view of society you lot have.

At least bendix's economic views (I take issue with some of his/her other ideass) have a moral decency to them.

Most of the 'successful' communist Governments have managed to kill substantial proportions of their populations either through capital punishment, work camps and/or ideologically imposed and enforced famines.

I can't think if a single roughly capitalist democracy that has managed to do any one of those things let alone all three.

Let's just look at Mao + Stalin + Khemer Rouge vs Western Europe.

On a political death toll I make it about 15,000,000 - nil to the communists. If you add in the Americans and Guantanimo Bay etc then perhaps the score goes to 15,000,000 v 100 deaths.

bendix

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Haha - next time you're ill in bed and need looking after I'm sure you're significant others will remember that.

Honestly - what a tiresome mechanistic view of society you lot have.

Honestly, what a tired mind you have.

It stands to reason there are different kinds of 'cooperation' - on a personal, romantic, altruistic and . . yes . . economic level.

At an economic level, that cooperation is called trade - a mutually beneficial exhange of good or services for either cash or something similar.

It's not bloody rocket science.

StevieJ

Generali wrote: »

On a political death toll I make it about 15,000,000 - nil to the communists. If you add in the Americans and Guantanimo Bay etc then perhaps the score goes to 15,000,000 v 100 deaths.

Then again maybe not the genocide of Stalin but the way they treat not insignificant number of the very poor in the US is pretty much a disgrace I am hoping Obama may achieve some success (starting with health reforms) but I am not holding my breath. BTW I don't have Stalin down as a Communist more further to the right than Hitler.

ruggedtoast

Generali wrote: »

At least bendix's economic views (I take issue with some of his/her other ideass) have a moral decency to them.

Most of the 'successful' communist Governments have managed to kill substantial proportions of their populations either through capital punishment, work camps and/or ideologically imposed and enforced famines.

I can't think if a single roughly capitalist democracy that has managed to do any one of those things let alone all three.

Let's just look at Mao + Stalin + Khemer Rouge vs Western Europe.

On a political death toll I make it about 15,000,000 - nil to the communists. If you add in the Americans and Guantanimo Bay etc then perhaps the score goes to 15,000,000 v 100 deaths.

I am not a communist!

One can criticise Bretton Woods neo-liberalism without being a card carrying member of the SWP you know.

Although I did quite like Citizen Smith when it came on UK Gold.

StevieJ

ruggedtoast wrote: »

I am not a communist!

One can criticise Bretton Woods neo-liberalism without being a card carrying member of the SWP you know.

Although I did quite like Citizen Smith when it came on UK Gold.

Freedom for Tooting

ruggedtoast

Anyway - I didn't study political science but I am fairly sure the general consensus is that communism / marxism has never been properly applied anywhere.

I wouldnt especially fancy it for the record because I think its too complicated to ever work fairly, but you have to look at the facts:

The Khmer Rouge were gun toting thugs who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Cambodians. They moved, mostly unopposed, into a power vacuum left after US military expansion from Vietnam failed in the end to support the Sihanouk regime and exhausted government forces surrendered, ran away, or just took off their uniforms and returned home, in the face of vastly overwhelming fire-power from the Chinese and Soviet armed and trained VC / Khmer Rouge.

And the Khmer Rouge incidentally started off as a response to French imperial occupation.

After a totally failed policy of oppression, industrial deconstruction and agrarian ineptitude they eventually ran out of people to kill and gave in.

Mao had similarly disastrous agricultural polices and ended up with the bizarre assumption that anyone who was educated and middle class should be sent to a death camp. I havent read a lot of Marx but I dont think he recommended that

Edit:

Mao's popularity also came from a reaction to, partly inequality, but also perceived weakness of the Kuomintang to protect China's borders from an array of rampantly capitalist imperialist aggressors.

Considering how often communist countries, such as they have been, have been a response to capitalist ones, I think the whole system deserves rethinking.

And Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos are all currently nominally communist and no worse then the brutal puppet regimes the US supports in the guise of supporting freedom.

bendix

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Considering how often communist countries, such as they have been, have been a response to capitalist ones, I think the whole system deserves rethinking.

And Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos are all currently nominally communist and no worse then the brutal puppet regimes the US supports in the guise of supporting freedom.

You've obviously never been to Cambodia and have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. It is in no way a communist country - either nominally or in any other regard. It is a fully functioning democracy with regular elections and multiple parties. Freemarket enterprise is not only supported but encouraged. Foreign direct investment from places as diverse as Korea, Europe, Russia, Australia, Thailand and China is flooding in. Tourism venues are being developed, even six star casinos being built. Foreign banks from Australia, Singapore and Malaysia are opening branches by the dozen. A Cambodian stock exchange is being developed and is mooted to open for business next year.

With the help of the international community, it is starting trials against the remaining KR leaders.

Overall, it is a wonderful place coming to terms with a tragic past.

That you are so ill-informed yet so happy to throw lines around as fact makes a mockery of the rest of your argument, and where does one even start to deal with a line like 'we should rethink the whole system'?

Utterly brilliant.