It's Capitalism, Not Globalism

Of course we have, and capitalism has gotten more ubiquitous. What we haven't seen in a long time are market forces. They've been eliminated by the capitalizers.

 

Without government privilege, this is impossible.
But thanks for the thumbs down for corporatism, which is what we have.

 

I'm happy you are seeing things my way. We've reached the point that market economics is anathema to capitalism/corporatism.

 

Which human rights? And what do you mean by authentic democracy?

 

No corporatism, caused by government privilege, distorts market capitalism by removing the markets.
Government is the problem.

 

I subscribe to the idea that government now works at the behest of the corporations. Either way, the corporations are going to remove the markets.

 

They have, but only with massive assistance by the FED and the USGov

 

Not so much the type of government, but the type of people within the government.

One of the main results of this election is the lack of, "the rule of law." Everything else you stated in this entire rant, is nothing more than an excuse and of course a rant. Anybody has the ability to become successful, but do they have the discipline? To teach to our young what your saying here, is very negative. And gives no help, whatsoever.

If you think mankind will ever have an era of complete peace, fairness, and ultimate prosperity, perhaps you should start to think that maybe your dreaming.

 

Okay, can we agree that corporations have no interest in open and free markets?

 

I'll agree that certain corporations woking in conjunction with government have have a dual lack of interest in open and free markets.

 

Up until recently when I bought out a couple shareholders and took back my corporation and made it my own private company, my only interest was stealing local market share. I didn't even think about healthy competition.

 

Even the most daft and dogmatic apologists for capitalism should be able to admit this. They simply can't admit that there's no real remedy for this inherent defective reality of the capitalist system.

 

Hmm, are you one of those (in the interest of civility I'll omit any of the various unflattering adjectives that might be inserted here) folks who has difficulty thinking in terms of the big socioeconomic picture and who instead simplistically assigns all blame to individuals. Is the concept that individuals are in large measure shaped by socioeconomic structures really that difficult to grasp?

You're being a tad bit dismissive here. Well, does being a rant rule out the possibility that it contains insight, truth, and substance?

Oh, so you're actually one of those, one of those pro-capitalists who goes in for lamely asserting that the poor and socioeconomically downtrodden are entirely to blame for their own unhappy lot, that they remain poor and socioeconomically downtrodden merely because they lack talent, initiative, and "discipline"! Well, apparently your pro-capitalist doctrinairism is such that it's not obvious to you that the reason people remain in poverty is that the capitalist system and power structure is one in which most of the economic wealth and power is arrogated and locked up by a small class of capitalists and not available to, not used to promote the success and well-being, i.e. the self-actualization of the working multitudes, that instead they're subjected to economic disempowerment and adversity that has them too up against it and preoccupied with survival to rise from rags to riches. This is indeed a glaring empirical truth of the capitalist system, but of course not all that apparent to free-marketarians. At any rate, to indoctrinate young minds with their blame-the-working-class-victim-not-the-capitalist-system rubbish is indeed negative and doesn't help matters. Well, internalizing blame merely makes one feel worse about one's lot, and spares the status quo the kind of critical attention that might lead to its transformation, thereby keeping capitalists in the catbird seat and workers in a state of subjugation.

You're merely trying to reduce my vision of an alternative form of life to something absurdly idealistic that can be easily dismissed.

 

So you engage in illeagal business activities? I've been in business over 40 years and never stole market share I legally earned it.

 

It takes you that entire paragraph for this. "Not so much the type of government, but the type of people within the government." It's very easy to understand.

"of the main results of this election is the lack of, "the rule of law." Everything else you stated in this entire rant, is nothing more than an excuse and of course a rant." Your response to this is.

And again, your reply is nothing more than denial.

"Anybody has the ability to become successful, but do they have the discipline? To teach to our young what your saying here, is very negative. And gives no help, whatsoever." Your response to this is a book, and in that book is nothing more than denial of what I said. Here is your response to the above quote.

Anybody has the ability to become successful, lest excuses get in their way.

 

Actually, capitalism is a system in which thanks to the gross accumulation of wealth engaged in by and the domination practiced by capitalist elites economic disadvantages, adversity, and disempowerment is inflicted on the majority of human beings, making it more difficult, unlikely, and in many cases downright impossible for them to achieve the full and beautiful self-actualization that they might under the better circumstances that would be provided by a form of society based upon pro-social, communitarian, ethical and humanistic principles, i.e. an authentically communist form of society. Yes, your sort of thinking indeed stems both from a pro-capitalist bias and from what psychologists term the fundamental attribution error, and enables you and your fellow pro-capitalists to see your way clear to supporting a system that imposes economic hardship and disenfranchisement of the multitudes of humanity.

At any rate, your pro-capitalist creed of "Anybody has the ability to become successful" in a capitalist society, "lest excuses get in their way" involves a blame-the-victim rather than an understand-his-socioeconomic-position-and-have-compassion kind of response to anyone suffering poverty. Well, if we give your creed credence then we're inclined to view anyone existing in poverty as a slacker who could simply adopt and practice a better work ethic and thereby make a better life for him/herself. This is of course a quite absurd idea, given the empirical reality that most poor people in fact work quite hard, but capitalism's apologists still have to pin poverty on its victims, lest we begin to look too critically at their beloved private enterprise system.

 

continued from above

Yes, your judgmentalism directed at individuals suffering from poverty indeed stems from both a pro-capitalist bias and from what psychologists term the fundamental attribution error, and enables you and your fellow pro-capitalists to see your way clear to supporting a system that cruelly imposes economic hardship and disenfranchisement on the multitudes of humanity, i.e. it has the evil effect of making you and your ideological kin cold-bloodedly complicit in the global cruelty of capitalism. (Yes, a part of this paragraph somehow got tacked on to the end of the first paragraph, I don't understand how it happened, perhaps it was my own human error. The corrected version is below.)



Actually, capitalism is a system in which thanks to the gross accumulation of wealth engaged in by and the domination practiced by capitalist elites economic disadvantages, adversity, and disempowerment is inflicted on the majority of human beings, making it more difficult, unlikely, and in many cases downright impossible for them to achieve the full and beautiful self-actualization that they might under the better circumstances that would be provided by a form of society based upon pro-social, communitarian, ethical and humanistic principles, i.e. an authentically communist form of society.

At any rate, your pro-capitalist creed of "Anybody has the ability to become successful" in a capitalist society, "lest excuses get in their way" involves a blame-the-victim rather than an understand-his-socioeconomic-position-and-have-compassion kind of response to anyone suffering poverty. Well, if we give your creed credence then we're inclined to unsympathetically view anyone existing in poverty as a slacker who could simply adopt and practice a better work ethic and thereby make a better life for him/herself. This is of course a quite absurd idea, given the empirical reality that most poor people in fact work quite hard, but capitalism's apologists still have to pin poverty on its victims, lest we begin to look too critically at their beloved private enterprise system. Yes, your judgmentalism directed at individuals suffering from poverty indeed stems from both a pro-capitalist bias and from what psychologists term the fundamental attribution error, and enables you and your fellow pro-capitalists to see your way clear to supporting a system that cruelly imposes economic hardship and disenfranchisement on the multitudes of humanity, i.e. it has the evil effect of making you and your ideological kin cold-bloodedly complicit in the global cruelty of capitalism.

 

Here's you opportunity to learn but it's not an easy task in this case because you have to actually understand what you're learning at you progress.

White the "Rights of Man" have been philosophically addressed since the earliest of times they were generally based upon "human" arguments. You may have read the philosophy of Socrates for example that there is great wisdom in understanding Socrates but his arguments as based upon humans. The philosopher that I consider the foremost in history, and the philosophy that was the foundation for the American political ideology, was John Locke that in 1690 published his Second Treatise of Civil Government. It is a positive presentation of logical reasoning that starts with "basic truth" that we know from nature and then with the precision of mathematical reasoning it builds the logical foundation that establishes the Natural Rights of the Person such as the Natural Right "Of Property" covered in Chapter V.

In one sense you just can't start at Chapter V because there's logical reasoning that precedes it that is applicable to the understanding. On the flip side you can go directly to Chapter V but may have a hard time fully understanding the details because of the absence of prior reasoning and logic but it will give you a little insight.

http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtreat.htm

PS - a desire to acquire more than you can use is not the same as acquiring more than you can use. The Natural Right of Property limits the possession of property to what can be used before it either spoils or the person dies. It is both useless and dishonest to possess more property than can be used.

 

Actually, the right to own private property is a legal fiction. Not only is there no natural, objective moral right to own private property, the "right" to property is in fact a profoundly metaphysically morally spurious concept. To talk metaphysical turkey, so to speak, the fundamental ontological nature of all entities is interrelational self-creativity, their fundamental aim is at the fullest and richest creative self-actualization that they can possibly attain by participating in the creative interdependence of existence. Ergo a fundamental ontological and moral imperative for human beings and societies is the optimization of social communality and all other socioeconomic conditions necessary to enable the self-actualization of every human being. This of course fundamentally entails cooperative sharing and universal access to the economic means of achieving self-actualization. Private property of course runs counter to the realization of these basic and requisite conditions for human self-actualization, it promotes a selfish individualism that undermines social communality, that destroys the hope of an ideal social state of affairs in which everyone works together in a mutually-assistive fashion for mutual self-actualization; and it obviously means that the economic resources, well-being, and empowerment privately arrogated by some individuals will be denied to other human beings, will not be available to enhance the attainability of self-actualization for them. In short, private property robs human beings of the social conditions and the economic wherewithal to reach the creative self-fulfillment they inherently aspire to, can't be genuinely happy without, and have an objective entitlement to. Therefore private property is indeed wrongful, indeed criminal, indeed theft. It certainly is not an authentic right, even if haves have been seeing to it that have-nots are indoctrinated with the legal fiction that it is for thousands of years. Well, truth can be concealed but is never altered by legal fictions, private property remains robbery pure and simple; and a con, that is, we've been downright flimflammed to believe in its legitimacy even though it's profoundly at odds with the most elementary ontological and ethical imperative of all entities.

And of course capitalist society escalates the crime by turning the forces of economic production themselves into the private property of a minority of capitalist elites, and thereby enabling them to more insidiously and expropriatively arrogate and accumulate wealth than was ever before possible in human history. Yes, the modern crime of capitalist expropriation, of capitalists grabbing most of the value created by the labor of workingpeople, which is indeed insidiously foundational for the capitalist system is made possible by the monsterization of private property into the private ownership of the materials and tools used in the process of production. And of course "expropriation" is merely a big word for theft. That is, to simplify, under capitalism the "right" to private property leads to more theft than ever before, and is even less of a legitimate right than ever before. The long and short of it is that private property is one of the most dangerous big lies in history, the ur big lie, as Rousseau pointed out, i.e. the ultimate reason that although we're all born free everywhere human beings are being subjected to the chains of poverty, exploitation, and economico-political oppression, and denied the means to achieve well-being and self-actualization. And communism is nothing less than the radical remedy and revolution that fundamentally involves revoking the figmental right to property, removing the fetters placed upon the full realization of human potential by a system geared for the intensification of the felony of private property, revising society to order it to the creatively interrelational nature of life, and thereby optimizing every individual's ability to experience the highest levels of self-actualization and fulfillment.

 

continued from above


Well, this case against the legitimacy of private property is certainly quite enough to convict it of being one of the worst untruisms that human beings have invented, and I haven’t even gone into how the metastasizing of private property into the private control of the resources and facilities used in economic production under capitalism results in workers being forced to sell, to submit to the commodification of their labor, i.e. their creativity, which as the property of the capitalists who pay for it becomes alienated from them, which of course means their alienation from their fundamental creative nature, their inability to experience its fulfillment and the true and deep happiness that is creative self-fulfillment. No, I haven’t really developed this insight about how private ownership has led to a socioeconomic and existential state of affairs in which workers are condemned to go through life with a chronic and deep sense of dissatisfaction, a quiet desperation for a fuller experience of self-creativity. But of course this is yet another reason that, from an existential and humanistic perspective, private property is an evil to be abolished, not an inalienable right to be upheld.

Yes, I realize that to many tough-minded believers in private property I appear to have launched into a philosophical fantasia that can easily be laughed out of court. But of course if one really goes in for being tough-minded, Darwinianly tough-minded, well, the right to private property will still be found to be a mere fiction, because in the Darwinian image of nature there are no rights whatsoever, merely the fittest and strongest individuals having their way and consuming and taking possession of whatever they want. That is, in a society grounded in the law of the jungle no one would be thought to be entitled to securely own anything, everything would always be up for grabs; if some alpha male capable of divesting you by physical force of whatever resources or possessions you have came along, well, there would be no recourse, you wouldn’t claim to have any kind of a right to deny him what he’s capable of seizing from you and expect society to create institutions to defend you against such plunderers and predators. The notion that you had a right to such protection would be considered a bit of baseless philosophical fantasia. But of course private propertarians never take their tough-mindedness quite this far, if they did then they’d scuttle their own point of view, they’d have to jettison the legitimacy of private property from their thinking. At any rate, either way, whether one embraces communist enlightenment, or Darwinian tough-mindedness, a right to private property is not something that’s inherent in reality, rather it’s merely one of man’s made-up mores that can be rightly dispensed with.

 

Interesting thought. . .As a geographer I've always thought of globalism as having a global community working together to address issues that affect the entire planet in a way that helps everyone, like Global Warming and its affect on rising sea levels. I see here that most subscribers to PoliticalForum.com have the view that Globalization is a more narrow economic concept referring to spreading capitalism to markets around the world. Both views are essentially right, up to a limited point, but it seems we are wasting our energy and a grand opportunity for learning from each other if we fight each other over these differences. Instead, we need to open our dialogue and our minds to what both sides are saying and try to incorporate both sides into our individual understanding of the issues being presented. Our problem isn't that one side is right and the other wrong. Both sides are partially right AND partially wrong. The truth lies in some sort of combination of the two sides together. I suggest we focus our efforts toward cooperative understanding and see where we can travel from that point together.

 

I'm certainly in favor of the former, and quite obviously anti the latter. I believe that I clarified this well enough in the OP, and in subsequent posts in the thread. It isn't my fault if conservative pro-capitalist respondents to the thread haven't been able to process this.

 

Charles, what is included in your meaning of "private property"? Certainly it includes the ownership of the means of production and the "ownership" of private profits. But this is a term commonly used by the left that is criticized by the right as meaning much, much more and used to turn people against the left.

Specifically, I don't believe you mean to include the ownership of a car, tools, or jewelry.

But what about a home sitting on a lot or an acre? Is a home "private property" and wrongful, criminal, and theft?

To me the term is limited to ownership of the means of production and private profits expropriated from the labor of workers.

 

And you think this is a problem from one of the political parties? No, both parties are all for it, for none of them have done anything to change it.

You keep blaming capitalism, but it's not capitalism or the type of government. Rather it's the type of men/women within the government!

 

The reality is that unchecked capitalism fails the majority. No country has -thankfully - fully unchecked capitalism, though even in its present form, it increases poverty and erodes human rights and destroys democracy.

The USA has probably the closest levels today of capitalism and that may increase under Trump. What we are seeing is the rich get richer and the poor poorer and the gap between bigger.

The owners of capitalism are companies. But, not only do companies not have a moral consciousness, it would arguably be contrary to the very existence for them to. We live in an age now in which companies are the centre of our lives. In the USA that means you will probably arrive in the world in a company (private hospital), spend your life working for a company in the hope they will treat you well and give you a reasonable pay, then die and be buried by a company. Yet all through this, the company does not have your best interest in heart. It cant. It is there to serve itself.

Look at how this works. The hospital where you are born will only offer the treatment which you can afford. Not necessarily the best or most appropriate. But based on your income - if you are poor, you wont get the same treatment as someone whose parents are very rich. You will then work for an organization that will endeavor to give you the least amount it can for your services - I always find it funny when companies in the USA only give 10 days holidays to people on the basis that is all it can, while the same company will give x2 or even x3 to people working for it in other countries. Companies will give you what they can get away with. Look at the profits of say MacDonald's, it could, as a business, give wage rises that are significantly higher than the minimum wage. But, it choses not to. Then when you die, even the quality of the coffin will depend on what the company demands