locutius wrote on Mar 18^th, 2009 at 2:54pm:


I look at it and don't see mass starvation like it was in USSR and is in NK.

locutius wrote on Mar 18^th, 2009 at 3:26pm:


Yes, capitalism is a cruel bitch but what is worse empty wallet or empty stomach?

Agreeing with it or not, it's impressive to these days read Marx's "Das Kapital", and realize how accurate his conclusions about the inevitable failure of capitalism were. The problem is a viable alternative, the much talked "capitalism with a human face", i think the best example there is at the moment of a working capitalism model with a social concern, can be seen in Scandinavian countries, although if that's to last that's another story - still, it's amazing how capitalism degenerated quickly into mercantilism, corporativism, the merger of state and corporate interests, plutocracy, and cleptocracy, and all this together with some fascist touches.

I think it was Plato that mentioned that Republics always fail when people find out that they can elect representatives to serve their own individual interests rather than the population's interests.
Such a shame that today's version of ancient Rome's "panis et circenses" prevents any meaningful discussion by pre-categorizing anyone into groups that are further distilled into the "against us", "with us", be it in the Joe McCarthy's US in the 50's, with the "communist menace", in the 1910's and 1920's in the US with the strikes and the "Bolshevik menace", in the post 9/11 world with the "islamofascist menace" (never mind that islamofascist is an contradiction in itself...), or the clearest example of all, anyone wanting a serious meaningful discussion about the situation of occupied territories in Palestine, being immediately labelled anti-semitic - something that can only come from people who are unaware of the significance of the word.

I'm deviating a bit, but trying to point that although there is good serious intellectually honest discussion everywhere, from the US to Israel, to Russia, to the EU, etc... the only possible way to get these voices heard without being labelled, censored, or worse, is via decentralized means, such as the internet - which is why governments worldwide are determined in controlling the flow of information on the internet, in the guise of protecting the children from paedophilia, or protecting the public from "domestic terrorists", or denying "potential terrorists" information that allows them to make bombs (never mind that the 1st thing any 13 year old does in his/her first chemistry/physics class is trying to find exciting ways to blow up things), or just regulating "speech" to prevent "hate speech", and discrimination, etc...
Mainstream media? You can forget it, media is Orwellian newspeak for "Ministry of Truth".

Look at Australia... the Chinese have the "great firewall of China", and Australia is on its way to have the Great Australian Internet Reef, a firewall that already blocks access to wikileaks pages - obviously the right of the public to be aware of information that is potentially embarrassing, if not criminal evidence, of government representatives, entire governments, or "just" corporate entities, is a right that needs to be regulated, as well as any political speech - anyone noticed some time ago some articles discussing the possibility of being mandatory in the US for bloggers to have a registration in some to-be-designated-institution, so that they could be entitled to freely discuss political matters?
Of course the only political matters allowed would be the ones sanctioned by the government, and the registration means that the authorities know who you are, if you deviate from the "official view of reality", you pay the price.

I wonder how many people in the US, besides historians, history and/or economy students, have read Marx for instance? I wonder if even these people have read Marx.
It's enlightening, and as you mentioned in your post, capitalism is truly dead, but this isn't anything new, in fact, capitalism was dead a long time ago - between the end of the Eisenhower administration, and the Nixon administration, the US for all purposes, was done for, if not even earlier.
The signing of the Federal Reserve Act by President Woodrow Wilson (if my memory serves me right) was the beginning of the end, from there onwards, it was just a small series of step to that same inexorable end, total complete utter corruption, dispossession of the property of the State, read The People, and passing on this property to private entities, usually corporations and businesses closely affiliated with elected officials, either via campaign contributions, or via more promiscuous relationships.

The US is not the only one to blame though, the UK unfortunately also was a precursor in such methods, and in the ultimate irony, those that created and had full faith in a "free market" model that was everything but Free, ended up paying a heavy price - for all practical purposes the US and the UK are now insolvent, unable to honour their debts, and will eventually have to default. Their disguised nationalizations of failed institutions did nothing except shift to the public sector the tremendous liabilities that were result of the reckless and even criminal behaviour of, lately, banking and investment institutions, boosting the US and UK's national debt to unprecedented levels and forcing their sovereign banks to start printing money in what is ironically called "quantitative easing".

If the crisis was circumscribed to the US and UK, then they were getting just what they deserved, unfortunately that's not the case.
Time to re-reread some of the old classics, History is always, always a source of enlightenment and solutions.