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Syndicate
After reflecting on this topic a long time, I've come to the conclusion that capitalism, while a highly exploitative and destructive practise in its own right, is merely an outgrowth of the real problem. The real problem is greed and an inability of people to control their appetites for goods and services. Those of us in wealthy countries ought to be spending our resources helping the poorer countries and looking for ways to lower our impacts on the planet instead of growing our economies. But we're not. And we can only partly blame capitalism for that.
I also think that economics is a failed science. Economists are good at answering simple questions like what will a leather shortage do to the price of boots but it's been an abject failure as an instrument of public policy. The practise of aggragating all activity into a single number (the GDP) and the fixation on orienting most public policy towards inceasing that number regardless of the real costs has to be the single most destructive influence on the world over the past century.
Well said. I'm not an expert but then again, I don't think you have to be to see the destructive nature of capitalism over the last two centuries. How do we go from here. My points have been in this topic that I don't see capitalism coming to an end in this century. Just because we might wish it would does not mean it will happen. My contention has always been from the start that, and I think you echo this, we love cheap goods and we love buying lots of cheap goods. As long as this mentality continues, so will the exploitation of the LDC's and DC's. That is why i have said to focus first on change in our own lives. Poilicy change will not flow from the top down. It will not come from government. Even if the NDP were to form government, the neoliberal paradigm is too intrenched to be changed in any significant way. It's far too easy to punish a developed country for making sweeping social changes, especially if their economy happens to falter. So I'm a fan of incremental individualism: personal change for social betterment. I feel in this day, neoliberalism has such a stranglehold on this planet, this is the only way to affect significant change.
Could China Already Be World's Largest Economy? Globalresearch TV video
- I'd have to read more of what you say, but this sounds an awful lot like just tinkering with capitalism rather than things that would be involved with some completely new, non-master-peasant system ...
II'm no expert in the minutiae of theoretical political discourse, but as far as I understand it, 'reactionary' refers to the 'counter-revolution' of formerly entrenched elitist powers trying to overthrow a populist movement of some sort which has taken their power. As such, my calls for strong democracies or national sovereignty are hardly 'reactionary', closer perhaps to revolutionary.
But regardless of the semantics, calling for strong, independent democracies is not the 'rhetoric of decenctralisation' - more or less the opposite, really, as the 'rhetoric of decentralisation' is what the current neocon-NWOers are up to, trying to destroy strong democracies so they can take over everything - democratic governments which were formed very largely for the purpose of creating a united front against these wouldbe oligarchs, and which they are now trying to usurp to their own purposes. I am saying we need to get these capitalists etc out of our governments, and establish some true democracies. Some sort of truly democratic world union might be possible in 500-1000 or more years, but only AFTER we have a world mostly full of strong, independent, capitalist-free democracies. If we follow the NWOers and their 'one world bank' and other 'centralising' ideas right now - we're just giving it to our enemies. The capitalists control the current faux-democracies, and if we go on with any more 'unions' of any sort, or allow this oneworld bank they want, they'll just control them too - and the more we centralize power now, the heavier the chains we are allowing to be placed on ourselves, and the harder it is going to be to get free later.
(and I'm not contradicting myself, words can have different meanings in different contexts - the NWOers want to decntralise, or disperse, democratic power to weaken it - and then replace that deomcratic power with their own centralised feudal power - they understand the strength of unity, and want to deny it to we their enemy, whilst using it themselves - as I say often, I don't like these people, but they know what they are doing, which few of 'we the people' seem to, either us or them. And as far as a central world bank goes, the monocropping vs diversity idea is even more relevant - in a world of two hundred strong democracies, if one country gets taken over by some idiots or criminals and destroys their own currency, then that will not be strong enough to harm the overall world economy - but if it is all centralised, then the bad guys (or idiots) only have to get themselves into one place to damage the entire world. It's not a crazy idea - they've obviously taken over the major power in the world, the US, decades ago, and have been running rampant ever since.)
In the context of what I wrote, labour vouchers, electronic labour credits, non-circulable labour credits, etc. are part of an overall computerized system of planned production and distribution based directly on labour time, in addition to the scrapping of capitalist and petty-capitalist private property relations.
- the elephant-in-the-living-room question is - who is doing the planning? The problem with 'capitlalism' isn't just the name - it's the whole idea of 'those who control' and 'those who do as they're told' and etc. 'planned' has some pretty scary implications .....
- the elephant-in-the-living-room question is - who is doing the planning? The problem with 'capitlalism' isn't just the name - it's the whole idea of 'those who control' and 'those who do as they're told' and etc - it doesn't matter what you call it. 'Planned' has some pretty worrisome implications to anyone who's looking for 'democracy' - that is to say, *real* democracy, not one of the many pretend versions .....
The CCF in Canada's Parliament asked this question after WW II. They wanted labour and unions and civil society groups to have input as to the allocation of raw materials, energy and manpower WRT the Canadian economy. Various Liberal and Tory governments made sure that ordinary Canadians would be excluded from such decision making.
True. One Amadeo Bordiga was quite economically more communist than most of the far left today, but emphasized technocratic planning over this post-monetary as well as post-capitalist system.