How Capitalism Help Build Socialism or..........

[wkmac]

bbsam,

One other point to consider and it was made by very strong advocate of the free market in Frederic Bastiat who also sat on the leftside (adocates of laissez-faire free markets generally were of the left) of the French Parliament along side Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who many consider the first to call himself an anarchist. Proudhon also was a huge influence on Marx and who also coined the term "Property is theft" and it is if one understands Proudhon's context.

Bastiat said the following:

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French economist​

IMO history bares this out as true also!

 

[wkmac]

Beware the Machine Messiah!

“Why do you resist us?” complains the Borg Queen. “We only want to improve the quality of your lives.”

 

[wkmac]

How the Constitution Enabled Socialism and Fascism in America

Even though Barack Obama is still president, the conservatives are already suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome, as they constantly label Obama a “socialist,” just as the left continue to label George W. Bush a “fascist.” This is strange, given that Bush is also a socialist and Obama is also a fascist. Go figure.
But the more I have thought about these issues, the more I have realized there is not much difference between socialism and fascism. And with essentially total government control over every aspect of our daily lives, while America is presumably a “capitalist” society, it is really more communist than capitalist.

Now, “capitalism” didn’t originally refer to free markets and voluntary trade and commerce, as The Freeman editor Sheldon Richman has noted. And both socialism and fascism involve a nasty relationship between the State and the society’s wealth, property and the means of production. One refers to State or “public” ownership of property, wealth and the means of production (socialism), and one refers to State control of property, wealth and the means of production (fascism).

When you get right down to it, there is no actual private ownership of something without the right to control what is privately owned, and the right to be free from outside intrusions against that which is privately owned. Such intrusions used to be called “theft” and “trespass.” In other words, without 100% authority and sovereignty over their businesses and property, and under the Rule of Law that forbids such theft or trespassing – including by agents of the State – owners don’t really own their businesses and property.

As Richman has pointed out, we have never really had any kind of “free market capitalism” in America that would include genuine private property ownership and control. But the “capitalism” that we have had since America’s founding has been State capitalism, the enmeshment between private businesses and the State. (“Crony capitalism” and “corporatism” are different terms, with aspects very similar to, if not the same as, State capitalism.)

But I see America’s State capitalism as consisting of two parts: socialism and fascism.

 

[bbsam]

I have often thought that 20 years from now, America and China will mirror each other in terms of capitalism/socialism mix.

 

[wkmac]

I have often thought that 20 years from now, America and China will mirror each other in terms of capitalism/socialism mix.

In 1954', Norman Dodd, investigator of the US Senate's Reese Commission charged with investigating the many tax exempt foundations interviewed H. Rowan Gaither who at the time was President of the Ford Foundation. He's alleged to have said the following to Mr. Dodd when asked just what purpose the foundations exist for.

"... all of us here at the policy-making level have had experience with directives... from the White House... . The substance of them is that we shall use our grant-making power so as to alter our life in the United States that we can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union."

Now whether one believes this took place, believes it from some contextual POV is up to the person who reads it but from our historical perspective nearly 57 years later, regardless of intent, this did indeed come to past at many levels.

As it relates to your comments and China, whether 20, 40 or more years from now I do think based on our current course and observation of events, your analysis has much merit!

OK for my smart ass moment and not directed at you so much bbsam.

Now where the whole thing gets interesting is how long does it take to convert the entire world to consumerism to absorb capitalism's need to generate excess surplus in order to drive profits ever higher in order to satisfy a monopolistic market system? I say monopoly in reference to try and sell your own stock shares out of your house to a friend or neighbor in the same fashion you would a piece of used furniture, computer or hammer, opps there's my free(d) market again. You do own those shares as your own property do you not? Then why does a private 3rd party get to dictate terms of transfer that also allow for rent seeking? That kinda capitalism if free market? Really?

What happens when the current economic model we call capitalism eg consumerism reaches it's global saturation point, what then? Still generating surplus but whose to buy it? Where are the next consumers to be converted? Mars maybe? Oh you'll be dead you say. Really? Are you sure you have that long into the future? How then do you explain the current global economic turmoil? Were all the countries of the world engaging in real estate financing scams too? Hmmmm!

What have we not been told!

 

[bbsam]

Wk--
You have no faith in man's incessant need for "more" and the "next best". We've got a billion Chinese and an entire continent (Africa) that we've not yet begun to sell our crap to. People just gotta have "it", no matter what "it" happens to be.

 

[wkmac]

“The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen], ought always to be listened to with great precaution . . . . It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.” —Adam Smith

Interesting!