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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:19
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What capitalist founder? No one founded capitalism. Adam Smith wrote a book describing a society he saw around him and made some recommendations on how it could be made better. He did not create an idea for a new society and present it to the world fully formed. If you'd actually read his book (which I have) you'd know that. There was no a priori attempt to define capitalism (especially since it ante-dated him).
As for Stalin, I accept that he was a Communist and a socialist and even a Marxist. I just think he was a bad one, and criminally responsible for a lot of bad things. The USSR never made the claim that it was communist, so why should I be forced to defend a position even they didn't take. I do accept that it was a socialist society, albeit a degenerated one.
There was an attempt to define what a socialist society would look like before it was created, starting in the 1820s, with the utopian socialists Fourrier and Saint-Simon. Marx, largely, tried to avoid making predictions as to how socialist society would appear. But creating a blue print or template for such a future society would be unMarxist.
As Marx wrote, the future society will be shaped first and foremost by the concrete circumstances underwhich it arose. Each society will have its own forms and features which conform to the level of political, social, and economic development previously occuring.
In other words, as I have stated previously on numerous occassions (having changed my initial position), it is disingenuous to simply dismiss the USSR by definition. IF one does so, it should be with the explanation that it is a simplistic answer in the place of a complex one. It is easier to say that the USSR wasn't socialist rather than explaining that it was, but ... (with all the complex causes and effects that changed the USSR into its opposite). One is substituting a simple, formal explanation for a complex, dialectical one. It's pollitically and intellectually lazy as well as unMarxist.
Last edited by chegitz guevara on 13-07-2005 at 01:42
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:19
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quote:
Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Oh come on, Smith, Ricardo, all those thinkers described a system of economics vastly different than the mercantalist policies in place. |
It's no accident that all these early capitalist theorists were British. They were analysts who were describing the society they saw around them, one emerging from the ancien regime, still as yet not fully formed. Mercantilism is no more a seperate form of society from capitalism than Keynesianism is.
Rather, it corresponds to the technological and social methods of production existing at that time, small artisanal production for mercantilism, the beginings of industrial capitalism for the classical political economisits, Taylorist and Fordist methods of organizing production for Keynesianism, etc. It is the forms of society that drive the ideas, not the other way around, i.e., ideas arise that correspond to the way people are organizing their lives.
Even Marxism and its variants are linked to specific forms of the organized society. Scientific socialism as an idea only arises in response to industrial capitalism, even if various utopian communalist ideas had existed before: Shey Beddredin in the Ottoman Empire, Thomas Munzer and that Anabaptists, Winstaley and the Diggers, etc.
quote:
I know your agenda is to link mercantalism with capitalism, but it doesn't fit and the original capitalist thinkers were writing in response to mercantalism and forged forth with a new economic system. |
It's not my agenda. The commonly accepted date for the begining of capitalism as the dominent form of social relations is 1500 AD. Those who have a political agenda to define capitalism to narrow, libertarian positions disagree, but they came up with their definitions only in the 1950s and later.
quote:
quote:
As for Stalin, I accept that he was a Communist and a socialist and even a Marxist. |
When he didn't hold to any of Marx's basic ideals? Its silly. He simply adopted Communist rhetoric to his own, seperate goals. Claimed or not, they made plenty of reference to Marxism. |
I don't disagree that in his hands, Marxism became a religion, but not knowing his mind, I'm not ready to say that he was entirely cynical in his Marxism. At one time, he was certainly a true believer, and I'm willing to accept the possibility that rather than being supremely evil, he was stupid, though I consider it exceedingly unlikely.
It is possible that he considered his methods necessary not merely to secure his own position but also to defend the revolution. That he may have identified the revolution with his own person doesn't necesarily mean he was simply interest only in his own power. What I think, however, is that his personal motives are not relevent in understanding what he did and why he did it. I think that more important are understanding the social relations within the USSR, as well as internationally between the USSR and the imperialist powers.
It's fun to speculate and gossip about the personally pecadillos of various leaders, but it doesn't really help us to fully or even largely understand why the tide of history occurs the way it does. It might help us understand why particular events happened they way they did, such as when a mistake changes what "should" have happened or when a particularly bold move does the same, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.
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Kidicious
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Diety of Kidiverse
Mar 2003
time: 21:19
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quote:
Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Too bad, it means something else entirely different today than the Communist definition of the term. |
Only in your little world. Free market is a subset of capitalism.
wikipedia
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The first use of the word "capitalism" in English is by novelist Thackeray in 1854, by which he meant having ownership of capital. |
quote:
Capitalism has been defined in various ways (see q:Capitalism). In common usage it refers to an economic system in which all or most of the means of production are owned by and operated commonly for profit.
Capitalism contrasts with socialism and communism, where the means of production, and the resulting products, are owned and used by the state or by the community collectively, and it contrasts with feudalism, where land may be privately operated, but is owned by the state and held in fee. Some authorities regard fascism as being distinguished from capitalism by extensive statist intervention in an economy, whereas capitalism is usually defined in part by as a system where economic decisions are made privately in a idealized "free market". According to this view, a fascist regime's use of force to arbitrarily distribute wealth is not consistent with how capitalism is ordinarily defined. However this distinction is disputed: critics point out that all modern economies experience state intervention to varying degrees, including the use of force for the benefit of individual capitalists, and that private proprietors continue to benefit from economic activity under fascism, as is the case with capitalism per se.
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Last edited by Kidicious on 13-07-2005 at 11:48
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11-07-2005 22:22
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