charleslb
05-26-2011, 06:23 PM
Here’s a very typical, trite, and facile conservative/libertarian/pro-capitalist argument against socialism: “The off-the-charts loss of human life and evil perpetrated under socialist systems of the Soviet brand is of such a mind-boggling enormity that capitalism is clearly a morally superior system, and clearly the preferable system for any reasonable person. Come on, Stalin killed 20 million and Mao killed 30 million, how can anyone say, with intellectual honesty and good faith, that socialism is better than capitalism. And anyway, as far as the evils attributable to capitalism, well, our system isn’t true capitalism, and it’s failings and crimes can’t fairly be laid at the doorstep of the free market.”
Firstly, I would say to anyone who falls back on this argument that I note that apparently you and your camp do not have an example of what hardcore free-marketeers such as yourself, or a von Mises, would consider an authentically and blissfully capitalist society – I can say this because pro-capitalists never actually seem to cough up such an example. You and your ideological compatriots casually gloss over coming up short in this regard, and proceed to challenge me and my "fellow travelers" to defend real-world socialism against the charge that it's been more of a force for evil than real-world capitalism. I'll get to that challenge momentarily, but can I take it that you admit that you and your fellow capitalist boosters lack a tangible example of the kind of society you advocate, i.e. that you accept membership in the club of romantic idealists and utopians?
Now then, as for the question of which ism, real-world capitalism or "communism" has demonstrated more of a capacity to deal out death and do evil, apparently you just assume that if we play the numbers game and add the thirty million that Mao killed to the twenty million that Stalin killed the resulting figure will be greater than the number of lives abbreviated by capitalism. However, as you might expect, I beg to differ. For you see, the greed and poverty generated by capitalism has in point of objective & verifiable fact caused an enormous loss of life.
The ruthlessly self-serving manner in which the capitalist elite of the rich nations behaves in Third World countries, for example, creates incalculable suffering and nightmarishly ups the mortality rate. Then there's all that the capitalist corporatocarcy does right here in the First World to raise the misery index, and to shorten the time on earth of millions of human beings. You know, by perpetuating conditions of poverty that kill in various ways. Yes, the poverty endemic in our capitalist system is a mass killer. Shall I enumerate some of the ways?
For starters, when poor people aren't able to afford and obtain adequate health care, and this leads to their premature death from treatable medical conditions, such unfortunate people are genuine casualties of our capitalist system in which health care is a for-profit industry rather than a recognized human right.
When the poverty-caused sociological conditions rampant in the economically blighted inner cities spawn lethal gang violence and crime, the resulting victims are also victims of capitalism – in the bigger socioeconomic picture that conservatives refuse to acknowledge, preferring to moralistically blame individuals and chant the mantra of "personal responsibility", the way this lets capitalism off the hook is very convenient.
When those massively rich and clout-wielding capitalist entities, the tobacco companies, use their money-power to keep cigarettes legal, when they lucratively market death all over the globe, the millions who die each year can be added to the death tab of capitalist greed.
When the capitalist plutocracy instigates wars to the end of practicing the shock doctrine, i.e. profiteering and raping a beaten enemy's economy, the people murdered to satisfy the money-lust of the billionaires boys club likewise should be added to capitalism's ever growing death tab.
Oh yea, I didn't even mention all the lives destroyed by unhealthy and unsafe working conditions since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Sweatshops ruin lives and kill too.
And what about the killer pollution and unwholesome environmental effects caused by piggish capitalist profit-mongering? Yeah, all capitalism does is enhance people's material quality of life, yeah right. NOT! Capitalism is often literally toxic, and, most unfortunately, this is no hyperbole.
I could go on, but you get the idea (unless one chooses to be stubbornly dense in his/her denial). Now then, if we add up all of this annual death, and multiply it by the number of years it's been going on, we would get a figure that far exceeds that of the murder victims of "communism". And I won't even go off on a digression about the possibility that industrial capitalism, by causing global warming, may very well wipe out billions of lives in the not too distant future, and even place humankind on the endangered species list. Yes, unloosed capitalist greed is every bit as dangerous to our well-being as the will-to-power of wicked characters like Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. The underlying atavistic mentality of capitalists, that the strong capitalist should survive and flourish, and the weak wage slave & pauper should occasionally be allowed to perish, makes a capitalist society a very "rugged" and precarious place to live indeed.
Moving on, as for the tyranny and cruelty of so-called "communist" societies, I unequivocally acknowledge the partial responsibility of the socialist ideologies of these societies, let me get that straight and out of the way up front so that no one needs to go off on a tangent calling me on the carpet for being in leftist denial. That being said, I ask the same intellectual honesty from anti-communists.
That is, can you-all admit that there was conceivably more to the evil of "communist" societies than just their communist philosophy? What kind of societies, pray tell, became totalitarian "dictatorships of the proletariat"? The answer, countries like czarist Russia and China. You know, countries that had a long history of authoritarian government, that had no tradition whatsoever of democracy, and precious little tradition of respect for human rights. Naturally, when they went "communist" they did so not in a humane and progressive way, but in a harsh manner preordained by their harsh history. They merely repackaged their cruel history in a new ideology, and ratcheted up their authoritarianism one notch to totalitarianism.
No, it's not really very intellectually honest or fair at all to lay all the sins against humanity of Soviet-style socialism at the philosophical doorstep of "communism". If inclined, one can do so, but not with integrity and justice. However, it’s quite honest and fair to point out the cruelty and death caused under capitalism is due to capitalist greed, because it is. Taking this into consideration, "communism" starts to look somewhat better in comparison to capitalism, a good deal better.
Finally, which philosophy has the greater potential for good? Well, socialism is a pro-social philosophy with pro-social values such as unselfishness, sharing, social compassion, and unity. Such pro-social values are empirically known to be good for society and for people's social well-being. Capitalism, on the other hand, is (forgive me) an anti-social philosophy, with anti-social values such as economic individualism, selfishness, cutthroat competition, and materialism. Such asocial, amoral, and downright anti-social values are empirically known to be decidedly bad for society and people's social happiness.
Well, what really does capitalism have to put up against the pro-social values of socialism, the theory that the “invisible hand” of unfettered self-interest and the "free market" is going to remedy all economic and social ills and give us a middle-class paradise on earth? Funny then how no society has found the wisdom and will to create a true "free market" that would prove the theory correct, could it be that we're being forced back to the realization that a true "free market" is more unrealistic than the pro-social values of socialism? Again, the pro-social values of socialism are a known quantity, we experientially and conclusively know that they make for socially stable and flourishing communities. On the other hand, Gordon Gecko's encapsulation of the philosophy of capitalism, that "Greed is good", is not only counterintuitive it's thoroughly refuted by the empirical data of history and sciences such as sociology.
So, at the end of the day's critical comparison, which ism really looks better and more appealing? My vote, and the vote of many who aren't ideologically and irrationally invested in dogmatically defending the "free market", is for "socialism". Whose position is really more whacky?!
(I apologize for the lengthy length of this post. I got going typing and it just grew longer and more detailed than intended. On the charge of verbosity I plead mea culpa and beg for forgiveness.)
:)
Firstly, I would say to anyone who falls back on this argument that I note that apparently you and your camp do not have an example of what hardcore free-marketeers such as yourself, or a von Mises, would consider an authentically and blissfully capitalist society – I can say this because pro-capitalists never actually seem to cough up such an example. You and your ideological compatriots casually gloss over coming up short in this regard, and proceed to challenge me and my "fellow travelers" to defend real-world socialism against the charge that it's been more of a force for evil than real-world capitalism. I'll get to that challenge momentarily, but can I take it that you admit that you and your fellow capitalist boosters lack a tangible example of the kind of society you advocate, i.e. that you accept membership in the club of romantic idealists and utopians?
Now then, as for the question of which ism, real-world capitalism or "communism" has demonstrated more of a capacity to deal out death and do evil, apparently you just assume that if we play the numbers game and add the thirty million that Mao killed to the twenty million that Stalin killed the resulting figure will be greater than the number of lives abbreviated by capitalism. However, as you might expect, I beg to differ. For you see, the greed and poverty generated by capitalism has in point of objective & verifiable fact caused an enormous loss of life.
The ruthlessly self-serving manner in which the capitalist elite of the rich nations behaves in Third World countries, for example, creates incalculable suffering and nightmarishly ups the mortality rate. Then there's all that the capitalist corporatocarcy does right here in the First World to raise the misery index, and to shorten the time on earth of millions of human beings. You know, by perpetuating conditions of poverty that kill in various ways. Yes, the poverty endemic in our capitalist system is a mass killer. Shall I enumerate some of the ways?
For starters, when poor people aren't able to afford and obtain adequate health care, and this leads to their premature death from treatable medical conditions, such unfortunate people are genuine casualties of our capitalist system in which health care is a for-profit industry rather than a recognized human right.
When the poverty-caused sociological conditions rampant in the economically blighted inner cities spawn lethal gang violence and crime, the resulting victims are also victims of capitalism – in the bigger socioeconomic picture that conservatives refuse to acknowledge, preferring to moralistically blame individuals and chant the mantra of "personal responsibility", the way this lets capitalism off the hook is very convenient.
When those massively rich and clout-wielding capitalist entities, the tobacco companies, use their money-power to keep cigarettes legal, when they lucratively market death all over the globe, the millions who die each year can be added to the death tab of capitalist greed.
When the capitalist plutocracy instigates wars to the end of practicing the shock doctrine, i.e. profiteering and raping a beaten enemy's economy, the people murdered to satisfy the money-lust of the billionaires boys club likewise should be added to capitalism's ever growing death tab.
Oh yea, I didn't even mention all the lives destroyed by unhealthy and unsafe working conditions since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Sweatshops ruin lives and kill too.
And what about the killer pollution and unwholesome environmental effects caused by piggish capitalist profit-mongering? Yeah, all capitalism does is enhance people's material quality of life, yeah right. NOT! Capitalism is often literally toxic, and, most unfortunately, this is no hyperbole.
I could go on, but you get the idea (unless one chooses to be stubbornly dense in his/her denial). Now then, if we add up all of this annual death, and multiply it by the number of years it's been going on, we would get a figure that far exceeds that of the murder victims of "communism". And I won't even go off on a digression about the possibility that industrial capitalism, by causing global warming, may very well wipe out billions of lives in the not too distant future, and even place humankind on the endangered species list. Yes, unloosed capitalist greed is every bit as dangerous to our well-being as the will-to-power of wicked characters like Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. The underlying atavistic mentality of capitalists, that the strong capitalist should survive and flourish, and the weak wage slave & pauper should occasionally be allowed to perish, makes a capitalist society a very "rugged" and precarious place to live indeed.
Moving on, as for the tyranny and cruelty of so-called "communist" societies, I unequivocally acknowledge the partial responsibility of the socialist ideologies of these societies, let me get that straight and out of the way up front so that no one needs to go off on a tangent calling me on the carpet for being in leftist denial. That being said, I ask the same intellectual honesty from anti-communists.
That is, can you-all admit that there was conceivably more to the evil of "communist" societies than just their communist philosophy? What kind of societies, pray tell, became totalitarian "dictatorships of the proletariat"? The answer, countries like czarist Russia and China. You know, countries that had a long history of authoritarian government, that had no tradition whatsoever of democracy, and precious little tradition of respect for human rights. Naturally, when they went "communist" they did so not in a humane and progressive way, but in a harsh manner preordained by their harsh history. They merely repackaged their cruel history in a new ideology, and ratcheted up their authoritarianism one notch to totalitarianism.
No, it's not really very intellectually honest or fair at all to lay all the sins against humanity of Soviet-style socialism at the philosophical doorstep of "communism". If inclined, one can do so, but not with integrity and justice. However, it’s quite honest and fair to point out the cruelty and death caused under capitalism is due to capitalist greed, because it is. Taking this into consideration, "communism" starts to look somewhat better in comparison to capitalism, a good deal better.
Finally, which philosophy has the greater potential for good? Well, socialism is a pro-social philosophy with pro-social values such as unselfishness, sharing, social compassion, and unity. Such pro-social values are empirically known to be good for society and for people's social well-being. Capitalism, on the other hand, is (forgive me) an anti-social philosophy, with anti-social values such as economic individualism, selfishness, cutthroat competition, and materialism. Such asocial, amoral, and downright anti-social values are empirically known to be decidedly bad for society and people's social happiness.
Well, what really does capitalism have to put up against the pro-social values of socialism, the theory that the “invisible hand” of unfettered self-interest and the "free market" is going to remedy all economic and social ills and give us a middle-class paradise on earth? Funny then how no society has found the wisdom and will to create a true "free market" that would prove the theory correct, could it be that we're being forced back to the realization that a true "free market" is more unrealistic than the pro-social values of socialism? Again, the pro-social values of socialism are a known quantity, we experientially and conclusively know that they make for socially stable and flourishing communities. On the other hand, Gordon Gecko's encapsulation of the philosophy of capitalism, that "Greed is good", is not only counterintuitive it's thoroughly refuted by the empirical data of history and sciences such as sociology.
So, at the end of the day's critical comparison, which ism really looks better and more appealing? My vote, and the vote of many who aren't ideologically and irrationally invested in dogmatically defending the "free market", is for "socialism". Whose position is really more whacky?!
(I apologize for the lengthy length of this post. I got going typing and it just grew longer and more detailed than intended. On the charge of verbosity I plead mea culpa and beg for forgiveness.)
:)