When did you grow weary of Capitalists?

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Do capitalists even think that far ahead?

Therein is the problem with austrian school thinking, it lends absolutely no weight to materialism and ultimately becomes its own grave digger.

As Lenin said "capitalism will sell itself the rope with which it hangs itself". How right he was.

If he was right, then please show a communist country that ever reached a western standard of living. Or you could simply compare the post-Soviet countries that made the transition to capitalism (mainly the Baltic countries) with those that did not (Belarus, Russia, Moldova, etc.)

Please, have a rather more exhaustive recall of history.

The USSR failed mainly, because Stalin reversed his policies.

In fact, there is a case that the USSR ceased to even be socialist after Lenin died because Stalin had the communist party liquidated and replaced them with his own henchmen since they were no longer at that point about equitable distribution of wealth and entirely about creating a new state bourgeoisie.

A more egalitarian capitalism where the workers own the means of production is still capitalism, as long as the market is free enough.

If you don't want your job given to foreigners or immigrants, then do a better job than the foreigners or the immigrants. Half of all European and American workers are lazy and incompetent--and think they are entitled to the latest iPhone every year, expensive wine, and extravagant vacations by simply showing up at the workplace to goof off.

(The president is still a subordinate to the laws, the supreme court, and the congress. He doesn't wield any God-like powers or anything like that.)

"Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains"

Stalin died nearly 40 years before it's collapse. The main reason why it failed, was because a centralized economy can never be Pareto optimal. Please, have a rather more exhaustive recall of microeconomics. Secondary reasons were the Chernobyl disaster, the falling oil prices in the 1980s, the space race, and the arms race.



No true Scotsman.



The Soviets were led by Lenin's henchmen from the start, and Lenin himself banned all other communist and socialist parties. Stalin only continued what Lenin had started.



Check out Lenin's Roll's Royce collection:



http://www.assetstorage.co.uk/AssetStor ... -royce.jpg

(Only 12 of these were ever built, and all were given to the communist party of Russia.)

Last edited by Kurgan on 06 Jul 2014, 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

how does the failure of communism in practice prove that capitalism has not also failed/is not also failing? please explain the logic behind that.

The failure of communism (or more generally, socialism), proves that capitalism and centrism are the only alternatives that work.

Sure, capitalism works - the problem is, today, as in the past, it's working only for the few. But it's been demonstrated how capitalism can work for everyone when capitalism is well regulated, and labor and consumer protection is in place.

Marx, Lenin and Trotsky all advocated the propagation of communism on a global scale because they realised this was the only basis on which it could work. We do not have experience of communism on a global scale, only one of it in competition with another ideology who had prior access to greater wealth, weapons and resources. Not because it was inherently better but because of chronological dictation.

Whether or not capitalism works is to me not the question that we should be asking.

As you say, the pertinent question is who does it work for?

I do not believe however it can work with the interests of the poor at heart under any case, because of the inherent class antagonisms that it invokes. The means of production owners will always want more work, more hours and less pay while the working class will always want the reverse. This conflict is irreconcilable.

Last edited by thomas81 on 06 Jul 2014, 3:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Agreed.

HOW does it prove that, exactly? this is what i'm asking. what is the "proof" you speak of, what is the chain of logic that explains how the failure of communism precludes the failure of capitalism?

I do not think its been proven that communism cannot work or at the least, is any worse than capitalism.


We do not have an experience of the global communism advocated by Lenin or Trotsky, only the bastardised version advocated by Stalin which promotes collectivism in one country and one country alone.

Had the shoe been on the other foot during the end of the cold war and it had been the capitalist ideology in control of less land area it would have been capitalism that succumbed. Its a matter of history not of economics.

Labor outsourcing typically happens when one country does one type of work more efficiently than another country (at least relatively to that country's typical level), while the other country does another type of work more efficiently. For example the Chinese do unskilled manual labor with more or less the same efficiency as Western laborers, but they probably do skilled labor much less efficiently (mainly because there are less skilled workers). Then both countries are better off if one country mainly does one kind of work, and the other country does the other kind.

This causes (typically temporary) difficulties to those who e. g. have to change profession. But this is the cost of making the economy overall more efficient - ever since the end of subsistence agriculture, when people had to move from agriculture to industry. When these changes come too fast for people to adapt, it can be argued that the government should slow down the change (though I'd prefer free market solutions such as private unemployment insurance wherever possible). But the govt should never halt the change because in the long term it makes the economy more efficient.

Also, the workers whose jobs are outsourced are relatively poor in the Western countries, but they are still better off than the Asian workers. And the Asian workers benefit from these jobs even if the conditions are bad with Western standards: if they didn't, they wouldn't choose these jobs over the jobs with local companies they had before the Western companies went there. So I question who is the real selfish here: the managers who outsource jobs, or the Western workers who protest them.

About the argument that every job is being outsourced. Salaries in every sector are typically lower in poor countries than in Western countries. But due to inefficiency, lack of skilled labor, complicated bureaucracy, corruption, risks due to the lack of rule of law etc. the overall production costs will often be higher. If the overall price of all products and services were lower (let's say by 20%) as produced in poor Asian countries than as produced in Western countries, then free trade would cause both the prices and the salaries fall by 20% in the Western countries (or similarly increase in the poor countries). But if the efficiency of Western economy doesn't decrease, this wouldn't change the real wages.

The unemployment is record high mostly in the Southern European countries where strict labor laws make it difficult to lay off workers - so the companies don't hire them in the first place. In Germany, where the labor laws are flexible, the unemployment is record low.

^^^
Another reason why labor in still so strong in Germany is because of the ghost of Hitler. While big business and political conservatives had sided with the Nazis behind the scenes in order to make Hitler Chancellor, it was organized labor from the start who had opposed him. Unions still can play the higher morality card.