: Can't see how, rteh depression happened here, France, Australia...etc. Fucking powerful federal reserve that one...It was actually! Shame also that the British govt abandoned the gold standard arounf the same time (they are conncted) which caused bank failures, money crises and there is your European connection (infact the British ditching the gold standard scared the US too - who promptly abandoned theirs (ooh what a clever idea mr president), now thats powerful!)
: Private ownership is a function of class ownership (i.e. only private people of a certain class own)
Which seems to be 43% of US salary earners now (if you count stock as such)
: ...talk about 'state capitalism', effectively the owning class used a state to maintain their ownership, rather than the fiction of private ownership.
Then you shouldnt imagine that a libertarian would favor it, except that I suppose any property rights are considered to be a part of the conspiracy (and a dismally ineffective part - considering how those unpleasant 'lower orders' now seem to own so much too)
: No, we can discern a direct link between the two in a number of ways: 1:Communism has never existed, capitalism has, russia was never communist for Stalinism to be linked to communism.
Capitalism as described by economists like Hayek, Mises, Friedman has never existed - capitalism as described by anyone who looks at a specific set up and decides to call it capitalism would have, ofcourse.
: Free trade it ain't, but then, this is competition, and without a world-state regulating trade, this is what you get.
And precisely what I would rather not have - this is the source of the evil - not the existance of privately owned capital. Your blaming the existence of the hand for the bruise on someones face, not the act of the puncher.
: I refer the honourable gentlman to the example of the Mafia, which was, accordng to the Dread Lord Jacobson, a fine example of Capitalism, of a particulalry Laisez Faire flavour.
I never saw that - it would have been fun. he doesnt come round anymore anyway, ho-hum, I liked the way frustrated posters used to insult him and I!
: Capitalists need the state to protect each other from each other, to recognise them, as wee Franky Fukuyama would say.
All people, to be free need to be free from the coercive force of others. when state does more than this it becomes the things we rail against.
: Erm, its called COmmodity fetishism
You can get magazines about that you know!
:- relations between people become relations between things, or we mistake them as such.
Hegel again (and Marx too!). Saying "were getting a bit confused" is not really an argument. Poetry always existed for the market of tastes. there is nothign to stop you fromn writing what others consider crap, but dont expect them to keep you in pens.
: It does when we know that their starvation is caused not by a lack of food, but by market forces preventing them, i.e. restricting their freedom, to get it.
Such people are able to benfit from generosity (would you deny food to them - I wouldnt if I saw their situation as desperate (and they could recover and move back to independance) - but you are in effect saying that anyone who produces food is guilty of not giving it away - whilst the unproductive are not?
(Actually Ethiopia is an even better example - quasi marxist governments hey, what can ya do with them)
