In my efforts to try to educate people about Communism and to explain why it is not “dead” as the official propaganda would have you believe, but alive and doing better than ever (thanks to the current collapse of the Capitalist AngloZionist Empire), I would like to share with you a pretty interesting lecture by Prof. Michael Parenti who, by debunking the founding myths of Capitalism, encourages those still capable of critical thought to reevaluate what they think they know about Capitalism vs Communism. Truth be told, Parenti does, from time to time, suffer from the main intellectual weakness of so many Communists: ideological orthodoxy. But compared to their Capitalist counterpart Communists are still far less ideological. Besides, we rarely hear from them, so I thought that posting this lecture by Parenti would bring some much needed common sense and “intellectual fresh air” at a time when historical, philosophical political education have all been replaced by vapid and hollow slogans.
I hope that you will enjoy listening to Parenti as much as I did.
The Saker
Didn’t find a transcript for this lecture, here is a link to a site with many quotations from him over the years so those unfamiliar with his work can get an idea of it.
Michael Parenti
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Parenti
Independent thinker. He’s one of the best around at debunking rightwing nonsense.
David Barsamian’s Alternative Radio, has a great archive of Parenti lectures.
See: https://www.alternativeradio.org/collections/spk_michael-parenti#
The lecture above, while not on the list at the moment, is mostly a condensation of many other lectures he has given over the years.
Check out the full list of speakers available thru Barsamian’s site. It’s impressive.
… but Alternative Radio want money for their audio downloads. Here are some places where you can download many of Michael Parenti’s lectures for free:
http://www.tucradio.org/parenti.html#Parenti
https://archive.org/search.php?query=“Michael+Parenti”
https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator:”Michael+Parenti”
There’s something wrong with the two archive.org links, possibly because this character: ” … has been automatically replaced by something more fancy, which ruins the link.
Thanks, good resource for deprogramming American Dreamer…
Suspiciously, he considers a controlled demolition on 9/11 “right-wing nonsense.”
Chomsky likewise avoids confrontation with the evidence on 911. Like Nelson:
‘He clapped the glass to his sightless eye,
And “I’m damned if I see it!” he said.’
It shows how even great minds can get in a rut: Newton was the champion of gravitational attraction, but he rejected experimental reports on that other great truth — electrical attraction; Galileo rejected the great truth of elliptical orbits for the planets.
Saker, this is great. He drags you right in from the beginning.
This is all tied in with Max Weber’s “Protestant ethic.” Greed, of course, is evil. Everyone knows that, even if some neoliberals online pretend to deny it for rhetorical purposes. Usury — money-lending and exploitation — greed has always been the chief threat to love, human goodwill, and happiness. But in Western Europe after the Protestant Reformation, accumulating money for one’s own purposes, and refusing to share, started to be seen as a way to be “responsible” to one’s family. Soon, the truly big hearts of every village were cast as fools and dopes. “Naive” took on a negative connotation.
Of course, Weber did not mention the rise of the Jewish bourgeoise… but conversely, people on the alt right today will slam Marx as a Jew, when in fact he was simply perceiving the massive moral failure of the bourgeoise around him with a moral eye.
But if communist, capitalist and zionist elites are a class, how do we overcome the problems of human nature?
No system can change our fundamental nature, while certain basic modes of existence always reasert themselves, for example the iron law of oligarchy. In any large or even small political collective the inner vs outer party dialectic must exist, which is why the present oligarchy has no problem with communism as such, knowing full the people who rule will always be full members of the zionist aristocracy, lest we begin to understand the nature of the systems which control our lives. Chasing communist utopia is no different from chasing capitalist or democratic utopia. It always puts in a permanent state of revolution, which will always be guided for the benefit of the few — a corrupt and ultimately psychopathic elite.
I have no doubt communism is coming back. I only question whether it is anything good or different.
And as for the ongoing merger of Christianities, the ecumenical merger of Catholic universalism with Orthodox theology, this is a project for the re creation of a relgion for a specific caste: that of the working class and perhaps child making and life giving stratum. The other classes include the technocrats, who will be sort of like Richard Dawkins type administrators of the system, adhering to a sort of Kyshatritic naturalism, and of course there will be those who wield the caduceus, the staff comprised of two snakes intertwined, representining opposing natures wielded by an all knowing elite, continuing the tradition we are in today, where good guys fight bad guys and we all know our place.
We are being led to a new future, for better but mostly for worst, and if you don’t believe it’s organized top down you haven’t been paying attention.
Can we finally make conclusions that religion, race, sexual orientation & gay rights, patriotism etc are used as tools to divide and control method to manipulate folks? Jim Crow was not actually created to control “black people” but working class whites. Patriotism worked well as a method to split socialists in Europe 1914 (when actually there was not at all any kind of hungry for war among 99% people). And inequality is immense only methods to control folks are terror, fear, propaganda and more wars.
Michael Parenti has also published an important anti-imperialist book, “To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia.” It carefully repudiates the West’s propaganda and lies against Yugoslavia (and Serbia) during the 1990s. The first time I had heard of Parenti was in 2003 when someone recommended this book to me online and I then read a few of his other books in the mid 2000s after that. I think he is a very good writer, on par with William Blum (the author of another important anti-imperialist text, “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II”).
Quote From CI (No system can change our fundamental nature, )
is human nature fundamental? what is meant by that? that claim needs great clarification by my way of thinking.
I don’t see much that is unchangeable in human nature, immutable, always there….
Capitalism has brought humanity to the brink. it ought to be clear to most people by now that capitalism is not an option..even the ‘Mom and Pop’ nonsense quaint old socialists always dreaming of in their speeches.
so if society changes in the face of global truth, the way forward is collective, cooperative socialist.
and if the socialist project holds, and exploitation of a working class as economic driver ends, in 2-3 generations we could have populations brought up in an ever growing and expanding, successful socialism..manned by them, functioning by and for the people, expansion in meeting and improving social need, consistent education programs, consistent cultural superstructure.. would that not eliminate any behaviors and habits of exploitation we may think of currently as basic?
and in more time with ever deepening socialism, the elimination of any possibility at all of the return of such backwardness, from any stock of old experience and memory that may be retained?
any successful socialism would be an advanced/advancing disposition, far more than any material establishment we currently have. we have such stocks in the most modern and advanced cities of the west right now, some Chinese cities etc.
yet what I imagine a successful socialism to be leaves all of that behind rather quickly. science and technology, bringing all people on stream and unhindered by capitalist restriction and channels into 1% hoardings, would call into being such creativity applied to human development, the results in my speculation boggles. and it would be always an ongoing development, unlimited and restricted only by considerations of need and value to human survival in our evolutionary environment,
given that why would anyone wish to return to oligarchy and capitalist inequality, even if there were strong memory and even urge to do so. it would be impractical, would make no sense, an insane kind of nostalgia fading rapidly in the rear view mirror with socialist society forging ahead?
I do not see anything at all about humanity that so intrinsic it is ineradicable, immutable by social/environmental experience itself. that is how we were shaped and that is how we continue to be shaped. and I imagine that this will always be the case with life as long as there is life going on planet earth
the key is to win the socialism and forge ahead. I have no worry at all about any supposed immutable bad human behavior emerging to scuttle future progressive human projects. none at all once the socialist project gets going for real
the thing as I said is to win socialism, kill whatever capitalism that remains.. and the capitalists too if that becomes necessary. we would have to forge ahead but also with no betrayals by supposed socialists in the progressive mix. in that sense it would not be capitalists alone necessary to be killed to win the day.
@ Navin
Good of you to debunk another myth: the ubiquitous claim that human nature is averse to socialism. Such claim is propagated ad nauseam by little minds unable to understand that “human nature” is nothing else than the result of indoctrination, brainwashing and constant conditioning. There is nothing “human” in it other than the systematic application of psychological techniques to make us less human. As to “nature” there is nothing natural about those techniques; on the contrary, they are contrived artificial procedures designed to separate humans from nature, that is, complying robots.
A Communist Orthodox Christian? Does not compute. Communism was promoted to destroy Christian societies and the nascent Republican movements in the 19th Century.
I can only conclude that this is another goy-baiting article. I ain’t fooled.
sure… you can easily tell it was religion marx was after in “das kapital”… its mentioned so many times there right?
in fact, it was to be named “das religion” and only changed name last minute…
:)
Christianity is very compatible with communism. Think of the word community and forget about Stalin and others associated with “communism”.
I am an Orthodox Christian and a Communist. One is cultural and spiritual and the other is social and political.
I can’t think of any other political movement other than socialism/communism that is more compatible with the traditional Christian lifestyle.
@Dušan
‘Christianity is very compatible with Communism’
“Though it originated in the West, Communism first arose in the society formed by the Russian Orthodox Church, and it had many features one would expect to find in a secularised Orthodoxy[2]. Poets felt it well, and Alexander Blok sang of Christ “with the blood-red flag, invulnerable to bullets, fleeting foot above the blizzard, in a white crown of roses” leading his Twelve Red Guards[3]. In the late Soviet days, the Russians proclaimed the Christian principle “Man is to Man a Friend, Comrade and Brother.”[4] The Russian Communists despised material comforts as had their Orthodox predecessors, and placed their sobornost (Catholicity, or togetherness-in-the-Church) and solidarity above all other virtues.[5]”
These lines are taken from an article by Israel Shamir “The Tyranny of Liberalism” that you might find interesting. Shamir brings up some timeless truths here;
http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Eng7.htm
Flopot: you are a bona fide *idiot*.
give up trying to compute. just give it up.
go gardening or something…
just don’t try thinking.
but if you do
don’t feel the obligation to share. really :-)
My 2cts.
The Saker
Christianity is a communism. The Churches exist to steer this Communism away from it’s centering humanity and bring the congregations to serve other-than-communist agendas…as Constatine illustrates…
Not all Christians are controlled by Churches and, therefore, exist as genuine Communists. They never join their enemies and they’re a constant irritation and threaten the dark force by their continued existence. Similarly, not all Churches steer Communism away from it’s center, the Orthodox Church seems to my unchurched eyes to be moving from a modest support of this Communism toward a full support.
After the war one may expect Ru to return to her moral foundations. Not Bolshevik style, urgent discipline no longer needed after the war. Many see the twinkle in the eye of VVP….
There are going to be monuments to this all over the world.
Pax
LZ
Not having been raised in a Christian household, but knowing the basic story, I was invited by my conservative Rightwing Mormon Colleague to Christmas dinner. After dinner, he asked me to watch a movie about the life of Christ. What I saw was a man who healed the sick for free, fed the hungry, and threw the Pharisee Bankers (times don’t change do they?) out of the Temple.
So they decided he had to go and they killed him. A missionary then called my friend to see if I was open to his message. He asked me what I thought, and I said, ‘Well he fed the hungry, healed the sick all for free and kicked the Capitalists out of the Temple. So they killed him. He appears to me to be a Communist, and like radical social reformers, such as Martin Luther King or Gandhi, he had to go.
They were speechless. Not what the dominant “He who dies with the most toys wins” mindset in the USA ever gave a thought to.
Years later, in China, I was introduced to a pretty high level Communist party official, and he asked me what I thought of Marx. I said that, as an American, and as a Buddhist practitioner, it seemed to me that Communism is about distributing the wealth of a society fairly, and Buddhist thinking encourages all being be saved without exception. So there is no contradiction.
The point being that any religion that preaches the virtues of kindness generosity, justice and so on, the basic elements of human decency, which are necessary for a society to function harmoniously, and Communism, which in China is regarded as a religion, are all in essential harmony, even if coming from different narratives, histories and points of view. We all breathe the same air, share the same planet. Ideologies come and go, but the basic fact of our common existence as living beings ‘should’ gravitate towards the well being of all. While obviously all too many people see themselves as separate and superior, that is their delusion, which is the source of the problem. The vast majority, though, have a common stake in making this planet work not for some but for everyone.
One other reason… The taxes. Money. In specific detail the Law says that Jews must obey tax law and the transliterated Hebrew is: Dina d’malkhuta dina. What it says is the law of the kingdom is the law. I’ve put a bit about that below. There is considerable size body of opinions about what it means, to say the least!
My understanding is:
Jesus, as Christians probably have heard, is supposed to have said to Jews that they must pay the taxes they owe, and give the remainder to G-d, this is to say “to the poor”. Tsadaka being an overarching requirement for Jews it was sinful to pay the squeeze, and it not required under the Law…According to the Law any “spare” money, the squeeze, should go to the poor, not the boss criminal occupation administrator P.P.The taxes were owed to Caesar and nobody else. The local Governor was “licensed” by Rome to squeeze (steal) what he could and for the legal tax he also was responsible…like the CIA “licenses” dope dealers…the result was a combination of regressive parasitism and proper lawful tax. Jesus proposed to refuse to pay the squeeze and pay only Rome, Caesar. Of course this divide-your-enemies tactic brought about a typical administrative result, sheepdiping the Communist Carpenter through a star chamber formality trial first, and wasting the poor guy. We see to-day shrines in places to Che…same kinna guy, different tactics, different times, ethics is situational, and so is tactics and strategy. same goal both men. one bigger. one smaller, very similar. Anyway Jesus had an opinion on dina d… and the bosses didn’t like it.
this below is from a Yeshiva, the general understanding is “kingdom”, not “country”, is specific according to Rabbi that taught me Hebrew (a little bit of it) meaning precisely “kingdom”. Anyway, for fun and comparison to actual zionist and Israeli actions to-day:
” The source of Dina D’Malchuta Dina is in the Talmud (Nedarim 28a, Gittin 10b, Bava Kama 113b, Bava Batra 54b) Shmuel said, The law of the country is law. The subject was discussed extensively in the Talmud, by the Rishonim and the Poskim. There are many discussions, whether it is biblical or rabbinical, and up to what extent it applies.
For example, some Rishonim dispute whether Dina D’Malchuta Dina applies only on laws which benefit the king or does it apply also on regulations and laws that benefit the public. There is another controversy whether this law applies only abroad and with a non-Jewish king or even in the Land of Israel and with a Jewish king.
The Rema in Choshen Mishpat 369, 8; mentions a few opinions regarding the application of this rule and he concludes by saying that there are some who opine that Dina D’Malchuta Dina applies in all cases, and therefore one who lends with a pledge can sell it after a year since that is the law of the land, and this is the main opinion.
It is however clear that this rule of Dina D’Malchuta Dina applies only on things which the king gains from or on things which are for the benefit of the citizens of the state, but it does not mean that people should judge according to the non-Jewish law system, and it does not apply to anything that contradicts the laws of the Torah (Rema ibid 11, and Shach, Choshen Mishpat 73, 39).
Actually, the books of responsa and Jewish law on monetary issues are indeed full of state law in detail wherever it is relevant to Dina D’Malchuta.”
So far as the history shows Jesus was a Jewish Communist “pro union” working man, married, and rather a hippy…costumed entrance to J Town on donkey in mimic-ridicule of Power. He spoke truth to power. Married a whore, gave the finger to the establishment…essentially a reformer, and reformation was impossible so there had to be revolution. Christianity is that rev. The Church exists to control it.These are fundamental revolutionary tactics…RT does it to-day….. Bosses do not like it. Hence RT is being 86ed from Murka…(will not work any better than the Cross did)
So, withal, tax “revolt” got him eliminated.
Pax
LZ
Saker,
I thought you might want to see, if you haven’t already, this 1975 documentary about the CIA’s/US’s ‘Project Phoenix’ in Vietnam. The Duran has a copy with good quality sound Here
(
Moon of Alabama devoted an entire blog to it’s soon to be released replay in Afghanistan:
Phoenix 2.0 – CIA To Unleash Vietnam Era Terror Campaign On Afghanistan
)
Herk
I normally wouldn’t spend the time on these leftist academic types but since this came from the Saker I gave it a shot. I got 30 minutes in to the video and here were some of the claims put forth by Parenti:
– Capitalism is the reason why people smoke
– Capitalism rewards the greedy and malevolent to reach the top of the dominance hierarchy
– Capitalism is causing poverty to rise.
At this point I shut it off because this last claim is demonstrably false with approximately 10 seconds of googling:
The available long-run evidence shows that in the past, only a small elite enjoyed living conditions that would not be described as ‘extreme poverty’ today. But with the onset of industrialization and rising productivity, the share of people living in extreme poverty started to decrease. Accordingly, the share of people in extreme poverty has decreased continuously over the course of the last two centuries. This is surely one of the most remarkable achievements of humankind.
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/
Guy is just another clueless academic that assigns every discernible problem from poverty (because Somalia was so rich and prosperous before the capitalists came along) to his mother’s flu she caught the other day to this monolithic abstract concept called capitalism. Not worth your time everyone.
(this wasn’t meant to be a reply to Herk in the comment above, it should be read as a “stand alone” comment. cheers)
SG, it is undeniable that there is wage stagnation and an unprecedented increase in asset prices that have caused great economic inequality. It’s just like in the 1920s, caused by reckless credit expansion, and monetary stimulus by governments and central banks.
Unfortunately, just like in the 1920s it will lead many people to seek solace in extreme left ideology instead of correctly identifying the root cause.
@ Serbian Girl
Well said. Many have mistakenly conflated crony capitalism, banksterism, and the corruption of the “too big to fail” corporate welfare state with the capitalist model. A regulated capitalist model based on a “banked” economy (investment into industry and businesses primarily by bank loans from depositor savings) is what works. Here I refer to a model where capital is not printed out of thin air but is directly linked to depositor capital.
What doesn’t work is a fiat currency based casino capitalism of a fraudulent equity market where capital flows are based on anything but the balance sheet of an enterprise.
@RC The problem is that what you and SG see as creeping Socialist corruption, others see as the inevitable result of late stage Capitalism. Characterized by regulatory and government capture by monied interests, declining profitability of global markets, increasing wealth inequality within OECD countries, etc.
What you describe as the ideal state of Capitalism sounds to me very much like the Bretton Woods period, generally a prosperous time for the vast majority of much of the world’s population. However, this was also a time of strict control of international capital flows, very high levels of taxation and fixed exchange rates. The much-maligned abandonment of the gold standard was a symptom, not a cause. Triffin showed that the conflicting demands of domestic and international monetary policy would inevitably result in the breakdown of a an international monetary system with a reserve currency pegged to gold. Nixon had no choice in his decision.
In any case, the solutions to the “flaws” of modern Capitalism proposed by advocates of Laissez-faire economics are exactly the opposite of what enabled the Bretton Woods period to succeed. That is, rather than tighter regulation, the prescription is for more deregulation, privatization, globalization and reduced taxation.
@Jonathan Davis
I never mentioned creeping socialism.
I am very aware that “late stage capitalism” creates many problems, the environment being chief among them, and I am not going to sit here and tell you capitalism is perfect or fair. There are very real problems to be discussed.
However, when you are seeing living standards rise across the board over the last two centuries thanks directly to industrialization, you are fighting a seriously uphill battle when critiquing that system.
My point is that Capitalist economic systems can yield results favourable to societies at large. However, this requires appropriate regulation and controls. The drive for profit must be channeled in productive directions not in destructive ones. Moreover, the rights of workers and the general public must be protected. This was largely the case during the Bretton Woods period. One of the few historical periods in the last couple of centuries when the politicians actually had the bankers fairly well contained.
From reading your posts, I had assumed you regarded current issues such as environmental degradation, banksterism, income inequality, etc. as resulting from government interference in the free market (i.e. Socialism) and not resulting from endemic flaws in the Capitalist system itself. If not, then I stand corrected for misrepresenting your position.
What you describe as “late stage Capitalism” is simply government interference in the markets. I agree that the rich, such as the Rockerfellers, had way to much leverage in government. That is not the fault of capitalism, it is the fault of the government. The market is you and I selling and exchanging freely.
There is no utopia. There will always be bad people. But keep the markets free and respect private property and things will work out despite bad people doing bad things.
@SG
Thank you! You just saved me some time, and time is a precious commodity you never get back nor can accumulate.
After the obvious failure of communism mapped across temporal, spatial (geographic) and cultural domains it’s futile trying to reason on this subject with members of the communist “faith” The only nation that successfully developed a viable economic model in the “communist” sphere was Yugoslavia, but it did so by rejecting the communist model of production, control, distribution and adopting a capitalist “mixed economy”. China too only prospered after dropping communism in the economic sector (China is communist on name only). The irony is that crony capitalists, oligarchies and banksters have more in common with the privileged communist “elite” than they do with free industrialized economies: they profit by limiting supply, leading to demand surplus, leading to shoddy service, and zero incentive to innovate.
Thanks again for the synopsis: off I go to next article in “Latest Articles”.
M P is popular, together with others of sililar character, at http://tucradio.org/section/catalog/newest-catalog-items/
some may wish to see what else of MP is there
good fella. I have heard him speak.
………
in a response to Saker’s implications it occurs to me that the ultimate value at the foundation of Marxist Theory is scientific inquiry. Whatever ideology Marxism embraces must therefore be necessarily be a tool, not a foundational basis. Is protean instrument. Uses tools. Ideology is tool.
Similarly some religions are not faith based but rely on philosophical inquiry, often in solitude, save the presence of god. Their ideologies also are tools, and similarly, change as they must to do the job.
Pax
LZ
LZ99
“good fella. I have heard him speak.”
I have also, back in the late 1980s. A talk about exploitation of people under the western capitalist oligarchs. During Q&A after, an interesting thing happened. A woman asked him why he didn’t talk about the exploitation of specifically women in western society. MP replied that he thought her criticism was valid and that he would prepare another lecture about the exploitation of women specifically. Which he did a few months later.
The trouble is the word “capitalism” and the definition of that word. “Crony capitalism” is what this guy and so many others are actually talking about, capitalism that is actually a government controlled and protected capitalism. What we need is similar to a separation of church and state: a separation of the economy and state. Free markets work when they are free.
@therevolutionwas
‘Free markets work when they are free’
Could you give me an example when and where it has worked.
I would be interested to know.
This is one of those fairy tales inculcated into the American mind by libertarians/Koch Bros/Mises Institute Et Al. in order to keep productive white guys in the system and divided against everyone else. If only we had free markets—why sociopaths would never take advantage of it. And obviously all these narcissistic rugged individualists looking for more loot would protect the commons. And well, gee, whomever can’t lift themselves up by their bootstraps in a “free and fair” dog-eat-dog world is clearly a lazy loser. Somehow these laize faire types are unaware that it is this very philosophy which set us on the path we are on today, and which would play out the same way if we played the tape over again.
Well put, I agree.
‘Free men and free markets’ as preached by the likes of the Koch brothers, do best under sophisticated dictatorships, where social issues are never discussed.
The Koch brothers are great examples of crony capitalism, not free enterprise .
Hi Siljan,
here are a few examples:
1. Consumer electronics is an example of typical free market sector very little government intervention.Result: Now everyone on the planet has a smart phone. Prices for old gadgets keep falling and for those who want something innovative, newer designs are proposed every year.
2. 18th century Britain. Something very important happened in Britain then thanks to the free market: the Agricultural Revolution. It was innovative use of arable land, and new breeding methods that created a SURPLUS of food. This surplus could be used to feed the workers of the industrial revolution. This is why Britain was the first country to industrialise. Stalin wanted to industrialise Russia, he introduced centrally planned collective agriculture policies. He basically squeezed the peasants to feed his industrial workers.Of course it worked, but at what cost?
3. Today’s Hong Kong, perhaps Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) as well?
4. 19th century USA…
5. Cosmetic medical interventions.. The price for cosmetic surgery is held in check by free market sources. Compare that to government regulated healthcare which as gone though the roof. here are some charts: http://healthblog.ncpa.org/why-cant-the-market-for-medical-care-work-like-cosmetic-surgery/#sthash.hehSUSt3.dpbs
It’s not a question having the entire country as a free market. It can apply to certain sectors . The powerful forces of the free market can be harnessed to improve/ bring a better product or service/ and not have to kill or starve millions of people to do so.
“The price for cosmetic surgery is held in check by free market sources. Compare that to government regulated healthcare which as gone though the roof.”
LOL, was that one of rush limbaugh’s advert spiels today. :-D
@Serbian Girl
You are presuming that humans will not innovate unless there is a personal profit motive involved. Humans are social animals. It is a fallacy that humans can exist as some sort of individualist in the absence of other humans. Every invention built upon prior collective knowledge. Every invention was able to spread because of the efforts of other humans and the infrastructure or knowledge or social networks they built. And many innovations occurred either out of necessity or because someone merely had a passion and explored some topic until they came up with something new and useful. We somehow progressed from a species with stone tools (which again, were innovated without capitalism) to pre-industrial age without capitalism.
Secondly, I am skeptical that there was no ability to produce a surplus of food prior to the industrial revolution. Populations in China pre-industrial revolution would suggest otherwise, no? I would suggest that given the feudal policies of European nations that there was a social problem in allowing the serfs to keep enough of what they produced or not giving them incentives to produce enough (you know, by having the royalty take everything they produced).
Lastly, arguing that cell phones, cosmetic surgery and America are “progress” is questionable. Cell phones have actually disconnected humans more than ever (witness the zombies walking or driving in cities while their eyes are glued to said phone). Cosmetic surgery? Wonderful in the case of those individuals disfigured through tragedies, but it is mostly a vanity industry. Who really cares if the cost of getting breast implants has dropped without government intervention? And 19th century USA? Yes, lets sing the praises of the genocidal, slave trading baby hegemon.
And that’s the thing, the champions of capitalism tend to praise MATERIALISM. Oh, but we have more STUFF now. Like this is an improvement. The quality of our relationships is demonstrably worse. Our spiritual values worse. Our treatment of the planet worse. But we have stuff. As in people in America have stuff, and the rest of the world is the poorer for it. And lets also stop pretending that in each of the cases you cited that capitalists did not lobby government to warp markets for them. Is the cell phone industry free or dominated by a few companies who write the regulations (including the ones that force the government to hide that the phones cause cancer)? Cosmetic surgery is dominated by a medical cartel that again forces government to cater regulation to them. 19th century America was ruled by robber barons, no? So contrary to these being some “free market” innovations, we can generally find the hand of mafias, cartels, royals, and other sociopathic types in the background manipulating the market in their favor, while espousing the “free market.”
Hi Mataman,
There is indeed something very wrong within our societies when plastic surgery can be had for half the price, in half the time compared to essential life preserving surgery. But instead of emitting judgement on plastic surgery/ or cell phones/ or aspects of 19th century usa/ 18th century Britain/ ( and I don’t disagree that there are bad things about them or that plastic surgery is vain and vulgar), should we not investigate how they managed to do it and try to apply it for our own benefit, and for our sick and elderly?
I agree with your comment that human beings are communal creatures. Of course it is natural that they will work for the wellbeing of their families and communities. Being forcibly expropriated of the fruit of their hard labor by a bunch of bureaucrats is basically-neo feudalism.
Not sure what you mean by pre-industrial China..? Mao’s agrarian reforms were also a form of coercive collectivism.
I really admire how Putin saved Russia from the corporate raiders of the Yeltsin years. Russia has been under attack, just like Venezuela, attack on their currency and the falling oil prices and yet Putin has not gone down the road of hyperinflation and massive food shortages, like Maduro. How did he do it? Perhaps we could have a few articles about Putinism and Putinomics?
aye… i agree 110% meaning I would go further.
once i saw a math phd thesis (circa 2002) that used limit maths to prove that in the end all money (and everything else) would belong to the banks, and on the end only 1 bank at it.
That is our current model.
my memory doesnt give more details so youll have to google yourselves.
otoh, it can be easily explained that when a company A, that belongs to the state, generates profit, it goes to everyone, whereas a company B that belongs to someone (maybe one of the less than 10 conglomerates that rule 80% of world business, there is also a zurich paper on that) it will go to only a few, and a few is always less than everyone!
Then you have people claming “ha, but state owned enterprises are not optimized and do a poor job!”
(I hear that for the last 30 years, so it must be a gift from the reagan/tatcher years)
So for the last 30 years, instead of fixing them, we sold them. And we can analise the results.
I don’t know a single example where the sale is greater than the profit of 5 years. Its easy to understand why. that is the most a politician can think (provided 5 year election cicle). notheless, the state has a longer timespan.
How can it not be obvious to everyone, that mathematically we are all loosing for the benefit of a few?
(i have a theory for that too, +100 years of studies on how to manipulate the public, starting with pavlov, followed by many others, bernays, skinner, bandura, etc etc etc)
“1. Consumer electronics is an example of typical free market sector very little government intervention.Result: Now everyone on the planet has a smart phone. Prices for old gadgets keep falling and for those who want something innovative, newer designs are proposed every year”
The IT sector comes with huge social and financial hidden costs. The new iPhone costs £ 1000, for that price you can get yourself a fairly decent computer or literally anything else actually worth getting for 1K cash. I for one wouldn’t spend that sort of money on a dentist (which I desperately need) let alone on a stupid phone!
Tablets in particular are useless without internet connection (wi-fi broadband of course), meaning… when you get one, however cheap it may be, it comes with other costs not included with the product itself (like the old disclaimer: batteries not included). Internet connection in general – which ain’t free – is becoming more or less a requirement for the majority of the new electronic products/gadgets coming out in the market. Schools expect children to have internet access to complete their homework. Internet connection is expensive for many and outright inaccessible if you live in areas without coverage.
And don’t even get me started with gaming, and how they’re salivating at the idea of getting rid of hard copies (discs) and make it all downloadable content only. ITunes, whether it was their intention or not, killed the music industry and not that I’m particularly bothered about the corrupt industry itself, but the end result is that it makes even harder for new bands/musicians to come out and even easier than it already was for old dinosaurs and manufactured pop “acts” to reign unchallenged.
Endless software and hardware updates keep making fairly recent (and expensive) gear/programs obsolete, example; XP and Vista aren’t supported by Microsoft anymore, the newer OS will follow suit sooner rather than later. Just like with phones, the idea is that you’ll have to get a new computer with new everything on it (meaning: all the software) every year, or every other year even though your not-so-old computer is perfectly usable and serves your needs just fine. It’s the pinnacle of capitalist, consumerist, throw away society.
Here in Europe they want to get rid of ALL gas/diesel cars by a set deadline, where does that leave people who can’t afford an electric or hybrid car or those who simply don’t want one? Where does that leave the mechanics/engineers who aren’t trained to service/repair the new cars?
For the big dogs in Silicon Valley all of the above is ancient news, they’re all about ‘artificial intelligence’ – which for them is next big thing, but for us is an Asimov’s living nightmare. Mass unemployment across the board starting with self driving cars which they’ve already launched and are balloon-testing via Uber in some parts of the US. Not to mention the Big Brother applications this tech has which Google is already pioneering and using.
I simply don’t see how people being able to get a generic Chinese-made cheap cell phone makes up for any of the things I mentioned and those are just from the top of my head.
Outside of Wall Street, I don’t see any other industry besides this one (and it’s tough competition, I know) that exemplifies better the horribleness that is Capitalism in all its putrid hideousness …which incidentally, in turn it aided Wall Street to be what it is now, their transactions are made by code/bots, not people. Because of their efficiency and speed they gained an advantage over their competitors at the time, and again; this is all ancient history, now high-frequency trading is the industry standard.
-TL2Q
PS: The Green Revolution was implemented in order to feed/sustain the Industrial Revolution, not the other way around but in any case, it certainly didn’t happen because of magnanimous reasons, that’s for damn sure. In other words; if capitalists wouldn’t have seen the feeding of the workers as a [regrettable] requirement needed to expand their industrialist [capitalist] ambitions, the Green Revolution wouldn’t have happened.
Additionally, with cell phones one is stuck with a very substandard piece of equipment. Basically, about as user friendly as a 1980s computer, and pretty much still at that technical level. Literally light years behind a modern, real computer.
Besides being technically backward and user unfriendly, the cell phone industry is also a locked in monopoly of 2 basic platforms, apple and google. This monopoly enforces this exploitive, rip-off state of affairs, and is a very good example of how capitalism works not only to keep us chained, but actually blocks technological progress, as well, as the parasites seek to extract the maximum control and profit for the minimum of outlay and effort.
Let’s take them one by one:
Consumer electronics: subsidized heavily by the military to yield gadgets that kill and sold off to private corps when they can turn a profit (like Pharma).
Eighteenth century Britain: Joint-stock companies like the Royal African (slave trading) Company and the British East India (dope smuggling) company, owned and managed mostly by government officials, made Britain an empire.
Hong Kong got its start as a commercial haven for the aforementioned dope dealers when China tried to keep them out of Canton. HSBC got its start here to launder all that state-subsidized drug cash.
The economic program of Henry Clay and Henry Carey in the nineteeth century predicated itself on a concrete refutation of laissez faire policies. The homestead act, college land grant acts, and railroad construction legislation all are examples.
From its start, capitalism as an economic model rewards greed, the destruction of community, and brute force.
Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Apple, Motorola, Alcatel, LG, Samsung, Huawei..
Here are some brand names, so which military, from which country created these “gagdets that kill”?
Don’t why this reminds you of pharma … patent protected sales, clinical trial ethics approval bodies, regulatory bodies e.g. FDA , subsidised by the government through health insurance…
Where and when was the last time the government subsidised the purchase of your cell phone?
I never claimed the East India company as an example of a free market. Go back and re-read: agriculture /farming was what I referred to…
Look around you. Even China has some free market aspects. Sure the Chinese government can come in at any time and shut you down, but they wisely refrain from doing so much of the time. China is booming! The Chinese people are getting richer. It is a communist nation in name only, just like the US has largely become a capitalist nation in name only, and the people are getting poorer.
Maybe we could quote John M. Keynes:”Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”
I hear many cool intelligent people talk about the ills of capitalism but no one comes with an alternative system.
Are they intelligent to understand that yes capitalism is bad but not intelligent to propose an alternative system?
Can someone point to someone who has proposed an alternative system (apart from communism)?
Thanks
I like Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul’s take on capitalism:
“Capitalism can be a useful tool or a weapon of unabashed human exploitation. Which it will be depends entirely on the way it is regulated. Capitalism itself contains no ethical values. Those who use it decide by their actions whether it is a force of good or evil.”
and
“The glory days of the Industrial Revolution came in England before a series of parliamentary reforms had created anything resembling a fairly elected assembly. With the rise of mass democracy during the late nineteenth century, the capitalist system began to stall, then decline, and has never recovered.”
Surely there must be an alternative to the capitalist system based on endless growth, or humanity will not survive. Margaret Thatcher was wrong.
I may sound like Islamic propagandist but it is unfortunate that we discount ridicule and discard available knowledge based on prevalent prejudices.
There are few interesting pointers which should generate at least some curiosity in such amazing thinkers and philosophers as Mr Parenti, but it seems it is getting neglected and all the interpretation of Quran is coming from illiterate Taliban or Madrassa taught clerics.
Here are three from top of my head:
Pointer like interest is same as if you have declared war against the Lord!
Pointer like Land and every thing Lord made available on and under land belongs to him no one owns them. They are made available to sustain life.
Pointer like You will only earn for which you have worked or toiled for. everything else is not yours.
I am not an economist but the above rules/laws sure sound like economic laws and they are from Quran.
You bet. The Profit adopted much from per-existing Law, largely Jewish Law, and did Great Deeds, and established Courts and so forth. There seems to be little, if anything, bad, and much Good in the Sages of Islam and their several philosophic/sociological/economic opinions and institutions, really adding to the global body of human good sense. As always, the illiterate and co-opted obscure this according to transient political/economic demands.
siljan, IMHO the economic ideology and functional aspects of ‘capitalism’ are just another ‘big tool’ of Empire. And like most all of the ‘big tools’ of Empire through the ages they can, if carefully used, be of some value to humanity — but Empire has a successful habit of grasping such ‘big tools’ as; myth, mystery, religion, ethnicity, race, politics, nationalism, money, technology (particularly weapons technology), ideology, economics, etc., etc. and subsuming the power potential of each ‘big tool’, unless or until humanity WakesTF-up to Empire’s propensity to misdirect the powers of such ‘big tools’.
any system consists of the individuals being it
communism is a widespread feeling by heart in man
Marx’ one and dynamic Iidea was, to make it conscious
and arrange it in conscious order.
Therefore “the masses” and the leader.
Well, thought is contrary to feeling – basic insight of Jung –
This leads to the ruling of the thought-class of bureaucrats
With Putin the question of communism again is on the agenda
as Putin is, in his heart, one of those ‘not so few’ communist = Christs
in Russia, true ones, and under Gorbachev’s opening
parts of the KGB literally were called ‘the last non-corrupted communists’
It’s a bless, that Russia has the tradition of the Tzar protecting the believers
against the oligarchs …
“Capitalism with politically clipped wings’ seem to be the secret
capitalism is the ‘religion’ (Walter Benjamin) of the elite
But a State is a stern and sober as well as funny and witty
piece of collective art
not too far away from the best teacher
communism? if it isn’t a g i v e n in the
heart of real individuals
it’s a PR of the bureaucratic wheels of lies
in the USSR finally resolved by final resolver Pisces: Michail
but the communism by heart has manged
to become reborn in Team Vlad and his united Russia
which is no ‘ism but the real stuff
and China’s Mao was a teacher like Xi is now being realized
Vlad & Xi 2 great clippers of the early 21th
Recommend to watch this video with another one “Socialism In America” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvBokz2-XNc, from which some food for thoughts:
– Public ownership means the wealth that created by the of labor of human being instead of concentrated in the hands of a few rich people but used for the society’s needs.
– US constitution gives the homeless the right to vote every two of four years, but they don’t have the right to a home. The socialist’s program is that everyone must have the right to employment or an income if they can’t work, a place to live that is affordable, and health care must be free, and education must be free.
– American unaware of the socialist ideas that they enjoy today: the rise of kindergarden , the rise of public education, the rise of social security and the unemployment insurance are all originated from the socialist movement in the late 1800s.
Thanks for posting this. Dr. Parenti is probably the best political scientist alive in the USA today, and one of my personal heroes. I have described him often as “Chomsky with balls.” His books (especially “Dirty Truths”) and videos are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Capitalist / Communist rivalry.
He doesn’t seem to be active anymore. Any nres of him?