bearORbullENIGMA

Anarchists don't vote.

Socialism is only as inherently linked to the State as Capitalism. All the advanced forms of widescale economic Capitalism we have seen have been State-Capitalism.

No set if individuals have anymore right to own the means of production & the ground where resources are stored & where we camp down to live, than any other is the point. They do so at the expense of all the other individuals.

Pure Socialism means that the land & the means of production be in the hands of the people, not necessarily a proxy such as the State, as the Communists or Social democrats would have it.

How so?

Why is this thread called Capitalism Vs Statism? It's as if you are trying to say Socialism is inherently linked to the State, whereas Capitalism isn't.

Except that it's also made it harder for people to buy second hand cars by encouraging people to get them out of circulation by scrapping them.

Yes, the U.S. & Britain not only supported Saddam throughout his worst atrocities (the Anfal Campaigns), supplied him with chemical precursors (after Reagan took him off the list of states sponsoring terrorism in '82, allowing firms to send him phosphorous fluoride via countries in Europe & cluster bombs & such via firms in Chile), but they also blocked U.N. resolutions condemning Saddam for the use of gas in '84, '86 & in '88 (Halabja), giving him the green light to continue gassing Kurds. Schwazkopf also allowed Saddam to continue flying helicopters to spray Malarial swamps with chemicals after the U.S. had incorporated the no fly zones, knowing full well that Saddam was going to use the U.S. bought Bell Helicopters (as shown by SIPRI) to gas more Kurds with. The U.S. & Britain have always been against an independent Kurdish state. Churchill was apparently one of the first to suggest gassing the Kurds. He said it would bring about a "lively terror" amongst them.

Iran has the will to use nuclear weapons? If Iran attacked Israel it would be wiped of the map by both Israel & the U.S.

Israel is the leading recipient of U.S. military aid & as such, is not only carrying out a role as the most important U.S. military mercenary client, but is serving as an extension to the vast U.S. military industrial complex. Military Keynesianism is alive & well.

Yep, my business is about 60% of what it was 2 years ago. Luckily, I haven't yet started burning through my life savings. Well actually I have, because I've been scraping the interest off to pay the bills for some time now.

I thought the most searched for term on yahoo was 'google'.

Hope you don't mind me being terribly sexist and asking if she had nice Bubbs? Talking of Bubbs, has the Doctor responded to this yet?:

So, whether the coercion comes before, after or during, you do agree that I am in a position of economic coercion, be the coercion direct or indirect? So you agree that wage-slavery exists & is a problem? I'm not just conflating chains & bondage with nature forcing me to catch my own fish? Yes, the current state maintains the system of private ownership of land & resources which causes economic slavery.

Let's say you had hoarded all the land & such & deny access to it via the state so that I could not grow or catch my dinner. In fact, the situation is, that I either work for you in return for cash (making you a profit) so that I can buy your fish at the shops or starve. What do I care if the coercion is direct or indirect? I'm in economic slavery. The same is true, whether it is just you denying me access to land & resources or lots of different people. Plus, any profit you make is dependent on this coercive situation & is not legitimately yours. Anything you buy with this money is not legitimately yours. Including your factory. Which the workers have taken over.

You'll have to be a bit clearer here for me, Injin.

Why should they buy them? There's no coercion involved.

So, by your definition, it wouldn't be coercive for a work force to refuse to hand the profits over to the bosses? It wouldn't be coercive for workers to simply ignore their bosses orders? It wouldn't be coercive to run the business as their own? It wouldn't be coercive for workers to refuse to leave the factory space? It wouldn't be coercive for the workers to effectively take over the means of production?

No, but it's coercive to put me in prison when I refuse to pay rent on the space on earth I inhabit. It's coercive to put me in prison when I 'trespass' on others land to get the resources I need to live my life free of economic coercion. So the refusal is backed up by coercion or threat of coercion. So, same difference.

Coercion isn't just the act of attacking others. Denying others the access to land & resources forces them into working for those that own the means of production. This is a form of economic coercion. Sure people can raise capital to buy land & resources to become self-employed, but why should they? They would only be buying their economic freedom & they would still be forced into economic slavery to raise the capital & still be involved in an unjust system. Yes, one would have to toil the soil or hunt to eat in nature, but one wouldn't necessarily be forced to work for another, wherein the coercion arises. In the present system, where the means of production & land are in the hands of those who have capital & those that don't end up having to work for them to survive, I can't see how it could be described in any other manner than economic slavery or coercion. Saying that this point of view is attempting to claim that people are tied up in chains is a clear distortion of what I'm saying, since I've made a clear distinction between wage-slavery, economic slavery & chattel slavery & just because they aren't tied up in chains doesn't mean there isn't a legitimate issue here. Your comment "Really, it's embarassing, knock it off." is more personal than rational & could safely be subsumed under the definition of ad hominem. It isn't.

I didn't say they were. I clearly said that chattel slavery transitioned to wage-slavery & other forms of economic coercion. I'm not. Read above. Your ad hominems are embarrassing. The world isn't so simple that self-defense can only be defined as a lone individual fending off an attacker.

Slavery wasn't exactly abolished, it transitioned from Chattel slavery into wage-slavery & other forms of economic slavery & coercion. Plus, I won't immediately become enslaved by a slave owner if I give up owning slaves myself, so the example isn't exactly analogous to convincing those engaged in collective counter-coercion to give that up in the face of coercion. We won't. At best you can convince a few rational people that it may be possible at some time in the future, but whilst collective coercion is in existence, collective counter-coercion is needed. To tell people to stop engaging in collective counter-coercion, right away in the now would be suicidal, both economically & quite possibly even literally.

The Pentagon usually over-exaggerates it's estimates of enemy death tolls by about 5 or 10, but I think you've even exaggerated their estimates even further. The highest official U.S. estimate of total Soviet atrocities I've ever seen, was brzezinski's 20-25 million. The median of most Western Historian's estimates is around 15-20 million. It's about the same number as the U.S. have slaughtered abroad since WWII & about the same as Capitalist Britain killed in India (17 million). Er, wasn't it the USSR that liberated Europe from the Nazis? Didn't they lose 20 to 27 million people (including aorund 7-12 million soldiers) putting in most of the effort against Hitler as opposed to our measly 500,000 each (U.K. & Britain).

Yes it's strange isn't it. America is the most tyrannical regime on the planet. Not domestically, but in terms of foreign policy since WWII, it has killed far more than any other nation abroad & overthrow more countries & governments than any other & bombed more countries than any other. So what you get is, lots of people fleeing U.S. tyranny in Latin America & such & seeking exile in America itself, where they can be safe. Mad isn't it?

No, everybody in the World would have to buy into your philosophy & that's the problem. People would end up being slaughtered en masse by accepting your advice. So they won't. Coercion may never cease, but scaling it down is possible, that's world history.