Is capitalism really such a good system?

[Serial_Apologist]

Sounds quite optimistic to me

If only it were true! If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. etc. <Wistful handwave>. I've just been re-reading Geoff Hodgson's little 1975 paperback Trotsky and Fatalistic Marxism. A bit of agency is needed to shift capitalism, methinks: a bit of a push.

[Richard Barrett]

how about the communist/socialist claim that the collapse of capitalism is 'inevitable'?

Well, it is. Every social order is eventually superseded, I wouldn't be sorry to see this one collapse and the sooner the better. If I were pessimistic I'd be labouring under the idea that its collapse would involve a fall into chaos and barbarism, which of course is one of the possibilities.

[Richard Barrett]

most countries attempting to go beyond capitalism have not been favoured circumstances propitious to the model Lenin laid down in State and Revolution, which foresaw in the dictatorship of the proletariat a huge expansion of democracy, but not having any experiences other than the 1889 Paris Commune to go on, could not have foreseen the consequences of revolution in a comparatively backward economy such as that of Russia in 1917.

Not to mention the conditions under which Russia withdrew from the world war, and the fact that all the other powers in the world, being frightened that socialist revolution could take hold at home, put a great deal of effort into ensuring it didn't succeed there.

[P. G. Tipps]

Not to mention the conditions under which Russia withdrew from the world war, and the fact that all the other powers in the world, being frightened that socialist revolution could take hold at home, put a great deal of effort into ensuring it didn't succeed there.

Well, naturally ...

And after what happened in its wake, in the thuggish form of the Soviet Union, shouldn't current and future generations in Europe be eternally grateful that it didn't succeed in their own homelands?

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, naturally ...

And after what happened in its wake, in the thuggish form of the Soviet Union, shouldn't current and future generations in Europe be eternally grateful that it didn't succeed in their own homelands?

Well Leon Trotsky put the issues in a nutshell: there was a civil war (not started by the Bolsheviks but by former supporters of the pre-soviet Kerensky government lining up with Tsarists, backed by European countries including the British sending in armies); wars lead to shortages, shortages to queues, queues to a need for policing. And before you know where you are, you have the makings of a bureaucracy.

[P. G. Tipps]

Well Leon Trotsky put the issues in a nutshell: there was a civil war (not started by the Bolsheviks but by former supporters of the pre-soviet Kerensky government lining up with Tsarists, backed by European countries including the British sending in armies); wars lead to shortages, shortages to queues, queues to a need for policing. And before you know where you are, you have the makings of a bureaucracy.

So Capitalism is to blame for Communism?

I suppose there is at least some logic in that belief!

[Flosshilde]

You were chewing on about most people thinking of their families first etc., presumably as a given of human nature. I merely provided an opportunity for you to think outside the box.

Not sure what part of that you're struggling with.

Indeed - the Israeli Kibbutz system is another example.

[Serial_Apologist]

So Capitalism is to blame for Communism?

I suppose there is at least some logic in that belief!

I always know that when you start reaching for soundbites, you are running out of questions.

[P. G. Tipps]

I always know that when you start reaching for soundbites, you are running out of questions.

And when things start getting a bit personal I know that others have completely run out of answers ... ?

[P. G. Tipps]

Indeed - the Israeli Kibbutz system is another example.

An example of exactly what ... ?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

an interesting review of Picketty

[Serial_Apologist]

an interesting review of Picketty

'"Nobody who has ever had a cake fail to rise can believe in the labour theory of value"' Hmmm. That critic of Marx's theory of value was wrongly extrapolating from pre-capitalist relationbs of production in which maker met buyer face-to-face, (which of course still happens in ways peripheral to GDP statistically governing data of economic wellbeing in any meaningfully measurable way) whereas capitalist production socialises, ie evens out, interpersonal differentials in productivity; the cake thus becomes a mere crumb in that analogy.

Kunkel's writing style is a bit opaque (is he German?) but it's good to see someone using the term ruling class, and though imv he's right in concluding that Picketty ends up as an apologist for capitalism, he himself leaves the question of agency open - unless, that is, we expected to think that the ruling class will conveniently disband itself. But the London Review ain't of course no call to arms!

[amateur51]

But the London Review ain't of course no call to arms!

Better value than Reader's Digest or Farmer & Stockbreeder, I reckon.

[ahinton]

it's good to see someone using the term ruling class

Sorry, but I take entirely the opposite view; I just wish that people would STOP using it when what they usually mean is people who are wealthy and try to use their wealth to exert power - I don't see these as all being uesfully regarded as belonging to a single "class".

[P. G. Tipps]

Sorry, but I take entirely the opposite view; I just wish that people would STOP using it when what they usually mean is people who are wealthy and try to use their wealth to exert power - I don't see these as all being uesfully regarded as belonging to a single "class".

Indeed ... and it is surely the case that class-hatred (from whatever quarter) is no different from racism, sexism, religious/anti-religious bigotry or any other form of prejudice?