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| View Poll Results: Can capitalism exist with govt | |||
| Yes |
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16 | 51.61% |
| No |
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15 | 48.39% |
| Voters: 31. You may not vote on this poll | |||
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#1
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I'm surprised most people aren't realizing that unregulated capitalism and a market economy based on consumption is inherently unsustainable given limited resources.
The economy's purpose is to produce and for the population to consume ad infinitum, with those seeking a profit continually seeking further profit ad inifinitum -- this will reach a breaking point when there is nothing left to consume or the planet is rendered uninhabitable due to continued catastrophic pollutants and so on. Marx pointed out that an economy based on endless production and consumption such as that is clearly not going to work out and anyone who understands that things on this planet are obviously limited in such a way as to make eternal growth an impossible ideal at best. The best capitalism can hope for is to continue to live on parasitically through some form or other of keynesian gov't intervention or the whole house of cards will come down on the heads of the financiers who created the money that clearly does not relate to anything such as material or labor. | ||
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#2
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Basically an outline of what he says is this:
" Marx assumed that the competitive processes of a capitalist market society would lead to a concentration of capital ownership in fewer and fewer hands. Marx built this claim on the assumption, which he holds in common with laissez faire economics, that a competitive economy must lead inevitably to the elimination of some producers by others, there must be winners and losers and the winners would grow increasingly large. Capitalism, Marx argued, contrary to the general assumption of laissez faire economics, had an inherent tendency towards concentration of capital in oligopolies and monopolies. The concentration of capital involved, first of all, the displacement of the handworker and the craftsworker and increasing domination of factory-based technology. An industrial proletariat of wage workers emerged, and grew larger, as independent producers were eliminated by factory-based competition. Capitalist corporations grew more concentrated and larger, the number of individuals owning the means of production became fewer. The class structure becomes polarized and the economic and social conditions of the two opposed main classes more strongly contrasted, leading to political activation of the working class and prolonged conflict with the dominant bourgeois class through political and industrial organization. It is this development of social polarization that provides the unsolveable social or relational contradiction of capitalist society. The social organization of a capitalist society also presented an inherent structural contradiction in the economic dynamics of capitalism. While capitalism revolutionized the means of production by promoting the greatest economic development in human history, its class structure focused the capacity to consume in a tiny minority of the population. The mass social scale of production could not remain compatible with the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. As a result, there must be inherent instability, or anarchy, in the whole capitalist system of production. The social effects of such instability in turn must intensify the political struggle of social classes hastening the event of socialist revolution" Obviously the idea of socialist revolution is utopian in a way, as Marx held a positive hope in the working class coming together in unity, and it definitely is a possibility, however it's just one of many kinds of possible revolutions -- that there will be tumult is more than likely, but what kind of revolution and structure that comes out of it is up in the air for certain. | ||
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#3
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Last edited by Samoht; 10-13-2011 at 02:52 PM..
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#4
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Edit: I typed all that out without getting to my final point, which was that many people who cite Marx and make similar arguments to this are acting upon the notion that wealth is finite. There is a set amount of wealth, and it is simply distributed. The simple fact is wealth is created. Things that are worthless by themselves can be combined to be worth something. The fact that you can take materials that are worth a small value, rearrange them, and magically they have increased in value proves that wealth is an infinite concept - there is no limit to wealth, and thus the idea of it being distributed in set amounts is simply wrong. | |||
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Last edited by Loke; 10-13-2011 at 03:16 PM..
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#5
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Privitising profit while socializing debt will eventually remove all capital from the market. Oh, and capital is definitely finite, otherwise inflation would be out of control. | |||
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