Anyway, Capitalism will pass away just like ALL other systems the human mind was allowed to try. A variable has changed though that the earlier systems did not have to deal with:

Global Climate Change -

Our world is about to start suffering major convulsions and humans will finally start understanding what the game is about, not about our silly egos, not about our silly laws, governments and customs but actually about the smallness of ourselves.

A new consciousness is developing, proof of this is this great article but unless we bottom out AS A CIVILIZATION, we will not go anywhere.

I’m simply saying that fear and domination and greed are not characteristics created by capitalism.

I have posted many times about alternatives to both super-corporate capitalism and Marx in the hands of imbeciles and sociopaths.

I think it is a very shallow argument to say that capitalism is based on fear and domination (or greed for that matter) any more than Marx’s ideas was ever based on anything remotely resembling a monolithic adherance to a one party system and militarism.

I’d suggest a closer reading of classical (19th Century) economics rather than your neo-classical M. Friedman.

Creating a new socio-economical frame (assuming global) would probably be best left until after a collapse since it’s hard to tell what or whom would be left in its wake.

The majority of human beings operating in world prefer the ignorance and comfort of someone else’s lead (so as to blame others when things go wrong) - isn’t this why we have frames of government to begin with? We’re too busy, too important, too dumb, too poor, or too “whatever” enough to work together within a self-governing meme.

Substantive change will only occur after a devastating shock - whether a revolution or collapse; individually and collectively- speaking.

How to start a revolution? The Stamp Act was a pisser of an example…
But for what? To create another of the same: Rome, England, America, China,______ (fill in the blank). Singapore is notable exception, but it still needs to operate within the global trickle-down.

The issues aren’t hurting us bad enough, yet. In America alone, the poorest of us are still too well off to care - if only with buying into the “dream”; the elite are prepared (wasn’t that what “Globalization” was for?) for whatever happens (space colonization as a worst-case scenario).

I say let it cave in - there’s always a phoenix in the ashes. The Earth will shake us off like the fleas that we are, gobble up the leftovers, or blow up… maybe one day we’ll “get it” ?

I would prefer to live in a self-sustaining, conservative and enlightened democratic-socialistic egalitarian society much like a global tribe/family versus the myriad of institutions created by imperial, aristocratic, parliamentarian, republican, communistic-socialistic, totalitarian models we have or have had. “You may say I’m a dreamer . . .”

Dave I give you Joseph Stalin and the state dominated, fear generating, greed of the few known as the former Soviet Union. Was that Marx’s vision?”

Max, since I don’t think Marx has been mentioned in this discussion at all, and I don’t refer to him anywhere at all in any of my writings, I am not sure what the point of the comment was, unless you’re one of the well-indocrtrinated masses who have been thoroughly conditioned to believe that anyone who dares speak against the great god Capitalism is some sort of raving Marxist, and the only alternative to Capitalism is a Stalinist or Maoist Communist dictatorship. Both ‘ideas’ are obvious nonsense, too obvious to bother getting into it all in a short discussion like this. But as far as I know of Marx and his writings, the answer to your question is no, Marx would have been as appalled at what became of his writings as you are, he hoped for a social-democratic type of society, where workers controlled their own production - although this may have been the Communist propaganda, I don’t think it was the reality, any more than ‘capitalist democracy’ is a ‘reality’. And as far as the ‘greed’ goes, I never said Capitalists had a monopoly on it, just that they exhibited that trait as good as anyone ever has, and that the serfs in any society must assume at least to some extent the traits of their rulers, in order to survive.

First of all, it is important to realise that large corporations now transcend government. They influence governments through various strategies. And if they are uncomfortable with domestic policies or law, they can in a moment transfer their centre of operations, and redistribute their current & future wealth to other more favourable environs.

You cannot achieve wholesale change without changing the governing philosophy of these organisations.

Secondly, I believe it is partially true that capitalism is based upon greed, domination and fear. Capitalism is essentially about wanting more. More of everything. That want comes from our innate self-centredness. Even those of us who try to empathise, to step into anothers shoes, cannot fully succeed. Whilst seeking that viewpoint we still retain our own baggage of ideas and experiences.

Because we cannot truly understand the other persons viewpoint, we cannot completely shrug off a degree of self-centredness or self-interest.

I believe in the past a sense of community, developed through close and frequent interaction with our peers, has ameliorated our natural preoccupation with self. But in our modern society, with the advent of electronic communications and reliance on the motor vehicle, we have lost that sense of community. How often do you see your neighbours? Do you know their names? What do you know about them? How often do you engage in a substantive conversation?

It’s a bit like divide and rule. Because we no longer relate to one another (just another face in the crowd), we become more inward, more self-centred, more selfish. And then we all become a soft touch for capitalism, consumerism, wanting more. And yes, that fantastic medium of television tells us just how much we don’t have, shows other people living lives we aspire to, or using the latest gadget that would make our life so much more fun/enjoyable/easy/rewarding.

I think, Zbignew, if we want change, a move away from unbridled capitalism, it must indeed come from the bottom up. From each of us, changing how we interact with each other, having more respect for each other at a grassroots level. And then electing people to government with a mandate to apply the same principles on a national and international scale. Government sets the rules, but all of society must take responsibility for determining how we behave.

But that’s only half of the equation. The same must be demanded of our companies by the shareholders. The real people with power in this world are the shareholders – individuals and institutional (though they often are fragmented, and don’t exercise that power). Without a change in them, and action from them, nothing is going to change.

And Americans are a bit fickle anyway - look at the whole SUV thing. While a lot of the world went on about saving themselves by creating better energy efficient stuff, Americans bought very inefficient, fossil guzzling SUVs in order to take all their stuff some place when the End came. Where were they all going to go? What we saw with Katrina was that you couldn’t get gas and you had to leave your SUV and all your stuff on the side of the road.

Well, things are going to go on as they have been, in my opinion, for most people. Clearly the US government is doing things to prepare for something really bad. I haven’t read an economist for quite some time now who thinks that the American economy is going to get better. I can’t imagine the rich and powerful are not preparing themselves to remain rich and powerful. So what about the rest of us? People tend to keep to their habits unless they must change. Americans have a strong individualistic spirit - with the greed, materialism, etc. that comes along with it. And change isn’t happening any time soon.

Jeremy, my point about it is not capitalism per se was as Thomas had framed it. I’m not an apologist for capitalism, but what is at work in the West is not a pure economic system of capitalism. I think Thomas was saying that corporate capitalism is not “pure” Adam Smith. I won’t further explain because Thomas did just fine. So, I advise you take a look at what he said.

As far as Parecon, it’s interesting but it is a blueprint when in fact we have great working models of workers’ coops, local sustainable economies and land use rent which is both progressive and economically sound on every count.

I appreciate the desire to create a visiion but a detailed blueprint is doomed from the get go and that is my problem with parecon. It says too much when what we need is a transformation of our culture, economics, polity. And this is done by the stories we begin to tell that are alternatives to TINA - try LOIS (local ownership and import substitution) coupled with a progressive land rent.

“It is imperative to concentrate time and energy on the development of a new, viable, alternative theory of social and economic organization before capitalism collapse disorder occurs.”

Marxism has always been the basically an attempt at scientific analysis of capitalism. The collapse of the Soviet Union (Stalinism) did not negate the insights of Marxism. Nor did it end the global opposition to rampaging capitalism.

The first step to liberation perhaps to throw away the television. The corporate capitalist corruption of television is so intense that this radical measure is essential to start regaining your ability at independent and critical thinking.

Some web-sites and periodicals worth examining:

World Socialist Web Site: http://www.wsws.org Excellent daily source of news and analysis from an international and socialist perspective.

Monthly Review Magazine http://www.monthlyreview.org (monthy mag
independent socialist magazine since 1947.
Follow the links to Monthly Review Books, mrzine (online journal)

Znet Z magazine http:www.znet.org Parecon

International Socialist Review http://www.isreview.org

I would not expect “power” to be handed over from on high. Instead, rather than a violent revolution, the need is to nonviolently transform what is. I can conceive a power shift happening which would mitigate the dominate class from reacting to such a transformation (like the frog in the slow boil water).

As far a change, the key attactors are there but need to find voice and narrative to make them real in our various communities. I do think the Bolivarian experiments hold promise and many are usable here.

I would also note that it might even be worth it to buy from a non-organic superstore whose suppliers are local farmers rather than Whole Foods who is part of the new organic agribusiness model and ships in (at untold costs of fossil) to their many outposts.

I think there are clearly sound sustainable economic models that needn’t be stained by old paradigms of socialism/capitalism. A model of entrepreneurship whereby entrepreneurs provide start-up and instead of turning the reigns over to “professional managers” they sell shares of the business to the workers is an excellent means of collapsing the notion of employer/employee pathological relationship (parent/child).

I recommend the works of economist Jane Jacobs, Ralph Borsodi, and Henry George for sound alternatives and analysis.

I completely agree that the problem should be focused locally, at the grass-roots. We spend far to much energy and resources on a national cause which is beyond human-scale and thus we make no in-roads to transforming the beast. At the local level we can begin the process of transforming our culture, economics and polity at the human scale; re-inventing our relationships and changing the domination/aggression paradigm. Old top-down leadership models are the problem. The concentration of power at the “top” has been deeply institutionalized. It cannot be confronted head on with any hope of change.

You are also right, capitalism is not the issue - GREED, DOMINATION, and FEAR are.

I’d gone today to a new Whole Foods store that just opened in downtown Oakland, CA. It was so huge and OPULENT - yes, it’s allegedly organic, but why do we need so many many types of food? I’m pretty sure there is waste on a gigantic scale.

But regarding the domination of ‘capitalism’ - I don’t agree at all. It starts from the bottom, from individuals.

“I cannot really condemn Burt’s Bees for selling out. For $925 million I, too, might consider letting Clorox use my name to market Zbig-branded cosmetics.” Why? If you are OK, financially, have a place to live in and enough money to not have to suffer from malnutrition, then why sell your major accomplishment in life to companies like Clorox and CocaCola? Burt’s Bees was a success already, that’s what Clorox bought it. Burt and Roxanne were already quite wealthy. So unless they had really expensive coke habits, why sell? Because that’s the current materialistic view of life, go for the max. Self interest with no limits rules.

When people are like that, there is no hope. There will be pockets where self interest results in a few people buying produce locally - mainly I find due to health concerns especially fears of breast cancer.

Capitalism is just a tool, a method of organization. And the West isn’t really 100% capitalist it’s a mix of socialistic subsidies to the really important wealthy people and wealthy corporations mixed in with capitalism for most others. The powerful western powers combine their vast military power with with their monster corporations - Citibank, Chevron,Microsoft, Lockheed-Martin, ConAgra, Monsanto Google etc. and are constantly psuhing to control more and more countries and to devour more and more natural resources. In a way the big corporations are public sector units - they do what the Government wants them to do and the Government will not let them fail.

Opposing the West is really just Russia and China. Others like Venezuela, Iran etc. would have been crushed instantly had it not been for the military power of Russia and China. I see their resistance as nationalistic/tribal. The higher ups in China, for example could sell out, but only a few million would find places in the Western juggernaut, while hundreds of millions of Chinese would be enslaved - so they fight on. So I think.

Russia had a short frightening experience of how it would be under control of the West with Gorbachev and Yeltsin. But now with nationalist Putin has regained control of it’s natural resources and it is resurgent economically and militarily.

Both Russia and Chine are using a similar “Military Power + Large Corporation” approach as the US. There it is more obvious that the largest corporations, like Gazprom, are under Government control.

But the whole approach is similar. Why? Because it’s the only way to avoid being crushed by the Western juggernaut. A country, say India, cannot be pacifistic and hope to survive. That’s a plain fact that many choose to ignore

You hit the nail on the head with ““alternative” systems of organization lack adequate means literally to defend themselves against, and repel, such a heavily militarized, aggressive, supremely deceptive, thuggish, unprincipled and merciless competitor as capitalism”

Except it isn’t capitalism. At the world level it is “The West’.

At a local/personal level it is ‘materialistic self interest’. If we lived much simpler lower-income lives the the power of the thuggish competitors is diminished. If you read Orwell’s 1984, there IS a life outside the system but it’s a scruffy low-income life.