this is from a mesage board i've been at for years. the news and debates not what it used to be but i really likeed this post comments whatever?

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The problem with capitalism is that it's not sustainable and never has been. It has been subsidized by unpaid domestic labour by women for centuries. It assumes resources are infinite and pollution is not a problem. And it's based on false conceptions of human nature, not the least of which is the notion that all humans do not share the same interests. The underlying ideals of capitalism are going to run smack into reality in the future. As the impoverished become capable of wielding political power and asserting their rights and demanding their share of global wealth and resources, things like property rights and the right to pollute are going to be challenged. It's no coincidence that environmentalism and socialism are often linked - they are based on the same principles of collective rights. People in wealthier countries especially are simply consuming more than our fair share of the world's resources. The entire nature of our economy is going to have to change and I don't think sustainability can be reconciled with capitalism. The modern concept of the profit motive is inherently anti-sustainability and runs contrary to the basic common sense notion that we are going to have to engage in rational economic planning to save the planet and allocate dwindling natural resources. The alternative is global environmental catastrophe which will certainly bring economic devastation, but that won't matter if we're all dead."

Someone's been reading Marx and Gore recently and putting 2 and 2 together in a really 1st year college way.

Don't get me wrong, there are some good ideas in there, and the person obviously has rhetorical flair, but there are a few too many fallacies/inaccurate assumptions in there about capitalism for it to persuade me. Also, the whole proletariat thing has lost all currency, even among academics. Lefties have more to gain from Jurgen Habermas than Karl Marx these days.

There's some leaps of logic in there that sort of stand out.

capitalism is the shit, dog.

These words came to mind:

naive
amateurish
unoriginal
recycled
garbage
conceited

Reading that was like listening to a stoned 18-year-old freshman wearing a Che Geuvera t-shirt trying to talk about philosphy as if they were an expert just because they got an 84% on their midterm of philosophy 101. Made me fucking sick.

Wow, somebody's really caught up in this whole "sustainability" thing...

(1) There isn't really any evidence in there that capitalisms is not sustainable; only repeated emphasis of such.

(2) What alternative is there that is sustainable? Socialism? They can't even get that to work at all in the first place, much less sustain it over a long period of time.

Capitalism has it's flaws, but that is a piss poor and inaccurate assessment of it.

is there really any evidence that capitalism is sustainable though? i think more signs point to it not being sustainable.

This part especially cracked me up. The whole concept of economics is rooted in how people deal with the reality of scarce resources. If all resources were truly infinite, then there would be no need for economics.

Lack of evidence in support of sustainability does not imply lack of sustainability.

I still have yet to see this evidence that capitalism is not sustainable--as Nick mentioned, capitalism does deal with the question of finite resources. In fact, capitalism is based on supply and demand, and you don't need to know a lick of economics to realize that supply and demand somehow accounts for limited supply.

I've heard all of the bolded arguments used to argue why communism doesn't work. A hell of a lot more convincingly, I might add.

We ought to teach kids Marx when they're 12 or 13 so that by the time they're in college, they've figured out why it doesn't work, and it's not some glorious revelation of hidden wisdom when they're 18.

This also stood out to me. You'd think that people would have to take some Economics in High School, if not in college.

The part about the impoverished world is probably the only important thing in there, but not in the way he/she is implying. In twenty years when the free world is a lot more eco-friendly (assuming it is, obviously) how well are those poor countries going to take it when they're told they can't industrialize in anywhere near the same way the rest of the world did?

The problem is capitalism is literally the only game in town. Cuba is essentially the only country on planet Earth still clinging to communism, and it probably wouldn't be if the US would lift the embargo. It would be nice if there wsa at least some other option in international economics, because in terms of economic ideas there is no "market" on the world scale, and there really should be.

Wasn't there a few decades ago?

Not really, no. i'd like to read a defense of the idea that there was, though.

What about the time (ie 1950s) when communism really made a splash in the world community? USSR, China, N Korea, Eastern Europe, etc. made up a fairly sizeable bloc as far as resources and population are concerned.

The problem with Communism is in order to enforce it, there is required to be some high-level management, and that is fundamentally opposite the principles of true communism. The production of the community is supposed to be shared among its members as their needs require, but it is absolutely impossible to guarantee that individual people get exactly what they need when the goods are distributed by an agency spanning thousands of communities. It was mentioned that capitalism does not consider sustainability (and the evidence of that is suspect), but communism does not consider human nature. Different people have different needs, and if people feel they are not going to get a decent ROI, they're not going to put in as much work.

If you actually think Communism has even an inkling of a possibility of actually working, I'd suggest watching John Stossel's video "Greed".

As far as this idea of there needing to be a larger world "market"--as I've mentioned, Communism only has the possibility of working on a small (should I say, communal) scale, so I don't see how a larger market would help anything. You'd only end up further abstracting the level of management to an even higher level, resulting in yet more inefficiency--if you didn't, things like trade and competition between units would inevitably occur, resulting in a capitalist market consisting of communes. That actually seems to be more in line with what actually occured (USSR vs. China, USSR vs. Yugoslavia, China vs. Cambodia, etc.). There were multiple communist entities that didn't necessarily get along too well.

Well, I'm not really talking about communism, and not really capitalism either. I should have made that clearer. What I am talking about is the "do it our way or else" attitude taken by the IMF, WTO, etc. I mean, basically, it's follow the Washington Conference or be isolated.

Personally, I don't think there's any chance in hell that the current international system will survive for more than another couple decades. It's still too dependent on colonialism and the big taking advantage of the weak. This isn't capitalism so much as it's rigging the world economy to maintain the status quo.

The whole thing is in huge conflict with the idea of spreading democracy and human rights, and that's where the main problem lies. I guess what I'm saying is the current system is as distorted a version of capitalism as Leninism was of Marxism. The fact is actual Marxism hasn't been attempted. The closest is probably currently going on in Western Europe. That doesn't mean I think Marxism would actually work, but some kind of synergy needs to be made that integrates the best ideas from the two major systems

So what I envision a world market of ideas to be is one that is exemplified by a great number of experiments with good intentions, being the raised standards for all as much as possible. I think the strength of the idea is it isn't at all anathema to self-determination like the current system is.

As for the market of 1945-1990, well, that wasn't really a market as there was basically no effort or concern over the actual success of the policies. The fact is when countries in the Western Hemisphere attempted any form of socialism the US intervened and put the kibosh on it because it thought it meant the country was allying itslef with the USSR. There wasn't an atmosphere where legitimate endeavors could really be compared. All it accomplished was radicalizing countries in either direction.

See, I think the problem with Marxism is that it cannot be attempted on anything but a communal scale. It requires a certain degree of familiarity among the membership, as that is the only way goods can be distributed in a truly communal manner.

It has actually been attempted in the US by religious groups (Bruderhof near Rifton, NY; Orderville, UT) with relative success, but only in the absense of bureaucratic distribution of resources.

I'm not sure what you're defining Marxism as, because I don't see where you're logic is coming from.

Granted, I've only taken one class that spent any amount of time on Marxism, but it seems Marxism is intended to overcome exploitation of the labor class by those who control the means of production, and that labor being considered a commodity is an inherent degradation of human character. When you say Marxism, I'm not sure exactly which interpretation of Marxism you're talking about, since, as far as I'm aware, Marx himself didn't actually define a concrete government or economic management system.

Marx's idea of exploitation is prehaps where the problem lies in implementing his ideas on a national scale... In principle, exploitation occurs when one is responsible for more productivity than he receives in wages. However, I don't see how any national economical management scheme can overcome this, as somebody has to distribute the wealth, and somebody has to own the means of production. If you say that is to be collectively owned by the proletariat, I say there's still no way to redistribute the wealth in a way such that exploitation does not occur. That's where the failure occurs, and that's why greed and capitalism are inevitable.