From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Oct 22 2002 - 10:58:30 MDT
Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
> Charles,
> In attempting to define how you would go about constructing a
> mathematical theory of capitalism you sort of illustrated one of the
> problems we have had with socialism.
> Most folks don't recognise that we have approaximately a 200
> year history of socialism. There is a book called Heaven on Earth
> that is a book place to start on that theory.
There is far more than 200 years in the history of socialism. Religious
communities were essentially socialist in nature quite far back in time.
Likewise, the essential tribal structure is, internally, basically
socialist.
>
> Yet, the facts are fairly simple. Over the last 200 years
> socialism has had ample time to theorise on every aspect of their
> system. They have installed that system several hundred times in
> socialist communities and several dozen times in socialist nations.
> What have been the results?
There may well have been, as you assert, sufficient time, but neither
capitalists nor socialists have created a coherrent theory of the
systems that they are proposing. Basically because they don't have a
good well-defined definition based on physical observables.
> Sometimes the communities or nations have remained in the hand
> of well meaning theorists (I suppose they were) and have ended in
> failure having fleeced the people that were true believers and
> invested their capital, thought, or labor into the system. Sometimes
> these failures were long drawn out but failures in the end.
Some were quite successful for generations, until they were swallowed up
by encroaching neighbors. Some may still exist. I haven't gone
investigating. I'm not that interested, and anyway I've never seen a
complete census of socialist groups. But it is true that the successful
ones don't tend to grow very large. Oneida was about the largest
successful group that I can think of, until the intolerance of their
neighbors hampered them.
>
> Sometimes the communities or nations have been controlled by
> thugs. I don't have to explain those to you the examples are numerous
> -- Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Tito, Mussolini, Pol Pot, etc.
Do you really feel that those examples (except, possibly, Tito and
Mussolini), fit even the loose definition of socialist that exists?
They were selfish powerful tyrants, and no different from the estemable
one's that we supported, e.g., Papa Doc, or who what that lunatic in
Vietnam.
> In the case of China they seem to have suffered a dictator but
> also in the end had the dictators release the economic sphere in order
> to hold onto their power. However the persecution of the populace
> continues.
China is merely continuing the imperial tradition under a new name.
Nothing to see here. They are just trying to modernise their system
without the emperor giving up any power.
> It is a long sorry 200 year record of total failure. It has
> gotten to a point that if you point to an example of a socialist
> nation that is not a failure then we are justified in replying "wait."
> I listen to conditions within various nations that tend toward
> socialism and have never seen one I would wish to live in.
> On the other hand, what ever short comings we have had in the
> development of capitalist theory you can't fault our results. You can
> try but with our shortcomings we still out perform the socialist.
If you want to look at our good points, you should also look at our bad
points. We have slaughered native peoples, fought bloody wars,
persecuted our citizens, maintained slaves until europe nearly gave up
on thinking of us as civilized. And we have a larger fraction of our
citizens held as slave-laborers than any other country today. We call
them criminals, and that lets us sleep easily. But why are there so
many of them?
> There is one other dirty little secret about the sorry record of
> socialism. It isn't as well founded in theory as the proponents would
> have us believe. Go to von Hayek's Road to Serfdom, he devastates
> their theory.
And the dirty secret of capitalism is that the people in charge make
slaves of those on the bottom. Sorry, I'm not a capitalist *OR* a
socialist. I'm a libertarian. If I thought it had a reasonable chance
of working I'd be an anarchist, but anarchy is unstable. (Well, so is
everything, or at best only quasi-stable, but I'd perfer something a
*little* more stable than anarchy.)
> How can this be? Most folks don't spend a lot of time checking
> out socialist theory so if the the socialist say things that sound
> good it passes. Von Hayek takes those theories and analyses them.
> The theories come up short -- very short.
> Ron h.
The, matter, that the socialists present is as meaninglessly emotional
as that presented by the justifiers of capitalism.
If you want to start meaningful development of your arguments, you must
first use well-defined terms. And that means that they are based on
observables. On what basis, e.g., do you assert that the Nazi's were
socialists and not capitalists? Do you take *their* word for it? Do
you take their word for anything else? (If they told me the sky was
blue, I'd want to check it myself.)
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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