10-07-2016, 01:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-07-2016, 01:50 PM by Eric the Green.)
(10-07-2016, 01:21 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:(07-03-2016, 02:20 PM)Odin Wrote:(07-03-2016, 10:44 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Marx saw ownership as the basis of power, ignoring the power of bureaucracies when those bureaucracies have no capitalists to contest them or when those bureaucracies are fully in collusion with the financiers and industrialists (as in America).
Many of us on the Left consider the Soviet regime to be State-Capitalist, the economy run as one huge corporation under the control and effective ownership of the party bosses and the bureaucracy underpinning the party bosses.
By that definition all industrial societies are capitalist by, since they involve leveraging labor with capital.
And by that definition, the Cold War was between state capitalism and free market capitalism, and the latter won by virtue of being the more efficient system.
Unfortunately today's left in the U.S. wants to move away from free market capitalism and toward state capitalism, and the right is fighting its own internal war on the issue and can't resist.
The Left wants to move away from Reaganism, not free market capitalism. The New Deal and Great Society were great starts toward what the Left wants. Reagan and Bush interrupted this progress and sent our nation back toward unregulated free market capitalism, and libertarians want to go even further. The result of Reaganism is ever-grosser inequality, increasing poverty and lower social mobility. Because many victims of Reaganism reflexively and out of prejudice blame the Left for their plight, the Right is in turmoil now because of a demogogue who is exploiting both the victims' plight and their ignorance about the real causes.