Does Capitalism Ensure Freedom?

[georgephillip]

RD Wolff is the best known Marxist economist in the US today, and he says capitalism does not serve freedom to the extent its apologists would like you to believe:

Poverty Has Always Accompanied Capitalism

"Capitalism usually overthrew its predecessor system (often feudalism, sometimes slavery or still others) violently and accompanied by slogans of 'freedom' as in the French revolution's 'liberte, egalite, fraternite' or Lincoln's 'Emancipation Proclamation.'

"Capitalism represented itself as freeing serfs, slaves, etc.

"Freedom became capitalism's self-celebration which it largely remains.

"Yet the reality of capitalism is different from its celebratory self-image.

"The mass of employees are not free inside capitalist enterprises to participate in the decisions that affect their lives (e.g., what the enterprise will produce, what technology it will use, where production will occur, and what will be done with the profit workers' efforts help to produce).

"In their exclusion from such decisions, modern capitalism's employees resemble slaves and serfs.

"Yes, parliaments, universal suffrage, etc. have accompanied capitalism - an advance over serfdom and slavery.

"Yet even that advance has been largely undermined by the influence of the highly unequally distributed wealth and income that capitalism has everywhere generated."

 

[Lumpy 1]

 

[irosie91]

RD Wolff is the best known Marxist economist in the US today, and he says capitalism does not serve freedom to the extent its apologists would like you to believe:

Poverty Has Always Accompanied Capitalism

"Capitalism usually overthrew its predecessor system (often feudalism, sometimes slavery or still others) violently and accompanied by slogans of 'freedom' as in the French revolution's 'liberte, egalite, fraternite' or Lincoln's 'Emancipation Proclamation.'

"Capitalism represented itself as freeing serfs, slaves, etc.

"Freedom became capitalism's self-celebration which it largely remains.

"Yet the reality of capitalism is different from its celebratory self-image.

"The mass of employees are not free inside capitalist enterprises to participate in the decisions that affect their lives (e.g., what the enterprise will produce, what technology it will use, where production will occur, and what will be done with the profit workers' efforts help to produce).

"In their exclusion from such decisions, modern capitalism's employees resemble slaves and serfs.

"Yes, parliaments, universal suffrage, etc. have accompanied capitalism - an advance over serfdom and slavery.

"Yet even that advance has been largely undermined by the influence of the highly unequally distributed wealth and income that capitalism has everywhere generated."

yeah? so? what is your point-----I have never come across a single person ---who has insisted that the economic system CAPITALISM---ensures everyone prosperity and happiness and freedom.-------COMICALLY---I have come across people who have insisted that Communism does, Nazism does, and Islam does. ----
capitalism ain't perfect------but both combined and separately ----Communism, Islam, and Nazism has WRECKED havoc on the world from starvation to genocide

 

[JakeStarkey]

How well did capitalism preserve and promote capitalism in Central America?

 

[irosie91]

How well did capitalism preserve and promote capitalism in Central America?

not well------nor has communism

 

[Iceweasel]

Losers will always embrace socialism. They need to feed off of others' success to live, like a parasite. Capitalism offers opportunity, it cannot guarantee outcome. Nor should it. Any system that guarantees outcome will do so at the lowest common denominator. Capitalism made the US the greatest nation on Earth and that irritates the Marxist to no end since it proves they are wrong.

 

[JakeStarkey]

How well did capitalism preserve and promote capitalism in Central America?

not well------nor has communism

Just so. Following the laws of a constitutional republic that guarantees minority rights is the best system for socialist and capitalist countries.

 

[georgephillip]

View attachment 80304

Wake up.

 

[Iceweasel]

View attachment 80304

Wake up.

You think like a child. Capitalism has led to more people living better lives than anything ever done before or since. Socialism has the opposite intended effect so everyone is guaranteed a seat at the table, why bust your butt, you can't get ahead.

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

It does a far better job than all other economic systems.

 

[georgephillip]

yeah? so? what is your point-----I have never come across a single person ---who has insisted that the economic system CAPITALISM---ensures everyone prosperity and happiness and freedom.

How many critics of capitalism have you interviewed?

Poverty Has Always Accompanied Capitalism

"By 'the economy' is meant modern capitalism as if (1) nothing else, no other system, was of interest today (other than for historians) and (2) no alternative ways of theorizing, thinking about economies, exist or are worth considering.

"Indeed, most mainstream textbooks have the word 'economics' in their title as if no differentiating adjective (such as neoclassical or Marxist etc.) needs to be added to let readers know which among alternative theories was being used by the author.

"The mode of repressing critical theories of capitalism and serious and sustained discussions of alternative systems in the US is chiefly by acting as though such theories and alternatives are not there.

"Denial rather than critical confrontation and debate is the norm."

Denial.
Something all good Zionists are familiar with.

 

[georgephillip]

View attachment 80304

Wake up.

You think like a child. Capitalism has led to more people living better lives than anything ever done before or since. Socialism has the opposite intended effect so everyone is guaranteed a seat at the table, why bust your butt, you can't get ahead.

Capitalism is equally successful at generating wealth and poverty; it has proven that fact around the planet for the last four hundred years. Capitalism's defenders generally fall into two camps; they either ignore equality as a social good or they deny poverty altogether. Which are you?

 

[georgephillip]

It does a far better job than all other economic systems.

Does capitalism inevitably produce poverty as a byproduct? If so, it would seem it loses much of its appeal once society reaches a critical stage of automation?

Poverty Has Always Accompanied Capitalism

"Poverty has always accompanied capitalism (as Thomas Piketty's work documents yet again). As an economic system, it has proven to be as successful in producing wealth at one pole as it is in producing poverty at the other.

"Periodic 'rediscoveries of' and campaigns against poverty have not changed that. Capitalism's defenders, having long promoted the system as the means to overcome both absolute and relative poverty (i.e. to be an equalizing system), now change their tune. They either abandon equality as a social good or goal or else try to avoid discussing poverty altogether."

 

[irosie91]

yeah? so? what is your point-----I have never come across a single person ---who has insisted that the economic system CAPITALISM---ensures everyone prosperity and happiness and freedom.

How many critics of capitalism have you interviewed?

Poverty Has Always Accompanied Capitalism

"By 'the economy' is meant modern capitalism as if (1) nothing else, no other system, was of interest today (other than for historians) and (2) no alternative ways of theorizing, thinking about economies, exist or are worth considering.

"Indeed, most mainstream textbooks have the word 'economics' in their title as if no differentiating adjective (such as neoclassical or Marxist etc.) needs to be added to let readers know which among alternative theories was being used by the author.

"The mode of repressing critical theories of capitalism and serious and sustained discussions of alternative systems in the US is chiefly by acting as though such theories and alternatives are not there.

"Denial rather than critical confrontation and debate is the norm."

Denial.
Something all good Zionists are familiar with.

Inteviewed "critics" of capitalism??? Like Karl Marx, Bakunin and Stalin? Well ---I never read the writings of Stalin (if any) but I have known some of the survivors
of Stalin. I have read lots of your literature in which
the word ZIONIST is used as a synonym of COMMUNIST
except the literature of your ideology which was done in the
USSR and various BAATHIST shitholes in which "ZIONIST" had the same meaning as "CAPITALIST"

 

[georgephillip]

How well did capitalism preserve and promote capitalism in Central America?

Better than democracy, based on results from Chile.
"Revelations that President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream' in Chile to 'prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him,' prompted a major scandal in the mid-1970s, and a major investigation by the U.S. Senate.

"Since the coup, however, few U.S. documents relating to Chile have been actually declassified- -until recently.

"Through Freedom of Information Act requests, and other avenues of declassification, the National Security Archive has been able to compile a collection of declassified records that shed light on events in Chile between 1970 and 1976."
Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973

 

[boedicca]

The OP is a loon. Capitalism has done more to improve incomes and alleviate poverty than any Do Gooder Government Totalitarian Nanny State program. Rising incomes combined with the Rule of Law that is necessary for True Free Markets to protect Individual Liberty. The alternative consists of the various forms of authoritarianism and totalitarianism in which the mass of people exist as slaves and serfs.

 

[irosie91]

Poverty has always accompanied every ECONOMIC SYSTEM

 

[JakeStarkey]

The curve is weighed to an average, not the actual wealth break down.

 

[georgephillip]

Losers will always embrace socialism. They need to feed off of others' success to live, like a parasite. Capitalism offers opportunity, it cannot guarantee outcome. N

When did capitalism guarantee equality of opportunity?

 

[irosie91]

The curve is weighed to an average, not the actual wealth break down.

LOL the "average" ----yup 95 % are within two standard deviations of the mean-------then remaining are the happiest group-----2 1/2 percent about two standard deviations from the mean------and the poor guys----2 1/2 percent--------ok