Re: Don't blame the doctor-- (also known as "Don't Shoot the Messenger."

Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 12 May 1999, Pat Gunning wrote:
> 
> >I suspect to other list participants. Perhaps you could define
> >capitalism and explain how it caused Hiroshima to be bombed.
> 
> Capitalism is a political economic system where the means of production
> are controlled by a small minority who extract from the majority social
> surplus by manipulating labor. Capitalism is a form of class exploitative
> society.

This sounds like fascism, feudalism, and Soviet communism. Could you be
more specific by differentiating these isms?

Andrew, I find the rest of your post rather far-fetched. It seems to me
that you conflate (1) a dispute over property and other rights with (2)
some grand master plan of capitalist expansion that, in your view, leads
to crisis and war. Disputes over property and other rights, theft, and
robbery are inevitable in a property system. And, absent a world
government with teeth, these actions are likely on occasion to be
carried out by governments and to lead to war. But this does not mean
that capitalism is the cause of the war in any useful sense. It is true
that if there was no property, the foundation of capitalism, there would
be no disputes and theft and robbery would have no meaning. But without
a property system, there would also be starvation, poverty, and misery
that is much more devastating than war. Both the Soviets and the Chinese
discovered this years ago. North Korea is discovering this now.

-- 
Pat Gunning, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman
Web pages on Subjectivism, Democracy, Taiwan, Ludwig von Mises,
Austrian Economics, and my University Classes
http://www2.cybercities.com/g/gunning/welcome.htm
http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/barclay/212/welcome.htm