Re: understanding Ed

Note from Alan Spector:  See bottom of message:

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> John_R_Groves@ferris.edu wrote:
>
> >His post also
> >showed how deeply capitalism (a term I find almost useless in the
> >post-communist
> >era) or rather more precisely, markets


Then Doug Henwood wrote:
-------

> Ah yes, markets. That utopian realm of liberty, equality, and
> Bentham! Forget production, just focus on exchange, where it all
> appears voluntary and satisfying.
>
> If the word "capitalism" is useless, what do you call a system under
> which a few people with lots of money hire those with none, paying
> them as little as they can, and appropriating the fruits of their
> labor in the form of monetary profit? Is it only because you can't
> imagine a non-capitalist Other that the word has lost its meaning?
>
>
> Doug Henwood
> Left Business Observer
> 250 W 85 St
> New York NY 10024-3217 USA
> +1-212-874-4020 voice  +1-212-874-3137 fax
> email: <mailto:dhenwood@panix.com>
> web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html>


COMMENT from Alan Spector:

To Doug (& others),

What you left out of your otherwise incisive point, is the REALITY that the
big capitalists FULLY UNDERSTAND the FAILURE of the Market System, which is
why THEY VERY HEAVILY RELY ON THE STATE, ON BIG GOVERNMENT  1) TO SUBSIDIZE
THEIR ECONOMIC WELL-BEING; 2) STABILIZE THE INSTABILITY CAUSED BY THEIR
SHORT-SIGHTED GREED; AND 3) ENFORCE THROUGH THE COURTS, POLICE, AND MILITARY
THEIR POLITICAL CONTROL OVER THE POPULATION.

>From zoning codes to selective enforcement of the law;

from lobbying to supporting anti-working class terrorism in other countries
via the CIA;

from the privitization of profitable government enterprises so that
corporations can make a private profit from the economies of scale inherent
in some aspects of collectivity--to the nationalization of those enterprises
which failed because the private interests quickly sucked whatever was
profitable from those enterprises and then abandoned the inefficient,
unprofitable aspects of it for society to have to maintain;

from from tax breaks, government subsidies, outright grants, free transfer
of research information, and inflated government contracts, to full scale
invasions of other countries, to the jailing of striking workers and the
purchase of endowed chairs at public universities -- in all these things and
a million more the capitalists know that they need big government.  But when
the big government is employed on behalf of the capitalists, it is not
Marxism, it moves towards the Corporate State, or Fascism.

But how to get working class people to accept this?  They have to critique
those parts of big government which might return to the working class some
of our wages  (ie health care, etc.) -- and call that "socialism which is
destroying individual initiativie."   For that, they have the Ayn Rand Fan
Club, some members of which seem to be on WSN,  extolling in broad
philosophical strokes the virtues of pure freedom while naively ignoring the
absolutely essential role that use of BIG GOVERNMENT plays in keeping
capitalism afloat.

Well, not quite. There are a few acknowledgement, such as this from J
(Randy) Groves:




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