[Peace-discuss] [Peace] "Is Capitalism Necessary?"

[C. G. Estabrook]

Could socialism exist before capitalism? Or is capitalism necessary for
socialism? That is, can the latter exist only as a critique and proposed
transformation of the former?

If you deny that, you could say that the original Christian community was a
consciously socialist community (a socialism of consumption - a community of
goods - to be sure: production was hardly in their hands).

See the account of the organization of the original Christian movement in the
Acts of the Apostles 2:44-45 - "All who believed were together and had all
things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the
proceeds to all, as any had need."


On 7/2/10 7:00 PM, unionyes wrote:
> When we were returning to C-U from our friend's house in Florida, there was a
> billboard 50-miles or so south of Atlanta that said ; " GOD IS NOT A SOCIALIST "
> " Voters against Obama . com. !
>
> What ignorance and / or propoganda !
>
> I mean, just the statement alone.
>
> First of all, I WISH Obama was a Socialist ( nothing could be further from the
> truth ),
> and second, does this person or organization have regular political discussions
> with GOD, and hence know what GOD's political views are ?
>
> I could though actually make an intelligent arguement that Jesus was a
> Socialist-Anarchist !
>
> After all, Jesus chashed the money lenders out of the temples with a whip. Fed
> and organized the poor, and was murdered ( tried and executed ) by the Roman
> occupation army via the Judea / Israeli puppet government. He did all of this
> with no formal organization, based on a decentralized informal network of people.
>
> David J.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
> To: <Peace at lists.chambana.net>
> Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 6:07 PM
> Subject: [Peace] "Is Capitalism Necessary?"
>
>
> "Is Capitalism Necessary?" (or, "Do We Wish Obama Really Were a Socialist?")
>
> Carl Estabrook, David Green, and David Harvey (by recording) will discuss that
> question on tonight's "News From Neptune" on Urbana Public Television, cable
> channel 6, at 7pm (and soon on Facebook & <www.newsfromneptune.com>).
>
> Our program is named in honor of Noam Chomsky, who has remarked that in the US
> media, “Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying,
> or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.”
>
> Today is Friday, July 2. On this day in 1776 the congress of English colonies in
> North America voted to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year
> after the outbreak of war between Americans and the British army . The birthday
> of the United States of America ("Independence Day") is celebrated on July 4,
> the day a statement about the matter was approved by the congress - but they
> didn't actually get around to signing it for another month, on August 2.
>
> The statement begins with what it takes to be an obvious point, viz. that no
> state has "a right to exist":
>
> "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [sic] are created equal,
> that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that
> among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these
> rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from
> the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes
> destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish
> it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles
> and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
> effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
> governments long established should not be changed for light and transient
> causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed
> to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
> the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
> usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them
> under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
> government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
>
> Obviously, this argument applies to the inhabitants of the territory between the
> Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea today.
>
> NOTES ON "IS CAPITALISM NECESSARY?"
>
> [1] "...humankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing,
> before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc. ... therefore the
> production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of
> economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form
> the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art,
> and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved..."
>
> [2] Capitalism = a process of production that depends on the relations of two
> groups: (1) a group that claims to have exclusive rights the materials needed
> for production - land tools, resources factories ("they own the means of
> production"); and (2) a much larger group without those rights who have to work
> at the direction of the first group in order to receive the means of their own
> existence - food, clothing, shelter ("they have to sell their labor-power in
> order to receive back the means of subsistence.")
>
> [3] "Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are
> privately owned ... developed incrementally from the 16th century in Europe ...
> dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism" ... through a
> series of bourgeois revolutions, beginning with the Dutch in the 16th century
> ... in the 19th and 20th centuries European & American colonialism made
> capitalism world-wide.
>
> [4] Some terms:
> class = a group with same role in process of production;
> wage-contract = "the equal exchange between free agents which reproduces,
> hourly and daily, inequality and oppression" (Perry Anderson);
> alienation = under capitalism most must sell what makes them human, their
> purposeful work of head and hands, to someone else in order to have food,
> clothing and shelter;
> socialism = a common-sense critique of capitalism that says the society (not
> individuals) owns the means of production and that work should be organized
> democratically; democracy and capitalism are contradictory;
> Marxism - a theory of history and of capitalism (not socialism); transformed
> into a authoritarian political program in the 20th history
> (Leninism/Bolshevism/"Communism").
>
> [5] The earliest use of the word "socialist" in English seems to be by William
> Hazlitt in 1826: recalling a conversation from 1809, he refers to "those
> profound and redoubted socialists Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus." (I'll save
> that lecture for another time.)
>
> [6] Patricia Hogue Werhane, "Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism"
>
> [7] In this RSA Animate [which concludes the program], radical sociologist David
> Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order
> that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible,
> just, and humane? This is based on a lecture at the RSA (www.theRSA.org):
> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0&feature=player_embedded>
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