The Non Aggression Principle

...but it must ensure that the national elites are economically competitive on a global scale. The result being increased militarism by dominant economic powers not only by building military bases worldwide, but also by having missiles in space.

This is not a consequence of Free Market Capitalism. One tenant of libertarian thought is the NAP, non-aggression principle, hence utilizing military force to dominate economic power is not consistent with Free Market Capitalism.

The history of the term corporatism/corporatist dates back to the mid-1800s where the European working class began to show more interest in socialism due to the harsh working and living conditions under capitalism.

Regardless of the etymology of the term, I provided a definition re appropriating corporatism in the context of the article. Whatever the term used, it is meant to denote the collusion/collaboration of the state and business regulating/restricting the free market.

I want to get a clear definition of socialism, one that we can, to the best of our abilities, agree to. Here are the two definitions we provided.

Paul: (Socialism) attempts to take matters one step further creating centralized control of the market. Socialism attempts to plan not only the means but the ends of production.

Jerald: In gaining power to rationally organize society (i.e., planning the production and distribution of goods), people will also be free to participate in the running of society...

Would we be able to agree to this:
Socialism rationally organizes society, planning the means and ends of production, (i.e. planning the production and distribution of goods) with individuals freely participating in running society.

The Misconception of Capitalism

Capitalism is the voluntary and free exchange of goods and services. There is a misconception that, taken as a whole, the type of economic system we have in the United States is capitalism. However, sticking strictly to the definition, the United States, although leaning towards exchanging goods and services (and apparently drifting the other direction), does not have a completely free and voluntary market.

The type of economy we have is a mixed economy, where business and government collude/collaborate, whether with good intention or ill, meddle in the voluntary and free exchange of individuals, creating a forced monopoly in an industry. A centralized entity has created a forced monopoly, in several industries, for example, education, health insurance, and banking (of which I will detail in further posts.) This is known as corporatism.

Socialism takes the idea of the mixed economy further, rather than just regulating and/or restricting voluntary and free exchange in the market, it attempts to take matters one step further creating centralized control of the market. Socialism attempts to plan not only the means but the ends of production.

"Capitalism has created its own gravediggers..."

Some economists claim that commodity production is inherent to human societies, or to take an anthropological term, that market based economic exchange is a cultural universal. This, of course, is false, and even a brief look at human history and pre-history indicates that for much of their time on this planet human beings (i.e., homo sapiens sapiens) have collectively or individually produced goods for their own consumption. Only recently has commodity production for the market been the dominant form of economic mode of existence. And this market was not a “natural” distribution mechanism either. So while capitalism has created the technological capabilities to produce enormous wealth, this economic relationship is still based on mass exploitation.

Within Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution, she indicates the three principal results of capitalist development which include (1) “the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to ruin”; (2) “the progressive socialization of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order”; and (3) “the increased organization and consciousness of the proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor of the coming revolution.” Essentially, as Marx argued, capitalism has created its own gravediggers.

So in short, scientific socialism (as opposed to utopian socialism, bourgeois socialism, etc.) is achievable through class struggle where the working class wrests political power from the capitalists who control the state. In gaining power to rationally organize society (i.e., planning the production and distribution of goods), people will also be free to participate in the running of society, not to mention pursue the creation of art, music, literature, etc. To gain a better understanding of revolutionary socialism, a reading of Karl Marx, Fredrich Engels, V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Antonio Gramsci’s writings and the history of revolutionary upheavals such as the Russian Revolution will be enormously rewarding.

The Principle of Liberty - Libertarianism and Free Exchange

A little over 230 years ago, the United States of America declared its independence from Great Britain, forming a union that protected the unalienable rights of the individual. An individual human being is sovereign over his/her body, extending to life, liberty and property. Individuals are free to act, granted that they are not initiating force or fraud against the life, liberty, or property of another human being. The US Federal Government was fairly libertarian in that the Constitution was written to restrain or restrict the actions of Governments will against individuals. The personal and economic liberties for voluntary exchange were protected.

However over time the rights of the individual and of the various States were usurped by the Federal Government. Laws now restrained and restricted the actions of individuals rather than the government. Individual rights of voluntary exchange were stricken towards coerced and mandated forms of exchange. Slowly, goods and services that were traditionally exchange voluntarily by freely associating individuals, garnered greater and greater control by the government: money, retirement, food supply, drugs, healthcare, taxes, education, etc...

Two factions emerged, modern day liberals and conservatives, aka Democrats and Republicans. Each, respectively, only supports half of the liberties we had during the founding and childhood of this country. Liberal rhetoric supports personal liberties. Conservatives rhetoric supports economic liberties. While politicians of both ilk talk the rhetoric of personal and economic liberties, their actions suggest otherwise: bigger government further restricting the liberties of the individual.

During the digression in the up and coming posts, I will further develop the libertarian and free exchange concept. I will also detail the violation of our inherent rights as individuals and provide methods of putting the pieces of liberty, supplanted by the factions of politicians, back together. I will provide support for why libertarianism and free exchange appears as the ideal choice in giving individuals the opportunity to live our lives the freest not only for one as the individual, but also with and for our fellow humans beings.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Principles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution:_A_Manifesto
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/mission/
http://mises.org/etexts/classical.pdf

Why socialism?

If you're at all in touch with reality and not in a self-sustaining delusion, you've noticed that the price of gas, food, and other goods have increased dramatically while the global economic system is undergoing a severe crisis. This, on top of declining wages, vanishing benefits, worsening working conditions, and a credit shortage, has resulted in a desperate global populace. For instance this past June closer to home, 3,000 people lined up outside Milwaukee's main welfare office when rumor spread that emergency food vouchers would be distributed to those in need when the center opened its doors on Monday morning. Monday morning came and went and these folks still are still in need of material assistance.

Since I'm on the topic of lines, just last week, hundreds of people stood in line outside of their local branch of Pasadena-based IndyMac Bancorp. to withdraw what they could of their savings, retirement or otherwise. What alarms me most is that bank runs have not been seen since the Great Depression! And more alarming may be the reports coming from the FDIC indicating that these runs are bound to increase as 90 others are on their list of "problem" banks.

So in the wealthiest nation on the planet, more and more people are going to bed hungry and malnourished, and across the globe, hundreds of millions of people are barely struggling to survive. And it comes down to the fact that working people can't afford to feed themselves nor their families. So after we begin to sift through the rhetoric coming from world leaders or cable television pundits or economists from elite universities, we should ask ourselves this question: what is really preventing us from feeding ourselves?

Some would say, there are just too many damn people on this planet. However this Hobbesian argument does not hold since "according to the FAO [United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization], with record grain harvests in 2007, there is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone--at least 1.5 times current demand. In fact, over the last 20 years, food production has risen steadily at over 2.0 percent a year, while the rate of population growth has dropped to 1.14 percent a year. Population is not outstripping food supply." Since it is the case that our present society has the technological capabilities to feed everyone one and a half times over, why does the dominant economic system deny the world's people the wealth of foodstuffs it creates?

In short, it is because capitalism fails to prioritize human need. Since food, as well as other goods, are treated as commodities bought and sold on a market, people who most need it can't afford it. And by capitalism I mean an economic system where firms are driven to increase profitability as they compete with each other for market share.

This post will be one of many that will hopefully win you to the argument that while capitalism has produced incredible wealth and prosperity for the few, it has also produced poverty, destitution, and misery for the many. So why socialism? Because the only way to rid the world of war, poverty, racism, sexism, and every other form of oppression and the only way to begin to seriously address the environmental meltdown taking place, workers much organize themselves to win political power to fundamentally change the economic basis of our society. This change does not come by electing new leaders, but by raising everyone up to become leaders and organizers. The society these worker/organizers will create thrives on rationally planning the economy where workers not only foster sustainable economic relationships but also ecological ones. To do so takes a long term class struggle, a democratic, concerted effort to take over workplaces and communities and attempt to solve the problems we face as workers (and the political and economic elites have utterly failed to address). Because as workers united, we cannot be defeated.


Here are some links to the occurrences I've mentioned above...

http://socialistworker.org/2008/06/26/desperate-in-milwaukee
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080718.RKOZA18/TPStory/Business
http://socialistworker.org/2008/05/23/can-whole-world-be-fed