Peter Hume,

Is it really so very amusing to you?

Your attitude is a "prime" example of the obscenity of globalised capitalism.

For you to hold up a dust-covered child working twelve hours a day in a hazardous environment as a "beneficiary" of globalised free trade, defies comprehension and is a withering testament to your warped humanity.
As was the case in the 18th century, unfettered industrial advancement usurped the role of household craft, transferring manufacture to urban factory environments - the people had little option but to follow. The same thing is taking place in the third world today. In countries like India, global corporations have moved in, impacting the livelihoods of the rural population and further propelling the shift to towns and cities.

You seem to think it's all a big joke - I would love to see you put to work in balloon factory - wonder how many BWAHAHAHAHA's we'd hear from you then.

(Unbelievable!)

> What a sad day it would be if the likes of Squeers, Grok or Grim
> ran the show politically and all this innovation was denied
> to the world, as they followed their ideology of envy.
>Posted by Yabby

What's sad is seeing the likes of Yabby wilfully taken in by this propaganda [Deleted for profanity], while billions are NOT served, world-wide -- even inside the U.S. for that matter. Remember I mentioned earlier about 'cherry picking' being one of the underhanded methods trotted out in 'debate' here (everywhere)? Well, this is a very good example of that.

Sienna:
> Grok, you say 350 words isn't enough. But in this whole thread you
> haven't even begun to justify your laughable position that public
> ownership of the means of production would make the masses better off
> - or Squeers that it would be better for the environment.

Then I guess you haven't been paying attention to your local 'Nitely Snooze' on the telly. And for that matter, I guess too that Reality hasn't quite caught up with you yet... But it will -- with not a marxist in sight at the time, either, I'll bet.

And '350 words' just means it would take longer. Not that I expect success in a forum such as this in any case: where close reasoning -- not to mention true facts -- is clearly not the main concern.

Sienna,

It's not about a "wage" - it's about a workplace abomination and capitalist exploitation. No-one should have to work in those conditions, especially in what amounts to slavery in the service of western excess.
Here we have children at one end of the trade spectrum, mucking about in a mire of chemicals so that children at the opulent end can enjoy decorations at their parties - slight ethical anomaly there - don't you think?

It suits the hysterical purposes of PH and co to denigrate "heretics" who take capitalism's name in vain. We are deemed bawling malcontents for not fawning to big business and defecating on the abused concept (joke) of human rights the way they do. PH and co are the humblest (meanest) of creatures in their slathering, uncomprehending zeal for a system that cannot but fail, destroying along the way the untold millions it gave a living to in exchange for any semblance of quality of. You are the ideologue, PH, benighted in an ideology in which you have everything invested, and so you must defend the indefensible. It's extraordinary that those who see plainly this fools' paradise, who must needs live within their means and husband their self-respect, these "realists" are subject to the ridicule of capitalism's ideologically enslaved minions.

I've already cited Hobsbawm, here's another famous historian, Emmanuel Wallerstein, writing in March this year:

"What has sustained the accumulation of capital since the 1970s has been a turn from seeking profits through productive efficiency to seeking them through financial manipulations, more correctly called speculation. The key mechanism has been the fostering of consumption via indebtedness. This has happened in every Kondratieff B-phase; the difference this time has been the scale. After the biggest A-phase expansion in history, there has followed the biggest speculative mania. Bubbles moved through the whole world-system—from the national debts of the Third World and socialist bloc in the 1970s to the junk bonds of large corporations in the 1980s, the consumer indebtedness of the 1990s and the us government indebtedness of the Bush era. The system has gone from bubble to bubble, and is currently trying to inflate yet another, with bank bailouts and the printing of dollars.

cont..

..cont

The downturn into which the world has fallen will continue now for some time, and will be quite deep. It will destroy the last remaining pillar of relative economic stability, the role of the US dollar as reserve currency for safeguarding wealth. As this happens, the main concern of every government in the world will be to avert uprisings of unemployed workers and the middle strata whose savings and pensions are disappearing. Governments are currently turning to protectionism and printing money as their first line of defence. Such measures may assuage momentarily the pain of ordinary people, but it is probable that they will make the situation even worse. We are entering systemic gridlock, from which exit will be extremely difficult. This will express itself in ever wilder fluctuations, which will make short-term predictions—both economic and political—virtually guesswork. This in turn will aggravate popular fears and the sense of alienation.

Some claim that the greatly improved relative economic position of Asia—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and to a lesser extent India—will allow a resurgence of capitalist enterprise, through a simple geographical shift of location. One more illusion! The relative rise of Asia is a reality, but one that undermines further the capitalist system by over-extending the distribution of surplus-value, thus reducing overall accumulation for individual capitals rather than increasing it. China’s expansion accelerates the structural profit squeeze of the capitalist world-economy".

Grok,

"As for the utility of it: tell me the utility of actively walking around in circles, when you are in fact lost in a forest... rather than sitting down instead and first attempting to figure out where you are; or at least which direction you should be headed in."

Besides the general statement that we should be heading toward communism, this sitting down and thinking is actually something that socialists have consistently failed to do. As I said in the article:

"With the addition of materialism to the dialectic for example, Marx and friends essentially told us that the way that we think is determined by the structure of our society. In other words, we will be selfish and greedy if we live in a capitalist society, and kind-hearted and benevolent if we live in a communist society.

Believing that our minds are currently corrupted by capitalism, therefore, and that as soon as capitalism is destroyed we will all want to move into mutually supportive communes together, this has led to the unfortunate tendency within socialist/communist circles to focus on revolution rather than on designing better systems of governance and economics."

Not true? Perhaps you can explain a few details for us then. What about the communist method for appointing government officials, or the communist interpretation of what drives inflation and how to manage that within the economy, or even whether communists believe in heavy specialization and free trade (or centralized distribution) or protectionism and local self-reliance.

This whole concept that we are incapable of designing better systems seems to me to be a smokescreen. Surely, 'we don't know the answers' would be a more useful contribution to the debate.