I read the article Poirot. Your writer makes some valid points,
then totally screws up on others. All emotion and a lack
of facts, is not going to do it, in the final analysis.

So lets first look at the big picture. It cannot be denied,
that globalistation has dragged hundreds of millions of
Indians and Chinese out of poverty. All the figures that
I have seen, show that they simply don't starve anymore,
as they used to.

Yes indeed, the Indian population used to be far more
sustainable. The West screwed up bigtime. We introduced
vaccines, we introduced antibiotics etc. Yet we ignored
the booming population that this would create and our
religious fanatics made sure that family planning would
not become commonly available. The result - unsustainable
population growth.

Indian agriculture has been the first to suffer from this.
Its all very easy to blame globalisation, but the fact remains
that rural populations have grown dramatically and with each
generation, land per family is reduced. You can't keep
dividing these plots in half each generation, many "farms" in India
are little bigger then a reasonble garden plot. So India
faces a similar problem as Rwanda faced.

I am the first to support permaculture as a way for the third
world to feed itself. If farmers can make a living that way,
good on them. But those tens of millions who have moved to
the cities, need to be fed too. The price of food matters to
them. Are you suggesting that the slum dwellers pay ever more
for food, so that those rural plots can become ever smaller?

They tried that in Europe. If you owned 8 cows, you simply farmed
the taxpayer for a living. It was a disaster. I really don't
think that this will solve India's problems.

> You seem to be advocating what Karl Popper called piecemeal social
> engineering. Try a change. If it works for the better continue in
> that direction. If it doesn't scrap it and try something different.
> That seems to me more reasonble than a grand ideological vision
> leading to an apotheosis. Piecemeal social engineering is the way
> evolution works. Changes must be advantageous every step of the way.

And here we find a clue to one aspect of the failure of bourgeois intellect (as epitomized in the work of the AFAIC arrogant and obtuse Herr Doktor Popper): the inability/unwillingness to grasp (at least in this context, conveniently) the very salient fact that humans -- as being *conscious actors* in the World: and not mere dumb, brute forces of Nature (my apologies to Pachamama) -- operate on a VERY different set of principles (emergent natural "laws") than do, say, droughts and rock-slides, or even epidemics and species' sexual selection dynamics. And it is this higher-order organization of human society's interactions with its own natural environment which very much indeed does set us apart from the other animals: to the extent that we really *can* 'master' what heretofore have been blind, brute 'forces of Nature'. Like even 'evolution by natural selection' -- viz. even Darwin's stressing of humanity's ability to transform this process in new qualitative ways thru animal husbandry, etc.

> You don't justify atrocities to produce eventual pie in the sky.

Tell that to the anglo-american imperialists and their stooge "allies", with their present colonial aggressions in Asia, Afrika and the Americas -- not to mention all their recent post-war atrocities, the murder victims numbering in the MILLIONS. One-sided attribution of atrocities to somehow being a "communist" thing will get you exactly nowhere, I ASSURE you. Unless, of course, your intention is simply to obfuscate any intelligent dialog for the duration, as a form of ideological warfare/'full spectrum dominance'... as not a few here seem to be attempting in their way, even subconsciously.

> What I'm saying...Sienna, is that people like you always excuse
> western exploitation on the spurious grounds that if those in
> third world weren't slogging away for us in some God-forsaken hole
> of an enterprise, that they would be starving.
> Perhaps if the West stopped stomping around the globe disrupting
> indigenous systems and "capturing markets" those people could exist
> quite happily.

The utter one-sidedness of these people is simply amazing, isn't it? If we could only harness this wilfull, selective blindness as a source of energy (hot air), the energy crisis would be immediately solved!

> I am an advocate of vigorous social reform. In this I am fighting
> to prevent social breakdown leading to or through chaos.

It's already been explained to you (if perhaps not yet 'proven') that ALL efforts at reforming capitalism WILL founder on the hard and irresistible fact of inexorable logic: that the *imperative* of capital to expand and accumulate itself (at an ever-faster pace, to boot) WILL corrode and undermine ALL attempts at defying this de facto 'Law of [capitalist] nature'. The ONLY solution, in fact, is to *transcend* this unyielding logic with a yet _higher_ one... And guess what that is.

So please do not continue beating your head against this irresistible cliff face simply because that is what all other similarly-deluded reformists have been doing (actually since the neolithic, and the rise of surpluses -- and thus of expropriating classes). Reforms have their uses, sure; but only the context of more _fundamental_ change. Otherwise they become mere pipedreams.

> The idea of destroying what we have got in the hope that we will
> be able to build it better later is in my opinion what led us to
> Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot.

Besides that you consistently and disingenuously misrepresent the method and the goals of socialism, I will state AGAIN that Stalin and other stalinists -- like Mao; and certainly pseudo-stalinoids like Pol Pot and the korean Kims -- were/are *national* independence revolutionaries, in poor countries starting out with an overwhelming peasant, agrarian economic base: and thus absolutely not a basis upon which to build real socialism. These forces, in fact, represent what we call the 'bourgeois nationalist/democratic revolution' against the preceding, essentially feudal and colonial/comprador forms of social organization. Each one has been different, both in course and in outcome, for various unique historical reasons -- but none have been truly socialist revolutions.

> And the concept is unfortunaltely built into Marxist thought.

No it's not -- and to persist in this delusion means that you will certainly never contribute anything of much value to the general intellectual history of Humanity.

Dear Sienna (PH?),
First, it's unhelpful to keep spitting "socialist"; name calling is unproductive.
Capitalism "is" based on exploitation, no?
There is nothing sinister in my "other services"; I mean social infrastructure generally. Our system is based on private/public apartheid. Why should a rich kid receive superior education/healthcare?
<Why not complete equality in terms of everything?>
I agree in terms of what a society provides for its citizens; that would allow the "true" distinctiveness of individuals to shine out on a level playing field. Equally provided for according to an equitable social contract, each one of us could be motivated by and distinguish ourselves for our natural/personal accomplishments. These are not "impediments", but the strengths of socialism.
I was pointing out to GH that what he is advocating is, essentially, communism.

<What do you say to the argument that economic calculation is not possible under public ownership of the means of production?>
Nonsense.

<Do you genuinely think that [socialising the means of production] would be viable in practice? In your opinion would mass starvation result? Or not? Seriously.>
Yes, it "could" be viable. Democratic freedoms evolved (differently in different countries), so too could a system based on material equality. Mass starvation/privation is already occurring under and because of capitalism. A sudden change to socialism would of course be disruptive and a transitional period that preserved essential services would be optimum.
Do you suppose when the capitalist bubble finally bursts there will be less disruption/starvation?

<Do you genuinely think that the economic and political problems faced by the socialist states in the 20th century were all down to historical contingencies, no reflection on the merit of socialist economic theory?>
Yes and no. Breakaway socialist states were in a hostile environment and never had an opportunity for healthy development. Such another attempt, to be successful, would have to be unmolested and unintimidated, i.e. more or less global. I think such a transition is extremely unlikely, however, in the prevailing context. There will more likely be a war of economic attrition (already underway) and (this time) a consummated nuclear stand-off.
cont..

..cont.

Hopefully the survivors will have learned something and create a just and sustainable human culture.

The closed system problem, as I hinted above, demands we "must needs live within [our] means and husband [our] self-respect". In other words we should not devote our lives slavishly to any economic rubric, but adapt as circumstances dictate and live sustainably; symbiotically with, rather than at variance, with natural systems. At present human society has all the self-governance of a mouse plague.

<If capitalism is drastically unsustainable [do you deny it?], then why will the reduction in living standards not have to be drastic?>

The reduction would only be drastic in wealthy countries. A rise of living standards could be just as drastic for over half the planet.

BTW, you are yet to mount a defence of the charges brought against capitalism?

GH: <I am an advocate of vigorous social reform. In this I am fighting to prevent social breakdown leading to or through chaos. The idea of destroying what we have got in the hope that we will be able to build it better later is in my opinion what led us to Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot. And the concept is unfortunaltely built into Marxist thought.>

Dear Gilbert Holmes,
I'm all for that! And supposing capitalism could be reformed along the lines you suggest (though what your talking about is socialism by stealth), how do you convince the bourgeoisie (let alone the true capitalists) to agree to such reforms. How do you turn pie in the sky into reality? Even after the GFC, corporate profits, executive salaries and overall wage-disparity continue to rise to ever more obscene levels. Governments meanwhile are dumped on the mere prospect of tax-hikes. How do you shift bourgeois hegemony to your way of thinking?
Sorry, but all you're offering is syllogistic rather than dialectical thought.

Dear davidf,
you appear to be on the same wavelength. Marx's dialectical thought was based almost entirely a critique of capitalism; which, btw, is showing no signs of "advantageous [changes] every step of the way", quite the reverse.

Bravo Poirot!