Comments by "BlackFlagsNRoses" (@blackflagsnroses6013) on "Ocasio-Cortez Brings Morality Back To Policy-Making In '60 Minutes' Interview" video.
-
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:
“I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic… [Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive… but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness.” – Letter to Coretta Scott, July 18, 1952.
“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…” – Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.
“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.” – Speech to the Negro American Labor Council, 1961.
“We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.”- Report to SCLC Staff, May 1967.
“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.” – Speech to SCLC Board, March 30, 1967.
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.” – Speech to his staff, 1966.
“[W]e are saying that something is wrong … with capitalism…. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.” – Speech to his staff, 1966.
“If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.” – Speech at Bishop Charles Mason Temple of the Church of God in Christ in support of the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike on March 18th, 1968, two weeks before he was assassinated.
Nothing has changed. We let it happen.
193
-
21
-
18
-
14
-
11
-
10
-
5
-
3
-
3
-
2
-
2
-
1
-
1
-
IronskullGM One delegates powers to the States. The other protects rights of citizens to life, liberty, and property which are not to be taking without due process of law. Meaning were the country to be lead by Socialists they would legally be able to declare private property as an affront to the people’s right to property. You see to Socialists private property is not the same as personal property. We’re not taking away personal belongings, we’re democratizing the means of production such as land, buildings, machines, etc... And frankly it doesn’t have to be done by declaration of law declaring private property against natural law, as the Earth’s resources are either unowned or commonly owned by the people that live, and giving privilege to individuals to own it is done by authority and force. Collectivized sectors could just arise and spread under guidance of Socialist organizations. Which is why our first goal is education of the masses towards a democratized economy.
Indeed as a LibSoc I support local and decentralized organization over the Marxist Statist approach. I’m no Marxist. FYI the Social Democrats were once synonymous with Democratic Socialism, a Marxist Democratic and parliamentary method of transitioning to a post-Capitalist system. But it’s clear they long abandoned their Marxist roots as they stopped being post-Capitalists content with reforms and regulations. Remaining Social Liberals not looking to reach a Socialist economy. This is the case of Social Democracy today.
“All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.” - Benjamin Franklin
1
-
1
-
IronskullGM Lol so says the Capitalist “double speak” person equating all Socialism to Marxist-Leninist State Capitalism. Please don’t pull that crap George Orwell was a Democratic Socialist, a real comrade.
Anyway again you may not have to close down business and give them to the workers. Just start a collectivized sector that’ll expand. Every year businesses close their doors allowing for new ones to replace them. Hence start a worker’s coop sector that can expand. Socialist organization should concern itself with education and changing the system from the local upward. This is what I always recommend them. As for large corporations why not use the German law that has worker’s voice in the board of directors depending on the numbers employed. Mondragon in Spain is the largest worker’s coop in the world, successful, and as big as any corporate business. You need to understand there are two strands of Socialism. The Statist kind which includes Marxist-Leninist authoritarianism, or Democratic Socialism closer to the other strand but still committed to government. Then there is the Libertarian strand. Could care less about government and look towards decentralized free associations of worker’s collectives ran democratically. In other words the Anarchist (anti-Statist, anti-Capitalist) branch.
Bitch all you want doesn’t change the fact that the most liberated societies have been these Libertarian (Anarchist) Socialist societies that rid themselves of hierarchical structures like State and classes for free associations of workers. I recommend “Homage to Catalonia” by Orwell so that you may grasp what kind of society we’re talking about. No Capitalist system can ever hope to achieve that kind of liberation. Capitalism needs the State to protect private property, to maintain the underclasses, to sustain the Capitalist ruling class, and like it or not to prevent market monopolies. Tyranny whether from the State or Capitalists is against freedom of the individual. The Classical Liberals fought against concentrations of wealth, power, and prestige. It’s no different today if you believe in liberation. This country has a history of Socialism. In Lincoln’s day the GOP had the support of Socialist groups. Their motto was “Those who work the mills, should own the mills!” Put down the Cold War propaganda and educate yourself.
1
-
1
-
1
-
IronskullGM sigh...
Mind explaining to me why Individualist Anarchists like Benjamin Tucker are Socialists, and why some support the Anarcho-Communism social organization? It’s because they see it as the perfect combination of individualist and collectivist interests. All anarchy is free societies of free individuals. In a Socialist economy the individual is encouraged to follow their own innate abilities and talents to their leisure. The individual isn’t made to sell their labor, work for hours for a boss, or be an employee. Social Anarchism and Individual Anarchism historically find common interests and grounds for Libertarian societies. Again if you don’t understand the history please STFU. Every Anarchist is for Socialism or Anarchist Markets, not one for Capitalism. Like Henry George we understand means of production are for society not a privileged Capitalist class. Hence why some Socialists would allow private property for recompense to the society, exactly what Georgians push for.
Socialism is variant in schools of thought, from Libertarianism to Statist. It’s a post-Capitalist socioeconomic system that advocates a classless society in which the means of production are socially owned.
These ideas stem from the Enlightenment. Adam Smith and David Ricardo influences Socialist thought. Jean-Jacques Rousseau advocated worker’s coops. As for your little Kropotkin rant... he was an Anarchist not Marxist. He didn’t push for a State control method, he advocates abolishment of all hierarchies.
The Marxist Revolutionaries certainly spilled blood. No different than Classical Liberals or many others in history. Hell you also conveniently leave out Capitalism’s murder history. From imperialism, colonization, slavery, forcing markets upon colonized peoples, the liberal revolutions etc...
Funny how Capitalists supported Fascists and the Socialists supported the Liberal Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Or that Fascist Germany and Italy persecuted Socialists and Marxists and supported the Capitalist classes. Again educate yourself. Capitalism is Social Darwinian sociopathic avarice. Cute you claimed Socialism as Social Darwinist. Is that why the Social Darwinian Nazis preferred Capitalism? Survival of the Fittest. "Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization." — Peter Kropotkin
You are really clueless.
1
-
IronskullGM sigh... Anarchist society isn’t about tribalisms. People have a Socialist worldview, or one that advocates communalism and a larger decentralized federal network for collaborative efforts and needs of the community. Why the fuck would the scientist syndicate want world domination, if they adhere to no hierarchies and already are free to do their work. Capitalism is about greed, Socialism is for the individuals talents and abilities to flourish for their and the communities good. Yes Anarchism looks toward global community free of nation-states. It is worker’s solidarity. Never would deny that. But not all are revolutionaries of immediate action. Take Noam Chomsky the old man is an Anarchist that participated in protests but never hurt a fly through violent demonstration. It depends on school of thought.
The Fascist ideal of Socialism had nothing to do with class conflict and social ownership, or even worker’s movements. Hitler made clear his despise of Marxist and Socialist movements. According to Fascists Socialism should be an ideology of class collaboration and the people working towards the State’s interests. There are many quotes in Mein Kampf alone to understand this. The world “privatization” was literally coined to describe the Nazis economic policy. In which they privatized banks and industries. Again know the history or STFU! Corporatism is the most common form of Capitalism. Capitalists and the State are allied. Capitalism would collapse without the State.
And no moron I don’t advocate murder of the rich. Just fucking educate the masses. The Catalonians didn’t got their Stateless society through war they spent decades studying Anarchist thought and before and during the Civil War took their ideology towards applicable methods. Anarcho-Syndicalism. Yet Franco the Fascist aided by Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin won the war and defeated the Anarchist, Socialists, and Liberals.
You’re just having a hard time letting go preconceived notions of Socialism. All your life you probably never heard of Socialism before Marx, of Anarchist societies, of Libertarian Socialism. You must think all Socialism is Marxist-Leninist and therefore have a very Statist negative view of it. Too bad democratization of the economy and libertarian strands flew over your head.
Now you can’t accept Libertarian Socialists created classless, and liberated societies the likes that Capitalism never achieved. Their economy thrived, they had a sense of freedom and community not seen in liberal democracies. “No gods, no masters.” This is all recorded in George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia.”
You moron the Capitalist class leach off the worker’s productivity. They inherit wealth and accumulate it while worker’s settle for wages. What a dumb fuck. Every worker has value unlike the rich CEOs that don’t actually do the work. If you work it you should own it it’s that simple.
1
-
IronskullGM I’ll just bombard your ass with these facts and then I’m out. You’re too narrow minded to believe anything but Capitalist propaganda.
In a right-libertarian or "anarcho"-capitalist society, freedom is considered to be a product of property. As Murray Rothbard puts it, "the libertarian defines the concept of 'freedom' or 'liberty'. . .[as a] condition in which a person's ownership rights in his body and his legitimate material property rights are not invaded, are not aggressed against. . . . Freedom and unrestricted property rights go hand in hand."
This definition has some problems, however. In such a society, one cannot (legitimately) do anything with or on another's property if the owner prohibits it. This means that an individual's only guaranteed freedom is determined by the amount of property that he or she owns. This has the consequence that someone with no property has no guaranteed freedom at all (beyond, of course, the freedom not to be murdered or otherwise harmed by the deliberate acts of others). In other words, a distribution of property is a distribution of freedom, as the right-libertarians themselves define it. It strikes anarchists as strange that an ideology that claims to be committed to promoting freedom entails the conclusion that some people should be more free than others. However, this is the logical implication of their view, which raises a serious doubt as to whether laissez faire capitalists are actually interested in freedom.
Looking at Rothbard's definition of "liberty" quoted above, we can see that freedom is actually no longer considered to be a fundamental, independent concept. Instead, freedom is a derivative of something more fundamental, namely the "legitimate rights" of an individual, which are identified as property rights. In other words, given that "anarcho"-capitalists and right libertarians in general consider the right to property as "absolute," it follows that freedom and property become one and the same.
Another important implication of this "liberty as property" concept is that it produces a strangely alienated concept of freedom. Liberty, as we noted, is no longer considered absolute but a derivative of property -- which has the important consequence that you can "sell" your liberty and still be considered free by the ideology. This concept of liberty (namely "liberty as property") is usually termed "self-ownership." But, to state the obvious, I do not "own" myself, as if were an object somehow separable from my subjectivity -- I am myself. However, the concept of "self-ownership" is handy for justifying various forms of domination and oppression -- for by agreeing (usually under the force of circumstances, we must note) to certain contracts, an individual can "sell" (or rent out) themselves to others (for example, when workers sell their labour power to capitalists on the "free market"). In effect, "self-ownership" becomes the means of justifying treating people as objects -- ironically, the very thing the concept was created to stop! As L. Susan Brown notes, "at the moment an individual 'sells' labour power to another, he/she loses self-determination and instead is treated as a subjectless instrument for the fulfilment of another's will." [The Politics of Individualism]
1
-
IronskullGM and so Capitalism will never be freedom. It relies on government intervention to even be sustainable, but ultimately it is an antiquated Social Darwinian system. Anarchists are socialists or for Anarchist Markets, not one is Capitalist. Tyranny whether by government or private owner class is opposed to liberty. And so Anarchists organize society in decentralized federations of free associations. Socialist economies of worker’s ownership, worker’s councils, cooperatives, democratized workplace, self-management, recall etc... Free societies of free individuals in worker’s solidarity. Societies like Anarcho-Syndicalist Catalonia were more liberated than any Capitalist one could ever hope to be. We’re anti-Authority, anti-Statist, and anti-Capitalist. But in the meantime we’ll do anything to alleviate the working class from their owner class exploiters. The more Social Democratic the less concentrated wealth. Ultimately Capitalists support the State. As they did with Franco, Hitler, Pinochet, Mussolini etc... Free Market Capitalism is a fantasy. No system of such concentration of prestige, wealth, and power is sustainable without a government to regulate it. Without a State to protect the Capitalist ruling class. Workers don’t look for employers to work for a salary because they are free to, otherwise they’ll starve and be homeless. They do it cause they have to.
1
-
IronskullGM Capitalism is presented as a “natural” system, formed a bit like mountains or land masses by forces beyond human control, that it is an economic system ultimately resulting from human nature. However it was not established by “natural forces” but by intense and massive violence across the globe. First in the “advanced” countries, enclosures drove self-sufficient peasants from communal land into the cities to work in factories. Any resistance was crushed. People who resisted the imposition of wage labour were subjected to vagabond laws and imprisonment, torture, deportation or execution. In England under the reign of Henry VIII alone 72,000 people were executed for vagabondage.
Later capitalism was spread by invasion and conquest by Western imperialist powers around the globe. Whole civilisations were brutally destroyed with communities driven from their land into waged work. The only countries that avoided conquest were those—like Japan—which adopted capitalism on their own in order to compete with the other imperial powers. Everywhere capitalism developed, peasants and early workers resisted, but were eventually overcome by mass terror and violence.
Capitalism did not arise by a set of natural laws which stem from human nature: it was spread by the organised violence of the elite. The concept of private property of land and means of production might seem now like the natural state of things, however we should remember it is a man-made concept enforced by conquest. Similarly, the existence of a class of people with nothing to sell but their labour power is not something which has always been the case—common land shared by all was seized by force, and the dispossessed forced to work for a wage under the threat of starvation or even execution. As capital expanded, it created a global working class consisting of the majority of the world’s population whom it exploits but also depends on.
1
-
IronskullGM internet and computers come from decades of government-military R&D public financed research. Only after all the risks and developments in college campuses were individuals able to privatize the tech. And the public has the privilege of purchasing PC’s from these billion dollar worth companies. Shame the computer scientists that developed the innovations in tech never saw the rewards of the Jobs and Gates of the world. Same thing happening within campuses in the medical field today.
Profit doesn’t motivate innovation, just motivates profit. Innovation is driven by proper allocation of resources towards people with talents and abilities in their fields. People having the freedom to follow their skills and passions, and having proper resources that’s how you innovate. Given that innovations have occurred in every period in history. Competition for profits motivates efficiency and cheaper methods, not leaps in the sciences.
"I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society."
Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?, 1949
1