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I said that Capitalism also murdered millions of its dissidents. You said that you wanted examples. I posted them.
It is up to you if you want to believe what the CIA and other government agencies have declassified. If the CIA was not involved in this, why keep lists and photographs of people captured, tortured and killed? The answer is that those people who did the killing in other countries were answerable to their superiors and as such were required to report their activities. If the American government was paying them to work, then they had to report on their progress, and that is why those documents exist.
When the CIA did these things, it was acting out of two motivating forces: ideology and fear. During the Cold War capitalist countries feared that communism was advancing at an ever grate rate. That fear, combined with a capitalist ideology, led the major western superpowers to do things that otherwise they would have considered undesirable.
You told me that "the CIA isn't capitalism". The question is, does it represent its ideology? If the CIA (and other western intelligence agencies) is not there to protect free enterprise, then why attack communism so forcefully? Why topple democratically elected governments and set up fascist dictatorships in their place? The answer is that the CIA is there to safeguard American political and economic interests. What are American economic interests if not the interests of capitalism itself?
> 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State, etc.
According tot his number, I guess the Soviet Union killed 1 of every 3 of its citizens. Since they were a brutal, despotic, totalitarian state then it was OK for capitalism to kill all those communists.
> It's a far far different thing to get involved with another country to bring about political change, > it's another to systematically murder millions upon millions of one's own citizens.
That's exactly what communists used to say about capitalist countries. "Capitalist countries kill many and exploit many, blah blah blah". It smells of just an empty excuse. Is your idea of political change is supporting fascist dictatorships? Fascism and dictatorship in the name of democracy. Isn't that a contradiction?
> You've only shown how the US via the CIA (and likely the military at times) has involved itself > with one government faction over another. Both factions were killing their own people.
Yes, the capitalist faction and the communist faction killing each other. The CIA just chose to ally itself with the capitalist faction. At this point I can say: "Capitalism doesn't kill people. People kill people." "Communism doesn't kill people. People kill people." Ideology has one function. It justifies human actions.
> Capitalism is an economic system that vastly differs from all others. It's not really a system > at all but a lack of a system.
Really? I guess the Federal Reserve and the banking system are not part of capitalism. Neither is the printing and control of supply of money. Free trade agreements are not part of it. Neither ar all the legal structures that regulate economic exchange, and the government agencies that draft and enforce that legislation. I think that you have to make a distinction between theoretical ideas of free enterprise, and the practical nature of the economic system. Capitalism IS a an economic system. Any social studies textbook will tell you that.
> In communism, people are forced to work for the State for the good of the State > (and in extension, the good of the people). In Capitalism, people are free from the > force of others. Capitalism itself doesn't force anything.
People are forced not by the state, but by poverty. That is how capitalism operates. Do you think all those people who work in factories in developing countries really want to earn a pittance to make cheap goods for western consumption? Those people work in those low paying jobs because they are poor and they have no choice. And when those people get fed up with it and decide that they want social change, what do the governments in those countries do? They oppress them so that they will keep working for a pittance. In the meantime who makes the profit? Capitalist do, of course. In Capitalism people are forced by their poverty to work for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Do you doubt this? How did the likes of Walmart get so rich? I guess they don't produce any of their products in developing countries.
> Communism OTOH, survives (when it does) at the end of a gun.
When the CIA was giving money and weapons to fascists, wasn't capitalism surviving at the end of a gun too?
> a simplistic conclusion heavily based on your a priori judgment
I can say exactly the same thing about your conclusions. Of course, I grew up in one of those countries with capitalist fascist dictatorships. I was six years old when my fahter was murdered in front of me, and 14 when my uncle was kidnapped by the military and disappeared. I guess my a priory jusdegement must be based on having see first hand the atrocities that were commited to keep capitalism alive.
(kaŝi) Vi povas sendi mesaĝon al viaj amikoj per unu sola klako: aldonu ilin al via amiko-listo kaj poste klaku la etan koverton apud ilia nomo. (pauloaguia) (Montri ĉiujn konsilojn)