Generally, right-libertarians–as opposed to the “anarcho”-capitalists, whose brains are in outer space–acknowledge the need for at least some state involvement, to the extent that it protects private property, but they’ll allow for no more than that. It sounds good on paper, but when it’s actually implemented, something quite different happens… The market fundamentalists’ notion of “free market” capitalism, as opposed to a state-planned economy, is more of an idealized abstraction than an actually existing thing. One cannot have capitalism without a centralized state to protect private property, and what does a government do, if it doesn’t make regulations and collect tax revenue to function as it needs to do? Supposedly, Democrats like the “socialist” Obama had something to do with this putting of capitalism into a “communist” straitjacket.Īctually, there is no one objective definition of the “free market,” Ha-Joon Chang observed. Of course, the free market fundamentalists like to guffaw at the labelling of the US as capitalistic in any sense, especially “free market” capitalist, since the mere existence of a government, with its taxes and regulations, apparently precludes any possibility of there being an American free market. If this is true, though, then how did China (a political system of Socialism with Chinese characteristics, or one of state capitalism, a kind of arrested NEP development?) grow into one of the strongest economies in the world, with its state-planned economy? Similarly, the countries in Europe, including those of the Nordic Model, largely with social democratic market economies, showed larger growth in 2007 than did the more free-market-oriented US during that time (see Chang, pages 104-105). The state, they claim, is like a ball and chain, stifling economic development with its taxes and pesky regulations. Right-libertarian ideologues like to claim that unregulated capitalism, by freeing business owners of taxation, allows them to reinvest, create jobs, and grow the economy. Those relatively good times shifted counter-clockwise–that is, we’ve been going backwards on the counterrevolutionary clock I call the ouroboros of capital (pardon the mixed metaphor), starting in the mid-70s and continuing to the present day. All things flow, like the waves of the ocean. ![]() This was done merely to appease the working class and to stave off communist revolutions in the First World, of course, but for what it was worth, it was a damn sight better than the neoliberal cesspool we’re stuck in today, ruled by narcissists and psychopaths. The Cuban Revolution, handcuffed as the island was and has been by the US embargo, transformed a Third World dictatorship of the bourgeoisie into one of the proletariat, providing near-universal housing and generally among the lowest of unemployment rates, with free education, and the best healthcare system in the developing world.Įven in the capitalist West, left-leaning concessions were made, providing stronger unions, better wages, and higher taxes for the rich. ![]() ![]() The Soviet Union, though flawed in general and weakened by Khrushchev, continued to be an effective counterweight to imperialism, giving aid to national liberation movements in the Third World. Still, in spite of these many problems, it can be reasonably argued that there was much reason for hope back then, hope that the world would one day be liberated from the oppression of capitalism and imperialism. These are but a few examples of all the evil that occurred from 1945-1973. ![]() Consider the merciless bombing of North Korea in the early Fifties the constant fear of nuclear war the Gulf of Tonkin lie that gave the US the excuse needed to engage more directly in the Vietnam War the killing of 500,000-1,000,000+ Indonesians in an anti-communist purge to replace Sukarno with Suharto and Kissinger’s idea for the bombing of Cambodia. There are, of course, many others.Ĭonsider the many CIA-aided coups of left-leaning governments over the years, including those of Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. The catastrophic creation of the state of Palestinian oppression and suffering (opposed by many Jews , and supported by many non-Jews), aided in part by an otherwise normally anti-Zionist USSR that–as soon as they realized Israel wasn’t going to be socialist–quickly repented and showed firm solidarity with the Arab people, is one example of the bad things that happened then. The years between the end of World War II and the economic crises of the 1970s were, needless to say, far from ideal.
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