Prytulak stammers: A gun without a bullet is a toy. An ideology, a political system, a set of ethics, without the power to push it down peopleÆs throats, is a word-play, a fiction, a fantasy, or just simply an entertainment. All ideas, all religious or secular ideologies, and all systems which end with the suffix æ-ismÆ fall into this category.My response: Then why are you shoving your "there are no alternatives to capitalism" propaganda down our throats? Or is your message meaningless by your own standards?
Prytulak then suggests: The debate about "Capitalism and Alternatives" poses the following question: What games should we play? What ideas should we amuse ourselves with? The answer is obvious: we should be free to play with all of them and invent even more.
SDF responds: Then Prytulak should free those enslaved to the capitalist system, so they can play other games than wage slavery. He should give them labor rights. Otherwise his "we" is nothing more than the pompous "we" of "we elites who decide world corporate policy while others are trapped in capitalism." He should free people FROM capitalism.
Prytulak then expounds: However, the situation changes dramatically when we ask ourselves: Which of those constructs should we force down peopleÆs throats? The answer, of course, is : "None of them!"
SDF then clears his throat of all that Prytulak is shoving down it -- people, young people who are not granted rights, are forced to be tools of capitalism every day, and he knows it -- as an educator, he is complicit with the process itself.
Prytulak then accuses: Simon Kongshoj described Communism as: "Not just a political system, but a complete philosophy, with a set of ethics ( e.g. a necessity ethics[?]), a socio-economic theory and a metaphysical theory (materialism). To ram this mouthful into unreceptive skulls of the unsuspecting populace would require a dictatorship on the scale of the now defunct Soviet Union, with cadres of political komissars, secret police, informers, political rallies, cangaroo courts, summary executions, public confessions, forced labour camps, etc.
SDF explains: Kongshoj is merely using his right-of-free-speech, a right won against the capitalists, to express the theory of a political system, a philosophy, ethics, etc.
Prytulak then regales us with: I do not want to imply that it is only indoctrination with Communism which requires violent means under a dictatorship. Socialism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, et al. could also not get very far without bloodshed. It suffices in this connection to recall the Christian Crusades, Grand Inquisition and the present-day events in Algiers.
SDF explains: It is because Prytulak's imagination is confined to the past that socialism is grouped in with millenia-old religions. Prytulak should try to think as a futurist. It would open his mind.
Prytulak explains: I do not view æcapitalismÆ as an ideological, religious, or political system. It is rather equivalent with freedom. What is so nice about it is the fact that it is not a philosophy. Its ethic is simple: buy what you want and sell that which other people want to buy. Capitalism leaves you in peace. It does not creep under your skin or between your bed sheets. It does not try to indoctrinate you with some weird ideas; it does not try to make you worship this or that deity, to love anything or anybody, to wear a constant grin on your face to prove that you are happy, to be more greedy, or less so, etc. It gives no hoot about womanÆs hair showing from under her scarf or whether the male assumes a missionary position in his amorous advances.
SDF counters: Capitalism begun by expropriating the resources of the commons from the common people, and then selling it back to the common people in exchange for their rights. Capitalism is synonymous with wage slavery and corporate complicity with government against the people, not freedom. Socialism was conceived as an advance in freedom, the freedom of the masses of humanity to dream of something better than slavery to a production process, of the freedom of people to create their own lives rather than being obsessed with material wants. Capitalism is an ideology, all right, and Prytulak's praise of it and his inability to imagine anything outside of it marks him as one of its adherents. And it's a system, too! Go tell Alan Greenspan and Bill Clinton and the Trilateral Commission and the OECD it isn't!
Admittedly, alternatives to capitalism on a large scale will have to wait until the eco-crisis, because people at present are too comfortable or disempowered with capitalism to do anything about it.
None.
