- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Some thoughts

Posted by: Samuel Day Fassbinder ( Citizens for Mustard Greens, USA ) on November 28, 1997 at 10:03:48:

In Reply to: the Multi-tendency posted by GERARD, ALSO A CITIZEN on November 27, 1997 at 13:33:34:


: Abolish private property (With the exception of things like your T-shirt or whatever)

You're not going to do this with any government fiat abolishing property. To understand why, it is important to understand what property is. Blackstone defined property as being an absolute power over things, like the absolute power granted to the monarchy of Louis XIV of France. Government, today, awards property rights to the individual, i.e. private property. It will also be important to understand the rule of the apparatchiki in Soviet society. Perhaps the Soviet Union abolished private property, but most of the power over things was still reserved to the apparatchiki, by government fiat. If this hadn't happened, Russia's reversion to capitalism in the early 1990s would not have been possible. It is the idea that you have a central power, government, unilaterally alloting the power over things to individual people, that needs to be abolished. As far as I know, the Soviet Union did not succeed in abolishing money, either, and the whole matter at hand in all volumes of Marx's CAPITAL is the pernicious nature of money.

To really abolish property, we will have to abolish all forms of government and develop a way of sharing things "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." And everyone will have to be part of it.

: Internalise trade(preventing expansion, downsizing and 3rd world exploitation)

Think carefully. If we have no private property, will we still call it "trade"? This concern applies to the other suggestions below.

: Work towards abolish of brand names and consumerism (through stigmatisation, and the development of one brand programs e.g. you only real need one washing powder)
: POPULARISATION OF SOCIALISM AND DESTRUCTION OF APATHY (education of the sheep thinkers)
: Expand and make efficient a public sector until it replaces the private.National Health Service and Public Transport.Nationalise fast food.
: Extend citizenship to encourage participative democracy and POWER TO THE PEOPLE, transforming the state into an administrative body.

I'm not sure that intermediate systems between capitalism and socialism will look like Swedish government, which is what it looks like you're describing, here. An intermediate system might look more like an anarcho-syndicalist situation, where the power over things is secured by consensually- or democratically-run communes of people. This sort of situation may be made possible 30 years or so from now, when the ecological crisis created by the capitalist system is bound to hit.

: Address environmental concerns and loegalisation is controlled substances.

The whole problem of "controlled substances" has been manufactured by imperialist governments. It started with the British, with the Opium Wars, and it continues today with the drug-dealing activities of the CIA. When the people get control over their governments' foreign policy apparatuses, the international cartels, the mafias, and the corporations, the whole problem with "controlled substances" will fade away with the vigorous promotion of 12-step programs.


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