Well, you've surprised me, NewGuy, I really wasn't expecting a response on this one.
NewGuy wrote:Well only someone from Europe, or some ultra-liberal fool from the US would seriosly present state control over the markets as being a form of capitalism. It goes against the long standing definition of what capitalism real is. Now I know some idiot (or to use your word "loon") created the concept of "state capitalism" in the early 1900s, but that doesn't mean he was right, or that the concept is a good concept.
Your argument, when it is extracted from all the hot air surrounding it, seems to come down to this:
You understand the definition of what capitalism really is,
I don’t, and anyone who disagrees with you is either a ‘fool’, an ‘idiot’ or a ‘European’.
Hmm. OK.
First of all, your historical understanding is confused. The use of the term 'capitalism' to describe only free-market capitalism and of 'socialism' to describe state-capitalism is relatively recent, not 'long-term'.
As I posted elsewhere, capitalism is not defined by the existence of a free market. The free market existed long before capitalism and is not central to its working.
The unique feature of
capitalism which defines it and which distinguishes it from all other previous forms of economic organisation is the process of capital accumulation and the corresponding employment of wage labour by which this is achieved. (Since you are interested in definitions, this central characteristic - the accumulation of capital - is what gives
capitalism its name.)
State institutions can accumulate capital in the same way as an entrepreneur or a joint stock company. Private companies can accumulate capital whether they are regulated or not. Denying the term '
capitalism' to any society that accumulates
capital is just doctrinal special pleading on the part of the twentieth-century proponents of free-trade.
Similarly
‘socialism’ if it means anything at all, refers to a working-class ideology and political programme. To deny that is to deny its entire history. Many governments with no working-class agenda have nationalised industries and regulated markets on the grounds that these measures will benefit their economies. Calling their actions
‘socialist’ therefore makes no sense whatsoever.
‘Socialism’ had an established and specific meaning among the working class long before governments began to regulate capitalism in a co-ordinated way and long before right-wing/libertarian organisations appropriated it to describe those bits of capitalism they didn’t like.
NewGuy wrote:BTW, care to guess in what country the term "state capitalism" originated?
No need to guess, NG. It first appeared in Western Europe in the late nineteenth century - not the early 1900s as you suppose. It had a wide currency and was used to distinguish socialism, which is based on the social ownership of the means of production by the whole community following the abolition of the state, from the totally distinct policy of ownership of the means of production by the capitalist state itself.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, Lenin (
) published a series of works which, among other things, acknowledged that since capitalism was only poorly developed in Russia, socialism was not immediately possible. The task of a ‘revolutionary party’ in his view, would therefore be to gain control of the Russian state and use it to rapidly develop capitalism, putting emphasis on the production of capital goods not consumer items. The kind of economic system he aimed at and worked for after the 1917 Bolshevik coup (as it is now more accurately named) he called - yep - ‘
state capitalism.’
NewGuy wrote:Who said free market capitalism could or should deliver uninterrupted growth. Uninterrupted growth is a utopian pipe dream that is not possible.
Then we can agree that capitalism is inefficient in delivering the goods, since who in the capitalist world would not want uninterrupted growth if they could get it.
NewGuy wrote:Free markets (ala Adam Smith's "invisible hand" theory) have been better at providing growth.
Pull the other one, NG. This is just one more tired old economic dogma tied up in a bow. Read up your history of nineteenth-century, free-trade Britain. Rarely has there been a time when government intervention was more negligible or markets less regulated. Yet the nineteenth-century produced some of the worst slumps and social misery in the whole of capitalism’s sorry history.
But you don’t need to go that far back. Since the 1950s trade barriers have been increasingly abolished or significantly reduced world wide, limitations on capital flow have been removed, currencies now receive market valuations, state enterprises have been privatised and international markets have become progressively deregulated
According to free-market theory we should be living in a much more stable, growth-oriented world. And yet the international boom/slump cycle has continued unabated; there have been major crises in Mexico, Asia, Russia and elsewhere. We’ve seen the Japanese economic meltdown, the crisis in long-term capital management, and we have had a major financial bubble roughly every ten years including the latest banking crisis. And of course, economic wars and famine in the midst of plenty are everywhere. What joy!
The free-marketeers had a perfect opportunity to prove themselves in post-Soviet Russia. With the blessing of the IMF, their economists waltzed into that sorry state und unleashed their theories for economic transformation. What was the result? - Absolute disaster and yet more suffering for that long-suffering people.
NewGuy wrote: sv-wolf wrote:All the evidence suggests that allowing inexperienced youngsters to ride large machines is hazardous for other road users.
Really? Let's see that evidence that backs that claim up.
There are no reliable statistics which demonstrate this fact unequivocally. What evidence there is, is mostly anecdotal or implied, which is why it only ‘suggests’ rather than ‘proves’ the point. However, in these posts I’ve not actually been bothered with whether it is or isn’t true. What I'm discussing here is the idea of whether legislation on the matter is to be welcomed or whether some blanket dogma about state intervention should be applied .
NewGuy wrote:Aah, typical US bashing from someone in the UK. Tell the truth, are you mad because the US kicked your butts in two wars, or because you needed us to save your butts in two others? . . . or is it both?
I wish I had a £1 for every time I'd heard this one!
LOL, no I'm not anti-US (whatever that means) nor do I give a damn about the military reputation of the British state. You seem to have a one-dimensional political perspective, NG, which has made you assume (incorrectly) that I am a nationalist or a patriot and need to compare dick sizes – but this is your anxiety, not mine.
I also note you haven’t addressed the point.
) published a series of works which, among other things, acknowledged that since capitalism was only poorly developed in Russia, socialism was not immediately possible. The task of a ‘revolutionary party’ in his view, would therefore be to gain control of the Russian state and use it to rapidly develop capitalism, putting emphasis on the production of capital goods not consumer items. The kind of economic system he aimed at and worked for after the 1917 Bolshevik coup (as it is now more accurately named) he called - yep - ‘state capitalism.’ 
