understandings of capitalism can be explained in following words: we all work; in every country, each with its own different governance and laws.
by any name, that’s what’s going on everywhere.

please note that, to me, governance is not governments. Gov’ts come and go but constitution and many laws stay.
it goes without saying that the ‘elite’ will always strive to complexify all simlicities when that suits their interests; i.e., lead low[er] classes by nose.
Most of the time they complain of too much government but avoid [is it always?] to look at the root cause of what is going on: the system of rule and constitution on which governance is based.

so, to better understand US, look at what people in US do and who enacts laws and how the law is related to us and our work.

i do not think that people need education to understand this simplicity. And, precisely, because it is understandable to even a child, it will without fail be complexified or the simplicity may be dismissed as simlifying too much.
another favorite retort by our ‘leaders’ is, There is no simple solutions.
too bad, but the ancient subterfuge works for leaders.
yet, it seems to me, most solutions can be obtained simply but reaching an understanding [with so many liars around] and finding a solution is indeed laborious, rancorous, or complex, if one will. tnx

So, it is a sham to call Capitalism some kind of monolithic economic system. It is a human construct as is socialism which has as many if not more variants as capitalism.

It is nearly impossible to talk intelligently about these “systems” without clear definitions, and hours and hours of time to dialog; none of which exists here.

To simply come out as some have here (I don’t mean you, B99, who seems to take a much broader view, thank you) and use these terms “willy-nilly”, to borrow a phrase is weak and lazy thinking.

But it is all too common “thinking”. Why, because that’s the way Americans (of either side of the proverbial isle) think – in sound bites.
The variant of “capitalism” we have is high-finance that views the US as a market for endless consumerism, where derivatives that go nowhere but to make a few gamblers very very rich without providing “capital” to enterprises, thus sucking the daylights out of you and me, collapsed – fed once again by the frog – Barack Obama so the scorpian – WallStreet/Banksters can once agains live and thrive off of us.

But because of this massive collapse, socialism, the other ill-defined an overused term, and Marx (who has all too many children) has been resurrected as a cure for this variant and paracitic form of capitalism. That’s lazy thinking. When the hammer isn’t working let’s just go for the screwdriver…no matter the problem.

My point with Schumacher (and Berry) is that what they have to say has more to do with building a new world, locality by locality, and are, therefore, relevent. They touch on first principles, while capital is an abstraction which is where Marx dwells. To think that capital has some kind of predetermined trajectory that we are currently living within is just hogwash.

Capital is not physics. But if you must view Marx as your framework for understanding capital/capitalism that’s your prerogative.

So, I disagree that Marx is essential. Read him. Fine, but essential? No.

All we need to know about what exists today, is in front of us, here and now. Observe, listen and think. That’s what’s required.

Now I think you’re touching on some important points. Two things are what has created much of what we see economically – economies of scale that make “commoditization” and reduce all to consumers void of human relationships. The other is the more culturally played tune of “time is money”. This is the mental marketing of economies of scale and high performance commondity selling.

This has led to hypergrowth and in that sense unsustainable growth for its own sake. This has been the US economy for at least a century, amplified by politicians over and over and over.

I don’t think you need to read Marx’s Das Kapital to get this; nor call it Marxism to see what we’ve got.

I’m not arguing in favor of capitalism which is so pathological that it needs a replacement from the ground up. But simply replacing it an analysis or a manifesto for Karl Marx misses the great opportunity to transform.

One would be better off reading Wendell Berry’s The Gift of Good Land or E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful to glean a workable solution, with scads of models the globe over.

But commoditization is the bane of human existence as we know it and with it the marketing of garbage to the very young from remote controls in living color…it is criminal.

i go further and assert with confidence that any ism of a given person does not remain the same even for a day let alone in 10 yrs time.

and each person’s definition or redefinition shld be accepted as valid for that person but not necessarily for another person.
in short, each person is right when defining any ism. This view wld occlude namecalling, frustration, anger, etc.

having said this, it can be noted that the basic human rights like the right to be medically treated with whole society paying for the treatment, cannot be further [re]defined.
the way we express or language which we use to express that right cannot further elucidate that right.
we’ve hit rock bottom and cannot dig any deeper in order to obtain a better explanation.

it appears true to me that this ‘right’ along the ‘right’ to be truthfully informed about your business such as your country, can be put in either-or form: it is either wrong or right to obtain healthcare.

Thus, 70% of amercans say, It is a basic right; 30% say, it is wrong to receive healthcare.
But is it then a democratic wish or not? Majority says, “Yes”. And if the ‘elite’ wld respect democracy [and the greatest ever] as much as they say, what is the problem?
tnx

Socialism is only the next stage of human social evolution if it actually turns out that way. There are no guarantees. The next stage is at least as likely to be some sort of Fascism – even a ‘Green’ Fascism. But you cannot be rigid about the direction of things – social evolution is hardly more directed than natural evolution.

Who are Rense, Rivero, and Icke? I think you are a right-wing conspiracy advocate dropping these names into the conversation so that some here will read them. And you are hoping that by making socialism sound ridiculous – some here will turn to your friends on the right. Am I right?

Don Hawkins, I don’t know what you meant to convey in it, but I enjoyed reading your tale.

One problem with the “debate” is that each one seems to mean something different by terms like Capitalism.
For instance,”Family Capitalism”. Small scale production for profit does not equal Capitalism unless the entrepreneur employs Labor hired for a wage low enough to provide said Capitalist entrepreneur a return on the amount of money invested which is above that amount, i.e., Surplus Value. What Max described is more precisely termed Commodity Production, that is production of commodities for sale for money. Of course whenever commodity production, production of items with the intent to sell them rather than use or consume them, whenever this becomes widespread across a society, becomes the general rule rather than an occasional exception, historically it has always led to the growth of capitalism because of certain cause and effect mechanisms which compel persons engaged in commodity production to begin to hire laborers who must agree to work for a wage because they have no other means of subsistence — or to purchase slaves and thereby their labor.

All this has been explained in exhaustive detail by Marx & Engels, gone into in even more detail by the many many who have taken their work as a starting point.
But I’m going to stop here because I think it’s probably useless to try to explain the Capitalist/Laborer relationship to people who see it from a capitalist standpoint, who see capitalist enterprise as a normal way to live life. Those whose experience of Capitalism is from the bottom will find Marx easy to understand; if they are looking for answers that’s where they should go, not to apologists for capitalism.

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http://www.leoslyrics.com/listlyrics.php?hid=giir0u1vfiE%3D

Yankee soldier
He wanna shoot some skag
He met it in Cambodia
But now he can’t afford a bag

Yankee dollar talk
To the dictators of the world
In fact it’s giving orders
An’ they can’t afford to miss a word

I’m so bored with the U…S…A…
But what can I do?

Yankee detectives
Are always on the TV
‘Cos killers in America
Work seven days a week

Never mind the stars and stripes
Let’s print the Watergate Tapes
I’ll salute the New Wave
And I hope nobody escapes

I’m so bored with the U…S…A…
But what can I do?

Move up Starsky
For the C.I.A.
Suck on Kojak
For the USA

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But capitalism itself is the real cause of most problems that this country has and not pure evil and greed in the ruling class.

You have to accept the reality that socialism is the next stage in human development and nobody can fight against evolution.

So what do you mean by “self-realized life”? Do you think that those who “own” the most are “self-realized”?

Again the problem is beyond capitalism. The very thought that the “haves” have something worth distributing to all of us is problematic.

I sense this with much of the banter here about capitalism vis a vis socialism and racism. Racism within this limited frame is one group (white) keeping the “good life” from the suppressed/oppressed minority. It is this kind of thinking that distracts us from the problem. So, we have Deadbeat making statements that it is not that there is peak oil (a “hoax” as he would put it to keep the oil companies fat, and the poor poor); the “real” problem is that white people are priviledged and keep this wealth in the hands of a few. That the wealth is in the hands of a few is correct here, as well as in most developing nation-states. Latin America is experiencing some change.

Deadbeat reminds me of a celebratory NAACP scholarship banquet. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the American “dream”, “we” (black people) just need to get our piece of the pie. The American empire is fine and dandy (whatever that means) and the wars are ok as long as we don’t talk about them. The REAL problem is we got to get more black folks in white-collar high paying jobs…

“Foolish” notions like “peak oil” are just a hoax and its raining on our parade because the fu?cking whities took all the good stuff and are leaving “us” black folks with crap…no no no way I’m going to believe that, exclaims Deadbeat!!! It’s racism trying to convince us there’s no more oil in the fu(ckn stuff for us!!

We’re not going to solve these problems with dumbass ideology or by denying the realities of peak oil and the collapse of an empire, or the rapid climate change that could make much of terra firma uninhabitable. Sorry….

The cause of why many people like you see USA a good country is because of conformism. Conformism makes people happy, because conformist people don’t really want much from life, they are content with 3 meals a day. But we need more than just food. Americans need access to college degrees, to pleasures, entertainment, to good quality doctors and hospitals. And only socialism can really democratize luxuries, pleasures, higher learning and self realization to every body.

Right now in the USA only about about 10% to 20% are living a full complete, self realized life, the majority are beating the bullets with unfulfilled reams, unchecked goals., and that’s why the capitalist system is not democratic, it is oligarchic, it is just like a monarchy and feudalism, not a real social democratic. That’s why capitalism is the dictatorship of the elite minority of exploiters against the majority of exploited.

And do you know who i really hate in USA? I hate the US Middle classes. Because the middle-classes of this country don’t want USA to get economically better because they conspire to support the bankruptcy of the United States by voting every 4 years for Democrats and Republicans.

What we need is a workers-council state in USA. A government ruled by workers while at the same time on the economic side: the mega corporations of USA like Wal-Mart, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Mcdonalds, General Electric, etc. owned by workers, thru the system of “workers control of production” (Workers management/workers-ownership), or “Workers stock ownership” however you want to label it.

Only under the proletarian dictatorship are real liberties for the exploited and real participation of the proletarians and peasants in governing the country possible. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, democracy is proletarian democracy, the democracy of the exploited majority, based on the restriction of the rights of the exploiting minority and directed against this minority.

The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot arise as the result of the peaceful development of bourgeois society and of bourgeois democracy; it can arise only as the result of the smashing of the bourgeois state machine, the bourgeois army, the bourgeois bureaucratic apparatus, the bourgeois police.

That’s why Lenin is very right in saying: “The proletarian revolution is impossible without the forcible destruction of the bourgeois state machine and the substitution for it of a new one” (see Vol. XXIII, P. 342)

Soviet power as the state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat signifies the suppression of the bourgeoisie, the smashing of the bourgeois state machine and the substitution of proletarian democracy for bourgeois democracy

Let other people you know learn about socialism! Spread the word… the more people who know the truth, the greater the force against the capitalist system! Resistance forever!

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SO PLEASE, STICK UP YOUR MIDDLE FINGER TO US IMPERIALISM AND CAPITALIST OPPRESSION !!

AND GO TO HTTP://WWW.WORLDSOCIALISM.ORG HTTP://WWW.MARXISTS.ORG AND HTTP://WWW.SOCIALISTWORKER.ORG FOR OUR SOCIALIST-SALVATION WHICH IS WHAT WE NEED TO GET OUT OF THIS CAPITALIST-HELL WHERE A FEW LIVE LIKE KINGS AND THE MAJORITY ARE SLAVES.

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Band societies are most definitely cooperative societies. But they are no longer a factor, though their existence proves humans are capable of running a society based largely in cooperation.