The important distinction is central state management versus decentralized governance. This continuum can exist with a fascist state or a communist state.

Again, the emergence of the world powers has been based on an industrialized growth economics. Both versions of 19th and 20th Century economic flavors embraced this as manifested in the major power players.

First, where is your example of a socialist state?

And then what is your idea of a market?

Aside from some book, what is your model for the new world order?

The market place holds both fairness and unfairness.

That is patently FALSE.

Do you deny the existence of the Soviet Union as a socialist state?

The answer is yes. It was a STATE CAPITALIST regime.

I have made my case consistently and repeatedly, socialize nature but harmonize it so that human existence is aligned with nature. Make nature accessable to all and you will have done more to create a fair, justice, peaceful, and taken poverty as far out of the picture as possible. Those who take ownership of the commons create unfairness, injustice and poverty.

Capitalism is an economic system which like all human systems are flawed. Balance is the way out of pathology. The market place holds both fairness and unfairness. It is WE who must, through our moral obligations, reign in the markets from its tendency to “go to far”; to move toward pathological behavior. This is not corrected by a system. It is corrected by community providing the checks or suffering the consequences.

To be, is to be related, say some people. And everything that happens under the sun is inter-related. So, there are not just two issues but an infinite number;all influencing one another and each influencing all the others.

In short, there is but one issue: the reality;each person being able to see it with own eyes and thus learn all one needs to know at a point in time.

We can, imo, only have two structures of society but an innumerable number of capitalisms. We cld have a sharply trapezoid structure one a much less so. So, i am not sure why u compare structure of society and/or governance with “capitalism”?

Structure of a society such as with aghas, amirs, princes, kings and a structure of society in n. korea can be compared. Their economies can be seen with naked eye; thus can be compared or some knowledge thereby achieved.
Economy in my usage denotes all what humans do!

Pyramidic or sharp trapezoid societies were wrought over millennia and obtained with much killings, torture, crimes, exploitation, etc.
We cld , tho, build an idyllic society w.o. killings, torture of dissidents, but not that stupid to allow fascists to destroy the process.

Now, one can see why US calls for “freedoms” in china, cuba. So that it can use their citizens to work for the destruction of socialism!

Yes, push for change via enlightenment shld be carried out from the street. All knowledge may have come from street; i.e., from a locus. It had not come from royal courts or ‘nobility’!
And it may not ever come from congress-wh-judiciary-cia-army-schools; so, it has to emanate from local communities.

But u have never declared that u are asocialist. From what us say, i conclude, u don’t want to build a more egalitarian society. Otherwise, u wld not have compared an egalitarian society with nebulous meaning of the word “capitalism”. tnx

The Soviet Union was a centrally planned state that failed at many levels and its “failure” is what reduce its overall impact on resource utilization relative to the West and particularly the USA. The race between these entities was real and there was no check by the Soviets to produce less than the USA. Their failure simply attests to how the West was just better at the industrialization game. Nothing more.

So, the change needed is, I would argue, more about aligning our markets with community needs to keep those markets tied to an eco-balance which neither China, USA, and Russia do not represent. Much of this is due to sheer size as well as organizing principles. Some would argue that China is making an attempt to check, but I’m very skeptical that China can enter the world “state” as a “power” (specifically economic power) without joining the unstustainable path of USA. Small nation-states are able to check regardless of the economic system label. It’s just a fact. I would add decentralized democratic societies are preferred, but again, human scale best provides us as we can witness historically, and globally. It is not a guarantee, it is a necessary but not sufficient premise.

DV is very good on Palestine/izzy matters, also merits praise for publishing Keith Harmon Snow’s v. informative articles on Africa. Kim P’s articles are usually v. worthwhile re the issues he chooses to explicate. But there seems to be a reluctance to tackle the really fundamento questions.
So DV seems to be wandering around in an ideological no-mans-land, somewhere between Liberal Capitalism and a tepid variety of “democratic socialism” with an anti-Isrealy Apartheid twist?
At least that’s my impression. Maybe I’m misreading the editors’ intent? If so, please do enlighten me:)
PS: is it necessary to note that the end of official Apartheid and the advent of Black faces in high places did not end the oppression/exploitation of the bulk of the Black population in S Africa, any more than the end of official Jim Crow & the coming of “Integration” has ended racial oppression in the USA?

US share of the damage had always been the largest. Today, i am told, US uses 25% of world’s wealth; thus, represents much more danger to biota than china.
And china wldn’t need to industrialize as much as it does now if there was guarantee that fascists wld not attack it like they did russia!

Puting all asocialistic countries togethher, their negative effect on our planet is probably much larger than that of socialist lands.
If socialist lands wld be allowed to do what they have always done;i.e., had a pastoral way of life: farming, growing orchards, fishing, hunting, etc., biota and people wld have not been going thru what they goes thru now.

We can predict that US wld want to destroy cuba and venezuella. And if the two lands cld industrialize or obtain WMD, US may not attack the two lands.

Btw, in socialist lands losing plants were not closed dwn. Losing plants were kept afloat by profits made by other plants. Banks, railroads, transportation was owned by all the people.

Socialism may fail only because socialists, unlike asocialists, do not amass money; thus, cannot pay well mercenairies that wld defend it at any cost; including killing own fascists, if need be.

But fascist, having money, were able to hire killers and liars in guatemala, chile, colombia, argentina, indonesia, filippines, honduras, nicaragua, etc.
But even in US, rich people are buying killers and liars. tnx

Do you deny the existence of the Soviet Union as a socialist state? If not than that entity provides proof positive that externalities are created regardless of economic ideologies. What can push back on these is tying the market to the community; that is tethering it to the reality of community as opposed to the abstration that creates runaway economic problems that endanger all forms of life whether those economies are socialist or capitalist by name.

Workers’ cooperatives, an example of workers holding power of production, does democratize the work place, BUT it does not assure that profit over the well-being of community does not reign. Workers are not better rulers than aristocrats or plutocrats; or oligarchs. The problem is systemic, but can be corrected, and must be forever corrected through vigilence.

Small scale does not solve the problem – it makes it possible to manage it. Whereas, with growth, such manageabililty is lost.

Kirkpatrick Sales explains it well here: http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/02/28/kirkpatrick-sale/

You can disagree but if you do I’d ask for clear explanations, not this hodgepodge of contrarianism you seem to trot out as a cogent argument.

That’s not true. Externalities relates to the power of capitalists and their governments to define the terms of production. Capitalists are permitted to exploit the vast pool of people and natural resources. That is what determines externalities. Scale on the other hand has a lot of benefit that you tend to dismisses as problematic. That is a mistake and calling for smaller scale is only going to weaken the forces needed to change the systems.

One caveat ab laws or ‘laws’ as i say! We’ve never ever had important one yet!

And most of all, economy [i am now using the term in its worldly meaning], is presented to unwary public as if it exists totally isolated from what happens btwn people; i.e, in a interpersonal relationship.

But even most americans do not ever visualize [visualization being, to some people, most efficient human thought] how wld economy look like with ALL people working, smiling, listening respectfully, enjoing the work and people around them; feeling wanted-secure, eating together, conversing warmly, etc.

We don’t have to visualize what happens now in a work place. We can see it! I have worked! And found most bosses and workers mean, arrogant; perhaps even deliberately stupid.
But as long as we have hell-on-earth people ruling us, expect more wars and worsening. tnx

I think what is so telling about your statements is just how far apart your thinking and mine is. You seem to relish in the old paradigms of growth, industrialisation and big is better. The only problem is who owns the means of production. It doesn’t matter that resources are scarce, that there are limits, because you deny these things. I appears that this denial is a kind of poverty of thinking: wanting what was denied makes what was denied worth having.

Here in the UK, the pound is tumbling today and large job cuts in local council services are being announced. My old Mum used to say ‘ A pinch and a punch for the 1st of the month’. How prescient of her. The house of cards, pile of dominoes or whatever is beginning to fall.

Scale, yes, but to ignore limits as you do is what the problem is all about. You are fully aligned to the problem and the corporate theives that rule the world today.

Power is not the solution. Power is available to anyone. The problem is our organizing principles and the unlimited growth that rules economics today.

Some solution you offer there Deadbeat.

Ecomonies of scale and the bigness they create is a deep problem, and is a root cause of much of what the author speaks to.

Not true. Economies of scale and bigness actually lowers prices and helps to mobilize labor in a manner that can deliver goods and services more effectively than your idyllic belief. Bigness and scale is not the problem. It is the lack of power and the divide nature of proletariat. This is aspect that bozh address and I agree with him. What make “bigness” seem problematic is that people are badly divided and indoctrinated and easily manipulated as the author of this article seem to be with his laundry list of issues rather than offering a systemic analysis and solution.

What is needed is an analysis that will help people understand that the problem is deeply system and propose solutions that will complete alter the system. The author’s proposals are contradictory and won’t fundamentally alter how the system functions.

Essentially we need scale — a world wide movement — in order to change the system.