[Conscript]

But unlike socialists, they didn't mention their system by name when they were doing it. So, yea.

[Rich]

We see this repeatedly,

The great enterprising individualists like Columbus and Cortes against the big government do gooder Liberals of Isabella and Ferdinand.
The great struggle of the Georgian colonists to have slavery against the wishes of the do gooder metropolitans back in Britain.
The American settlers against the British proclamation line.
The Heroic struggle of the Texans to reintroduce slavery which had been abolished by the evil authoritarian Liberal do-gooder Mexican government.
The Confederacy against King Lincoln obviously.
The Afrikaans against the British.
The Rhodesian UDI against the British.

And of course in the nineteenth century you had conflict between the Mid West frontiers people who wanted to deal with the Savages and the Indian loving East Coasters.

[The Immortal Goon]

But unlike socialists, they didn't mention their system by name when they were doing it. So, yea.

Yeah, they didn't really have to as that was broadly assumed that they were following the system of the day. Wealth of Nations was published in 1776 and, from then on, both Federalist and Anti-Federalist raced to be more in line with Adam Smith and capitalism.

I challenge someone to find official American policy from then on that promoted feudalism or communism.

So, yeah...

[Dystopian Darkness]

If this is about body counts the Catholic Church is the greatest terrorist ever.

[Ahovking]

I think everyone is getting Capitlaism mixed up with Mercantilism, Capitlaism only emerged around 1800-1900s (depending on your view), the genocide and displace whole populations of America, Africa, Australia etc was Drivien by Mercantilism which emerged around 1500s and finally died in the early 1900s.

National economic policy of Europen state was aimed at accumulating monetary reserves through a positive balance of trade which frequently led to war between the states and also motivated colonial expansion at any cost, this was driven by Mercantilism not capitlaism.

Under Mercantilism you had

- Building overseas colonies;
- Forbidding colonies to trade with other nations;
- Monopolizing markets with staple ports;
- Banning the export of gold and silver, even for payments;
- Forbidding trade to be carried in foreign ships;
- Export subsidies;
- Promoting manufacturing with research or direct subsidies;
- Limiting wages;
- Maximizing the use of domestic resources;
- Restricting domestic consumption with non-tariff barriers to trade.

Most of this however was abolished or abandoned when free market capitlaism was adopted in the late and early 1900s.

I agree with @JohnRawls that:
As to whenever modern Socialism/Social democracy/social libertarianism is better or worse than modern Capitalism/Anarcho capitalists/Globalism, it is really unclear.

[Pants-of-dog]

I think everyone is getting Capitlaism mixed up with Mercantilism, Capitlaism only emerged around 1800-1900s (depending on your view), the genocide and displace whole populations of America, Africa, Australia etc was Drivien by Mercantilism which emerged around 1500s and finally died in the early 1900s.

National economic policy of Europen state was aimed at accumulating monetary reserves through a positive balance of trade which frequently led to war between the states and also motivated colonial expansion at any cost, this was driven by Mercantilism not capitlaism.

Under Mercantilism you had

- Building overseas colonies;
- Forbidding colonies to trade with other nations;
- Monopolizing markets with staple ports;
- Banning the export of gold and silver, even for payments;
- Forbidding trade to be carried in foreign ships;
- Export subsidies;
- Promoting manufacturing with research or direct subsidies;
- Limiting wages;
- Maximizing the use of domestic resources;
- Restricting domestic consumption with non-tariff barriers to trade.

Most of this however was abolished or abandoned when free market capitlaism was adopted in the late and early 1900s.

I agree with @JohnRawls that:
As to whenever modern Socialism/Social democracy/social libertarianism is better or worse than modern Capitalism/Anarcho capitalists/Globalism, it is really unclear.

Some things continued on in capitalism:

- Building overseas colonies;
- Export subsidies;
- Promoting manufacturing with research or direct subsidies;
- Limiting wages;
- Maximizing the use of domestic resources;
- Restricting domestic consumption with non-tariff barriers to trade.

...and some of the things you did not mention:

- Slavery;
- The ongoing theft of indigenous lands;
- Gov't support or tolerance of private security forces attacking citizens and workers;
- Installing puppet dictators in other nations;
- Union busting;
- Attempted destruction of indigenous cultures and peoples.

[The Immortal Goon]

I think everyone is getting Capitlaism mixed up with Mercantilism

Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, and everybody else that named and described capitalism?

Capitalists will often try to say that capitalism is the ideal theoretical system in order to mirror socialists. But this is problematic.

There was a system that existed after feudalism. People studied it, weighed it, and called it capitalism.

Hundreds of years later, you have people proposing that just as feudalism ended and capitalism came to be, capitalism will end and another system will develop. For the most part, the next system, was called socialism. Marx made the best case for this, so his, "scientific-socialism," became most associated with the shorthand, "socialism."

Cut a hundred years after that, and now capitalists are using socialist rhetoric in order to try and scrub hundreds of years of history away. Like Winston Smith trying to create a glorious current by destroying the past.

It's frustrating to argue with people that have to keep changing the meanings of words and twisting language and destroying history, but it's also weirdly comforting to know your opponent has to go to such extreme levels in order to make their history work.

[JohnRawls]

Wonderfully said TIG. Although you put it very onesided, both systems merged together to a large degree, not exacly destroyed each other.

[The Immortal Goon]

I certainly would not conclude that socialism had "merged" with capitalism or that it had ceased to exist as a concept.

Just that socialism has never existed as it's an explicitly a world-wide system, in the Marxist sense. Capitalism has clearly existed as the name itself was invented to name something that already existed.

Capitalists try to play the, "We're both talking about the ideals!" game, but that's not true. Neither of us are talking about ideals.

[Conscript]

I certainly would not conclude that socialism had "merged" with capitalism or that it had ceased to exist as a concept.

I would, but not exactly by what you mean here. If socialism never again rises it's because the movement could never shake off the certain currents and isolated, backwards states that combined it with nationalism, social-democracy, and the bourgeois-democratic revolution/national liberation in the third world. What westerners and cold warriors think today when they hear socialism, is essentially this legacy, this merger, what socialism became after the international revolution of the 20s failed. Just an illiberal, 'anti-imperialist' form of national capitalism for undeveloped, semi feudal nations.

It's the only way a predominately non-russian, internationalist revolution that looked to Europe and linked its cause to national minorities of the empire, could become a symbol of the Russian chauvinism Lenin hated and for rejection of Europe. Granted, fascism did much to hammer this home for the Russians and Stalinists through the GPW, but it didn't start with them.

It's also the only way a certain 'Marxist' could start claiming class struggle and the law of value exists under socialism, too.

What do you think?

[The Immortal Goon]

What do you think?

I think words have meaning and hate the Orwellian attempts to change that.

Government service is not, nor has it ever been, socialism.

Even the non-Marxist socialists were talking about something other than government assistance or something. Owenism was totally not Marxist, but it was still socialist.

Engels mocked the idea of state ownership being socialism:

...since Bismarck went in for State-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that without more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of Socialism.

If the Belgian State, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the State the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the Government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes — this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick William III's reign, the taking over by the State of the brothels.

Another generation followed:

Therefore, we repeat, state ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism – if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials – but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism.

Schemes of state and municipal ownership, if unaccompanied by this co-operative principle, are but schemes for the perfectioning of the mechanism of capitalist government-schemes to make the capitalist regime respectable and efficient for the purposes of the capitalist; in the second place they represent the class-conscious instinct of the business man who feels that capitalist should not prey upon capitalist, while all may unite to prey upon the workers. The chief immediate sufferers from private ownership of railways, canals, and telephones are the middle class shop-keeping element, and their resentment at the tariffs imposed is but the capitalist political expression of the old adage that “dog should not eat dog.”

It will thus be seen that an immense gulf separates the ‘nationalising’ proposals of the middle class from the ‘socialising’ demands of the revolutionary working class. The first proposes to endow a Class State – repository of the political power of the Capitalist Class – with certain powers and functions to be administered in the common interest of the possessing class; the second proposes to subvert the Class State and replace it with the Socialist State, representing organised society – the Socialist Republic.

And here we are, after several generations, having to explain the same. Socialism—scientific, utopian, Fabian, reactionary, whatever—has always meant something other than, "government ownership."

But I do agree with you in that...

What westerners and cold warriors think today when they hear socialism, is essentially this legacy

Which I think is dangerous and Orwellian. It means that people can't even have words that develop an idea that is counter to capitalism. That capitalism is such a fundamental part of life, that one literally does not have words to describe something different—just tweaking capitalism here and there.

And, damnit, I'll be the last person out there telling everyone what socialism means. When the Stalinists and the capitalists go prancing around on Marx, Engels, and Lenin proclaiming that socialism isn't a specific thing but a feeling or whatever claptrap they come up with—I'll be there with the books explaining that socialism means something.

[Ahovking]

Some things continued on in capitalism:

- Building overseas colonies;
- Export subsidies;
- Promoting manufacturing with research or direct subsidies;
- Limiting wages;
- Maximizing the use of domestic resources;
- Restricting domestic consumption with non-tariff barriers to trade.

...and some of the things you did not mention:

- Slavery;
- The ongoing theft of indigenous lands;
- Gov't support or tolerance of private security forces attacking citizens and workers;
- Installing puppet dictators in other nations;
- Union busting;
- Attempted destruction of indigenous cultures and peoples.

Things like Slavery, destruction of indigenous cultures and peoples are more cultural issue caused by old cultural thinking not economic theory/system.

Limiting wages, The ongoing theft of indigenous lands, limited freedoms of state owned Unions, Gov't support or tolerance of private security forces attacking citizens and workers etc were present under socialist systems as well and is not a systemic problem of a single economic theory/system.

Wrong, we currently live in a Mix economic system sliding to state capitalism, where we have capitalism as a base and build socialist pillars for the walls,

[Ahovking]

Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, and everybody else that named and described capitalism?

Capitalists will often try to say that capitalism is the ideal theoretical system in order to mirror socialists. But this is problematic.

There was a system that existed after feudalism. People studied it, weighed it, and called it capitalism.

Hundreds of years later, you have people proposing that just as feudalism ended and capitalism came to be, capitalism will end and another system will develop. For the most part, the next system, was called socialism. Marx made the best case for this, so his, "scientific-socialism," became most associated with the shorthand, "socialism."

Cut a hundred years after that, and now capitalists are using socialist rhetoric in order to try and scrub hundreds of years of history away. Like Winston Smith trying to create a glorious current by destroying the past.

It's frustrating to argue with people that have to keep changing the meanings of words and twisting language and destroying history, but it's also weirdly comforting to know your opponent has to go to such extreme levels in order to make their history work.

Um.. would you like to explain how feudalism is capitalism?

[The Immortal Goon]

Why would I explain something that I never said about a position that I don't take?

[mikema63]

In the text you quoted to ask that question.

There was a system that existed after feudalism. People studied it, weighed it, and called it capitalism.

[Dagoth Ur]

How the shit do you build socialist social pillars with a capitalist base?

[JohnRawls]

How the shit do you build socialist social pillars with a capitalist base?

By introducing social elements that are not based on capitalist base? (Free healthcare, free education, common goods, limited insurance coverage, pensions and benefits etc)

[Dagoth Ur]

I don't see how bribes to the working class constitute socialism.

[Rich]

I'm sick and tired of this Marxist bullshit that has pervaded our language and discourse. We here this endless tirade of anti capitalism. But if you say alright lets go back to Feudalism or the Roman Republican system you find out these self professed anti capaitalisters don't want that.

The whole Marxist class system is utter drivel. The idea that some American West coast software developer has a common economic interest with a Malawi factory worker, is absurd. That self professed anti racist, anti imperialist internationalist socialists spend their time whining about the American minimum wage when the minimum wage in New Guinea is 3 cents an hour.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

I am just as perplexed as Rich concerning how Marxists don't want to return to feudalism! How confusing it is indeed! And boy, I can't stand how Marxists never ever discuss capitalist exploitation of foreign markets, or the social conditions in developing nations! Rich and I are really smart!