"But It's Not Going To Work!" (blog)

I'm sure every radical has heard this when discussing the kind of society we desire to live in. "Well, that's a good idea, but it's not going to work. Never has, never will!" they tell us as if they're repeating some kind of religious text. I have heard this time and time again, not just from right-wingers and property-lovers, but more often from leftists and social democrats (such as people who are part of the Green Party and want the USA to be like Canada or Europe) who don't want to go the extra mile and who desire band-aid solutions to problems that require much more to solve. These people often point to things like the break up of the USSR as their example, or claim that humans are "naturally" unable to sustain a classless, stateless society.

What I would ask those people is: does your system work? You talk a great deal of the problems directly caused by the capitalist system, people's love of the state (nationalism/patriotism), the function of the state (i.e. going to war to satisfy the interests of those who control it), and so on, but the only "realistic" solutions you have is to kick out the people who currently have their hands on the system and to replace them with new ones. You claim that if Americans put a Green Party or social democrat candidate into office, then the US will no longer be the big business-controlled, war-hungry, imperialist country it is and will gradually solve all the issues of poverty, racism, environmental destruction, lack of education, lack of health care, destructive patriotic/nationalist feelings, and the rest. Little do you realize that all of these plagues are not the result of the system, but are the system. The very essence of capitalism is that it requires a barbaric state to hold it up and by its very definition robs people of their liberty through wage slavery, rent/usury, and class division. Neither Ralph Nader nor Ron Paul nor Kucinich nor McKinney will do what it takes to end this. They will never abolish private property (the real roots of the system) because they neither have the desire to or have the ability to from their position. Likewise, they won't end the authority of the state; for someone in power to destroy or break down the current power structure is impossible.

And also understand that the reason for Europe's high standard of living isn't due to the benevolence of the state but rather the people who fought for things like free health care and low-cost college tuition. It wasn't a victory for the state but a victory for the people. And what is happening now in these social democratic states? You see riots going on in Greece, the UK, Spain, France, Italy, now Germany and Portugal, many times lead by anarchist comrades. If anything, social "democracies" are systems which are not sustainable, as they're still capitalist and run by an elite ruling class, and still manage to rob the people of their autonomy.

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Read more: http://propagandalalaland.blogspot.com/2010/12/but-its-not-going-to-work.html

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I'm with you. What do you suggest?

For any human to talk about "Capitalism." There is no longer any such thing as Capitalism.

Capitalism requires, by its very nature, that when a group of people take on economic activities that crash and burn, those individuals must take the losses on those activities (Unless they somehow have some type of "Over insurance" policy for that activity.)

So when the Geithner/Bernanke(Paulson) trio began bailing out the Big Financial Players, using the overall cash cow generated by the Federal Reserve, Capitalism died.

Every single RW pundit on TV talks about Capitalism in these reverent terms. But it no longer exists. What we have now is massive and extreme socialism for the rich, and feudalism for the middle class and the poor.