Question: Is claiming to be "anti-capitalist" while posting on a PC produced by a corporation

using slave labour, hypocritical?

Its far more about how capital and labor are organized in a workplace than what one's consumer patterns are.

So I don't know. It came locally, so very easily could of been employee owned.

But Im involved in the production of my work, and the computer is not used capitalistically whatsoever.

Gee, you don't sound very concerned about the workers who were exploited in the creation of it.

Sorry....you are trying to define capitalism by a business's consumer patterns, rather than by how they organize labor and capital. Its pure silliness.

Because you own property produced by an exploited workforce. Marx himself viewed such complacency as immoral.

"Marx himself viewed such complacency as immoral"

I'm not one for moral judgments, especially by dead men like Marx and Jesus

Id say complacency is recognizing a problem, accepting it, and calling everyone who doesn't directly practice the system "hypocrites" to make yourself feel better.

To each their own.

...of simply living within the capitalist economy. His work was funded by Friedrich Engels, who was a factory owner!

Maybe that's hypocrisy, but the fact remains that we live in a capitalist economy. You can't step outside of that even if you were using a computer you built yourself (from what parts? With what tools? Where do you get your electricity?).

...in a house with mostly second hand/reclaimed furniture, because you want to minimize your support of that inevitable slave labor, as much as possible?

:shrug:

which was produced by capitalism

...that "capitalism" later benefited from?

Are you arguing that if you use a computer you are OBLIGATED to support capitalism?

Some of us see computer activism as using the machine's tools to bring it down.

And we'd have no chance of getting any messages into wide circulation WITHOUT computers.

Any more than using guns liberated from a fascist army obligates you to fight FOR fascism, rather than against it.

Smoke signals?

just a little over the top
I think capitalism probably is the best way to deliver goods and services, I just think regulation is necessary to keeping it from being unfair and exploitative.
What other ways can one be on line with out a computer, it is kind of a monopoly isn't it. With Microsoft controlling most of the market with their products.
I guess you want progressive to go back to the cave since we can't get news in a timely manor without capitalism's stuff. Silly very silly.

Still, that's a noble lifestyle. :)

n/t

Hint: the repair place isn't going to buy its new computers and parts from a different repair place.

The only thing an anti-capitalist has control over is their own labor practices. If they do not practice capitalism, I would venture to say they are fairly not being a hypocrite.

You are attempting to call people hypocrites, even if they don't practice capitalism, if somehow the wealth they generate trickles into a capitalistic system. Who lives in a bubble? Wealth trickles everywhere these days in a global economy. Almost ANY position in that context is hypocritical. According to your standard, you cannot ever safely criticize anything, because some way or another you are, through a long chain, indirectly contributing to a problem.

Just say it..."Everyone should shut the fuck up about everything"

their economic participation in a system of "commidify everything" that they justly criticize.

Since the apologists are generally part of the problem -- "Buy new stuff! Buy new stuff!" -- it makes 'em crazy that other people are consciously less so...

So what? By your logic, no one could ever criticize Wall Street because sooner or later the money they are spending winds up in the hands of the few.

Yes, that is the problem. Everything we do is controlled by the corporations for their profiteering. How do you get from there to "therefore we should not criticize corporations?" Bizarre logic.

New parts? New computer? Money in the system is still money in the system. My real point is that we live in a capitalist economy and all the money we earn and all the money we spend is part of that system. But still, you are making a lifestyle committment towards altering that system in a better direction, and that's good. I just hate when people think they have somehow escaped the system, or worse (in my mind) when they think that everything they do is somehow not part of the whole system, so the system is all bad and they are all good. Not saying you--I like the choices you describe. Just saying in general.

my own slave!

or complaining about how many dogs Michael Vick drowned while eating a bacon cheeseburger...

To be fair, perfect consistency isn't really necessary to fight for changes would make the world better. I'm opposed Bush's tax cut policies because they were bad for the economy, but I spent the money.

And did they buy it knowing that? Hey I have a better idea, I build whiteboxes that last forever. Support my local economy, buy customized PCs from me and know you are helping out the poor.

was I got free from a friend. I've never actually bought a computer in the 25+ yeasr I have been using them. :D

:popcorn:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8663062&mesg_id=8663214

I'm not so narrow minded as to only support "pure" economic models.

We live in the real world with real people though.

reality.

Of course it will never come to fruition, with anything short of a revolution.

That doesn't make the concept "wrong".

That doesn't make capitalism "right".

This is a "might is right" argument essentially.

In the real world, the elite will fight off any attempt to separate them from their right to profit infinitely, and will buy enough of the government that is needed, such that they can deregulate and make more money, more easily. Thats the ultimate reality that Adam Smith's paper utopia created.

But I have an idea. Lets ridicule everyone who doesn't conform to this destructive system in the meantime! That changes, well, eh, I don't know...

It's legitimate to say that.

It's NOT legitimate to tell other people they have no right to work for what THEY believe in, which is the whole point of this thread.

You could compare using corporate-built computers to work against capitalism to, say, liberating guns from the forces of a military junta to use in an armed struggle AGAINST that junta. In either case, the salient fact is this: the fact that a weapon may have been created by and for the forces of evil does NOT mean that you can't take the weapon and use it to struggle AGAINST evil.

Antifascist partisan brigades in Europe often fought the Reich with liberated guns, to use a real-life example.

other than the ignorance of your question.

See, we have to live in the world that we're in. I would love a different system of government than this corporate owned bs, but I can't wave a wand so I fight in the world I'm in and work and hope for real change.

Thanks God we have Chuckles like you here to remind us of our hypocrisy and ignorance.

By the way, I only buy used, and I buy locally.

:sarcasm:

Wow, how constructive.

a few economists have even called it a command economy, here
'
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Econ_Articles/Command_Corporations.html

http://hf-implode.com/viewnews/2009-06-02_EerieParallelsBetweenSovietPlannedEconomyandAmericanCapitalism.html

I think we have to start looking for actual definitions of what we are dealing with.

Oh and CAPITALISM, as defined by Adam Smith, Ricardo and the rest of the gang, it is not.

As to hypocrisy... I know who builds my crap... and that is ALL my crap... that should be the issue at discussion by the way. As well as to WHY that is the case... free clue... FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS, that again are NOT free trade, per those who set the theoretical basis of the system.

So no, you don't prove a thing. That said, capitalism is a new religion. I recommend you head down to the bookstore and buy yourself a copy of the holy of holies and READ IT.

Its late-stage real world capitalism.

Like I give a fuck about the distinction, really. One you can't accomplish, and one is inevitable.

All apologies aside

When anti-apartheid activists(most of whom were leftists) in South Africa used radio to issue communiques in a revolutionary struggle, they were using a medium popularized and spread by corporations that traded with the white minority regime. Would you call them hypocrites for doing that?

the 19th Century Marxists and anarchists used printing presses that were originally built for and by capitalists, often under horrible conditions. By you, was THAT hypocrisy?

Even when they used pencil and paper to write manifestos and passed them hand-to-hand, those were made in privately-owned factories and pulp mills, for the most part. If they took them to other locations, they probably rode on capitalist-built transportation systems(trains or streetcars). Were THEY hypocrites?

If you took your argument here to its logical conclusion, Clintonista, you'd end up arguing that it is hypocritical for leftists to communicate through any other means than standing in the street shouting out their messages at the tops of their lungs, without microphones. And they'd have to be naked, since most clothing companies are owned by capitalists.

Why are you so obsessed with shouting down people to your left? It's not as if we're doing anything to harm you, for God's sake.

'cept when my amp needs electric power.

You are either missing the point or mis-stating the issue intentionally. I won't guess which is true.

The problem is actually embedded into part of your rather circular logic; as Maggie Thatcher so elegantly put it in the last century: TINA ("there is no alternative").

Are you really so ignorant of anti-corporate thought that you believe activists are happy they must use computers created by corporations who abuse factory labor? Do you believe they think its funny that people in some communities have no energy alternatives, clothing alternatives, or even a decent representation of divergent economic perspectives and theories? Do you really think activists find it awesome that some farmers have no choice but to grow GM crops?

I find the myopic ignorance and arrogance of your post astonishing: it shows a stunning lack of context and understanding of exactly how monolithic and hegemonic corporate life has become: there literally is no real alternative presently available.

Of course, the ignorant, knee-jerk response to this is to chide activists for failing to create these alternatives themselves but this is again nothing but shortsightness: these issues are based in economics, "regulation" and intense political pressure created through the flood of corporate money through Washington DC. Take a look at the Oil industry's massive finding of climate change denial groups or Big Pharma's control of regulation for an introduction to this type of secret control.

So no, it isn't "hypocritical" for activists to use these instruments; the only thing your post shows is that you do not truly understand the concept of hypocrisy.

:applause:

Welcome to DU! (Belated. Can't believe I haven't seen your posts til now)

"Are you really so ignorant of anti-corporate thought that you believe activists are happy they must use computers created by corporations who abuse factory labor?"

Have you read any of the posts here? They're justifying it or brushing it aside as "irrelevent"

All we're doing in using computers is using a method that works. The source of the method doesn't matter, nor does it oblige us to be loyal to that source.

Why are you so obsessed with silencing the anti-corporate? It's not as if what we stands for could possibly do you any harm.

Your question really, really sucks. Read some history.

n/t

my conscience is clean. The labor was my own.

Corporations play multiple roles in any society, or something like them, whatever we call them. Corporations, or Peoples' Manufacturing Collectives, whatever. Stuff needs to be manufactured, whether it's computers that folks can purchase ready to use at Best Buy, or components we can buy and assemble ourselves. No one is going to assemble a modern motherboard in their garage!

Manufacture is a skill and equipment intensive enterprise. Groups of people working together to achieve production goals are both necessary and desirable. There is no inherent problem with that.

The problem arises when social rules and norms become skewed in favor of corporations and begin to operate against the best interests of the people who comprise the corporation and its customers. Unregulated capitalism tends to go there because it is ultimately selfish, but that's another topic, I think. But there isn't any inherent contradiction in working on a corporate produced machine to further socialist objectives. None at all. Especially if one is cognizant of the social organization that produces the illusion of contradiction.

Sid

+1

So there!

while using a browser based on Mosaic technology, whose funding came from the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991

I know lots of folks who are for regulating corporations so they aren't predatory in practice and nationalizing other types that are necessary for life and can be run more efficiently when not focused on making profits.

Now you know of one.

So what exactly do you mean by your definition of anti-capitalist? Do you believe in no private companies, everything shared sort of system? I am not being snarky AT ALL, I really am curious as to your views :)

Essentially, I'm in favor of a hybrid system consisting of government services (like insurance), government-owned corporations (crown corporations like BC Hydro for example), and employee-owned private enterprise (which makes up the vast majority of industry).

Why are my private enterprises not capitalistic (nor are they entirely socialistic)? Because they do not allow the continued separation of labor and capital; the employees eventually become the owners and are able to profit from their very labor (which provides quite an incentive). But my model also allows private investors to have finite ROI from an initial investment too. It would be a system that tries to strike a balance between awarding both capital and labor (rather than just capital perpetually at the expense of labor).

This type of private enterprise operates by allowing a private investment (either start up capital or public offerings to generate capital), but uses profits to purchase back a portion of those shares yearly on a set schedule. So, lets say someone invests in a business...they then have 30 years to collect dividends while the company slowly buys their stock back from them (then they need to get off the gravy train and find a new investment to keep getting rich). Those stocks that are bought back are then redistributed to workers (if the initial investor is a also an employee, he gets a share of them too). As workers accumulate ownership, they have a right to the profits their labor generates, and when they retire, they have 30 years or so of the company repurchasing the ownership they earned (lets call that a pension).

This system straddles the fence between known economic system, allowing both an unplanned economy while minimizing exploitation. The longer a business operates, the more emancipated the workers become, who will be able to ensure a business does not operate against their short or long term interests. While not all employees are saavy in business (nor investors who have managers), thats what well paid executives are for. In this version though, that executive would become directly responsible to the workers and have to operate in their interests. And since everyone wants to retire, this would also minimize smash and grab practices.

With that said, this will still cause perpetual economic growth, and eventually kill all mankind along the way. It may just do it less painfully. Its not a panacea to our overall environmental crisis, but rather simply addresses problems with the separation of labor and capital. If you want to actually fix the world, a whole other approach is required.

Thank you for sharing them with me. I wonder if we will ever see a world like that?

Many here are.

nfm

If so then I am right there with you. I always considered that socialist. I find all the terminology confusing sometimes.

and you are so much a better person than I am for pointing that out to me. I have a question for you. Are you pro-slavery? Because I promise you if you have lived in America for any number of years you have used products made by people working at slave wages in horrible conditions. So does that make you pro-slavery or a hypocrite? Or just someone who has an inherent need to feel superior?

Great question: "does that make you pro-slavery or a hypocrite"

Seems like hypocrite is the better choice.

Why not a Stephen Harper avatar instead of Secretary of State Clinton? :shrug:

:rofl:

Hope you sleep tight enjoying your socialistic insurance and socialistic electricity tonight.

What you don't use Chinese products in Canada? Who built the computer you are typing on? And "I live in Canada" isn't an answer to my questions. Are you pro-slavery or a hypocrite? Or just someone who needs to feel superior?

Its a big bonus of having people in charge who talk with God

Actually I built my computer. All of the parts were made in Canada. Some of us actually take our beliefs seriously walldude, we don't just pay lip service to them. And for other folk who wish to NOT support the slave labour that produces your products, great website to use: http://www.canadianmade.com/

Every little component and chip in your computer is Canadian made, eh? Why don't you show us a high-resolution picture of your motherboard?

We wouldn't want you to be a hypocrite now, would we? Come on now. Purity tests are fun.

In fact, barely any are made in Canada. Most are made in the USA, including the motherboard and power supply.

On one had you are calling people hypocrites because they indirectly infuse money into a capitalistic system once its out of their hands (even if they don't directly practice capitalism)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8663342&mesg_id=8663429

On the other, you are claiming you "take your beliefs seriously", while trying to reinforce your moral high-ground. But the reality is that you are either buying parts made from slave labor, either directly or through a middle-man. Sounds pure.

This just reinforces "Everyone is a hypocrite so everyone needs to shut the fuck up about everything".

How constructive

:shrug:

The parts I buy are both sold and made in the USA. No slave labour in the production of them. The computer you buy is likely build in a slave factory in some third world country. You are a hypocrite, I'm not.

Riiiiight. You aren't any more pure than anyone else. Open up your computer and have a lookie around


BTW, if a communist revolutionary ever points a gun at you, make sure that you let the hypocrite know what capitalistic country its made in.


This whole distraction is a big joke and really has nothing to do with discussing the organization of capital and labor, and the advocacy or practice of any one system. Its just tangential nonsense.

They always use that rhetoric about "purism". It's a dead giveaway.

I believe we prefer "Trokskyist". It's more pure! :)

and it's the People's Front of Judea...not the Judean People's front...splitters!

:)

n/t.

But I had that debate with another person in the past and was informed that I still support slave labor because I didn't build all the components from scratch. You know, he was mad because I didn't have a clean room in my house to assemble the CPU and motherboard :rofl: And you are still avoiding, so you never bought anything that was made by slave wage earners? I highly doubt it, and if you managed to get this far in life without it then congratulations. But you might want to look at some of the parts on your video card, your motherboard and your CPU, and check that none of them say Made in China or Made in Taiwan. Plus are you going to fault someone for not knowing how to build a PC?

And if anyone is being smarmy it's you with your OP. No one wants to hear how much better you think you are than everyone else. I can't imagine why you thought you were going to get "support" on this issue. You would have been better off coming in and informing people of which companies don't use 3rd world labor to build their machines instead of just coming in with that smug self superior attitude like your shit doesn't stink. Instead of helping with the problem as you see it all you did was piss off a bunch of people. Not very useful.

On edit: Oh and Canada is in North America, in case you hadn't noticed.

"The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."

And if Lenin could find a use for capitalists, who am I to argue.

I imagine it's doing the best we can with the tools our culture both provides us with/forces on us.

I would hazard that if one lives in the U.S., one is forced by a pragmatic necessity to either conform to the social mores to one degree or another, or starve-- both physically and mentally.

Therefore, I see it less as hypocrisy... as hypocrisy is chosen rather than forced.

Maybe in the DU rules we can have a list of what it would take for us to please all the "Purites."

Who says that "being pure" achieves any political goals? Beyond that, what does that have to do with the opinions people express? The OP suggests that those who are not pure, and so therefore are hypocrites if they express certain opinions should not be taken seriously.

tea-party rantings only they are about different ideas. The mechanics are the same. We think the tea-party folks are bat shit crazy.

The American revolutionaries used guns manufactured in Britain. So did the Irish.

The Northern troops wore uniforms made from slave produced cotton during the civil war.

Just to name a few contradictions in goals vs necessity.

We wouldn't want any capitalist indirectly profiting from your movement now, would we?

I think the unspoken message is STFU.

n/t.

"publish". :sarcasm:

I take that into consideration before starting leading polls essentially accusing memers of our community of hypocrisy. Why do you get all wound up about claims you can't verify?

That's not a rhetorical question. Can you give me an answer?

Well-regulated capitalist systems work very well. In conjunction with social democracy, it's probably the best system yet found-- if we're going by real world examples and not fantasy stories.

I don't seen many-- if any-- people here railing against regulated capitalism. They're against unregulated capitalism, and rightly so.

I don't know whether you're being intentionally obtuse here or not.

We exist. We are amongst you

What do you want to replace it with?

In the context of continuing over-development and exploitation of the earth, Id prefer to end the separation of capital and labor by promoting employee owned private enterprise (mandating private investors must sell back shares over a schedule to be redistributed to the laborers, and employees do the same upon retirement). This ends infinite inheritable ROI on seed money and the exploitation of the working class.

In the context of not polluting until mankind is extinct, I advocate a loincloth, spear, and a solar powered hut.

I am opposed to capitalism.

There is no one thing to "replace" it with, any more than there is any one thing to "replace" murder with.

Show me 'well regulated capitalism' existing over any extended period of time. The bastards accept a little punishment when it is absolutely expedient and soon as things get quite they're back at it again, only more so, every time.

You might be surprised how many people are getting past the delusion of 'well regulated capitalism'. We have but one choice, Capitalism or survival.

BTW, unregulated capitalism IS capitalism. Capitalism is what the PROPONENTS of capitalism SAY it is when they are in position to set policies. Today's proponents of capitalism say it's the unregulated variety. Ergo, what we have today is what capitalism IS.

Yes, unregulated capitalism is incredibly destructive. Many things are destructive forces when untended, but beneficial when well-managed. Water can be devastating flood or a boon to the community, depending on how it's managed. Some of the social democracies in Europe have, in my opinion, tempered and tamed capitalist systems into things that fuel innovation and productivity without running roughshod over the population.

If no one could ever criticize corporations unless one was completely free from any association with corporations, no one could ever criticize corporations.

Slavery was thoroughly interwoven with the US economy at one time. Some people boycotted various things - cotton and sugar, mainly, and that served the purpose of raising people's awareness about slavery. And certainly the argument was used against the Abolitionists that we were all dependent upon slavery, so therefore those speaking against it were hypocrites.

The Abolitionists in the 1850's rejected this argument then, and we should reject it now.

so no.

the French Resistance during the occupation of France during WWII?

The OP is drifting into the sands of absurdity, but I have to share the same atoms on the planet
thus I am guilty of using the same planet.

I like your analogy


More on moral relativity;


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism

It's an economic system, not a personal lifestyle choice.

A lot of these folks can't tell the one from the other. They wear their Che T shirts and call themselves 'socialists' but are just a shade to the left of Ron Paul.

any more red herrings you'd like to introduce?

and putting locally-owned grocers out of business. :P

You do that on purpose Hannah? :)

Of course, not.

The answer to your question is a big NO!