In my own understanding, capitalism and economic system are proportional to each other in the sense that capitalist invests a good amount of capital to maximize profit and sharing which enhance the economic development of the state.....

What about the tendency of the decrease in profit rate? Automation, concentration and centralization of capital? It seems to me that the ultimate end point of capitalism is crisis, in which further centralization is the only outcome and eventually (because the exploitation of labor is fixed) it is doomed to devolve into expansion ie. colonialism, hegemony, collapse etc. Even if we assume that all markets react rationally and that there is no environmental disasters, ie. that we live in a perfect world, even when we give capitalism the benefit of the doubt it appears that capitalism is a walking contradiction.

Capitalism always provide the conditions for its own destruction. Since profit maximisation remains the ultimate goal of the capitalist. In the process of this accumulation, there is always the urge to reduce the cost of production. Labour is the very first target followed by reduction in the quality of production and outsourcing of the entire production prcoess or part of it. But every strategy is crisis-laden because of their harsh effects on the common man and the violent reactions of the people to such effects. The current Middle East and North Africa upheavals are well linked to the effects of capitalist rentier economy just like the democray wave that blew across Africa between 1980s and 1990s.

Part of the western capitalist nations' efforts at sustaining capitalism was the development of Welfarist system but the gap between the rich and the poor still remains wide. Unemployment rate, juvenile delinquecy, drug and alcohol abuse are on the rise. As a diversionary tactics, most advanced states give some social handouts to the people, but at the same time reduce the cost of alcohol. They also pump money into entertainment and sports industries etc. All these are to occupy the people's minds with entertainments, divert their attention away from serious philosphical reasoning and give the impression of a caring state when in actual, protection of capital is the main reason.

Capitalism in all ramifications is a system that only caters for a few, hence the possibility of sustaining itself in the midst of agitating and impoverished majority remains doubtful.

Couldnt agree with you more,Olatunji. It seems the safety net is there not to lift up the poor but to protect the rich. About your references to diversions: we can see a parallel of these diversions in ancient Greece with the Olympic games, gladiators, etc. used to divert attention away from their slave economy and social injustice.

Capitalism has so many contradictions... (Well, of course!) But if I was to point to what I deem is the biggest problem in capitalism...it's carbon-fueled nature. Capitalism in not sustainable ecologically.

Goraya, you are quite right..Capitalism is not sustainable ecologically simply because such sustainability offends the profit maixmisation goal of the capital. See Kyoto Agreement. You will apprciate this fact when you look at the countries that are responsible for its failure. I am currently developing a new economic theory tthat can check-mate the excesses of capitalism and socialism. I call it speconomy, derived from socialised partnership economic system between man and state. I f you dont mind, I may send you some gists about it. Tara.

I'm reminded of something Zizek said (i think it was him) ... something like... USA will never accept the Kyoto Protocol or anything like it because that will be the end of the (excessively high consumption) American way of life... I would be very interested in knowing about speconomy...

OO and JW above mentioned 'diversions' ... isn't Herbert Marcuse's one-dimensional man about this? I would be grateful for a response.

First of all this question is rooted on the consequences of uncontrolled globalization, Global economic melt down, detrimental global warming, food crises in some part of the developed and undeveloped world, Global terrorism and so on. Yes at a first sight it looks like as you consider CAPITALISM as unsustainable . But as far as the conservative ideology is concerned the story is little bit opposite.

so here question is Why?

1-Till now no other substitution like Communism or Socialism is not better suited yet. John Maynard Keynes to be full employment we have to follow the path of capitalism otherwise more stalins and more Hitlers will born and more world wars.

2-To make the Green Economy to be wide spread more and more Green technology and green economic ideas is exported and imported without restrictiveness. And to let this happen Globalization is a inevitable step, however.

3-As far as the wealth distribution is concerned no doubt that economic gap is increasing but other part of the coin is that more and more Fortune 500 is now to forced to listed more and more entrepreneurs from the developing countries like China(become more globalized then previous.), India (opened it's economy since 1991), Brazil(Also introducing capitalistic models of economy), Mexico etc.

In the end I want to ask you a question would you not like me to watch movies like Harry Potter, eat Mcdonald Bugers, Pizzas, watching BBC London, Enjoying disney land, Employed in American or German or UK Firm etc? If this is the case then surely u is right boss.

Saurabh Sharma, I understand the position you're coming from. The problem with capitalism is that it imposes unimaginably large costs on people who don't benefit from it. Who benefits from capitalism? A small small minority, either in the Global North or a section of ruling elites in the Global south. But the costs of capitalism are..., and here I'm continuing my ecological argument but this can be extended to other spheres of life, ...are paid by the victims of it's consequences. The livelihoods of a vast majority of the global population are dependent on their ecological surroundings Carboniferous capitalism is already pushing them towards the edge.

I am not against higher standards of living. But at what cost? And who must bear that burden? Those who enjoy such lifestyles, seems logical. The problem with capitalism is... it is unethical.

What I believe is... we need a more compassionate global economic system. Which needs to be a progression from where we are at this present moment. We need to correct the failings of the current system and construct a new and more just one. Of course, this does not mean that we wipe out the past. Accountability has to be integral to the new system.

Saurabh Sharma, if my reading skills are still okay, I guess you are seeing globalisation as a process that brings progress and development to any country that leaves its doors widely opened to capital without any restriction. If this is what you are saying then there is a need to revisit the purpose of globalisation as packaged by the globalisers. Meanwhile let me point out to you briefly that globalisation is a neo-liberal agenda that allows capital to move away from high cost labour zone to low cost labour regions for the purpose of maximisng profit.

Part of the issues that African countries challenged at Doha Round was the issue of standard/quality. While goods and services from the advanced world enjoy unrestricted movements into the less developed countries, politics of standard was put in place to checkmate movements of goods from the less developed world into the advance countries simply to prevent competition at home. What is being globalised is the capital including finance. Skills and labour are restricted through stringent visa conditions. Have you ever pondered on where the developed countries are sourcing all the items including agricultural products in every store or supermarket from, when you can hardly locate industries and farms in some of these countries? Why some of these items are cheaper, sometimes at buy one get one free charges, in these developed world, reverse is the case in the less developed countries. Have you tried to reason out the faactors that may likely be responsble for this?

Why you are pondering over these issues let me also bring to you attention that the propelling engine of globalisation is a combination of technology, research and finance which obviously the advanced countries have upper hands over the less devloped ones. For the less developed countries to be on the same page with the advance world in the globalisation contest, it will require some concessions and re-ordering of the world economy. Capitalism is not an idoelogy the accommodates such concessions. There is nothing wrong in yoour quest for Harry Portter, McDonald etc, you can have such tastes without obatining a visa but you should have it at the back of your mind that the more McDonald you eat or Harry Portter you watch the more profit flight you encourage as well due to lack of restriction.

In the end as well, I will also like to ask you the siginifcance of Fortune 500 to the life of average Chinese mostly in the hinterlend where people still use black and white television?

I agree with you, mostly. I have often heard the argument that capitalism needs to be 'tamed' - the above post says 'watched and secured' - but this goes against the very rationale of capitalism and is a paradox. Who should watch and secure capitalism when it more or less controls the state?

Ohhhhh, thanks for all high definition comments. And simultaneously sorry for delaying this reply. Now, I think the point of discussion is-Is capitalism unsustainable as an economic system? And I reply, in some point of views, ambiguous. May be?

But as far as i am concerned we all discuss the ideological/ practical positives and negatives of capitalism, the proportional to economic system(according to sir Thounaojam Somokanta), Fine? And somebody (sorry for forgotten the name) argues that Capitalism is unethical, terminal goal of it is profit, exploitation in multidimensional formats(socio-economic, political, cultural etc)and system collapse is its fate. Again nice, as well as prevailing too according to some facts.

Again---------------------------BUT? But why?

1-Are we wish to construct a pseudo/egalitarian society having no personal status, division of labour in short communist utopia if no it's fine to me but if yes then i straightforward reject this view for simple reason----NEVER POSSIBLE.(And I know that you all Know it.)

2-As we all familiar about the word-"DEMOCRACY", which I think promotes individual rights, individual welfare, individual freedom, in nut shell a whole package of individualism as like capitalism(Although in certain aspects it opposes the individualism.). So Are we against democracy?

3-Are we trying to convince that without profit economy runs sustainable way?

4-As far as ethics of capitalism is concerned-Is Communism is ethical? Question is in the context of Cold war era.

5-Let's Suppose capitalism or so called dirty, unethical, rootless, ruthless capitalism is eradicated than what's next ? Again I am arguing are we have any fruitful product to cope the challenges laying in the path of Sustainable development, Global Poverty, food deprivation and the like.

6-Is the prevailing Global Economic System (although tremendous reform is required on the front of doha round, Kyoto Protocol Trips front etc.) have a capacity to make itself quarantine from the system of capitalism.

7-And what about the research and development in the fields of ICTs, biotechnology, nanotechnology etc due to which the intellectuals like us are trying to discuss the most sophisticated issue of the century by the conduit of IT based service Research Gate. Is it free or a product of again so called unethical capitalism (although again i am not ignoring the negative consequences of technology like global warming, genetic piracy, nuke wars are some of the few.)

8-What about the Genre of today's humanities demanded called Science maniac. Are our all discussion is scientific based on unanimity, neutrality, objectivity etc.

9-What about the interconnection of concept of good governance, integrated governance, sustainable development etc and capitalism? who directly or indirectly promoting capitalism. Are we neglect the importance of these concepts who regularly promoting professionalism and entrepreneurship.

10-In the end what about the personal dimension of capitalist (actor of promoting or implementing capitalism) means itself us. Are we trying to convince or put pressure at that--we open a firm or any other economic structure and leave the profit and join the club of the destitute s .Or try to become Bill gates , Mark zuckerberg to help the poor.

And by the way sir Olatunji Olateju-- Fortune 500 listed the bigger economic entrepreneurial giants and here I want to covey that if developing countries like China, India and the others, produces more and more entrepreneurs then it simply increases the boundaries of government revenues which by the process of trickle down effect reaches to the poor and at the same time excess amount of money is pooled by the capitalist for the good of the indigents.

I have serious doubt on the concept of Sustainable development due to some reasons-------

1-The development is either Forward or backward but how it would be Sustain or Constant, so etymologically there is loophole in it.

2-In its definition it seems that it would consider the developing, developed and undeveloped in the same scale.

3-It is simply the delusion considering the demands of inter-generational equity but what about the present generation.

4-In practical it is not achievable as such it demands.

5-Its an ideology pulled by developed on their counterparts i.e developing/under developed countries.

Please make me correct and give your valuable suggestions.

"... nothing is perfect because there is no universally accepted definition of perfect to attain..." (applause) Saurabh, I will reply to your post soon. But my basic problem with capitalism today, it does not take into account all the 'costs' , borne by 'others' (a very many possible kinds and types of others)... I have no problem with the pursuit of wealth, but if it is to be fair, it has to pay up. Only then can we call it fair profit, nay? Otherwise, exploitation.

John Sinclair, I like the cake analogy. But what historically do you base your opinion on that capitalism must be an element of future economy? When the bourgeoisie overthrew their noble masters and lords the preceding mode of production was overthrown albeit phased out. Could we not assume that a further revolutionary progression could depart from the capitalist script? A tempered version of capitalism was experienced in the U.S. but it inevitably devolved into our current age of austerity and crisis. Can we really keep vigilant at all times, can we prevent the creep of the capitalists' influence in our democracy? It seems the longer we hold to this model or variations of it the longer we must wait for political as well as economic democracy. As for the advances gained by way of capitalism: I wonder what might have been had the restrictions of capitalism not limited our human potential. The only light at the end of the tunnel I can see is that capitalism does indeed sow the seeds of its own destruction due to its own inherent contradictions...

Somokanta, I dont see where the capitalist lays anything out first. If anything it seems the laborer is the first to offer up thier labor in advance and in this way has made the first investment since he doesnt get paid till after he has sold his labor. But on the surface it does seem as if the capitalist is the only one laying out capital. However he only lays out half of the capital: namely the fixed and circulating capital while the worker lays out the variable capital.

Capitalism is not sustainable......

Kudos to the initiator of this thread for posing such an interesting and open-ended question. Similarly, congratulations are due to responders, who have uniformly contributed something in their analysis, assertions, presentations of evidence, etc.

That said, if we were to adopt the view that ours was a serious inquiry that we wanted not only to undertake but also to move forward from our undertaking into the social and political arenas, then we would have to put on the brakes and back up. We have not defined what we mean by 'Capitalism.' It has to be both a historical and contemporary phenomenon that has evolved, and it almost certainly has had many faces in different times and places around the planet, despite the arguably hegemony of an overarching elite, etc. That would have to be a first priority of this discussion if we were to imagine it as a part of a worldwide Peoples Economic Forum, or something similar, a priority moreover that would have many subsections to flesh out--what is capital, for example? What are wages? What is a commodity?

Secondly, we have not agreed on what sustainability means? One would assume, or at least hope strongly, that this is not a theological query--whether one can if fact "take it with you" when one dies. So saying then, does 'sustainability' mean a millennium, a certain number of centuries or human generations, or what? Is it only quantitative, or do qualitative measures count as well? If 'sustenance' requires reimposing a slave-regime and more or less regular mass-murder on a global scale, would we still count that as 'sustainable?'

Having said as much, here is a provisional 'definition' of capitalism: a scheme of production in which a relatively small set(or class) of people own most investment instruments and productive machinery and in which relatively large numbers of people(a class) work in one fashion or other for wages. In a more nuanced way, it might also imply such notions as these: it is a set of political-economic arrangements in which the accompanying social relations--law, religion, education, property, work, and on and on and on--have clear and explicable connections--often controlling--with the political-economic structures, dynamics, etc., and in which objective and subjective polarization occurs--in lifestyle, prospects, consciousness, and so on--between those who own capital and those who sell their labor to capitalists.

Observers can note that this definition has nothing explicit to do with such ideological bugabears as personal property, marketplaces, or freedom. Whatever differing definitions that diverse thinkers might propound, the first step of an exchange such as this would have to struggle with these basic questions.

This leaves aside, for now, the issues of how to examine matters dynamically, historically, objectively, scientifically, etc., although such thorny bits and pieces might require both heat and light to articulate intelligibly and intelligently.

As to the second question, the meaning of sustainability, that is a likelier even more tendentious and delicate matter, one which would necessitate long debate and negotiation merely to offer different views of what might constitute sustainability. This humble correspondent can see that one way of viewing the question is just to ponder, "I wonder whether capitalism as we know it will be around a hundred years from now?"

The answer to that query would be simple to assert: "No!" From the perspective of this humble correspondent, in fact, the survival of the hegemony of the bourgeoisie, without which capitalism will go the way of feudalism and the dinosaur, requires one or more of several possibilities, far-fetched or ugly in turn.

The unlikely scenario is that humanity manages the leap to interplanetary and then interstellar travel. Under circumstances of potentially limitless material capacity for expansion, things could continue along a bourgeois path. This is the reason that smart 'entrepreneurs' like one of the founders of PayPal are putting so much of their fortunes into manifesting such eventualities.

The ugly possibilities are, unfortunately, all too likely, lacking a capacitation of communities in citizenship and democratic principles of popular rule. One involves a continuation of 'endless war,' the inevitable result of which will be a ghettoized hyper-repression of almost all wage-earners. The other entails another 'World War' that would massively 'cull the human herd' and let the rulers who have saved themselves start over, maybe with Adam Smith's warnings about thuggery and corruption and theft more applicable than has been the case in capitalist regimes over the past few centuries.

Thanks for the thorough response to a perhaps too broad question. I'm a fan of critical theory and appreciate the input. I feel like we're at the crest of an economic wave that's about to come crashing down in numerous ways. Limited natural resources, finite needs compared to infinite desires, production for production's sake etc. It just seems to be heading for a crossroad where we will have to make a choice from the bottom up about where we are going as a species. Maybe the diffusion of information will quicken its pace against the concentration of capital and allow for a more self governing collective conscience.

Yes, Jason. Your assessment is compelling and persuasive, albeit other views are certainly possible to advance. In any event, this humble correspondent would stipulate agreement with what you deduce is happening and pending.

So then, what should happen? Those who hold powerful positions economically and politically either spit at the 'common herd' or promise that they already are taking care of business and that the rest of us should just shut up, watch, and follow the prompts that we're provided.

This humble correspondent, for lo these many decades, insisted that a grassroots upsurge is essential. Peoples' Economic Congresses; Peoples Information Networks; Community Conversations; Community Capacitation & Engagement Exercises; in short all of the protocols that Habermas and Freire and other proponents of Community-Based Participatory Research and Strong Democracy have promulgated, have been the directions for which this humble correspondent has lobbied.

How to orchestrate, budget, and evolve such efforts is not crystal clear. That their orchestration, budgeting, and evolution may be critical to human survival, however, does seem likely, if not certain. When and how do we begin? Inquiring minds want to know.

This humble correspondent agrees with your extolling democratic virtues, at the same time that he rejects wholeheartedly any notion that "capitalist democracy" is inherently better than 'socialist democracy.' That is one reason that "social democracy" is a widely-accepted synonym for socialism.

This humble correspondent would go further. The 'public relations' shtick that passes for 'democracy' under the manipulations of the 'two-party system' here is no more than a Frankenstinian simulacrum of majority rule.

A friend of THC, while these paragraphs were being assembled, spoke of a mathematics class that he teaches. Half of his charges, when prompted in their English course to compose an essay about whom they most admired, chose George W. Bush. White suburbanite kids across the land might make similar choices. Whatever else is going on is such a selection, it is not an expression of democratic consciousness but of a manipulated understanding of reality that is coming to the fore here.

As to the risks of 'factions' and factionalism, who could argue with that? Certainly, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton and John Jay put a lot of thought into avoiding the risks of factions when they penned the Federalist Papers. Of course, they also put a lot of thought into protecting class privilege among wealthy merchants, manufacturers, and slave owners. My point is that we need to actualize our commitment to participatory democracy, instead of just talking about how democracy--whether we are speaking of practice or 'theory'--is definitely a good idea. Under such circumstances, the proportion of young people who praise a rich criminal might well fall, for starters.

How do we go about actualizing participatory democracy? This humble correspondent is far from sure, but inquiring minds would like to know.

Your humble correspondent will be what he is. However, how could anyone other than the most churlish troll, and blind to boot, read what you've written here and not feel a tad charmed.

Well done. Lyrical, rich, honest, inclusive, it opens doors and invites attention and interaction.

So now comes the more difficult part: honoring the invitation. When does 'you and your crew' become a wider we? How do we proceed? Inquiring minds want to know.

I am new to this conversation so I apologize for barging in. However, I see more than one major flaw in the entire dialogue. None of the above deals with the important question of "what exactly is capital and capitalism today" but rather assumes that capitalism is this thing, this set of ideas, that was comprehended in one way by Marx, another way by Adam Smith and another way by J.P. Morgan (I use his name metaphorically). They and their conceptions were based on a reality that no longer exists and a discussion of capitalism framed by those ideas is quite irrelevant in today's world.

They all lived 100-150 years ago when capital was simply understood as money. You invested money and you got money back, more hopefully. The great capitalists of this era are those who founded Microsoft, Dell, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, etc. All of those were founded in college dormitories by guys who had trouble finding change to buy pizza. They were not founded by people with great money to invest. Of course, their IDEAS, ENERGY, ENTHUSIASM then attracted money which is completely fluid today, unlike one hundred years ago. Those companies, by the way, have a market value that exceeds all steel companies, auto companies, or the entire manufacturing sector. These entrepreneurs created a huge amount of wealth, but it was not generated by the investment of financial capital. Financial capital was a secondary or tertiary cause and the least significant.

So, what is capital and does it matter? An academic discussion of capitalism or capital as money has only marginal utility in the world in which the real economy functions. The significant capital that results in the creation of wealth today is social capital, spiritual capital, and human capital. Each of these is different, although related. That gap between rich and poor nations today is better defined in terms of the gaps in these types of "soft capital." Social capital, the radius of trust in a society, and human capital, the sum of human competence and motivation, are far more significant in the development of an economy or a business today and to discuss capitalism and economic outcomes without recognizing this makes the conversation of use only to academics.

One other problem with some of the comments (but not all) above is that there is a pervasive prejudice, unabashed bigotry expressed in academic circles that could only be unrecognized by those so indoctrinated in those prejudices. The assumption that "capitalists" make investment decisions solely based on return on investment, with no regard for ethics, the environment, etc., is nonsense. Capitalists are human being, like academics, who have diverse motives, diverse experiences, and diverse needs. Every statement about the motives or ethics of capitalists is a generalization, sometimes true and often wrong, just as would be any generalization about the motives or ethics of academics.

A third problem with the above discussion is that absolutely no sensible alternative is ever presented. Capitalism versus what? Private control of capital and investment versus government control of capital and investment? It is a child's game to criticize any system of thought in absence of any alternative. There is no sensible alternative to capitalism. The only sensible question is "exactly how should private investment be regulated by governments?" Every business person with any sense understands that like referees on a football field, and a rule book as in every sport, there needs to be sensible regulation of the "game" of business or capitalism. Not too much or too little, and exactly where that lines should be drawn will probably be debated forever.

Personally, I think we need to move rapidly toward a global system of environment regulation, labor laws, etc., given the reality of the global economic system that is essentially a system without borders. The world is one country and we are all its citizens.

Industrial society, capitalist or socialist, is not sustainable. The environmental crisis is a limit for the idea and practice of a wealthy world shared today for 7 billion humans. The way out is the space…Extinction is more than a biological fact it is also a social fact.

Raul!

You echo what I said in a much earlier post, although I stated the potential of 'space colonization' to salvage capitalism as a decidedly suboptimal choice. As to the necessity of exploring the cosmos as a sine qua non of industrial survival, that Is arguable, though the facts of environmental degradation and the stipulation that seven billion human cousins is too many by a few billion more or less do not prove the argument.

For my purposes, I would hope to see an increase in grassroots and community organization and capacity, along with citizen networking and leadership's replacing corporate hegemony as the first step. In other words, since the cause of the disease is arguably the class system and its oppressive social relations, those seeking a 'cure' ought to focus there first, while remaining open to other necessities and developments as time goes on.

The discussion that attends this increase capacity and networking, in all events, ought to focus on understanding the state of capitalism itself, not on hypothetical and hoped for 'rescues' like heading for the stars. For your purposes, if you are unfamiliar with the work of Frederick Jackson Turner, whose "Frontier Thesis in American History" is a minor or major classic(depending on one's POV), you would find it quite salubrious to your contentions. Space is the 'final frontier' in the estimation of many. In similar vein, the ideas of Vannevar Bush would offer you some rationale and insights that you would appreciate, if you're not already aware of his report, "Science: the Endless Frontier."

I disagree with these analyses, but they would fit right in to your thinking.

Lawrence Miller!

You close well. "We are all citizens," in a world where political borders are more and more of a liability. Before that, a few difficulties are discernible.

I raised the point with which you begin, both more charitably and more analytically, much earlier in this thread. Perhaps you overlooked that. In case this is so, here is what I said, in pertinent part.

"Kudos to the initiator of this thread for posing such an interesting and open-ended question. Similarly, congratulations are due to responders, who have uniformly contributed something in their analysis, assertions, presentations of evidence, etc.

That said, if we were to adopt the view that ours was a serious inquiry that we wanted not only to undertake but also to move forward from our undertaking into the social and political arenas, then we would have to put on the brakes and back up. We have not defined what we mean by 'Capitalism.' It has to be both a historical and contemporary phenomenon that has evolved, and it almost certainly has had many faces in different times and places around the planet, despite the arguably hegemony of an overarching elite, etc. That would have to be a first priority of this discussion if we were to imagine it as a part of a worldwide Peoples Economic Forum, or something similar, a priority moreover that would have many subsections to flesh out--what is capital, for example? What are wages? What is a commodity?

Secondly, we have not agreed on what sustainability means? One would assume, or at least hope strongly, that this is not a theological query--whether one can if fact "take it with you" when one dies. So saying then, does 'sustainability' mean a millennium, a certain number of centuries or human generations, or what? Is it only quantitative, or do qualitative measures count as well? If 'sustenance' requires reimposing a slave-regime and more or less regular mass-murder on a global scale, would we still count that as 'sustainable?'

Having said as much, here is a provisional 'definition' of capitalism: a scheme of production in which a relatively small set(or class) of people own most investment instruments and productive machinery and in which relatively large numbers of people(a class) work in one fashion or other for wages. In a more nuanced way, it might also imply such notions as these: it is a set of political-economic arrangements in which the accompanying social relations--law, religion, education, property, work, and on and on and on--have clear and explicable connections--often controlling--with the political-economic structures, dynamics, etc., and in which objective and subjective polarization occurs--in lifestyle, prospects, consciousness, and so on--between those who own capital and those who sell their labor to capitalists.

Observers can note that this definition has nothing explicit to do with such ideological bugabears as personal property, marketplaces, or freedom. Whatever differing definitions that diverse thinkers might propound, the first step of an exchange such as this would have to struggle with these basic questions.

This leaves aside, for now, the issues of how to examine matters dynamically, historically, objectively, scientifically, etc., although such thorny bits and pieces might require both heat and light to articulate intelligibly and intelligently."

The rest of your post is so full of assumed premises, bare assertions paraded as 'fact,' and undefined or vaguely articulated terminology, that I hardly know how to begin to take apart what you've proffered. In such a situation, a simple list of problems with what you have stated is a way to start. This assumes, of course, that you are actually interested in an intellectually credible exchange rather than just propounding a bourgeois ideology as inherently incontrovertible. But I'm willing to hope that this is the case. So saying, here's a list of difficulties with your ideas as currently presented.

#1--The assumed premise of your second paragraph, that folks a plus or minus a century ago considered only money as capital, is wrong: Marx, Andrew Carnegie, and John Maynard Keynes, among thousands of others would have naysayed such a contention as absurd. Not only is equipment more likely a conceptualization of classical capital, but money quite frequently has nothing whatever to do with capitalization.

#2--Also in the second paragraph, you make a hugely false assertion. I have done research on Dell computer, and can state categorically that great wealth, venture capital, and old money played a big part in its foundation; I played poker with Bill Gates at college--his nickname, "Gravy Train" for the interest payment that he drew on his ten million dollar trust fund, belies his having faced difficulty finding 'pizza funds.' I am confident that a factual analysis of the other companies, rather than empty assertions, would find that they too had substantial money backing from early in their existence.

#3--The critique in your third paragraph, an anti-intellectual screed against 'ivory tower' nerds, rests on undefined and unexplored ideas that supposedly differentiate 'capital' today into 'softer' elements than in the past. While you charge that this conversation will 'only interest academics,' who are allegedly the primary audience here, one might take issue with such a charge in any case; perhaps people would be interested in discussion based on something other than imperious presumption and fuzzy ideology. Who knows? Have you asked?

#4--Your fourth paragraph apparently mistakes analysis, fact, and opinion for prejudice and bigotry. I resent the hell out of such a label. If you detect a certain ferocity in tone here, well perhaps you ought to check your weapons at the door if you don't want a fire fight. As to the assertion that capitalists are warm human beings with lovely motivations, this would be something that a public forum might examine: perhaps folks might take issue with such a notion, but perhaps you could make a case based on something other than your lofty opinions, eh? As a point of fact, every corporate entity in existence in the United States has a fiduciary duty to maximize profit; depending on the context, such inherent civil wrongdoing can also entail criminal liabilities.

#5--Your next little diatribe goes from a critique of what has decidedly not been the purpose of this thread--alternatives to capitalism, the lack of which is nonsensical, according to you--to an arrogation to yourself of knowledge about "the only sensible question," based on an assumption that no alternatives to capital exist. Dude, that's like really wacky; it's so amateurish and lacking in thoughtfulness that one would have to imagine that you're not 'on your game' here, you're reacting emotionally rather than rationally, and so forth. One might at least give credit to the folks here, myself included, to consider, since the point of this conversation was about questions of sustainability, that maybe, just maybe, participants in this process might be able to make an intelligible and even possibly intelligent point or two about said 'alternatives.' I can imagine contributing to such a discourse; however, more importantly, we all--you included--should be honorable and honest enough to imagine supporting and bringing to fruition a thoroughgoing, public, inclusive investigation of all these issues.

Or do you believe that only 'experts' should have a chance to speak? And are you one of those alleged experts? inquiring minds would like to know.

Jim,

"This assumes, of course, that you are actually interested in an intellectually credible exchange rather than just propounding a bourgeois ideology as inherently incontrovertible." REALLY?????

Define "bourgeois ideology." No, please don't.

Let's focus more on what is significant. It is a bit hard to respond to the above because it is really more of an emotional outburst than anything else. Obviously I hit some very sensitive nerve.

1. Rather than money, let me rephrase that as "material assets" including land, plant and equipment, as well as "money" assets. One is quickly exchanged for the other so the difference between these material asset classes becomes immaterial. But, the important issue is that other forms of capital such as social capital was not given much credence and note considered in the analysis of either countries or companies. I can tell you from a great deal of first hand experience that the ability to build trust, both internally and externally, are primary aspects of "wealth" or capital for a firm. As I am sure you know the World Bank and others have studied the relationship between social capital and wealth creation.

If you feel that social capital (and I am just focusing on this as an example for the sake of brevity) was a significant component of how capitalism was understood at the time of Marx or J.P. Morgan, I would be very interested to be so educated. In all seriousness, I would like to have references to study in that regard.

2. I have also studied all of the companies, Yahoo, Google, MSFT, etc., and it is true that money, investment capital soon came into play and enabled the growth of these companies. But, the seed of these companies, the impulse that gave birth to them was not financial capital. It was ideas, faith in ideas, enthusiasm for ideas, a passion for building something or creating something. These impulses are something very different than money. Financial capital, or capitalists, are constantly searching for those who have good ideas and passion for those ideas, and quickly dives in to provide that capital. This was certainly true with Apple and many other companies that are dominant in their fields.

One might say, "why is this important?" It is important because when one studies socio-economic development and when one attempts to provide solutions, the focus on financial capital is too often misguided and fails. The development of human capital and social capital are far more important.

3. In your third paragraph above you accuse me of a diatribe with a diatribe. I never said anything about "ivory tower nerds" so using that phrase in quotations makes no sense. I really don't know what this whole paragraph is about other than some emotional issue you have at the moment. I am not going to try to read your mind or emotions here.

4. "As to the assertion that capitalists are warm human beings with lovely motivations..." You would really make your points better if you didn't feel a need to put words in my mouth. I never said anything like this, so attacking an assertion I did not make does not merit a refute. What I said was that generalizing about capitalists makes no more sense then generalizing about academics. Capitalists have every possible motive you can imagine. Some have warm and fuzzy motives. Large amounts of capital have gone into micro-enterprise and other "social capital" efforts. And, yes, some capital, perhaps the majority, have gone into purely exploitative or financially motivated efforts.

"As a point of fact, every corporate entity in existence in the United States has a fiduciary duty to maximize profit; depending on the context, such inherent civil wrongdoing can also entail criminal liabilities." This is one of those statements that is true, but a truth in a sea of other truths. It is only one of many responsibilities of corporations. Every corporation, by law, has duties for health, safety and environmental standards. If this statement was taken literally, no corporation would donate any money toward any social good. Virtually every corporation does. If you took the statement above literally, virtually every corporation in the country could be held liable for criminal of civil wrongdoing. Every donation to the United Way could be challenged on those grounds. Of course, that would be absurd, as I am sure you would agree. Corporate leaders are not so simple in their motives and that was the point I was making. Starbucks is a good case in point. They spend far more money then they need to on health care, education, and other social goods. I don't believe any shareholder has taken them to court for their misdeeds. It is not hard to point to other examples.

5. Regarding alternatives to capitalism: I didn't say there was no alternative to "capital." (again you misquote). I said that there is no viable alternative to capitalism - and to be clear - I mean a system in which capital decisions, investment decisions, are made by those who control private capital and the means of production. I have listened to, or read, many rantings against capitalism that end in nothing but condemnation, but no presentation of any viable alternative. Perhaps I missed it, but in the above thread, I did not see any coherent statement of an alternative. The presumed alternative (presumed by me, at least) to the private control of capital is capital controlled by state entities.

In all seriousness, and humility, I would be very interested to hear a description of what that alternative might be. My opening paragraph in my previous post stated that I didn't feel the above dialogue dealt with the important issue of exactly what is capital and therefore capitalism is in today's world. Jim, your post doesn't not respond to that subject and I would be very interested to hear your response.

I am going to ignore the numerous ad hominem attacks in your piece above. It is not productive.

Before we go any further, please enumerate the "ad hominem" attacks in my reply. Where are they, exactly? Inquiring minds want to know.

No. I will not.

Hello, John!

You're talking to the old fart whom you charmed with your 'free-market reform' shtick, which, in case you haven't realized yet--"Quelle Surprise!" as "Naked Capitalism" puts it--is not exactly 'my cup of tea. I like to listen to folks.

Critique strengthens me, new ideas and new facts enrich me. However, anyone who calls my thinking prejudiced and bigoted throws down a gauntlet. 'The fur will fly,' as my dad used to say.

That said, unless I'm cornered or over my head, I won't resort to ad hominems, like calling someone a prejudiced bigot. I'll use reason, but I'll likely be more or less harsh, depending on the extent of the insult and the 'time of the month,' or sensitivity of a particular 'nerve' that someone hit on.

For my harshness, I apologize. My argument stands up pretty well, nevertheless. Debate is good.

I'm being civil. Sustaining society may require a willingness to consider transformation. In the past, an unwillingness in this regard has led to the opposite of civility, that is to say civil war.

Lawrence, Lawrence!

Okay, then, let's start with that. You "will not" because you cannot.

One meaning of "ad hominem," argumentatively appealing to emotions, without facts or reasons, doesn't apply to me. While emotional, thus far, I have constantly used rational ideas and facts as a touchstone. I am always passionate and distrust those who are not honest about their biases, as I also strive always to be.

The second meaning is even less apt--in my case. I have neither imputed your motives nor assaulted your character. I never once stated outright that you were guilty of "pervasive prejudice and unabashed bigotry"(you might note the double quotation marks--it's a sign of a direct quotation, as opposed to single quotation marks, which are useful for paraphrasing, idioms, irony, etc.). You are the one who has introduced ad hominem into this thread.

Here's a psychological insight. "Projection is the most primitive form of coping strategy."

As to the substance of your most recent response with any substance in it, you begin with a command, "Define 'bourgeois ideology,'" which you then sarcastically countermand, "No, please don't."

You then address my five enumerated sources of error in your original post. Let's see.

Number one: you expand your original statement about capital and money. That's a start. Well done.

Of course, you immediately state that this expansion is "immaterial," an assertion with which I disagree. Here's one reason. Not all money(one might say, 'most money')is capital. Cash in circulation is not capital, nor is currency that does not form the basis for any investment--say, in the wallets of workers or under the mattresses of misers. In general, your 'definition' of capital, from which you develop many ideas about capitalism, is inadequate, in my estimation for several reasons. It is inadequately analytical, inadequately dynamic, and inadequately historical. My definition, when I identified the same flaw with which your original contribution began, is much more to my liking. However, you have modified your first stance enough to permit a discussion about the issue were that pertinent.

Also in this first arena, you again introduce the notion of 'social capital.' Let's be clear. Capital and Capitalism, while complex and not always easy to pin down phenomena are from the realm of reality: they have a historical, demonstrable, comprehensible existence that, given time and debate, most people can agree about; at the least, for purposes of discussion, disputants would stipulate something like, 'At the least, capital(ism) is' such and such, and so forth.

This is decidedly not the case with 'social capital,' one of the matters that I study in the course of work that I do. The following is from one of the dozen or so PDF's on the topic that I have close at hand(http://www.socialcapitalresearch.com/definition.html). "The commonalities of most definitions of social capital are that they focus on social relations that have productive benefits. The variety of definitions identified in the literature stem from the highly context specific nature of social capital and the complexity of its conceptualization and operationalization. Social capital does not have a clear, undisputed meaning, for substantive and ideological

reasons (Dolfsma and Dannreuther 2003; Foley and Edwards 1997)."

So here's what you're doing by introducing this. You're conflating a complex historical, dynamical, phenomenological fact and set of relationships--i.e., Capitalism--with a complex, disputed, ideological belief. Then you're making arguments based on that conflation. It won't wash, though a lively and productive discussion could flow from this erroneous beginning.

Number two: you acknowledge the role of venture capital very early in all of these company stories. You fail to address the point that I made additionally, that great wealth underpinned the capacity of 'adventurers' like Bill Gates and Michael Dell to start their ventures and attract adventurous cash looking for outlets. Recall, please, that your little quip about needing pizza money was part of what I disputed--that the Dell family or the Gates family might have such concerns is laughable, and it is false.

No one can argue that "ideas, faith in ideas, enthusiasm for ideas, a passion for building something or creating something" plays some part in the development of enterprise. Perhaps the seed metaphor that you use is apt, but if so, then the soil, fertilizer, water, and husbandry that built mega-billion dollar corporations was the family money and other networked class advantages of these 'visionaries.' This is almost always the case, with every single venture that makes the leap to the top of the heap--not always, but well over 90% of the time, this is demonstrable, as in the cases cited.

This leaves aside additional arguments about what really drives innovation and capital's development and transformation, not precious ideas of particular individuals, but social choices guided by public investment. Particularly in regard to high-technology, and especially in the case of anything concerned with the internet, this point is close to incontrovertible. I have written about this to significant extent and can back up what I propound.

Number three: you accuse me of a diatribe and of being incomprehensible. You misquote my use of "'ivory tower' nerds," suggesting that I am misquoting you when I had not intention of quoting you but of characterizing the chic anti-intellectualism of your position.

Here are your words. This whole thread is of "only marginal utility in the world in which the real economy functions. ...(and) of use only to academics." Pardon me, but that seems like wording which suggests that reasoned debate and conversation about these issues is close to useless. That is the position of those who trade in anti-intellectual bonhomie and, perhaps, a particular sort of 'ad hominem' attack--'Your character is that of a useless nerd.'

Number four: as stated here, yours are points well-taken. We could have a lively discussion, no doubt, about the relative weights given by large firms to 'social responsibility,' 'corporate ethics,' philanthropy, and profit, no doubt, but what you state here, including your sarcastic acknowledgment of the accuracy of my point about fiduciary duty, might actually facilitate that lively discussion.

Number five: you begin by misquoting yourself. You did not write, no "viable alternative" originally; instead, you wrote no "sensible alternative." When someone calls those with whom they disagree senseless, nonsensical, or insane, all antonyms of sensible, those so labeled might be forgiven for assuming that they have just heard their beliefs, in this case about 'alternatives to capitalism,' roundly dismissed.

In any event, now you want to say that you meant that 'no viable alternatives to capitalism' exist. What justifies this assertion, however, is your assumption that "control (of) private capital and the means of production" is immutable. Nationalization and revolution are always available. Castro's Cuba will end up one of history's most amazing success stories; the jury is out on Chavez' Venezuela, but my money is on Hugo and the free violins of "La Systema;" the Chinese case is more complicated and, frankly, outside of the area of my focus, but the Chinese economy is in absolutely no sense classically capitalistic.

These examples all exist in a world dynamic in which capital does reign, of course, but these and all manner of other social democratic forms are extant in the context of that bourgeois hegemony. I'm in favor of consistent expansion of the scope of democratic collectivity, as opposed to the rule of the rich, backed by the taxes of the masses through the largesse of corporate-controlled governance.

The alternative that I call for, since you've asked, is an expansion of the dialog to include 'stakeholders'--workers, unemployed people, small farmers, students, and their representatives--heretofore excluded from the disposition of said "private capital and the means of production." This is what I meant by lobbying for a Peoples Economic Forum or Peoples Economic Congress movement. Out of such processes may emerge alternatives to what is transpiring now, for certain, whether capitalism continues or not. Before anyone accuses me of a "child's game" or other foolish nonsense, such a one might want to research "The Economic Bill of Rights," FDR's curtain call and something that I've written about. That would make a swell place to dwell in initiating such conversations as I seek; Roosevelt thought so, anyway, and so do I.

Here is what I foresee. Either such a nexus of democratic dialog will develop, possibly along the lines of the U.N.'s "Management of Social Transition" protocols, about which I've written, or some version or other of carnage and mayhem--much more widespread and murderous than our present plethora of little wars--will ensue, from which might emerge a bloody civil war or world war of uncertain outcome, number one, or a ghettoization of human existence to an extent that makes the slums of Mumbai appear paradisaical, number two, or the extinction of humankind, number three.

Perhaps this will still seem like "rantings" or a "child's game" to you. However, such imputations suggest a descent into the ad hominem attacks of which you've accused me, without foundation. Vaya con Dios.

Hi Jim, thank you for your comment. Returning to the foundational quest: Is capitalism unsustainable as an economic system? Of course it is not sustainable for long haul, and so? What will happen if we cannot stop all those irrational effects produced by our wealthy life style? There is, first, a very cynic answer: we don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, because in a distant future “we are all dead”. The second answer is: science and political rationality based upon dialog and understanding, are the tools in order to operate the reality, and I think it is also kind of ideology. Anybody believes in social-democracy for five of those seven billions (before I end this post some beautiful babies certainly will born in very different conditions), giving to them social security, credit cards for buying cars, computers, air travels and let them sparing their time at shopping centers? Who will pay the energy? (The sun?, the wind?) Green energy can sustain our consumerism? Poor people will be changed in enormous global middle class? They will vote in a global democracy? I’m not sure if some affluent societies will have enough technology to go to the “ spatial west”, the last frontier, but everybody knows they are trying to do so, for military an economic reasons. Probably this kind of new world will be not “capitalism” in the same sense we can still define our global economic system, because private accumulation tends to be less important than a range of technologies related to control the environment (and this will be a sort of social control). Sorry, I don’t want to do bad science fiction, or just bad social science, but the question about sustainability of capitalism, in such days, without any possible utopia, is a pessimistic exercise.

Jim, first let me say that I don't want to engage in argument or debate. I find it inherently unproductive and this exchange has felt far too much like debate rather than dialogue. So, I will respond to those things in which we may find common ground, or where I would like to ask for clarification.

1. Regarding the definition of capital. If I understand what you are saying, you are saying that the accepted and historical definition of capitalism is... not all money, not cash in circulation, etc. That is all fine. But, the essential idea of capital remains. The issue that is the core of my concern is whether we are stuck in the historical definition, or the traditionally accepted academic definition. Although others may wish to engage in a very technical discussion of exactly what is included or excluded from capital, I am personally not very interested and don't find it very significant, as long as it is about the material forms of capital.

What is significant (to me), and I want to see if I hear you correctly, is that I feel the definition of capital and the discussion or study or capitalism, must be expanded to include other forms of capital. But, what I hear you saying is that you reject the inclusion or significance of social, human or other forms of capital.

That social capital does not have an "undisputed meaning" or definition does not strike me as particularly problematic. The definitions of many things, including capital, are disputed all the time. That does not make them any more or less real.

I want to be sure that I understand you correctly. Are you saying that these are not important in the development of a company or economy? Or, are you saying that there simply has not been enough academic study of these matters to lead to any conclusions regarding their importance or their relationship to financial (traditional) capital? You said that "Also in this first arena, you again introduce the notion of 'social capital.' Let's be clear. Capital and Capitalism, while complex and not always easy to pin down phenomena are from the realm of reality: they have a historical, demonstrable, comprehensible existence..." This implies that social capital is not in the realm of reality. Do you really believe that? Was Fukuyama's study of the relationship of economic development to high trust and low trust societies completely irrelevant or wrong headed? Are the World Bank's similar studies also insignificant?

My position on this simply comes from working in corporations and not-for-profit organization over the past forty years. My observation is that money, or material capital, comes and goes very easily. But trust within the organization and trust with the market place is a far more precious thing. So to with human competence and motivation (human capital). If I am right about this, and I can understand that others have other views, than the idea of capital in the traditional or academically accepted definition, is not so important and need to be, in my view, dramatically revised.

2. Quickly (I don't have a lot of time) to the Bill Gates and Michael Dell issue. I don't think we have any real disagreement here. Yes, they both came from wealthy families. The significance of that to me may be different that the significance to you. It was not that their families said, "Here's a million dollars go start a company." Rather, the significance is that the family money allowed them opportunities to develop human competence and social relationships upon which they were able to build their entrepreneurship. There is no question that money provides opportunities. I think we can agree on that.

I have a model that I have been using with corporate clients that presents the idea of five forms of capital: Spiritual capital (values and dedication to an ennobling purpose); social capital (internal trust and external trust or brand equity); human capital (competence and motivation); innovation capital (capability to innovate in both product or service and process); and finally financial or material capital. The point of it is that there is a holistic dynamic, and a non-linear dynamic between these. Money gets invested in the development of human capital. The decline of values results in the decline of trust which then results in the decline of innovation, which results in the loss of financial capital, etc. etc. This idea of five forms of capital rings true to those in the corporate world and helps them expand their understanding of strategy and what is important to success.

I would argue that the same can be applied to countries. The decline of the U.S. can be seen in a decline in values and a decline in a sense of worthy purpose, which is related to a severe and obvious decline in trust or social capital (Robert Putnam was right), which has resulted in a decline in human competence, etc..... The declines ends in the loss of financial capital, but does not begin there.

I know you may argue that none of that is academically proven, not historical, etc., etc. But, I have never allowed myself or my thinking to be restricted by what has been. I am much more interested in how things really work and how they will work in the future.

So, what I am trying to do is create a holistic, dynamic understanding of how things really work. And, my understanding comes more from my hands on work than from academic study, which is most often hindsight. I hope that helps you understand where I am coming from.

3. You said that Castro's Cuba will end up one of histories most amazing success stories. Why?

4. You said "The alternative that I call for, since you've asked, is an expansion of the dialog to include 'stakeholders'--workers, unemployed people, small farmers, students, and their representatives--heretofore excluded from the disposition of said "private capital and the means of production."

If I understand correctly, I agree with you. I think capitalism, or the economic system in general, should be viewed as a corollary to democracy. Both are best when they are most inclusive, most transparent, when the interests of all are taken into account and all have a voice. This is slightly off topic, but I think the idea that "corporations are people" is absurd and is nowhere to be found in our Constitution. The history of the decline of civilizations is the history of the centralization of wealth and power, the widening gap between rich and poor, the alienation of leaders and led, that almost inevitably ends in revolt. This is, in fact, the greatest enemy of democracy.

You know that part in "Wizard of Oz?" When the gatekeeper says, "Well why didn't you say so?! That's a horse of a different color."

You're right. We obviously have much more fruitful grounds for agreement and mutual understanding than we do for debate, though as a dyed-in-the-wool dialectician, i recognize the essential value of debate.

I'll answer substantively some of your questions within a day or so. Till then, here's a challenge.

You want to bring this message to corporate culture; I want to include communities in the dialog and put across the notion of a more inclusive definition of who the stakeholders are and develop a more expansive embodiment of a truly participatory democracy.

So let's do a conference call about it. We'll each invite some people, and we'll see if some sort of ground exists to evolve an agenda, a "Dialog for Survival and Empowerment" or something similar.

Until I have a chance to compose a more complete response, or till I hear from you otherwise, I'll just say, "Well met!"

Jim, I look forward to your response. Thank you.

John, I agree and disagree.

What is certainly true is that all human beings will tend to behave in ways that further their self interest. This can be said of business executives, school children, and university professors equally. What is not true is any blanket generalization about people of any class or profession.

This discussion reminds me of the quip: "What's the difference between capitalism and communism? Answer: In capitalism man exploits his fellow man. In communism the reverse is true."

I began my career in 1970 working in prisons in North Carolina. Long story short, I developed the first "free economy" behind prison walls, a form of a "token economy" (per Ayllon and Azrin), a behavior modification process to reward good behavior, thereby teaching pro social skills. We developed a pay system whereby every inmate received a check each week based on the skill level and performance in his job; then paid rent in one of four dormitories - a luxury dorm, a quality dorm, a standard dorm and an efficiency dorm. I essentially managed an economy for three years in which we had inmates go on "unemployment security" when they lost their jobs, and we then taxed the other inmates to pay for unemployment insurance, etc. It was quite an experience in managing an economy and observing how human behavior responds to the nature of a system.

Well, every corporation and every country is a similar system of rewards and punishment. And my inmates, like good business executives and university professors, become very skilled at perceiving the contingencies of reinforcement and adjusting their behavior to gain advantage.

The naive idea is the idea of some Utopian system in which there are no rules, no rewards or punishment, and everyone just behaves altruistically. It is not human nature. So, we are stuck with the messy business of designing systems, whether within companies, as I have been doing for many years, or within the larger society. There simply is no alternative to such a system. We, through out political system, constantly seek to adjust that system to elicit desired behavior and punish bad behavior.

When I asked the question "what is the alternative to capitalism?" I have still not heard any answer to that question that is actually an alternative. What I have heard is ideas as to how to modify our current system of capitalism, such as Jim proposed "The alternative that I call for, since you've asked, is an expansion of the dialog to include 'stakeholders'--workers, unemployed people, small farmers, students, and their representatives--heretofore excluded from the disposition of said "private capital and the means of production." I would certainly agree with that, but it is not actually an alternative to capitalism. As long as the primary source of investment capital is in private hands, the primary means of production and distribution are in private hands, it is still capitalism.

We tend to generalize about people we do not know in any intimate way. If you live in an all white community it is easy to generalize about African Americans from some crime scene on the nightly news. You are fed data that is the negative exception. Most Americans make false generalizations about Muslims for the same reason. Many business executives make highly derogatory assumptions about academicians based on their own lack of intimacy with academicians. And, those in the academic world make equally false generalizations about business executives.

I know too many business executives too well to accept many of the generalizations you and others here make. Business executives are not stupid or amoral (for the most part). Most business executives do not want to see our environment destroyed or a world a mass poverty. They also have to live in this world and want a clean environment just as much as you do. And most agree that we need government regulation and testing of new drugs; we need environmental and safety standards for automobiles, etc. It is only people like Ron Paul and his followers who live in a world of complete theory, devoid of any need to make practical decisions, where those kinds of ideas prevail.

Capitalism is an organic thing that is constantly evolving. The capitalism of today in the U.S. is drastically different than the capitalism of one hundred years ago, before an SEC, EPA, social security, etc. It has transformed and will continue to transform. I was in China over the holidays, where my daughter lives, and you could hardly find a more capitalistic society anywhere in the world. The transformations and rate of change are amazing - both for good and bad.

But, our ideas and conceptions have to keep with the transformations in the "real world."

Hey, John!

The "hole in the bucket" that you mention above is a flaw in any Utopian dream or intention. I'm not interested in Utopia, but in finding ways to enhance the Jeffersonian sense of capacitation with the Marxist sense of political economy and consciousness. That's not Utopian, inasmuch as identifiable societies and communities manage to provide such a nexus in the real world--Sweden, Cuba, Vermont, and many other instances exist.

Thus, the psychological points that you raise, that people are inherently selfish and that 'blood is thicker than water,' seems off as a critique of what I proffer. That's not to say that we can safely ignore inevitable greediness and nepotistic tendencies any more than we can easily dismiss the fact of people's inherent laziness and clannishness. However, the necessity of this awareness does not disprove either the potentially equal necessity of or the potential acuity of broadening social, political, and economic democracy.

That's what seems the case to me, in any event. I'll be responding to Lawrence Miller here in a bit, now that I've returned from the ether. Who knows if this conversation will get us beyond this tiny slice of virtual reality?

I'm ready, willing, and able to participate in such an expansive extension of the dialog, in any event.

Hello, Lawrence!

I've been swamped. My work involves all manner of discussions. Like Paulo Freire, I accept that only through conversation is humanity possible. For a time, anyway, I am devoting my own time to engaging folks here. Perhaps that will lead to possibilities in what you term "the real world."

I have to assume, since you've shown up here with a perspective, an agenda, or 'an ax to grind,' as it were--and likely all three of these--that you too have some real-world payoff or potential in mind by participating here. If you don't like what you hear or experience here, then, on the one hand, you may continue to criticize, or you may depart; alternatively, on the other hand, you may find some utility in one form or other of interconnection and development on the basis of what transpires in these sallies back and forth.

Voila! Any such "interconnection and development" must start with a careful attention to what others are responding to one's own evidence, ideas, and argument. Inevitably, all honest dialog includes elements of debate and argumentation, so I'm not sure what you mean by saying that you eschew these. I'd have to say, "I beg to differ," not only about my own feelings and thoughts on the matter, but in relation to every single word that you've written thus far.

Thus, when you say that you will participate only where "common ground" is evident or you desire clarification, you are not rejecting argumentative behavior, but rather, you are asserting the grounds under which you are willing to continue. Since I recognize that the most crucial element in any debate is this "common ground"--otherwise, the only options are murder, violence, and so on or 'agreeing to disagree'--I don't necessarily mind your arrogation of the right to guide the 'dialog' along the pathways that you determine unilaterally 'work for you.' On the other hand, I will point out that in a dialog, listening to other perspectives is inherently necessary, even if you'd rather just skip over those parts.

That said, here are substantive replies to your points and 'requests for clarification:' First as to "the definition of capital." You wonder if 'you understand me correctly.'

This will be the third time that I've inserted the ideas that I presented long before you were here, the initial possibility for 'common ground,' as it were. "That said, if we were to adopt the view that ours was a serious inquiry that we wanted not only to undertake but also to move forward from our undertaking into the social and political arenas, then we would have to put on the brakes and back up. We have not defined what we mean by 'Capitalism.' It has to be both a historical and contemporary phenomenon that has evolved, and it almost certainly has had many faces in different times and places around the planet, despite the arguably hegemony of an overarching elite, etc. That would have to be a first priority of this discussion if we were to imagine it as a part of a worldwide Peoples Economic Forum, or something similar, a priority moreover that would have many subsections to flesh out--what is capital, for example? What are wages? What is a commodity? ...

Having said as much, here is a provisional 'definition' of capitalism: a scheme of production in which a relatively small set(or class) of people own most investment instruments and productive machinery and in which relatively large numbers of people(a class) work in one fashion or other for wages. In a more nuanced way, it might also imply such notions as these: it is a set of political-economic arrangements in which the accompanying social relations--law, religion, education, property, work, and on and on and on--have clear and explicable connections--often controlling--with the political-economic structures, dynamics, etc., and in which objective and subjective polarization occurs--in lifestyle, prospects, consciousness, and so on--between those who own capital and those who sell their labor to capitalists."

You have not responded to this. Perhaps that smacks too much of the 'debate' which you decry as lacking in utility. But then again, the question remains: you asked it. What I mean by 'capital' and 'capitalism' is present above; it is neither overly technical nor particularly academic--I merely seek a historical, analytical, and dynamic framework for discussing the original question.

Your response to this inquiry, "Is capitalism...sustainable," starts by suggesting that the struggle to agree what capitalism means will lead to 'getting stuck' in historical beliefs and that your experience of capitalism ought to have a validity outside of attempts to stipulate what in the hell we're discussing when we ask the original question. As to the validity of your anecdotes, fire away. It's all grist for the mill. As to the notion that we can somehow finesse the need for a difficult dialog about 'what we mean when we ask about capitalism,' good luck!

My basic and inaugural position here is process-oriented. We have to battle out some sort of acknowledgment of what we're dealing with when we pose the original question, or the discussion quickly becomes absurdist and surreal.

Neither I nor any of the communities that I work with would have any interest in discourse that fails to honor the chance of all present to speak. My initial speaking, in the whole process, is to insist that we grapple with this matter of defining things.

I offered a definition. You haven't responded to it.

Instead, what you did is to state remarks that you've since retracted about how unimportant money is in the development of modern capital, which you then further assert is somehow totally different from J.P. Morgan's day because of the importance of these other ideas--spiritual capital, social capital, and so on. You then fail to understand what I am saying about these ideas. I am not saying that they 'do not exist,' but that their existence is of an entirely different order from the reality of capital and capitalism.

In other words, you may elect not to participate in reckoning what folks mean in a discussion about capital's sustainability. But you cannot, unless you intend only to include yourself and other 'friends and associates' in the conversation, at the same time that you opt out of this difficult dialog, then tell everyone what the matter that we're discussing means and indicate that you only want to talk about that.

In so doing, you violate a sacred process of democratic dialog, which is to say that folks get a sayso in the agenda, even if you've labeled them 'pointy-headed academics' or any other sort of being that doesn't fit in to your 'real-world' experience and beliefs. Saying as much, I do have a lot to say about the idea of social capital.

For my purposes here, at this juncture, however, given that your willingness to play nicely in this sandbox is not obvious--i.e., you may be saying that you get to set up the rules, take them or leave them--I'd only want to offer a very brief capsulization of this extensive exchange that I am capable of having on the issue of 'social capital.' Here goes then, in sum: "Social capital is, first, both a useful idea for speaking about empowering communities and cohorts often otherwise excluded from decision-making and policy forums and, second, a powerful ideological construct that capitalists and their agents often use to prohibit deep and thorough discussions of power and agency and society in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries."

John Sinclair offered a critique that is simpler than mine. I would want to expand not just the critique but the discussion as well. However, he said something important when he offered this bon mot: "Whatever your operationalization of 'capitalism', it is at base power and influence and advantage."

You conclude your discussion of this first notion by referring to your work over more or less the exact period of crisis of modern capitalism, the last forty years. I might ask you to consider something: during those forty years, workers have experienced both relative and absolute losses of equity; communities have encountered devastating attacks and dissolution; 'trust' is as lacking in regard to such institutions as Fortune 500 corporations as it has ever before been in history. Maybe, just maybe, a more thoroughgoing debate than you envision as helpful would be just the ticket, if in fact 'building trust' is important to you.

In your second point, as I note above, you withdraw your original overstatements. Well done! You then go on to speak of your efforts for corporate clients. From the sounds of things, you have developed an interesting and effective set of ideas.

However, I'm not a child. I obviously see that the basis for your relationships and successes is that you have never questioned the foundations of the hegemony of your clients. You repeatedly accede to the veracity of the observation in your comments, in any event.

And that's dandy. I'm not knocking your success. This thread is not about that.

But here's a question. How are your clients doing these days? Are they optimistic? Is everything 'coming up roses?' I can't say for certain, of course, but my guess is that, at best the answers to these interrogatories would be guarded if not downright scoffing in their tone.

Though I've not worked with 'corporate clients' as a matter of choice, focusing my efforts instead on struggling communities and on the development of accurate and pro-working class knowledge, I have as a backgammon player had occasion to deal in friendly combat with all sorts of wealthy folks. One stockbroker acquaintance of mine, who the last time he visited looked positively spooked about the future, told me two years ago an interesting anecdote.

I have never verified the truthfulness of the story, but his stating it is evidence of a sort, in its own right. He said that, because of his acquaintance with radicals such as me over the years, beginning in 1999 he had bought a form of insurance of which I had never heard.

He called it "Revolution Insurance," and said that policies started at ten million dollars. From 1999 to 2007, such a contract cost him "a little more than $100," but in 2007, the price went to over $12,000, and the insurance was no longer available in 2008 and 2009. If only to show the worried state of mind of a very successful capitalist--not up to Bill Gates' standards, but a tidy eight figure net worth for all that--this story might cause us to take pause; if we take it seriously, my goodness, what a snake pit seems to lurk ahead.

So I wonder. Do Lawrence Miller's clients have real concerns about their future viability? Do they think that things might go decidedly south, as it were? If so, then, again, a more inclusive and less restrictive sort of dialog might help obtain a new lease on life, might help to make utter chaos and meltdown less likely.

The point, however, is essential to develop clearly. Such a dialog cannot assume or insist that issues such as the nature and survivability of capitalism are not valid agenda items. Nor can the proponents of such dialogs preclude the critical importance of debate, argument, and real political struggle as part of the whole deal.

Your THIRD request asks for an explanation of my assertion that modern Cuba is one of history's most amazing success stories. I've written extensively about this. I easily already have produced a lengthy volume's worth of research, analysis, and commentary about Cuba's place in the present pantheon of imperial efforts of the U.S.

Very briefly, the rationale for my assertion are fourfold.

*First, the overthrow of Spanish rule of Cuba placed a racketeering enterprise in its stead, a criminal enterprise based on sugar and 'entertainment'--gambling, forced and voluntary prostitution, cheap sunny vistas for touristas, a racket well documented in both academic and popular literature--Smedley Butler's "War Is a Racket" is a particularly potent populist narrative.

*Second, despite the complete backing of the United States Government, a 'rag-tag' group of revolutionaries replaced the Batista thugs who had driven Cuban standards of life to the neolithic level or below.

*Third, this 'rag-tag' revolution has maintained hits power in the teeth of constant acts of war and other attempts to undermine it by the most powerful empire in history.

*Fourth, this revolution, beset by forces of immeasurable magnitude, has built a society with the best health care in the Western Hemisphere, unsurpassed literacy rates, life expectancy that rivals that of the empire that attacks Cuba, and other powerful indicia of well-being and personal and community empowerment.

I could go on. I could go into loads of detail. That is unnecessary merely to make my point.

Your FOURTH item, above, implies a real potential nexus for dialog and collaboration. Hence, I proffered a 'well met!' above. That said, of course, were other elements of my response unacceptable, the real possibility exists, of course, that the 'real potential' would be a non-starter, so to speak.

Finally, not wanting to barge in to the conversation between you and and John Sinclair, I did want to make one point in regard to your response to him. It concerns China.

While I freely admit that my area of focus does not include Asia, and recognizing that Northeast Asia is one of the most complex and nuanced areas of the world just now, I would have to wonder whether you could back up your assertion that one cannot find "a more capitalistic society anywhere in the world" than present-day China. In particular, I would ponder whether the forty million member Chinese Communist Party, just slightly more than three per cent of the populace, would affirm such a conclusion.

Do you have knowledge that the Communist leadership of China would accept your point of view? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Jim,

First, you said: "I have to assume, since you've shown up here with a perspective, an agenda, or 'an ax to grind,' as it were--and likely all three of these--that you too have some real-world payoff or potential in mind by participating here."

Of course, I have a perspective. Every human being does. But as to an "agenda" or "ax to grind", or some real world payoff, I have no idea what that would be. There are a number of reasons why I am interested in the conception of capitalism, the process of wealth creation. I am writing a book, tentatively titled "Sustainable Wealth" in which I put forth a holistic theory of wealth creation that is based on the idea of five forms of capital and how they interact and how that dynamic changes over time. So, I am interested in reading or participating in any dialogue that may further my own thoughts on that subject. But, I don't think it would be fair to label that an "ax to grind."

As to the nature of dialogue and this dialogue in particular: I have a drawing I use in my training that is a pyramid (I have tried to attach it) that has "me" and "you" on the bottom corners and "we" at the top. Simple idea. With debate (people stay in the we and me corners trying to "win', as in a political debate); versus the top of the pyramid where the participants are trying to gain knowledge, learn, serve, etc. I am trying to move the conversation upward on that pyramid. There is nothing to be "won" here. I certainly agree that listening to the other's perspectives is inherent in true dialogue.

To the definition of capitalism: You said, it is "a scheme of production in which a relatively small set(or class) of people own most investment instruments and productive machinery and in which relatively large numbers of people(a class) work in one fashion or other for wages. In a more nuanced way, it might also imply such notions as these: it is a set of political-economic arrangements in which the accompanying social relations--law, religion, education, property, work, and on and on and on--have clear and explicable connections--often controlling--with the political-economic structures, dynamics, etc., and in which objective and subjective polarization occurs--in lifestyle, prospects, consciousness, and so on--between those who own capital and those who sell their labor to capitalists."

Your definition is distinctly different from a more commonly academically accepted definition of capitalism which would be the following:

"Capitalism" is conventionally defined along economic terms such as the following: (http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Politics_Capitalism.html)

"An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market."

Source: Dictionary.com

"In order to have an economic system in which "production and distribution are privately or corporately owned", you must have individual rights and specifically property rights. The only way to have an economic system fitting the first definition is to have a political system fitting the second definition. The first is an implication of the second. Because the second, political, definition is fundamental and the cause of the first, it is the more useful definition and is preferable."

I assume you realize that your definition contains biases. Those biases being "a relatively small set or class" owns, controls, etc. And the idea of polarization appears in your definition to be inherent to the idea of private ownership, which of course, is the essence of capitalism. But, what if a majority of the people had ownership in businesses? In your definition I don't see clearly the idea of private ownership or any alternative to that.

That being said, I want to insert several things that are unashamedly my own opinions: First, we in the western world, have a very significant problem in regard to the growing wealth gap between the top percent or two and the bottom or majority. I assume we would agree on that. There are dozens of reasons why this is not healthy, even for those at the top.

But, here we must make the distinction between what capitalism is, and what is inherent to capitalism, versus how the game is played out today. I am in favor a progressive taxation, public funding of education, the elimination of the idiotic idea that corporations are people and have the same freedom of expression, and other elements of our political system that are damaging both to the economy and to the cohesion of our society.

The second thing I will state, and this is my opinion based on my own reading and observation of how things work, is that the conception of capitalism as material things (whether represented by money, land, machinery, etc.) is no long an adequate understanding of capital if one is trying to understand how either national economies work, or how individual enterprises grow or fail. I have already stated my ideas on this so there is no need to repeat them.

So, I have responded to your definition. There is your definition, the more accepted academic understanding of the term, and then there is my understanding that both of these understandings fail to take into account the key mechanisms of economic activity in today's world. We don't need to agree, we simply have different understandings.

You then talk about opting out of the dialogue, etc. and to be frank I can't figure out what you're talking about. You then again attempt to but words in my mouth or thoughts in my head with your "...even if you've labeled them 'pointy-headed academics' or any other sort of being that doesn't fit in to your 'real-world' experience and beliefs." What is this silliness? Several times you attempt to posture yourself as the "academic" or intellectual speaking to someone who you assume is not. Why is that? I have authored nine books, published by the likes of John Wiley, William Morrow, etc.; I have written for the NY Times; founded an academic journal and still serve on its Editorial Board; lectured at Harvard, Wharton, and other universities. And, at the same time I have Googled your name and can find nothing published anywhere. Perhaps you changed your name.

So, cut this polemic crap about academics, intellectuals versus whoever you think I am. It's BS!

On the subject of social capital: So, you say it is "a useful idea for speaking of empowerment, etc...., but a powerful ideological construct that capitalists and their agents often use to prohibit deep and through discussions....."

Can you give me an example of how this idea is used to prohibit deep and thorough discussions? Do you think that was the meaning or outcome of Robert Putnum's work? Is that the meaning of the UN and World Banks's research on social capital? Are these the capitalist agents you are speaking about?

You then speak of my relationship with my clients: You say " I obviously see that the basis for your relationships and successes is that you have never questioned the foundations of the hegemony of your clients." What does this mean? Just to bring it to real examples: Chick-fil-A was a long time client of mine. I think you are in Atlanta (where I lived for thirty years) so you must know them. What does "hegemony of your clients" mean in regard to them? Or, I am now working in Canada with VON (Victorian Order of Nurses), the largest home health care organization in Canada. What does "hegemony of your clients" mean in regard to them? I literally don't get it.

How are my clients doing these days? That is a long story and it is a different story for every client. Some are doing great and some not great. It depends on a lot of factors. Industries and companies are constantly rising and falling and that depends on their leadership, culture, management practices, and the overall economy. So, I can't answer that question in any simple way. Are they optimistic? Most leaders of corporations are optimistic by nature. It is fundamental to their character and sometimes it is a flaw. But, if you ask are most of them optimistic, the answer is yes. Which of course doesn't mean "everything is coming up roses." Nothing is so simple.

Your story about the dire warnings in 1999 are interesting. I assume you realize that 1999-2000 was a market top when stocks were extremely over inflated and preparing for a dramatic fall. That fall was to be expected for a lot of reasons, primarily the bursting of the dot.com bubble. No great revolution has happened. There have been dozens of market tops and bottoms. That is just the seasonality of the stock market.

Do my clients have a real concern about their future viability? I hope so! Andy Grove (the founder and CEO of Intel) said that "only the paranoid survive." Perhaps an exaggeration, but a worthwhile understanding nevertheless. Corporate leaders should always be concerned about their future viability. If they don't have that concern they are probably not doing their job.

As to Cuba: I would be interested to read your paper or research on Cuba. I can't find it. The available facts about Cuba do not match up with your understanding. If you examine Cuba's ranking on health statistics (http://www.nationmaster.com/red/country/cu-cuba/hea-health&all=1) you will find that they are not terrible, but no where near the best in anything other than the number of doctors per capita. Your claim that they have the best health care in the Western Hemisphere is not substantiated by any facts I can find, but I am open to being informed.

As to China: This gets very interesting when discussing capitalism, communism, etc. There are four things that can be formed into a 2x2 matrix. There is the nature of the economy (the degree of private ownership versus government ownership); then there is the degree of democratic governance and decision making. These two things should not be confused, but often are. Then, there is what countries or parties call themselves. They may call themselves communist or capitalistic; and they may call themselves democratic, theocratic, authoritarian, etc. The use of labels should never be confused with the reality of how a government or economy actually functions. Is the "Democratic People's Republic of North Korea" really democratic, or really of the people? It is a complete totalitarian state and there is zero democracy.

So, is Communist China, actually communist? If you have been to China, if you know Chinese business people or how the economy functions, you surely know that it is not communist or socialist at all. Private capital dominates the functioning of the economy. I know a woman, Zhang Xin (look her up) who, along with her husband, own a company that literally owns one fifth of Beijing. She is wealthy than Donald Trump or Opera. She was born in 1965, was poor, and started her company only a relatively few years ago. Nothing about her wealth was inherited. She an her husband made smart investments at the right time. There is a huge class of Chinese who have become wealth in the past twenty years. Yes, the gap between rich and poor has grown, primarily because the rich have grown so rich. The Chinese leaders and Zhang Xin recognize this problem. Note that Foxconn that makes Apple products just raised wages by 25%. That is all part of the messy dynamic of capitalism that dominates China today.

China has lots of problems. The environmental disaster they are facing may be their gravest. If you ask, "Is China democratic?" That is a different question. It is certainly not democratic as we understand the democratic process, but then our own democratic process is not very democratic, either. That is all another and long story.

Would the Chinese leaders affirm my position? The Chinese leaders are very skilled at talking around issues. Many of the most senior party officials, and those who dominate the economic management, are Harvard, Yale and Wharton trained economists. Do you really think they are communist in the classic understanding of that term? There is no evidence for that.

Enough.

Best wishes

Well, one would have to say that your articulation of your position improves as the level of debate--which I do not mean as a game, but as a process, though the game is fine if that's what one wants--increases. You use words at times--argument and debate are just a couple of examples--in a fashion that seems to damn their deployment in ways that everything here involves.

But that's neither here nor there. I've not published any books, but I have written a lot of words that I'll stand by whether they've made it into Harvard's lecture halls or not. You must not have searched very hard, since my texts are all over the web, as both Jack Hickey and Jim Hickey, though my bona fides would not begin to match your level of success in the marketplace.

If, despite your insistence that you don't want to debate and 'win' that is what you want, in relation to the 'best CV,' you undoubtedly are the victor. As to the ideas, facts, analysis, and insights that we proffer, one would have to ask an audience.

I'd certainly have no problem taking a place on a stage where you sat, and either supporting your thinking or criticizing it strongly, depending on how it fit the real world that I've experienced and studied lo these six decades. Expertise, except when the problem at hand is in fact a highly technical and incredibly focused and specific issue, is less important than honesty and a willingness to grapple with what is at stake, what networks and social bodies are in play, and what the historical and analytical dynamics are.

At least, that's my perspective. I'm an honest broker whose life has revolved around community organizing, grassroots journalism, and pulling together a living from doing all kinds of physical and intellectual labor. I stand by my arguments until someone can show me error.

Thus, I'll also stand by my assessment that, at least initially, you adopted the rhetoric of an 'anti-intellectual' stance in regard to the thread here, though this last posting certainly takes seriously what I've asked you to consider. Thanks for that.

In relation to Cuba, I have written about it off and on, offline until the 1990's, in print and online since then. Here is a recent excerpt(http://www.justmeans.com/editorials?action=readeditorial&p=30320). "This willingness to 'mean well' at the same moment that one carries on in a decidedly imperial, and imperious, manner led William Appleman Williams to entitle his masterwork "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy." Williams prefaces the history with an aptly historical reflection.

'The tragedy of American diplomacy is aptly symbolized, and defined for analysis and reflection, by the relations between the United States and Cuba between April 21, 1898 through April 21, 1961. The eruption of two wars involving the same two countries in precisely the same week provides a striking sense of classical form and even adds the tinge of eeriness so often associated with tragedy.'

From the false friendship of the invasion against Spain to the presumptuous brutality of the Bay of Pigs, punctuated by thugs and drugs and dictators and whores at the beck and call of empire, this tragedy continues, half a century of vituperation by the most powerful nation in history against an island that was willing to keep fighting for its freedom to say no to capitalism and casinos. These sorts of echoes are everywhere, if we'll listen."

So your 'agenda' is to help sharpen a book. Good luck with that. For your amazement, I'll have more substantive responses, both in regard to Cuba and otherwise, after I've met a couple of other deadlines.

I've always found extremely difficult getting my head around the Chinese experience since 1949. I'm sure that your insights may provide some guidance. Thanks for that too.

JIm,

I'll be quick. First, I know it is in bad taste to say "So, I wrote this many books...." etc., etc. I am sorry for that. But, here is why, and this is my problem not yours. One of the "categories" we put people in is "businessman" and there are a bunch of flat out prejudices that go with that. I could tell you a long story about dealing with NY literary mavens at major publishing houses who could not believe that I could possibly write well or intelligently because I was an Atlanta businessman, and this was after already publishing two books with major houses. They insisted I hire a woman writer to re-write my manuscript. She made a complete mess of it! Then, I lied. I claimed to hire another woman professional writer to do another re-write. I submitted what I had submitted in the first place. Now, the editor thought it was wonderful!!

So, I am sensitive to assumptions about people... of any profession. They are most often wrong.

There is no debate there that I want to win. The quality of an idea stands independent of its author or his credentials.

I will read the link you provided, but probably not today.

Just from what you wrote above, I am sure I do not entirely disagree with your assessment of US policy toward Cuba. The embargo is absurd and useless and we would do far better to engage them and integrate our economies as we have done with so-called "communist" countries. But, the blame is not one sided.

As to China: I see that you write on the environment. China and the environment will be THE case study on the limits of growth. When I was in Macau and Zhuhai over the holidays (where my daughter lives and I have many friends there) there were riots taking place a hundred miles north over the construction of another coal powered power plant. They are killing themselves over what they are doing to the environment. As you probably know there were more than three thousand strikes and protests last year in China, most over corruption, many over environmental issues, and of course, many over wages.

If you think we have problems, and our government has challenges solving problems, you should ponder the issues that the Chinese government has to deal with.

Thanks, later.

Hey Lawrence!

We seem then to agree that a broadening and deepening of dialog enriches it. What also appears clear is that you have a set of protocols and experiences for conducting such dialogs--working with your clients and developing active conversations about how companies can maximize utility, profits, equities, etc.

While such work is inherently interesting--both its mere existence, and its actual operation give nuance and information to the likes of me, who want simultaneously to understand the world operationally and to take action in support of certain biases, neither explicating nor advancing your particular efforts are the purpose of the discourse here. This thread instead seeks to inquire about the 'sustainability' of capitalism, which is an even more enticing topic to the likes of me.

A rational dialog about any topic, however, no matter how interesting, must come to terms with what is under discussion. We both pointed this out.

I directed your attention to my initial posting on this issue; I'll discuss this further in a minute. You have, subsequent to your original contribution, come to a 'definition' that examines several tiers of critical import to the manifestation of the final stage, which comports fairly well with more traditional definitions of capital and capitalism.

My whole point about this core nexus of any democratic dialog among equals is that we cannot proceed on the basis of your, or any other, definition, unless we stipulate our acceptance to it, until we have agreed that we accept that definition. I, for one, certainly do not accept your definition, about which a bit more later.

You assert that my "definition is distinctly different from a more commonly academically accepted definition of capitalism." Here is an analytical deconstruction of this 'accepted' definition in comparison to my offering of a 'basic statement.'

*The first half of my definition matches pretty exactly with the standard idea--i.e., a private set or class that owns and controls capital.

*I reject the idea that 'free markets' have had a historical existence, at least for the most part, as generally used, so I definitely leave this out.

*My definition insists on the presence of a set or class of people who work for wages as well as the set or class who own capital.

When I expand my definition, I include perspectives on historical and contemporary capital's 'standard operating procedures,' or dynamics, any one of which is arguable and all of which I want to discuss. Of course I have biases, just as everyone has agendas.

You then slip in a very ideologically biased replacement for what is, in fact, a "commonly academically accepted definition of capitalism." This is the conflation of a concept, "individual rights," that is arguably impossible to defend as a routine aspect of contemporary 'Patriot-Act' existence, with another idea, that is in fact in some sense accurate, to wit that "property rights" are essential to capital's inner workings.

When I think about issues such as prison labor, the brutalization against immigrants, the exclusion of entrepreneurs from all kinds of marketplaces, and dozens of other matters, the belief that 'capitalism rests on individual rights,' in any general sense, becomes, charitably, laughable. That said, my reaction is one basis for requiring an open-ended discussion of this definitional engagement in order to get at the query into the 'sustainability' of capitalism.

A general search for definitions of capitalism leads, literally, to millions of possible citations. Roughly half of these, or more, appear to be ideological or propaganda exercises, defending 'the American way' of business in one form or another.

A big additional set of links lead to academic discussions. In particular, one might turn to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=capitalism+definition), at one edge of North America or to the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts(http://www.peri.umass.edu/), at the other edge of North America.

An affable public intellectual discussion(http://www.progressiveliving.org/economics/capitalism_socialism_communism.htm) of the issue concludes that such conversation is largely lacking, and that assumptions and unexamined premises predominate. This is also what I'm saying.

A smaller but still significant category of those who want to examine this matter contains Marxists such as me. The basic definition in these arenas(http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/a.htm) is very close to mine, to wit, "The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour." A 'From-All-Sides' discourse is what I'm after, so, in my addition to a rejection of any common sense validity of the identification of capitalism with "individual rights," your presentation of this matter would need substantial expansion before I'd consider it even close to adequate.

Just as a possibly interesting way to move on from here, a Harvard Business School Working Paper(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CGwQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hbs.edu%2Fresearch%2Fpdf%2F07-037.pdf&ei=In5OT9WzAY_qtgexwrGlCA&usg=AFQjCNEdmnzVlI2t9ebzym9YQqLGsngo9A&sig2=BacBYCiukgoyWEHjySnhyw) proffers a conceptualization that explores some of the subtleties and richness that a thorough discussion might develop. "This paper defines capitalism as a system of indirect governance for economic relationships, where all markets exist within institutional frameworks that are provided by political authorities, i.e. governments. In this second perspective capitalism is a three level system much like any organized sports. Markets occupy the first level, where the competition takes place; the institutional foundations that underpin those markets are the second; and the political authority that administers the system is the third."

As regards the use of the phrase "social capital" as a variety of capital-as-such, I'd ask you to consider an estimate(http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/a.htm) like the following. "Frequently, 'Social Capital' is used to refer to those externalities other than the conditions for capital accumulation provided by the state, in what bourgeois economists refer to as 'Civil Society.' The point is that “Social Capital” is not capital at all; it is those creative, productive and life-giving relations between people which have the potential to be converted into capital, but are presently external to capital, i.e., not capital at all. ...The term was first used in an ironic sense by Jane Jacobs in her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and more recently popularised by James Coleman, Robert Putnam and Francis Fukuyama. For bourgeois economics, the term is important for the purpose of drawing the attention of capitalists to the potential for capitalist development contained in society generally, which can be converted into private production with minimal expenditure (for example, the skills and networks workers have before they are hired or ‘trained’ by the firm, people's capacity to provide information and ideas from their informal networks), and conversely to draw attention to the social capacities which are providing these inputs and absorbing outputs and are capable of being used up and destroyed by capitalist industry (for example, family ties supporting overworked or injured workers, trust and loyalty which allows business to be done without a team of lawyers and policemen to enforce contracts)."

My multitiered point about the employment of 'social capital' began with the notion that its use was opportunistic for capitalists to increase profits, etc., and that it was not analytically accurate merely to assume that social capital "was...capital at all." I then offered a definition that was dialectical, in relation to its potential as a dialogic tool.

You asked if I could point out examples of the phrase's utilization to forestall dialog--of course, my point was about its inherent bias against workers and communities, so other sorts of negative potential also exists is this area. My answer would be "Yes! I can provide multiple examples, two of which have occurred in projects that I had a part in developing." In both cases, business 'stakeholders' invited to participate in dialog sessions sought to forestall or undermine serious critiques of business practices by arguing that a reliance on expanding 'civil society' and 'social capital' would take care of the problems without any need to discuss, let alone address, structural inequities or unequal power or polarized wealth.

More generally, a search like this one--"world bank" OR imf "social capital" critque OR controversy analysis marxist OR marxism OR radical--yields 152,000 hits. Many of them, though clearly not all, speak to the issues I've raised.

A Canadian commentator(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CFkQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpi.library.yorku.ca%2Fojs%2Findex.php%2Fijcst%2Farticle%2FviewPDFInterstitial%2F34397%2F31278&ei=95xOT-GGK4PxggeV9s2sAg&usg=AFQjCNGZtB80bT_GAxdSlkboJ_A44PUgJg&sig2=VQ6O0pHgKlaF6ajNez-3Qg) summarized such points-of-view. "Social capital is conducive to externalizing the inherent contradictions of capitalist market economy, blurring the unequal power relations, and repersonalizing social responsibilities for economic outcomes which are the main objectives of neo-liberalism."

From the first page of those 150,000 links, here are a couple(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&ved=0CHMQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffds.oup.com%2Fwww.oup.com%2Fpdf%2F13%2F9780198297130.pdf&ei=95xOT-GGK4PxggeV9s2sAg&usg=AFQjCNEz5cO4E1I7dyY8Y9TRFde08wmDWQ&sig2=iDgs8RCSCuFt-CocGFl2NQ) more(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CD4QFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politics.pomona.edu%2Fpenglebert%2Fwbsk.doc&ei=95xOT-GGK4PxggeV9s2sAg&usg=AFQjCNFqDV_dWdsMQ0_WzGQGvss0SiUccw&sig2=gdtRSwpgicOtSKd5dSjyMQ) connections that are congruent with my contentions. These materials and thousands of others contend that hidden biases and corporate agendas are rife in the deployment of 'social capital' in dialog, and that, furthermore, as a type of construct it has other, different problems that its users often overlook or consciously ignore.

Thus, that you find my contentions about this topic surprising in fact surprises me. One might have thought you had become aware of these lively discussions, all of which call into question both the meaning--even the existence--and the fairness of the idea.

Maybe the phrase "hegemony of your clients" is offensive. However, these sorts of observations--that conversations that are robust must start from the premise that all citizens have a right to the status of 'stakeholder' and that any dialog is flawed which undermines or disallows suggestions merely because they discomfit or threaten the interests of other 'stakeholders'--are reasonably easy to dovetail with the notion that many consultants' clients' business agendas and beliefs supersede the kind of balanced equity that I hope to develop.

In any event, that's what I meant by stating that your work sounds as if the continued power and imprimatur of your clients was never in question. Where I come from, a lot of folks are ready for serious changes, whatever the state of easy-to-define models of 'alternatives to capitalism.' Again, the conversation itself can put questions on the table, by principles of majority rule and otherwise, in which part of the dialog's purpose is to promote transformation, transition, etc.

Now, perhaps you don't care to participate in such explorations. Te me, if we're uninterested in exploring or willing to engage in such fashion, then we are biasing the dialog and prohibiting certain types of ideas. The whole point of this thread, in any case, cannot have any integrity if it tries to eschew such in-depth coverage.

An extremely interesting recent socio-economic assessment of China(http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/sgabriel/economics/china-essays/1.html), from sources at Mt. Holyoke University that have often served me in the past, makes some trenchant points, which I'm using to close this section of things between us. "For many social analysts and commentators, their definition of capitalism is ad hoc, changing over time or occasion to meet polemical demands or simply to reflect the present set of idealized characteristics of particular high income societies; usually the United States suffices as the model.

Unlike typological work in the "hard" sciences, the typology upon which these ad hoc definitions rest are almost never subjected to much scrutiny nor required to meet even minimal standards of uniqueness (non-arbirariness) and clarity. It is as if an animal could legitimately be classified as a reptile based on the whims or polemical requirements of the particular biologist who deploys the term in his scientific analysis or policy statements, rather than based on non-arbitrary and easily identified criteria with unambiguous scientific implications. ...

Because these terms are frequently used for polemical purposes, we often think we know what they mean and can very easily end up like the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland (with these words meaning whatever we want them to mean --- there being no test for whether the conditions of the concept are or are not met). ...

In a nutshell, the social arrangement that distinguishes the capitalist class process from other class processes is the existence of a free market in labor power (the capacity to work) under conditions where it is possible for someone other than the actual laborers/direct producers to take possession of the fruits of their labor. This definition tells us that capitalism, if it is to exist and be reproduced over time, requires a particular type of market, a free market in the buying and selling of labor power, and a particular type of ownership, the ownership of the fruits of the labor of an employed wage laborer by someone other than that employed wage laborer.

...Instead of seeing free markets in labor power as a condition of existence of capitalism, it has become a commonplace to think that free markets in general are a condition of existence of capitalism. This is very misleading, of course, since it is possible to have free markets in everything except labor power and not have capitalism."

Turning to Cuba, the source that you provide clearly demonstrates that Cuba is near the top in most Western Hemisphere indicators of health care. As to my superlative assertion, one might ask Michael Moore, who apparently doesn't find the idea ridiculous. I'd stipulate that 'communist' Cuba may not be number one, but it beats out the vast majority of other states in the region, no matter what, as your 'NationMaster' site shows.

In your second reply, you suggest that Cuba deserves 'some of the blame' for bad relations. How is this exactly? Inquiring minds would certainly like to examine the evidence and argument behind that statement.

China's difficulties are the world's dilemmas writ large. I appreciate your conveyances in this area, as my own understanding of Northeast Asia is so limited.

Overall, my take on things is that truly grotesque times could lie ahead. In fact, lacking participatory capacity--learning, dialog, engagement, and more--among the masses of people and community, the survival of the vast majority of anatomically modern human cousins is seriously in question.

These exchanges help me to clarify my own thinking. They lay the basis for opportunities for capacitation, should they appear.

A swell aphorism with which to initiate such engagement as ours might be the following: "Everyone is entitled to a personal opinion; however, no one is entitled to personal facts that do not meet basic evidentiary standards."

However, agreeing to investigate data fairly and rationally is not the main component that I want to emphasize. Rather, it is that the present mechanisms for expounding on important issues either prohibit or tremendously discourage most people's 'place at the table,' as it were.

This is unacceptable to me. It is unacceptable because democracy or death seems a likely choice. It is unacceptable to me because I believe in social justice. Thus, both self-interest and moral matters bias me.

Ideological elements like Marxism aside, therefore, I stand for democracy and dialog. If people, after having taken part as citizens in figuring out how to proceed, decide that Marxism sucks and capitalism rocks, so be it.

But we can't high-handedly, at the outset, suggest that dear old Karl and amorphous and dialogic 'alternatives to capitalism' do not constitute "sensible alternatives."

As noted by a commentator, Marx was coming from a different environment, different compared to Western societies. His time was burdened with exploitation, child labor, no workplace safety, and no social network for the injured, sick or elderly. Slavery was in the process of abolishment (in the West) during his lifetime. His environment today, as Capitalism in a pure form of social organization, does not exist. Even in the presented definition by a commentator, Capitalism as a vehicle that may or not be "sustainable" is redundant (as also noted, it does not matter). We would then have to delve into the difference between Social Capitalism and Capitalist Socialism, which, again, for sustainability does not matter, neither historically nor for the future.

Nevertheless, the Marxian perspective is not all futile for the purpose of modern understanding. While starting out with the paramount assumption of individual needs, he presses Capital into a mechanism that is almost mathematical. When we carefully study his work, it is soon revealed that his ideas of the Capital have not been reflected in societies that base(d) their doctrines on the Communist Manifesto. His aim was more to find a system to positively manipulate socio-economic systems. Some of it is ingenious (his meticulous analysis) and some of it makes little sense (many of his conclusions/or I am ignorant). We refute Marx for Marxism rather than for his contribution to social economics.

The question must thus not be whether or not Capitalism is sustainable but how any given socio-economic system can be improved in order to make it (somewhat more) sustainable. Hence, the critique must not center on criticism on Marx but on self-critisism of the individual components of our systems and their positive contribution to society in an academically verifyable environment. What are our weak-spots? Debt, deadlock in Washington (as a synonym for an outdated political system from the 19th century across the world), entitlement, indoctrination (education in economics?), systemic poverty, religion, just to name a few.

For example, the 13th century Muslim writer Khaldun had already explained the interaction between religion, poverty (by religious choice), debt, living above means, and ultimate collapse. With certainty, but in a difficult to read text, he already recognized the basic threats that subvert ANY society that chooses to live above means. Capitalism, to return to the starting point, has nothing to do with it. Hume and Smith were great critiques of their social systems. From their forgotten approaches, we can learn much more than just economics.

Jim, I have not forgotten to reply, and I will.

However, I just want to share a rant: This rant could be titled "Is Academia Sustainable?"

So, I wanted to subscribe to an academic journal that can be found on Emerald's. It is the Journal of Organization Development and Leadership. It is a peer reviewed academic journal. And, what do you think it costs to subscribe? On the website page for this journal there is no information as to how to subscribe (pretty poor business practice, if you ask me). So, I email them. Here is the email I get back:

Hi Larry

To subscribe to a journal you need to contact ourselves in subscriptions

Is it an article that you are interested in? As you can purchase individual articles online by following the instructions on our website cost at $25.00 per article

Leadership & Organization Development Journal for 2012 is $ 14,589.00 as you can see this is very costly.

Which is the other title that you are interested in?

Regards

Julie

Now, Jim, is this "capitalism" or is this a complete failure of academia, an ethical failure, to make available academic research to those who are interested for a reasonable price? 14.5 THOUSAND dollars for ONE YEAR of a subscription. Tell me that is not complete insanity.

Don't worry, I am not really expecting you to defend it. But, it is pretty good proof that business people are not the only corrupt and greedy people in the world.

As to the subject of the sustainability of capitalism:

Let us put whatever differences in definition aside. I would choose to redefine capitalism in terms of more than material assets and independent of who has it, who controls it, or who may be advantaged or disadvantaged by it. Those things may be or are, outcomes of the existing system of capitalism at any point in time, but they are a result of that system. One should not confused the result of something with the thing itself. A storm is a storm. It may bring needed rain to a corn field, or it may flood some other property. But a storm is not a flood. It is just a storm.

But, I choose not to dwell on the definition any more. We have both expressed our own understandings of the current or historic definition, and in my case, how I feel it should be redefined.

Let's address the issue of sustainability.

I, at least, understand capitalism as an organic, dynamic, changing system, rather than as something fixed in time and space. In other words, if you asked me, "Transported to the world of 1844, do you think THAT world of capitalism, or that system as it existed, was sustainable? My answer would be a clear and definite "No". And, in fact, that form of capitalism - wedded to the nation state, almost completely unregulated in terms of health, safety or environmental issues, or of issues of financial transparency - it could not possibly have survived and it did not.

I would say the same as to the state and survivability of capitalism at any point in history between then and now. And, if you ask the same question at this very moment, I would answer in the same way.

All complex systems exist in an environment, interact and are dependent on that environment. All systems that survive over time display the ability to adapt to changing environments. If they cannot adapt, they cannot survive. I would say that about academia as well as private enterprise, or governments.

So, if one asks, "is capitalism sustainable?" One must add "in its current form?" Or, in some other form?

Just a couple examples to make my point:

The trading of equities, ownership in companies, one hundred years ago, was done by a very small group of people in a very small and very private and very unregulated environment. Globalization and the Internet, most recently, have changed everything. Stocks are traded 24 hours a day, in every corner of globe, all electronically, instantaneously, and by anyone with even a small amount of money. Whether this is a good or bad is a subject we don't need to debate. It is simply a reality. This represents a huge transformation in capitalism.

Some years ago Peter Drucker wrote a book titled "The Unseen Revolution: Pension Fund Socialism." General Motors is now 55% owned by its unions. Pension funds, which represent workers in corporations, represent the largest block of ownership in many large corporations. One can debate how significant this is, how real it is, etc., but there is no questions that it represents a major change in the nature of capitalism.

Regulations: Of course, corporations and the Republican Party always believe there is too much regulation. Exactly how much is enough will probably be debated forever. But, the idea of complete laissey-faire, unfettered capitalism does not exist anywhere in the developed Western world, although China comes much closer to that extreme than does any Western country. In my almost 40 years of dealing with corporate executives I do not remember one time when any executive ever expressed the belief in this extreme form of unfettered capitalism. Most investors do want an SEC that makes investments transparent and creates a fair playing field for investors. Every consumer wants to know that meat packing plants, pharmaceutical companies, and farms are delivering products that do not make them sick. We all want cars that are safe and pollute as little as possible. In general, we all accept the need for government regulation, even though we may differ on exactly what regulations are excessive or inadequate.

Moving forward, capitalism will change again in the next one hundred years as much as it has changed in the last one hundred years. We need a world government because we do, in fact, live in a global economy, with global environmental problems, global trade, global currencies, global health issues, etc., etc. Yet, we have administration or governments that compete to attract businesses in ways that are contrary to their own best interests. That must change. And, the thing that may surprise you is that most business executives would welcome global regulations, global standards, etc.

Why you may ask? Real life examples:

1) I worked with two major pharmaceutical companies. Before the EU, do you realize that Merck and Upjohn (who I worked with) both had to conform to drug formulation and packaging requirements that were completely different in every European country, in addition to every American country. In other words, the exact size and shape of a pill had to be different in each country even though it was the same stuff. The same with packaging requirements. This added a huge amount of cost and confusion that was completely unnecessary. Human beings are not noticeably different in how they digest a medicine, whether in Chicago, Barcelona or Paris!

2) Texaco, with whom I worked, had an office building in Florida that did the taxes for 113 different COUNTRIES. It is almost impossible to keep straight tax laws in the United States alone. How could any group of people correctly complete tax forms and comply with tax regulations in 113 countries. Can you imagine the completely unnecessary costs associated with that? Why not just have one simple tax law that would apply in every country? It was save billions.

3) Who regulates the banking and financial markets? Why should it be just the US, when Morgan Stanley, Chase or any other large bank is doing work in every corner of the global and the collapse or corruption of a bank will impact the economies, investors and customers of those banks in one hundred countries simultaneously.

Well, you get the point. We will move toward globalization of regulation and governance of capital markets, environmental regulations, labor laws, consumer protection, etc. It is an historic inevitability.

But, none of that will change the fundamental idea of private ownership of capital, companies, etc.

Is capitalism sustainable? Yes, if you understand it as a dynamic adaptive complex system. No, if you define it as static, simplistic thing as some German defined it a century and a half ago.

There is no laisse-fairre capitalism in the western world? What about the hand over of wealth that took place most recently in the U.S.? No one went to jail..isnt that the definition of unfettered-no real retributive regulation only restitutive regulation and even that falls short of compensation for victims...its just the cost of doing business as it was a century and a half ago (eg. Massey Energy, BP Horizon, Enron, Blackwater etc). As for China, I'd say theirs is state-capitalism mostly. As for your "some German" comment,.I have to say...his "Capital" reads more current than this mornings Wall Street Journal. Things were different back then but Marx certainly didnt refer to capitalism as static or fixed. He saw it as evolving or devolving. He saw it as the product of revolution...and he saw its fate to be in further revolution. But consider the limits of even an evolving capitalist system: Environmentaly can this earth's resources sustain production for production's sake? I dont think so because as you said if a trend cant continue...it wont. We're already in a dog pit fighting a global war for resources. Production for the sake of fullfilling use-values makes more sense. Even considering capitalism as a dynamic system, that system rests on certain inherent conflicts that predisposes it to self destruct. It's cheapening of commodities (labor power included), coercive laws of competition, and the tendency of the fall in profit all point to the same conclusion: that capitalism is a monumental edifice, powerful and strong...but it's built on a foundation of mud and that its slowly sinking under its own weight.

A.J.: yeah the question could have been put a better more specific way, my bad. But about the comparison of working conditions in Marx's day compared to ours today dont you see that comparison in the defense of capitalism as superficial and inadequate as the question I posed? Wealth is relative right? If so then the relation between social conditions then and now is only half the equation. The other half being the social relation between those living within each time period. My point: that though all boats might rise, if they rise at disproportionate rates, this changes the prior relationships. The average CEO fifty years ago made about 40 times the average wage of his laborers, now its somewhere around 600 times-but did times historically get better? Not really, we've no pensions, 401k's being wiped out, home forclosures, best hospitals in the world (just cant afford the insurance). We live in an age where individuals have more money than entire countries. The concentration of material means is the concentration of power. If Capitalism keeps grinding along with no comensurate increase in the standards of living for those who created that wealth (the laborers not the capitalists) what is it all for and where is it going?

Jason, I see that you are very passionate. I do not think that the symptoms in your two comments have anything to do with capitalism. Let me briefly address them and show me one different point of view for each, of many possible. Perhaps none of them would need to be addressed in order to show that the arguments do not stem from systematic research but from anger and bias.

Laisse-fair capitalism in the West: over-regulation in Europe with similar socio-economic problems.

Wealth transfer in the U.S.: corruption

Nobody in jail: corruption

unfettered, only restitutive regulation: detail obsessed legal system leads to loopholes in the larger framework of what is "right or wrong"

compensation for victims: what victims?

cost of doing business 150 years ago: generalizing polemic that overlooks that the majority of businesses do play by the rules

state capitalism in China: Maybe we have something to learn from one of the few powers that are not bankrupt?

revolution: in the U.S. where we find the hysteric wave-flaggers that hieve an army of corrupt talkers into power?

environment: In no time in history has a society (the West) taken care of its environment to such extent (or at all)

production for production sake: there is no such thing; production aims at perceived needs

trend cannot continue: this trend seems undefined. If I would have asked you ten years ago, you would perhaps been of a different opinion in many points

I think: vs. I know

dog pit fight in global war for resources: global problem, not capitalist

production for fulfilling use values: study the outcome of fullfilling use values in Muslim countries (see Ghadafi's Green Book for an outline or Khaldun for a more detailed definition)

capitalism predisposed to self-destruct: any civilization predisposed to self-destruct (there is non surviving of old)

cheapening of commodities: gold is at an all-time high

cheapening of labor power: change it, get to the polls

coercive laws of competition: where are these laws?

tendency of falling profits: yes, this is what keeps the system evolving (a static system, we should have learned by now, is not sustanable)

capitalism on a foundation of mud: any civization is built on mud.

CEO 600 times average salary: this is only in the top corporations.

no pensions: vote for them (and figure out how to pay for them)

401k's being wiped out: what are the flaws in the system that leads to this outcome?

home forclosures: living above means

best hospitals in the world (just cant afford the insurance): Canada can do it

individuals have more money than entire countries: good for them; that does not give them more votes other than through corruption

concentration of power: democracies are the antonym of concentration of power (what is going wrong?)

Let me be frank with you (and with some of the other commentators that use similar techniques and arguments): If you are seriously interested in contributing research to the sustainability of the Western socio-economic systems, you will have to do better than that. This is an exciting question. The answer thereof is not as obvious as you may want it to be.

As all Western countries pride themselves democracies, all of the above should be easily addressed at the ballot. Are we talking failing capitalism or democracies? Assuming that the majority of Westerners would believe in the same set of talking points as you do, why do we fail to address them?

I would probably again guide you toward the elements of socio-economic systems in order to figure out whether "capitalism" (obviously your negative coin for the modern Western political systems) is not sustainable. How to address corruption, how to change the legal framework, how to deal smarter with incarceration (violent crimes only?), how to get businesses in line that are "too large to fail," how to keep governments operating within means (is that even a problem?), how to get the public to the polls (educate them firsts?) etc., etc. Each of these questions would bring forth a sufficiently exciting dissertation on their own. Your road to fame is in answering any of the subquestions with veryfiable knowledge, which you would have to create. The answer to the head-question lies in the sum of the answered subquestions.

Jason,

There is no laissez-faire capitalism in the U.S. But, that does not mean that a) the banks are sufficiently regulated; b) that the regulations are sufficiently monitored and enforced; or that c) criminal conduct cannot occur regardless of regulations. People commit crimes, not because of the absence of laws, but because of the temptation to gain despite those laws and a prediction about the possibility of being caught. This will be true in either capitalism or socialism.

I absolutely agree that regulations of international banking, the mortgage markets, etc., were inadequate and poorly enforced. Hopefully, Dodd Frank will correct some of that, but the Republicans are blocking funding of the agencies that have to enforce it.

China is state capitalism? Really? You need to travel in China. The chinese government is making more investments in the economy than in the US, but the dramatic growth in the economy has come from the freeing and development of the private sector. Frankly, it is very out of control.

I agree with your concerns about the environment. And, the worst place in the world now is China! It is an environmental disaster. The US and Europe are the cleanest countries in the world and we are doing more, although not enough, to promote clean energy, etc.

As to Marxism: you are obviously religiously committed to Marx. Good luck with that. Half of the world tried it, tasted it, got sick, threw up, and swore it off. Its over every place accept in your mind.

A.J. Deus!

In one of your comments above, you begin by noting the difference between now and the mid-nineteenth century. While this point is clearly accurate, almost tautological at some level, one might--in a different context, dispute your analysis and conclusions, for reasons both logical and evidentiary.

Rather than do that here, however, I'd just suggest that you make a research inquiry for R.G. out of your comments and then see what transpires. You then speak of some of Marx's strengths and weaknesses in general terms, closing, "We refute Marx for Marxism rather than for his contribution to social economics."

I assume that the 'we' in this sentence refers to small-minded people. Obviously, a reverse 'guilt-by-association' would be pretty silly, at best. Moreover, and more pertinently, condemning such a gigantic group of thinkers as those who now and again or regularly count themselves as proponents of 'Marxism' would be further beyond ludicrous than the planet Oblivia.

You next speak of a way to rephrase this question which, while reasonable in its own right, does not invalidate the reasonableness and utility of the inquiry as originated here. As proof-positive of my point, one might gaze in wonder at the long and varied thread that this question initiated.

Furthermore, other questions might be equally rational as this one, or your suggested replacement. For example, I would prefer a pair of inquiries--one to supplement Jason's, the other to augment yours--such as these: 1)Is the continued evolution of capitalism without the necessity of revolutionary transition likely? 2)What processes can we engage immediately, or develop relatively quickly, that would increase democratic participation in identifying and acting on necessary reforms and transformations of our current socioeconomic relations?

Lawrence!

My heart certainly goes out to you in regard to your 'subscription information' call. Imagine the impact of such findings on the likes of this humble correspondent, who has pockets no deeper than a Sahara puddle in the noonday sun.

The recent "Science Times" piece about ResearchGate powerfully validates your sense of outrage, recognizing the widespread agreement among as many as half or more of the professional researchers seeking to move the horizons of knowledge further into the unknown.

At the same time, what the nearly comatose reply from 'Julie' suggests to me is a monopoly, a franchise of almost mercantile vintage. It is a variety of capitalism that undercuts anyone's contention about 'free markets' and their hidden, liberating hands.

Whatever the case may be, many reformers and radicals alike would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you to cast down a gauntlet to the likes of the owners of this journal. 'Open your books; demonstrate that investors are not making out like bandits while humanity's need for ideas and dialog suffers; recognize that, in a democracy, we might legislate other arrangements if cupidity and restriction reach certain levels.'

Hey again, Lawrence Miller!

Putting aside the discussion about definitions is fine, with this caveat. I believe that an ongoing and in-depth conversation about such fundamental issues is a huge part of what we're missing in the world now.

The people that I work with exemplify this on an almost daily basis. They desperately want jobs; they recognize that part of their 'responsibility,' going forward, has to include an expansion of their participation as citizens; yet again and again, they cannot articulate event he most basic idea of what constitutes capitalism, let alone manifest the parry and thrust of our back and forth. Axiomatically, you can't figure out where to go if you don't know where in hell you are.

For the rest of your commentary, regarding sustainability, plaudits for a job well done. Now that is not to say that I agree with loads of the analysis that you advance and the conclusions that you reach, a very brief statement of which follows below. But it is to note that you have developed a reasonable and credible position. One could argue with that, and in a different context, this humble correspondent would revel in having a weeklong retreat, or a publisher's go-ahead, to do just that.

I don't anticipate either of these eventualities' transpiring though, so I'll just make a few brief observations about the sorts of lively exchanges that we might have under such circumstances.

1)Agreeing absolutely both that the transformation from what some of us might see as industrial capitalism to finance capitalism is vitally important, not to mention fascinating, and that a discussion of such shifts in terms of new forms of negotiable instruments' marketing is a critical aspect of understanding where we are, I would have to warn against naivete in asserting that pension funds' stakes in huge corporations equals 'union ownership'--in any event, I would argue, and take upon myself the task of proving, that such a contention is not valid; I would also point out that various other transformations--of foreign trade, labor-management relations, and many more--are at least equally important in the transitions of capital over the past century and a half.

2)While I might in one sense find your ideas regarding regulations unexceptionable, I would approach them very differently; toward the end of his life, looking at both the United States and Europe, Marx equated the leadership of capitalism with the 'executive branch of the modern state'--a congruent point about yours that 'a regulatory framework' is inevitable, but much easier to examine critically, as in noting that oligopolistic forces have been behind every scheme of legislative codes to 'reform' earlier more 'libertine' methods of doing business.

3)Thus, far from 'finding the fact surprising,' of ruling class promulgation of global standards, I have written about it and how it is part of a key dialectic of the current moment--the upshot of which, in my estimation, is that either the dialog about this 'globalization' will become more inclusive or hideous results will be extremely likely to ensue if not altogether unavoidable, results under the rubric of which nothing akin to what you would recognize as 'capitalism' could conceivably continue.

4)I truly appreciate the specificity of your examples; I love data--at the same time, I and the communities with which I work insist that we expand the dialog of regulation, as noted above, to include 'Citizens-Panels,' Citizens-Juries, and community expertise and input generally in the regulation of such industrial enterprises as pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, finance, and so forth.

5)You close with the assertion that the stipulated 'inevitable' globalization "will(not) change the fundamental idea of private ownership of capital, companies, etc.," a point-of-view both no doubt very popular in corporate boardrooms and, arguably, a prediction of the future that will prove accurate; however, once again, I demur: if the dialog, conceptualization of 'stakeholders,' and expression of 'seats-at-the-table' don't expand to include those who, utilizing present-day standards would not have a right to claim 'ownership,' then the above-predicted dire consequences will become completely ineluctable.

We can wait and see. As Karl Marx was wont to point out, 'a thousand years might pass in which the change of a single afternoon does not transpire, until comes a day in which the change of a thousand years takes place in the space of a single afternoon.' We can manage this transition--UNESCO's M.O.S.T. ideation--in either a friendly fashion or in the biggest carnage that humanity--perhaps with its dying gasps--has ever witnessed.

As I noted, wait and see.

Jason Weese!

Please, please, please, persist in deepening your analysis and cohering your arguments in more and more dialectically scientific and historical fashion. Don't let those who predict the 'death of Marxism'--a laughable notion or tragic one--deflect you. If you've any interest whatsoever, touch base with the likes of this humble correspondent in a one-on-one fashion via other means than ResearchGate.

As Joe Hill and Mother Jones implored, "Don't mourn. Organize!" In that regard, as a rallying cry to the dispossessed, misled and inculcated with ridiculous falsehoods and distortions like 'free market laissez faire' capitalism, I would ask you to consider such things as the following analysis.

It doesn't exist now and has never existed. I highly recommend that, in this vein you read David Graeber's brilliant exegeses, such as this, from 'Naked Capitalism(http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/david-graeber-on-the-invention-of-money-%E2%80%93-notes-on-sex-adventure-monomaniacal-sociopathy-and-the-true-function-of-economics.html).' We might take exception with pieces of his sociopolitical conclusions, but his socioeconomic analysis is 'spot-on,' as the saying goes. A lit-review of this issue-the historical existence or non-existence of the vaunted 'free market,' would contribute mightily to your capacity to discourse with intellectually honest proponents of capitalism and to dispose of the thugs and the idiots.

In the above vein that I suggest that you mine, one could imagine periods the unfolding of which most closely approximated a 'free market.' For instance, the mercantile conditions early in the bourgeois epoch, the period of English piracy and Spanish plunder of the 'New World,' often seem a case of relatively free markets, at least at the fringes where conquistadors and 'letters-of-mark' were free to operate. The superficiality of such a position is easy to note, with every recalled colonial governor and every 'soldier-of-the-queen' who ended on a rope when Her Majesty withdrew her plaudits for entrepreneurial spirit in relation to Spanish shipping.

Another case favored by fantasists of liberty-and-economics, of course, is Jacksonian America. Were such a view merely a canard for what actually defined this phase of capital's conquest of the planet, we might enjoy a few good belly laughs. However, those chortles would be hard to maintain as Frederick Douglass described his sale, by his father, to mollify the woman who would have been his 'step-mother,' were she not a typically philandering slave-owner's wife.

While some would subscribe to the view that buying and selling human flesh might argue in favor of a 'free-market,' unfortunately, part of the fantasy of such thinking is the slogan that many prohibitionists rallied under--'Free Soil, Free Men, Free Labor--actually applies to the 'marketplace.' It did not, as Eric Foner documents in his gem of history of the same title as the slogan, full of other samples of the 'unfreeness' of a supposedly ultra-free-market. Literally thousands upon thousands of bits and pieces of data, and irrefutable analytical concepts, rebut any hope that 'free-market capitalism' has ever been anything other than a fairy tale that bourgeois supporters haul out for reasons both ideological and practical.

The rulers may be free. Money may find a certain freedom in its expression of capital. But the classical economics view of an actual historical 'free-market' on anything even vaguely resembling a 'level-playing field' is nonsense. Just read what Adam Smith has to say about monopolies and other 'combinations in restraint of trade,' if you have any doubts.

Solidarity Forever!

Jim,

The "we" stands for Western scholars that refute the writings of Marx without having studied them, mostly relying on the Communist Manifesto instead, if at all. They (these same scholars) overlook his contribution to social-economics and its effects by means of bias rather than knowledge. There is nothing more or less to be read into it.

I am genuinely interested in the questions that emerge from the initiator's clarifications. Quite obviously, he is not concerned about "Capitalism" and a comparative analysis to Marxism but about all the things that do not work in modern Western societies, which, I think, he incorrectly and negatively labels as "Capitalism." Hence, I am not going to get into an argument that is removed from the initiator's focal point, such as whether or not a long thread among a handful of people is proof-positive of anything.

Having said that, I thoroughly like the approach with your questions and would like to rephrase them somewhat:

1) Which systemic failure points can be identified that threaten sustainability of modern social economies? I wonder whether a priority list would shed light on the points of highest urgency, and whether it would even be possible to agree which failure points subvert sustainability.

2) What are the options to removing each of these failure points?

3) Is the continued evolution of Western social economies without the necessity of revolutionary transition likely?

4) What processes can we engage immediately, or develop relatively quickly, that would increase democratic participation in identifying and acting on necessary reforms and transformations of our current socioeconomic relations?

With the fourth question, I am not entirely happy as it suggests that increased democratic participation would lead to solving the problems (a seeming point of general agreement in this thread). Maybe it has to be rephrased to exclude this "democratic" emphasis as it may in itself constitute a systemic failure point.

A.J. Deus!

I take issue with your lecture to Jason Weese. Perhaps I misunderstand, something for which I am occasionally renowned, but you seem to be indicating in providing him with your long list that you are 'straightening out his thinking.'

If this is accurate, that you are lecturing him about the 'error of his ways' in suggesting that certain 'symptoms' have 'something to do with capitalism,' one might scratch behind the ear and ponder the metaphor of the pot's imputation of the kettle's filth. Your general take might translate as 'history has nothing to do with history.'

More specifically, here is your list, with a few pieces excised:

"Laisse-fair capitalism in the West: over-regulation in Europe with similar socio-economic problems.

Wealth transfer in the U.S.: corruption

Nobody in jail: corruption

unfettered, only restitutive regulation: detail obsessed legal system leads to loopholes in the larger framework of what is "right or wrong"

compensation for victims: what victims?

cost of doing business 150 years ago: generalizing polemic that overlooks that the majority of businesses do play by the rules

state capitalism in China: Maybe we have something to learn from one of the few powers that are not bankrupt?

revolution: in the U.S. where we find the hysteric wave-flaggers that hieve an army of corrupt talkers into power?

environment: In no time in history has a society (the West) taken care of its environment to such extent (or at all)

production for production sake: there is no such thing; production aims at perceived needs

dog pit fight in global war for resources: global problem, not capitalist

cheapening of commodities: gold is at an all-time high

cheapening of labor power: change it, get to the polls

coercive laws of competition: where are these laws?

tendency of falling profits: yes, this is what keeps the system evolving (a static system, we should have learned by now, is not sustanable)

capitalism on a foundation of mud: any civization is built on mud.

CEO 600 times average salary: this is only in the top corporations.

no pensions: vote for them (and figure out how to pay for them)

401k's being wiped out: what are the flaws in the system that leads to this outcome?

home forclosures: living above means

best hospitals in the world (just cant afford the insurance): Canada can do it

individuals have more money than entire countries: good for them; that does not give them more votes other than through corruption

concentration of power: democracies are the antonym of concentration of power (what is going wrong?)"

That's quite a list, sir. However, if, in your own words "(Y)ou are seriously interested in contributing research" to this or any other similar conversation, you would do well to avoid the nearly universal assumption of premises. Moreover, with a single, very lonely exception, all of your perspectives--while valid as opinions--are arguably distorted half-truths, mixed with a few vast oversimplifications, a few outright falsehoods, and generally weak articulation of what you think you are trying to say.

Here's the one irrefutable statement in the lot: "capitalism on a foundation of mud: any civization is built on mud." Well done!

Here's a sample of the prevalent distorted half-truth: "Wealth transfer in the U.S.: corruption." Plus-or-minus half the list falls in this category.

Here's an instance of vast oversimplification: "home forclosures: living above means." By the way, this is also a distorted half-truth.

Here's a falsehood: "compensation for victims: what victims?" At least a few of the great-great grandchildren of the Cherokee here in Appalachia, or the Sioux in the Dakotas, or up to two-hundred-fifty million or more United States descendants of people screwed over by capital's routine operations--I would very much like to use more colorful language--might consider your disingenuousness here, at the very, very least, cause to reject your standing to lecture a student on egregious errors.

I can bring evidence, argument, authority, and rigor to a discussion of all these issues that you casually assert as somehow undermining a Marxist position. Perhaps you're not 'on your game' here.

Perhaps we could find a context for you to bring your best shot to bear, as it were. I'm game.

Now, I've butted in. Then again, that's the nature of the beast, eh? You've said some lovely things in the thread.

This comment, however, does not qualify as quality. Standing alone, the idea--one of those with which you close--that the primary means of obtaining redress is the ballot is so laughably presumptive and arguably inadequate that one would have no choice, again, but to think that you think that you're dealing with the very gullible children of a very dedicated 'choir' of 'American Exceptionalists,' to whom you have the absolute right to preach.

Whatever your ideation in presenting this little missive, it mandates a stern critique. To wit, this missive in reply.

Jim

I am under the impression that you are faster in writing and in arguing for the sake of arguing than in reading and understanding. I have clearly stated: "Let me briefly address them and show me one different point of view for each, of many possible." I have taken the initiator's list and tried to provide him with a different point of view, not to prove him right or wrong. None of these points have any scientific meaning attached to them other than showing that a text full of polemic can be responded to with polemic from the other spectrum.

Should I have come across as lecturing Jason (for those that can read, reflect, and understand), this was certainly not my intention.

A.J.!

Well then. Perhaps I should have stuck with my caveat. My bad. I apologize.

I wouldn't want to argue for the sake of arguing; critique for the sake of criticism is another matter, of course.

Your list still rankles. It has such consistency. Nonetheless, your positioning yourself as an avuncular adviser, albeit not the one whom an aspiring Marxist would likely want to choose, is clear enough.

I'm an ignorant slut.

Jim

Accepted; done and over with!

I gather that we agree with the notion that the initiator had meant to discuss the sustainability of modern social economies and that his term "Capitalist" would come along with a negative undertone. I would like to invite you to comment on the four, partially rephrased questions that I had posed in the previous comment.

Just as an observer of the above exchange, and the general nature of dialogue on this subject, I would simply like to say that it reinforces the notion that the polemic, dichotomous, set of assumptions that are held by individuals are inherently dysfunctional. It is rooted in a world that no longer exists and will not exist in the future. What matters most is knowledge and relationships, not financial capital whether owned by the state or private individuals. Arguing over financial capital is somewhat like arguing over the dead or dying carcass. Both Marxism and unfettered free-market capitalism are dead and irrelevant to the future. Both have proven unsustainable.

The only productive conversation is about creating new paradigms, new ways of thinking about human and economic development and value. But, clearly, those on this board are not interested in creating the future, only arguing over the past. I depart the morgue and leave it to the undertakers.

Vaya con Dios, Sir Miller!

As you wend your way, you might recall something that I've said. You cannot arrive at your intended destination, except by a random happenstance the likelihood of which approaches zero, unless you know where in the universe you are at present.

Those of us conversing here, whatever our warts, are in fact trying to discuss where we are, what the parameters are of knowledge about that, and so forth. Good luck to you. Perhaps you already know all the answers.

Is that it, Lawrence? You already think you know? Inquiring minds want to know.

Of course I don't know all the answers, Jim. That is not the point. But, I don't think there are many answers to be found in the dogmas of the past. The new world we are entering requires new and creative thinking, not arguing over what Marx thought or what Adam Smith wrote. You can't get there from there. You have to be willing to develop new ideas based on the new realities and not always harp back on worn out ideologies.

That much I do know.

Damn!

I had meant to convey how excellent I consider these question, though I try to drum into my writing students to avoid the passive voice. Both Jason's interrogatories, and your rephrasing of them, are very cool.

I still maintain that a fundamental point consists of, on the one hand, agreeing what we're talking about and, on the other hand, understanding how the present moment that we've defined as the locus of our conversation arose out of the maelstrom of the past. That such understanding and definition will always be incomplete and contentious does not obviate the likelihood that we cannot get anywhere else until we know quite richly where we are.

"How do I get to Portland?"

"Well, what? Where are you now?"

"I'm not sure. Just tell me the way to Portland." It's like a bad comedy routine, but it illustrates what I'm conveying, or so I'll hope.

That said they are cool questions. My notion of Peoples Congresses, Peoples Information Networks, Popular Action Networks, and so on imagines a process in which just these sorts of questions--in one way or another, the inclusive dialogs in which these sorts of questions are key parts of the agenda--are the 'order of battle,' as it were. Thus, though the queries assume, without our having demonstrated it, that some sort of "Management of Social Transition" evolution, in UNESCO's phrasing, is essential more or less immediately--i.e., within a generation or two--I'm certainly willing to stipulate the likely veracity of that premise.

Therefore, in a very rudimentary fashion, 'off the top of my head,' as it were, today, my response to this quartet would look like this:

1)I would place the following three general categories of blockage at the top of my list: a--Ideological blinders, including various flavors of supremacist thinking(men are better; Whites are better; my God is better), nationalism, anti-communism, hyper-individualistic idealism, among several others; b--inadequate community capacity, such as the knowledge and ability and right to participate(other than through internet polls and other polling mechanisms), access to tools and social technology to address critical issues robustly, and lack of mechanisms and experiences that promote social relations of negotiation and powerful action; and c)nonexistent or only nascent global community power networks. I might easily have noted the Uranium economy, militaristic Keynesianism, the mega-fraudulent 'War on Drugs,' or half a hundred 'issues.' But these matters are subsidiary in that, even by the miracle of addressing them all at once, without community engagement and participation, the 'solutions' might very well either fall to pieces or be worse than the present problem.

2)Various models are readily available, in many cases aspects of 'best-practices' in the social and 'behavioral' arena of the sciences: Community-Based Participatory Research, Participatory Action Research, Citizen Juries and Citizen Panel Projects, Popular Education, Dialog Sessions, Lifelong Learning, Media Literacy, and on and on and on; in other cases, we would need to be open to discovering next steps as we manifested the will and resources to permit this first true flowering of general human capacitation and citizenship.

3)This is probably either a loaded question or a no-brainer, the former if by 'revolutionary' we mean 'civil war,' the latter if by 'revolutionary' we mean evolution that involves deep and profound and dialectically central transformations: if this inquiry is the former one, my handicapping of the matter swings wildly from 'very unlikely,' as in 'not a significant fraction,' to fifty-fifty; if it is the latter inquiry, then my response would be zero, as in "continued evolution of Western social economies" is impossible outside of revolutionary change in these structural/dynamical senses.

4)This is something that I obsess about constantly: here are a few items that have occurred to me--a)Debtor Default Networks, in which those owing student loans, credit card debt, consumer debt, and even mortgage debt, reject the terms of their indebtedness as teams that propose to turn their fiscal yokes into Community Bonding Programs to enhance community capacity, empowerment, action, etc.; b)Peoples Information Networks, in which geographically proximate community members pool their current media expenditures and reorient them to production, articulation, and outreach instead of to consumption, passivity, and isolation in terms of media, culture, journalism, and so forth; and c)Cultural Action Networks, in which P.I.N. members translate their output, findings, and connections to strategic action to further both the enhancement of local capacity/power and the widecast networking of far flung capacitated and empowered localities; I could go on. The problem is not a shortage of good ideas, which these suggestions may only vaguely resemble anyway: the problem is one of resources, will, and the first steps themselves. As in the case of explorers who know they have no choice but to travel down a certain river, we sociopolitical explorers must have the necessary tools and skills and willingness to build boats or other conveyances; then somebody has to get in the water first and show that the journey is possible.

Now all of these answers also presume that, without engagement in some democratic shape, any attempt to address the underlying issues will either miscarry or involve hideous social carnage. I completely acknowledge both my bias in this and the potential that I am 'so full of crap that it leaks from my eyeballs.'

However, I'd certainly wager that, without something akin to democratic engagement then, both in terms of uprisings from the excluded oppressed and in terms of errors and self-serving idiocy on the part of the elites and their experts, all attempts at reformulating our social economies, to adopt your terminology, will collapse and fail or lead to mass collective homicide or complete ecocide. I can present argument and evidence to support this position, but we can also just wait and see.

Lawrence, I agree that we need new ideas...the problem is that we've been using the same ones over and over expecting different results. You cant get there from there...true. But you need to at least look over your shoulder once in a while to see what direction your going. History is our reference point and we need to consider it in plotting our future. I've been hearing alot of conservative talk about the economy in the U.S. and how we just need to forget about all the abuses of the past by the finance sector and plow on through..."focus on the future"..."it is what it is"..."we need to just move forward"...that's no way to travel. You could walk straight off a cliff with that mindset. But at the end of the day all these problems: housing bubble, health care crisis, unemployment, outsourcing, environmental disasters, political corruption etc. are all traced back to a capitalist substrate.

Jason, you are making a fundamental error.

Corruption exists within every system because human beings give in to temptation. Any study of the Soviet Union, China, or any attempt at socialism/communism produced corruption on a massive scale. Corruption is the biggest problem China is facing today. Blaming human failures, dishonesty, greed, corruption on capitalism makes no more sense then blaming cancer or the common cold on capitalism.

In ALL economic systems, in any period of history, regulation and control was needed to create any semblance of justice in the economy. Just as football or baseball require a rule book and referees on the field calling fouls, economic behavior requires rule making and rule enforcement. If you want to argue that those rules were both inadequate and inadequately enforced, I am in absolute agreement.

Human character is not altered by an economic system. That is the function of religion and too many so-called economists look to economic theory as their religion in the false hope that an economic system by some other name will some how eliminate human greed or cause all people to be supremely altruistic. Only the ultimate religious conversion could do that, not an economic system.

Hey Lawrence, what's good?

I consider the Soviet Union and China to be state-capitalist economies. You make the argument that corruption and greed are inherent predispositions of human nature and that I cant agree with. I think we're actually hardwired for collective communal modes of production. How else would we've survived? Something else outside of our natural tendencies must be to blame for the rampant egoism taking place in the world. As for regulation and control, I agree that these are important if kept in check. As for human character not being altered by an economic system I'd like to give you a chance to either recant or rephrase that statement. It's obviously a dynamic system. As for religion, you'll probably agree that capitalism is an outgrowth of the Protestant ethic. I'd say religion is a product of human character and not the other way round. I dont see any economic system as a religion. Though you could make a strong argument that under capitalism money has surely displaced much of religion. Religion has even become commodified and has been even before Martin Luther's day. I dont wish for an economic system by "some other name" but by some other content and this is very possible. By revolution? I dont know. But I can tell you this: Capitalism as we know it today is killing itself and some other form of economy will have to evolve to take its place. But when rights are equal force decides and that's what we have to contend with.

Jason,

I gather that you understand that I concur with Lawrence in most of his points throughout the thread. The focus needs to be on the future, possibly with an entirely new paradigm. Finding this future rests on sound analysis of the present with an eye to the socio-economic trajectories of the past.

Can you give us an example of a modern economy that YOU do NOT consider capitalist?

The questions about corruption, greed, or collectivism as innate or induced traits are beeing addressed by a number of researchers. I would like to direct you to two papers:

- Children’s Developing Commitments to Joint Goals, Child Development, Harvard University, January/February 2012

- Identification of the Social and Cognitive Processes Underlying Human Cumulative Culture, Science, March 2, 2012

The results are quite instructive for the purpose of this discussion.

Teaching, communication, observational learning, and prosociality all play important roles in human cultural learning. Collaboration and sharing seem culturally induced. While primates do also show some of the collaborative and sharing behavior, some humans are more goal driven than others. As the rewards for getting ahead for those are greater than for cooperating, a complex human ritual emerges in outcompeting peers with skill, deceit, and sheer force.

When I talk to Muslims for my own research, a striking difference in socio-economic behavior can immediately be singled out: Religious Muslims are driven by giving and sharing, while for Western Christian cultures (Jim, note the distinction in comparative phrasing), giving is more of a chore. The human behavior and over time the character is indeed influenced by religious belief systems. I have not come across verifyable research that atttributes such influences to economic systems. It seems quite natural that having more (after the base needs are covered) triggers wanting more, and that, regardless of political systems, some individuals will always try to get ahead through greed, corruption, and deceit, even Muslims. Staying with religion, Judaism encourages treachery as a means to getting ahead as long as it is by Jews to non-Jews.

Protestantism has nothing to do with capitalism, quite in contrary: it was Luther's call to return to the roots of Christianity -- poverty. You can double check that there is a strong underlying bias in (mainly Christian) Western societies to attribute the economic successes to Protestantism. Luther was active at the height of the Renaissance and its outpour of creativity and industriousness. The triggers for modern capitalism (in as much as they do differ from the ancient Roman socio-economic systems) are to be sought in religious fragmentation, rejection of religious authority (in particular in England), state control of religion (also in England with a parallel to modern Turkey), progressive secularization (fostered by minority religions), and technological advances. Henry VIII had singlehandedly legalized lending on interest (max. 10%) while Christianity was hanging onto its prohibition of usury (Greek Orthodoxy and the Netherlands (max. 12%) had relaxed the laws before, Calvin came after Henry (0% to the needy, max. 5%). The churches relaxed the usury laws because they themselves had to rely on credit to fund their investments, which they could no longer sufficiently obtain without paying interest. Religion is not a product of human character. It is a tool to bind a people together against a common enemy, in Luther's case, against the Catholics (who had taken the revenues of his sect), against the Jews, and against the Turks.

Political economics rests, unfortunately, more on bias than on knowledge -- on belief. Political systems act indeed "like" religions that are far removed from verifyable scientific enquiry. Political economics may be as far advanced as climatology or vulcanology. So far, we know very little about the mechanisms and are unable to predict much outside of the main trajectory. Of course, we pretend as much to know otherwise as our forefathers did.

I would encourage you to make a statement to your objective. What is the purpose of your inquiry? Have you actually started to conduct research into a specific systemic problem? Is it understood correctly that your interest is not to discuss "Capitalism" as a comparative theoretical system with "Marxism" but rather systemic risks to modern socio-economic systems, which you negatively coin as being "Capitalist?" Do we actually know by what factors "sustainability" of societies is terminally threatened? To clarify that, is the perceived chaos and damage that lies along the human path part of a mechanism that actually creates adaptive sustainability? Which socio-economic component is already beyond repair that we are doomed to implode? If it does end in revolution, is the answer going to be a reactionary rebirth of "cooperative" societies where the individual drive for getting ahead is choked?

Hey A.J, The purpose of my question was bascially to pick your brains and gather diff. points of veiw on the matter. As far as specific problems I gotta say credit scares the crap out of me right now. It seems that the exchange process over the past few hundred years has been increasingly abstract and further from true value. Somewhere in your post you asked if i could name a modern economic system that doesnt include capitalism and my answer is not really. The reason is that capitalism has already colonized the globe and that is its nature. So I would be hard pressed to point to any economy that has not been subsumed under capitalism because it is the nature of capitalism to absorb these economies. About your question (last paragraph) re: adaptive sustainability, are you talking about some culling of the heard, survival of the fittest upward cancellation here? About what factors sustainabiltiy of societies are terminally threatened: nuclear war, disease, unnatural disasters, etc. all aggravated by capitalist world trade and globalization. Another example (to beat a dead horse) is the oil trade. Here we see capitalist entities/corporations unneccessarily create need for a commodity that didnt exist before and need not exist now that defies all logic other than for self gain. It has fueled wars, contributed to mass pollution, and disease and for what? Production for productions sake and not for that of humanity. What socio economic components are beyond repair that we're doomed to implode you ask? I gotta return to my first statement about credit. Capitalism appears at least to me to be an increasing Ponzi scheme. We dont even know how much real money is backing up credit now...with the finance sectors distortions god himself couldnt figure out who's holding what until its too late and the electronic heard begins to stampede. If we continue to advance into the abyss of abstraction when it comes to money and capital the outcomes are less predictable and crisis ensues and resounds at closer and closer intervals...

Jason,

I see. Let me focus on your main point only, the financial system. It should answer your question about "upward cancellation. First, I would like to direct you to an article that you might like to think over: www.ajdeus.org/articles/472. I think that it addresses the core concerns that you may have in a popular style. After it had been distributed through the academic community, I received some comments that it was too America centric -- which it is. But it might be a starting platform for your exploration.

The financial system will fix itself through a number of possible evolutionary processes:

- collapse (your preferred scenario); it does not mean the end but a new beginning; someone will pick up the pieces and continue, possibly with a new paradigm; it is the creative chaos of (modern) socio-economic systems.

- deflation; the monster for financial systems; it reduces the relative value of the debt owed by home owners and other creditors.

- wage inflation; its effects technically also reduce the relative debt value as a percentage of income; if you made 100 p/a and paid 25 in interest, when you make 120 but still pay 25 in interest, you will be perceivably better off.

- interest rate caps; the return of a discussion about usury (remember the interest rate limits in the above comments); it would probably be the most effective tool to get the debt expense/income ratio in line; imagine, the 25 in interest from before came at 10% and now you only pay 5; it would act like a booster for disposable income.

- splitting of traditional banking from casino style "investment" banking; amounts to a quarantine of the tremendous and unknown systemic risks that plague the financial system; establishment of an obligatory listing on a new electronic derivatives market place; this lays open the quantitative and qualitative aggreagate risks.

- debt swap initiatives; what you are currently wittnessing in Greece; it is also what is being tried with mortgages.

- regulation; a return of tight regulatory frameworks for banks and financial institutions.

There are many other avenues for a fix to the financial mess. Should the global economy pick up speed, you will see these discussions about debt and financial crisis wane very quickly. You see, there might be bigger fish to fry than putting too much worry unto a perceived threat that may help keeping us in line to finance the global theatre of political follies.

Disease, unnatural disasters, and natural disasters (megadisasters) pose probably the biggest systemic risks that humanity is unprepared for or insufficiently prepared for. While they are detached from differences in modern socio-ecnomic systems, it is the low frequency, high consequence risks that would need to be looked at more closely. I am working on a book on the topic of global systemic risks that could potentially wipe out (a) civilization(s). I think that the questions are similar to yours. The answers how to protect civilizations efficiently and effectively are not straight forward.

Nuclear war, I think it was mentioned before is a roundabout term that may have started out more monstrous than it is today, in particular after the horrors of the American bomb falling on Hiroshima with 250,000 casualties and infinite sick. Today's nuclear weapons tend to be more targeted. Without trying to downplay the risks, these bombs may constitute some kind of an insurance policy against war. Dare those that will deploy them. I think that the bigger threat (based on my research on social economics of religious terrorism and religiously induced poverty) than bombs is the religious war of ideas that feeds off systemic poverty and induces eternal hatred, resulting in jihad, holy war, or conquest of canaan. How then -- your main concern -- do you address systemic poverty and income inequality in a world of zealots that glorify poverty?

I dont really see a world of zealots glorifying poverty. A few yes..Jesus included. I think what most of us in the world would like to see is a little more balance between the value our labor produces and the value of our paychecks. I've heard the argument before that the market will self regulate but the problem is who bares the burden in the process. So far it has been the working classes who always carry this burden. What bothers me most about modern capitalism is its unavoidable hypocrisy of privatizing gains and socializing losses. I'm not a ludite who wishes to banish all of the advances made in tech. etc. I only want for a more equitable distribution of the value that is created by labor. I beleive in democracy in politics and I only dream of democracy in economics. An economic democracy to me=socialism in a sense. Why must the surplus be siphoned off by those who really had no part in creating it? Is it due to the assumption that the working class is only capable of producing the wealth but somehow incapable of distributing it? As for the nuclear argument and the theory of MAD and its checking of nuclear powers, doesnt the same logic apply to the fact that if one nuke went airborn that all would be lost? Its a gamble and noone can say how it would end. And like the previous argument its not about how it will end but who is hurt in the process. That's really not much of an insurance policy.

You know I wouldnt be surprised if capitalism didnt culminate in total state-capitalism and then democratic political processes could be used to phase in a more equitable distribution of the value created by labor. In time perhaps class distinctions could be dimmed. If a man wanted more than his neighbor he would be welcome to pursuit this goal but only by working longer or harder than his neighbor as opposed to the leisure class lifestyle of those who own the means of production.

Jason

If you want to see a balance between the value of your labor's products and your pay (I gather that you are not merely refering to wages but to a cut in profits), you really need to study Gadaffi's Green Book. As an entrepreneur, I am all for decent wages and voluntary bonuses for good work. However, splitting profits after having taken all the risk, having worked 7x16 for years without a day of a break, seems to me a recipe to stifling the spirit of individual industriousness. I am quite positive that you would not be willing to work for free and put your life savings into a venture until you, hopefully and years down the road, reap some fruits. Instead, you want the enterpreneur to walk away with the same hourly rate? I am sure that you are pulling my leg for argument's sake. I see absolutely no offense in Bill Gate's wealth. The rash comes from outrageous compensation packages to non-enterpreneurs that run organizations that are too big to fail and have, in the worst cases, required government bailouts. I am quite certain that businesses themselves have become sensitive to packages that lead to big payouts despite non-performance. An evern greater point of contention are exorbitant payouts that flow into the pockets of government or government related functionaries.

The market will not self regulate, the aggregate systems will. Part of this is an evolving regulatory framework that tries to set limits to greed and corruption. I have merely shown a set of possible mechanisms or a combination thereof that could address what you look at as the greatest problem of modern civilizations.

Democracy in economic units (businesses) leads to certain bankruptcy. It is probably one of the main flaws of modern socio-economic systems that democracies have a hard time in distinguishing between necessary and desired actions and investments. With few exceptions, businesses cannot operate with such a paradigm.

I agree with you on the nuke gamble. In a trigger event, all will be lost. However, the dream of no nukes seems not realistic for the next while. Hence, for the time being, we just have to hold our breath that the Ultra-Orthodox elite in Jerusalem (the ones in the Middle East with nukes) does not succeed in manipulating the American Christians into a war with the Shi'ite Muslims in Teheran.

A. J. Deus,

First, thank you for turning this conversation in a direction that is much more interesting and profound. I have ordered your book and look forward to reading it. I am also a student of history and particularly an admirer of Arnold Toynbee's Study of History and his analysis of the causes of both emergence and decline of civilizations. There are many lessons in that study regarding both economics and the role of religion as a stimulus to civilization.

While history is a useful base of knowledge to assess future trends, it does not provide a clear guide to the future because there are fundamental underlying circumstances (i.e. technology) that have created dramatic new opportunities and challenges. As Mark Twain said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."

I want to focus on the future and talk about how we construct a future economic system.

First, two underlying biases:

I view the economy as a complex interdependent human system. In my organization design work I rely on the principle of self-organization, empowerment and complexity and these principles require one to allow the system to be dynamic, rather than fixed or bureaucratic. Economists and economic theorists too often view the economy as something that is more rigid and fixed than it can be. Bureaucratic control in corporations stifles creativity and growth and the same is true in the larger economy.

Second, since the subject of religion and its impact on economies has been introduced I have to be transparent and reveal what is, for me, a very significant set of biases, or source of understanding. I am a member of the Baha'i Faith, have written a book on business and economics based on Baha'i principles (Spiritual Enterprise) so the following comments are informed by those understandings.

Now, to the main point:

1. Past economic theory and governing laws have been based on the the history of nation states and their presumed power to control economic activity within their borders. While this has never been entirely true, it was somewhat true. Today, however, the power of the nation state in regard to economic activity is greatly diminished due to the globalization of financial markets and the percent of GDP that is based on imports or exports, and this is more true for nations other than the U.S., although also true here.

One of Toynbee's observations was that each succeeding civilization encompasses larger territory than the preceding one (Rome vs. Greece or Persia). What are the boundaries of civilization today? Where can Hadrian's wall be built to keep out the invading barbarians? There is no wall and no border. We are clearly entering a period of global civilization that will encompass all and overpower all nation states. This dramatically changes the game of economic transformation and control. Any nation that attempts to control its economy to the exclusion of other nations must fail or achieve an extremely low level of economic activity (Cuba, North Korea, now Iran and Venezuela). It is a prescription for poverty.

The point is that you cannot intelligently discuss the future economy without acknowledging the diminished power of nation states and the overwhelming power of global dynamics.

2. Economies are about information. If you knew how to navigate to the Spice Islands you gained a competitive advantage. If you knew how to create an assembly line, or now lean manufacturing processes, you gained an advantage. More than ever, the economy is about information flow. Yesterday's assumptions about information flow are no more valid than the assumptions about who could read a Bible prior to Gutenberg. The printing press transformed religion and education and the Internet is transforming economics, making borders ever more irrelevant. A large percent of the economy is no longer a relationship between "capitalists" and "labor" but about individuals with websites, blogs, social networks, networked learning, etc. The old dialectic of Marxism becomes increasingly irrelevant every day.

3. Now to the real main point: Principles for the construction of a future economy. Complex systems, or chaos, require organizing principles and those principles become the "attractors" around which organization will occur. The principles of the reformation and the enlightenment, were not imposed, rather they were attractors around which self organization occurred (ie, the American and French Revolutions and dozens of others.)

So, the useful question in my mind, is "What are the organizing principles of the future economy?" Answering this question is the only way to get to sustainability. You will never get to a sustainable economic system by debating from the ideological frameworks of capitalism/socialism.

So, here are some suggested principles of future economic organization:

1. Honesty and Trustworthy: All economic activity is an act of trust, whether trusting that the meat isn't poisoned or that your check won't bounce. Low trust cultures are economically hindered by the inability to form spontaneous associations and extending the radius of trust. You could write a book on this subject alone, but if you look at poorly performing economies they occur in a culture of low trust.

2. Abolish the Extreme's of Wealth and Poverty: Differences in ability, opportunity and achievement are natural and differences in reward are natural. However, extremes of both wealth and poverty are evil and the regulation of the economy must seek to abolish extremes on both ends.

3. The Spirit of Service: Earlier there was an exchange about greed versus altruism. Interesting article in the current New Yorker on the science of socio-biology and the study of the genetic routes of altruism. What is clear is that two things are simultaneously true. Our species has survived because of our ability to work in groups and our willingness to sacrifice for others. What is also true is that there is great variability in human behavior and some of that variability is in the direction of greed, deceit, etc., and therefor requires regulation. However, what is important is that we educate humankind in the direction of a spirit of service to others. This has profound consequences in regard to economic activity. It should be the primary motivational force in our lives.

4. Acknowledgment of the Unity of the Human Race: Genetic research says that we all, regardless of race, are 99.99 the same with Caucasian, Asian, African, etc. But, this acknowledgment is more than a biological reality. Much of the destruction in human history is the result of tribalism of one sort or another: "My people are God's chosen people, and your's aren't!"

Today (literally) my daughter, Layli, is in New York where she is receiving the Diane Von Furstenberg People's Choice Award for her human rights activity in which she has assisted thirteen thousand women fleeing human rights abuse. As her father, let me tell you why (other than good fathering, of course). As a small child going to Baha'i children's class she learned a simple song that went like this: "God is one, Man is one, and all the Religions agree. When everyone learns the three onenesses, we'll have world unity." She grew up believing that she was a "world citizen" and that all humankind was one family. And, that underlying understanding and motivation, is why thirteen thousand woman have been assisted to escape persecution. Religion, training and motivation does matter. It transforms society and it transforms economies.

5. The absolute equality of men and women: Most of the world is playing the economic game with one hand tied behind its back. As long as women are held as property, as long as they are denied education, healthcare, and full economic opportunity, no country or economy can achieve prosperity. This must be an underlying value of future economic activity.

6. Universal Education: No people or person has full economic opportunity absent the access to education. The global system of economics and governance must provide universal education to every child, every man or woman, in every corner of the globe. We are moving in that direction. Initiatives like the Khan Academy offer hope that this will be realized.

OK, that's too much from me.

Lawrence,

Thank you. I appreciate it and am looking forward to your feedback. My email address is in my profile, and I am happy to address any quesitons that you may have. I have no longer a religious affiliation but think that religious energies can be re-directed for positive progress within a framework that prohibits a set of religious behaviors.

I am running my business on the principle of empowerment. However, it still needs a decision maker (or a team of decision makers) to take those turns that are unpleasant and difficult, for example to fire people or to stop an escalating commitment. Maybe socio-political system need a mechanism that can prevent majorities from taking decisions that lead to living above means. Perhaps simple majorities are not reasonable enough.

Coming forth with a workable social vision that does not create a new ism or another unflexible socio-economic model is not easy. I agree that economic theorists are fixated, yet, those models are just models, uncontrolled experiments in the grand scale, of which I have seen none that actually work in reality. What I am looking for is a framework of paramount freedom that is balanced with a set of likewise paramount responsibilities. Through the view into history, I think that a new paradigm must allow for self-regulating (as you state) evolutionary flexibility that is much more nimble than today's monolithic socio-political hypertrophies that are no longer ran by states-man.

To illustrate a possible glimps into the future, I spent much of today with Kony-2012, not because of the Invisible Childrens' credos (I am not even interested too much in these complications) but in a historic moment that may unfold under our feet. So far, I had viewed social networking as a tool that may highlight socio-economic discontent, but it has not brought forward new visions. The Kony case fuses millions behind a cause -- however poorly explained and based on crating shared hatred -- that may indeed help change the world. It will show whether the extreme violators of human responsibility can be brought to justice, one after the other, with the power of peaceful exposure. Can Kony hide or is he going to be flushed out as a liability to his own people? Similarly, can social networks change the trajectory of wealth exploitation? Can they lead to individuals giving up undeserved excess wealth in exchange of retaining a life? Can social networks blackmail financial institutions into ethical behavior by announcing a day, for example, where millions of people would, all at once, pull out their savings? Can we use these tools to address global systemic poverty and force a discussion about religion unto the public (discussion leads to fragmentation, a key to social progress).

I have a feeling that those tools help further fragment visions of the future and could thus emerge as enablers for a political establishment that retains the status quo. As the public learns to utilize them for causes, governments will learn to control and manipulate them.

While universal education is a no-brainer, I hope, it gets more complicated when thinking about what needs to be learned and how it is paid for. What I am missing is the responsibility of the parents that help their children decide what exactly is desired to be learned apart from the compulsory base subjects like writing and number crunching. The higher up the educational ladder, the more I would expect a cost return program that puts the burden on the future income of the educated. I am sensitive and worried about educational indoctrination that leads to entire generations being unable to think critically and independently. What is state education good for if you get (religious) conformation for free? Hence, how do we raise responsible citizens? When we talk about a new paradigm for a future, we would probably have to focus on how to implement universal (primary) education on a global scale and what that education would include or exclude.

If we get education right, a new socio-economic paradigm will perhaps rise all by itself -- based on the assumption of a universally educated people rather than sheep.

The second point that I would like to address is usury (I deliberately use this term). The ancients did not come up with that concept by sheer inspiration. Something must have happened that was existential to a society, prompting anti-credit sentiments. Credit is the root for living above means, and we might need to revisit how a framework for credit puts civilizations on a smarter path. Ancient Islamic writers have been particularly good at describing the evolution of living above means into social collapse. While I think that technical progress depends on competition among businesses, and social progress depends on competition among nations, the financial system and trade probably need a global regulatory framework and possibly a global currency, setting a plain playing field for world-wide economic cooperation. Such cooperation might turn out to constitute a safety net in case of mega-disasters. A poor Africa or South America are unable to rush to help other continents.

A brief third point is that sick people are not free. Free BASIC universal healthcare needs to be a human right. However, a paradigm shift is needed from sick care to health promotion (penalizing of unhealthy foods, for example).

Your other points:

1. Honesty and Trustworthy is probably similar to my meaning of responsibility. I am not sure, though that low performing economis are necessarily of low trustworthyness. Muslims are particularly fond of honesty, yet because of their religious straight jackets, they do not stand a chance to get out of the mess unless a secular state takes charge (Turkey).

2. We are probably on the same target with Extreme Wealth and Poverty as well, although with slightly different approaches.

3. Spirit of Service is also on my agenda (obviously). However, here I see the expedient religious doctrines of helping the poor, alm, or zakat after having sent the subjects into poverty. Hence, industriousness and making a living must be prime educational targets from which the spirit of service must follow. Muslims give zakat to the point where they impoverish themselves.

4. The problems of Human Race come, I think, mainly from religious exclusion mechanisms, which should find their prohibition in a new regulatory framework for the industry of relgion. However, I fear a world without national competitors to rapidly fall into a global tyranny. We are family but we still live our own lives with distinct social aspirations and economic assets.

5. We agree on equality of men and women. Your daughter will l-o-v-e the chapter on women's issues. I would like to qualify this insofar that equality is within the boundaries of the unequality of the sexes. I am puzzled by a decision by the tennis federation, for example, that pays out the same price money for both sexes. It is probably an indicator for an escalated commitment.

I was wondering whether Jason might comment. He is the initiator, and I do not like his thread to be hi-jacked.

Hi, AJ, You've given me alot to respond to. Some good points too. About tech. innovation hinging on competition though I'm not so sure. Many tech. advances are the products of laborers off the clock in their garages. You could make an opposing argument that many tech. innovations are stiffled by corps. need to maintian the status quo. Also capitalist production requires the cheapening of commodities through competition resuting in the consumers observation that "they dont make 'em like that any more". This approach to production results in the current disposable generation...things arent repairable theyre just discarded and this mentality leaks into human relations as well. Look at the proportion of U.S. citizens incarcerated. Commodities=disposable-->People=disposable. Qualitative is traded for quantitative. Re: "simple majorities are not reasonable": I do have certain fears about overnite democracies and the backlash that they can have but i'm much more fearful of the alternative ie. tyranny of a dictator or oligarchy. About the point in your second paragraph: I dont see majorities making decisions to live above thier means in the U.S. I see a minority deciding what means the majority may enjoy while at the same time this minority portion themselves out the equivalent of a small countrys GDP in bonuses. We can say that the min. wage is set by those with influence at 7.25/hr and therefor your means= living in your car, shelter, squatting etc. According to this logic anyone who works at this rate of pay full time is being irresponsible if they attempt to live at what the existing society considers decent or humane. So do you blame the poor for living above an unrealistically low standard or do you blame those with the power and influence for limiting the means for the majority? It's not a question of production but distribution. With tech. advancement the surplus is vast but is absorbed by a few. At the same time the majority is offered various forms of credit to fill the gap in thier stagnate wages and big surprise they accept. Now you've people borrowing their paychecks. A whole swath of the population is relegated to the status of "surplus populations" used to further lower the wage, fight wars, prison and military industrial complex etc. Unemployment goes up= wage goes down= further cheapening of the commodity of labor power. The elite determine what means are to be dispersed and the majority struggles to meet the standard of evolutionary human decency with these limited means.

On a more technical level though i feel capitalism as we know it cant proceed much longer. Theyre must be changes. When production is applied simply for exchange value instead of for fulfilling use values we see a shift from qualitative to quantitative production. When production is for use values the goal is clear: produce enough of labor product to fulfill this need. Today we gauge productive success not on fulfilling a need but on fulfilling a number. This leads to overproduction, artificially deflated values of commodities, and unemployment. Intimately bound up in this dilema of exchange value production is the problem of automation displacing the laborer. As a result of automation (after it has become industry standard) is unemployment and the decrease in the rate of profit since that portion of capital that is variable (and thereby the source of surplus value and profit) has been reduced.

The other argument refers to resources. Bounty of the earth=finite, exchange value based prod.= infinite. Renewable resources=normally at harmony, under quantitative production existing reserves are depleted at exponential and unsustainable rates.

The coercive law of competition of capitalism: Capitals fate for relative value to be centralized and concentrated. A product of this is the shifting from private form to that of State-Capitalism ie. what we're seeing take place globally right now.

Jason,

It is your thread.

First, I would like to encourage you to not think in isms. If you would like to tackle your profoundly important question, you will need to leave at least some of your negative bias toward modern Western forms of socio-economic organization behind and maybe try to focus on one aspect at one time. You will otherwise not arrive at answers in your lifetime, and I have a hard time following arguments that jump out from nowhere. For example, and you do not need to explain, I do not really see your connection between discarding material things and the problem of incarceration of people.

That innovation is stifled by corporations seems one of these absolutims that cry out for reconsidering, in particular when thinking forward. You will see within only a few years that social production methods (beyond software) will start undermining traditional manufacturing and shipping of merchandise around the world. Instead, small social producers will be enabled to access instructions globally and produce anything at lot one locally. It will have an immense impact on sustainability for distributed manufacturing will lower risks of supply disruptions, and it will also allow innovation by 99ers to flow more freely -- leading to products that use less resources. Think of eliminating middle-men, stock, and transportation, and you have a massive tool to counter economies of scale. You can jump on the bandwagon today with a PC and $1,500. With such low cost of entry, you will quickly see profits being marginalized, driving the world closer toward your concept of value production. What we will have to address collectively is the social impact that these disruptive changes bring along.

Also, history is full of "good tyrants," single rulers or oligarchs that were statesmen in the service of their people. Bad rulers tended to end up in a coffin. Limiting us into the box of democracy as we know it, deprives us from asking the hard questions that we should discuss. Is it not the system of democracy that could raise the minimum wage by consent? I am not sure whether we correctly blame the 1% when the 99% do not get their act together to exert some control over the former. How can I reasonably blame top heavy "capitalism" of anything when the people fail to impose stricter rules? There are a few people in this thread that could tell you a thing or two about fish starting to stink in their heads.

There seems to be some philosophy behind your line of thought, and I would like to make sure that I understand better before addressing your points further. You seem to be fixated on "use values," and I would hope that you could explain what exactly you mean with that. As earlier mentioned, I understand it as only consuming and producing to a level where the personal necessities are satisfied while the laborer would have not just a salary but his full share in profits (the Khaldun/Gadaffi concept). Everyone would essentially end up with the same hourly rate, but there would be no excessive luxuries. I gather that your background is Musllim. Are these two assumptions correct? If your focus is more on waste, maybe taxing industries more that produce waste would help in a rethinking process (as long as imports are included in the scheme). "Cost" is a language that every businessman on earth understands quite well.

Except in former plan economies of the Socialist/Communist era, can you name a country that is based on fullfilling a number for production? Businesses throughout the world are typically geared toward a market, which equates to perceived needs. There, the question of sustainability might be addressed by, only as one example, taxing fat or salt usage in order to bring forth healthier lifestyles through higher quality food (e.g. lowering sick care costs).

Hey AJ, No I'm not muslim. That you'd ask me that is confusing. I do remember you mentioning that you study some muslim forms of economy... whatever coincidence my posts have to that i dont know. Kind of a lil presumptious but what the hell no offense taken. Anyways, yeah i do focus a bit on the use value/utility vs. exchange value relationship when i'm talking commodities. Your assumption about my use of the term is wrong. By use value i simply mean a products utility-->you make a shovel because you need a shovel, you dont make 5,000 shovels simply so that you can syphon off the surplus value from the labor used in the production of the shovels. I understand that the source of all value that a commodity can contain is none other than the labor that is invested in it in some form. You say that under this type of production the laborer gets to keep his wage and his profit: but there is no "profit" in your sense of the word. If the laborer keeps the net of his product their is no distinction between salary or profit. Neither term exists. Nobody has purchased his labor and so no surplus value and so no profit. What he is doing is merely objectifying his labor. Re: your question on an example country that bases its production on numbers I'd say wake up and smell the coffee they all do. Is it a fixed number?No. It is an infinite one: if the order calls for 40 widgets do the workers stop at 40? No, they must continue to crank out widgets no mater their market. This is overproduction, then comes layoffs. If you can force the competition into bankruptcy by increasing the number of widgets on the world market then your on your way to monopoly. Next you can replace labor with machines and further lower the price of your widgets. Problem is in the process you've shrunk your own profit because the capital fixed in your machinery is just that: fixed. You cant threaten a macnine into working harder for you. Once the tech. is industry standard it has to constantly innovate in an arms race against any other producer. Use value production=fulfills a determined need, exchange value production=an infinite and quantitative form of production, constantly losing value. BTW the hidden hand of the market does not serve everybodies interests. When the warehouses are full, the owner of the company can sit back and live it up, while the workers who actually produced the value are unemployed.

AJ I agree that I do have negative biases, no doubt. But I dont have blinders on..I really want to find something in western capitalism to feel good about...I just cant find it. I've mentioned the tech. advances made by capitalism but I wonder what further advances could have been made in the mean time had we had more diffusion of resources like education, healthcare, etc. The cure for cancer could've been waiting locked inside a child's brain never to be realized because of the fallout from a profit motivated society. I guess what im saying is that I feel that our human potential is being squandered so that a few fat cats can enjoy a life of leisure.

If you need a recent example of the exchange value approach to production and the damage it causes look at the housing bubble here in the U.S. Here you had firms building and building not knowing that the hidden hand of the market was about to give them a royal bitch-slap. At the same time you had working class folks borowing against their homes to pay off there medical bills (another example of exchange value production being the healthcare industry). Then you had the market speculators who bought up huge quantities of homes to "flip" them in what they thought would be a successful profit/exchange value enterprise only to find out that the values of the properties they bought had actually lost significant market value. Now you have whole neighborhoods of vacant homes boarded up while homlessness is still a serious problem in this country. This is just one example of what exchange value production actually produces. Now I know folks would say yeah but the market will eventually regulate and "fix" these problems. My answer to that is a resoundin "no". Right now those with capital, landlords etc. will be buying up those homes and turn them into apartments. So will the market regulate...sure. But there are consequences and those consequences mean the expropriation of the workers.

And if you want to get really nuanced about it we can talk about how the banks slipped these toxic values from the mortgage market into huge bundles for global investors nearly bankrupting the entire country of Iceland and sending shock waves through the world market. Once again quantity vs. quality. Its gotten so bad that now actual production no longer serves as the mediator between capital and its increment ie: surplus value/profit. AIG, Enron, Worldcom, Lehman, et al. can just seem to produce profit out of thin air...they are the smartest guys in the room as they say so nobody raises an eyebrow until its too late. Remember Madoff? Same thing there. You mentioned your confusion re: my comment on how our relationship to commodities translates to our relationships with people. Under the production of use values we see relations of products mediated by people eg. you have apples, i have wheat, we bargain and walk away fulfilled. With exchange value production though it is a relationship of people mediated by commodities. The commodity is in control via its market price which may not translate to the actual value of the labor invested in it. A result is a cheapening of the commodity. But labor power is also a commodity and as social relations are mediated by things the laborer is worth less in aggregate. So the cheapening of the labor product=the cheapening of the laborer. So in an era where we just throw away something because it needs repair the same applies to the producer of that product. Consider this: The U.S. is by far the most "disposable" of all countries and we have more people incarcerated than all of Western Europe combined...

Well then!

Jason, keep on swinging. One might present questions and feedback about such matters as 'socially necessary labor,' about 'fetishism of commodities,' about the way that mechanization embodies class struggle, and more, but in general well done.

Lawrence and A.J. have so many things to say. And many of them, in some postings the vast majority of them, are marvels with whom only a cretin could disagree.

They are, quite plausibly, men of good faith. Plenty is present to discuss in what they say, matters that might be fruitful for other than the corporate clients and followers that Lawrence has described.

However, I incline to a different interpretation than that they are merely well-intentioned blokes seeking comity and social improvement. In this view, they are truly marvelous propagandists for the bourgeoisie, blending irresistible heartfelt passion with both bald assertions at best dubious and occasional outright untruths to come up with a set of conclusions that have far less to do with 'reality' or 'possibility' than they do with maintaining upper crust hegemony.

I subscribe to this point of view because their errors are so congruent with present power relations' staying 'in the right hands,' as it were. While I might give dozens of examples from the aggregate of their different responses, I'll emphasize only a small matter, but one which is revealing.

Originally, Lawrence had described Bill Gates as someone who had to scramble to find pizza funding, while the young fellow with the nickname 'Gravy Train' plied his course through college on several thousand a month in excess interest payments from his as-yet-to-be-vested trust-fund. Much later, A.J. chastened Jason's suggesting that a 'leveling' movement might be salubrious by stating, "I see absolutely no offense in Bill Gates' wealth."

The response to both positions--the former false and the latter disingenuous--would start with mention of the verity of ten million dollars, inherited from grandpa, upon the receipt of which dear William left college and embarked--years before pulling together the elements of Microsoft--on a poker-playing practicum that cost him quite a bit but left him one of the better players on the planet.

'The rest is history,' A.J. might insist, a history that he finds palatable. Mr. Gates worked hard; he increased his fortune between a thousandfold and ten-thousandfold. The point is not to deny how hard he worked but to note how ludicrous is the assumption that level is an apt descriptor of a playing field in which 99% of people, to pick a popular number these days, don't receive anything akin to ten million bucks with which to begin enterprising their way through life.

Thus, both actual history--Billy G's reality--and analysis cry out for a corrective of such facile nonsense. Bertell Ollman, he of "Class Struggle" legend--a great yarn that all might find instructive--puts matters into perspective.

"A young reporter asked a leading capitalist how he made his fortune. 'It was really quite simple,' the capitalist answered. 'I bought an apple for 5 cents, spent the evening polishing it, and sold it the next day for 10 cents. With this I bought two apples, spent the evening polishing them, and sold them for 2O. And so it went until I amassed 80. It was at this point that my wife's father died and Ieft us a million dollars.'

Is this true? Is it fair? What does it all mean? There are no more hotly contested questions in our society than why some are rich and others poor- and whether things have to be this way.

Karl Marx sought the answers to these questions by trying to understand how our capitalist society works (for whom it works better, for whom worse), how it arose out of feudalism and where it is likely to lead. Concentrating on the social and economic relations in which people earn their livings, Marx saw behind capitalism's law and order appearance a struggle of two main classes: the capitalists, who own the productive resources, and the workers or proletariat, who must work in order to survive. 'Marxism' is essentially Marx's analysis of the complex and developing relations between these two classes."

In relation to this dynamic of historical, political-economic conflict, which continues--and some would say is amplifying--to this day, A.J. and Lawrence either implicitly or explicitly side with the burghers. They would eschew history. Each then says, 'oh, but don't get me wrong! I want great things for everyone.'

To start with what no sane person would countermand, one might look at numbers two through five, which Lawrence promulgated above. A.J. agrees and had some important points to make about what a valid educational engagement would need to manifest in order to be worth a damn.

The difficulty with this position is multilayered. They don't want to discuss the past in any analytical or investigatory way, though both are prone to grab simplistic notes about our collective annals that may or may not be true. They rely on personal anecdotes and assertions about 'isms' and preconceptions that Jason and others allegedly evince, when in fact--'projection is the most primitive form of coping strategy'--they are the ones most mired in an 'ism'--one that begins with a capital 'C' and it's not 'commonism,' as J. Edgar Hoover called it--and their preconceptions are omnipresent.

The upshot of this is simple. Perhaps good-hearted error is at the root of their approach. Or maybe, as I infer, a more calculating tendency is at work--in which the vested stakeholders are, in their presumptive reading of things, the only ones who have any real right to play a part in the grand, unfolding drama of the present. Whatever the case may be, their imprecations about abolishing extreme wealth and poverty, imbuing a 'spirit of service' in society, recognizing the oneness of humankind("We're All Cousins, After All" is the title of my essay on this topic) in all its cultural and ethnic and other expressions, eliminating male chauvinism and establishing absolute gender equality, and providing universal educational excellence for all are completely in the realm of hot air and totally unmanageable outside of the hard work that they abnegate doing.

Capitalism, growing out of feudalism, deified extremes of wealth and poverty. Capitalism, growing out of feudalism, wanted a 'service-ethic' all right, but it was rooted in slavery, poor-houses, convict labor, and other attacks on workers' rights of the sort that Jason has pointed out, oppression that is again on the upswing, even in 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Although the story in relation to women's rights is a complex one, here too, capitalism, growing out of feudalism, has consistently yielded ruling classes that have relied on divide-and-conquer tactics, of which this is the oldest in the book, so to say. And capitalism, growing out of feudalism, has adopted a course of rigorous 'schooling,' leaving anything even vaguely resembling an education to the upper crusts in their pricey secondary schools, private in the U.S. and 'Public' in England.

Lacking an appreciation of these historical assessments, which are contentious but which are evidence-based and come with plentiful authority, Lawrence and A.J.'s high-minded rhetoric comes down to windy hopes that the rulers will be nice, ethical, 'responsible,' and so forth. And many people who examine this richly layered past-becoming-present reject any such lofty oratory as, at best, misguided good intentions.

The purpose of this championing of history is not 'predicting the future,' at least not in any superficial sense. It is merely exemplifying the truism both that the present is incomprehensible except in light of its evolution from the past and that moving forward without such a capacity to comprehend is, charitably, an optimistic fool's bet. In the absence of treasuring and struggling to understand the past, all hosannas to business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and other manifestations of so-called 'social capital' will produce nothing except further enriching the rich and upending the rest.

This assertion, about the futility of the 'corporate-responsibility'/'social capital' pathway, basically just makes a prediction. I could, were I so inclined, take a more evidentiary approach that developed argument and analysis and vast troves of data in support of the assertion, for instance in all five of the forms that it takes above--from eliminating economic polarization to universalizing quality learning.

The likes of Lawrence and A.J. can rebut it by claiming otherwise, at this juncture, so long as they can refute the notion that the past interweaves with the present in ways that are critical to choosing future options. What I would recommend, however, is that we finesse this critique of CSR and its ilk by engaging the stakeholding and marginalized populations that currently have no place at the table and, apparently, no right to have input on the agenda.

Alternatively, of course, Lawrence and A.J. can also give this merry grig an opportunity again to utter one of his favorite quips: "I told you so;" when various fantastical notions that they advance so blithely crash and burn. For, in the final analysis, whatever additions one might want to make to Jason's replies above, he speaks accurately and for the most part without refutation. Capital, in its current form and on its current path, is no more sustainable than exponential bacterial growth on a petri dish.

For my money, I proffer an operating protocol for moving forward that I've found of merit enough to continue offering to folks.

TEN NEW COMMANDMENTS

1. The Golden Rule Reigns Supreme.

2. All Children Receive Priority.


3. All Who Work Are Welcome.


4. All Who Work Are Equal.


5. All Who Work Have Responsibilities & Rights.


6. All Who Work Receive Benefits & Provide Support for Others.


7. All Who Work Own Everything That Labor Transforms.


8. All Who Work Are Family.


9. All Beliefs, Congruent with the Golden Rule, Are Welcome.


10. All Other Matters Are Negotiable.



The above are Jim Hickey's ‘spindoctor’-mandate-and-challenge to those who long for decent work, who lack the capacity to make ends meet, who fear that they have no place in the coming political-economic scheme of things.  Without enshrining something like this consciousness in ourselves, continued worsening of economic prospects and social relations seems unavoidable. 

Put into a single sentence, the above 'commandments' might lead to a complicated summary such as the following.

The central task of the social reformer or progressive, as the first decades of the twenty first century unfold, is to form relationships durable enough and pointed enough to begin, on the one hand, to dismantle the Prison-Imperial-Military-Industrial Complex, the various arms of which--'War on Drugs,' INS, Homeland Security, Operation Iraqi Liberation and similar invasions, etc.--effect the evisceration of the working class, both in terms of consciousness and in terms of action, and on the other hand, to reconstitute the social and productive forces therein turned to exploitation and repression to the expression of humankind's creative capacity for a human existence.



As merely a single instance of what this all means, a community-led jobs policy would be an aspect of the final phrase in this long-winded sentence, an "expression of humankind's creative capacity for a human existence."  Self-preservation alone ought to dictate sticking with such an agenda; a still higher calling, to achieve what Woodie Guthrie intoned as "Solidarity Forever," might represent a sterner standard by which we can evaluate our motives, our actions, and our resolve."

As I've pointed out, I am well-equipped to develop hypotheses and facts in support of the ideas that I present here. But as Lawrence has insisted, 'we're not arguing.' We're having a dialog.

My contribution, in the end, is pretty simple. A dialog without historical grounding, a rigorous struggle over defining key terms, and robust participation by heretofore excluded populations will produce nothing except the continuing slide toward devolution that is capitalism's fate.

Jason

The reason why I had asked for your religious affiliation (or non affiliation) is that it usually provides for a better understanding of people's thought framework. Thank you for clarifying your value based system, which now seems to me to be some sort of Medieval socio-economic system where small producers would build their lives on personal relationships with their customers. Humanity at today's numbers cannot survive (sustainability) if such a socio-economic model would be applied. I'll explain.

"Profit" and "Power" respectively getting ahead balanced by collaboration are probably as old as humanity. When studying ancient societies, even hunter-gatherers or non-human primates, we tend to overlook that there are no succcessful collective societies that do not also exhibit forms of elitism. There is no time in history where there has not been some form of the ruled many. While some are happy with sharing more than what they have, others are equally content with accumulating more than their "fair share." The wonderful thing in human evolution that those that want to get ahead, those that are curious, and those that are seeking for profit have always been the ones to directly or indirectly shape the destiny of humanity. There are the alphas and then there are the others that live in more or less free (or controlled) environments. Profit, in primate thinking and personal relationships (even intimate) is as simple as improving quality and quantity of mating opportunities, which increase even more with territorial expansion. Profit, in very simple terms, is a natural consequence from a "value" based form of socio-economic organization. In other words, the realities of modern societies are closer to your model of "value" systems than what you you might like to argue away. There is no such thing as a numbers/exchange based economy (as you see it) as it would lead to nothing other than bankruptcy, socially and economically. Maybe we have to discuss waste, production surplusses, transportation inefficiencies, etc. instead. I think I have addressed this issue already somewhat.

To use your example, you are only successful if you can produce 5,000 shovels when those shovels happen to satisfy a need (value) at the right time and place. If the order calls for 5,000 but the alpha anticipates a market of 6,000, he makes a decision of market risk, employing more labor than necessary (!) to build (!) and fill the warehouse. At a profit rate of only 10%, he is bankrupt if he estimated wrong. Hence, the output produced is naturally self-regulating even -- and in particular -- if every manufacturer bets on over-production. Over-production means over-employment; cut-backs mean correcting over-employment. In a discussion about sustainability where unemployment seems to be high on your list of concerns, you seem to leave out the benefits to over-production, over-consumption, indebtedness, housing bubbles, etc, which translates in the ramp-up to exactly what you are looking for: over-employment. Nobody complained then. In a theoretical context, one might sarcastically make the case that unemployment is caused by previous over-employment. The issues of sustainability here are fair labour wages, safety/health concerns, over-consumption (!), credit and "securities" regulations, anti-trust, and environmental impacts, among others. I have already advocated universal education within framework that fosters critical thinking and BASIC universal health caree. These are to be negotiated in the social balance between the alphas and their collective people powers (democracy?).

In order to understand the earliest such processes, you might like to consider studying the rise of the stone axe industry. There, I am sure, you would not be able to bring forth the same rejectionist arguments. However, you will see, that quite immediately, there are strong elites that control laborers through an elaborate and ritualized power system. Then as now, in order to address sustainability, we would have to conquer only one question, which is why the collective negotiation process fails and what could be done to make it work. Maybe it is because the alphas are always thinking two miles ahead of the pack. Being good at deceiving and manipulating is another innate behavior of alphas. However, what you describe is a natural progress, from individual innovation to mass production, to automation, with shrinking profits, finally leading to a loop to more innovation. It is the irreversible human "arms-race" as you term it that has been going on for 15,000 years, interrupted by global natural, religious, and power based disasters. As you correctly state, shrinking profits lead to diminshing commodity prices (in some cases), which in the aggreagate view improves the disposable income of the laborer.

In terms of sustainability as in achieving a reasonably comfortable living for over 7 billion people, a profit driven socio-economic system is paramount. Without it, we could not even output the food necessary to keep everyone alive.

Jim,

Go forth and conduct your revolution.

Good luck.

Jim

Your selective reading or understanding will soon become legendary ;) (my very first twink).

Jason is asking a profoundly important question to which I take a personal interest. I am not trying to convince him of anything but am seeking the root of the issue. He does not exactly make it easy, and to get at this, one needs to understand some natural socio-economic processes. The thread is Jason's not mine or yours, hence, while neither Lawrence or I are blind to inequality and unsustainability, I am seeking for his guidance to where he wants to go and I am addressing his concerns as carefully but briefly as I can. It seems to me that the core of his concerns about sustainability boil down to one central question: Why does the collective negotiation process fail and what could be done to make it work sustainably?

To see whether my time is well spent here, I would like to encourage Jason to respond to your post first. For me, your comment adds nothing that has not already been said that would help to find a balanced view.

;) Wuz up AJ: Wow u know i was thinking as i scrolled down this long list of posts about how much thought this question has generated. I've had a few beers( and you've given me much to think about) so bear with me. I gotta take it down point by point in this inebriated state...is that how you spell inebriated?...no matter here goes: First how many muslims you know named Jason? Sorry that wuz the beer talking...Second: about "small numbers of producers": didnt you say in a previous post that it was these small producers that were the future of capitalist production? Something about their flexibility and pragmatism and logistics? (If not, disregard...i'm a lil drunk and dont want to scroll through all that shit.) To the point (first paragraph): im not talking about reverting to some "medieval" form of economy. I merely pointed out the failures of quantitative, capitalist production. Third: Profit is as old as humanity?...really? Anyway, um, yeah, you next compare humanity to that of the animal kingdom..an anaology might suffice: Lions..right...male lions do very littlle of the hunting...agreed? but they are the first to eat the kill and then they sleep all day...all very elitist. I've heard the old and beaten argument of capitalism evolving out of nature and to some extent you're right. But let me ask you this: If in the animal kingdom, all values (reproductive) were centralized in the same matter as they are in modern capitalism, what would be the result? My answer: genetic devolution...inbreeding. About your point on "over employment" you would be right except that the overemployment is usually paid at the same rate of pay or wage: intensity of labor increases while rate of pay remains the same=increased exploitation but not over employment. Re: "nobody complained then" well i guess every one figured that the alpha male knew what he was doing. Oddly enough im actually familiar with the "stone axe" industry: that was the study of male control over the axe (given to women etc. if granted permission?) And actually I think manipulation and deception would be more inherent to the weaker of the pack, not the alpha male who already enjoys the bulk of power by virtue of his size and might. On the whole I have to disagree that value, capital, profit, are simply vestiges of natural order. And the arms race you spoke of hasnt been going on for 15,000yrs (as we know it) but only for the past 500-600 or so years.

Jason

You have just turned yourself into living proof that it is not over-production that leads to disregarding humans, but over-consumption. Your post is not only embarrassing for yourself but deeply offending for everyone who takes the pain to come to this point in this discussion, only to find out that there might be a connection between rejectionist socio-economic views and utter contempt toward your peers. I specifically include Jim in this group of people that should be awe-struck. To bring it to you in as simple terms as possible: there is nothing, absolutely nothing cool about you showing up drunk in your own discussion thread. At the moment, it places you at the wrong side of the primate equation. You may want to fix this -- fast.

Jason!

The interesting thing is this: you are more authentic and capable of rationality and honesty when drunk than many others are when stone cold sober. You were factual, analytical, and actually more grammatical than in many of your other shotgun posts.

Well done! As to the rest, I always recall the line from Marx, something like. 'Philosophers want to understand the world; the point, however, is to change it.'

Dismissive 'authorities' who already think that they know the answers notwithstanding, I am all about inclusive and ongoing and in-depth conversations that lead to action. So where to from here, kiddo?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

Jim

I gather that you are excluded from those that ought to be offended. What has emerged here is a profound lesson about how fundamentalist minds work, although and hopefully without statistical significance. That Jason responds "factual and analytical" to a post that he obviously did neither understand in its substance nor in its details, shows me yet again that your reading and understanding is highly selective (as you pride yourself). This threatens to turn the discussion litterally into a beer table exchange where everyone throws in all the factoids loaded in their buzzed up brains. I am sorry, Jim, I'd rather keep on seeking understanding before changing the world with you, even if some of your ideas are worthy of pondering.

Hey AJ, you were the one who tipped toed around racism with the muslim crack ok. As for me having a few beers...well i gues im human and i enjoy a good beer now and again. Im the working class remember? You have to cut me some slack. Maybe loosen up a little. Maybe we could have a few together and discuss this material? I havent read the following posts but will respond to those soon.

AJ: My bad that wouldnt be racism...I dont know what you call it when someone assumes with prejudice anothers faith. Maybe you just think in stereotypes...I'm not sure. Either way, I'm not trying to make you angry with me..and if it means anything to you I apologize for having beers during the thread. It might be that I misunderstood your post. In a nut shell it sounded to my drunken brain that you were saying that capitalism is natural..preordained..like physical evolution where the law of the jungle reigns supreme, survival of the fittest kind of thing? Is this what you meant? If so I stand by my argument that while nature impacts the social world and vice versa that todays form of capitalism would indeed result in devolution among primates/any species.So we're in uncharted territory here today and many of the social ills of today could be manifest forms of that devolution.Besides you cant make a Darwinian argument here because its not just survival of the fittest its about survival of those best adapted to the environment you know? Think of pigmies, in that case it was the smaller and less powerful who survived. Any species really: if the source of food etc is limited the smaller more efficient of the species prevail because their needs are met at lesser quantities. As for the underemployment vs. overemployment argument that is a half empty half full argument. Overproduction on the other hand is all too real and distinct. We produce more every day but the distribution is still and increasingly (relatively speaking) disporportionate.

Jason,

Religious affiliation helps understanding a little better where socio-economic ideas of a person come from. It has nothing to do with stereotypes or even racism, but simply with trying to understand different cultural backgrounds. You can have as many drinks as you like. It is none of my business. However, priding yourself of being drunk in response to a thread does not exactly demonstrate style. Did you seriously try to convey how cool you are by bragging about responding while drunk? And then you have the stomach to talk about ethical norms and lack of values in our society? I think that it takes a little more than that to be a role model for societal change (think about what I am trying to tell you here). So far, I had not put you into a "working class" stereotype, but I find it telling that you classify yourself as such as if you would not have the opportunity to "work" yourself up the social ladder, should you only wish to do so.

My comment makes no connection to "capitalism." Instead, I have tried to explain to you that profit, power, and getting ahead are part of humanity. These are "balanced" by a collective majority within the ramifications of my above post. In other words, both, profit seeking and cooperation are natural human behaviors.

In terms of over-production, I was trying to convey that producing more than a market need has the positive side effect of over-employment during the ramp-up. Theoretically then, the difference between your "value" based system and a "profit" based system is a zero game where you would like to reduce unemployment, which would come at the cost of reducing over-employment that is derived from over-production.

In order to bring it back to your original question about the sustainability of "capitalist" socio-economic civilizations, I think, from what has been expressed so far, that the core lies in elements of sustainability, not in the ism. Thinking of reducing the profit motive leads to nowhere while contemplating how contain the negative consequences from it does address the heart of your initiative. Why the collective bargaining process fails to bring about better sustainability is probably the beginning of all inquiry into this topic. The rest is merely symptomatic.

Attempting to answer it requires thinking way out of the box, which is not where I am going to go with you.

First AJ: Your right about religious affiliation and all that it offers us in understanding each other. But you flatly made an assumpion based on my veiws that i was muslim. You didnt ask me and then extrapolate from that you made a prediction by asking me if you were right in assuming my religious beliefs...prima facia. You were wrong to assume and you should take responsibility for that. And then you chastize me for getting my buzz on during a thread. Thats how many scholars in the past have discussed issues...over a nice cold beer. About the working class, yes i am among them and stereotype or no, a great many of us do indeed like to knock a few back after work...big wup. I didnt say all of us do but a large segment sure. And i have no doubts or down trodden feelings about whats in my future so we can ditch the whole cry-baby accusation..To your repeated point of the profit motive being human nature I still have to stubbornly disagree and youve not successfully challenged any of my rationale against it. And again about overproduction, and i'll say it again, you cant account for an increase of the intensity of labor that goes with it. Pay stays the same rate while the surplus value created increases. To your last point: we have no need to eradicate the profit motive/greed..it will kill itself under capitalism as the rate of profit declines as capitalism unfolds. Why has collective bargaining not helped with sustainability? Um because its operating within the realm of capitalist production it has been subsumed by it. Sure they can rally for benefits, safety, and the wage, but at the end of the day under capitalism they must continue increasing production indefinately or die. If the northwest loggers have to choose between saving the snow owl or feeding thier families of course they're going to say screw the damn bird. I try to think out of the box bro I really do...but I think your in a box too. a box within boxes... i guess we should just agree to disagree on this. But I gotta say for the most part it was interesting to share ideas with you guys...peace--weese