Gar Alperovitz describes a model that challenges private monopoly ownership without a powerful bureaucratic state



http://youtu.be/PHkPTP5gVAI

not bad. he's got the decentralization part right. the nationalization part needs work. why? because any time you get a bureaucracy in charge of anything, you get bigger problems than you would have had otherwise.

True capitalism is the answer to all our problems, it is what made America what it is ... er, uhm, what it "was". What we have now is not capitalism, that ended when the top capitalists got hold of American money, i.e., got the FED act passed in 1913. Then, in slow motion, they took over the country.

And, they decided to destroy America for profit using Socialism.

How ironic.

with a few caveats. the system has been gamed so badly that we may never see 'true capitalism'.
if we were by some miracle to turn back time and recapture that, there are still some issues that would need to be addressed.

property rights and all the other rights of individuals. not corporations as persons and their limited liability. those notions are crap.

common national resources. the whole populace owns them and not some government or corporation.

corruption. it is killing us.

misplaced loyalties. far too many beholden to israel and other interests.

and of course, banks and finance, wars of all kinds, the various 'complexes' etc etc


so, to sum up: there are lots of entanglements, vested interests and psychopaths in positions of power not interested in true capitalism. does it mean we can't go back? yes, but we can go forward if we have the resolve to do so.

This is still capitalism... capitalism is always evolving, it adapts to changing conditions, reinvent itself with every crisis it creates, even if you started with a level playing field, there would still be winners and losers, accumulation of capital and greater control by the few over the market, increased influence on public officials and so on. The bourgeois state is a creation of and is there to serve capitalist interests at every level, to facilitate it's expansion, it even precipitates wars to control markets and ensure availability of cheap resources and labour, the European and imperialist wars were mostly about that. (Read war is a racket by General Smedley D. Butler) in fact in order to flourish capitalism does needs a strong and powerful state.

Today capitalism is more international in scope more focused on financial speculation than production since the buying power of the majority is shrinking overall. This "success" has been achieved in part by keeping wages low and profit high, somebody predicted the development of this casino economy 150 years ago. It's a bit like Israel, by winning all the time capitalism has eventually painted itself into a corner, next stop fascism, and that will still be another form of capitalism, endless profit and control by the "winners", corporations and governments working together to control the economic order and subjugate the population, same as it ever was but on a much grander scale.

We need to create an alternative which is truly democratic and locally controlled, creating links between worker owned enterprises, small business and local governments, creating municipal and state banks that would reinvest locally and be independant of wall street, making capital more democratic and serving the public interest. The good news is that there is already movement in that direction, but it needs to be more deliberate, more focused. On a recent trip to Nova Scotia I went through several towns where cooperatives controlled much of the local economy with fishing, canning, food and shopping centres, gas stations, and banking coops, it seems everywhere I looked there was a coop, so this is possible and it does work, I would argue that this perspective is much closer to what Marx proposed than what happened in the soviet union but in the end understanding what needs to be done is more important than the labels we use.

i disagree. crony capitalism, disaster capitalism, communism, socialism, fascism...they all need a state.

society does not need a state. it does need justice, but no state apparatus is required. get something working on a local scale and if people like it, they will imitate it. simple.

Secret control over government, i.e. government being controlled by evil (actually they think they are duly appointed by blood to rule over us, a repeat of the feudal system in England, run by their ancestors) capitalists, is our problem. Capitalism, when on a level playing field, isn't the problem. It is the solution. Do you think that Socialism will solve our problems?

Central planning never works.

I don't think in terms of 'capitalist', 'socialist', 'democrat' or 'republican'. I think in terms of "UP-DOWN" vs. "BOTTOM-UP". "Bottom-up" is the way society should, if it hopes for a good life, be managed. There is room within the "bottom-up" ideologue for socialisitic principles, if people in a community choose to pool their resources to build a school, that's a great thing, a necessary thing, that is "socialistic" in nature ... but when the elite tell us to do what they think is in our best interest from above, i.e. "Top-Down Socialism", that's not what this country is about.

I guess then we no longer have to fear the secret elites and their "socialist conspiracy".

On the left, among Marxist ideologues the soviet model was, is generally referred to as state capitalism, the Bolsheviks and Lenin himself did not believe that socialism was possible in Russia in 1917, in fact according to Marxist orthodoxy socialism can only emerge from an advanced capitalist economy and not in isolation in a single country. Not only was socialism impossible in Russia at that time but the condition for a functioning capitalism system did not exist, economically Russia was a basket case, there was no capitalist class as such, less than 4% of the population worked in the industrial sector, Russia was a feudal farming society with subsistence living condition, with no national government or central authority.

The Bolsheviks were putting their hopes in Europe and in particular Germany, but when the revolutionary movements fizzled out there, they were pretty much on their own. Since capitalism could not play it's historical role in Russia Lenin believed that responsibility should then fall on the communist party and the state, using capitalist methods and organization forms (the state being the owner and the population wage earners) the Bolsheviks set out to industrialize Russia, which they did in record time, creating a world industrial power in spite of the wars and backward conditions, so central planning does have a few strong points....

One of the first things the Bolsheviks did was to push aside and then abolish the "soviets", these popular democratic councils that could be found across Russia at all levels (even the military) should have been one of the pillars of Russian Socialism, but there were no Soviets in the Soviet union and no socialism either, as many on the left predicted, using capitalist methods and relying on the state bureaucracy to move Russia ahead the Russian Communists, where making the return of capitalism inevitable.

context, context. central planning never works for the common man. better?

Right... central planning or an hierarchical command structure can be very efficient at meeting certain objectives but those objectives are not usually in the public interest.

Just the opposite! ... We need to fear it because it doesn't "work"!!!! - They like it because it's the ultimate monopoly.

I gather from your post that you don't believe that there's a "secret elite", (all died-in-the-wool uber-capitalists, btw) who are trying to reign in world government via socialist policies?

But that's the truth of the world now, and it's not a conspiracy "theory".