Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

Fine. I'll settle for "the vast majority"... When did i last hear a logical argument vs. an emotional appeal from a politician? Oh, that's right. Nearly never...

Umm, all the time? For all I think the conservatoves are wrong about the urgency of deficit reduction, and indeed ideological, but I don't think their argument can be described as "emotional".

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As opposed to what they had prior? ...

a) I'm not sure that thats a strong argument in any sense, and b) it can also be used to justify Soviet collectivism.

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I still think that the Bhopal plant scandal is not as bad as the gulags or the concentration camps, sorry.

Oh I didn;t say it was. But it is merely one of a huge number of events by which capitalism causes death and destruction. 11 people died in the exploded oil rig, workers get killed becuase of lax standards on building sites. Capitalism produces more and more dead bodies every single day. Capitalisms apologists choose to turn a blind eye to the death and destruction for which their system is responsible.

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?! Since when the slave trade part of 'capitalism'? Or, if it is, why don't you throw in Roman slavery human cost and Viking pillaging?

Ridiculous. When has it NOT been part of capitalism? It is absolutely foundational to capitalism, the purest form of the denial of the value of labour, and expriopriation of the labour of others into a capitalists hands. Furthermore, it is the foundation of many still-existing capitalist firms, and played a major role in the primacy of England as the worlds first, or maybe second, fully capitalist state.

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Is that capitalism fault? Plenty of people die every year of old age and diseases? We don't blame capitalism for it either...

Yes, it is. And the fact that you don't blame capitalism is precisely the sort of selective vision I alluded to above.

And just as I pointed out above,

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Production time =/= value =/= price. See a liter of water in the desert example...

I'm perfectly famniliar with, and as I have pointed out before, that doesn't suport your argument at all. Indeed, the very fact the price of water is unusual and remarkable demonstrates the fact that its governed by a power relationship; we intuitively know that water is "cheap", or else the example wouldn't work.

As you said above, capityalist theory describes what happens under capitalism, and as I pointed out, this is just saying that it describes a coercive relationship. What it's NOT doing is going back to first principles. Capitalist analysis always starts with the FACT of the existence of capital on on hand and impoverished workers on the other, and doesn't seek to explain how that occurs (such as, through the slave trade mentioned above). The coercive element is unquestioned and assumed.

Originally Posted by contracycle

Umm, all the time? For all I think the conservatives are wrong about the urgency of deficit reduction, and indeed ideological, but I don't think their argument can be described as "emotional".

"OMG! We got to cut the deficit or we will end up like Ireland"... That's an emotional appeal. Why not use Iceland? Oh, that's right. Coz they devaluated and are now, well, not exactly better-off but able to rebuild their economy...



a) I'm not sure that thats a strong argument in any sense, and b) it can also be used to justify Soviet collectivism.

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But it is merely one of a huge number of events by which capitalism causes death and destruction. 11 people died in the exploded oil rig, workers get killed becuase of lax standards on building sites. Capitalism produces more and more dead bodies every single day.

There'll be no scaffolding or oil rig incidents in the workers' paradise? Hmmm...

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Ridiculous. When has it NOT been part of capitalism? It is absolutely foundational to capitalism, the purest form of the denial of the value of labour, and expriopriation of the labour of others into a capitalists hands.

Why exclude piracy then? It's basically the same thing, innit?

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Furthermore, it is the foundation of many still-existing capitalist firms...

Really? Care to run a % of the nowadays existing firms that were around in the 1600-1800s?

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... and played a major role in the primacy of England as the worlds first, or maybe second, fully capitalist state.

I'd have thought that the Industrial Revolution might have had a more direct impact. After all, slavery is an old phenomenom and thus it is funny that it'd be giving rise to capitalism this time around only...

Furthermore, countries like Germany or Italy didn't engage in the New World slave trade and that didn't stop them from becoming capitalist. Spain engaged into it (somewhat) and they remained a backwater crumbling power for a long long time. Heck, they still are...

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As you said above, capityalist theory describes what happens under capitalism, and as I pointed out, this is just saying that it describes a coercive relationship. What it's NOT doing is going back to first principles. Capitalist analysis always starts with the FACT of the existence of capital on hand and impoverished workers on the other, and doesn't seek to explain how that occurs (such as, through the slave trade mentioned above). The coercive element is unquestioned and assumed.

I guess that's true enough. I mean I don't really agree with the 'impoverished workers' description per se but that's a detail. I guess that's probably because anyone with power throughout History seems to have wanted to maximise its use - within the legal or practical constrains he/she couldn't overthrow...

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

"OMG! We got to cut the deficit or we will end up like Ireland"... That's an emotional appeal. Why not use Iceland? Oh, that's right. Coz they devaluated and are now, well, not exactly better-off but able to rebuild their economy...

Some of may be done that way, but most of what I have seen is not remotelyu so histrionic, nor do I have any reason to believe that Cameron & co are anything but honest (in the sense that they genuinely believe the proposition).

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There'll be no scaffolding or oil rig incidents in the workers' paradise? Hmmm...

there'l be no accidents as a result of cost cutting in the bosses interest, no. People might take risks in their own interest, but they won't have risks imposed upon them without consent and without reward.

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Why exclude piracy then? It's basically the same thing, innit?

No, becuase it doesn't involve putting people to work. It's just crude acquisition.

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Really? Care to run a % of the nowadays existing firms that were around in the 1600-1800s?

Not many,I imagine, but even if they don't exist as independent entities, many were incorporateed into others, with their assets etc transferring. Imperial Tobacca included Wills & co, and JPMorgan admitted that a couple of the firms it absorbed accepted slaves as collateral.

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I'd have thought that the Industrial Revolution might have had a more direct impact. After all, slavery is an old phenomenom and thus it is funny that it'd be giving rise to capitalism this time around only...

I've pointed out before that the atlantic slave trade was different from prior forms of slavery in several respects; the development of capitalism and industrialism are contributing factors to making it as brital as it was.

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Furthermore, countries like Germany or Italy didn't engage in the New World slave trade and that didn't stop them from becoming capitalist. Spain engaged into it (somewhat) and they remained a backwater crumbling power for a long long time. Heck, they still are...

Well sure. I didn't say slavery was a prerequisite for capitalism, but the triangle trade certainly contributed a great deal to the development of capitalism. And indeed, one might in it some of the reasons that the anglo-saxon model of capitalism is so predatory.

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I guess that's true enough. I mean I don't really agree with the 'impoverished workers' description per se but that's a detail. I guess that's probably because anyone with power throughout History seems to have wanted to maximise its use - within the legal or practical constrains he/she couldn't overthrow...

Fair enough. But then look how this plays out; whenever someone asserts that for example the work you do is "worth" the amount that you happen to get paid for it, then that whole implicit but unacknowledged power realtionship is still at work, justifying the continuance of coercion. And thus capitalism as ideology masks the reality of unequal, coercive exchanges with the fiction of voluntary, equitable exchanges.