Tony Abdo wrote:

>It's the skewed distribution, more than a supposed under-production,
>that is the fundamental problem of capitalism that you are talking
>about.     But I think that the nature of what is being produced, is
>just as significant a problem of capitalism as the production or
>distribution.

It isn't just unequal distribution. I can live with that, I could live with
some people consuming more than others, I could even live with some people
consuming vastly more than others. But the problem is that some people,
many people, the majority of people on the planet in fact, cannot even
obtain the minimum they need to sustain a decent life.

That is the problem that capitalism is incapable of fixing, because
capitalism depends on there being shortages. Whenever the supply of goods
and services in a capitalist economy threatens to equal demand, prices
inevitably collapse dues due to the simple law of supply and demand. This
automatically leads to reduced production, until shortages are restored and
market prices recover.

Capitalism is an excellent economic system for dealing with scarcity. But
it cannot cope with the opposite and only the maintenance of an artificial
scarcity will allow the system to continue to function.

Poverty and squalour must be maintained, for the system to work. It seems a
high price to pay to maintain a redundant ecopnomic system.

>Classical Marxists have tended to shy away from mentioning the
>tremendous quantity of garbage and harmful products that capitalism
>produces.       We are at sea in a cesspool of garbage while
>living in our capitalist society.     That's what I mean by
>artificial squalor.

Yes, I know what you mean.
>
>No doubt that the pro-capitalist Tresies of America will enter in at
>this point, with their ......What about the great consumer and other
>products that Yugoslavia, Russia, and China are known for?
>Weren't they far worse?

And of course Tresy would be right, they were/are far worse. If we examine
the reasons for that we will see that the reason they are far worse is that
these societies have been even less democratic than western capitalism. Far
from them being socialist economies, the people had even less control over
the means of production than people living in western capitalist countries
do.

In a capitalist democracy the people have, at least, a degree of political
democracy. This can exert indirect influence on the economy, meaning on the
privately owned means of production. Socialism goes a step further, it
entails the economy being under direct democratic control.
>
>As a matter of fact, the industrial production of these societies may
>have been less destructive to the environment, and of an OVERALL better
>quality, than what was coming out of the First/ Third Worlds of that
>period.     We can certainly say that the distribution of finished
>(non-military) product was less skewed.

But if we look at the whole picture, rather than putting on blinkers and
ignoring military spending, the opposite picture emerges. The proportion of
the economy of the former Soviet Union that was devoted to the arms race
was ludicrous, eventually bankrupting their economy and leading to the
downfall of the system.

>Tresy would have us believe that capitalism now can run the ex-Soviet
>Bloc countries without Chernobyl, Lake Baikal, etc.     What we
>really fear, is the absolute certainty that capitalism will now take a
>bad situation and make it far worse, as it pillages wood products, oil,
>and other resources from the region.

Probably. Russia is not a western democracy, it will take time to develop
institutions and traditions of democracy. 70 years of bureaucratic
dictatorship has retarded development of these institution and the
consequences cannot be predicted. It was certainly a roadblock to
socialism, how much time it will take to clear all the debris so we can
continue the journey of human progess is unclear to me.
>
>It wasn't Russia that churns out 40% of the world's garbage daily. Or
>was responsible for depeleting atmoshere and biodiversity.     Or
>was behind Bhopal or the 2 World Wars.     Or that has oversold ATB
>use as the focal strategy against disease.

Well actually, Tsarist Russia did play a seminal role in the 1st World war,
and the only reason it doesn't churn out as much garbage as the US is
because it is too poor, after 70 years of economic dictatorship, to throw
much away. It is a very long way behind the US in cleaning up its nuclear
industry though, not just because of poverty, but because of the
traditional lack of political democracy. This probably makes it a bigger
threat to the global environment.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell tas.