Capitalism has a definition. You said the US backs it. Now you are saying it doesn't.
Where did I say the US doesn't back capitalism?
While I agree that in the recent years with these bailouts the US has leaned toward socialism for some, and not all, it doesn't change the fact that capitalism is freedom of individuals to compete in the market and it doesn't stop people from sharing wealth if they choose to, case in point: Private insurance companies.
The US hasn't leaned toward socialism. It remains right-wing. Obama's 'socialism' is fraudulent at best.
So if the US did back capitalism, that's a good thing in my book. In capitalism people get paid for what they do, period. That doesn't give them any right to the wealth they are helping to create. If they are so helpful, they can start their own business and see how that goes, no laws against that again.
This is very backward thinking.
Capitalism by its very nature is anarchic, without regulation, inevitably and unavoidably bound to the kind of recession we're suffering now - the worst in capitalist history, since capitalism has developed into a complex
global system, which is quite unprecedented.
Capitalism operates via wage slavery. People get paid, sure, but in order for capitalism to work it needs those with property to exploit the propertyless by reducing wages in order to make a profit.
You say that even if someone works, they have no right to the profit they've helped create. What's the point in working, then? Seriously, why else would anybody ever work if not in need of something in return? You're not making any sense.
Capitalism is historically necessary in order to create the amount of wealth society now has. Now we are collectively capable of changing the class relations in order to ensure a more sustainable economy, which precludes a safer healthier planet, less human suffering, less waste and so on, all of which you would, from your argument, not give a dime for.
By definition, socialism puts the welfare of society before individuals.
No.
Because dialectical materialism sees society as constituting individuals, and sees individuals as therefore part of society; they're not mutually exclusive, and any ideology that treats them as such is going to face endless contradictions.
You're still treating Marxism as some sort of utopian blue-print, which it isn't; it's a social theory that attempts to explain, in varying degrees of detail, how capitalism actually works, and what it does.
That requires regulating laws to prevent free competition in favor of the majority. No sane individual is going to keep his wealth in a not so free system and also you'd have to make the press shut up about infringing upon individual rights, because, well you had a dream, and you didn't dream what the hell to do about this part. And little by little, you get where Cuba is today.
Cuba isn't socialist, it's state capitalist.
Sorry, I thought we'd established that.
You talk about having a 'dream' as if capitalism as we know it now was thought up in some shadowy basement by a group of geniuses, who thought everything through and then it was only a matter of putting it in place, without struggle.
Capitalism demands 'free competition' and all of the individualism that incorporates. Under collective ownership of the means of production, society is in a much better position to cater toward its own needs; who or what does society comprise of? People, individuals. Capitalism breeds greed because the self-expansion of profit demands it - if you're not working to the logic of the economic base, you're going to fail. Which is why isolating one particularly harsh factory plant owner and making them change without a wholesale change in general would only make that one factory plant go out of business.
I put the individual rights and freedoms before that of society. And that's where we part.
Nah, you're talking in idealist lingo again.
Because 'individual rights and freedoms' are a necessary part of
social freedom. I mean, go down to an inner city street of, say, Baltimore, and sure, everyone's 'free' to do whatever they please within the law (which is
a social law!)... and, of course,
within the choices they've been given, which isn't saying a great deal. To even suggest that 'setting up their own business' is a concrete choice for these people would be grossly misguided, no?
The notion that you could even 'put society ahead of individuals' is frankly silly. I can't even imagine how that would work. I don't even think eco-warriors would fit into that.
The urgent need for socialism stems necessarily first and foremost from the ever-widening gulf in wealth
between classes, which comprise individuals. But other things too; the rising temperatures of the earth, a trend directly linked to the fact that capitalism necessarily destroys the very materials on which it relies in order to even work. (And campaigning for the widespread reduction of pollution, etc., without a wholesale shift in the economic system is idealistic, because the very economic system has its own pressures that affect and prevent such reduction from happening.)
There was society before capitalism, and there will be society after capitalism. Because of its very nature, the way it overcomes each recession, each recession it suffers - inevitably! - gets worse and worse. We can either take history into our own hands and overcome capitalism as per
the social need to do so, or we can let it sink into barbarism.
This is what happened with the Roman Empire; the class struggle didn't manifest revolution against Roman imperialism, and we fell into the Middle Ages... To imply that capitalism is immune to such historical processes, when it is itself a product of history, is to conclude that history itself has ended.
In which case: oh dear.
