Will ssoren ever get a warning from the mods? Doubt it.

Ssorenn, please tone it down. Do what most people do, ignore Putin. :)

Putin, you provoked him and you got the reaction you wanted. Please don't provoke him anymore. Thanks.

Zultar, you're a farce. Ssoren engages in these posts with and mostly without provocation.

your making assumptions that being gay is a bad thing? im just trying to understand where his anger comes from....Maybe where Putin comes from, being gay is frowned upon, no here, this a safe place...putin can put his trust in us

You clearly provoked him here, Putin, so don't play the innocent bystander. Thank you for understanding.

I've clearly not provoked him many other times. So don't play the fair and dispassionate mod. Thank you for pretending to care.

i care Mr. Putin, if i stuck a cord with you(i must have hit the nail on the head,hehe) i apologize. i want the best for you

Ssoren can freely engage in hate speech and nothing will happen to him. He's done it his entire time here.

wheres the hate, Mr pot, wheres the kettle

putin, if you want to push my buttons, i like to push back

you want to know hate,Putin, you and Mapleleaf hijacked a thread about a women who just died, and tried to turn it into hate, you fucktard...who gives a shit right? shes dead...

"The fact is without slavery and genocide, capitalism wouldn't have been possible. Your whole edifice of "human freedom" (what a joke, tell that to the millions working in sweat shops to provide cheap shit to the first world) is built on enslavement."
That's not necessarily true. Technically, it's based on money, banks, and investments into enterprises, and capitalism spread across Western Europe with relative ease, not enslaving people for the sake of spreading capitalism (at the point of foundation until a little bit later).
"Capitalism has exponentially raised the standard of living of the people of the world. This is not at all controversial." Actually, it could be controversial. Especially recently. The trickle down effect doesn't really work unless someone (the government) intervenes to keep the wealth from being overaccumulated by an extreme minority.

Yes and where did those banks get the capital? From the slave trade. Bankers who made a killing (literally and figuratively) off the slave trade gave credit to the cotton manufacturers to process cotton, fuelling the industrial revolution. The slave colonies of the West Indies were the most lucrative territories for the British and French empires, whose profits enriched and modernized the lands of the British planters back in the home territories. And the capitalist countries would never have had any supply of labor had they not forced peasants off the land and compelled them to sell their labor for the capitalists profit to begin with.

And where would all the land have come from that all these supposed "freedom seeking migrants" had access to if the indigenous inhabitants of North America and South America had not been systematically wiped out?

""I have always had trouble trying to explain Socialism to Capitalists in non-economic non-monetary terms"

I think the point of the OP was to discuss Socialism in non-economic and non-monetary terms, if you are unable to do that due to brain limitations why not talk about economics and capital markets, because that's all you know, but maybe on a different thread with a title like 'God was a Capitalist, Jesus an Investment Banker'

The point of the OP was to engage in abstract meaningless poetry, not analysis. Good thing nobody ever follows the OP.

Can it not be said that other nations contributed to the slave trade? Specifically ones that weren't capitalist? It was an international practice at the time, spread across the world, capitalism wasn't. European imperialism, not necessarily (extra emphasis on necessarily) slavery, had an interesting impact on its growth. How would the growth of capitalism be different without it? We can't be entirely sure of that. Can a lesser growth of the economies of other nations not have contributed? European capitalism dominated financially because others didn't have as big of an economic backing. Also, making a literal killing off the slave trade would be terrible for business.
Disease killing millions of people Europeans didn't even come into contact with isn't very systematic.

"The point of the OP was to engage in abstract meaningless poetry, not analysis"

In your head yes Putin, of course it was, a little poetry, futile and meaningless, that's right Putin, perception is projection my friend.
Do you have the ability to take language at face value or does the act of passing them through your brain twist and warp them so badly they come out as some garbled distortion of how you see the world or how you want us to see the world.
In the mind of the paranoid every word is a potential enemy, every phrase a personal slight .... but only when you put yourself at the centre of your own universe, ego mon amis is your biggest enemy but humility one of your greatest friends, how long do you need to understand we're not all spinning around you?

"Can it not be said that other nations contributed to the slave trade? "

The slave trade of import that fuelled industrial capitalism in Europe and North America was the Trans Atlantic slave trade, so no. The slave trade of non-capitalist countries (Middle East, Central Asia) was irrelevant to this, not to mention of a different character (it wasn't based on an industrial scale plantation economy system, it was more akin to indentured servitude).

"European imperialism, not necessarily (extra emphasis on necessarily) slavery, had an interesting impact on its growth. How would the growth of capitalism be different without it?"

It wouldn't have grown at all. Europe needed the land, labor, and capital stolen from the rest of the world in order to develop capitalism. Industrial capitalism would not have spread outside of North America and Europe since European imperialism is what introduced it to the rest of the world.

"Can a lesser growth of the economies of other nations not have contributed?"

But how did Europe get the fast growth to begin with? This is the question being missed. Non-European countries used to lead the world in key industries like textiles (see: pre-British India) and then the Indian textile industry was destroyed after the British conquest.

"European capitalism dominated financially because others didn't have as big of an economic backing. "

Because the banks had made mega bucks off the slave trade.

"Disease killing millions of people Europeans didn't even come into contact with isn't very systematic."

The annihilation of the central American Indians wasn't due to disease. They were wiped out in a single generation from coerced labor.

"In the mind of the paranoid every word is a potential enemy, every phrase a personal slight .... but only when you put yourself at the centre of your own universe, ego mon amis is your biggest enemy but humility one of your greatest friends, how long do you need to understand we're not all spinning around you?"

I don't even know what this drivel is supposed to mean or how its relevant to what I said.

C'mon, NigeeBaby, the OP is a Billy Bragg quip. It's stage-banter sloganeering, and if there's anything at all behind it, it would have to be economic. There's no way to "discuss Socialism in non-economic and non-monetary terms" since Socialism is an economic system.

"The annihilation of the central American Indians wasn't due to disease. They were wiped out in a single generation from coerced labor."

The Indians of central America were not annihilated. They still exist. Much of Panama's territory is set aside for native peoples. Millions still speak Mayan languages. Please understand I'm not denying forced labor happened and many, many people died. But it's just not true to say they were "annihilated," which implies total destruction along the lines of, say, Carthage.

I assume you're thinking of the native people of the Caribbean islands, who really were totally wiped out.

Or maybe you mean their culture/way-of-life was annihilated, which obviously is true.

" The slave trade of non-capitalist countries (Middle East, Central Asia) was irrelevant to this, not to mention of a different character (it wasn't based on an industrial scale plantation economy system, it was more akin to indentured servitude). "
What about the people of West Africa who got the slave trade started and actually ran it? They weren't capitalists. That's most of what I was thinking of.
"But how did Europe get the fast growth to begin with?"
Because money rules the world, and Europe sought it on a world-wide scale. Slavery was more of a means to get money indirectly.
"Because the banks had made mega bucks off the slave trade. "
That's false. They made mega bucks off of plantations, which had slaves working them. They put money into the slave trade, and they made money from other Atlantic trade.

Interesting that the dispute over terminology appears to have gone by the wayside: "socialism" vs. "social democracy" and all that. I do think it's funny, though, that the social democrats among us seemed to want very much to claim that they are the REAL socialists, when in fact, as Putin has tirelessly pointed out, they are not.

It's confusing, I know, especially since the parties in western Europe that are CALLED socialist (PS in France and Belgium, PSOE in Spain, and there are probably others that I can't think of and can't be bothered to look up) are actually social-democratic. But nevertheless, if we're going to be at all clear, we have to explicit about what we're talking about when we say "socialist" (do we mean genuine socialism or social democracy?) because otherwise people will just talk straight past each other and no progress will be made -- par for the course for a Webdip debate, I grant you, but not necessarily something worth striving for.

Then again, given my own view on both social democracy and socialism, everyone talking past each other and making no progress might actually BE something worth striving for. Right, carry on.

There's an issue of conflation here. People who take a classical viewpoint of socialism are thinking of more communist-era governments while people who are looking forward are acknowledging that socialism will have to make some concessions to the democratic governing model.

You can be a socialist without believing in a total centralized government and worker control of production. Anyone who believes in a decent social safety neat with things like universal health care, housing programs, publicly owned co-operatives and credit unions, and something like a universal basic income is a socialist.

We have to consider that for socialism to break into the mainstream and truly come about not through bloody revolution but policy reform has to be incremental. Little adjustments here little adjustments there. There's a school of thought only now developing that is leaning towards a kind of neo-marxist viewpoint and could be called something like new socialism.

Piketty's book and the attention it received was a big boon for this new progressive socialism and is a step in the right direction (think overton window). If anyone hasn't read it I'd also recommend some of the writings of Jesse Myerson who has been advocating for very simple yet beneficial reforms that you could label as socialist.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-economic-reforms-millennials-should-be-fighting-for-20140103
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/22/end_the_1_percents_free_ride_how_taxing_land_would_solve_americas_biggest_problems/

TrPrado,

I was not referring to separation and/or stratification of wealth. That is a different question entirely, although I will state that I think that the evidence is overwhelming that Capitalism does not inherently result in the levels of separation we are seeing in the United States for example, nor do I ascribe the phenomena to many of the policies that you may, but that is for another time.

The point was that Capitalism clearly has exponentially raised the standard of living across the world by producing economic freedom in terms of ones own livelihood and in terms of consumer empowerment, raised the quality of product(s), lowered costs and promoted astonishing innovations that were more broadly available to human beings than had ever been the case.

I am more than willing to second Chairman's further reading suggestions.

civwarbuff,

First, how can you be sure it was capitalism what raised the standard of living and not human progression completely unrelated with it? I'm thinking about scientific discoveries. And please, don't say this developments were only produced in private corporations. Specially when this corporations work for their own benefit, and raising the standards of living is a side effect. The same company that creates an useful device we will buy in the developed countries, generates enviromental problems in third-world countries like deforestation and water contamination, and paying workers ridiculous salaries. What I mean is that associating "capitalism" and "raise of living standards" is wrong. The goal is to make money; raise the standard of living is a means to an end because that's what people will buy.

Second, which living standards would we have if it wasn't for workers' struggles? Slavery would be commonplace yet today. The raises in standard of living for popular classes were achieved in strikes, protests and, sometimes, in the parliament.

tl;dr:
The fact that standard of living was raised under capitalism doesn't mean this was the cause. Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy