Man shall never fly (WILLIAM BLUM)

[laststeamtrain]

Man shall never fly by William Blum


The Cold War is still with us. Because the ideological conflict that was the basis for it has not gone away. Because it can't go away. As long as capitalism exists, as long as it puts profit before people, as it must, as long as it puts profit before the environment, as it must, those on the receiving end of its sharp pointed stick must look for a better way.

Thus it is that when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced a few days ago that he plans to nationalize telephone and electric utility companies to accelerate his "socialist revolution", the spokesperson for Capitalism Central, White House press secretary Tony Snow, was quick to the attack: "Nationalization has a long and inglorious history of failure around the world," Snow declared. "We support the Venezuelan people and think this is an unhappy day for them."<18>

Snow presumably buys into the belief that capitalism defeated socialism in the Cold War. A victory for a superior idea. The boys of Capital chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the past century has either been corrupted, subverted, perverted, or destabilized ... or crushed, overthrown, bombed, or invaded ... or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement -- from the Russian Revolution to Cuba, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN in Salvador, from Communist China to Grenada, Chile and Vietnam -- not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home. Even many plain old social democracies -- such as in Guatemala, Iran, British Guiana, Serbia and Haiti, which were not in love with capitalism and were looking for another path -- even these too were made to bite the dust by Uncle Sam.

It's as if the Wright brothers' first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of America looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Man shall never fly.

<more>

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16161.htm

[mainegreen]

1. When the hell did socialism get defeated?

Last I checked it's been doing a damned fine job holding it's own against vastly larger capitalistic countries.

Communism took a big nose dive, yes, but since when were communism and socialism the same thing?

[Recursion]

2. Just a note: story is 4th entry on linked page n/t

[Possumpoint]

3. Capitalism is

a deeply flawed economic system. It is inherently unfair in it's distribution of wealth. It is however vastly superior to any other economic system designed by man. Socialism and Communism have failed time and again in that there is no encouragement of personal innovation. The ruling class sets itself above the needs of the common man. Monarchies and Dictatorships never work well for the common man either. Church based systems were/are no better.

You want a better system, invent it. The other alternatives don't work. What are you suggesting, socialism?

[laststeamtrain]

7. From the post:

"...every socialist experiment of any significance in the past century has either been corrupted, subverted, perverted, or destabilized ... or crushed, overthrown, bombed, or invaded ... or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement -- from the Russian Revolution to Cuba, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN in Salvador, from Communist China to Grenada, Chile and Vietnam -- not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home."

"no encouragement of personal innovation"? Toward what end? The pet rock? Products no one needs until an advertiseing campaign convinces them they do?

I'll take Finland.

I wonder when we'll be bombing them? Their taxes go toward a large 'social wage' (Health care, education, etc.), not corporate welfare & 'tax cuts' for Paris Hilton.

[IndyOp]

4. Blum woke me up...

After 9-11 I didn't gain much from Newsweek's article "Why They Hate Us" so I kept looking and I found:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.

If you flip over the rock of American foreign
policy of the past century, this is what crawls out ...

invasions ... bombings ... overthrowing
governments ... suppressing movements
for social change ... assassinating
political leaders ... perverting
elections ... manipulating labor unions ...
manufacturing "news" ... death squads ...
torture ... biological warfare ...
depleted uranium ... drug trafficking ...
mercenaries ...

It's not a pretty picture.
It is enough to give imperialism a bad name.

http://www.killinghope.org/

[FormerDittoHead]

5. Fueled by the military. We've never gotten out of war since WWII...

For those too young to remember, this is what Vietnam was all about.

People realized that the cycles of war we were having, over useless things was insanity.

We realized that sitting on top of enough nukes to destroy the world 10+ times over was insanity (MAD, actually)

The "peaceniks" of the time said that Russia was not the threat that they were being painted.

THEY WERE RIGHT.

Those "hippies" weren't listened to however, and even though we were at peace, we continued buying and spending on WAR at levels as when we were in "the big one"...

While capitalism IS an amoral ponzi scheme dedicated to profiting the ones running the game, the military is the tool with which the game is implemented.

Could you imagine how much better your life would be if you didn't have to pay federal income taxes? How much of a nicer home/car/education/health/life you could have?

Well, our military budget is just about the same amount as personal (as opposed to corporate, etc) income taxes.

One calculation I saw added up all the money we've spend since WWII for the military. The total was MORE than the value of all the buildings, houses, factories, roads, etc. in the country!

Currently, Democratic politicians, while opposing the Iraq war, still want to be "strong on defense". This means no cuts in the military.

IMO, this is the problem.

When we can finally sit down, decide what we would actually need in a military, and put the rest in our pockets, you would see this country turn around in ways unimagined.

[GreenZoneLT]

6. What about Finland and New Zealand?

Those countries had heavily socialistic economies in the 1970s, yet were friendly to the U.S. or even military allies in New Zealand's case.

What we were fighting wasn't socialism. Socialism works; it's what allowed industrialized democracies to evade communist revolution. Government pensions, subsidized education and health care, government relief and unemployment insurance, wage and hour laws -- those are all socialist reforms.

What we were fighting was the "dictatorship of the proletariat," advanced by people with guns who weren't afraid to use them. Russia didn't get a chance to forward the Soviet experiment unmolested because a lot of Russians, quite naturally, didn't want to have all their possessions confiscated, and to be told where to live and work by bureaucrats in Moscow. Western governments who didn't want the Leninist insanity to spread, quite naturally, allied themselves with those Russians (many of whom were awful people, but not as awful as Lenin's philosophy).

New Zealand, btw, has transitioned to a much more free-market system, quite successfully, because while socialist reforms are necessary to an industrial or post-industrial economy, socialist economies don't work very well; socialism inhibits the production of wealth just as successfully as it inhibits the private accumulation of it. And wealth (surplus goods) is where it's at, baby, wealth = leisure.