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Martin Armstrong On The Recurring Battle Between Socialism and Capitalism
Submitted by Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics,
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; This battle between socialism and capitalism, is there any precedent from history that you can site for this clash of Titans?
ANSWER: Oh yes. Marx was convinced about communism from the French who began the commune movement in the late 1700s with the French Revolution. However, Marx did research and took the side of Sparta against Athens using in part Aristotle’s complaint about the market economy in Athens was changing the social values. He called them the people who made money from money. Aristotle felt that the establishment of brokers who then would encourage farmers to grow more crops that could be sold overseas changed Athens. True, it made Athens the financial capital of the world. The famous Athenian decadrams were a two-tier coinage used for international trade in large transactions. They were too big for normal circulation. Kind of like a $100,000 bill.
Communism first appeared in the historical record back in Ancient Greece. This was the classic battle like our modern cold war. Athens was the capitalistic system that had its own internal battle between the Oligarchy and Democracy, which we have still today. Sparta was the communistic state so much so, they NEVER adopted coinage and these spits were maintained to PREVENT people from hoarding wealth – sound familiar with electronic money and cancelling currencies?
Marx drew his belief that Communism would prevail because Sparta defeated Athens in 404BC. However, to be fair, Sparta was in league with its neighbors, especially Corinth whose own coinage competed with Athens in trade. So Sparta was the Communist state, but it was aided by other capitalistic cities to knock out the financial capital of the world so they could replace it. This division eventually led to opening the door to the northern Macedonians to take all of Greece under Philip II and his son Alexander the Great.
We can see the impact of this battle against Athens as its coinage was debased just as in Roman. The coinage going into the collapse 406-404BC became bronze silver plated.
So yes. This battle has been fought many times in history. As I have said, you cannot forecast the future without understanding the past. It is truly a catalogue of solutions if you take the time to map it out without bias and prejudice.
You simply cannot have a mixture as we have today.
This is why you see politicians doing everything possible to kill democracy for that falls whenever socialistic/communism rises.
That collapses the economy sucking in everything like a black-hole and then the pendulum swings back and you get freedom once again with revolution against the oligarchy/monarchy – no taxation without representation.
The EU Commission is doing the precise pattern as always – deny representation to serve the oligarchy.
The USA is moving in the same direction.
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Which one gives me a free phone again?
Exactly.
There is no capitalism beyond a select few big corporations and a lot of small or family owned businesses.
The battle is between liberty and tyranny.
Agreed, Manthong!
There hasn't been real capitalism in this country for a very long time.
Now we have a new generation that have been indoctrinated into believing that capitalism is bad with the mistaken belief that crony capitalism is true capitalism.
DaddyO
Ever try to un-convince one of those people of that fact? Forget it. Go talk to a wall for a couple hours, you'll make more progress.
That my friend would be a zero sum game.
My own mother is a case in point, whenever a Papa John's commercial comes on, she yells at the TV that he should pay his help $15/hr instead of buying his old Camaro back.
There is no arguing with this mentality, because with her it's, because Obama.
DaddyO
F.A. Hayek seems to think that capitalism will always tend toward fascism and socialism will always tend toward communism. These are presented as a false dichotomy though; in both cases the end result is the same: totalitarianism/a small group of people telling a large group of people how to live. This is also called horsehoe theory.
Let's see, F.A. Hayek has been dead since 1992, so I don't think he seems to think anything in this spiritual plane at the moment.
As to you equating his thoughts about capitalism tilting towards fascism, name the book and page, then we can have a meaningful exchange.
Until you can do this, kindly refrain from bloviating on how Hayek thinks...
DaddyO
However, “capitalism will always tend toward fascism and socialism will always tend toward communism” is indeed the false dichotomy of the unwashed masses and they have been sold that bill of goods by wide variety of state, educational institution and media factions.
And indeed, communism and fascism are just two different flavors of the same sick leftist soup and ultimately lead to oppression, subjugation and death.
I had a discussion with a guy one day about free markets. He said free markets don't work because they are always controlled by big business. After politely suggesting thrice that a controlled market, by its very definition, is not a free market, I gave up. Dogma>logic
There are ONLY dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies.
Socialism is the excuse for fascism (ObummerCare, Common Core, etc..).
The Fabian Socialist symbol is a wolf in sheeps clothing.
They're not small businesses, and they're not large businesses, either. They're the 141,358 U.S. firms that fit midway between the two extremes. These medium-sized companies employ 100 to 499 people apiece, accounting for 2 percent of all business establishments within the nation's 938 metropolitan and micropolitan areas.
You can get a FREE phone, but you might NOT like it.
Please do KILL democracy! Then restore our Constitutional Republic.
Armstrong doesn't seem to understand his terms and descriptions very well does he? Why doesn't he focus on the real problem of Central Banks?
Fuck you Marty.
Maybe he doesn't want to be imprisoned and tortured again?
he wrote much better stuff in jail. Jim Sinclair published it.
seconded - his blurbs are a waste of time
Democracy or some derivative of it, is what is required to establish the socialist regime. It just can't be done with force. We must to a large extent go willingly into the collective slaughterhouse.
So who's the Judas Goat that is leading us there?
Every generation for the last 4 or 5 have been continually desensitized to the sights, sounds and smells of the slaughterhouse.
DaddyO
Not sure why a simple thing like this can't be forced into a presidential debate or something. The chump that uses the word democracy could have their ass handed to them if they had a knowledgeable and skilled opponent... Rand.. ahem.. Paul..
Because of the indoctrination in our public school systems that makes school kids believe that Democracy is the root of our happiness and freedom. Instead of teaching about Ben Franklin’s kite flying they should teach his warning about Democracy: "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb arguing about what's for dinner."
Fuck democracy!
The U.S is moving in that direction? The U.S killed capitalism in 1913. We are living through its death rattle. Oh, BTW our country was not founded as a fucking democracy! Damn, why can't any author get that straight?
Its sort of a "long term" kinda thing. You gotta be a real visionary to see us returning to anything like capitalism, liberty, rule of law. All that happy horse shit nobody wants around any more. Give it a few generations, coupla wars, maybe some mass population starvation events and.... boom! It springs right back to life, good as new.
Probably won't happen until a few billion people disappear from the globe.
That's my working theory.
Thank you!!! We were founded as a Republic, not a Democracy. Democracy has lead us down the path of Communism. It is a natural progression.
But isn't progression "progress"?
I don't think an 85 year old, a decade later, would refer to the last 10 years as progress.
Aren't we all "progressing" down the road to hell, paved with good intentions. If there is a devil (and I am more inclined to believe there is every fucking day) he has to be getting a real laugh out of this. Bullish, to say the least!
Quite correct. Hitler was a great fan of Democracy because he understood how easily the masses can be manipulated. By the way, unbeknownst to most people, Hitler was legally elected to power.
here we go with the false "ism" bullshit again. Socialism, by definition means that the productive capacity is controled by the public. Even in a socialist society, unproductive assets and people get dumped.
What you are seeing now, around the world is fascism.
fas·cism[fash-iz-uhm] Show IPA
noun
1.( sometimes initial capital letter ) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
Sound familiar? I wonder if the "car Czar" job will open up after all the recalls at government motors...
Bingo.
Why are the Tylers lowering their standards by allowing this Martin Armstrong fuckwit to post articles on here?
He doesn't even understand that what we are all witnessing unfolding right in front of us today in plain view is fascism dressed in its Sunday best.
Get a clue for fuck sakes.
This is NOT Fascism, it is Communism. US political and business leaders have been selling the country out for the last several decades in favor of a Globalist Communist movement.
Why the constant argument over what we call it? Its like pornography, we know it when we see it. All of it...socialism, communism, fascism and to some extend capitalism are all designed to eliminate individual freedoms to the benefit of a few at the top. These "isms" are State "ISMS" and therefore a tool of the state, designed to empower them. So lets just give up on the names, be they accurate or not, and call it what it is and that is the destruction of liberty. The only just law is local law and the only free commerce is between consenting individuals unencumbered by the state.
It is absolutely important to make these distinctions. Without them, we cannot KNOW THE ENEMY.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” -- Sun Tzu
"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under
by: Norman Thomasthe name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist
program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without
knowing how it happened."
(1884-1968) six-time U.S. Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America
I'll be the judge of that. What u got?
Precisely. It is important to understand these distinctions. Fascism = NATIONAL Socialism. Communism = INTERNATIONAL Socialism. Since the US has clearly been co-opted by global interests, it is critical to understand that the US is a communist regime.
Some people get confused because they focus on the fact that corporate and government power has merged, thus we must be a fascist state. However, it is corporate executives, NOT corporate shareholders, that are working in league with government. That is a critical difference and signals that the fascist model is no longer operative.
Well stated Mr. Banzai.
Bingo indeed.
I do not see this as fascism. Fascism, by the definition you posted, has "aggressive nationalism...". There is absolutely ZERO Nationalism. This is Globalism, another name for Communism. What we need IS Nationalism. A multi-racial, pro-capitalism, pro-USA movement is needed. Often racism is associated with Nationalism, but it does not have to be that way.
Absolutely right on ! And what is called Capitalism today more looks like Crapitalism, to be interpreted for both "Values" : Crap and Crapuleous !
This is Communism. Has nothing to do with Capitalism.
Yes it does sound familiar: Musollini was a Socialist, and coined the term Fascism for his particular version. As head of the National Socialist Party AKA Nazis, Hitler was also a Socialist. Our revisionist history tells us that Facism and Socialism are mortal enemies. We needed our WW-II enemies (Nazis and Faciscts) to appear different from our allies (USSR communists), when in fact, they are indistinguishable.
Socialism puts the state before the individual. This is true in Monarchies, Aristocracies, Totalitarianism, Oligarchies, Fuedalism etc. These systems raise one group to total power over all others. Socialism spends about 15 minutes being for the people, then it begins creating a ruling class. In a short time it is indistinguishable from any other form of authoritarianism. The richeset class in China are the corrupt communist party leaders.
All of these systems are purely political, all actions are taken to increase personal and/or state power. And because in politics perception is reality, this means the economy is operated for the perception of gain, not actual gain. Thus, as a whole the society is constantly loosing money through inefficient operation and malinvestment. Investments are made for power not for profit, and therefore not for productivity. A society that is not productive (labor and investment produce more than is put in in capital, resources and hours) will contantly loose prosperity, intelligence, culture and eventually population. The autoritarian solution is to print more money to create the perception there is no decay. Of course, while this might work in people's minds it fails miserably in reality, so the system collapses.
The great advantage of Capitalism is Shumpeter's "creative destruction". We measure the productivity of each enterprise by its profits. If it looses money for too long, it goes bankrupt and all its assets, customers, supliers, employees are all sold or transfered to the competition who have proven their managerial prowess. Inefficiency and malinvestment are inevitable, but Capitalism is the only system that uses a darwinian process to elimate failure and immediately replace it with productivity. And since darwinism has successfully evolved mud into the human brain, its probably a good system to go with. Political systems keep everything for political expediency, or destroy things based purely on poltical disloyalty. Besides they have no way of knowing there's a problem let alone who to get rid of.
Whne you look at GM, or all of Detroit for that matter, or the insolvent financial system you are looking at Socialism in all its glorified failure.
Historical revisionism, eh?
I doubt anyone but me has a clue about what you're talking about.
Glad to see intelligent life here, KingTut.
Do you have History and Social Intelligence by Harry Elmer Barnes: http://bookator.net/?p=695441 ?
If you've never hear of him, it's about time. I started with his "Revisionism as the Key to Peace" and the "Historical Blackout and the Smearout Boys", republished in the 1980 Cato Paper 12.
After page 2 of Social Intelligence I was hooked and started buying up almost everything of his, mostly early 1970s Revisionist Press new condition books from Runforcover in Broooklyn.
By way of the peer-to-peer vox populi Ministry of Truth crowd-sourced by all the people who are terrified to send an email to anyone who announces that they use PGP, Barnes was almost completely erased from common knowledge because he spoke truth as an academic historian, and ever since FDR came into power that's not allowed on college campuses.
Socialism/Capitalism, flip sides on the same coin. They are, and have always been, a political partnership, one cannot exist without the other.
Oscar, the nitrites and nitrates in your weiner have clearly affected your thinking and cognitive skills.
You should really invest in a good dictionary and possibly spend some time in SCHOOL.
The first word you should look up is MORON...
DaddyO
DaddyO you clueless, dickless wonder. Both were invented at the same time by the same people with the same goal, your inslavement.
But you go ahead and believe as you wish fool.
And when were they invented and where?
Like I said, MORON should be the first word you cogitate with your superior intellect.
Did it ever occur to you that writings and teachings on capitalism and communism were to describe an already existing human behavior.
So I'll ask again, when and where were Capitalism and Communism invented and by whom?
DaddyO
You didn't ask and what a fool you are for asking. Socialism and Capitalism are crafted Ideologies with just enough semblances to reality that they would fool unthinking dimwits such as yourself. Do youself a favor and educate yourself and stop regurgitating their propaganda.
http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/iron_fist.html
google: "capitalism vs. free enterprise"
Capitalism, Socialism and the Fed, the triade of your enslavement.
You didn't answer the question.
Because you can't answer the question.
I stand by my statement, moron...
DaddyO
Capitalism, YES!!! Democracy??? What, so everyone that doesn't work votes for more taxes on people that do? No thanks!!!
Not everybody should have the right to vote! You receive ANY form of public benefit/welfare, and you should void your right to vote. No more!!!
Careful what you wish for. Unless you are living completely self-sufficiently, YOU'D be in that group of folks who shouldn't vote. It would probably come as a shock to you to learn how dependent YOU are.
STFU communist trash. Your mom's basement will be available no matter what. No need for you to worry. I have been on my own and self employed for two fucking decades getting my mother fucking ass taxed so a bunch of fucking losers can spend my hard earned money. I'm still making it work despite the fucking drag!
Good, it sounds like you've got the finances down.
Now you just have to work on that attitude.
And yet we still are hated by all of the moochers and eaters out there. After all these years of the left making me believe I could buy their love, it just ain't happening. They won't be happy until they get it all and will still be laughing at me for even trying.
Battle of the utopias.
We are legion. a crony-capitalistic, fascho-corporatistic, pseudo-representative republic. Forgive me if I left anybody's favorite -ism out...
What we are ladies and germs is a "failing state".
;-D
Great post. Things are going to get ugly if and when EBT cards either don't get filled ENOUGH in in amount or in terms of the amount it will buy. Then the phone stops working. Then . .. then it gets ugly. In the US we not only have a class of dependency but one that has been taught and trained that it is a right and that they are merely getting what is owed to them by society. After all, they know that the rich folks (folks that work) don't deserve what they have. A lot of us are going to feel like the lady that does the refunds at Wal-Mart. "The paint didn't help at all and now you want a refund for the 15 empty cans?" "So after you had worn the shoes for a year you realized that they were not fitting right?" "Eating the entire box of Twinkies left you feeling sick so they're bad?" That's the pleasant part. Then they get nasty and violent.
Fofoa successfully dismissed Marx years ago (to my satisfaction anyway) in this piece. Marx just got a few critical elements wrong. The result has been idiots and devious politicians using Marx's work to stir up the rable ever since.
http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2010/07/debtors-and-savers.html
Sigh...
This is why nothing ever changes. Even on ZH, many times it's just dogs chasing their tails around and around.
The problem isn't this system or that system. The problem is people who think they can force their 'perfect' system on others.
Well said.
The best "system" is that which does the absolute minimum to affect the lives of the average man. The mistake humans make again and again is thinking that a "system" is fairer than chaos. It's not and it never will be. Systems always end up being ways of defining advantages for some over others. The rules might be fair if followed purely, but human nature dictates they will NEVER be followed honestly. Chaos may be ugly and brutal at times in individual cases, but it is absolutely fair. Each succeeds to his / her own abilities, modified by the same amount of luck as is background whether there is a system in place or not.
We're a long way from that, for better or worse.
Mart, best you get back to programming your Commodore C64
Martin has it backwards.
the USA is already serving the oligarchy.
the EC is actually endorsing representation to serve the people.
The battle is not between -ism's. Never has been.
The battle is between those that produce and those that want to live off the labor and product of others via theft and violence. Always has been.
WHERE'S ALL THE CYCLES WORK GONE MARTIN? DID YOU LEAVE IT IN THE PEN, TOP SECRET FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY, OR IS IT EXCLUDED BY YOUR AGREED UPON CONDITIONS OF RELEASE THAT ALLOWS YOU TO PICK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF PRIOR TO BEING TOSSED AWAY INDEFINITELY FOR CONTEMPT.
Tough being a pardoned and released political prisoner, eh? I studied your penitentiary penned missives at length back in the day. These latest postings you manage to get up just do not contain nearly the same character or flavor of subject matter as that you were so adamantly wrote about then. Which leads me to think the current mission of your writings are likely the talking points of a misinformation shill doing what he agreed to do. I suspect you are weaving a web armstrong. I think your working hard now, to gain a readership, a following that trusts only to confuse later. If that is the case, your soul was better served in jail.
That's a fitting last picture that looks like Mel Gibson - you know what he said about money and all the wars?
money system designed by enlightened patriots or designed by the rothschilds
one for the republic one to enslave. take your pick you have now experienced both.
its up to we the people now.
Socialism wins every time.
Go to any ICU and ask who’s self-insured (paying cash on the barrelhead) Vs insured.
Scandinavia is more socialist and more democratic than the US privatized economy. And it has a more balanced budget despite free education and health care. What Americans call socialism is their own capitalist oligarchy having taken over the state.
Scandinavia has a small and homogenous society with everyone having primarily the same social and economic goals. The USA is a hothouse of different beliefs and goals. Economic morons, communist unions, fat lazy people unwilling to work all the while demanding more of another persons paycheck to feed their fat ass and buy them big screen TV's. Socialism works fine in a small homogenous society that does not require the economic resources and demands to defend themselves from their neighbors and benefits from the production and ingenuity of the capitalist driven societies.
In a nutshell socialism works as long as someone else pays for it directly or as in the USA's case, indirectly for the rest of the world.
Scandinavia also has energy at the ready.
No way this article can be taken seriously.
This is just the Tylers having fun by throwing some red meat out for their audience.
Socialism in ancient Greece... Mr. Armstrong flunked History 101... 102 103 and them all 'tseems. He never studied what socialism is and to him is just a newspeak term.
Of course, each different version of organized lies presents itself as the "good guys." However, there are no "good guys," only different kinds of "bad guys," while, paradoxically, the worst of the "bad guys" tend to prevail to be able to present themselves as being the "good guys."
The basic realities are that all human beings operate as entropic pumps of energy, whose behavior can best be described by the principles and methods of organized crime. All of the various ideals (such as liberty) are ways in which the principle of the conservation of energy has been asserted to have been privatized.
The ability of the biggest bullies' bullshit social stories to dominate society has inverted everything, so that we live in a Bizarro Mirror World Fun House, where everything appears proportionately backwards and distorted. All of the properties associated with God are due to the conservation of energy flowing throughout everything that happens. Since everyone, and all groups, live as entropic pumps, they are are all staking claims over the flows of energy, using energy to stake those claims. From a sublimely paradoxical point of view, the most fanatical people who most assert that they have privatized God, and thereafter privatized the environment, tend to have become the most successful at operating their own versions of entropic pumping.
Human realities are always organized lies, operating robberies. All human beings live as robbers in their environment. Of course, those doing that have developed an encoded language to talk about that in almost perfectly backwards ways. There are no "isms" which could possibly operate outside of the basic ways that energy systems generally operate. However, of course, it fits within the Bizarro Mirror World understanding of things that the ways we developed the concept of entropy was backwards too. Therefore, the ways that we understand energy systems is backwards.
The phrases "liberty" or "democracy" etc., are magical words, that many people love, as well as love to abuse. However, there is no freedom without a force, just as there is no right without a remedy. "Liberty" does not exist outside of the habits of people, who operate their own systems of organized lies, operating robberies, and typically, the belief in "liberty" is therefore as backwards as everything else that we tend to believe in. The views that "the battle is between liberty and tyranny" or "capitalism versus socialism" are merely more false fundamental dichotomies, which inspire impossible ideals, that work paradoxically, like every other kind of bullshit.
Similarly for the view regarding there being any "capitalism" at all. To the degree that "capitalism" overlaps with how entropic pumping works, then everything is capitalistic. However, therefore, that then includes how there is a "free market" in murder, which was the history of warfare, upon which basis was built the existing financial systems which are fundamentally fraudulent. And, similarly, "socialism" is most abstractly about how different entropic pumps can be assembled into evolutionary ecologies, with all of the ranges of different effects upon the participants that makes possible.
This article by Martin Armstrong is full to the brim of the most extreme forms of old-fashioned false fundamental dichotomies, being resolved by coming down on the side of over-simplifications through impossible ideals. Of course, that kind of article provokes comments which tend to mirror the same trends. It continues to be one of the most extreme paradoxes how success in warfare was based on deceits, and so, then success in finance was based on frauds. The various systems of organized lies operating robberies naturally tend through their evolution to select for the most fanatical partisans for their versions of doing that.
The recurring battle between capitalism and socialism is merely the perpetual variations in the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies, which processes have paradoxically tended to favour the biggest bullies to be able to promote their versions of that bullshit as the absolute truth. Always at issue are the true "units of survival." (The trick answer is that the only "true" unit of survival is the universe as a whole, or even an infinity of infinite universes, through which the Supreme Being flows.)
The only "absolute truth" is always necessarily paradoxical. There is no way to name anything, assign it properties, and then tell stories about it, other than by relatively subtracting it from its environment. Therefore, every possible story is necessarily based on the original subtractions, which were illusions, and necessarily lies, due to the inherent limits to measurement, as well as host of other ways in which there is never any way to actually fully separate objects from subjects.
My view is that all the different groups of human beings, who operate their own kinds of organized lies and robberies, develop sets of magical words through which they encode their behaviors. Words such as "freedom" or "democracy" are popular versions of that in some contexts, where different interests are promoted through selective bullshit about those. I have never yet encountered anyone who promotes the concept of "liberty" that is willing to deal with the issue of how can any "freedom" exist when human beings cannot create energy out of nothing, nor send something to nothing. The same concern applies to information, as a subtle form of energy. Hence, the only true freedom would be for God, or for the environment as whole, while never would any finite being have any freedom whatsoever, except in the ways that they were still God, or still the environment as whole.
To the degree that all beings share in the same flow of the same energy, they are all participating in that, where the principles of the conservation of energy, when considered more seriously, become equivalent in every way to how God was attempted to be thought about. However, to the degree that the biggest bullies' bullshit was able to dominate society, thus, the ways that most people were taught to think were as backwards as could possibly be.
The most extreme symbol of that phenomenon was that an arbitrary minus sign was inserted into the entropy equations in thermodynamics and information theory, in order that the measurements of power and information would end up being positive numbers, instead of negative numbers. In my view the fundamental concept is SUBTRACTION, and, of course, our current civilization understands that in as backwards of ways as it possibly can, from which flows that we understand pretty well everything else in as backwards of ways as are possible.
HEY ARMSTRONG, I THINK RADICAL GANJA JUST SAID YOUR FULL OF SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, paint it red ca..., but then, of course, everything I wrote applies just as much to me as to anyone else. Hah! Such is the irony of any sufficient meta-truth, that when anyone is looking in the mirror, they still appear as backwards too.
Marx also starved his kids from being engrossed in writing theory over working a job to put food on the table. He lived off of Engels. Look it up. Socialism makes 90 % equal in the gutter of shit fed by the 10 % with the clout. It's a shitty system with numerous historical references that back me up. Capitalism can have socialist aspects too without going full Marxism welfare state. We know the proper way, but to achieve it we must have a legal system that hammerfucks those that manipulate it to the detriment of their fellow man.
In the real world, the legal system gets eventually captured by the the best organized gangs of criminals (if not originally created by their ancestors), who use bullshit "isms" to manipulate other people, with their controlled puppet shows.
Nobody actually guards the guardians. Instead, the systems that attempt to monopolize violence tend to end up being taken over by the worst possible guardians. (One of the worst aspects of that tragic trajectory appears to be how the worst pedophiles tend to end up running the child protection agencies, etc. ...)
The paradoxes with respect to enforcing the rule of law are profound, and there are no practical solutions which I am aware of being developed by anyone, since Plato's writings on The Republic articulated those problems. In my view, there are, in principle, NO solutions, other than to have to continue to muddle through the madness that the real world can never be anything else than some dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies, operating robberies.
Tragically, "a legal system that hammerfucks those that manipulate it to the detriment of their fellow man" nevertheless tends to end up being taken over by those who will hammerfuck their fellow man the worst. In my view, there is no escape from the situation that governments are the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gang of criminals.
I think that everyone has some power to rob, and power to kill to back up that power to rob. Politics is about assembling and channeling that power, as was done through the history of warfare, out of which emerged the War Kings, which created sovereign states, which then ended up being dominated by the best organized criminals, the Fraud Kings, or the banksters, and the big corporations that grew up around those banksters' systems, as a growing spiral of bigger legalized lies, backed by more legalized violence. Indeed, even the existence of such corporations as "persons" was itself a classic case of "legal fictions" which was a euphemism for legalized lies.
Therefore, I must disagree that even IF "we knew the proper way" that then we could actually be able to implement it, since I am not aware of any good resolution to the paradoxes of the enforcement of the rule of law, which I am aware of ever being developed by anybody, anywhere. Instead, as far as I can tell, there has never been, and will never be, anything better than have to muddle through the madness of combined money/murder systems operated through the deceits and frauds.
Ideally, more people understanding that better could enable there to be better overall dynamic equilibria between the different systems of organized lies operating robberies. However, we have clearly been headed in the opposite direction for quite some time, whereby the biggest gangsters, the banksters, have been successfully brainwashing more people to believe in bullshit, (such as all the superficial "isms" that are used to trick and manipulate them.)
E.g., for background perspectives:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/power-principle/
The Power Principle
Part 1: Empire
About the 1:24 mark, historian Michael Parenti points out that "... Much of politics is the rational use of irrational symbols ..."
Similarly, another long documentary, The Century of the Self, which is available here:
http://philosophyofmetrics.com/category/the-century-of-the-self/
reviews some of the myriad ways that the science of psychology was actually primarily employed to manipulate people so that they would become more insane, rather than saner, because that worked all too well!
I find it all too typical how common it is for articles and comments on Zero Hedge to complain about "communism" or "socialism" when what they are labeling that way in the real world has almost nothing to do with the dictionary definitions of those words. Instead, almost everything that people tend to talk about are Bizarro Mirror World perversions of those ideas. For instance, it was totally typical for the so-called "Progressives" to actually have been extremely regressive, and so on and so forth ...
Like I said, pretty well all of the stuff about "Conservatism versus Liberalism" etc., etc., tends to have become nothing more than cynical puppet shows, deliberately manipulating people, through the rational use of irrational symbols, if one looks more deeply into the matter, where most politicians are puppets performing for muppets, which works because both the school systems and mass media were dominated by the biggest bullies, which therefore, promote their bullshit view of the world.
As far as I can tell, there is nothing but organized lies operating robberies, in which context, all the "isms" and "ocracies" tend to be false fronts. In my view, the ONLY things which actually exist are energy systems, which operate through human beings according to the methods of organized crime. There are no good labels for what is happening in the real world, due to the paradoxical ways that the biggest forms of organized crime are governments, which are controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, whereby the biggest bullies' bullshit social stories dominates the public debates, so that those are overflowing with different "isms" and "ocracies," all of which are being promoted by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites.
Again, it is normal for the best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites to end up actually operating the established systems of organized lies, operating robberies. Therefore, almost everything actually gets done through level after level of lies, where those lies tend to be different at every level. The bottom line is that everybody operates as entropic pumps of the flow of energy, and everybody, as soon as we define them as separate from their environment are doing so through systems of organized lies, operating robberies, where the actual ways that works are best described as being consistent with the principles and methods of organized crime.
However, since that IS the case, civilizations end up being dominated by various kinds of State Religions, where the language of the ruling classes is encoded to be able to operate that through the maximum deceits and frauds regarding what it actually happening. Since the real systems are actually lies operating robberies, we end up being drowned in the bullshit promoted by those most successfully doing that, who are best at pretending that something else entirely is what is actually happening.
Some of the most important concepts are about how the biggest and best organized gangs of criminals are able to control their apparent opposition. In that regard, it is important to understand how the international banksters paid to promote "communism," in ways which were designed to deliberately discredit that. The similar story about "socialism" is way more convoluted, but nevertheless basically the same. Furthermore, one can also find the international banksters were also behind promoting "fascism," and so forth.
The constant theme throughout was how a tiny minority ends up becoming wealthier and more powerful. That is why the plutocracy is one of the best labels, of those which are available, However, that one too does not really work, because the main source of the "wealth" of the plutocrats was their ability to make the public "money" supply out of nothing, as debts, while governments enforced those frauds against all their people, as well as even against those governments themselves. Therefore, the true bottom line is not oligarchical government through the wealthy, but rather through organized crime cartels, that are not labeled criminals, because they have been able to capture control over government, in order to legalize their crimes.
Thus, the deeper truths are that the basic systems which dominate everything else were the best organized gangs of criminals, whose organized lies enabled them to benefit the most from the resulting organized robberies. Furthermore, those deeper levels of truth are that all human beings must necessarily be doing that, as soon as we define and perceive them as separate from their environment. The universal scientific principles are those of general energy systems, which operate through human beings according to the principles and methods of organized crime, whose success sets up a Bizarro Mirror World, which is described in proportionately backwards ways to how those things actually are.
I repeat a point that I made in my previous comment above, that the biggest bullies' bullshit world view also dominated the philosophy of science too, so that the Bizarro Mirror World backwardsness includes how the concept of entropy was inverted.
There are no good labels, while all the well-known "isms" and "ocracies" tend to be bullshit. Even attempting to describe human systems in ways which are consistent with general energy systems are problematic, unless one also goes through a radical critique of the concept of entropy while doing that. Anyway, again, I repeat that my conclusions are that the most universally valid ways to describe how human systems operate is as energy systems which correspond most closely to the methods of organized crime. All other "isms" and "ocracies" tend to be revealed as fancy distorted ways that those methods of organized crime actually work.
I agree. Well written. But, criminal is a strong word only becuase history shows us that humans are pulled to build civilization(s). Overly 'complex collapse' combined with corruption of whatever system (over time) is probably a better term or way to look at this-- including what you call an energy system or systems.
When we review the short term and long term benefits of society, to me, it's apparent why we gravitate toward something like it. If everyone on the planet disappeared except for 100 people at random, for isntance, think about how much would be lost-- medical knowledge, technology information, agriculture, etc. That is, the sum-- is always going to be greater than the parts. I think what we are seeing (in the modern world) are the absolute limits of our current ability for exponential growth (for now), pending some push for new advancements in technology or changes in the human condition (space exploration for example; or whatever will replace oil eventually; or some nano gentic virus computer DNA quantum invention), but for that to happen, it would appear like a big reset or some major change in the current system has to occur-- becuase there just isn't enough incentive for any immediate 'big' change to happen (pending a crisis). We pay movie stars and bankers far more than the best scientists; and malinvestment says that maybe some bright/ intelligent person would have done other things or invented something better, but why would they if they could make far more selling derivatives in cyber space, inventing face book or stealing it, or being famous for being famous, et al. Or, when the resources become overly concentrated to a small few, someone like Einstein can't start applying his knowledge becuase he's too busy working at Burger King, trying to pay down his credit card...
The question then becomes, do we eventually adapt or do we fail... History seems to demonstrate that human beings in the long run are pretty successful; but, again, can we continue to be successful without destorying the World???-- that is always-- yet to be seen... Also, let's be honest, if you want to talk "isms," as you say-- there is no perfect form of these human creations in the real world. Humans tend to be irrational, and I think the current form of capitalism; global capitalism (which market forces will never allow to exist in it's 'natural/intended' form) show us that we will try to maximize short term gains/ productivity with little thought about the bigger consequences (the old 'let me get mine, let me take care of me/ or my friends/ or family first, then we can worry about you' philosophy). Religion, really is about the opposite of that-- but again, humans-- aka being irrational and all-- just use religious mantra to toxify and corrupt and start wars.
It's Capitalism for the poor,Socialism for the rich, and PLUTOCRACY for the uber rich. Martin Armstrong fancies himself as a tool of the plutocrats.
The global economy is designed to keep the PLUTOCRACY going as long as possible until there is nothing left to steal.
Same as it ever was. People in power work to maximize their power. If you strip away power, other avenues of power will rise. Eventually the system collapses. Egypt. Persia. Greece. Rome. France. England. Germany. USA. We start over. There is no pure 'ism,' becuase forces intervein to tilt the system in their contorlling favor; so we create laws to balance things out; then the 'powers that be' just buy, or re-write the laws (e.g. the current state of America is bought and owned by a club you are not a part of).
Also, unions were/ are greedy/ lazy bastards, right along with every CEO, they killed or are killing themselves (the worst one still to collapse, USA gov workers and most Bankers). Case in point, the avg. people of the USA are horrible indiviudals to employee-- and will be the first to cry equal opportunity, etc. to a bloated government system for a lawsuit claiming they need a therapy dog at work. In addition, seems strange that most companies can fail while executives take massive bonsus that are generally non tax-able; and even might be bail out funded through corporate lobbyists.
If I controlled any means of production, first thing I would do-- move my factory, et al. to China where no such laws exist... But, you see the problem, be it either we run out of oil or hallow out a stronger economy becuase our standard cannot compete with another region's slave labor... It's all the same in the end. The 'system,' runs out of juice. We are in the death throws of an over inter-dependent global enconomy.
However, progress at least seems forward, becuase I don't have to catch the black plague anytime soon while some priest-doctor bleeds out the demons under my skin and I can get on the internet in the meantime to tweet about it and take a selfie. World wide debt will collapse, oil will run out, and the world will keep spinning... Gold probbaly retains some value. We've always been at war with EastAsia... It's never as simple as this "ism" is better than that "ism"... The back drop is about society, do you want an organized society while you forsake the ability to do whatever, whenever you want. Ultimatley, it still doesn't matter, becuase the dude with the bigger gun, or sword or groups of such weapons is gonna roll through your farm, and now your farm is his farm and so on...
There is room for both socialism and capitalism. As the author states you can't escape one in the other. So we need to accept it.
On one level we need to ensure that everyone has adequate shelter, food, water, medical care, access to affordable energy, etc. What is out of the realm of neccesity (modern day) should be freely in the hands of the capitalist system.
I also believe in return for this minimum sustinence, that people need to do their share. There should be no such thing as a welfare deadbeat. If you can't find a job after a while, and you want to keep benefits, then you need to do some work for the state. We need to end the notion of something for nothing. Eventually working on their own would look like a good solution for these people. People who are physically unable to work should of course be exempted from this requirement.
Its really not a hard debate if all the cards are put on the table. We need people to be allowed to flourish and gain monetarily through their contributions to society, but we also need to make sure that we don't allow the explotation of those who do contribute.
"There is room for both socialism and capitalism. As the author states you can't escape one in the other."
You're thinking of corporatism, aka fascism, enforced by jackboots. Always step-by-step so as not to scare the horses. Greater steps are engineered when events like "the Reichstag Fire" occur. The modern day equivalent being "9/11". That's pretty much where we are.
The opposite of freedom is rationing. When the richest 1% have almost all of the money, and the 99% have all of the debt, the only way that goods and services are going to be distributed is by the say-so of the 1%, i.e. rationing.
At least communism cuts through the bullshit of tricking people into thinking they have freedom of choice.
ministry of truth via news speak...
The only solution... everyone says:
I refuse to be governed... by anyone.
Of course, humans are too stupid to want NOT to be slaves, so down the toilet of history will humans go.
Except perhaps for a few who get outta dodge in time.
And yes, "dodge" means "earth".