Setting aside my colourful use of language
[I let you off lightly, Stavros; if I'd done the same thing it would merely have confirmed my credentials as the resident swivel-eyed fanatic], the point is that you claim fidelity to a system that when it has been applied more closely to your principles -if not entirely- has not resulted in either economic equilibrium or greater freedom
[for one thing, we work to different definitions of 'freedom', so I'm not sure how we'd measure this] -the late 19th century in the US and the 1990s in Russia were symptomatic of the tendency of capitalism
[the same old sleight of-hand: you may feel nothing when repeating the words 'free market capitalism', it's up to you, all I ask is that you give words their plain meaning; the Russian oligarchs, to take one of your examples, were crony capitalists] to monopolise the means pf production, anything rather than sharing it out -you can wish it away as 'the unacceptable face of capitalism' if you want to, but the evidence of dirty dealings amongst the railroad bosses, the bankers, the Rockefellers and Mellons of this/that world are well documented
[I seem to recall Rand wrote an interesting essay on this, possibly with Greenspan; if you're interested it's in Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal, which I don't have to hand], and resulted in the haven of free markets
[interesting word that, 'haven', isn't it?], the USA introducing an Act in 1890 to prevent the dominance by single individuals and their firms of industrial sectors -ie the Sherman Act, even if not implemented until 1911. Your faith in the honest intentions of free market capitalists
[I claim no such faith. I've said that I accept there will of course be sharp practitioners; they can be dealt with by the laws of fraud; what I do say is that rational self-interest means that party A maximises his needs or desires by fulfilling those of party B and I happen to believe that most people tend to act in good faith] is as absurd as the belief of a Communist Party cadre in the wisdom of the Central Committee
[yet what is the difference between your planners and regulators, on the one hand, and the central committee, on the other? democratic legitimacy? maybe, but that says nothing of the efficacity of their decision-making, which is what we're talking about]. And as for Russia, it was called
The Sale of the Century for good reason, only the average consumer wasn't involved, merely screwed.
Perhaps we can agree that communism is the natural condition of mankind
[you mean that when Ugg and Grunt first crawled out of the primordial ooze feeling peckish and Ugg snared a frog for dinner, he noticed Grunt looking at him enviously and was confronted by the choice of sharing or not, realising that if he didn't then Grunt might try and take the frog from him by force, or that Grunt might starve and then he'd be left alone, or that by sharing on this occasion then Grunt might share the fruits of his labour subsequently, or that by sharing neither would have enough and they would both starve? Well the frog is Ugg's property. It is the fruit of his labour, although there is no rule of law to uphold property rights, and the land on which it was found has presumably not been claimed by Ugg. So I suppose I'd say that at this stage, we have a sort of hybrid, where property is literally up for grabs, but sharing, or perhaps bartering (part of a frog now, in the hope of a return favour later) is on the radar; but what if they both find a frog? if their frogs are of equal plumpness then all we have is the acquisition of property rights by each, absent the application of force by either to denude the other of his frog. The scenario can be sliced and diced a number of ways, but I rather doubt that Ugg, if he is initially the most successful scavenger, is going for any length of time to apply the principle of 'from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs'], that private property emerged historically
[I think the fact of private property emerged as described above, although of course the language would not have existed to describe it] as a consequence of the process of accumulation that began during the Neolithic revolution, and which combined with the division of labour to enable a minority of the population to dupe the majority into thinking they were superior, aided and abetted by religious/mythological systems of belief. Industrial capitalism is the private appropriation of publicly produced wealth -the capitalist who puts say £100,000 of capital into a shirt-making business and collects say, £1 million on that investment pays the people who actually make the shirts their equivalent share - £10, thereby proving that capitalism is immoral, and that private property is theft
[everything belongs to everyone? so if we were in the same room together right now, and I walked over to you and started to remove your watch and car keys, you wouldn't stop me?]. Moreover, as Marx pointed out in
Capital the workers are so completely subsumed by capitalism that they are both producers and consumers, and simultaneously exploited at work and in the market-place, bridging the gap between the natural price of a commodity and its market price -(viz
Capital, Vol 1: Appendix: Results of the Immediate Process of Production, esp pp1019-1025 in the
Pelican Marx Library, Capital, Vol 1; and same series,
Capital Vol 2, Chapters 1-2; and Chapters 20-21).
This pseudo-debate however is going round in circles -perhaps you can explain how free market capitalism will produce economic growth and full employment in the UK, and crucially -what happens to the losers who fail at business, who can't hold down a job, don't have the education or whatever their problem is?
[That's a vast subject, and I don't have sufficient time to do it justice, but I'll make the obvious point that regulation raises barriers to entry in any sector of an economy. That means fewer people can start businesses.]
On xenophobic violence in Greece, I provide a link from HRW.
http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/12/30/x...iolence-greece
[Putting it politely, this link does not support your prior claim]
