-- On 6 Dec 2001, at 20:03, mattd wrote:

Coercion is implicit in all capitalism above low level market and trade.

Nonsense. If you do not like one guy's prices or wages, you can go to another, or start your own business. Without property rights, the specialization of labor has to take place by something very like a state telling people what they must do, and what they may consume. Thus to suppress capitalism requires centralized terror, and lots of it. Nothing less will suffice. Been tried. And indeed that terror is a large part of the attraction of socialism. Observe the popularity among socialists of books by those who have murdered helpless captives. Many socialists even name their ideology after mass murderers, for example Trotskyists. One can hardly imagine some faction of neo-nazis naming themselves after one of Hitler's more prominent goons. Similarly, when socialists celebrate great moments in socialist history, it is not the heroic battles they recall, but the murder of the helpless and powerless -- for example they recall not the last days of the Paris commune, but the first. Similarly observe how the Soviet Union, Mao's china, and the rest ceased to be loved when the terror ceased. When the terror in the Soviet Union was in full flow, it was described a glorious paradise where the concept of a policeman was strange and unknown. When the terror eased, then they started to describe it as regrettably wicked, but nonetheless a much lesser evil than the USA. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ABIneCWWlhteIvuD9hUDGb8T65PWJmjh7sU7oHNC 4tAoGzRBh75oPqlFsnOuCfu8sy2dLtGOXMTRdT3i4