Real capitalism falling down drunk

[jamesd at echeque.com]

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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
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