Parasitic capitalists - a point to ponder.

[Audley Strange]

Also can someone point me to a citizen of "the masses". I know some hardcore dole scum that could out-think and outwit every single fucking one of us on this forum and would rob you blind for a lottery scratchcard but they don't give a fuck about your Marxist Utopia because they don't want to build perfunctory tractors for people like us, the system is not the issue to them any more than chimps concern themselves with the planning of deforestation.

Hope doesn't lie with the proles unless you are a dangerous unstable manipulative ideologue who wishes to exploit them for your own end, they are not a political class.

They haven't been hypotised by full spectrum media bombardment either. They spend their nights out on the streets and in pubs and dealing and whoring and playing with their kids and decorating. The Spectacle may keep them passive, but the Spectacle was ALWAYS designed as a distraction for the politically motivated.

The papers in 1984 are not being revised for the masses. Bill the chav isn't sitting down to get upset at Question Time. NEWSpeak is for the literate, the aware, the concious.

[Rum]

Nah, sorry but that doesn't work. The people you speak of have no power, but more importantly they don't have the consciousness concerning the system's hegemony of culture, ideas and even language. They are chimps in cages (to use your analogy) who don't even know they are locked up.

[Atheist-Lite]

Nah, sorry but that doesn't work. The people you speak of have no power, but more importantly they don't have the consciousness concerning the system's hegemony of culture, ideas and even language. They are chimps in cages (to use your analogy) who don't even know they are locked up.

None are so free as those who believe they are free whilst living next to the largest repository of highly radioactive yuck in the entire world.

[Hermit]

I take issue with the op definition. Firstly parasitic suggests detrimental to the body. In this case society. Capital flowing throughout a system, even if certain parts of that system are restricted is not parasitical. What is parasitical, is financial vampirism which is detrimental to capitalism.

Please lay off the True Scotsman line of argument. While that line does have valid applications, capitalism is essentially, fundamentally exploitative. Profits are made by creaming off the difference between the value workers are paid for and the value of the products they create. And please don't start on the "risks and deserts" crap. Most of the wealth of billionaires comes from mergers, takeovers, hedge funds, stock and foreign currency speculation, leveraging, corporate restructuring, marketing strategies, monopolistic and cartel shenanigans and so on, not to mention tycoons building on the empires they inherited.

[Audley Strange]

Nah, sorry but that doesn't work. The people you speak of have no power, but more importantly they don't have the consciousness concerning the system's hegemony of culture, ideas and even language. They are chimps in cages (to use your analogy) who don't even know they are locked up.

No. They are free. You are in a cage. I am in a cage. Those who concern themselves about politics are "in the party". Those in the party are the ones targetted for indoctrination, those vare the ones who volunteer themselves to the game..

The people I speak of do have power but it is emergent and random, it topples kings and dictators and sets up kings and dictators. They don't give a shit about fiscal union or corporate hegemony until someone explains it then they'll get irate for five minutes before going back to wondering how they can stick their dick into a barmaids tits.

The masses are not politically concious, but I'd suggest that perhaps political conciousness is in fact the hypnosis. Seems to me that's what both Huxley and Orwell got at, it's a pretty obvious conclusion of Manufacturing Consent.

In short, Politics is the bread vand circuses you feed on. The owners of the planet don't give a shit who you vote for, nor do the animals or most of the population.

This is our game can we stop pretending otherwise?

[Svartalf]

I take issue with the op definition. Firstly parasitic suggests detrimental to the body. In this case society. Capital flowing throughout a system, even if certain parts of that system are restricted is not parasitical. What is parasitical, is financial vampirism which is detrimental to capitalism. This, like the rolling banking collapse con, is not capitalism, it is the removal of funds from the body politic, capital doesn't flow. This also happens with tax avoidance, the money is removed from the system.

Parasitic capitalism is not capitalism, it is plutocracy.

Technically, many of the top tier of a capitalist society ARE parasitic. They make money by mooching the big corps of huge salaries and financial compensations that they don't do much to deserve, or by playing stock prices and financial games at the expense of the actual functioning of the company and the economy at large, since it would be better if the companies could employ more people that could afford their products (or the products of other companies that will then buy their goods and services for their own functioning), or simply invest in better production facilities and in R&D rather than upping profits by slashing functioning budgets.

[John_fi_Skye]

Politics - "democracy" - is at base a sham, a show put on to mislead us into thinking we are influencing events, so we'll be more docile. Real power resides with those who have wealth, and who use the capitalist world order to ensure they keep it, and augment it, for themselves.

And somebody a few posts back said that history has shown that capitalism works and Marxism doesn't: the way I'd choose to re-phrase that is that the ways Marxist ideas have been used so far haven't worked, but that's not to say there isn't some merit in parts of them - ie the parts that imply an emphasis on altruism rather than materialism; and capitalism has worked SO FAR (notably for some), but since the world is finite and markets therefore can't go on expeanding indefinitely, capitalism will at some point have to be replaced with a new world order, based on altruism - and we should start now thinking how that can happen.

[Atheist-Lite]

Politics - "democracy" - is at base a sham, a show put on to mislead us into thinking we are influencing events, so we'll be more docile. Real power resides with those who have wealth, and who use the capitalist world order to ensure they keep it, and augment it, for themselves.

And somebody a few posts back said that history has shown that capitalism works and Marxism doesn't: the way I'd choose to re-phrase that is that the ways Marxist ideas have been used so far haven't worked, but that's not to say there isn't some merit in parts of them - ie the parts that imply an emphasis on altruism rather than materialism; and capitalism has worked SO FAR (notably for some), but since the world is finite and markets therefore can't go on expeanding indefinitely, capitalism will at some point have to be replaced with a new world order, based on altruism - and we should start now thinking how that can happen.

Space is big. Capitalism in some form may go on for a while yet?

[John_fi_Skye]

Politics - "democracy" - is at base a sham, a show put on to mislead us into thinking we are influencing events, so we'll be more docile. Real power resides with those who have wealth, and who use the capitalist world order to ensure they keep it, and augment it, for themselves.

And somebody a few posts back said that history has shown that capitalism works and Marxism doesn't: the way I'd choose to re-phrase that is that the ways Marxist ideas have been used so far haven't worked, but that's not to say there isn't some merit in parts of them - ie the parts that imply an emphasis on altruism rather than materialism; and capitalism has worked SO FAR (notably for some), but since the world is finite and markets therefore can't go on expeanding indefinitely, capitalism will at some point have to be replaced with a new world order, based on altruism - and we should start now thinking how that can happen.

Space is big. Capitalism in some form may go on for a while yet?

I'd rather we tried to find a way of co-existing as a species without some always taking from others, than that we find ways of travelling to and living in all the corners of the universe. Or at least let's do the first one first, and then spread our altruism everywhere.

[Atheist-Lite]

Altruism? I have no requirement for that hypothesis.

[Svartalf]

Altruism is unnatural... rational class self interest through welfare of the group... that's something else.

[Rum]

Altruism is unnatural... rational class self interest through welfare of the group... that's something else.

This may be true, but the circle of self interest - the group whose interests coincide with your own has expanded and expanded over the centuries. It is now close to including everyone on the planet.

[Audley Strange]

I take issue with the op definition. Firstly parasitic suggests detrimental to the body. In this case society. Capital flowing throughout a system, even if certain parts of that system are restricted is not parasitical. What is parasitical, is financial vampirism which is detrimental to capitalism. This, like the rolling banking collapse con, is not capitalism, it is the removal of funds from the body politic, capital doesn't flow. This also happens with tax avoidance, the money is removed from the system.

Parasitic capitalism is not capitalism, it is plutocracy.

Technically, many of the top tier of a capitalist society ARE parasitic. They make money by mooching the big corps of huge salaries and financial compensations that they don't do much to deserve, or by playing stock prices and financial games at the expense of the actual functioning of the company and the economy at large, since it would be better if the companies could employ more people that could afford their products (or the products of other companies that will then buy their goods and services for their own functioning), or simply invest in better production facilities and in R&D rather than upping profits by slashing functioning budgets.

That could be said of workers, that they are parasitic on shareholders for demanding that their governments force their workplaces to give them entitlements that are cost inefficient and therefore subtract profit and capital from the investors. Exploitative perhaps, undeserving perhaps, but as long as the capital remains in the system, no matter how problematic getting capital to certain parts of the system may be it is not actively impoverishing the society until it leaves.

I see this being the problem.To me the Euro bail outs for countries are going towards bail outs for private banking cartels which being multi-national are moving the phantom menace of toxic debt and social collapse to actively steal capital from society. However that's not invisible and it was done in daylight, publicly with much protest from right along the political spectrum. We recognise the difference between making an honest or even shady profit and outright pillaging don't we?

Capitalism regards the flow of capital as fundamental to capitalism working because of growth and investment. Plutocrats think whomever gets the most money wins.

I'm not sure capitalism is a good model btw, but I think it fair to point out that the left who distrust capitalism are making the same mistakes in assuming that plutocrats are the same as capitalists, as those on the right are when they conflate Socialism and Stalinism.

I'll be surprised if anyone accepts such a comparison though. It's the other, when they do it it's evil when they point out we do it it's a strawman.

meh.

[JimC]

Insufficiently regulated capitalism (as is too often the case) is often parasitic, and corrupts the political process by the influence of power and money to maintain privilege.

However, free-enterprise is also an engine of innovation and efficiency - societies who abandon it have crippled their abilities in this area, and invited the dead hand of authoritarian rule.

We need checks and balances; a society that tries to optimise the advantages of free enterprise, while putting a serious effort into restraining capitalist greed.

I will not pretend this is easy...

[Svartalf]

That's symbiotic... feed me well, keep me healthy, and I'll work well and willingly and make you money.

Of course, nowadays, damn few shareholders have done any serious capital investment in whatever company they have shares... the money goes on the market, not into company coffers, making them pure parasites who get fat and are prone to killing their hosts.