by

What Is The Free Market Fallacy? by The Anti-Social Socialist

Enjoy Capitalism

Image by Isaías Campbell via Flickr

“This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968)

by
Writer, Dandelion Salad
June 29, 2018

The Anti-Social Socialist on Jun 28, 2018

from the archives:

Abby Martin: Capitalism Cannot Be Reformed–Seize All the Banks

Chris Hedges and David Harvey: Enough is Enough of This Capitalist Fraud

Socialism: Our Alternative To The Madness Of The Market by Eric Ruder

Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty in the World by Michael Parenti

Chris Hedges and Richard Wolff: Capitalism Does Not Work for the Majority of the People

Traditional Libertarianism VS American Libertarianism by The Anti-Social Socialist

David Harvey: What is Neoliberalism? + Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason

Michael Parenti: Does Capitalism Work? (2002)

Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr.: The Three Evils of Society: Racism, Militarism and Capitalism (must-see)

Michael Parenti: These Countries Are Not Underdeveloped, They Are Overexploited (1986)

Noam Chomsky: Free Market Fantasies: Capitalism In The Real World (1996)

14 thoughts on “What Is The Free Market Fallacy? by The Anti-Social Socialist”

  1. Pingback: The Anti-Social Socialist: Why Capitalism is NOT the Free Market – Dandelion Salad

  2. Pingback: Caleb Maupin: Neoliberalism: A Study in Evil – Dandelion Salad

  3. Pingback: Chris Hedges and David Harvey: The Ideology of Neoliberalism is a Con, Part 2 – Dandelion Salad

  4. Pingback: The USA: A Vast Sea of Fable, Deception, Ideological Selection and Flat-Out Propagandistic Falsification by Paul Street – Dandelion Salad

  5. Pingback: Chris Hedges: Late Stage Capitalism Is Killing America, Parts 1-3 – Dandelion Salad

  6. I just read your latest post on the horrors of colonisation of Australia using “criminals” which also reminded me of the same being attempted in the colony of Jamaica along with natives before mass African slavery was established. Both these posts are related in that John asks “Where are those of us prepared to utter unlawful oaths”. 99% of those in the designated consumer nations/societies don’t see anything wrong. Their material lives have improved immensely, now able to attain their needs and wants relatively easily.

    They therefore trust their governments who ironically continue to bang the war drum in the name of defence, with a goal to provide access for privately owned Capitalist companies backed by a select few who have the authority to fund them. Manipulated by power hungry, evil individuals we exist within an invisible prison are now indebted in both senses of the word to owners of private money, all protected by the law!

    However you don’t need to dig very deeply to soon realise that our “joyful” lives are dependent on the exploitation of our fellow man and lands both here and abroad. This started with colonisation in order to control the spice trade in the 15th century and snowballed from there. Post colonial “independence” and WW2 this power to exploit was finally loaned to the poor working classes of the west in the form of fiat money which allowed financiers to gain unprecedented power, Capitalism to continue unabated and any other form of living to be dismissed/hated. However as this relies on debt repayment, continual extraction of finite resource to produce stuff turned from natural based to synthetic based goods which have now polluted our planet. We are currently in the midst of only the Earth’s sixth mass extinction of species, which may lead to our destruction.

    Unfortunately I don’t believe that the mass awakening of spirit required to overcome this will happen before the controlled collapse of this system, which I fear is coming soon for all our families.

    So why are they doing it? Just going to throw this out there but during and after both world wars steps were taken in the formation of Israel, Balfour Declaration (1917), Israeli Declaration of independence (1948) etc. If there is a cult that believes in the “Second Coming” they may be ensuring that it happens as they want it. Both British and US based elite back its formation and the current killing, you have to ask why? for me it can’t be based on altruistic reasons as history shows their motives are quite the opposite.

    • Though I have no certainty about it, I see at least some reason for hope that a big change will come =before= total collapse. One precedent that I can point to is that Martin Luther’s reformation breakaway from the Catholic Church, in 1517, was NOT preceded by a COLLAPSE of the Catholic Church. It was preceded by a growth of individualism in our culture, the elevation of individual rational thought over authoritarian decree. That stemmed in part from the growth of the merchant class, but perhaps even more it stemmed from Gutenberg’s printing press a few decades earlier.

      What is new in recent years is not the cruelty of our economic system and our authoritarian hierarchical governments. What is new in recent years is our awareness of those systems, and our increased access to viewpoints different from those of the establishment. This access stems from our new kind of printing press: the internet.

      The Hans Christian Anderson tale ended: [[“But he hasn’t got anything on!” the whole town cried out at last. The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.]] But I think we might get an ending involving more substantial change.

      • Hi leftymathprof, I have read your blog and we share so many of the same views on our current global socioeconomic system. I agree the Internet has helped to open people’s eyes and start to question the status quo but its also allowed the establishment to spread propaganda and hate to cause further divisions.

        For me our situation stems from an elite mentality based on Feudalism where they reneged on their responsibility of contributing towards producing human needs. Instead they controlled vast areas of land and so peasants were indebted to them for their livelihoods and forced to dedicate their time and energy to producing elite needs and some wants. With all this free time on their hands the apparently “Christian” elite wanted to enjoy the material “pleasures of life” and therefore had a requirement for even more wants, which if they had the money merchants could supply them with eastern based spices, sugar, textiles etc. Once the Ottomans took over the Byzantine Empire and this lifestyle was now at risk, it spurred on European colonisation to monopolise these lucrative trades. So both financiers and merchants saw this as an opportunity to gain a seat at the “private ownership” table which feudalist Church, Royalty and selected Land Lords had monopolised for centuries. In fact once debt based money was established throughout the world this feudalist control was wrestled away from the old and power migrated to money lenders. This is what Capitalism evolved from, a power shift from one elite to another, some of the old managed to hang on or even flourish, examples are the UK Royals and the Vatican.

        For me individualism is no good if it comes at the price of expoitation of my fellow man. I would rather all contribute some of our working week to a select number of human needs eg. shelter, food, water, health etc. No money would be required as all would get universal access to needs based on your contribution towards these. The rest of the week humanity could pursue other pursuits that were deemed sustainable that would allow you to express your individuality eg. art, music, sport, sciences etc. I think as a society we would decide where our human energy and time should be dedicated to enable human progression. Organisations would exist that align with this not simply produce stuff and manipulate humanity to want it.

        I believe the way out is to firstly realise our lives of immoral material consumption is not sustainable, that it has its roots in exploitation of our fellow man and causing huge harm to the environment. That there could be a higher purpose to our existence which many people throughout the world believe, even scientists. I think this should be the ultimate pursuit of our society.

        By collapse what I mean is that the select few have always seen the rest as workers for them and used a form of debt, enshrined in “law” and violence to maintain this. This then evolved into this Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” for the poor western workers but remained the same for the rest of the world. I believe its this system that may be on the verge of being systematically demolished, the US/Europe/China trade wars beginning may be the start. I believe our role as the worker may not be required as robotics takes over. For the elite their lives would remain the same but instead have less issues to deal with, no human workers rights required, just 24/7 unquestioning servitude. This could be the other reason for a future purge of human society rather than being based on Christian-Judeo-Islamic eschatology? Both could be carried out by economic collapse leading to global wars. Or environmental collapse could happen faster than we think possible.

        Sorry for the dire reply… I have a family and I fear for the future. I cannot see any evidence that our governments or the real controlling private organsations acting in any way to stop what is happening, they seem to be accelerating the inevitable.

  7. ty for informing me why im so miserable in a so called democratic republic with freedoms

  8. I think the video short-changes Russia and China. The video omits those from its list of examples of “successful socialism.” But in fact the socialist semi-dictatorships of Russia and China improved immensely the living conditions of the average people there, and thus were the greatest improvements in human living conditions in the history of the planet. And were they dictatorships? That’s not clear. Here in the USA, we have elections, but the only public policies enacted turn out to be the ones the rich want. So it’s not clear that we are more “free.”

    My own preference would be anarcho-communism. That’s where people share, and where the “government” is not a hierarchy but rather a horizontal network. Hierarchical representative democracy, such as the USA claims to practice, is actually a bad system: It encourages the 51% to rule over the 49% without caring about them, and it actually ends up with 1% ruling and claiming to “represent” all the others. But these issues aren’t addressed in the video — it’s more about economics. Regarding economics, I would emphasize the importance of sharing. As long as we have separate property, we have a society based on not caring about each other, and there’s no way for that to work out well.

    The video is a little bit confusing, because it doesn’t say enough about socialism. It contrasts “free market capitalism” with the USA’s system of “crony capitalism,” and condemns both, but may leave some beginners in the audience with the impression that those two systems are the only choices. Still, I think it’s a pretty good video.

Comments are closed.