Re: Take Back Your Time Day

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (G*rd*n) wrote in news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:

> Either median infant mortality dropped during the rise of
> capitalism, or it didn't.  If it did, then capitalism fans
> can argue that that was due to the rise of capitalism.  A
> quick end to the argument would be to show that infant 
> mortality remained the same or increased.
> 
> If cap fans want to argue that capitalism is advantageous for
> every nation they will have to go quite a bit further: define
> "advantageous" and show that such conditions are produced
> everywhere by the operations of capitalism.  Some cases will be
> difficult, such as the statistics coming out of Russia in the
> 1990s.  The proposition above is far more limited.

Russia's mess can be traced back to certain things, so the question is 
whether these things are caused by capitalism. For example, when Russia 
privatized enormous state industries, they were sold for peanuts to a small 
number of apparatchiks and cronies. That was directly caused by the fact 
that the USSR had a command economy, which was directly caused by the fact 
that the USSR had been formed by ideological communists. It would be beyond 
absurd to blame that aspect of the current situation on capitalism.

So, we need to go bit by bit, examining Russia's troubles, analyzing them, 
determining what are the causes, and tracing those causes back to their own 
causes to see why Russia is in the mess it's in right now.