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Offline MrsSmith

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The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« on: September 27, 2009, 03:12:27 PM »
Quote
Joanne98  (1000+ posts)      Sun Sep-27-09 02:08 PM
Original message
The Normal Violence of Capitalism
 
Americans believe that the normal state of things is not-violence, and that is why they are shocked and appalled they see violent acts. The health care debate has revealed that violence is normal. Look at our own Mary and Ron McCurrin: forced into an unnecessary divorce to survive financially. Look at this study (.pdf), which tells us that being uninsured dramatically increases the risk of death, primarily from lack of treatment for chronic diseases. This isn’t an abstraction: recently a young woman died because, lacking insurance, she refused to go to the doctor when she had swine flu and pneumonia. This kind of systemic violence is normal in our system; it is killing people, and no one is accountable.

The financial crash reveals another side of normal capitalist violence. Millions of Americans lost jobs and millions more lost their savings either through direct theft or through the collapse of the stock market, and no one is held accountable.

Health care and the financial system are closer than they may seem. I recently went to the sentencing hearing for a man convicted of stealing millions from retirement plans. One by one the victims came to the podium to tell the Judge how they were affected by the loss. “I worked 35 years on the factory floor, and that was my retirement. I don’t know when I can retire, and I’m tired.” These people have lost years of their lives, just like many of our sick people.

Somehow we perceive this as shocking, not as the normal state of things. In fact, these examples are the direct consequences of the way we organize our society. Statutes and rules, court decisions, executive branch decisions, all interlock to create a system, and the outcomes are predictable results of the rational operation of that system. Slavoj Zizek discusses this in his book Violence. We think of the real economy as the system in which real people make real things for sale, and we think of financial speculation as a non-real abstraction, a parasite on the real system. In fact, the inexorable logic of speculation drives the productive sector. It is not an abstraction. It has rules, logic, and money, and people to operate with them, and it has real world impact. When the financial system fails, the productive sector suffers.

Therein resides the fundamental systemic violence of capitalism, much more uncanny than any direct pre-capitalist socio-ideological violence: this violence is no longer attributable to concrete individuals and their “evil” intentions, but is purely “objective,” systemic, anonymous

Continued>>.
http://firedoglake.com/2009/09/27/the-normal-violence-o...
 
:orly:  

It's sure nice to have such smart people explain the violence of our economic system!!!!11!!1!  :sarcasm:

 :thatsright: :mental:
« Last Edit: September 27, 2009, 03:14:58 PM by MrsSmith »
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Offline djones520

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #1 on: September 27, 2009, 03:17:59 PM »
Joanne98 has without a doubt my vote for #1 DUmmie of the year.
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Offline AllosaursRus

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #2 on: September 27, 2009, 03:28:53 PM »
Yeah, right! No violence in socialism or communism, is there DUmbass? Difference I see in this article is a woman refused to go to the doc because she didn't want to have to pay for it. No one to blame but herself. For cryin' out loud, I would think my life is worth a little more than a trip to the doctor and a short stay in the hospital. What part about them NOT being able to refuse you, don't you get?
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Offline dandi

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #3 on: September 27, 2009, 03:37:52 PM »
Yes, capitalism is the most violent economic/political system...except for all the other types of systems that require violence from the state merely to keep them in place, i.e. socialism, communism.
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Offline Carl

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #4 on: September 27, 2009, 03:38:51 PM »
Wonder how DUmmies would like life in a real socialist/communist system.

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Offline Chris

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #5 on: September 27, 2009, 03:42:13 PM »
[youtube=425,350]dOOTKA0aGI0[/youtube]

For franksolich... Scene 3
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Offline franksolich

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #6 on: September 27, 2009, 03:48:37 PM »
Thank you, Chris, I appreciated the small kindness!
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Offline dandi

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #7 on: September 27, 2009, 03:52:14 PM »
Quote from: djones520 on September 27, 2009, 03:17:59 PM
Joanne98 has without a doubt my vote for #1 DUmmie of the year.

I tried to argue with her once on another site. She has the IQ of a toenail fungus.
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Offline franksolich

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #8 on: September 27, 2009, 03:53:28 PM »
Quote from: dandi on September 27, 2009, 03:52:14 PM
I tried to argue with her once on another site. She has the IQ of a toenail fungus.

Don't forget the violence she wreaks on her washing machine.

She changes her underwear only every ten days.
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Milo Yiannopoulos "It has been obvious since 2016 that Trump carries an anointing of some kind. My American friends, are you so blind to reason, and deaf to Heaven? Can he do all this, and cannot get a crown? This man is your King. Coronate him, and watch every devil shriek, and every demon howl."

Offline TheSarge

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #9 on: September 27, 2009, 06:50:02 PM »
Quote from: Carl on September 27, 2009, 03:38:51 PM
Wonder how DUmmies would like life in a real socialist/communist system.



They'd turn Conservative within a week.  Those that didn't die from shock when they realized that THEY wouldn't be the ones living in the castle that is.
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Offline ATTC

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #10 on: September 27, 2009, 08:56:26 PM »
Quote from: TxRadioguy on September 27, 2009, 06:50:02 PM
They'd turn Conservative within a week.  Those that didn't die from shock when they realized that THEY wouldn't be the ones living in the castle that is.

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956):
"The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it."

... and how's the other quote go?  Something along the lines of "those who willingly argue for socialism do so with intention of being the ruler"

Not quite sure how exactly it goes.  Maybe someone here can help me out.
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Offline AprilRazz

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #11 on: September 28, 2009, 06:37:36 AM »
When someone works hard to earn money there will always be someone out there trying to steal it. Case in point the democrat party.
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Offline NHSparky

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #12 on: September 28, 2009, 07:54:24 AM »
Quote from: ATTC on September 27, 2009, 08:56:26 PM
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956):
"The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it."

... and how's the other quote go?  Something along the lines of "those who willingly argue for socialism do so with intention of being the ruler"

Not quite sure how exactly it goes.  Maybe someone here can help me out.

I'll give you a couple of more contemporary ones by P.J. O'Rourke:

"The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich."

"Liberalism is just communism sold by the drink."
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Offline jukin

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #13 on: September 28, 2009, 01:01:30 PM »
Bad news for DUmbasses:

The worst genocides of the 20th Century
 
Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,000
Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) 23,000,000 (the purges plus Ukraine's famine)
Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII)
Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) 5,000,000 (civilians in WWII)
Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915-20) 1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20)
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000
Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) 1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)
Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000
Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) 1,000,000
Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) 900,000

None of the above are capitalistic.
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Offline Ptarmigan

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #14 on: September 28, 2009, 02:03:27 PM »
Quote from: jukin on September 28, 2009, 01:01:30 PM
Bad news for DUmbasses:

The worst genocides of the 20th Century
 
Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,000
Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) 23,000,000 (the purges plus Ukraine's famine)
Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII)
Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) 5,000,000 (civilians in WWII)
Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915-20) 1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20)
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000
Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) 1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)
Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000
Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) 1,000,000
Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) 900,000

None of the above are capitalistic.


I think Stalin killed a lot more than 23 million. Same goes with Pol Pot, who likely killed 3 million. Let's not forget Saddam Hussein.
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Offline Chris_

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #15 on: September 28, 2009, 02:07:49 PM »
Quote from: Ptarmigan on September 28, 2009, 02:03:27 PM
I think Stalin killed a lot more than 23 million. Same goes with Pol Pot, who likely killed 3 million. Let's not forget Saddam Hussein.

And I could swore that Hideki Tojo got tagged with at least 25 million in the "Rape of Nanking" incident alone.
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Offline djones520

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #16 on: September 28, 2009, 02:17:57 PM »
Quote from: DefiantSix on September 28, 2009, 02:07:49 PM
And I could swore that Hideki Tojo got tagged with at least 25 million in the "Rape of Nanking" incident alone.

25 million?  I've only heard in the hundreds of thousands.  Maybe getting up to 800,000.
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Offline Chris_

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #17 on: September 28, 2009, 02:34:13 PM »
Quote from: djones520 on September 28, 2009, 02:17:57 PM
25 million?  I've only heard in the hundreds of thousands.  Maybe getting up to 800,000.

I do have to admit that when I heard the "25 million" number it was being reported by the MSM, and they were citing the ChiComs as their source for the tidbit.  Could put some veracity questions to it.

 :cheersmate:
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Offline djones520

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #18 on: September 28, 2009, 02:36:42 PM »
Quote from: DefiantSix on September 28, 2009, 02:34:13 PM
I do have to admit that when I heard the "25 million" number it was being reported by the MSM, and they were citing the ChiComs as their source for the tidbit.  Could put some veracity questions to it.

 :cheersmate:

Yeah, I did some searching and couldn't find a single source that said more then 1,000,000.

http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/nanking.htm
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Offline AllosaursRus

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Re: The Normal Violence of Capitalism
« Reply #19 on: September 28, 2009, 08:51:30 PM »
It's not good when we exagerate like the left.
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