Ummmmmmmmmmm….how about religion?

But the idea of the state “whithering away” is a fanciful notion to anyone who understands economics, much less political history. If private parties are not allowed to control resources, they must be distributed by a central planner. I grant you, it may be said in theory the state will whither away, in the same way that you can fly by flapping your arms in theory. What I am saying is that I don’t have to agree with the theory, and one can predict the theory will lead to tyranny even before it is put into practice.

Chile is an interesting (in the “may you live in interesting times” sense) special case. This is what Friedman said about it.

I would say that fascism is a type of government, not an economic system (which is what capitalism and communism are). That definitional point aside, I made explicit reference to the very capitalist economic policies of both the Argentine and Chilean dictators. Pinochet’s economists were trained by Milton Friedman himself, so don’t try to say that they weren’t capitalist.

Giant corporations, insurance companies, you name it. They aren’t screwing people over because of capitalism. They are screwing people over because they’ve been able to use GOVERNMENT to force their competitors out of business and prevent new ones from entering the market. This has nothing to do with capitalism or free markets whatsoever.

As for the slavery argument, please prove to me that slavery did not exist before capitalism, then I’ll give you that one. Since you can’t, slavery is not a product of capitalism. It IS pretty interesting that after THOUSANDS of years of slavery under every other form of economy, it only lasted about a hundred years in a capitalist society.

The “Chicago School” had nothing to do with Pinochet’s atrocities. Free market economics did not motivate Pinochet. A few Chicago School economists advised him on how to turn his country around well after he had already taken it over. Just as, if they asked, I’m sure plenty of economists would give advice to other unsavory regimes on how to make their people better off. Chile is the economic jewel of Latin America because of those policies. Millions of Chileans were bettered by them. But they had nothing to do with while Pinochet took power.”

Radley, drop the straw man. I’m not attempting to defend Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, or any other communist dictator. They were monsters, and they did terrible things. Glad that’s out of the way.

And yes, I provided a single example because I was making a short comment, not writing an essay. I could provide other examples of capitalism creating bodies if you like. The Argentine dictatorship of the 70s also pursued free-market capitalist economics while torturing and slaughtering supposed dissidents. Or perhaps we could talk about the violence committed by the Contras in Nicaragua, many of which were motivated by strong right-wing politics.

The real question is, why do you think you can divorce Pinochet’s authoritarianism and his capitalism, while you cannot divorce Stalin’s authoritarianism and his communism? Pinochet didn’t just happen onto free market capitalism, the ideology of the Argentine coup was explicitly anti-Communism, thus the near-immediate banning of all leftist parties after its victory. The same was true in Chile, where the violence carried out during the late Peron years (which carried over into the Videla dictatorship) was by a death squad called the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance.

It’s clear that there were a number of butchers and rapists in the camps supposedly fighting communism as well. When will you remember their victims?

actually no, that’s socialism. Theoretically a communist state has no central planner, the state “withers away” to quote marx. Read him sometime, you might learn a thing or two.

Unless you can get everyone to go along willingly with the whole “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need ” part then what other ending, other than a violent one, is there? It’s more like, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need…or else! ”

they give some credit to the pope: JP2.
they give MUCH MORE credit to the US president who *didn’t* cave to the communists, or reach out to them to create dialogue, or stand there with his thumb up his ass sputtering “but…but…” like kennedy did when they built it under his nose: they say almost all the credit goes to ronald reagan.

fortunately, we here in the west see through their simplistic childlike rose-tinted worldview, and refuse to print or speak of this mistake on their part. as the profs in college continually reminded us, *gorbachev* was the real hero of freedom that year.

I suspect it might be more accurate to say that is what they all quickly became. I bet at least one of the communist founders really believed his own rhetoric and were all gunh ho for a utopian communist society. It’s just communism at a state level doesn’t work and quickly devolves into that dictatorship. I’m sure Lenin at al decided pretty quickly that they would never get the total buy in needed to sustain a communist economy and decided to exert dictorial powers.

The “Chicago School” had nothing to do with Pinochet’s atrocities. Free market economics did not motivate Pinochet. A few Chicago School economists advised him on how to turn his country around well after he had already taken it over. Just as, if they asked, I’m sure plenty of economists would give advice to other unsavory regimes on how to make their people better off. Chile is the economic jewel of Latin America because of those policies. Millions of Chileans were bettered by them. But they had nothing to do with while Pinochet took power.