Destruction of World’s Eastern Heritage in Iraq

wajahat #65 i afraid sir but i dont see much logic in your post. if there is something specific i wrote that you wish to question, i will be glad to discuss that further. but just reciting slogans doesnt solve anything nor does it constitute a discussion. anyway, cheers till we perhaps meet again on some other board.

wajahat

I am laughing at you, not with you, like when you try and crack jokes about defaults and stuff like that and blurt out slogans like a parakeet on heat. Read tahmed32`s last post, you just dont make sense and there seems to be a discrepancy between the images you form in your head and what you put into words.

For those who are interested:

www.blairfacedlies.org

Tahmed32 said:

``So: the question is not if capitalism or democracy are better than any alternative. time has proved they are. the question is, HOW can they be made to work?``

I don`t agree (first point).
Let`s begin by an explanation of the two terms(second point):
`Democracy` means, more or less, the power (cracy) to the people (demo). So were is the problem in that? The problem is how the people is represented, and if it is well or not.
The institutions receive the majority of the critics, not the idea that the power is for everyone, maybe for more equality.
What is capitalism? An economic system based on private ownership of the means of production, in which personal profit can be acquired through investment of capital and employment of labor (thank you yahoo, I was lazy to check somewhere else).
The main problem here, are, like Marx said (can say whatever you want about him, he did a great work pointing out what are the errors and dangers of the XIXth century capitalism), that the profit is not, at least morally, acceptable (ah Das Capital!).

So (third point), if I`m agree with the idea that democracy is the best option right now, because there`s no known better (like Winston Churchill said) if you want to live with a community, like the entire society of a country, I`m not at all agree with capitalism.
I will not use the arguments of the communists, but the idea is that all this economic development doesn`t have any reason to think of the best, socially speaking, for the people. If you want to make it work, you have to reduce his power. So that`s where the syndicats, the non governemental associations and organisms have to act.

Time (last point) didn`t prove anything. The result of communism (because it`s the first in the list of the losers) is only known as the result of a proletarian dictature, a thing that is not the goal. You can reduce in the same way capitalism with the imperialism of the west, and you have the same failure: the rulers won and the colonised countries have to survive with an horrible economy and political situation. I don`t call it the best choice.
So, there is other alternatives of course, but it doesn`t mean a complete opposite thing.
Capitalism made us consumers, owners, workers, but where is the `better` in that?
A religious speaker, for example, will say that to be `believers` is better and at least you don`t worship `work`, `property` or worst, `money`.
Money is a tool but also a physical representation of your power over the others. Where is the equality in that?

``but more seriously, for all practical purposes ultimately SOMEONE (president, prime minister, caliph, martial law administrator, arab sheikh, king, dictator, mard-e-momin) has to have supreme executive authority in soceities``
No. In a small state (of the size of a city for example), you don`t need this SOMEONE. The leader, the hero, the representation of the father (I go too far) is not even an universal and only solution: look at the French revolution for example. The problem is the stability of these other solutions (more than one head).
Just one last thing: even if there`s no example in the past, it doesn`t mean that a new system can`t work. America has his own history, and it`s a mistake to take it for an example. Why not be inspired by its great values, like the great values in Islam, and build a new kind of society?

Thanks

#44 MichealM

Well said and Just to substantiate your views, the complicity of Democracy with Captilism invokes the kind of negative government system we see in the so called democratic states. The basic degeneracy is in the fact that democracy does not represent the people as such, but the pressure groups that back it into power, America for example has a government structure which is based upon who raises the most amount of campaign money from vested groups and thus its no wonder that Dubya today mainly represents and serves the interests of the Oil, Weapons Industries who have funded his accession. These pressure groups have global interests that only power and supreme power, at that can carry out. Thus the terrible mess in the middle east show the awesome power of Representative Democracy.

In Pakistan on a smaller scale, We have the feudals who hold the main voting banks who use democracy to violate and bring in civilain govts who basically represent their domain and their interests. e.g benazir for sindh and Sharif for Punjab. This is the problem with Western Notion of democracy based on capitalism. But if you take the capitalist structure out of democracy than it fails as a concept, athough I do not know enough about socialism to speculate(although I have been called a commie here at chowk)

The islamic alternative would be a sort of capitalism that does not make anyone rich, thus the idea of a No Interest based Financial System. But then the kind of consumerist society we have become, this will become almost impossible. I mean from 10-15 years ago our society has become more greedy, financialy unstable and decadent(I mean waste rather than religion). The need and use of credit is ever increasing and we will in the next decade or so turn from a Cash based society into a western type interest based society.

Thus the point I keep raising (Yelping as PZ refers to it :)) that we have to be mindful of the dogmas of our own society and understand that Western Democracy is not the only answer no matter how viable it may seem. That is my only conclusion no matter how illogical it may seem

Regards

Wajahat

michaelm #44 let me start with your conclusion: ``America has his own history, and it`s a mistake to take it for an example. Why not be inspired by its great values, like the great values in Islam, and build a new kind of society? ``

i think rather than talking about american values or islamic values, we need to talk about universal values which no one except a complete sociopath would deny: equality, liberty, fraternity (to use words from the french revolution you mention). these also happen to coincide with american values and islamic values (as apparent in the Quran and in the best examples of muslim history as in muslim era spain and 12th century baghdad for example, not as promoted by religious parties today whose idea of islamic values is the opposite of that found in the Quran). so actually, it is not too hard i think for everyone to agree on a universal set of values, whether these are in the preamble to the US or most other written constitutions, or dug up from some religious books.

the question that you pose therefore is: what is the best way to ensure these values are promoted in society, and not curbed.

for this purpose, what you are suggesting is basically to start from scratch, forgetting about democratic institutions and capitalistic forms of economy. i dont believe that is realistic. Rome wasnt built in a day. systems evolve, they dont emerge overnight. communes of the kind you mention have been tried in many places (including the US), and they have never caught on, and many ex-hippies now wear black suits and drive SUVs to work. so, unless you know a good alternative, you are best quitting while you are ahead when quoting Churchill on democracy being the worst form of governemnt except for all the alternatives.

incidentally, the french revolution that you mention did not result in living up to the ideals of liberte, equalite, fraternite either. the revolutionary leaders like robespierre ended up guillotining one another as soon as they were through guillotining the bourbons, and as soon as they were gone the french did not get a committee something to rule but the Emperor Napoleon, the biggest dictator of all. so, like i said, revolutions cause a lot of bloodshed and generally put society a few steps behind: the russian revolution, led by visionaries like lenin, led not to freedom but to the dictator Stalin who killed people in the millions. The chinese revolution, led by the visionary mao-tse-tung, soon degenerated and today the biggest visionaries in china are the ones who stood at tienanmen square with - surprise - a replica of the Statue of Liberty to inspire them. and the chinese government that suppressed them has thrown completely overboard the basic notions of marxism and adopted the US economic model instead. and if marx is to be believed (this is probably the only thing he said that made sense outside the narrow context of late 19th century europe), poltiical institutions in china will follow the economic structure. in other words, the chinese revolution, after meandering around, will finally end up on the same path the US has been on for two hundred years.

#34 by stuka on December 2, 2003 7:06am PT
Thanks for the info. Regards.

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