Racism Report

[Badger 2,405]

1 hour ago, Barbe bleu said:

But this bang could have happened anywhere and at anytime in the last several thousand years.

I'm presuming by bang, you mean capitalist  revolution - but I know that I might have misinterpreted you.

I'm not sure that it could have happened at anytime in the last several thousand years. There has been capitalists - merchants using money (capital) to buy or make goods to sell at a profit and so on. However, until the nineteenth century, ownership of land was the key to power and wealth. Sure some traders became wealthy, but never even approaching then wealth of the big landowners. As for power they had very little - even at the local level, power was dominated by what the English called "the gentry." Even very rich merchants tended to have a low standing with the aristocracy that tended to own and control society.

The technological developments that I have partly described - but could have on further - enabled the production of goods on a scale never previously imaginable and imperialism provided extra raw materials, markets and extra capital. It became possible to generate enormous wealth without owning huge swathes of land: in due course they began generating far more wealth than landowners, whose relative power declined so that capital replaced land as the source of political power - movement from feudalism to capitalism.

The political change resulted from a fundamental economic change, which in turn resulted from technical change in the preceding centuries. It is likely that this pattern will be repeated. We are already in a position when great wealth can be generated without access to huge amounts of capital - through ICT. Many goods that are popular and responsible for an increasing proportion of expenditure have zero marginal cost. Robotics and other infant technology already help us imagine a society where the concept of work is radically different. Imagine what it might be like in 50, 100, 300 years time...

I think that it is unlikely that capitalism is the end of history and that there will be no further economic revolution, which consequent political change around the ownership and control of society. Marx hoped it would be communism that replaced capitalism - but perhaps it will an ICT dominated oligarchy,  who dominate not through control capital, but of knowledge - an instead of communism we will have, the opposite - a planet wide oligarchy.

Who knows but technological change drives economic change which in turn affects how society is ruled and controlled.

 

[Badger 2,405]

5 hours ago, horsefly said:

6 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

To backup your point BB, here is a graph showing the growth in global wealth over time. 

And the relevance of this is what?

I think RTB is trying to demonstrate the profoundly beneficial impact that the development of socialism from the 19th Century has had upon GDP (Wealth).

BTW - the graph is complete nonsense - If you read the y axis and RTB's guidelines, he is suggesting that global wealth in 2000 was 50 Million dollars - that would barely cover the revenue of a premier league team at the time! I don't know where he gets this nonsense🤦‍♂️

[Barbe bleu 814]

On 16/04/2021 at 17:48, Yellow Fever said:

Isn't that called the Renaissance and basically was when people started to throw off and question religion?  The age of Reason?

Yes, 

 

 

Edited December 26, 2022 by Barbe bleu

[Barbe bleu 814]

On 16/04/2021 at 19:38, Badger said:

I'm presuming by bang, you mean capitalist  revolution - but I know that I might have misinterpreted you.

I'm not sure that it could have happened at anytime in the last several thousand years. There has been capitalists - merchants using money (capital) to buy or make goods to sell at a profit and so on. However, until the nineteenth century, ownership of land was the key to power and wealth. Sure some traders became wealthy, but never even approaching then wealth of the big landowners. 

 

.

Edited December 26, 2022 by Barbe bleu

[Yellow Fever 3,747]

1 hour ago, Barbe bleu said:

Yes, I would agree that the acceptance of the scientific method was key to the 'bang'. But in itself it cannot explain 'progress'

And scientific progress cannot be decoupled from capitalism and empire.  

We use the terms 'voyage of discovery' as  metaphor now but it wasn't always the case. We only need to think of darwins voyage to know that this was once a literal thing.

Would darwins voyage (or those of Cook etc) have happened without the royal navy , nope.   Would the Royal navy have been built in the way it was but for capitalists seeking  new markets abroad and building the stock market and insurance companies to share the risk, nope.

By capitalism I mean the capitalism certianly of the masses, but also of the elite.  At some point the elite stopped funding jousts, feasts and processions   and started putting money into voyages instead.  Money+empire + scientific method = development.

Hell for sure it was a combination  that enriched some and exploited others but,  for better or worse, it made the 'pie' bigger.

 

 

I think that's part of it but many other empires I.e China had similar outlooks and indeed fleets of discovery (possibly even US Pacific coast). Our view of world history can  be very parochial.

I think you really have to look for the industrial revolution as the point of no return ... and in England at that time a fortuitous set of circumstances and stability. By contrast the ancient Greeks were on the cusp of the same when their civilization was swept away ... they had some steam 'toys'. Then again much of our mathematics is of Islamic origin as Al Gebra and Al Gorithm and so on.

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

1 hour ago, Barbe bleu said:

Exactly!  Europe until around 15th century was an irrelevance.  If a European power had marched on the ottoman or Chinese empires none of its soldiers would have returned. None could compete on any measure of size, power or wealth with these goliaths (and probably any number of lesser entities) so why was the enlightenment and the agricultural and industrial revolutions not begun in Baghdad, Cairo, or Beijing?  Probably because these will empires had no need for investment, wealth for them was enough.  But without investment  of capital (capitalism) progress is piecemeal. 

It was in Europe that investment became a practice of the rich and the powerful.

Remember though that even the modestly rich can invest in stocks so whilst modest chinese merchants could not fund a voyage of discovery or employ an army of scientists to improve agricultural standards  a group of Dutch merchants, each putting in a modest sum could. It just took someone to invent the stock market. And if that is not capitalism, then nothing is.

Yes, but, and I don't know whether this has been satisfactorily explained, there has also been a distinct geographical movement. From the first civilisations around the Tigris and Euphrates (they occured in India around the same time, and perhaps China, but China, though greatly civilised was generally not expansionist by nature) power has moved westwards.

From Persia to Greece and later Rome and then later to Iberia (partly through Islam) and up into France as well, and then towards northern Europe and the British Isles. With Britain dominating as the world power in what historians call the long nineteenth century, ending with world war one.

Power moved across the Atlantic to the US, and even in that one country it has arguably moved west to Silicon Valley, and now perhaps is going across the Pacific to China. I should say this neat analysis doesn't take much account of the way power has changed over the centuries. One used to be able to measure it by the number of gunboats a nation could put to sea. Not so simple to quantify or so physically visible now.

Edited April 16, 2021 by PurpleCanary

[Yellow Fever 3,747]

20 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

Yes, but, and I don't know whether this has been satisfactorily explained, there has also been a distinct geographical movement. From the first civilisations around the Tigris and Euphrates (they occured in India around the same time, and perhaps China, but China, though greatly civilised was generally not expansionist by nature) power has moved westwards.

From Persia to Greece and later Rome and then later to Iberia (partly through Islam) and up into France as well, and then towards northern Europe and the British Isles. With Britain dominating as the world power in what historians call the long nineteenth century, ending with world war one.

Power moved across the Atlantic to the US, and even in that one country it has arguably moved west to Silicon Valley, and now perhaps is going across the Pacific to China. I should say this neat analysis doesn't take much account of the way power has changed over the centuries. One used to be able to measure it by the number of gunboats a nation could put to sea. Not so simple to quantify or so physically visible now.

Yes I like that. I've also heard that maritime nations also historically drove technology as ships and navigation are intrinsically technical undertakings.

[horsefly 4,287]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/we-now-have-13-year-olds-shot-dead-on-camera-but-still-nothing-changes/ar-BB1fIwY8?ocid=msedgntp

[Badger 2,405]

12 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

Would darwins voyage (or those of Cook etc) have happened without the royal navy , nope.   Would the Royal navy have been built in the way it was but for capitalists seeking  new markets abroad and building the stock market and insurance companies to share the risk, nope.

I think that both happened regardless of capitalism and actually predate it. The big expansion of the UK navy was during the 16th Century and was primarily a response to external threats. You may recall that England was something of a "pariah nation" following after leaving the Catholic Church so that Henry 8 could marry Anne Boleyn. Whilst Britain was able to control the seas around itself, it was safe from invasion - the Spanish Armada is the classic example of this (although fortune and the weather was perhaps the determining factor). 

The voyages of discovery largely started at the end of the 15th Century and the start of 16th Century*. They were not funded by capitalists (who could not have afforded to at this stage) but by monarchs. They were the product of feudalism, not capitalism.

* eg Columbus set sail in 1492. The first Circumnavigation of the world was by Magellan starting in 1519. Both were funded by the Spanish King.

[Badger 2,405]

13 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

Exactly!  Europe until around 15th century was an irrelevance.  If a European power had marched on the ottoman or Chinese empires none of its soldiers would have returned. None could compete on any measure of size, power or wealth with these goliaths (and probably any number of lesser entities) so why was the enlightenment and the agricultural and industrial revolutions not begun in Baghdad, Cairo, or Beijing? 

I agree that Europe would have  failed in an invasion of the Ottoman Empire. Equally, however, the Ottomans were never able to conquer Europe: they never got further than Vienna. This is simply a question of logistics, not economic system - supply lines become overstretched.

Several hundred years later, Napoleon failed in his attempt to conquer Russia in 1812 and even in the 20th Century Hitler couldn't conquer the USSR. Marching on China, was simply unimaginable.

Of course, China was technically far more advanced than Europe. It was nothing to do with capitalism.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Badger

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

38 minutes ago, Badger said:

I agree that Europe would have  failed in an invasion of the Ottoman Empire. Equally, however, the Ottomans were never able to conquer Europe: they never got further than Vienna. This is simply a question of logistics, not economic system - supply lines become overstretched.

Several hundred years later, Napoleon failed in his attempt to conquer Russia in 1812 and even in the 20th Century Hitler couldn't conquer the USSR. Marching on China, was simply unimaginable.

Of course, China was technically far more advanced than Europe. It was nothing to do with capitalism.

There is an American adage:

'Never eat at a diner called Ma's. Never play poker with a guy named Doc, and never start a land war in Asia.'

[Barbe bleu 814]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

 

The voyages of discovery largely started at the end of the 15th Century and the start of 16th Century*. They were not funded by capitalists (who could not have afforded to at this stage) but by monarchs. They were the product of feudalism, not capitalism.

* eg Columbus set sail in 1492. The first Circumnavigation of the world was by Magellan starting in 1519. Both were funded by the Spanish King.

Columbus voyage happened because of capitalism.  He pimped himself around the European elite until he found a monarch willing to invest. 

The cash was from feudal enterprise but it is not the origin of the funds that makes it capital, rather it becomes capital when it is invested in order to produce a return on investment.  This is the essence of capitalism. If funds are spent not on trying to make a return they are simply wealth

Contrast this to the Chinese emperor. He put money into fleets but he expected no return. He was happy that a grand fleet displayed his wealth and power. Progress in China was slow because it lacked state sponsored capitalism. Within a short time of building  a vast fleet the once biggest and most powerful empire in the world was being bullied by tiny European nations

 

If capitalism wasn't a massive driving force how on earth were the Dutch once the most powerful people on earth?  The answer is they invented the stock market, national debt and various other capitalist institutions. That is what elevated the Netherlands from an irrelevant part of an irrelevant continent to a nation that had an empire that spanned the world and - like it or not, for better or worse- helped kick-start the various revolutions.

 

Edited April 17, 2021 by Barbe bleu

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

So what would we call the Vikings?

Capitalists? Murderers? Adventurers?

 

[ricardo 7,345]

1 minute ago, keelansgrandad said:

So what would we call the Vikings?

Capitalists? Murderers? Adventurers?

 

Scandinavian Immigrants.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

10 minutes ago, ricardo said:

Scandinavian Immigrants.

But was it called Scandinavia then?🤔

It was probably Norse Code.

[Barbe bleu 814]

 

20 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

So what would we call the Vikings?

Capitalists? Murderers? Adventurers?

 

All of them?

Capitalism made the modern world. Historians ranging from Marxist anti imperialists to right leaning liberals agree on this.

But you can make heaven or you can make hell.  Opinions here are divided

Edited April 17, 2021 by Barbe bleu

[Badger 2,405]

21 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

The cash was from feudal enterprise but it is not the origin of the funds that makes it capital, rather it becomes capital when it is invested in order to produce a return on investment.  This is the essence of capitalism. If funds are spent not on trying to make a return they are simply wealth

I think that you mistake making a profit with capitalism. The desire to make a profit through trade has existed through millenia and long predates capitalism as the dominant economic system.

21 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

Progress in China was slow because it lacked state sponsored capitalism

China was many centuries in advance of Europe in a whole range of technical areas - e.g gunpowder, printing, the compass and paper. The conditions for capitalism existed in China well before they did in Europe. Why it did not is question of much debate. 

23 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

If capitalism wasn't a massive driving force how on earth were the Dutch once the most powerful people on earth.  The answer is they invented the stock market, national debt and various other capitalist institutions. That is what elevated the Netherlands from an irrelevant part of an irrelevant continent to a nation thst had an empire that spanned the world and - like it or not, for better or worse- helped kick-start the various revolutions.

I'm not sure that the Dutch were ever "the most powerful nation on earth" and if they were it was only for a brief period but they were a dominant trading power. They were, as you say, very innovative financially. As a nation they only attained independence from Spain in the 16th Century and consequently its feudal aristocratic class was relatively weak enabling it to become the first capitalist nation. Despite this, however, they did not become the first industrial nation: as I understand your hypothesis, I would have imagined that they should have become?

[Badger 2,405]

27 minutes ago, ricardo said:

Scandinavian Immigrants.

For most of us... ancestors 😃

[Badger 2,405]

12 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

All of them?

Capitalism made the modern world. Historians ranging from Marxist anti imperialists to right leaning liberals agree on this.

I don't think many historians would class vikings as "capitalists" but they were, of course, big traders. Most vikings were, as you might expect, agrarian rather than capitalist.

The direction of causality between capitalism and the modern world is more complex that you suggest. Capitalism could not have become the dominant societal system without the scientific, technical and societal change that predated it. However, I agree with you that capitalism also served to drive technical change and shape the modern world.

[Yellow Fever 3,747]

Historically I don't think calling any of the historical 'voyages or conquests of discovery' capitalism helps. Few adventures where really privately as opposed to 'state' (or tribe/ king) funded at heart. Did even the US / Russia vie to get into space and the moon for capitalism or for other reasons ? Sure these days capitalism now plays an increasing role in 'space' but is 50+ years since man landed on the moon so it hasn't exactly been quick!. 

Was Genghis Khan a capitalist - he did (with his Mongol descendants) after all have the largest historical contiguous empire from the gates of Vienna to Beijing and Korea etc. Anxious days even in western Europe lest we forget (the Huns are coming !!!). I'm not sure those that wish to consider him a capitalist as opposed to brutal conqueror would of wished to of lived (or more likely died) under him !

I think its fairer to say historically human greed, poverty and power has driven people and tribes by whatever means they had to hand to explore and conquer the world.

I think the word capitalism only comes into play in modern times.

[Barbe bleu 814]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

I don't think many historians would class vikings as "capitalists" but they were, of course, big traders. Most vikings were, as you might expect, agrarian rather than capitalist.

The direction of causality between capitalism and the modern world is more complex that you suggest. Capitalism could not have become the dominant societal system without the scientific, technical and societal change that predated it. However, I agree with you that capitalism also served to drive technical change and shape the modern world.

I was being  a bit flippant in calling Vikings capitalists.  Who knows in their eyes maybe they were.

To the wider point, yes I agree. Capitalism + science  + empire (+ minor factors) formed the modern world. It built on piecemeal changes but these were the fizzing fuse before the big bang

Edited April 17, 2021 by Barbe bleu

[Rock The Boat 1,325]

On 16/04/2021 at 19:45, Badger said:

I think RTB is trying to demonstrate the profoundly beneficial impact that the development of socialism from the 19th Century has had upon GDP (Wealth).

BTW - the graph is complete nonsense - If you read the y axis and RTB's guidelines, he is suggesting that global wealth in 2000 was 50 Million dollars - that would barely cover the revenue of a premier league team at the time! I don't know where he gets this nonsense🤦‍♂️

I think you have misread the scale, in 2000 it is $50 million million.

[Rock The Boat 1,325]

On 16/04/2021 at 17:26, keelansgrandad said:

Utter tosh. It isn't about a collective. Its about society having the input and sharing in the reward.

To achieve this, other factors have to align.

But the ruling classes, frightened that their power and wealth, so long dependent on the labours and obedience of their servile workers, would diminish, never allowed anything other than their system to prevail.

It is utter tosh to deny that the root of communism is a collectivist philosophy and double tosh to replace collectivism with the vague term 'society' as  you have done. You then compound this vagueness by talking about society having the input and sharing the reward which is so ill-defined as to have no meaning whatsoever.

'To achieve this other factors have to align'. What other factors and how are they supposed to align? Again you've supplied a throwaway line that really has no meaning.

Which is a big shame as you were earlier mentioning the Triumph collective as an example of an alternative system working within  capitalist environment, so I had hoped you'd describe in a little more detail about how it was able to operate, even though it did eventually fail. Nevertheless, you did prove my point that collectives can operate when entry and exit to the system is a voluntary choice. So we have Triumph factories, kibbutzes and hippy communes all operating under their own steam in a capitalist system. There are thousands of people living 'off-grid', just search Youtube for off-grid living and you will find hundreds of videos explaining how it is possible to live a non-capitalist life style yet separated from an overarching capitalist system. And the ruling classes have no power to prevent people from living in a collectivist system if that is what they choose to do. People can and do opt out of capitalism.

But that wasn't really the point I was making, which was collectivist systems fail, you can use the term society if you feel more comfortable with that, when there is no mechanism to allow people to opt out of the collective. Which is exactly what happened in communist countries such as Russia, China, North Korea and Cambodia. And the only way the ruling class (and lets not kid ourselves that a ruling class does not appear in communist systems because hierarchies of power appear in every system) can keep order is to use totalitarian methods. As a result, the communist collective very quickly transmutes to a totalitarian state, allowing western lefties to claim they were never communist in the first place.

Edited April 19, 2021 by Rock The Boat

[A Load of Squit 5,128]

Panorama this evening.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56779190

"A really shocking incident was a young black man who received a picture of a banana. But that banana had his head superimposed upon it - and underneath it said: Banana Man. That is a deeply offensive and deeply racist image.

"He took it to HR [human resources department] and he did file a grievance. And the decision was that it wasn't racist.

 

[horsefly 4,287]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/united-nations-experts-condemn-shocking-race-report-and-call-for-commission-to-be-scrapped/ar-BB1fO59c?ocid=msedgntp

An arm of the United Nations has condemned the “shocking” Race Commission report ordered by Boris Johnson and called for the body to be scrapped.

The widely-criticised study is attacked for “ignoring racial disparities” and for “shifting the blame for the impacts of racism to the people most impacted by it”.

“In 2021, it is stunning to read a report on race and ethnicity that repackages racist tropes and stereotypes into fact, twisting data and misapplying statistics and studies,” say experts from the UN Human Rights Council.

They conclude: “The reality is that People of African descent continue to experience poor economic, social, and health outcomes at vastly disproportionate rates in the UK.”

The statement also attacks “the report’s mythical representation of enslavement is an attempt to sanitise the history of the trade in enslaved Africans”.

Notoriously, it pointed to “a new story about the Caribbean experience which speaks to the slave period not only being about profit and suffering but how culturally African people transformed themselves into a re-modelled African/Britain”.

The experts say: “This is a reprehensible, although not unfamiliar tactic, employed by many whose wealth came directly from the enslavement of others, ever since slavery was outlawed.”

[horsefly 4,287]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/church-of-england-clergy-paid-off-to-keep-quiet-about-racism/ar-BB1fNSC4?ocid=msedgntp

Clergy and staff who complained of racism in the Church of England were paid off to “buy their silence”, according to the church’s former race adviser.

 

[Jools 584]

Standing ovation for Kemi Badenoch would be in order:

👏👏👏👏👏

 

The time is long overdue for the likes of Butler & Maxine Waters over the water to be told how it is and what they are..

[Herman 9,713]

"I hate you Butler."

[Mr.Carrow 376]

https://www.persuasion.community/p/who-decides-whats-racist?fbclid=IwAR0pw9959iVapA3RMjkc12bnB_uAb1ac-3wkSCQz8I1Ex1SCPfyxjjq0vXo

[horsefly 4,287]

2 hours ago, Herman said:

"I hate you Butler."