Comments on Das Capital

I'd keep that small kid away from the fat one. He looks like he has self control issues and there's still some meat on those bones.

Let's see what are these juxtaposed pictures showing: capitalism provides goods and services so cheaply that one of the largest problems poor people face in the US is too many calories and obesity, whereas places with socialism tend towards having problems with basic sustenance and disease. Is that what you're showing here?

Sucks to be the black kid.

And the fat kid was BORN that way. It has nothing to do with his diet. And I heard that from a fat mother on the #64 heading to work last week.

Dumb.

@4, no you're dumb!

The success of the privatized rebuilding of Iraq and New Orleans shows how outdated this image is. Coca Cola is hardly the symbol of international capitalism in the 21st century. Today it's Halliburton.

Just picture this same image constructed around Halliburton and Iraq and then try to tell me there is a defect anywhere to be found in free markets and private capital.

Don't worry 'spanky' there will keel over someday from over eating, even after his family in the christian ways have given to the charitable causes in Africa. 'God' is a twisted one indeed.

Good to see the Stranger employs someone with such a knack for intellectual discourse. How fucking old are you? 12?

@6 maybe. but i think halliburton is capitalism run amok, like pointed to a puppet democracy and using it to discredit the idea of people governing for themselves. what would the poster for communism, or socialism look like? a skinny kid and a grave, with a fat, well dressed dictator on a poster in the background?

Let's see what are these juxtaposed pictures showing: capitalism provides goods and services so cheaply that one of the largest problems poor people face in the US is too many calories and obesity, whereas places with socialism tend towards having problems with basic sustenance and disease.

Socialism? Damn... I'm beginning to think that idiot conservatives don't even really know the meaning of the word. Ask Europeans if this is a depiction of "socialism".

The image on the right is not borne out of socialism, but instead out of war and neo-colonialism at a grand scale. Wars and neo-colonialism, I might add, which have not been helped by American foreign policy over the past hundred years, but have created a system in which your kids can turn into bloated fat fucks that will go blind from type II diabetes by the time they're 20.

So, you're saying that our choices are either living in grotesque comfort with capitalism, or dying in grotesque misery with communism? Easy choice.

which kid would you rather be?

Please direct your hatred at the fat kid's parents and not the kid himself.

No. Not "enough" said.

Capitalism does not require famine: there is plenty of capitalism that works pretty well; there are plenty of famines not caused by capitalism; and any kind of economic system, such as communism and feudalism and capitalism, has produced famines. So, as a proposition, this is rather lame and uninformed.

But, as a visual poem: c'est chique !
If not "radical chouette"!!
Are you going to make T-shirts?
The "Che" silhouettes are passe; there's a huge opening in the "aware," under-30, Third-Worldly set.

@8, my guess would trend toward 16.

bma,

You're probably right that I was painting with too broad a brush with the generic 'socialism', perhaps communism or state-planned totalitarianism would be better.

Capitalism=voluntary transactions (albeit sometimes those choices are bad or unhealthy).

The kid may not have been born that way, but it's no more his fault that he's tremendously fat than it is the starving child's fault that he's skin and bones.

This picture doesn't work. Fat White babies are not killing Black babies with their capitalism.

Capitalists are profitting off both of these kids in two different ways. They are both vitims.

The difference, though, is that the one on the left has a much greater likelihood of getting to be a perpetrator when he grows up than the one on the right does (assuming neither die of their starvation/extra-early-onset-type-II-diabetes first).

Don't blame capitalism, blame Tribalism in Black Africa. I bet you can name at least 8 Black African Tribes that are butchering each other right now...I knew you could.

The black African child isn't being exploited by capitalism. He's being ignored by capitalism. His country has nothing that rich Westerners want, and has no economy that can make stuff people want. So he starves.

The solution is MORE capitalism, not less. Maybe if our country was secure enough in its ideals to open its borders to African goods, they could earn a living there.

The fat kid, though, is just as doomed.

The power of propaganda! Very impressive image to elicit a strong emotional reaction. Of course, it has very little to do with reality.

I have hankerin' for a Big Mac.

People in Africa used to grow food and then eat it. But the capitalists told them they had to borrow money from the IMF and the grow cash crops to sell so they could have dollars to buy food with. Our CIA made sure they got leaders who would play ball. The theory of supply and demand says that in the long run this should work out fine. Sure sometimes markets have bubbles and panics and so on, and so they need a little correction. The starving kid is one such little correction.

If only capitalism had ignored Africa.

Fnarf, are you serious? Are you saying South Africa doesn't have anything that Westerners want? Like, I dunno, diamonds? Or that there was no market for ebony or ivory or Sudanese gold? What about Nigerian oil? Oh, yeah, no market for that stuff either.

Capitalism and imperialism is a problem. It's a problem that Africans don't have control over the diamond market, because DeBeers does. It's a problem that European nations exploited African countries for specific cash crops for centuries ruining their lands.

Africa has plenty of natural resources full of things westerners want. The problem is that Africans aren't in control of those natural resources. Westerners are. And that is the failure of capitalism.

@21, maybe in Latin America, but the CIA didn't do that much in Africa. Nor did they have to listen to the IMF.

A big part of the problem in Africa is a larger population then economy. Much of this is due to things like medicine and cheap imported food. Both are products of capitalism, but not exactly nefarious ones.

In non-industrialized societies most kids die before reaching adulthood so population growth is restrained. People might have 10 kids, but 6 or 7 of them die.

Cheaper food, medicine, World Vision and the like come in and save those kids resulting in massive population growth. unfortunately no one really gave any thought to what those kids would do as adults.

Large populations with no jobs, food, or houses equals revolution instability and further poverty.

a big f you @27. you don't know what you're talking about.

Das *K*apital

woops Charles, turns out your beloved Marxist economies like Cuba and North Korea are the ones who have trouble feeding themselves. Africa is fucked because of primitive and dysfunctional tribalism. They need more capitalism not less.

In a one-on-one, my money's on the fat kid.

ENJOY COMMUNISM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Holodomor.jpg

Unutterable in its triteness, in its lameness, reeking of patchouli and spilled bongwater, all this says is:

1. Somewhere there is a fat white kid
2. Somewhere there is a starving African kid
3. Somewhere there is still a 19-year-old who thinks putting 1 + 2 together (a collage, no less! Like Kurt Schwitters!) is a radical unveiling of the truth about Capitalism.

@23,

It's really counterintuitive, but expanding access to medicine in the Third World actually helps their economies.

One example: if a family is saddled with a chronically ill family member (think AIDS or tuberculosis), that family has to waste time and resources helping that family member. The sick relative can't work and other relatives have to take time away from seeking work/working in order to nurse that relative. Take that burden away and those people have a better chance of realizing some of their potential.

And, of course, increased access to medicine equals increased access to birth control.

I love it when "educated" people come on a blogging board and prove their ignorance

@ #23 Is spot on accurate. THAT is a large part of the problem.

# #30 you are clueless, and is typical ignorant liberal spin. That example is ridiculous in actual practicality and shows you are an idealist and not a realist. Most of the poor/starving have very little if any large family unit to fall back on. They don't have "work" to miss or take time away from in the first place.

Ohh .. and increased medicine equals increased access to birth control? Huh? The reality of the situation is that most of the men are taking the birth control pills thinking that it will keep them from giving babies and disease to females. For the most part they are so universally ignorant and uneducated they can't help themselves even if they wanted to.

And let's not even start going down the path of having more and more children equates to increased "wealth" and "stature" in their economy, nevermind that they don't have the common sense to think that another child might be more of a burden on themselves and their overall community.

Ultimately @ #29 sums up this post and it's relative importance.

Reality Check

@30 no they don't. They don't have the ability to . Their family member dies and they move on. the idea that there is something they can do is simply an artifact of white/industrial privilege.

Reality Check and Giffy, the reason you are sputtering and frothing at the mouth and calling people names is that the truth hurts. You have an emotional investment in an ideology and you'll say anything to protect it.

You're calling Africans stupid. And Latin Americans. And most of Asia, and on and on. Everywhere you want to blame people for being stupid because you're too afraid to loosen your grip on your ideology. Oh, and of course, everybody who tries to tell you differently is stupid.

Everybody else is so, so, so stupid. If you really were so much smarter it would be easy for you to say something with a little depth and insight instead of just spewing insults.

@22 -- I take your point, but can we PLEASE move beyond diamonds as the West-friendly export reference point most often deployed for South Africa?

Instead, let us resolve to cite a Rustenberg Peter Barlow, Stellenbosch, 2004. Deep ruby-red. Pure, perfumed aromas of cassis, minerals, licorice and flowers. Extremely primary wine, entering the mouth with subtlety, then building inexorably in silky texture, concentration and power. Wonderfully spicy and penetrating, finishing with noble, sweet tannins and superb persistence. A great wine in the making, but still an infant.

Ahhh...is it 5pm yet?

@33 I don;t recall doing any sputtering or name calling. I also never said Africans were stupid.

Outside intervention has done a number on Africa, just not in the way people often think.

Capitalism and communism are not the only two types of political systems in the world, and an indictment of the underbelly of capitalism is not an endorsement for communism, for Chrissakes! The failings of this or that communist regime are completely irrelevant to a discussion on the image Charles posted.

#36

Communism is discussed because it represents total government control (so far I know of no pure communist utopia without a government middleman) verses the hands off policy of pure capitalism.

This makes Communism the logical swing of the pendulum and thus totally relevant.

Personally, I think the reason the african baby is starving is not due to any ideology, but to the fact that humans are generally assholes.