crime colour-blind?

[Sosiba]

Now I have a very rudimentary understanding of socialism but let me proceed thus

I think this really brings in the question of whether in a capitalist system you can ever be pro The People... Panic, the problem with the black middle cla** is that they become  liberal. We see a possibility of us all just getting along; in our schools, workplaces we interact with white people. This compromises our ability to state the demands of the poor ma**es, more even to work towards effecting such demands. We constantly have to re-structure our opinions on race because some of our friends are white.

A friend of mine pointed out that, though we might be conscious of the troubles facing our people it is really in our own material interests not to take radical actions to redress such problems. A lot of opportunities are available for the black educated but they cannot sieze these opportunities without somehow changing their principles on many issues.

So I cosign what "Me" said (save for raping white women)... The government has had some good hearted ideas the recnt proposal of giving evryone free medical-aid standard care. But how do you fund such? Can we afford it in the current economic reallity? The reallity is that I'd like to get a job at some big paying company, but once I'm there my materail interest will require that I abandon these ideas, or at least not act on them. So if we the educated brothers are bound to let down our people does it not mean the only way the feared violent revolution?

[Dpleezy]

That's right, it's easy to be co-opted by the system. The system in SA is capitalism. White people are currently the main beneficiaries of years of inequitable capitalism, but this will gradually change over the years (probably many generations) now that there are no actual laws preventing black people from getting into the game.

The problem now is that capitalist systems tend not to give a f*** about poor people who are generally left with horrible housing, no health care, poor (or no) education, lack of safety and security etc etc. This makes getting into the game incredibly difficult (or even impossible in some circumstances).

The whole world is so entrenched in the capitalist system that it is hard to see South Africa ever adopting anything else. If the South Africa government declared tomorrow that it was going to be switching to some form of communism or radical socialism, investors would pull out immediately triggering an economic meltdown that would leave no money in the system to pay for any kind of social upliftment.

We're working with a company that has a subtle but, I think, radical approach. They're setting up a social investment stock exchange which basically works within the capitalist system to 'fund' meaningful social and environmental projects.

As they say,,, "...business can no longer operate in isolation from society or the environment... Never before has there been so much capital in search of meaningful, high quality socially and environmentally productive enterprise opportunities."

I believe that this is one possible way for poor communities to get out of the capitalist trap.

Check out NeXii - http://www.nexii.com/

[The Angry Hand of God]

The whole world is so entrenched in the capitalist system that it is hard to see South Africa ever adopting anything else. If the South Africa government declared tomorrow that it was going to be switching to some form of communism or radical socialism, investors would pull out immediately triggering an economic meltdown that would leave no money in the system to pay for any kind of social upliftment.

That may be true for any other country, but not SA. Our abundance of natural resources means the world are dependent on us for many things. Gold, Platinum, Manganese, diamonds. etc. are all minerals of which we are the world's leading exporter.
If only we had oil, we would be able to say f*** you to the rest of the world and they would have to do what we want regardless of our politics.

We are capable of nationalising mines and turning socialist and I think we would actually have an increased flow of currency to our lower income groups (I said I think, this is by no means fact, since I haven't really had time to research this).

Look at Venezuela. Chavez has instituted a shitload of socialist policies and nationalised a lot of the industries which previously benefited from the country's mineral wealth and labour force. Though foreign investors pulled out en ma**e the Venezuelan people are better off than ever before, because now the country's wealth actually reaches them and they can see a difference.

Of course there is now a rebel group opposing him, but I think this has more to do with the US who is known to fund any group in South America who is against socialism, despite the obvious failure of capitalism.

Read up on the "trickle-down theory". It's an economic theory which basically states that advances in gains usually start at the top and then trickle down through the various cla**es until it also benefits the poor. This is a blatant pot of bullshit, since it so obviously attempts to justify the capitalist system by telling people to just be patient and eventually the riches from your masters will reach you too.
This is the bullshit on which a lot of our government's decisions seem to be based. "Just be patient and admire our Benzes and Range ROvers. If you work hard enough you can one day drive one too."

I refuse to believe this. Unless we reverse this process and use a system in which all gains are ploughed into development of the poor and then the left-overs can be used to line the pockets of those who already have enough.

We can talk about action from the middle-cla** till we are blue in the face, but I believe the only real option we have to change things is socialism. I am talking about real socialism (anarchist) and not the bullshit communist version which relies on the "withering away of the state". This will never happen since all communist states actively enforce laws which prevent this withering away and maintain the status quo.

This leads to a dictatorship of the new elite. Bakunin called it a dictatorship of the intellectuals, which pretends to be a dictatorship of the people.