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You are completely right in your pedantry. well done you. How-bleedin-ever the term 'capitalism' now means something else, especially to a large group of people who describe themselves as capitalists. Language is like that, it evolves, no amount of bitching about it is going to stop it.

Not only that, but scoring linguistic points is extremely childish. We all know what morfe means, and so do you or you wouldnt go off like a car alarm, so STFU with the origin of the word argument. The orgin is irrelevant, what it means now is important, go read 'language is a virus' by William Burroughs.

I believe morfe was also actually underlining some elements of yr argument, as in 'if capitalism means A then why do they do B'. Whereas you go 'wah! wah! its not capitalism, its not what Marx defined', the rest of the world has learned to expand the meaning of capitalism to encompass all free market western democracies. Whereas the US is actually acting like any good ole imperialist nation on an empire building cycle, we'll just call it evil bad capitalist. Is that okay with you ?

Back to the other point, money, its origin. Aristotle was around when that was happening, and he said, something to the effect of, 'The trouble with money is people will see the purpose of it is to hoard it without end'

but don't you think that america and britain are better described as "democracies" - where any capitalistic expanisonist activity is justified as the political will of the inhabitants within a framework of international law.

BTW I mean "in theory" here because its obvious there is no such thing as international law that can't be gotten around. This is the problem. America getting round international law the way it did in Iraq shows the same level of breach and same lack of respect for international agreement as any terrorist. But it's not 'capitalism' that's the problem in my opinion.

Mofre's rant uses "capitalism" as a be-all bogeyman. He basically ascribes everything to "capitalism" without showing any indication what he means by that. He uses "capitalism" where he could use more specific terms -- money, greed, consumerism, economics, democracy, "Westernism" -- these are not all the same thing.

And of course you've also got a few "anarchists" running around here who will tell you the Soviets, China, N. Korea et al and every state that ever defined itself as "Marxist" and "anti-capitalist" was really "(state) capitalist" too. That really clears things up.

So if "capitalism" is everywhere at all times and places and is the repository of all that is wrong in the world -- what is there left to debate?

It's like an evangelical ranting about Satan -- he's everywhere and everything bad is his fault. So you can say "Damn you Satan!" but then what?

And I'm sorry my fancy words and attention to "meaning" bothers you. May have something to do with all those degrees in sociology I have.

I'm increasingly thinking I should just stick to the musical discussions around here . . .