NationStates Jolt Archive

All this talk of Marxism; I say that it is obsolete. Class conflict is no longer the defining attribute of our social institutions. We are our own "oppressors".

Follow the lines of power through our economy. Workers are being "exploited" by their employers. These employers are frequently large corporations that do whatever it takes to make money. Their CEOs are people who are skilled at making a lot of money for corporations, and are paid large sums of money to do so. If they fail to "exploit" the company's assets properly, they are fired. By the owners, who are the shareholders. It's the shareholders who have the real power. The fact that companies pay to find the best exploiters-for-hire is because the shareholders prioritize company profits (or stock prices actually) over everything else. Who are these bourgeois shareholders who are behind capitalist exploitation of the proletariat? Why, they are the workers, who have invested their money in mutual funds and retirement accounts with the purpose of saving as much money as possible, investing for financial maximization rather than social responsibility.

Therefore, in America, the proletariat = the bourgeoisie

That's not to say that capitalism is grand, just that Marxism incorrectly describes the underlying problem as being that of one group of people exploiting another, when in today's reality it's the structure of the system rather than class conflict that is the reason for capitalism's faults.

Amiright?

This is bourgeois, Trotskyist propaganda.

No friend, oppression is just better hidden these days.

No friend, oppression is just better hidden these days.Then I ask you who is doing the oppressing, and wherefore?

All this talk of Marxism; I say that it is obsolete. Class conflict is no longer the defining attribute of our social institutions. We are our own "oppressors".

Follow the lines of power through our economy. Workers are being "exploited" by their employers. These employers are frequently large corporations that do whatever it takes to make money. Their CEOs are people who are skilled at making a lot of money for corporations, and are paid large sums of money to do so. If they fail to "exploit" the company's assets properly, they are fired. By the owners, who are the shareholders. It's the shareholders who have the real power. The fact that companies pay to find the best exploiters-for-hire is because the shareholders prioritize company profits (or stock prices actually) over everything else. Who are these bourgeois shareholders who are behind capitalist exploitation of the proletariat? Why, they are the workers, who have invested their money in mutual funds and retirement accounts with the purpose of saving as much money as possible, investing for financial maximization rather than social responsibility.

Therefore, in America, the proletariat = the bourgeoisie

That's not to say that capitalism is grand, just that Marxism incorrectly describes the underlying problem as being that of one group of people exploiting another, when in today's reality it's the structure of the system rather than class conflict that is the reason for capitalism's faults.

Amiright?

I would encourage a read of this, I think it adequately describes your mindset.

2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism

A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.

To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.

We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophis de la Misère as an example of this form.

The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.

A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.

Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.

Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.

It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class.

Eh. Marxism has never been a viable solution to my mind, but obsolete is another thing entirely.

Follow the lines of power through our economy. Workers are being "exploited" by their employers. These employers are frequently large corporations that do whatever it takes to make money. Their CEOs are people who are skilled at making a lot of money for corporations, and are paid large sums of money to do so. If they fail to "exploit" the company's assets properly, they are fired. By the owners, who are the shareholders. It's the shareholders who have the real power. The fact that companies pay to find the best exploiters-for-hire is because the shareholders prioritize company profits (or stock prices actually) over everything else. Who are these bourgeois shareholders who are behind capitalist exploitation of the proletariat? Why, they are the workers, who have invested their money in mutual funds and retirement accounts with the purpose of saving as much money as possible, investing for financial maximization rather than social responsibility.


It's a solid system, but employees rarely hold a considerable share in their companies, and couldn't eliminate abuses even if they did. The number of people who own stock is rising, and expanding in scope to include lower-income earners, which is outstanding, but that's never going to be our real failsafe in terms of ethics. I prefer the SEC, there. :p

Then I ask you who is doing the oppressing, and wherefore?

How many percentage of people get their income from capital gains (surplus value extracted from capital), and how much percentage get it from wage-labor? There's your answer.

How many percentage of people get their income from capital gains (surplus value extracted from capital), and how much percentage get it from wage-labor? There's your answer.But if you took away these people, or their money, nothing would change. Therefore they may be the ones who have figured out how to make the systematic "oppression" benefit them, but they aren't its perpetuators, and they aren't the oppressors.

I would encourage a read of this, I think it adequately describes your mindset.
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
That's utterly ridiculous.

1) It doesn't describe a the mindset of anybody on the face of this Earth save a few dictators. Those who desire the redress of social grievances don't do so to improve their own power unless they are frickin Musharraf. That's not to say that redress of specific grievances may function to strengthen the capitalist system, but that doesn't say anything about motivations.

2) It's entirely beside the point to question my motivations. The validity of my argument has nothing to do with whether I'm some kind of cryptocapitalist. Besides, I'm not one of the beneficiaries here - I make fourteen-something / hour in a place where I have to pay $1000/mo in rent for a decent place.

You do realize that the distribution of stock ownership (and other kinds of wealth) is absurdly lopsided?

All modern capitalism has done is blur the lines... a little.

You do realize that the distribution of stock ownership (and other kinds of wealth) is absurdly lopsided?I agree, but I think the perpetuation of the system is no longer predicated on that lopsidedness (although the lopsidedness may be a consequence of it).

1) It doesn't describe a the mindset of anybody on the face of this Earth save a few dictators. Those who desire the redress of social grievances don't do so to improve their own power unless they are frickin Musharraf. That's not to say that redress of specific grievances may function to strengthen the capitalist system, but that doesn't say anything about motivations.

Nonsense. Redress of grievances has been justified in exactly those terms throughout the history of capitalism, from Otto von Bismark to Franklin Roosevelt.

It's no accident that real reform tends to come about most easily when there's serious risk of more radical social unrest.

I agree,

Then there are still class divisions in the relevant sense, and your argument against the Marxist analysis doesn't hold.

But if you took away these people, or their money, nothing would change. Therefore they may be the ones who have figured out how to make the systematic "oppression" benefit them, but they aren't its perpetuators, and they aren't the oppressors.



That's utterly ridiculous.

1) It doesn't describe a the mindset of anybody on the face of this Earth save a few dictators. Those who desire the redress of social grievances don't do so to improve their own power unless they are frickin Musharraf. That's not to say that redress of specific grievances may function to strengthen the capitalist system, but that doesn't say anything about motivations.

2) It's entirely beside the point to question my motivations. The validity of my argument has nothing to do with whether I'm some kind of cryptocapitalist. Besides, I'm not one of the beneficiaries here - I make fourteen-something / hour in a place where I have to pay $1000/mo in rent for a decent place.

But you see, your now going against your own argument that people are naturally greedy and their material incentive motivates them. Thus the material incentive of those who own means of production (capital surplus) is to defend the system which gives you profit. I highly doubt you are a bourgeois proper, highly unlikely given the NSG demographics, but you are probably a urban petite-bourgeois and/or intellectual who defends bourgeois ideology (the intellectual outgrowth of bourgeois property and the political ideology to defend it), so thus you are probably a libertarian, social-democrat or any other bourgeois socialist (as defined by my quote).

I highly doubt your stance (and indeed the red-baiting nature of this thread and others on NSG) is a direct defense of your own bourgeois property (you probably have none), you have some petty personal possessions and somehow you think you owe capitalism for this.

It's sad that so many youths have been trapped into believing abstractions of liberalism which exist only to defend the property of a tiny few, and the emotion appeal of these libertarian-bourgeois ideologies attract people who don't have any material incentive to defend such an ideology. I consider myself a Communist and thus in line with Marxism I consider the interests of the vast working masses to be the greatest good and indeed a inevitability given that socialism will replace capitalism just the same as capitalism replaced feudalism.

So, my question to you is simple, why do you defend something (bourgeois property) which you do not have? I think it overwhelmingly likely that you have no production capital at all, yet you defend it, why? It's ludicrous in the extreme, but instead of going on I'll quote Marx again to elaborate.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.
Why would you defend the property of others, I hardly think theres an altruistic bone in your body yet you defend unfettered bourgeois property when you yourself don't have any.

Tongass, you like all libertarians etc on NSG, are an aberration.

Also Tongass, you better not leave, I am getting warmed up;).

Again, just like our other friend Granada, you revert to trolling, emotional appeals and self-gratifying rhetoric to 'prove a point'. Do you like Tongass make your income through capital gains? I think it would be quite funny (and sad) if you were a wage-labourer and still defending the property that you'll never have and which leeches off your efforts in life.

Then there are still class divisions in the relevant sense, and your argument against the Marxist analysis doesn't hold.
His stance is classic bourgeois, he wants bourgeois society without historical context, without exploitation, without any of it's consequences or the mechanisms that keep it around; ie wage labor. In short as Marx said he wants a bourgeois without a proletariat, which is impossible because who will support the excess of the few at the top? In short he lies to himself and everyone else by saying capitalism can exist permanently, which ignores the historical fact that just like feudalism class relations will forever keep reconstituting themselves until their are abolished (ie communism).

Tongass is actually intellectually dishonest to the core, he knows the exploitative nature of bourgeois society, yet he denies it sometimes and other times he passes it off as a good thing for workers, depending on the situation, he is opportunist to the core. And yet he feels the need to red-bait with topics like this to satiate his ego.

He feels the need to defend the privilege and wealth of others and thus somehow this makes him feel superior. Strange really.

Nonsense. Redress of grievances has been justified in exactly those terms throughout the history of capitalism, from Otto von Bismark to Franklin Roosevelt.The notion that the purpose of FDR's New Deal was to enable his class to keep power is ridiculous conspiracy theorizing.

It's no accident that real reform tends to come about most easily when there's serious risk of more radical social unrest.These days that's only because we live in a democracy - not because the rich feel that their elite status is threatened.

Then there are still class divisions in the relevant sense, and your argument against the Marxist analysis doesn't hold.My argument is that those class divisions aren't what's driving capitalist exploitation, but rather are perhaps a natural consequence of a self-sustaining capitalist system.

But you see, your now going against your own argument that people are naturally greedy and their material incentive motivates them.Although it may be true in part, my argument isn't premised on this, but on factual observation of the economic mechanisms that regulate society.

Thus the material incentive of those who own means of production (capital surplus) is to defend the system which gives you profit.This ill-defined group's defense of the system is not required, because the system is self-sustaining.

I highly doubt you are a bourgeois proper, highly unlikely given the NSG demographics, but you are probably a urban petite-bourgeois and/or intellectual who defends bourgeois ideology (the intellectual outgrowth of bourgeois property and the political ideology to defend it), so thus you are probably a libertarian, social-democrat or any other bourgeois socialist (as defined by my quote).Your masturbatory Marxists semantics are irrelevant to the substance of the discussion.

I highly doubt your stance (and indeed the red-baiting nature of this thread and others on NSG) is a direct defense of your own bourgeois property (you probably have none), you have some petty personal possessions and somehow you think you owe capitalism for this.It's entirely beside the point to question my motivations. The validity of my argument has nothing to do with whether I'm some kind of cryptocapitalist.

It's sad that so many youths have been trapped into believing abstractions of liberalism which exist only to defend the property of a tiny few, and the emotion appeal of these libertarian-bourgeois ideologies attract people who don't have any material incentive to defend such an ideology. I consider myself a Communist and thus in line with Marxism I consider the interests of the vast working masses to be the greatest good and indeed a inevitability given that socialism will replace capitalism just the same as capitalism replaced feudalism.Irrelevant.
So, my question to you is simple, why do you defend something (bourgeois property) which you do not have? I think it overwhelmingly likely that you have no production capital at all, yet you defend it, why?I haven't defended it in this thread, and I have so far made no claims in this thread regarding its validity or lack thereof.

It's ludicrous in the extreme, but instead of going on I'll quote Marx again to elaborate.It will surprise you to know that I actually agree with the quote more than I disagree.

Why would you defend the property of others, I hardly think theres an altruistic bone in your body yet you defend unfettered bourgeois property when you yourself don't have any.I think you should reread my posts more carefully. The argument I'm making isn't the argument you think I'm making.

Tongass, you like all libertarians etc on NSG, are an aberration.Meaningless finger-waving

Again, just like our other friend Granada, you revert to trolling, emotional appeals and self-gratifying rhetoric to 'prove a point'. Do you like Tongass make your income through capital gains? I think it would be quite funny (and sad) if you were a wage-labourer and still defending the property that you'll never have and which leeches off your efforts in life.


His stance is classic bourgeois, he wants bourgeois society without historical context, without exploitation, without any of it's consequences or the mechanisms that keep it around; ie wage labor. In short as Marx said he wants a bourgeois without a proletariat, which is impossible because who will support the excess of the few at the top? In short he lies to himself and everyone else by saying capitalism can exist permanently, which ignores the historical fact that just like feudalism class relations will forever keep reconstituting themselves until their are abolished (ie communism).

Tongass is actually intellectually dishonest to the core, he knows the exploitative nature of bourgeois society, yet he denies it sometimes and other times he passes it off as a good thing for workers, depending on the situation, he is opportunist to the core. And yet he feels the need to red-bait with topics like this to satiate his ego.

He feels the need to defend the privilege and wealth of others and thus somehow this makes him feel superior. Strange really.
The effort you spend defensively slandering me and avoiding the topic of discussion is indicative of your inability to address it on its merits.

No Tongass I am not going to debate with you until I understand your material motivations for doing so, so do you or do you not get your income from capital and the surplus value extracted from it in the form of gains? I would think a wage-labourer defending bourgeois property the most insanely ludicrous thing ever.

Tongass, you can think of my position whatever you will, but my position is not hypocritical while yours surely is.

The effort you spend defensively slandering me and avoiding the topic of discussion is indicative of your inability to address it on its merits.

How is that slanderous? I am simply pointing out that your position is based wholly in nonsensical material motivations, and your arguments are thus completely hypocritical. In short I do not argue abstractions, if you can't place your idea within the context of reality (meaning your personal reality) then it's irrelevant.

How is that slanderous? I am simply pointing out that your position is based wholly in nonsensical material motivations, and your arguments are thus completely hypocritical. In short I do not argue abstractions, if you can't place your idea within the context of reality (meaning your personal reality) then it's irrelevant.

Holy shi....Are you capable of making a post which isn't convoluted and nonsensical? Go back high school.

Marxism was an economic theory. That's why any attempt to use it politically is doomed to either fail dismally or move radically away from the core concepts.

Marxism was an economic theory. That's why any attempt to use it politically is doomed to either fail dismally or move radically away from the core concepts.
Actually Marxism is thus the observation that economic power translates into political power, thus the religion, political system etc are all instruments of the socio-economic order of the day. So thus conservatism is the reflection of the latent remnants of the fast-vanishing feudal relations, the middle-lower classes and farmers. And libertarianism and classical liberalism etc is the reflection of bourgeois property. And Communism and organized labor is the reflection of the growing economic power of the workers.

No Tongass I am not going to debate with you until I understand your material motivations for doing so,1) Why not? An argument's validity is not dependent on its arguers
2) Why must I be materially motivated to hold the position that Marxism does not adequately describe the impetuses of control in today's capitalist society?
3) I am materially motivated to some degree, and I surely would hope to be able to game the system to my own benefit as do others, although I acknowledge that it will not be likely that I'll not be able to do so to the same extent as the richest, and I might even base some of my political positions on such "bourgeois" ideas as liberty, but my argument in this thread is factual, not philosophical, so such things are irrelevant.

so do you or do you not get your income from capital and the surplus value extracted from it in the form of gains?My income comes as an amount (negotiated between an incompetent union and equally incompetant state government) of capital from government coffers that are mostly funded through modest taxation of and leasing of state resource "rights" to large oil companies.

I would think a wage-labourer defending bourgeois property the most insanely ludicrous thing ever.Which is why nowhere in this thread am I defending such property. In fact, if somebody were to address my argument, I would probably have to attack the notion of such property to defend it.

Tongass, you can think of my position whatever you will, but my position is not hypocritical while yours surely is.You have no idea what my position is. I don't even think you've read any of my posts.

How is that slanderous? I am simply pointing out that your position is based wholly in nonsensical material motivations,Actually, you've said yourself that you're having trouble understanding my motivations. And clearly you have not demonstrated any understanding of my argument.
and your arguments are thus completely hypocritical.Arguments aren't hypocritical, people are.

In short I do not argue abstractions,You have argued nothing but the greatest abstractions with your empty, flailing use of Marxist lingo that has no bearing on the hypothesis I've put forth in this thread.

if you can't place your idea within the context of reality (meaning your personal reality) then it's irrelevant.Truth doesn't need my personal reality to be true. In my personal reality. Hmm. Okay, I've met and seen enough of the so-called bourgeoisie to see that they are not evil puppetmasters, but in fact are deluded through propaganda and greed. I've also seen them disposed of and exploited in the same way that wage laborers are - only their bourgeois needs are not real, only imaginary - yet the exploitation is effective all the same. Through careful observation, I've witnessed the way economics is not just a tool, but an all-encompassing system that regulates the sentiments and desires of its participants. This notion that the nefarious attributes of capitalism is somehow the result of lucid ill will is utterly ridiulous when exposed to the reality of how human motivation really works. It if were true, those supposedly in charge would at least demonstrate competance in their corruption. If they were acting on self-interest, then they themselves would benefit. Instead, you see symptoms of psychological disfunction and delusion among the elite as you do the rest of the population. When Marxism says that the impetus is the exploiter, it stops short of coming to terms with its own idea of commodity fetishism. The actions of the rich so that they succumb to this fetish. Would you say that they are knowingly use the capitalism to exploit, but somehow manage to fall victims to their very own tool by working themselves to ill health merely to grow needlessly richer - all the while knowingly using the phenomenon to exploit? I call BS.

1) Why not? An argument's validity is not dependent on its arguers
2) Why must I be materially motivated to hold the position that Marxism does not adequately describe the impetuses of control in today's capitalist society?

[QUOTE]3) I am materially motivated to some degree, and I surely would hope to be able to game the system to my own benefit as do others, although I acknowledge that it will not be likely that I'll not be able to do so to the same extent as the richest, and I might even base some of my political positions on such "bourgeois" ideas as liberty, but my argument in this thread is factual, not philosophical, so such things are irrelevant.
Whether it's false-hope or plain ignorance, your still kidding yourself if you'll think you'll be a bourgeois proper one day. So you see, you've answered my question, your support of bourgeois ideology is not abstract (nor could it be), it's motivated by a forlorn hope of having bourgeois property yourself. It's actually very dishonest for the bourgeois to peddle libertarian like ideologies which give false hope to wage-laborers, not that I am confronting them on moral grounds, they have every material incentive to defend their property, but criticism is that means of their property surplus (the workers) will be the end of their property.


My income comes as an amount (negotiated between an incompetent union and equally incompetant state government) of capital from government coffers that are mostly funded through modest taxation of and leasing of state resource "rights" to large oil companies.
I admit it, I lol'd hard, I think what you meant to say (in all too many words) was that you are a wage-labourer, you get a salary yes? Which is all I need to know.

Tongass, you also have very little actual idea of what the bourgeois really is, which of course explains why in the OP you said the proletariat and bourgeois are exactly the same.

Whether it's false-hope or plain ignorance, your still kidding yourself if you'll think you'll be a bourgeois proper one day. So you see, you've answered my question, your support of bourgeois ideology is not abstract (nor could it be), it's motivated by a forlorn hope of having bourgeois property yourself.Then it may be puzzling for you to learn that I support an ideology that isn't merely non-bourgeois, but is even more radically anti-capitalist than your Leninism/Stalinism or whatever.

It's actually very dishonest for the bourgeois to peddle libertarian like ideologies which give false hope to wage-laborers, not that I am confronting them on moral grounds, they have every material incentive to defend their property, but criticism is that means of their property surplus (the workers) will be the end of their property.So?

I admit it, I lol'd hard, I think what you meant to say (in all too many words) was that you are a wage-labourer, you get a salary yes? Which is all I need to know.I don't labor. I sit in an office and perform obsolete paperwork and computer tasks and also sit around and waste time. I'm not even in danger of developing carpal-tunnel syndrome.

Tongass, you also have very little actual idea of what the bourgeois really is, which of course explains why in the OP you said the proletariat and bourgeois are exactly the same.Oh really. Enlighten me then. Actually, before you do that, please address the argument I put forth.

Studies have shown that the wealthiest 5% of people in Australia own 76% of all shares, 46% of bank deposits and 29% of business equity.1

-1 S. Pietsch, to have and to hold on to: wealth, power and the capitalist class. In R. Kuhn Class and struggle in Australia, Sydney, Pearson education Australia, 2005

i think that class is veryyy apparant and marxism is therefore not obsolete

marxism as such, in a sense, yes. may always have been. BUT.

there is a problem, though, with using the shortcommings of marxism to justify, let along praise those of capitolism. that is that it also shaires nearly all of them. in some cases even more so.

and by marxism as such, in this sense, i'm refering specificly and only the conceptual structures directly attributed to carl marx himself.

as opposed to say a just and balanced socialism, who'se real origen, is, believe it or not, every revelation of organized belief from the very earliest known, MANY dozzens of millinal iterations predadating western monotheism in any form, though encompassing it as well.

what is really obsolete, logically always has been, is the expectation of benifit, from prioritising the arbitraryness and rigidity of ANY idiology or idiological economic theory, ahead of the real effects of real policies on real people, places, and things.

every deterioration of conditions is precipitated by arbitraryness of policy, and every idiology and idiological economic construct, contributes to that arbitraryness and rigidity. there are no exceptions.

=^^=
.../\...

i think that class is veryyy apparant and marxism is therefore not obsolete
And I think that any attempt to talk about class by means of talking about wealth is missing the point.

There's rich "workers" and poor owners of capital. More importantly, our relation to productive capacity doesn't define our interests, our characters or our actions. I'm not convinced that Marx wasn't just trying to fit a certain wrong he wanted to point out to a certain way of thinking he'd picked up reading the wrong sorts of philosophers, but even if he wasn't and class antagonism existed in a meaningful sense back in his time, it's not today - and if it was, you couldn't show it by telling me about stock ownership or wealth distribution.

And I think that any attempt to talk about class by means of talking about wealth is missing the point.

There's rich "workers" and poor owners of capital. More importantly, our relation to productive capacity doesn't define our interests, our characters or our actions. I'm not convinced that Marx wasn't just trying to fit a certain wrong he wanted to point out to a certain way of thinking he'd picked up reading the wrong sorts of philosophers, but even if he wasn't and class antagonism existed in a meaningful sense back in his time, it's not today - and if it was, you couldn't show it by telling me about stock ownership or wealth distribution.

I can't honestly remember reading something so intellectually dishonest.

I can't honestly remember reading something so intellectually dishonest.
As you know it's the start of the uni semester at the moment. Since it's my last, employers keep wanting me to attend their information sessions. Because of that I've spoken to more "business analysts", "consultancy associates" and investment bankers than I would care to mention...but they all have a thing in common: they're all employees who own no equity in the business they work for, and they're all pretty wealthy individuals. Being "exploited" in no way means that what is left over for a person isn't a lot of cash.

I don't need to look even that far to find some owners of capital who are on the poor side. Go to any suburban shopping centre, find a shop that's a bit on the quiet side of the mall and find the owner - voilà. "Exploiting" others is in no way guaranteed to be a good way of making money.

I believe that if you dig in your marxist scriptures, you will find that not even Marx would have tried to equate wealth with class, and since occasionally he could get amusingly obsessive about making his ideas look scientific (while at other times just completely ignoring that part of it), I don't think he'd be dishonest enough to claim that the nature of productive capacity (and therefore the notion of class as he saw it derived from that capacity in his day) is unchanged today.

The notion that the purpose of FDR's New Deal was to enable his class to keep power is ridiculous conspiracy theorizing.

That's really not much of an argument. And you speak of "the purpose" as if there must be only one--as if any policy ever gets enacted when inspired by only one motivation.

Look, we question conspiracy theories because they seem implausible... but referencing the stability of the system is neither an implausible justification nor one that need be hidden. It's one of the pragmatic reasons that have traditionally been given to support social reforms--we see varieties of it today, when people talk about crime and terrorism--and quite naturally it's one that can be expected to appeal especially to those who ordinarily would be least inclined to support a large-scale economic reform: the rich and powerful.

Also, you forget that in the 1930s, unlike today, there was what appeared to many people to be a viable alternative to capitalism--the Soviet Union--and radical left-wing parties had a major role in politics in the Western World. Yes, the US left-wing political parties were fairly weak (though they were stronger then than ever before or ever since), but labor militancy was quite fierce, and the danger of large-scale social unrest, at least to those considering the matter at the time, seemed quite real. Elsewhere, such concerns contributed significantly to the rise of fascism, as a guarantor of relative class stability against a socialist revolution.

In that atmosphere, the only thing "implausible" is to pretend that such concerns played no part in allowing FDR to enact the sort of changes he did at the speed and to the degree he enacted them.

These days that's only because we live in a democracy - not because the rich feel that their elite status is threatened.

"Democracy" doesn't always get you very far. It's the nature of our system that it takes a whole lot more than democracy to push something like the New Deal through; it takes a different approach at the top, from the people at the top.

For that matter, the New Deal, like the Civil Rights reforms thirty years later, altered the political character of our democracy and the positions of the political parties. It wasn't a simple matter of the population choosing whatever best pre-existing option there was.

My argument is that those class divisions aren't what's driving capitalist exploitation, but rather are perhaps a natural consequence of a self-sustaining capitalist system.

How are these mutually exclusive? And how is anyone being exploited if the exploitative profits from their labor go right back to them? No, exploitation requires class divisions.

I wouldn't Soheran, after rereading his 'arguments' I have come to the conclusion that he thoroughly does not understand what he is writing, especially the claptrap after 'self-sustaining' yet did not explain it. Gosh what classifies as 'opinion' has changed alot, Tongass just has a reflexive oppositionism based on an infantile wish to red-bait.

/snip OPI suppose Marx would just define this as the petite bourgeoisie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie) taking another form.

I would say that Marxism is obsolete because the fastest growing portion of the American economy is the PETTY bourgeoise, who are technically counted as proletariats. The companies that are making up the lions share of the economy increasingly are not the AT&T's, the DuPonts, and the WalMarts but smaller, more nimbler businesses that use advanced technology and focus on a particular aspect of production to eliminate the overhead from Administration and inertia from beaureacracy that larger manufacturers, et al, have had to deal with. As it turns out, the cost of one middleman CEO these days is substantially less these days then the cost of 50,000 middle class workers in HQ plus inefficiency and inertia from corporate beaureacracy.

Ironically, the one major exception is the one business that traditionally WAS small, retail. Retail is actually getting bigger, as Wal Mart has demonstrated so dramatically in a town near you. But manufacturing, accounting, financial and consulting services, corporate ordering services, IT, computing, research, et cetera are increasingly small business affairs, which is ironic, because these fields used to be dominated by Big Guys. The large corporations that still exist in these fields are mainly still there because 1) They're already there and already making a profit (Du Pont, Johnson & Johnson), so there's nothing to build and 2) they can sometimes attract better engineering talent, and so end up handling the quality side of their business (like Microsoft) though most of the quantity side (small corporate contractor computing firms, specialty firms, et cetera) is handled at small offices with only a few people.

Also, you might say it's still wage jobs, but your relationship with your employer becomes very very different when there are approximately five of you. You're both easier to control and have a greater say in what you do. You also have a greater share in the objectives of your business, because you represent 20% of it, and since the relationship becomes more personal, it is often also more flexible.

That's really not much of an argument. And you speak of "the purpose" as if there must be only one--as if any policy ever gets enacted when inspired by only one motivation.Conceded. Let me define a "proximate impetus" then, as a kind of root mechanism without which the effect and its more immediate causes wouldn't exist.

Also, you forget that in the 1930s, unlike today, there was what appeared to many people to be a viable alternative to capitalism--the Soviet Union--and radical left-wing parties had a major role in politics in the Western World. Yes, the US left-wing political parties were fairly weak (though they were stronger then than ever before or ever since), but labor militancy was quite fierce, and the danger of large-scale social unrest, at least to those considering the matter at the time, seemed quite real. Elsewhere, such concerns contributed significantly to the rise of fascism, as a guarantor of relative class stability against a socialist revolution.

In that atmosphere, the only thing "implausible" is to pretend that such concerns played no part in allowing FDR to enact the sort of changes he did at the speed and to the degree he enacted them.Conceded. However, I submit that such a dynamic does not play as significant a role in today's American politics. Furthermore, I submit that FDR's personal motivations and those of a great many other bourgeois, which is apparently of deep concern to Marxism, were benevolent. A desire for public order need not be predicated on personal ambition.

"Democracy" doesn't always get you very far. It's the nature of our system that it takes a whole lot more than democracy to push something like the New Deal through; it takes a different approach at the top, from the people at the top.

For that matter, the New Deal, like the Civil Rights reforms thirty years later, altered the political character of our democracy and the positions of the political parties. It wasn't a simple matter of the population choosing whatever best pre-existing option there was.Agreed. However, I don't believe these changes were purposefully shaped, or if they were, that the governing capitalist system could have allowed them to be shaped any differently.

How are these mutually exclusive?Hmm. Well, I would say that if you removed the upper class, capitalism would proceed unhindered and simply make itself a new upperclass if it was needed, which it probably is under today's system. However, if you removed the legal framework for capitalism (contracts), you remove the both the mechanism by which capitalism necessarily operates, and any tangible power-basis for class divisions. Granted, the whole discussion is hypothetical...

And how is anyone being exploited if the exploitative profits from their labor go right back to them?Because the way the system functions to sustain itself is by encouraging consumption. Culture and the media message are part of the capitalist feedback loop that manipulates and sometimes coerces people into consuming more and more. So the profits of their labor go in to two places:
1) the ever-expanding inefficiencies of the ever-expanding capitalist system, and
2) Worthless crap which they are forced to buy in order to function in society (cars, telephones {soon to be cell phones too}, everything taxes support, professional attire, personal computers are practically required only two decades after their introduction, etc) and crap they are persuaded to buy in order to have friends, attract mates, and feel better about themselves (cosmetics/grooming, penis enlargement, plastic surgery, a bigger house, more expensive versions of everything, etc etc). Note that results usually aren't as advertised, yet nearly everybody buys into it, and the system ensures that consumption is as maxed out as possible.

No, exploitation requires class divisions.I would say that if capitalist-style exploitation requires class divisions, it is only in the sense that it may necessarily create them.



I wouldn't Soheran, after rereading his 'arguments' I have come to the conclusion that he thoroughly does not understand what he is writing, especially the claptrap after 'self-sustaining' yet did not explain it. Gosh what classifies as 'opinion' has changed alot, Tongass just has a reflexive oppositionism based on an infantile wish to red-bait.If I had made this post, you would run crying to the mods.

Conceded. However, I submit that such a dynamic does not play as significant a role in today's American politics.

True, because the system is quite stable. Accordingly, the social gains garnered through past struggle have been whittled down over several decades.

Furthermore, I submit that FDR's personal motivations and those of a great many other bourgeois, which is apparently of deep concern to Marxism, were benevolent. A desire for public order need not be predicated on personal ambition.

Undoubtedly there were benevolent motives involved.

Hmm. Well, I would say that if you removed the upper class, capitalism would proceed unhindered and simply make itself a new upperclass if it was needed, which it probably is under today's system. However, if you removed the legal framework for capitalism (contracts), you remove the both the mechanism by which capitalism necessarily operates, and any tangible power-basis for class divisions.

That's right: capitalism creates capitalists, not the other way around. That's a perfectly Marxist analysis. ;)

I would say that if capitalist-style exploitation requires class divisions, it is only in the sense that it may necessarily create them.

Well, we are talking about different kinds of exploitation. The sort of exploitation you refer to is less a result of capitalism as of markets--we would expect the same from any of the varieties of market socialism, for instance.

That's right: capitalism creates capitalists, not the other way around. That's a perfectly Marxist analysis. ;)I haven't studied Marxism in depth, but I wonder why it is then that modern Marxists still seem to focus on the class divide, when clearly that is only a symptom of the real problem, a symptom which when addressed in a Marxist fashion would seem not to ultimately yield a solution the real problem of market dominance over human affairs. I think we need a new manifesto.

All this talk of Marxism; I say that it is obsolete. Class conflict is no longer the defining attribute of our social institutions. We are our own "oppressors".

Follow the lines of power through our economy. Workers are being "exploited" by their employers. These employers are frequently large corporations that do whatever it takes to make money. Their CEOs are people who are skilled at making a lot of money for corporations, and are paid large sums of money to do so. If they fail to "exploit" the company's assets properly, they are fired. By the owners, who are the shareholders. It's the shareholders who have the real power. The fact that companies pay to find the best exploiters-for-hire is because the shareholders prioritize company profits (or stock prices actually) over everything else. Who are these bourgeois shareholders who are behind capitalist exploitation of the proletariat? Why, they are the workers, who have invested their money in mutual funds and retirement accounts with the purpose of saving as much money as possible, investing for financial maximization rather than social responsibility.

You are a rebrand of the fiscal conservative types who think that trickle down actually works. The shareholders ARE the CEOs and such, or otherwise are of significant value. How many poor people invest? Honestly... People always assume stockholders are all across the board. They are primarily in the upper classes.

I haven't studied Marxism in depth, but I wonder why it is then that modern Marxists still seem to focus on the class divide, when clearly that is only a symptom of the real problem,

What gives you that idea?

Marxists agree that capitalism creates capitalists: getting rid of capitalists without getting rid of capitalism would just create capitalists all over again. That's why they advocate getting rid of the whole system.

Marxists do not agree that this class structure is somehow irrelevant to capitalism's failures, that the "real" problem has nothing to do with classes.

a symptom which when addressed in a Marxist fashion would seem not to ultimately yield a solution the real problem of market dominance over human affairs.

Nonsense. The negative effects of the "market dominance" you refer to could be much more easily dealt with in a democratically-planned economy, and would probably mostly disappear if anything approaching ultimate communism were achieved.

All this talk of Marxism; I say that it is obsolete. Class conflict is no longer the defining attribute of our social institutions. We are our own "oppressors".

Follow the lines of power through our economy. Workers are being "exploited" by their employers. These employers are frequently large corporations that do whatever it takes to make money. Their CEOs are people who are skilled at making a lot of money for corporations, and are paid large sums of money to do so. If they fail to "exploit" the company's assets properly, they are fired. By the owners, who are the shareholders. It's the shareholders who have the real power. The fact that companies pay to find the best exploiters-for-hire is because the shareholders prioritize company profits (or stock prices actually) over everything else. Who are these bourgeois shareholders who are behind capitalist exploitation of the proletariat? Why, they are the workers, who have invested their money in mutual funds and retirement accounts with the purpose of saving as much money as possible, investing for financial maximization rather than social responsibility.

Therefore, in America, the proletariat = the bourgeoisie

That's not to say that capitalism is grand, just that Marxism incorrectly describes the underlying problem as being that of one group of people exploiting another, when in today's reality it's the structure of the system rather than class conflict that is the reason for capitalism's faults.

Amiright?

Naomi Klein (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080218/klein) wrote about this recently in the Nation. It's basically the philosophy of the conservative "ownership society" meme. But what has actually happened is that while workers do own stock, they own a paltry amount.

The ownership society was used to sell deregulation and privatization, but rather than pumping wealth into all classes, it has just made the lower classes statistically insignificant owners, while the rich have become exorbitantly rich.

Then there's the double-wammy. Not only are the workers not the owners, as promised, but the deregulation has insured that actual wages have not risen for the vast majority of Americans for the past 35 years.

You are a rebrand of the fiscal conservative types who think that trickle down actually works. The shareholders ARE the CEOs and such, or otherwise are of significant value. How many poor people invest? Honestly... People always assume stockholders are all across the board. They are primarily in the upper classes.

Upper and middle class.

But as for the poor, may I remind you that the poverty rate in America is only 13% right now but used to be (only about 40 years ago) much higher. Further, the number of people in poverty is declining globally, and not because of any real expansion in social programs. Indeed, it could even be argued that in the places where the most advancement has occured (ex-communist China especially) things have been working in the OPPOSITE direction. The problem with trying to divide out the pie is when you do, you make it smaller, because the cost of dividing out the pie is not simply the money that's distributed but the enforcement through government of it's distribution, and the cost of hiring huge numbers of beaureacrats who have no real clue or care for what they're doing.

Add to this the fact that you discourage the pie from growing by taking away a considerable part of the motive for engaging in such activity, and a considerable portion of the technological advancement neccesary to grow the pie, and you end up with an unsavory situation where things may start out okay but will always get worse for your people. It's far more intelligent just to grow the pie in general - it's incredibly politically sustainable, and does not assume any degree of smarts on the part of the average voter, which is always a bad assumption to take.


NOTE: The reason I say it is politically sustainable versus socialism is because you do not have to increase taxes, you do not have to indoctrinate people to any particular mindset or way of thinking, it's in the best interest of all parties involved to some degree, though maybe not in some cases as much as other actions no one is actually screwed over by it per se (in other words, nobodies situation gets worse), there's no delicate balance to be kept with trying to get the pie splitting from getting out of hand, and it's in line with traditional foundations like the church.

Indeed, it could even be argued that in the places where the most advancement has occured (ex-communist China especially) things have been working in the OPPOSITE direction.

In the long-term, Maoist policies in areas like food distribution and health care greatly increased the health and life expectancy of the population.

The evidence suggests that that's the general pattern: economic development follows such improvements in social indicators, which typically require government social programs.

You are a rebrand of the fiscal conservative types who think that trickle down actually works.No I'm not. Why is everybody making up shit about me just because I'm calling an obsolete ideology obsolete?

The shareholders ARE the CEOs and such, or otherwise are of significant value. How many poor people invest? Honestly...As many who have retirement accounts. Obviously not the poorest of the poor, but probably the majority of households in the US, or if not, soon to be a decent-sized majority assuming that Obama lands the presidency and manages to implement his economic plans.

People always assume stockholders are all across the board. They are primarily in the upper classes.The preponderance of the wealth is certainly in the upper classes, but I doubt that the majority of stockholders are in the upper classes, and if they are, then the US has a very large upper class.

The social equilibrium has been significantly altered from that which was seen in the time of Marx. There is no doubt about that, with societies that are defined not along the class lines that he described, but rather along the division into sectors. Agriculture, Industry, Information and Management. What Marx failed to realize is that the middle managers, especially in a later capitalist society with advanced technology, would like equal or outnumber the actual number of proletariat, also, that in some countries, the proletariat/laborer segment of the economy would never be able to secure a position of majority.

Further, the mass media has permanently altered the relations between large groups of people. The other sectors of the society, especially the information/communication sector, has been able to inculcate its own values into the other sectors of society far more effectively than would have been permitted in the age of Marx. It reflects the fact that the distribution of ownership is not the only line along which society is divided, but also other interests.

Weber's criticism, that Marx did not take the value and potency of ideas into account, also remains at hand. Ideas are often formed by more than mere power-relations, and can be spontaneous outgrowths of a specific dissatisfaction with society.

Ideologies that are of little relation to the Marxist depiction of history have also developed, in a condition that would be unaccounted for. Nazism and Fascism, for instance, viewed themselves as a third way, distinct from Marxism and Capitalism, which would remove the vagaries of the market, as expressed in the form of the depression, but locked out the dislocation that would be associated with a Soviet-style revolution.

Another highly significant alternation is the development of heavily automated, strategic nuclear arsenals, which would be capable of instilling significant terror in a targeted populace, that a significant revolution would be phenomenally unlikely. If the power holders were able to launch even a partial strike, with the size of modern strategic arsenals, it is unlikely such a revolt would be able to sustain momentum.

If the power holders were able to launch even a partial strike, with the size of modern strategic arsenals, it is unlikely such a revolt would be able to sustain momentum.

Nuclear-armed regimes have been overthrown before--the Soviet Union, South Africa.

It's highly unlikely that any regime would respond to a domestic revolution in that fashion.

Nuclear-armed regimes have been overthrown before--the Soviet Union, South Africa.

It's highly unlikely that any regime would respond to a domestic revolution in that fashion.

In both cases, though, the power-holders didn't significantly shift from their position of power. Governments may change, but the power relations in Russia and South Africa have not experienced a significant change. Take a look at the fact that no one from either state's ruling class lost their heads.

In my opinion, this situation makes uncompromising revolutionary belief-structure, whether it is right, left or third way, of the type that Andaras embraces, totally untenable.

In both cases, though, the power-holders didn't significantly shift from their position of power. Governments may change, but the power relations in Russia and South Africa have not experienced a significant change.

Hmm, you're right. I didn't think of that.

Still, though, control of nuclear weaponry tends to be directly political: it doesn't reside in classes, even the wealthy and powerful ones, but in the individuals at the top of the political hierarchy--who do change.

Responding to a popular revolution with nukes would not save those in power. It would just take the rest of the country down with them. The major exception would be a case where the revolutionary movement was concentrated in a geographic area, but even then political control over the rest of the country would be brought into question by such an act.

Generally speaking, popular uprisings are best put down by external forces--note the differences in Eastern Europe after the Soviets withdrew--and domestic factions don't have the cold-blooded brutality to use extreme repressive tactics against their fellow countrypeople. The exception is in civil wars, but those have something of a different dynamic.

Take a look at the fact that no one from either state's ruling class lost their heads.

True, but chopping off people's heads just isn't a very good idea anyway, and is not a necessity in a revolution.

In my opinion, this situation makes uncompromising revolutionary belief-structure, whether it is right, left or third way, of the type that Andaras embraces, totally untenable.

It depends entirely on what kind of revolution is envisioned. A protracted, violent, insurgency-type struggle is probably untenable--and for lots of other reasons aside from the danger of nuclear weapons--but a popular movement using (mostly) non-violent tactics like protests and strikes might be a different matter. It's worked elsewhere against governments with access to far superior coercive force.

Hmm, you're right. I didn't think of that.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Still, though, control of nuclear weaponry tends to be directly political: it doesn't reside in classes, even the wealthy and powerful ones, but in the individuals at the top of the political hierarchy--who do change.

Internal unrest of this sort, though, would likely be the sort of thing to force these individual political leaders, whose deteriorating authority and ability to maintain control by conventional means would cause them to react in unexpected ways. As the saying goes, when all you've got is a hammer, all problems tend to look like nails.

Responding to a popular revolution with nukes would not save those in power. It would just take the rest of the country down with them. The major exception would be a case where the revolutionary movement was concentrated in a geographic area, but even then political control over the rest of the country would be brought into question by such an act.

I'd argue that the rationality of the action is most certainly approaching zero, but this is not a sort of rational decision, this is a desperate decision, a scared decision.

Generally speaking, popular uprisings are best put down by external forces--note the differences in Eastern Europe after the Soviets withdrew--and domestic factions don't have the cold-blooded brutality to use extreme repressive tactics against their fellow countrypeople. The exception is in civil wars, but those have something of a different dynamic.

Ahhh, the Warsaw Pact. The only major alliance structure that only ever used force on its own members.

True, but chopping off people's heads just isn't a very good idea anyway, and is not a necessity in a revolution.

Full agreement. It kills off the technical expertise in both technological and administrative roles that, so often, is needed in a post-revolutionary environment.



It depends entirely on what kind of revolution is envisioned. A protracted, violent, insurgency-type struggle is probably untenable--and for lots of other reasons aside from the danger of nuclear weapons--but a popular movement using (mostly) non-violent tactics like protests and strikes might be a different matter. It's worked elsewhere against governments with access to far superior coercive force.

Which, from my understanding, is not the sort of revolution that would be predicted in Marxism, or Leninism either for that matter. Certain forms of revolutionary anarchism that are less dogmatic and more flexible than Marxism or Leninism account for this far more readily.

Internal unrest of this sort, though, would likely be the sort of thing to force these individual political leaders, whose deteriorating authority and ability to maintain control by conventional means would cause them to react in unexpected ways.

Yes, but let's talk in explicit terms.

There are protesters in the capital who want to topple your government. What are you going to do? Flee the place and drop a nuke on them? I think that carries "unexpected" to a rather radical extreme (among other things, it quite directly destroys your regime anyway)... not to mention the fact that even when the leader has nominal control, he still has to actually get the compliance of others to get the nuke launched. And in a revolutionary situation where the regime in power appears highly unstable, it's very doubtful that he would get compliance with that kind of order.

Nuclear weaponry is just an extreme expression of a fact revolutionaries have always known, and that successful revolutions have managed to overcome: nominally speaking, the people in power always have much more sheer military power than you. But it's illusory without the political legitimacy and control to exercise it against you.

Full agreement. It kills off the technical expertise in both technological and administrative roles that, so often, is needed in a post-revolutionary environment.

And it's just not nice.

/bleeding heart

Which, from my understanding, is not the sort of revolution that would be predicted in Marxism, or Leninism either for that matter.

Actually, Marx at times envisioned a democratic revolution of the parliamentary sort, and the revolutions he probably got the general idea from--the bourgeois revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries--were not really the long insurgency sort.

Lenin and Mao were different, but recall that they were trying to advance revolutionary tactics in societies that were fundamentally different from the industrial and post-industrial societies we are discussing.

Marxists agree that capitalism creates capitalists: getting rid of capitalists without getting rid of capitalism would just create capitalists all over again. That's why they advocate getting rid of the whole system.Then why the fundamental emphasis on class warfare? Or is that just supposed to be propaganda to motivate the proletariat? In which case it seems to me that they are undermining their own ideology.

Marxists do not agree that this class structure is somehow irrelevant to capitalism's failures, that the "real" problem has nothing to do with classes.Classes are a problem, and perhaps at Marx's time they were responsible for capitalism and its failures, but today we can trace the power flows of capitalist societies and show that they are not reliant on class divisions. If we had a progressive liberal government that redistributed wealth to compensate for material inequality, capitalism and its negative attributes would still thrive.

edit- it should also be noted that there are no classless societies on Earth. They all have a pecking order. The societies with the least inequality/power discrepancy are of course those that are the smallest - tribes. Compexity of organization and interdependence are what breed social inequality, and those are what would need to be addressed by any system touted by an ideology in order to reduce inequality. Communism doesn't do enough to address this IMO.

Nonsense. The negative effects of the "market dominance" you refer to could be much more easily dealt with in a democratically-planned economy, and would probably mostly disappear if anything approaching ultimate communism were achieved.Nonsense to you. A democratically-planned economy is just as susceptible to the kind of thing I'm talking about as any other economy. Only political / mass media / cultural feedback systems to shape public opinion and planning policy would take a more prominent role.

Then why the fundamental emphasis on class warfare?

Because the resolution of class struggle is the control of the proletariat over the means of production: the abolition of capitalism.

For Marxists (and for the rest of us, too), class struggle is always ultimately about changing the social system: not just getting rid of the existing bosses.

If we had a progressive liberal government that redistributed wealth to compensate for material inequality, capitalism and its negative attributes would still thrive.

Simple wealth distribution of the scale necessary would probably destroy the economy; trying to compensate for material inequality that way is too rough a means.

In any case, no, many of the negative attributes of capitalism would be greatly reduced by greater material equality.

A democratically-planned economy is just as susceptible to the kind of thing I'm talking about as any other economy.

No, it isn't. The kind of problems you're talking about are essentially massive collective action problems: everyone gets individual profit from encouraging consumerism, but everyone loses out in the end because everyone else is encouraging consumerism too. (To put it very simply.)

Because planning allows for large-scale coordination, this sort of thing is what it would avoid best.

Edit: In any case, we will never even approach solving this problem until we wrest control from the political and economic elites who benefit from it.

Because the resolution of class struggle is the control of the proletariat over the means of production: the abolition of capitalism.I don't think the means of production are controlled in the first place (in modern society). I think they're out of control, so class warfare seems to me a distraction from controlling the means of production. I also think that gaining some kind of collective control of the means of production is problematic, if not impossible, for the same reasons that it is under capitalism.

Simple wealth distribution of the scale necessary would probably destroy the economy; trying to compensate for material inequality that way is too rough a means.I don't that's necessarily so if you phase it in, although it may be that capitalism continues to adjust wages to compensate so that all you're able to create is a massive welfare state.

In any case, no, many of the negative attributes of capitalism would be greatly reduced by greater material equality.Okay maybe, but only those that are resolved through welfare - not the fundamentally, overarching exploitative/manipulative quality of capitalism which will simply press people to spend even more money, yielding the same stresses to personal budgets and pressure to work harder in less fulfilling occupations.

No, it isn't. The kind of problems you're talking about are essentially massive collective action problems: everyone gets individual profit from encouraging consumerism, but everyone loses out in the end because everyone else is encouraging consumerism too. (To put it very simply.)I don't think that goes away under a democratically planned economy. Politicians and their constituencies can still be lobbied to support policies that benefit certain entities. I think the only way to abolish the political capital market might be to abolish democracy.

Because planning allows for large-scale coordination, this sort of thing is what it would avoid best.Maybe, but I don't think it could avoid it enough or completely. I think that large-scale coordination is part of the problem. Looking at the effects of the whole system, capitalism functions as a large-scale coordinating mechanism, which because it is outside of uninfluenced human control, works toward ends that aren't humanitarian. Democracies are inherently susceptible to hijacking by over-arching society-systems such as capitalism, given that they are essentially systems of political capital. The form of government least susceptible to hijacking by phenomenon outside of human will would be dictatoriship, but we know that even dictators are prone to isolation from human interests and ultimately become monsters in every case. This paragraph may or may not have made sense.

Edit: In any case, we will never even approach solving this problem until we wrest control from the political and economic elites who benefit from it.Which brings me full circle to my first point, which is that the political and economic elites don't really control the system.

I don't think the means of production are controlled in the first place (in modern society). I think they're out of control,

You're equivocating. People factually do own and control the means of production. What you mean (I assume) is that they are not controlled in a rational, coordinated fashion, but that is beside the point from the perspective of class struggle (though the resulting crises, the Marxists say, do intensify the phenomenon.)

I don't that's necessarily so if you phase it in,

The way capitalism works, the means advanced to redistribute wealth--income taxes on the higher brackets and corporate income taxes--can be counterproductive and produce the wrong incentives, especially at the sorts of levels that would be necessary for real redistribution.

Okay maybe, but only those that are resolved through welfare - not the fundamentally, overarching exploitative/manipulative quality of capitalism which will simply press people to spend even more money, yielding the same stresses to personal budgets and pressure to work harder in less fulfilling occupations.

That in itself is in its way a function of material inequality: economic development brings with it its share of stresses and costs that are borne by the general population, and dealt with (often) through the purchase of goods.

Achieve greater material equality, and those attempts will be made easier as the benefits of such economic development are more equally shared.

I don't think that goes away under a democratically planned economy. Politicians and their constituencies can still be lobbied to support policies that benefit certain entities.

So? It's still a totally different collective action dynamic. As Marxists tend to envision it, there is "scientific" planning, so there is some assessment of need, then production to meet it: not production for profit's sake, with an incentive to artificially create needs. And from the perspective of the interests of the voters, supporting such a system makes perfect sense from the direction of your critique: essentially, everyone agrees to stop hurting everyone else, on condition that everyone else stops hurting them.

It's a sort of post-market social contract. ;)

(There are a whole range of problems associated with this proposal. But you have to admit that it solves the problem you note in a way market capitalism can't.)

I think that large-scale coordination is part of the problem.

Let me clarify my phrasing. Marxists who recognize the alienating character of capitalism as Marx described it are not, for good reason, going to be particularly fond of a distant central planning agency that makes all the decisions. But collective control over economic institutions gives the possibility for having some central guidelines to deal with collective action problems: without private ownership, the difficulties with individual coordination are much simplified even if political power is decentralized.

Looking at the effects of the whole system, capitalism functions as a large-scale coordinating mechanism, which because it is outside of uninfluenced human control, works toward ends that aren't humanitarian.

That's right. And that's why socialism--democratic control--is so important: at this point of economic development, we lack the capacity to exercise control over our economic lives as individuals because of the power of the system, but as a people we can collectively choose to change things.

The "coordination" of capitalism is outside collective control: in certain ways, it is outside anyone's control, but regardless it is still not the coordination that might permit us the freedom to escape the market lose-lose you point to.

Democracies are inherently susceptible to hijacking by over-arching society-systems such as capitalism, given that they are essentially systems of political capital.

I don't know about the paragraph, but this sentence, in any case, makes no sense to me.

Which brings me full circle to my first point, which is that the political and economic elites don't really control the system.

Some of the later Marxist analysts of "late capitalism"--like Herbert Marcuse--made similar observations to yours, but perhaps it was their Marxist orientation that let them recognize something you haven't yet: the phenomena you speak of and the social institutions that underly them are not class independent. Quite the contrary. They are functions of class power, at least in the negative sense that getting rid of them would greatly harm those at the top.

The powerful don't want ordinary people to be free of economic stresses and the consumerist trap--they make profit off of it.

You're equivocating. People factually do own and control the means of production. What you mean (I assume) is that they are not controlled in a rational, coordinated fashion, but that is beside the point from the perspective of class struggle (though the resulting crises, the Marxists say, do intensify the phenomenon.)I mean that the people who are controlling are themselves selected and controlled by the system. To focus on the people themselves as agents of control is meaningless if they are for all sociological purposes replaceable cogs in a machine.

The way capitalism works, the means advanced to redistribute wealth--income taxes on the higher brackets and corporate income taxes--can be counterproductive and produce the wrong incentives, especially at the sorts of levels that would be necessary for real redistribution.If you are referring to material greed as the motivational fuel of capitalism, and suggesting that its removal would undermine the system, I disagree. I mean yeah, it's a factor, but I see too many other cultural motivators reinforced by the capitalist propaganda machine at work to think that it would be a death blow to give everybody equal money. You would still have celebrity, job desirability, and a wide variety of status factors to motivate people.

That in itself is in its way a function of material inequality: economic development brings with it its share of stresses and costs that are borne by the general population, and dealt with (often) through the purchase of goods.

Achieve greater material equality, and those attempts will be made easier as the benefits of such economic development are more equally shared.I disagree. I think that our system functions to push most people's consumptive habits to the brink financial viability no matter how much they make or how equal they are.

So? It's still a totally different collective action dynamic. As Marxists tend to envision it, there is "scientific" planning, so there is some assessment of need, then production to meet it: not production for profit's sake, with an incentive to artificially create needs. And from the perspective of the interests of the voters, supporting such a system makes perfect sense from the direction of your critique: essentially, everyone agrees to stop hurting everyone else, on condition that everyone else stops hurting them.

It's a sort of post-market social contract. ;)

(There are a whole range of problems associated with this proposal. But you have to admit that it solves the problem you note in a way market capitalism can't.)IMO that sort of justification is the same kind of impractical pie-in-the-sky stuff used to say that libertarianism would work out hunky-dory for everybody. Theoretically, our democratic government is supposed to pass reasonable laws within their constitutionally-appointed duties. Yeah right. The problem is that putting principles in charge of policy is an impossibility. You can only put people in charge, and people are able to be influenced by power systems in order to reinforce their power. A slide toward a sort of capitalism is inevitable in any democracy.

Let me clarify my phrasing. Marxists who recognize the alienating character of capitalism as Marx described it are not, for good reason, going to be particularly fond of a distant central planning agency that makes all the decisions. But collective control over economic institutions gives the possibility for having some central guidelines to deal with collective action problems: without private ownership, the difficulties with individual coordination are much simplified even if political power is decentralized.

....

That's right. And that's why socialism--democratic control--is so important: at this point of economic development, we lack the capacity to exercise control over our economic lives as individuals because of the power of the system, but as a people we can collectively choose to change things.

The "coordination" of capitalism is outside collective control: in certain ways, it is outside anyone's control, but regardless it is still not the coordination that might permit us the freedom to escape the market lose-lose you point to.

...

I don't know about the paragraph, but this sentence, in any case, makes no sense to me.

Maybe I can put it this way. I think that the Collective is a myth. An individual makes a decision based on their own experiences and thought processes. A collective doesn't make decisions on any more rational or lucid grounds than its constituent individuals. In fact a collective doesn't make decisions at all. It is simply a system for making policy based on the sentiments of a number of individuals too large to allow for deliberation and consensus. The only decision-making happens at the individual level. Because individuals are persuadeable, those entities/systems with the most power have the most persuading ability, and can thereore "buy" power in the collective by persuading individuals. This power can be used to reinforce and strengthen the power of those systems/entities even further. I argue that all social systems are subject to such intrusions and manipulations by virtue of being comprised of individuals. In this way, all representative governments eventually devolve into a form of political capitalism.

Some of the later Marxist analysts of "late capitalism"--like Herbert Marcuse--made similar observations to yours, but perhaps it was their Marxist orientation that let them recognize something you haven't yet: the phenomena you speak of and the social institutions that underly them are not class independent. Quite the contrary. They are functions of class power, at least in the negative sense that getting rid of them would greatly harm those at the top.I don't argue that negative sense. It is that positive sense that I argue against. Money isn't power if your free will is compromised.

The powerful don't want ordinary people to be free of economic stresses and the consumerist trap--they make profit off of it.That's ridiculous. The powerful are selected by the system to be powerful precisely because they're blind to any role they might play in furthering the ills of capitalism.

To focus on the people themselves as agents of control is meaningless if they are for all sociological purposes replaceable cogs in a machine.

Only, again, if you equivocate on "control."

The wealthy do as a simple matter of fact exercise a great deal of control, both economically and politically: they own the means of production and use them for their own profit, they have a wildly disproportionate share of access and opportunity to influence politics, and so forth.

Are they in a sense a product of the system, in that the system creates the possibility--and tends towards the necessity--of concentrations of wealth and power? Sure, but so what?

Are they themselves bound, in some ways, to serve the capitalist machine? Perhaps, but in material terms this is idle philosophical speculation (not necessarily a bad thing, but in this context it misses the point). The powerful do not give up their power just because they pay certain psychological prices for it.

If you are referring to material greed as the motivational fuel of capitalism, and suggesting that its removal would undermine the system, I disagree. I mean yeah, it's a factor, but I see too many other cultural motivators reinforced by the capitalist propaganda machine at work to think that it would be a death blow to give everybody equal money.

Capitalism couldn't possibly work without economic inequality. Who would do the investment? You would need collective institutions--like government--and thus socialism.

I disagree. I think that our system functions to push most people's consumptive habits to the brink financial viability no matter how much they make or how equal they are.

The better-off have enough of a cushion to reduce their economic stress: their consumption does not drive them to the edge. They are faced with a different problem, that of maintaining that cushion, but such economic insecurity is one of the things that a more egalitarian distribution of wealth would help solve.

You can only put people in charge, and people are able to be influenced by power systems in order to reinforce their power.

So? In a democracy, the "power system" is the body of the people. They have every incentive to act as I described them acting. You're not really making an argument.

Because individuals are persuadeable, those entities/systems with the most power have the most persuading ability, and can thereore "buy" power in the collective by persuading individuals. This power can be used to reinforce and strengthen the power of those systems/entities even further.

You should really be less vague. Are there differences in persuasive power in our society? Yes, but on the large scale they largely correspond to differences in wealth, and thus to access to the means of persuasion. A good reason for more economic equality, but not for getting rid of democracy.

Are there also be factors like charisma that influence voters? Sure, but these are small-scale factors, and added together they end up more or less canceling each other out--they don't tend to create a lopsided distribution of political power such as you describe, with groups gaining dominance over others.

In any case, I'm not at all convinced that the population is dominated by unequal influence over opinion anywhere near to the degree that vast inequality in wealth causes unequal access to political power.

I don't argue that negative sense. It is that positive sense that I argue against. Money isn't power if your free will is compromised.

Who cares? Does it mean so much to you to say, "We're helping the capitalists, too"? Is not the misery they inflict on everyone else enough? The fact of the matter remains that changing the system requires challenging class power relations.

The powerful are selected by the system to be powerful precisely because they're blind to any role they might play in furthering the ills of capitalism.

No, they just aren't concerned about that role, for the most part. But, yes, they'd object if anyone tried to stop them from using manipulative advertisement, or products that create their own demand, or anything else they do that causes the problems you speak of--they do those things for a reason. It brings them profit. And they can and do object to regulations aiming at reducing economic stresses on the "labor" side of things, for exactly the same reason.

In the long-term, Maoist policies in areas like food distribution and health care greatly increased the health and life expectancy of the population.

The evidence suggests that that's the general pattern: economic development follows such improvements in social indicators, which typically require government social programs.

I'm not so sure Soheran. This is the same government that allowed rivers to become toxic enough to kill. And last time I checked, China's life expectancy was nowhere near the levels appreciated in places like South Korea and Japan, or even in poorer countries like Vietnam. Also, it seems that the lions share of development here in the US occurred without social programs, not even to mention Dickensian England. Further, I have a hard time believing that any kind of "social programs" that remain in China are more then a PR scam.

It would be very much out of character for them - China, for the "People's Republic" at the beginning of it's name, is no more Communist then the "Democratic Republic of the Congo" ever was Democratic, and has been such since 1978. And during it's brief experience with Communism under Mao, "food distribution" was hardly effective (If you can remember the huge famines that occurred during the "Great Leap Forward".)

That's not to say that capitalism is grand, just that Marxism incorrectly describes the underlying problem as being that of one group of people exploiting another, when in today's reality it's the structure of the system rather than class conflict that is the reason for capitalism's faults.

Amiright?

No.

1.Marx described a simplified capitalistic model based on the capitalism of the XIX century. Of course, the details of the current capitalistic model are different.

2.Marx underlined that the key to understanding the society and the history of its developement is the analysis of the production relationships. This is still valid... it's what you've just done to try to disprove Marxism. By the way, what you described is higly modelised and idealised, don't you think so? As example, take the 1929 crisis, or the Enron scam. Even better, take the subprime mortgages' crisis.

3.Workers are being "exploited" by their employers. These employers are frequently large corporations that do whatever it takes to make money. Their CEOs are people who are skilled at making a lot of money for corporations, and are paid large sums of money to do so. If they fail to "exploit" the company's assets properly, they are fired. By the owners, who are the shareholders.
As counterexample, many corporations have gone bankrupt because of CEO-devised frauds. Ross Perot, anyone?
Also, CEOs are also shareholders (many of them are paid in shares, too!).

4.The very existance - and steady numerical growth - of the "working poors" in the USA disproves your reasoning. "Working poors" means that the higher class is pushing back the middle class into the lower ranks of society, because the capitalism can exploit better the lower class than the middle class.

Actually many Marxists these days see current capitalism as cyclical to a degree, they see the late 18th century Laissez-faire model in the urban states of France, Germany and Italy they see capitalism close to decay. These Laissez-faire liberal states of course failed by the early 19th century and collapse, as famously noted by Mussolini himself:

"The importance of liberalism in the XIXth century should not be exaggerated for present day polemical purposes, nor should we make of one of the many doctrines which flourished in that century a religion for mankind for the present and for all time to come. Liberalism really flourished for fifteen years only. It arose in 1830 as a reaction to the Holy Alliance which tried to force Europe to recede further back than 1789; it touched its zenith in 1848 when even Pius IXth was a liberal. Its decline began immediately after that year. If 1848 was a year of light and poetry, 1849 was a year of darkness and tragedy. The Roman Republic was killed by a sister republic, that of France . In that same year Marx, in his famous Communist Manifesto, launched the gospel of socialism"

Liberalism was then quickly replaced by the emerging state capitalist (or welfare capitalism) of Germany, France, Italy and Britain. The United States soon put welfare capitalism into full effect during the 'New Deal'.

And to it wasn't so long after welfare capitalism came into full bloom as a period of bourgeois property that as fast as it's rise, so too was it's fall and replacement by fascism. Fascism itself was an extreme variant of welfare capitalism, but unlike welfare capitalism which adopted a 'soft' approach to repression of the workers, fascism took a violent and militantly anti-communist line, it trumpeted 'unity' yet engaged in the most recalcitrant and reactionary defense of social hierarchy. It made society literally into a cesspool of servility.

And as we know fascism was replaced mostly by an early form of socialism and more moderate form of state capitalism led by the 'West'.

In this way modern 'neoliberalism' and 'globalization' can be seen in a cyclical way as a rebirth of the old Laissez-faire model, and that given the unstable nature of it's economic results, that inevitably a more state-orientated mode of bourgeois property will prevail it.

"Working poors" means that the higher class is pushing back the middle class into the lower ranks of society, because the capitalism can exploit better the lower class than the middle class.
How in hell's name did you put that together?

"Someone works but doesn't earn enough money to live comfortably. Therefore the higher class pushes the middle class into the lower class."

:confused:

Actually Marx defined quite clearly between the emerging industrial working class and the middle/lower class.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

Are they in a sense a product of the system, in that the system creates the possibility--and tends towards the necessity--of concentrations of wealth and power? Sure, but so what?

Are they themselves bound, in some ways, to serve the capitalist machine? Perhaps, but in material terms this is idle philosophical speculation (not necessarily a bad thing, but in this context it misses the point). The powerful do not give up their power just because they pay certain psychological prices for it.
I'm really trying, but so little of what you say makes any sense to me. People who are created by capitalism? How can a rationalist person who spends so much time trying to figure out the moral fabric of the universe tolerate such a thought? I had to read the line about philosophical reasoning being idle speculation twice - it's hard to believe that you could be a victim (?) of such doublethink.

Fact of the matter is that a key theme underlying marxism is the way class is invented so that difficult moral questions can be circumvented. Marx wasn't the first to go down this road of course, but that doesn't excuse it. If class struggle is a real phenomenon as revealed by the scientific analysis of dialectic history, then that makes it much easier to justify why I'm putting random people into gulags. In fact, it's not really me putting them there, it's just the manifestations of contradictory material phenomena sorting themselves out. It allows me not to have to ask whether they did anything to deserve such treatment. Why do you think it is that Andaras loves Marx so much while advocating people like me getting shot the next moment? I don't know whether he realises the statement he's making, but nonetheless it's the best piece of analysis on the worth of marxism you could ever hope to see. People free from the need to make moral decisions both on their own lives and the way they affect others, free by virtue of either their decisions being meaningless when confronted with the sheer size of historical developments (read: material relevance) or free by virtue of being painted as part of a class, inevitably tied to a prescribed fate.

And the sentence confirms that you know all this perfectly well. You acknowledge that a moral issue might be in there and dismiss it as being not 'materially relevant'.

Not cool.

How in hell's name did you put that together?

"Someone works but doesn't earn enough money to live comfortably. Therefore the higher class pushes the middle class into the lower class."

:confused:

Easy.

If you can't live comfortably, you're more likely to:
1.lose your personal property (like your house) in favour of banks (i.e. higher class), and go bankrupt
2.accept worse labour conditions in exchange of higher wages, even if the new wage still wouldn't be enough
3.see your peers as competitors in your strife for survival (loss of class unity for the lower class)
4.lose ability of creating new enterprise (less competition for higher class)
5.lose access to better cultural standard

Why? Historically, the higher classes have always been threatened NOT by the lower classes, but by the middle classes.
Senatores, plebeii, equites. (Rome)
Aristocrats, serfs, bourgoisie. (medieval society)
Capitalists, lumpenproletarians, proletarians. (classical capitalist society)
Inner Party, Prolets, Outer Party. (Orwell's 1984)

Actually Marx defined quite clearly between the emerging industrial working class and the middle/lower class.

This definition of the middle class needs to be reinterpreted - it was ok 150 years ago.
Today, most of the classically-defined "middle/lower class" has been made into "industrial working class" (how many artisans do you know?). Also, the classically-defined "industrial working class" has been numerically reduced in the most developed countries, mostly due to automation.
The new "industrial working class" is mostly white-collars more than blue-collars, at least in the most developed countries.

1.lose your personal property (like your house) in favour of banks (i.e. higher class), and go bankrupt
Banks don't get anything out of that.

2.accept worse labour conditions in exchange of higher wages, even if the new wage still wouldn't be enough
Employers don't get anything out of that.

3.see your peers as competitors in your strife for survival (loss of class unity for the lower class)
Who gets anything from that?

4.lose ability of creating new enterprise (less competition for higher class)
You know what banks do get something out of? Business loans.

5.lose access to better cultural standard
I fail to see any relevance whatsoever.

Basically you're making an atrocious case that some hivemind has a motive for a poor person having a job (or something) and therefore not only is this proof for the existence of the hivemind, but also for its guilt in having given this poor person a job (or something).

ALL politico-economic idiolgies are obsolete and always have been. marxism AND capitolism INcluded!

because every idiology (with no exceptions) contributes to and motivates arbitraryness of policy, and every arbitraryness of policy resaults in a deterioration of conditions faced by real people, places and things.

there will always be an elete, precisely and only as long, as people remain conned into the lie, that hierarchy in any form, is morally or in any other way superior, to the lack there of.

there are only two, very narrow contexts, to which hierarchy, or at least social organization, in any form is essential.

one is the kinds of physical and tecnologcial infrastructure familiar comfort zone to which the vast majority are adamantly emotionally attatched depeds upon utterly.

so the challance becomes to harness hierarchy, and or whatever other topology of social organiziation, to infrastructure and the general well.

because the other context is the raising of armies and the making of war.

marx didn't get it right, but, he had the right motivation, saw the right real need, one that now more then ever still exists. the egalitarian ethic is the moral ethic. but marx himself specifically, and it is understandable considering the circumstances of his life and all that, didn't get quite right.

he tried. he had the right idea generally. he was just "close, but no cigar".

=^^=
.../\...

because every idiology (with no exceptions) contributes to and motivates arbitraryness of policy, and every arbitraryness of policy resaults in a deterioration of conditions faced by real people, places and things.
Huh?

i·de·ol·o·gy
1. the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group.
ar·bi·trar·y
1. subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion: an arbitrary decision.

So doesn't this apply that ideology provides rules and guidelines on policy, directed towards a certain goal. Doesn't that necessarily mean that the policy would not be arbitrary, that at best the goal would be?

So doesn't this apply that ideology provides rules and guidelines on policy, directed towards a certain goal. Doesn't that necessarily mean that the policy would not be arbitrary, that at best the goal would be?

nope. guidelines themselves arbitrary that usurp the natural and neccessary priority of real effects on real people, places and things.

and precisely, all of them, why we have the screwed up mess this world is in, under EVERY idiology.

=^^=
.../\...

Further, I have a hard time believing that any kind of "social programs" that remain in China are more then a PR scam.

You'd be wrong, but I did refer to Maoist policies for a reason. The current regime is not Maoist.

And during it's brief experience with Communism under Mao, "food distribution" was hardly effective (If you can remember the huge famines that occurred during the "Great Leap Forward".)

Hence the reference to the "long term." And the Great Leap Forward famine was a product of an idiotic economic policy that had little to do with food distribution.

People who are created by capitalism? How can a rationalist person who spends so much time trying to figure out the moral fabric of the universe tolerate such a thought?

Um, I was very explicit about what I meant: "in that the system creates the possibility--and tends towards the necessity--of concentrations of wealth and power."

That's not an absurd thought, or even a radical one.

I had to read the line about philosophical reasoning being idle speculation twice - it's hard to believe that you could be a victim (?) of such doublethink.

Perhaps you should have read it a third time, because I don't think you understood what I was getting at at all.

My point was that we can speculate all we like about how the powerful as well as the powerless are harmed by the existing social order, but that doesn't change the simple fact that the powerful are likely to want to hold on to their power anyway. Thus, such speculation is materially irrelevant: it doesn't change the facts of power relations and the necessity of overcoming them.

If class struggle is a real phenomenon as revealed by the scientific analysis of dialectic history, then that makes it much easier to justify why I'm putting random people into gulags.

No, it doesn't. That's not even a beginning of a moral justification, and Marxists don't pretend it is.

If you want to accuse Marxism of circumventing morality, there are far better ways to do it: you could point, for instance, to the fact that Marx seems to have denied that justice transcended economic systems, leading him to argue that capitalist exploitation could not be opposed on the basis of right.

Of course, I tend to think that Marx had, if not a "moralistic" sense of ethics, at least a humanistic notion of what is good for human beings, and a desire to bring it about... and that element tends to be pretty common to Marxism as well. He was willing to accept bloodshed if necessary, but that's true of most everyone, and the prospect hardly seems to have exhilarated him. He did write against the death penalty, and was antagonistic to those radical socialists who fetishized violent revolutionary struggle.

In fact, it's not really me putting them there, it's just the manifestations of contradictory material phenomena sorting themselves out.

This is an old philosophical question, but Marx's philosophical interests were elsewhere.

A materialist analysis of human behavior, in my view, might mitigate moral wrongdoing ("What you did was wrong, but understandable") but does not even come close to justifying it.

It allows me not to have to ask whether they did anything to deserve such treatment.

No, it doesn't. "Is" doesn't imply "ought." The fact of the class struggle does not justify your actions.

I don't know whether he realises the statement he's making, but nonetheless it's the best piece of analysis on the worth of marxism you could ever hope to see.

Should I use every statement by libertarians against you, too?

You acknowledge that a moral issue might be in there

What are you talking about? There was no "moral issue" being referenced in my statement. The question at hand was whether the class character of capitalism is still important.

In Soviet Russia, obsolete is Marxist!

*ignores boos and hisses, dodges tomatoes*

Actually Marx defined quite clearly between the emerging industrial working class and the middle/lower class.



In that, he was also astoundingly incorrect. Small firms, small manufacturers, and providers of unique and specialized services have actually thrived as a result of industrialization, and continue to do so. The vested experience required in certain fields makes it astonishingly difficult, even with mega-corporations, to break into field.

The actual model of class warfare is completely wrong anyway as we all know.

The drive for a revolution always comes from the middle classes, who want their chance to be upper classes ie replace the current set of rulers.

How they do this is to enroll the support of the working classes with promises/slogans, ride the revolution into power (hopefully before some other clique of middle class discontents can seize power).

Having done this, its then remove the former rulers by whatever means seems ideal, then use whatever means nessasary to keep the remaining middle class from formenting a revolution.

Terror is a good one, along with false imprisonment, and execution of so called 'enemies of the revolution'.

And all the time the 'working class' in who's name the revolution was carried out have ended up in an even worse state than they were before the revolution.*

Capitalism maybe a crap system, but its a damn sight better than any of the alternatives

El-Presidente Boris

*Before the revolution I was poor and downtrodden, after the revolution I was poor, downtrodden and hungry.

nope. guidelines themselves arbitrary that usurp the natural and neccessary priority of real effects on real people, places and things.
We need an example.

Marxism is an ideology. A marxist group has a goal, namely to end the class struggle and make sure there's a communist utopia in the end. That goal is arbitrary in the sense that it comes from within the ideological construct (or the brain of a crackpot) rather than being dictated by what is happening to people.

But in terms of policies, there is no arbitrariness. This marxist group wants to bring about the revolution, put the proletariat in charge and so on and so forth. It does so by enacting specific policies that are dictated by a) the knowledge provided by the ideology and b) real effects on real people, places and things.

Just because I have an ideology doesn't mean that I'm somehow removed from reality or pragmatism. It means that what I perceive is being sorted and processed according to a certain set of ideas, and the solutions I propose stem from this sorting process.

More importantly, if I had no ideology, then I would have serious difficulty making sense of the things I perceive. I would have no long-term goal to achieve and no consistency as far as my policies are concerned - I'd only ever be making ad hoc responses.

That's not an absurd thought, or even a radical one.
Of course it is. Rather than a capitalist making a decision which you can evaluate according to its morality, you talk about "the system" which apparently makes people do stuff as though it had a mind of its own and people didn't.

Thus, such speculation is materially irrelevant: it doesn't change the facts of power relations and the necessity of overcoming them.
The necessity of overcoming them can only be due to two reasons. The former is some sort of economic efficiency argument, which would fall flat on its face because marxism doesn't do serious economics.

The latter is the interesting one, namely that the power relations are somehow evil and unjust. That's a moral question that absolutely requires finding out how people act, why they act and what they think about all this. The only reason you can have for calling this speculation irrelevant is if you have already made up your mind and are now only talking about implementation - which means either you have some sort of other reason outside marxism (one that justifies the gulag-principle), or you're accepting the marxist vision that morality is unnecessary.

No, it doesn't. That's not even a beginning of a moral justification, and Marxists don't pretend it is.
They just don't talk about moral justifications at all. They talk about the gulag as though it is a natural process like evolution, thereby declaring any moral investigation unnecessary.

Of course, I tend to think that Marx had, if not a "moralistic" sense of ethics, at least a humanistic notion of what is good for human beings, and a desire to bring it about... and that element tends to be pretty common to Marxism as well.
Good for some human beings. Sayyid Qutb thought a certain group is being exploited and oppressed and unfortunately bloodshed is necessary to overcome this, but I wouldn't call him a humanist.

A materialist analysis of human behavior, in my view, might mitigate moral wrongdoing ("What you did was wrong, but understandable") but does not even come close to justifying it.
Mitigation and justification are just questions of degree. Once you accept that it mitigates something, it's just a question of making the murderer a bit more exploited and a bit more poor until he's undeserving of any meaningful punishment at all.

No, it doesn't. "Is" doesn't imply "ought." The fact of the class struggle does not justify your actions.
It just makes any claim to the contrary unprovable and therefore meaningless.

What are you talking about? There was no "moral issue" being referenced in my statement.
Of course it is.

"Are they themselves bound, in some ways, to serve the capitalist machine?" = "Are they guilty of wrongdoing or not?"

If they're bound, they don't make a free choice and can't be blamed for the outcome, nor can their motives be taken into account. They're no more moral agents than the bullet that hits someone.

The question at hand was whether the class character of capitalism is still important.
On that you were both on the wrong track in believing that such a thing as class exists. I wasn't going to interrupt that one like I'm not going to interrupt a debate that starts off with "God said..."

Of course it is. Rather than a capitalist making a decision which you can evaluate according to its morality, you talk about "the system" which apparently makes people do stuff as though it had a mind of its own and people didn't.

Wait, are you really going to say that the capitalist system doesn't enable capitalist-style concentrations of wealth and power? Or that human beings are abstract individuals whose desires and perception of reality are not influenced by the social system under which they live?

We're not magical and we're not independent of one another. We're highly social creatures with biological natures, with complex systems of motivation and psychologies very much open to external influence. We can actually deal with this fact and see what kind of freedom we can achieve, or we can pretend it doesn't exist and languish in avoidable misery and unfreedom.

That's a moral question that absolutely requires finding out how people act, why they act and what they think about all this.

When it comes to the powerful? No, because it doesn't matter what their motives are: unjust power relations are still unjust power relations. Whether they do it because they really hate other people, or because they like money, or because they're indoctrinated into it, or even out of benevolence is irrelevant to that injustice.

The only reason you can have for calling this speculation irrelevant is if you have already made up your mind and are now only talking about implementation

That's exactly right. Tongass and I had already agreed that capitalism had its problems. My point was that class analysis was relevant tactically, when it comes to changing that: the powerful, in all probability, are not going to be inclined to give up their power.

They talk about the gulag as though it is a natural process like evolution,

So why do Marxists either reject the Soviet Union or work to deny its atrocities?

Why is there such concern among Marxists, down to Marx himself, for showing the immense human costs of capitalism--and the comparative human benefits of socialism?

Good for some human beings.

Marx is actually quite universalist in his conception of the good. You could criticize him justly for that.

Sayyid Qutb thought a certain group is being exploited and oppressed and unfortunately bloodshed is necessary to overcome this, but I wouldn't call him a humanist.

Right. I didn't call Marx a humanist for that. I merely noted that it didn't detract from his humanism. Pretty much all of us are willing to countenance violence in conditions of oppression and exploitation.

Mitigation and justification are just questions of degree. Once you accept that it mitigates something, it's just a question of making the murderer a bit more exploited and a bit more poor until he's undeserving of any meaningful punishment at all.

No, it's not a difference of degree at all; it's a difference in kind, and a rather important one.

You're right, of course, that in theory we could increase the mitigation to be perfectly mitigatory, to the point where it would be unjust to punish the person at all--but so what? That's just a perfect mitigation. It's not a justification.

The difference is, when I as a moral agent consider my course of action, things that mitigate matter not at all to my moral evaluation (is/ought), but things that justify make all the difference. I am obligated to try my best to do the right thing regardless of mitigating factors.

Edit: You can think of it this way. Mitigation is concerned with the moral status of the person. Justification is concerned with the moral status of the act. There is a break between the two because we are only human; we are not perfectly rational supernatural beings for whom the fulfillment of moral obligation need never involve warring against ourselves.

It just makes any claim to the contrary unprovable and therefore meaningless.

No, it doesn't even do that.

"Are they themselves bound, in some ways, to serve the capitalist machine?" = "Are they guilty of wrongdoing or not?"

Maybe, but I don't care, because I'm not out to punish them anyway.

I have never justified opposition to capitalism on grounds of exacting retribution upon the rich for their crimes. Indeed, I have never been much of a believer in retributive justice in any case, especially not for a practice that was legal and respectable.

The question for me is not, "Have the wealthy committed wrongdoing?". The question is, "Is the present distribution of wealth and power just?"

(And, no, redistribution doesn't count as punishment--not unless we make the rules harsher for those who were formerly members of the wealthy classes. We give them what they are due, no more and no less.)

If they're bound, they don't make a free choice and can't be blamed for the outcome, nor can their motives be taken into account. They're no more moral agents than the bullet that hits someone.

Actually, the question of reconciling free will with the existence of extensive external influence is not anywhere near as clear-cut as that. People can, in a sense, be both "bound" and "free": sometimes, for instance, free choice of an alternative is possible but very difficult.

Wait, are you really going to say that the capitalist system doesn't enable capitalist-style concentrations of wealth and power?
No, apart from my acknowledgement that power doesn't come from wealth, but from the acceptance that violence is sometimes okay.

Or that human beings are abstract individuals whose desires and perception of reality are not influenced by the social system under which they live?
I'd think that if you're really that smitten by the is/ought problem, then you'd be perfectly happy to accept that if we have a mind, we are able to use it to go against the grain. Just because I live in a capitalist country doesn't make me want to earn lots of money. I make myself want lots of money. It's a question of who and what I want to be, and shaping myself and my environment accordingly. I know plenty of people who make a different choice despite living in exactly the same environment as me.

But even if the presence of capitalism increased the number of people who chose to become capitalists (that is, people willing to rely on themselves to create value and expect rewards for themselves in return), it would still not be valid in my view to start talking about capitalism rather than the individuals involved. It's simply that you can't gain anything from leaving the individual level - the only result you will come up with is to restrict the ability of people to make those individual choices, which is not a moral course of action.

That's exactly right. Tongass and I had already agreed that capitalism had its problems. My point was that class analysis was relevant tactically, when it comes to changing that: the powerful, in all probability, are not going to be inclined to give up their power.
The difficulty I have with this is that you talk about a system when it comes to problems and something being wrong, but you talk about people when it comes to hurting someone. I think it's a massive leap to take one to justify the other.

So why do Marxists either reject the Soviet Union or work to deny its atrocities?
Because it didn't work.

Why is there such concern among Marxists, down to Marx himself, for showing the immense human costs of capitalism--and the comparative human benefits of socialism?
I have no idea. I never quite got how Marx on one hand talked about things not being down to individuals but to dialectics, but then openly advocated revolutions which are clearly not due to the dialectics he predicted. The Manifesto for example is just that, and not a piece of scientific or objective writing. The wish to point out wrongs or accelerate their correction seems to go against what marxism is all about - when the time is right, everything will happen by itself.

Right. I didn't call Marx a humanist for that. I merely noted that it didn't detract from his humanism. Pretty much all of us are willing to countenance violence in conditions of oppression and exploitation.
But you wouldn't call Qutb justified in his advocacy of violence, even though he could provide rather more substantial arguments for his case than marxism has left. At some point you must stop looking at what the person believed in private and the ideology they advocated - Hitler was a gentle and caring person with his dog, committed to healthy living and fiercely loyal, but you wouldn't use that to try and make nazism anything other than what it is.

The difference is, when I as a moral agent consider my course of action, things that mitigate matter not at all to my moral evaluation (is/ought), but things that justify make all the difference. I am obligated to try my best to do the right thing regardless of mitigating factors.
But marxism offers a great avenue to avoid thinking about whether or not I'm actually doing the right thing, doesn't it? If my actions are just part of the proletariat's great struggle for freedom, then that can serve as an overall rationalisation even as every single action I commit in the cause is an evil one.

But you're right, for most people marxism itself won't be the motivator, unless they're particularly into self-denial. The problem is if you have an ideology that judges capitalism unjust, in combination with marxism. The ideology provides the initial motivation, marxism shrouds the whole thing in analytical language and sends as its message that violent revolution is the only way capitalism will end, thereby requiring anyone who thinks capitalism is bad to accept the proverbial gulag as a necessary evil.

There is a break between the two because we are only human; we are not perfectly rational supernatural beings for whom the fulfillment of moral obligation need never involve warring against ourselves.
Unless you're an objectivist. The secret to John Galt's heroism was his refusal to follow a code of morality that forces us to fight himself.

(And, no, redistribution doesn't count as punishment--not unless we make the rules harsher for those who were formerly members of the wealthy classes. We give them what they are due, no more and no less.)
And punishment isn't giving someone what they are due? First I have mah bucket, then I don't have mah bucket. Therefore I have been hurt. To me that certainly looks either like punishment or like just hurting people at random.

Actually, the question of reconciling free will with the existence of extensive external influence is not anywhere near as clear-cut as that. People can, in a sense, be both "bound" and "free": sometimes, for instance, free choice of an alternative is possible but very difficult.
It's always very difficult. That's life - the only case when it actually becomes impossible is if your physical integrity becomes compromised, thereby compromising your ability to make any choices at all.

But honestly, if I'm a capitalist, is it really that difficult to give my money away to charity? Or, more holistically, is it really that difficult to choose not to create economic value?

Only, again, if you equivocate on "control."If I'm "equivocating", then I think we have to do so as a matter of practicality. The point is to change the systems, and if the system controls the controllers, then it does no good to target expendable puppets instead of their mechanical master.

The wealthy do as a simple matter of fact exercise a great deal of control, both economically and politically: they own the means of production and use them for their own profit, they have a wildly disproportionate share of access and opportunity to influence politics, and so forth.Granted, although this seems to me a reason to attempt to enlist them rather then fight them in an unwinnable proxy war.

Are they in a sense a product of the system, in that the system creates the possibility--and tends towards the necessity--of concentrations of wealth and power? Sure, but so what?

Are they themselves bound, in some ways, to serve the capitalist machine? Perhaps, but in material terms this is idle philosophical speculation (not necessarily a bad thing, but in this context it misses the point). The powerful do not give up their power just because they pay certain psychological prices for it.Sure they do. Quite often those who might otherwise have been powerful choose instead to lead a simpler life because of the stresses of power, or because they see it as bankrupt. But battling the elite as an ends is about as useful as attacking terrorists without addressing the root causes of terrorism.

Capitalism couldn't possibly work without economic inequality. Who would do the investment? You would need collective institutions--like government--and thus socialism.Corporations are collective institutions as much as governments are.

So? In a democracy, the "power system" is the body of the people. They have every incentive to act as I described them acting. You're not really making an argument.I'm trying, but it's only lately that the idea I started this thread about took its final form in my brain so I don't have all the semantics worked out. How bout this: You say the power system is the body of the people, who will act rationally and every individual will play their prisoner's dilemma / Nash's games perfectly. I disagree. There is no body of the people. There are only the individual persons with unique sets of motives, who interact with other individual persons. The body of the people is more like a swarm of influencing people, and its overall systemic contours will necessarily possess some predictable, unintelligent characteristics which cunning persons or entities will take advantage of in order to boost their power. By its very nature as an interactive group of impressionable individuals, the body of the people does not have the ability to wholly purge themselves of such characteristics or act to wholly contain them or prevent actors from exploiting them. At least that's how things seem to me, but I'll admit the argument needs strengthening.

You should really be less vague. Are there differences in persuasive power in our society? Yes, but on the large scale they largely correspond to differences in wealth, and thus to access to the means of persuasion. A good reason for more economic equality, but not for getting rid of democracy.

Are there also be factors like charisma that influence voters? Sure, but these are small-scale factors, and added together they end up more or less canceling each other out--they don't tend to create a lopsided distribution of political power such as you describe, with groups gaining dominance over others.

In any case, I'm not at all convinced that the population is dominated by unequal influence over opinion anywhere near to the degree that vast inequality in wealth causes unequal access to political power.There's where we disagree. If you remove money, then the most-watched/respected journalist immediately becomes the most powerful person in the nation, almost to the level of a near-dictator without capital marketing/PR interests to compete with.

Who cares? Does it mean so much to you to say, "We're helping the capitalists, too"? Is not the misery they inflict on everyone else enough? The fact of the matter remains that changing the system requires challenging class power relations.That's fine by me - the upheaval of class power relations is a consequence of fundamental change, and revenge against capitalist oppressors is all fine and dandy, but a petty foundation for a political philosophy if you ask me. It's empowering the victims I care about; tearing down the victors is only a consequence of a means to this end.

No, they just aren't concerned about that role, for the most part.That's not quite true. The rich are way into philanthropy.

But, yes, they'd object if anyone tried to stop them from using manipulative advertisement, or products that create their own demand, or anything else they do that causes the problems you speak of--they do those things for a reason. It brings them profit. And they can and do object to regulations aiming at reducing economic stresses on the "labor" side of things, for exactly the same reason.Yes, but they're in denial about the reason. They aren't thinking to themselves "I want to keep poor people down because it ruins my profits." It's like racism, where everybody moves away from black people and grumbles about having to be "PC" at work, but recoils at any overtly racial thought or phrase. And the reason they're in denial is not just greed, but because the system promotes ideologies that allow easy and convenient justification for unfair disparities in society.


People who are created by capitalism?Bingo. All of us have been to varying extents.

Of course it is. Rather than a capitalist making a decision which you can evaluate according to its morality, you talk about "the system" which apparently makes people do stuff as though it had a mind of its own and people didn't.That's a necessary perspective if you're trying to evaluate the large-scale sociological effects of a given system. My position is that people, while having minds of their own, are also necessarily impressionable, because those minds can only make decisions based on what's put into them. I wouldn't say that the system has a mind of its own, but its over-reaching machinations are becoming more and more independent as society becomes more complex and technological.

...that the power relations are somehow evil and unjust. That's a moral questionInteresting. I think we can all agree that power relations are at least not just in all circumstances, and if they are, we can only be assured of it because an intelligent decision has been made. I would put forth that large-scale power relations decisions in a capitalist society are unjust not only on the grounds that they are the wrong decisions, but on the grounds that they are ultimately dictated by the unintelligent over-arching system of capitalism that cares nothing for human interests except inasmuch as they serve its own ends, which are those of a train derailed.

well you know, what's really goofy is this bussiness of using the shortcommings of one thing to claim how wonderful something else is.

that would only make sense if they were the only two things possible, which the biggest big lie of all times has to be the claim that they are.

what pushes it really over the top is when, on top of that, they shaire nearly all of nearly the same shortcommings.

which would have been easier to pretend they didn't 10 years ago. when 'western' politics was still disciplining itself to maintain that illusion.

but with even that having since been thrown out with the bath water, it has become a complete mystery to me why so many people remain so blinded and don't see it.

we CAN do better then either, and the biggest thing holding us back from doing so, is having been convinced to lie to ourselves that we cannot.

=^^=
.../\...

Also, I really don't wish to get back into this debate, but taxation, subsidy etc isn't the only way toward redistribution, no one should forget the role that a nationalized bank (and central bank) would play, or according to Marx a 'Centralisation of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly'. I think in Venezuela that idea of socialism has been used well in the so-called 'Social Missions' which give micro-loans to the poor etc. Also the role the state oil company plays is key, instead of operating on a traditional profit-corporate model, the money goes straight to social missions for eduction, health etc. In that way socialism is about seizing productive capacity and using it to perpetuate socialized relations rather than private ones.

All of us have been to varying extents.
And you have no problem with the implication of that?

I wouldn't say that the system has a mind of its own, but its over-reaching machinations are becoming more and more independent as society becomes more complex and technological.
What machination? What is it with people trying to remove everything from our control?

Look, sociology is all fun and stuff if you're not into another career - but it's really not worth a dime if you look at it seriously. There is no causality in anything you can possibly establish with sociological observations. The entire science lacks any sort of solid foundation, it can be shot down just because correlation doesn't imply causation.

I think we can all agree that power relations are at least not just in all circumstances, and if they are, we can only be assured of it because an intelligent decision has been made.
Of course not all power relations are always just, it would be silly to claim that. I just don't see how you can claim that whatever we have today is caused by capitalism, is always caused by capitalism or is actually unjust. Nor do I follow the assertion that just power relations are a sign of intelligent decisions while unjust ones aren't. What outcome we have today is the result of billions of intelligent agents making decisions according to the best of their knowledge, and I think that it's certainly conceivable that a power relation that just sort of happened without any planning can be just.

I would put forth that large-scale power relations decisions in a capitalist society are unjust not only on the grounds that they are the wrong decisions, but on the grounds that they are ultimately dictated by the unintelligent over-arching system of capitalism that cares nothing for human interests except inasmuch as they serve its own ends, which are those of a train derailed.
Of course the system doesn't care. It can't, it's not capable of thought, emotion or any other action or reaction we attribute to conscious organisms. It's not an organism, not even an unconscious one.

Gravity doesn't care either, but that doesn't mean we need to put everyone in big rubber bubbles so they don't hurt themselves falling off stuff. That doesn't tell us anything about the justness of capitalism (or gravity).

As for whether or not they are the wrong decisions (in fact, I disagree with calling them "decisions", because that implies a decider and the existence or reasonable alternatives), I put it to you that you're not qualified to determine this. Nor is Soheran, or me for that matter. The only thing we are qualified to determine is whether or not someone we trade something with deserves a reward and that is what you need to call just or unjust. Furthermore I put it to you that even if you could somehow determine a better course of action, you would be unable to implement it. So really, all this talk about "the system" just avoids the actual heart of the matter.

I think in Venezuela that idea of socialism has been used well in the so-called 'Social Missions' which give micro-loans to the poor etc.
You don't need "Social Missions" for that.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,538088,00.html
INVESTING IN THE WORLD'S POOR
Taking Microfinance to the Next Level

The aim of outfits like BlueOrchard to serve those below the poverty line is both a philanthropic and profitable endeavor

Just putting it out there...

Wait, are you really going to say that the capitalist system doesn't enable capitalist-style concentrations of wealth and power? Or that human beings are abstract individuals whose desires and perception of reality are not influenced by the social system under which they live?I think (and he can correct me if I'm wrong) what NL is trying to say is that Marxists view history as a deterministic causal chain, and therefore the overthrow of capitalism and then the gulags are inevitable becuase they are determined.

And punishment isn't giving someone what they are due? First I have mah bucket, then I don't have mah bucket. Therefore I have been hurt. To me that certainly looks either like punishment or like just hurting people at random.e?When the 13th Amendment in the U.S. was passed, it illegalized slavery. Slaves were freed.
Were the slaveowners punishes for owning slaves?
Should they have been compensated for their loss?

(My intention of this analogy is not to say that slavery is morally equivalent to owning a factory, so I hope you don't think I'm implying that it is. I'm using it purely because it's a real-life example.)

The only thing we are qualified to determine is whether or not someone we trade something with deserves a reward and that is what you need to call just or unjust. This scenario assumes that both parties in the trade have the right to trade the things they're trading in the first place.

This scenario assumes that both parties in the trade have the right to trade the things they're trading in the first place.
To also answer the slavery issue, yes, it assumes that both parties have that right. Importantly though, slavery of the sort practiced pretty much in every case in history isn't a trade at all, so no ownership can be created as a result.

We start off by saying that the owns himself. For the slave owner to have the right to own the slave and consider him his property, there must now be a trade in which neither side is threatened with violence and both sides are informed to some minimum degree about the terms and conditions. Clearly that wasn't the case, hence there is no reason to think that the property in question ever changed hands.

But that's a different case from property redistribution, because in that case the property is justly owned as a result of voluntary and perfectly valid trades between intelligent people. If the slaves had somehow chosen their fate, then I think it's pretty clear that the slave owners shouldn't have been punished, that is affected negatively, by the change in policy and some sort of compensation could be justified.

Of course, I'm also saying that people have the right to trade themselves and that it was the trade, not the object being traded, that was the issue. I think that's a reasonable call to make.

Shemales!:D

No, apart from my acknowledgement that power doesn't come from wealth, but from the acceptance that violence is sometimes okay.

Well, wealth has always depended upon violence, so....

I'd think that if you're really that smitten by the is/ought problem, then you'd be perfectly happy to accept that if we have a mind, we are able to use it to go against the grain.

That's right. I believe in free will. But so what? Most people don't want to spend their lives battling against external pressures in any case, and the simple fact of the matter is that our wills can and do fail.

Unfortunately, we can't pretend that "free will" is somehow a guarantor of substantive freedom. Human beings are much more complicated than that.

Just because I live in a capitalist country doesn't make me want to earn lots of money. I make myself want lots of money. It's a question of who and what I want to be, and shaping myself and my environment accordingly. I know plenty of people who make a different choice despite living in exactly the same environment as me.

Right. People are different. So? You have no control: you do not consider how the proportions would work out in a non-capitalist society. Nobody says that capitalism is so rigid as to create people who are mirror images of one another.

It's simply that you can't gain anything from leaving the individual level

Yes, you can.

On the individual level, you see individuals choosing, and little else. Confine yourself to this perspective, and you fail to take into account the social nature of humanity: you deny freedom to us by refusing to let us choose what kind of society to live in.

Instead, we end up being faced simply with the choices offered to us within the existing social framework, which we may or may not accept. That is not true freedom.

the only result you will come up with is to restrict the ability of people to make those individual choices, which is not a moral course of action.

Sure it is. Individual choice can and does routinely reduce freedom. When human beings live together in society, our individual choices are so laden with externalities that to confine our freedom to that level is to deny us freedom entirely. That's the basic insight of the social contract, and one that can with much justification be expanded to the economy.

Because it didn't work.

That wasn't clear in the first few decades, yet there was a degree of Marxist opposition that grew over time, and not in correlation with economic failure at all. The Soviet foreign policy swings back in forth before World War II took a toll, for instance, as did the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and Khrushchev's "Secret Speech." Furthermore, the dehumanizing authoritarian bureaucracy at the heart of the Soviet system was a frequent target of Marxist-influenced New Left writers.

No, the chief reason the Soviet Union and its supporters had to lie and delude themselves so thoroughly was because it was a betrayal of Marxism, not an affirmation.

I never quite got how Marx on one hand talked about things not being down to individuals but to dialectics, but then openly advocated revolutions which are clearly not due to the dialectics he predicted.

It's because you conceive of "individuals" and "dialectics" as mutually exclusive, and Marx did not. Socialism will triumph, but only through political action. It does not happen magically by itself.

It's like voting. One individual's vote is of minuscule value; elections are decided by large-scale factors that must be analyzed at the societal level. But if everyone takes their vote to be meaningless as a consequence, the results are changed drastically.

Nobody ever said collective action wasn't weird.

But you wouldn't call Qutb justified in his advocacy of violence, even though he could provide rather more substantial arguments for his case than marxism has left.

I rather doubt that.

Hitler was a gentle and caring person with his dog, committed to healthy living and fiercely loyal, but you wouldn't use that to try and make nazism anything other than what it is.

I am not excusing Marx's beliefs by reference to Marx's personal life. I am defending the moral status of Marx's beliefs by reference to their actual content.

But marxism offers a great avenue to avoid thinking about whether or not I'm actually doing the right thing, doesn't it? If my actions are just part of the proletariat's great struggle for freedom, then that can serve as an overall rationalisation even as every single action I commit in the cause is an evil one.

This is an appeal to the greater good, a sort of "ends justify the means" reasoning, and such arguments can be used with respect to any ideology.

marxism shrouds the whole thing in analytical language and sends as its message that violent revolution is the only way capitalism will end, thereby requiring anyone who thinks capitalism is bad to accept the proverbial gulag as a necessary evil.

Okay, first, whatever the rhetoric of later Marxists, Marx was willing to accept the possibility of peaceful change and certainly advocated peaceful tactics when possible. He was, for good reason, skeptical of the possibility, in most cases, of actually achieving radical social change without violence, but he was very far from advocating violence on principle.

Second, violent revolution in no sense implies gulags.

Unless you're an objectivist. The secret to John Galt's heroism was his refusal to follow a code of morality that forces us to fight himself.

That's the least heroic thing possible; indeed, it is the precise opposite of heroism. It is to surrender: to abandon both morality and freedom, to relinquish the "ought" for the "is."

And punishment isn't giving someone what they are due?

Punishment is giving people what they are due as people deserving of punishment, not as ordinary citizens whose shares we are concerned with as matters of distributive justice.

First I have mah bucket, then I don't have mah bucket. Therefore I have been hurt. To me that certainly looks either like punishment or like just hurting people at random.

We are converting an unjust distribution into a just distribution. To deprive someone of that which they had no right to in the first place (whatever their record of wrongdoing) is not punishment.

It's always very difficult.

No, it isn't. Some choices are very easy. Some choices are very hard. That varies to an extreme degree based upon circumstance. We can and do make choices easier for people, so that they are more capable of doing what they truly will for themselves, instead of complying with pressures external and internal. That's part of the struggle for freedom.

But honestly, if I'm a capitalist, is it really that difficult to give my money away to charity? Or, more holistically, is it really that difficult to choose not to create economic value?

Depends on how radical an abandonment we're talking about. People can and do give to charity extensively, and people can and do choose satisfying jobs over well-paying ones. But the economic pressures to consume and to accumulate more are very strong, and truly radical breaks from the system are extremely difficult.

How many percentage of people get their income from capital gains (surplus value extracted from capital), and how much percentage get it from wage-labor? There's your answer.

Over their lifetimes, I suspect most people in western nations earn significantly from both sources.

On the individual level, you see individuals choosing, and little else. Confine yourself to this perspective, and you fail to take into account the social nature of humanity: you deny freedom to us by refusing to let us choose what kind of society to live in.
Society isn't a thing.

You can associate with like-minded individuals, but that is already available to you through individual freedom.
But the economic pressures to consume and to accumulate more are very strong, and truly radical breaks from the system are extremely difficult.
There's economic pressure to consume? I don't see how that could possibly be true.

Look, sociology is all fun and stuff if you're not into another career - but it's really not worth a dime if you look at it seriously. There is no causality in anything you can possibly establish with sociological observations. The entire science lacks any sort of solid foundation, it can be shot down just because correlation doesn't imply causation.


You don't think any of the professors and academics have studied it so seriously have bothered to think about the whole correlation equalling causation thing?

You don't think any of the professors and academics have studied it so seriously have bothered to think about the whole correlation equalling causation thing?
I'm aware of the statistical trickery that's possible to try and establish Granger causation and the like - but that's just correlation with a time pattern, not true evidence of causation.

Fact of the matter is that there is nothing these academics can do. I'm sure they try really hard, but ultimately there is nothing they can do to actually establish causation because they're so often dealing with "systemic" issues where no amount of surveying and asking people can tell you anything. All you can do is observe and hypothesise. Macroeconomics used to have the same problem, but a need for a solution was only made obvious when stagflation happened in the 70s after Keynesian theory and all the econometrics that supported it turned out seriously flawed. Since then the discipline has been using a better way, that is to incorporate microeconomic principles (where you can establish causation because it deals with people you can ask and understand) and work our way to the macro level from there. Sociology, when it deals with systems and power relations, unfortunately doesn't have that option, nor is it particularly likely that the discipline has the impact or academic rigour to suddenly feel confronted by something as big as stagflation was for economics since it doesn't make clear predictions which can then turn out wrong in the same way.

I'd also consider that the Marxist focus on the producers and the means of production covers, at most, half of the picture. Any serious critique of our modern society must include the consumer, as, quite possibly, the central driver of the entire economic and political system in an economy that is increasingly becoming post-industrial, and focused on information, distribution and management structures.

I believe it was Virginia Woolf who noted that around Christmas of 1909 there was a fundamental change in the human character, that a society that was oriented around the concept of production, suddenly shifted in a manner that was very subtle, but also very sudden. The development of a consumer consciousness altered how people identified themselves.

Society isn't a thing.

Yes, it is.

You can associate with like-minded individuals

What of it? You still live within society.

There's economic pressure to consume? I don't see how that could possibly be true.

Yes; there is, for starters, a massive industry dedicated to getting people to buy things, but perhaps more importantly there is the human desire to at least maintain a given standard of living, and to keep up with the material affluence of the rest of society.

Since then the discipline has been using a better way, that is to incorporate microeconomic principles (where you can establish causation because it deals with people you can ask and understand) and work our way to the macro level from there.

Economics undoubtedly has more solid theoretical footing than sociology.

Of course, this comes at the cost of being able to say much that is meaningful about a wide range of actual human problems in the real world... like power, like culture, like externalities in general, which it can describe in economic terms but can't actually point to in any but the most obvious of cases.

The fact is that certain questions highly important to human life are very uncertain and epistemologically difficult to answer... human beings are insanely complex creatures, and human societies carry that complexity to an entirely new level. But to use that as a reason to refrain from asking them, to say sociology is useless because it is difficult, is to prefer theoretical simplicity to practical significance.

And you have no problem with the implication of that?I do have a problem with it, which is why I created this thread.

What machination? What is it with people trying to remove everything from our control?

Look, sociology is all fun and stuff if you're not into another career - but it's really not worth a dime if you look at it seriously. There is no causality in anything you can possibly establish with sociological observations. The entire science lacks any sort of solid foundation, it can be shot down just because correlation doesn't imply causation.Statistics are all just damn lies, eh?

Consider the following nuggets as examples of itty bitty somewhat-related slices of the system:

1) Advertising works. The money companies pay to entice people to purchase their products is returned to them multiple times over.
1a) Advertising works on politicians and constituents. Companies and organizations pay money and use charismatic personalities to alter policy to suit their ends.

2) Every sentiment a person has is based on input - which facts and opinions are observed and in what context, etc.
2a) On a large scale, media organizations filter, regulate, and direct much of this input.
2b) Competitive darwinian economics ensures that only the media organizations best at making money will survive.
2c) The surviving companies are those who moderate the information fed to the public so as to achieve the highest ratings.

3) People watch news that they consider interesting/newsworthy (and creates a simple, digestible narrative that makes them feel good).
3a) A front-runner's strengths and an underdog's weaknesses are not newsworthy. Their opposites are.
3b) If a person is less aware of a candidate's strengths than weaknesses, then they are less likely to vote for that candidate. The opposite is true as well.
3c) Therefore, in acting to maximize profits, news media push public sentiment to an even split when there are two major candidates.

4) The 2000 and 2004 US presidential elections were very close even though one of the candidates was an unintelligible, knuckle-dragging chimpanzee who was known in 2004 to have killed several thousands of people. Record amounts of money were spent by campaigns and record amounts of profits were raked in by media organizations.

Obviously, I'm oversimplifying it, but that's just one of many interlocking governing systems in society.

Of course not all power relations are always just, it would be silly to claim that. I just don't see how you can claim that whatever we have today is caused by capitalism, is always caused by capitalism or is actually unjust.It is unjust because children starve, and for many other reasons. It is true that other forces are in play, but my position is that modern capitalism is the kind of adaptable complex system that sustains itself, whereas other factors are either consequences of capitalism, or not nearly as strong as it. Therefore, the capitalist system is biggest, baddest boss thing.

Nor do I follow the assertion that just power relations are a sign of intelligent decisions while unjust ones aren't.

What outcome we have today is the result of billions of intelligent agents making decisions according to the best of their knowledge, and I think that it's certainly conceivable that a power relation that just sort of happened without any planning can be just.Although I don't think your characteristization of today's situation is accurate, allow me to clarify my previous statement. If a power relation is just, it can be so only if the action of the dominant party is an intelligent act by an intelligent agent. Such is not the case today.

Of course the system doesn't care. It can't, it's not capable of thought, emotion or any other action or reaction we attribute to conscious organisms. It's not an organism, not even an unconscious one.If that were so, would the phenomenon be any less vile?

Gravity doesn't care either, but that doesn't mean we need to put everyone in big rubber bubbles so they don't hurt themselves falling off stuff. That doesn't tell us anything about the justness of capitalism (or gravity).Gravity may direct a force upon us, but not our will. Also, we can build railings to protect against dire gravitational situations. The solution to capitalist-like societal phenomena may be a similar Newtonian awareness of its existence, and a search for railing analogs to keep us from falling into and feeding its presently-growing vortex of control.

As for whether or not they are the wrong decisions (in fact, I disagree with calling them "decisions", because that implies a decider and the existence or reasonable alternatives),Conceded; the semantics were imprecise.

I put it to you that you're not qualified to determine this. Nor is Soheran, or me for that matter. The only thing we are qualified to determine is whether or not someone we trade something with deserves a reward and that is what you need to call just or unjust.Qualifications of the bearer are irrelevant to the truth of the bad news.

Furthermore I put it to you that even if you could somehow determine a better course of action, you would be unable to implement it.Firstly, that's irrelevant if this is an academic discussion. Secondly, that's like saying your vote doesn't matter. If everybody except fo old people thought their vote didn't matter then the election would go to all whoever the old people voted for, and we'd have president Matlock.

So really, all this talk about "the system" just avoids the actual heart of the matter.Which is what?

Well, wealth has always depended upon violence, so....
But the creation of wealth hasn't. Just its defense against others.

Unfortunately, we can't pretend that "free will" is somehow a guarantor of substantive freedom. Human beings are much more complicated than that.
Freedom is the ability to express one's free will and therefore to make moral choices. What those choices are doesn't tell us anything about whether or not freedom exists (only the fact that they are made does), and if all of us have peanut butter for breakfast that doesn't mean no other spreads exist.

You have no control: you do not consider how the proportions would work out in a non-capitalist society.
That's because I have no reason to. If I'm not made to do certain things by capitalism, then there is no basis for assuming that anyone else is. So they choose to do them by themselves and if you don't like these choices, then your angle of attack should be the people, not the system (which in this case just means hurting lots of innocent randoms).

On the individual level, you see individuals choosing, and little else. Confine yourself to this perspective, and you fail to take into account the social nature of humanity: you deny freedom to us by refusing to let us choose what kind of society to live in.

Instead, we end up being faced simply with the choices offered to us within the existing social framework, which we may or may not accept. That is not true freedom.
I'm not denying our social nature, capitalism is necessarily a collaborative system. I'm denying that we have a social nature that can be considered seperate from the rest of ourselves. We observe individuals and we observe their social choices along with all their other ones.

As for choosing a society, if that means making everyone else live a certain way, it will involve violence and being, well, evil. So yeah, I advocate a certain limit to our freedom in this area, but so do you.

Sure it is. Individual choice can and does routinely reduce freedom. When human beings live together in society, our individual choices are so laden with externalities that to confine our freedom to that level is to deny us freedom entirely. That's the basic insight of the social contract, and one that can with much justification be expanded to the economy.
The only problem with going down the externality path is that they don't go away just because we have a different decision process. Building a house still takes up the same resources, except now the house will never be built since the tendency will be to find the smallest common denominator. The compromise will end up the death of humanity, because no one will ever be able to overcome the gigantic prisoner's dilemma your system creates.

That wasn't clear in the first few decades, yet there was a degree of Marxist opposition that grew over time, and not in correlation with economic failure at all. The Soviet foreign policy swings back in forth before World War II took a toll, for instance, as did the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and Khrushchev's "Secret Speech." Furthermore, the dehumanizing authoritarian bureaucracy at the heart of the Soviet system was a frequent target of Marxist-influenced New Left writers.
Yes, you had a few oddballs attacking the USSR specifically. But they weren't attacking what the USSR stood for, they were just attacking this particular way of doing the same evil thing. They had disliked politicians or particular policies, but not the idea of a dictatorship destroying those elements of another class that wouldn't submit. You can't disagree with that idea and still call yourself a marxist.

No, the chief reason the Soviet Union and its supporters had to lie and delude themselves so thoroughly was because it was a betrayal of Marxism, not an affirmation.
The betrayal was the revolution itself because capitalism had quite clearly not fallen apart and left the proletariat with the spoils. What we have learned since then is that capitalism will never fall apart, and there will never be a time for revolution like Marx predicted.

Socialism will triumph, but only through political action. It does not happen magically by itself.
Not marxist socialism. That requires some pretty well-defined material conditions and unless they're there you can have all the political action you want, the outcome will still suck.

It's like voting. One individual's vote is of minuscule value; elections are decided by large-scale factors that must be analyzed at the societal level. But if everyone takes their vote to be meaningless as a consequence, the results are changed drastically.

Nobody ever said collective action wasn't weird.
The question is where the legitimacy is in all this. You have everyone voting and everyone's right and effort involved is the same. You then go to the societal level and pick a winner. And this winner is now in effect declaring some people's votes more important than others' and uses a societal justification to hurt very real people.

I rather doubt that.
Well, which has more legitimacy - the LTV or Islam? I don't feel comfortable picking here.

I am not excusing Marx's beliefs by reference to Marx's personal life. I am defending the moral status of Marx's beliefs by reference to their actual content.
Yeah but Marx and marxism are still different things. The moral message of marxism and the moral stance of Marx don't have to be the same thing since Marx, as you said, didn't consider some pretty important questions. If he had, perhaps his humanism would have had an impact and changed marxism, but ultimately he didn't and we can only deal with what's left.

Second, violent revolution in no sense implies gulags.
If you consider it in combination with "class", it does.

That's the least heroic thing possible; indeed, it is the precise opposite of heroism. It is to surrender: to abandon both morality and freedom, to relinquish the "ought" for the "is."
Surrender in a war that wouldn't have to be fought if it weren't for preachers who thrive on our self-induced misery.

Punishment is giving people what they are due as people deserving of punishment, not as ordinary citizens whose shares we are concerned with as matters of distributive justice.

We are converting an unjust distribution into a just distribution. To deprive someone of that which they had no right to in the first place (whatever their record of wrongdoing) is not punishment.
You can give it whatever name you like, people are getting hurt. That's either punishment if they've done something wrong, or it's just hurting them without a cause.

I know you really want it to be, but redistribution is not a strictly positive thing, it's not a pareto improvement. For someone to get more, someone else has to have less. This pain can't be argued away, and it's a matter that is worth at least a little bit of thought, particularly if you say they don't deserve it.

No, it isn't. Some choices are very easy. Some choices are very hard. That varies to an extreme degree based upon circumstance. We can and do make choices easier for people, so that they are more capable of doing what they truly will for themselves, instead of complying with pressures external and internal. That's part of the struggle for freedom.
It's also quite dishonest if you start off by saying that what they're doing now isn't what they really want to do. Perhaps capitalism is the default system for all human society, and any deviation from it is your interference with what they truly want - you don't know and I don't know.

But the economic pressures to consume and to accumulate more are very strong, and truly radical breaks from the system are extremely difficult.
If by consumption you mean "eat food", then yes, it's a hard thing to forego. If you mean "buy a new TV", then it's not at all hard. I haven't bought a new TV in years. I've stopped eating too much and too unhealthy foods too, even though that was reasonably difficult for me.

Really, there are no significant real pressures to consume. The only people who find it hard to ignore the few that exist are people who don't value their brains and their own wishes and opinions and they aren't forced to act that way either.

Of course, this comes at the cost of being able to say much that is meaningful about a wide range of actual human problems in the real world... like power, like culture, like externalities in general, which it can describe in economic terms but can't actually point to in any but the most obvious of cases.
Economics can deal with any issue regarding the allocation of scarce resources and any issue involving at least somewhat rational behaviour. That's pretty good, you have to admit.

If people don't act rationally, we can't predict their behaviour no matter what we do and no policy or action that relies on some cause-effect reasoning will be worthwhile.

As for externalities, I'm not sure what you mean by "point to". If the data is available, it most certainly can, but the whole issue of the calculation problem means that getting the data is like trying to find out about the location of quantum particles with a magnifying glass. I wouldn't blame economic theory or its underlying scientific principles for that.

But to use that as a reason to refrain from asking them, to say sociology is useless because it is difficult, is to prefer theoretical simplicity to practical significance.
Economic theory is hardly simple either. I'd suggest it's probably quite a bit more complex than what you'd find if you opened a sociology textbook.

But economics has developed a powerful tradition not to let the maths and statistics run wild, but to keep making sure that everything pans out according to well-known and understood first principles. That's the only way what you develop ends up being consistent enough to be a guideline for real-world action.

If sociology can't do that, then nothing it can say will be of any value, regardless of the complexity of its subject matter or the honest intentions of its academics. It's just not valid to do a statistical analysis of some phenomenon, establish correlation and then start implementing policies that rely solely on that bit of correlation your data says exists (not that such data is easy to collect).

But the creation of wealth hasn't. Just its defense against others.

Still power.

Freedom is the ability to express one's free will and therefore to make moral choices. What those choices are doesn't tell us anything about whether or not freedom exists (only the fact that they are made does), and if all of us
have peanut butter for breakfast that doesn't mean no other spreads exist.

So? That doesn't change the fact that our free will is not in an abstract reality of perfectly free rational individuals; it manifests itself in a material reality that influences us in all kinds of complex ways.

That's because I have no reason to. If I'm not made to do certain things by capitalism,

How do you know? Self-knowledge is never perfect. That's one of the reasons we bother to actually study human behavior.

then there is no basis for assuming that anyone else is.

So people are all the same, and are affected in the same ways by things?

So they choose to do them by themselves

Well, that's certainly a convenient way to look at it.

I'm not denying our social nature, capitalism is necessarily a collaborative system. I'm denying that we have a social nature that can be considered seperate from the rest of ourselves.

But this is the whole point. Our social nature isn't separate from the rest of ourselves. It is fundamentally bound up with our entireties. That's why society can be oppressive; that's why we need freedom on the social level to be truly free. We can't just sacrifice that "extra bit" of freedom for the sake of individual liberty.

So yeah, I advocate a certain limit to our freedom in this area, but so do you.

Not really. Only democracy and a strong concept of equality under law, both of which are restrictions that function on the social level--they are guarantors not of an "individual" sphere separate from society on principle, but only of full participation and equal respect for all citizens.

Of course, implicit in these procedural requirements is a range of personal freedoms, but only because that's the society we desire for ourselves, and we are not entitled to deny those rights to others if we grant them to ourselves.

The only problem with going down the externality path is that they don't go away just because we have a different decision process.

A collective decision process--democracy--ensures that we have the capacity to act as a society to limit the negative consequences of individual choice for genuine human freedom.

Yes, you had a few oddballs attacking the USSR specifically. But they weren't attacking what the USSR stood for, they were just attacking this particular way of doing the same evil thing. They had disliked politicians or particular policies, but not the idea of a dictatorship destroying those elements of another class that wouldn't submit. You can't disagree with that idea and still call yourself a marxist.

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" is not a "dictatorship" at all, except in a limited Marxist sense that most of its critics don't understand, and the "suppression of the bourgeoisie" entails little more than stopping it from forcefully retaking power. In no sense does it imply mass murder. Again, that's why defenders of Stalin to this day ignore the truth about his atrocities.

The betrayal was the revolution itself because capitalism had quite clearly not fallen apart and left the proletariat with the spoils.

No. The betrayal was the Soviet Union's twisting of Marxist principles. Its failure to succeed immediately was not a decisive factor at all, and its eventual failure was long after the breaks. No one ever said it would be easy.

Not marxist socialism. That requires some pretty well-defined material conditions and unless they're there you can have all the political action you want, the outcome will still suck.

Surely you're aware of the distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions?

The question is where the legitimacy is in all this.

We've already been over this, at length, and it is beside the point of the comparison.

Well, which has more legitimacy - the LTV or Islam? I don't feel comfortable picking here.

Islam is religious nonsense. The LTV was accepted economic doctrine for quite a while, and in any case an analysis of capitalist exploitation does not require use of the LTV. Marx used it (though not exclusively), but Marxism can survive without it.

Yeah but Marx and marxism are still different things.

Thing is, what "Marxism" constitutes is a disputed matter. I see no reason to concede Marxism to authoritarian Leninism in any of its varieties.

If you consider it in combination with "class", it does.

No, to eliminate class you change social relations. You don't go around killing people. That's what socialism's about, and that's what Marxism is about too.

Surrender in a war that wouldn't have to be fought if it weren't for preachers who thrive on our self-induced misery.

Sorry, Ayn Rand and her followers can whine about it as much as they want, but "is" still doesn't imply "ought": however much we don't want to do something, we still might be obligated to do it. Separate questions. Separate answers.

You can give it whatever name you like, people are getting hurt. That's either punishment if they've done something wrong, or it's just hurting them without a cause.

Again, it's neither. It's taking something away from them which they had no right to in the first place.

Is cutting welfare programs "punishment" for the poor? Should it require proof of wrongdoing?

I know you really want it to be, but redistribution is not a strictly positive thing, it's not a pareto improvement.

Nothing in the real world is ever a "strictly positive" thing. It is always a matter of cost-benefit.

It's also quite dishonest if you start off by saying that what they're doing now isn't what they really want to do.

Right. But we should not assume a necessary identity between the two either. That's why, as a society, we should have the capacity to choose.

Perhaps capitalism is the default system for all human society,

Clearly, utterly, unarguably false.

you don't know and I don't know.

Well, we can actually look at the evidence and see what we can find.

Really, there are no significant real pressures to consume.

Really?

So why is it that people in today's developed economies consume massively more than people elsewhere in the world, yet nevertheless fall into debt, and take on more hours of work that they don't truly want, and so forth?

Economics can deal with any issue regarding the allocation of scarce resources and any issue involving at least somewhat rational behaviour.

Right. The problem is in application. Economic theory can model most things that can happen in human societies, but in practice it's used with assumptions that don't actually hold.

If the data is available, it most certainly can,

How? How does economics measure "utility"? Seems like something sociologists and psychologists might get a better idea of--the kinds of concerns people in society actually have, and the way economic phenomena interact with them.

Economic theory is hardly simple either.

Not "simple" in the "easy to understand" sense, but, for lack of a better term, "clean"--it has a mathematical elegance to it that doesn't fit well with the ambiguity and complexity of human social phenomena.

If sociology can't do that, then nothing it can say will be of any value, regardless of the complexity of its subject matter or the honest intentions of its academics. It's just not valid to do a statistical analysis of some phenomenon, establish correlation and then start implementing policies that rely solely on that bit of correlation your data says exists (not that such data is easy to collect).

Why do you think sociology's empirical methods are so limited? They have the same tools, or more, open to them that economics does. Their theory may be "softer", but, again, that's the way the real world works. Economics can generate a theoretical model of anything, but if it tries to figure out which one actually applies, it runs into exactly the same problems.

I know I'm interjecting here, so my responses may be out or context, but...

Freedom is the ability to express one's free will and therefore to make moral choices. What those choices are doesn't tell us anything about whether or not freedom existsBut if people always exercise their "free will" in a matter sufficiently similar to what deterministic behavior would be such that the outcomes being analyzed are practically identical, what does it matter whether you say there is free will or not?

If I'm not made to do certain things by capitalism, then there is no basis for assuming that anyone else is.So if it can be shown that somebody else if made to do certain things by capitalism (it seems obvious to me that this is easily proven true for at least some people), would it follow that capitalism makes you do certain things as the obverse of your statement would imply?

As for choosing a society, if that means making everyone else live a certain way, it will involve violence and being, well, evil.Our society currently requires people to live in a very specific way in order to survive - i.e. it only teaches people the skills to survive in a society-dependent manner, live only in certain buildings, vie to spend most of one's time performing one of an assortment of precise economic rituals at certain other locations in order to acquire symbolic capital that allows for the sustenance of this only-known lifestyle, be careful to move between these locations by only moving over the precise locations so as not to violate other's ritual territory or space dedicated to machine transport, where ritual garments so as not to be imprisoned, etc. Yet this society is not crippled by violence. Why? I have a theory about that, as you know.

capitalism will never fall apartThis is what keeps me awake at night.

You have everyone voting and everyone's right and effort involved is the same. You then go to the societal level and pick a winner. And this winner is now in effect declaring some people's votes more important than others' and uses a societal justification to hurt very real people.Sounds like a metaphor for capitalism, except no "vote" has been held since the Homestead Act.

You can give it whatever name you like, people are getting hurt.That may have been true before we reached post-scarcity, but now that the vast majority of capital is in the form of non-existent imaginary ones and zeroes, there's no way you can argue that somebody would be "hurt" by removing the artifical contructions that compel the holders of material goods to relinquish them to those who hold this phantom place-holder pseudo-property would in any way act to "hurt" anything but somebody's feelings. Even if it did, why should I care? My personal and objectively-derived moral code tells me that somebody who's starving is more important than your stereo. Why shouldn't I steal it?

Perhaps capitalism is the default system for all human society, and any deviation from it is your interference with what they truly want - you don't know and I don't know.Capitalism may be the default system for all society, but there is direct evidence disproving that it is "what they truly want" and you would have to be blind not to acknowledge it. Look at how people vote. Look at how they beg. Look at what they pray for. Look at how they share with those they know and trust. Look at the indigenous societies whence we came.

If by consumption you mean "eat food", then yes, it's a hard thing to forego. If you mean "buy a new TV", then it's not at all hard. I haven't bought a new TV in years. I've stopped eating too much and too unhealthy foods too, even though that was reasonably difficult for me.Congratulations. You are apparently unique.

Really, there are no significant real pressures to consume. The only people who find it hard to ignore the few that exist are people who don't value their brains and their own wishes and opinions and they aren't forced to act that way either.I didn't realize so many people actually wanted to be fat and get diabetes, or wanted to work multiple jobs to pay off a mortgage on a house they never have time to enjoy. I mean geez, no pressure? If you are a woman and you don't spend several times the annual salary of the average sub-saharan African on clothes and cosmetics, then you ARE ostracized in my country. How can you not see that our entire economy is built on consumption? Every ad you people see on TV is a direct enticement to consume, and most shows indirectly serve the same function. News outlets devote most of their content to how/what to consume, and what others are consuming. New cars costing so much more than slightly-used isn't some kind of economic fluke, you know. Non-college parties are nothing but exercises in conspicuous consumption. People needlessly engage mostly in forms of entertainment that cost money, and are usually less entertaining than simply hanging out with friends. Bars are a capitalization of the "third place". Society has practically outlawed real social gathering places outside of paid venues. If you ask a person what they wish, they will usually tell you that they wish they had enough money to buy something that YOU know won't make THEM any happier. Walk down any street in America and try to calculate the percentage of people who aren't wearing something tacky and unnecessary that cost money, or driving thousands of dollars more vehicle than the apparent enjoyment they are deriving from its usage. Look at the houses and try to guess how many rooms are being used, and how many are just being filled with crap. How many yards look like they actually have kids playing in them or people enjoying them every once in a while? No pressures to consume? The evidence is everywhere!@!!

Economics can deal with any issue regarding the allocation of scarce resources and any issue involving at least somewhat rational behaviour. That's pretty good, you have to admit.Then why doesn't it?

If people don't act rationally, we can't predict their behaviour no matter what we do and no policy or action that relies on some cause-effect reasoning will be worthwhile.Untrue. People act irrationally in predictable ways. Or that is, the rationale behind their actions is not what they would think, but is still sufficiently consistent.

Economic theory is hardly simple either. I'd suggest it's probably quite a bit more complex than what you'd find if you opened a sociology textbook.

But economics has developed a powerful tradition not to let the maths and statistics run wild, but to keep making sure that everything pans out according to well-known and understood first principles. That's the only way what you develop ends up being consistent enough to be a guideline for real-world action.

If sociology can't do that, then nothing it can say will be of any value, regardless of the complexity of its subject matter or the honest intentions of its academics. It's just not valid to do a statistical analysis of some phenomenon, establish correlation and then start implementing policies that rely solely on that bit of correlation your data says exists (not that such data is easy to collect).I don't know, but I suspect that most real sociologists use economics or are actually economists applying economic methodology to social issues.

More interjecting:

as a society, we should have the capacity to choose.I think that it's impossible for a society to make choices, at least one larger than a very small community.

To also answer the slavery issue, yes, it assumes that both parties have that right. Importantly though, slavery of the sort practiced pretty much in every case in history isn't a trade at all, so no ownership can be created as a result.

We start off by saying that the owns himself. For the slave owner to have the right to own the slave and consider him his property, there must now be a trade in which neither side is threatened with violence and both sides are informed to some minimum degree about the terms and conditions. Clearly that wasn't the case, hence there is no reason to think that the property in question ever changed hands.I will skip this part, because my arguments deal with the specificity of violence as opposed to other potentially equally coercive methods, and I think we've discussed that before.

But that's a different case from property redistribution, because in that case the property is justly owned as a result of voluntary and perfectly valid trades between intelligent people.So then all trades that don't involve violence and deception are perfectly valid? Even trades that began as the result of theft?

Of course, I'm also saying that people have the right to trade themselves and that it was the trade, not the object being traded, that was the issue. I think that's a reasonable call to make.I suppose it may have been, but many arguments against capitalism deal with the legitimacy of trading specific objects, so I felt I should bring them up.

But the creation of wealth hasn't. Just its defense against others.

Bullshit. If all actions by the state to fund public infrastructure, R&D, education, and whatnot through taxation are deemed violent then a lot of wealth creation has been caused through violence.

You can give it whatever name you like, people are getting hurt. That's either punishment if they've done something wrong, or it's just hurting them without a cause.I know you really want it to be, but redistribution is not a strictly positive thing, it's not a pareto improvement. For someone to get more, someone else has to have less. This pain can't be argued away, and it's a matter that is worth at least a little bit of thought, particularly if you say they don't deserve it.

Even you dont believe in only allowing Pareto improvements. If we stop funding welfare programs the former receipients get less while those with the lightened tax burden get more.

There's also pain when redistribution is lacking. An organization that provides free medical care in several Third World countries has recently organized doctors to provide care in the US and even with that it turns away many because of scarce resources. If we had universal healthcare of any kind that problem would be greatly reduced.

Really, there are no significant real pressures to consume. The only people who find it hard to ignore the few that exist are people who don't value their brains and their own wishes and opinions and they aren't forced to act that way either.

None? Not even say housing? Housing is resource and unlike most goods for someone to have more other must have less. Take an economy where those at the top of the income spectrum have their income increasing at a faster rate than those at the bottom. They indulge more of their taste by buying bigger homes and more than one home. This of course drives up prices for everyone.

This is also true for any good or service that gives one social status or the lack of which takes it away. One has to consume more just to stay in the same place. It the Red Queen problem.

I think that it's impossible for a society to make choices

Well, you're wrong. People make choices together about what to do all the time, both on the very small level and the very large level.

It may be more difficult and more indirect the larger the group in question, but then, I have never been much of a fan of political centralization.

This is bourgeois, Trotskyist propaganda.

**hands Kleptos a small hatchet**

**hands Kleptos an ice axe**

Fixed. :D

There is no true freedom or oppression in Democracy, for such a system merely has every individual in the nation screwing each other over in a cycle of one always trying to use the next as the stepladder to reach a higher position

the worker steps over the homeless guy who has nothing, the employers step over the worker, the corporations step over the employers, then back to square one - the homeless guy who has nothing for the Corporations to exploit, can step over the corporations and claim the welfare that their taxes pay for

technically, democracy is the Circle of Life for money

You people realise that I am now doing 5 subjects this semester (with a 40 minute presentation on EuroDisney's failure due on monday), work three days a week, have to start training for a shift supervisor position there, am learning karate and looking for a way to start Chinese, right?

If I end up not getting that job I want, I'm gonna come to all your houses. And you don't want that.

So in short, my replies will have to wait longer the more posts you make me answer. ;)

Well, you're wrong. People make choices together about what to do all the time, both on the very small level and the very large level.

It may be more difficult and more indirect the larger the group in question, but then, I have never been much of a fan of political centralization.

It would seem that this is more of a philosophical distinction, whether society itself is making the choices, or whether it is individuals in the society making the choices. I think the single most stark contrast would be a society with an absolute ruler, (as a philosophical tool, I know that, in reality, there is no such thing as a truly absolute ruler) and how one single individual sets the course for the whole of society.

That's the end result of yet another one of my musings :D I like it...it's fun.

Just because Marx called it a morbid desire doesn't mean it's real.

I like this, morbid desire. Morbid desire...

What of it? You still live within society.
But in a free society the society has no necessary impact on you.
Yes; there is, for starters, a massive industry dedicated to getting people to buy things, but perhaps more importantly there is the human desire to at least maintain a given standard of living, and to keep up with the material affluence of the rest of society.
That industry doesn't compel behaviour. And keeping up with the material affluence of the rest of society is a choice people need not make.

Just because Marx called it a morbid desire doesn't mean it's real.

But in a free society the society has no necessary impact on you.

No such society ever has, will, or can exist. Society necessarily has an impact on people. That's the way we are.

That industry doesn't compel behaviour.

It can and does manipulate behavior, which amounts to the same thing.

And keeping up with the material affluence of the rest of society is a choice people need not make.

Just like not being shut with a gun.

Not that the two are necessarily comparable, but "a choice people need not make" tells us nothing.

It would seem that this is more of a philosophical distinction, whether society itself is making the choices, or whether it is individuals in the society making the choices.

Well, we can draw something like that distinction--see Rousseau's analysis of voting according to the general will--but my point is actually not so philosophical. I'm using society in its rawest, least glorified sense--a bunch of individuals who happen to live together and interact with one another.

Even assuming people who think of themselves as individuals and are out for themselves, there is a difference between individual choice procedures and collective choice procedures in the options open to us. In an individual choice procedure, I choose my own behavior. In a collective choice procedure, I can vote to influence the behavior of others.

This is just the logic of the social contract: I accept collective restrictions on my behavior so that I can benefit from collective restrictions on other people's behavior. With it is secured true freedom--no longer am I offered the non-substantive choices open to me as a powerless individual in a society beyond my control (which, the logic of externalities tells us, could be everyone's condition), but instead I am offered the right to participate in decisions about society as a whole.

I refer to choosing "as a society" not because I believe, in this context, that society is independent of the individuals composing it, but because I want to emphasize that our choice is on the social level: we collectively choose about our collective behavior. All of us individually choosing our individual behavior is a very different phenomenon, even if our choice is unanimous... we could, for instance, be choosing to screw each other over, and then none of us are free.

We are too social, too interdependent, for there to be a "perfect" private choice, a true victimless crime. Any decision about personal rights, then, is by necessity a political decision, a choice about which values rank higher, and by right belongs to society--though it is and must be subject to legal equality (we can't take away from others rights we keep for ourselves) and positive restrictions we ourselves enact upon majority rule (like constitutions, which help solve the lose-lose of majoritarian tyranny).

(In effect, of course, this means that there will be some realms free from public regulation in all but the most extreme, exceptional circumstances--certain kinds of interference are so incompatible with fundamental human dignity that even though interference may serve public ends, we cannot possibly accept it in our own cases, and therefore not in the cases of others either. But we make this restriction not on principle, not as a matter of "natural right"--we do so because as a society we necessarily value such protections over the ends that are restricted by them.)

I think the single most stark contrast would be a society with an absolute ruler, (as a philosophical tool, I know that, in reality, there is no such thing as a truly absolute ruler) and how one single individual sets the course for the whole of society.

Well, the addition of inequality in power adds a whole new element.

Most importantly, of course, we run the risk of having "social" choices confined to the powerful: the public institutions established to prevent the potential for lose-lose in individual choice must by necessity have access to coercive power, and having that coercive power in the hands of the few is a very dangerous thing. This is the case you have described.

There is, however, a second danger, and one more relevant to my general point about modern capitalist economies. Pre-social contract, if we have a person who need not fear others, whose exceptional superiority in power meas that she benefits more from the chaos than she loses, she has no self-interested reason to agree: to the contrary, she has every reason to resist. Similarly, if it is true that modern market systems involve massive Prisoner's Dilemmas, but also that modern class relations mean that (unlike in the Prisoner's Dilemma) there are those who benefit from the "rules of the game", in seeking to establish the social regulation that can solve the problem we must necessarily run into the powerful and their interests.

So in short, my replies will have to wait longer the more posts you make me answer. ;)

Don't bother if you're too busy. I'm not here to manipulate you out of your time. :)

But in a free society the society has no necessary impact on you.If that is the case, than a modern capitalist society is not in the slightest bit free.

That industry doesn't compel behaviour. And keeping up with the material affluence of the rest of society is a choice people need not make.Of course the system compels behavior! You should read my previous huge post. You think you can choose not to purchase clothes? Never to purchase transportation? Never to purchase health care or food? Never to prostrate yourself in front of capitalists in order to engage in society's arcane economic rituals we call jobs and businesses? You are only right if you consider it to be a free "choice" when your alternative is to be a starving, sick, homeless bum who dies thirty years early. I call it coercion.

.I know that the point you are making in this post is entirely false (perhaps for the precise reasons that you criticize capitalism to contrast), but I haven't figured out how to explain it in an overt and clear manner yet because it seems too obvious to me.

I know that the point you are making in this post is entirely false (perhaps for the precise reasons that you criticize capitalism to contrast), but I haven't figured out how to explain it in an overt and clear manner yet because it seems too obvious to me.

Well, that's nice.

You'd be wrong

Let's look at the scorecard:

China:

-No minimum wage laws.
-No child labor laws.
-No federally funded education - in China, you pay to go to school.
-Virtually nil environmental regulation - some of the dirtiest air in the world.
-Welfare policies are limited at best.
-No consumer protection against unsafe or unusable goods.

Soheran, with all due respect, China is NOT a representation of the kind of government you seem to want to see. Oh, and I forgot to mention these non-economic issues:

-Death Penalty - and the family pays for the bullet.
-No fair trials.
-Religious Freedom = 0.
-Intellectual Freedom limited to only what is absolutely necessary to keep public happy.

In other words, China is fascist, pure and simple.

, but I did refer to Maoist policies for a reason. The current regime is not Maoist.

True, but even the Maoist regime was not the pinnacle of workers rights in anything but name. They got where they are now for a reason - if they had been treated well under Mao, they would have revolted under Deng Xiaoping when it was taken away completely to an absurd degree.

Hence the reference to the "long term." And the Great Leap Forward famine was a product of an idiotic economic policy that had little to do with food distribution.

LOL! Exactly. That's ALWAYS what they do! :D And why not, it's not like they have a substantial incentive to do well, besides popular opinion which, as we all know, doesn't always go to the person who accomplishes something.

But you never answered my question about Dickensian England. How come they developed the first wealthy industrial state without any of the societal advances you speak of. Indeed, much of that healthcare et cetera didn't even exist at the time they were developing - even the Queen herself used crackpot medicine back then. I'm not saying it doesn't help, but does one necessarilly follow the other?

Soheran, with all due respect, China is NOT a representation of the kind of government you seem to want to see.

When have I ever said otherwise?

True, but even the Maoist regime was not the pinnacle of workers rights in anything but name.

I know. I made a very specific point about a very specific thing.

How come they developed the first wealthy industrial state without any of the societal advances you speak of.

Well, I'm thinking mostly of twentieth-century cases. I'm not sure. Among other things, England probably enjoyed benefits that aren't currently open to developing countries--like an empire allowing easier access to capital, raw materials, and markets.

But you never answered my question about Dickensian England. How come they developed the first wealthy industrial state without any of the societal advances you speak of.This page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_revolution) helps to explain why, especially this part (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_revolution#Causes_for_occurrence_in_Britain).

So your blaming China for 'millions of deaths', all of which have absolutely no sources to back them up, in order to industrialize a backward feudalism state in over a decade. And yet you don't condemn capitalist industrialization, which took the lives of over 10 million slaves, many of whom had to sleep near their blast furnaces and fell in to their deaths, not to mention the absolute decrepit poverty and cesspool of disgust it rained down on the domestic population for decades. The deaths associated with industrialization in the USSR were due to far-right forces that wanted to retain feudal control of the peasants, but the peasants resisted, resulting the civil war.

Why don't we explore some more capitalist crimes, which includes 70 million Indians during the colonization of the Americas, 10 million due to slavery, 10 million due to World War I, 50 million due to World War II, 3 million due to the Vietnam War, and 1 million due to the Biafra War.

In Mozambique, Renamo, organized by the CIA and the security services of South Africa, has massacred and starved 900,000 villagers since 1980. The goal: prevent Mozambique from becoming an independent country with a socialist direction. In Mozambique, Western intellectuals did not need to invent cadavers, all they needed to do was write about imperialist barbarity. But these 900,000 deaths are a non-fact: no-one talks about them.

Why don't we explore some more capitalist crimes, which includes 70 million Indians during the colonization of the Americas, 10 million due to slavery, 10 million due to World War I, 50 million due to World War II, 3 million due to the Vietnam War, and 1 million due to the Biafra War.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties


The total estimated human loss of life caused by World War II was roughly 72 million people. The civilian toll was around 47 million, including 20 million deaths due to war related famine and disease. The military toll was about 25 million, including the deaths of about 4 million prisoners of war in captivity. The Allies lost about 61 million people, and the Axis lost 11 million.

So I guess WWII was fought and died for mostly by Indians then. Russia's civilian and military death toll must have been fighting those Siberian bears of theirs while Germany's armies must have gotten lost somewhere in the Black Forest never to be seen again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties



So I guess WWII was fought and died for mostly by Indians then. Russia's civilian and military death toll must have been fighting those Siberian bears of theirs while Germany's armies must have gotten lost somewhere in the Black Forest never to be seen again.

Please, if you can't answer the statement, please refrain from trolling, just go back to your hole.

Please, if you can't answer the statement, please refrain from trolling, just go back to your hole.

I find it telling how you consider facts, especially when they contradict your unproven claims, to be trolling now. But please, do continue. They only provide me with more information of the rate of deterioration of your state of mind.

I must admit, it is quite informative, picking apart your mind. I hope to learn an effective way of cult deprogramming from the studies.

No such society ever has, will, or can exist. Society necessarily has an impact on people. That's the way we are.
That's the way you choose to be. Stop.
It can and does manipulate behavior, which amounts to the same thing.
Manipulation is the fault of the victim. And yes, I still think that even when I'm the victim.
Not that the two are necessarily comparable, but "a choice people need not make" tells us nothing.
It tells us they could choose otherwise, which defeats your point.

So your blaming China for 'millions of deaths', all of which have absolutely no sources to back them up, in order to industrialize a backward feudalism state in over a decade.

China still mines coal with 100 small people with pickaxes and a railcart.

We mine coal with 10 guys, a nifty drill thingy, and mechanized trollies.

20 chinese miners die a year.

20 American miners died in the last 30 or so years.

Capitalism pwns.

This page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_revolution) helps to explain why, especially this part (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_revolution#Causes_for_occurrence_in_Britain).
Though countries like Taiwan and South Korea must also be kept in mind. They industrialised without empires and military power, and didn't introduce welfare systems and labour rights until fairly late in the piece.

That's the way you choose to be. Stop.No, people influencing people is by definition what society is, and all that it is. If nobody influenced anybody, then there would be no such thing as society. If nobody influences you, then you are not part of society.

Manipulation is the fault of the victim. And yes, I still think that even when I'm the victim.That's ridiculous. Manipulation is the fault of the manipulator by the very definition of fault and manipulation. People are responsible for what they are the cause of, and manipulation implies a line of causality from the manipulator to the manipulated. Therefore, the manipulator is responsible, and at fault.

It tells us they could choose otherwise, which defeats your point.I see that you have succumbed to the illusion of free will, in which people are purported to act independent of their inputs, but somehow not randomly.

All this talk of Marxism; I say that it is obsolete. Class conflict is no longer the defining attribute of our social institutions. We are our own "oppressors".

Follow the lines of power through our economy. Workers are being "exploited" by their employers. These employers are frequently large corporations that do whatever it takes to make money. Their CEOs are people who are skilled at making a lot of money for corporations, and are paid large sums of money to do so. If they fail to "exploit" the company's assets properly, they are fired. By the owners, who are the shareholders. It's the shareholders who have the real power. The fact that companies pay to find the best exploiters-for-hire is because the shareholders prioritize company profits (or stock prices actually) over everything else. Who are these bourgeois shareholders who are behind capitalist exploitation of the proletariat? Why, they are the workers, who have invested their money in mutual funds and retirement accounts with the purpose of saving as much money as possible, investing for financial maximization rather than social responsibility.

Therefore, in America, the proletariat = the bourgeoisie

That's not to say that capitalism is grand, just that Marxism incorrectly describes the underlying problem as being that of one group of people exploiting another, when in today's reality it's the structure of the system rather than class conflict that is the reason for capitalism's faults.

Amiright?Got news for you.
When the people who are being exploited realize that they out number the exploiters by 100/1 there is going to be one hell of a back lash.
And don't worry they will it has happened before.
How do you think we got trade unions.
As for the directors of corporations are only doing their job.
Sounds like the Nazi only following orders excuse to me

As for the directors of corporations are only doing their job.
Sounds like the Nazi only following orders excuse to meIt's similar, but the Nazis had a man at the top ordering everybody and taking orders from nobody. There's no Hitler in capitalism.

while i don't consider marxism an adiquite, let alone optimal alternative, i do feel, and feel based on experience and observation, that faith in capitolism is excessive and misplaced.

really there is so much being expected of it, that is totally unrealistic, and in many cases outright utterly absurd.

and again, we are VERY capable of doing MUCH better then either.
with or without the use of symbolic value, and certainly with far less centralization of 'authority' of EITHER.

bigger is NOT better, and hierarchy is NOT inhierently superior, moraly nor practically nor in any other way, to the lack of it.

only for infrastructure (and things which depend on and bennifit from infrastructure) is social organization usefully bennificial and neccessary.

=^^=
.../\...

It's similar, but the Nazis had a man at the top ordering everybody and taking orders from nobody. There's no Hitler in capitalism.

actually there is. only it isn't an organic or even sentient being. its a little green piece of paper.

=^^=
.../\...

actually there is. only it isn't an organic or even sentient being. its a little green piece of paper.Yeah, I guess that's pretty much true.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Anti-capitalism_color.jpg

actually there is. only it isn't an organic or even sentient being. its a little green piece of paper.
I think if a little green piece of paper is telling you to do bad things, it might be time to visit a shrink.

It's similar, but the Nazis had a man at the top ordering everybody and taking orders from nobody. There's no Hitler in capitalism.

Godwin's law.

/thread.

This thread said goodbye to the topic about 30 posts ago. Please get back on topic or start a new thread.

EDIT: Don't bother, I'll split it.

EDIT 2: Offtopic posts now here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=551626).

This thread said goodbye to the topic about 30 posts ago. Please get back on topic or start a new thread.

So, explain to me (anybody) how a flawed 160 year-old economic theory masquerading as a political theory isn't obsolete.


That good Ard? :D

RESPECK MAH AUTHORITEH, Dyakovo!

Or I'll sulk.

RESPECK MAH AUTHORITEH, Dyakovo!

Or I'll sulk.

You gotta start beating him with a baton too.;)

I never met a temptation I didn't like.

(But sssh! Not in front of the cameras!)

I never met a temptation I didn't like.

(But sssh! Not in front of the cameras!)


Thats the spirit.


ps- I find it ironic that after you tell us to get back on topic, you get bogged down in the offtopicness.

Powerful we are, yes?:p