OK, about communism, I just had to do it right away of course. Man, my paper is suffering for this...
You describe totalitarian dictatorship with a communist slant, is my initial obection really. But fair enough, that is the versions of communism we have seen. And you did say that socialists are different, although you didn't say just how. I'll do some points again:
Your interpretation of communism is in the totalitarian vein, in which freedom is certainly removed. That is not communism at it's core. I could let it all slide, but since you as the alternative continually pose the theoretical utopian capitalism, I guess I can argue some theoretical utopian communism. To Marx, man's purpose is to be creative. So the point of Marx' vision is creating a society in which man needs to "work" for the common good as little as possible in order to provide the necessities for all, so that they have as much free time as possible in which to be creative. He envisioned this through the proletariat taking over the means of production from the capitalists and utilize them for their needs only. This is way before consumerism, so that was actually palatable in it's day. So communism is very much about freedom. It is about being free from being exploited and forced to work more and harder than necessary, and rather being free to pursue your own creativity. The providing for others on which you focus, is just a small part of it.
Communism isn't any more outlandish than the christian tradition of caring for thy neighbour. That also goes against individualist theories and perspectives, whose only morality is selfishness (through the assumption that selfishness by all will be the best for all). Perhaps the individual in communism isn't "free" as the capitalist thinker would see it, but he could certainly be free in other ways. The overarching control by a dictator which you assume throughout (with the you're just a means, not a goal) is not a part of communism. Mind you this has all been about theory, which your anarchist capitalism also is currently. I stay by my judgement that both requires a homogenity among people not found.
And being devil's advocate, acting the communist here, in response to your attack:
The communist tells me – “you have no right to private property”. Fine, I say. Property is not my end. He can have it all. Now what? How can “the public” own the means of production when they can’t own the knowledge that created it?
Noone should own anything in the sense that we do under curent society. Every man owns his productive power and creativity. The point of this society is not consumerism and creation of loads of excess goods. It's about people being free to pursue, after basic necessities are met.
The communist tells me – “you need security”. Exactly, I say. The biggest threat to me is the state that enforces the subjective law of another’s “need” with their guns.
Not to be rude or anything, but I have gathered that you are an entrepeneurial type owning your own business, or at least running one, am I right? So of course to you the state is your biggest threat. For ordinary workers, the threat can just as well come from employers and capitalists juggling around on things, making living a lot harder for the employees. The problem is being subject to arbitrary forces over which you have no control. That can be the state, that can be your company. And we need security to a certain degree, that we do. And people less favourably placed than you, or indeed me, need it even more.
The communist tells me – “people before profit”. Precisely, I say. Profit is the payment to people for the product of their minds. The rejection of profit is a rejection of the mind, the rejection of people.
In other words, you reduce people to profit?
I am not a communist. Here’s what I believe:
-This world is an objective place. I cannot affect that world based on my needs, my whims, or my desires. I can only affect that world based on my thoughts and the actions that stem from them.
Certainly. But you imply that thoughts have their sole creation isolated in your mind, unaffected by others.
-My mind is my greatest gift. I love my life and I desire to live it. My mind is my only means to do so. The man who tells me to ignore my mind tells me to die.
Noone has ever asked you to ignore your mind. Possibly under your speculative version of communism, or totalitarianism which seems to be your real beef.
- I am a human being and I am free. You have no ability to force me to think for you. You have no right to force me to act for your happiness at the cost of my own.
- You are a human being and you are free. I have no ability to force you to think for me. I have no right to force you to act for my happiness at the cost of your own.
The selfish principle. That you also want others to be selfish does not salvage it for me. And we dont necessarily talk about forcing anyone to think for anyone, we are rather talking about letting what one does and think come to the benefit of others. Not be a selfish scrooge demanding things in return for any action.
But yes, as an indictment against totalitarianism, I agree almost fully with you here. I am merely raising the theoretical argument here, since you rely on that to oppose it.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
06/20/06 "Information Clearing House" --- When George Bush and other capitalists speak of bringing freedom to the world you must understand that they do not mean freedom in the sense that most of us understand it. We must realize that they are speaking from the perverted, oddly-skewed language of capitalism. By freedom they do not mean the spread of democracy or the liberation of oppressed peoples. They mean the unfettered access to markets through the use of coercive military and economic force. The majority of the world conceives of freedom in human terms. Capitalists conceive of freedom in terms of corporate personhood, access to markets by any necessary means and absolute dictatorial rule. This is the face of free markets and fair trade as it relates to human beings.
Not only did capitalism give birth to the idea of corporations, it endowed them, by very questionable means, with all of the rights of personhood and none of the social responsibility of real persons. The idea of corporate personhood has to be one of the most twisted and bizarre creations ever produced by the human imagination. Like Frankenstein’s fictional monster, it is sociopathic and evil, and it has wrecked havoc wherever its monstrous tread has touched the earth.
By freedom Bush and company mean corporate freedom. They are speaking about the freedom of corporations to operate with impunity in all parts of the world without regulation of any kind. Simply stated, they are talking about corporations ruling the world backed by the strong arm of the U.S. military. They are covertly advocating the oppression of the world’s people’s, the plunder of the earth, the destruction of culture and language, the exportation of jobs to the cheapest, least regulated and most exploitable pools of labor. That is what they mean by freedom—the freedom for Plutocrats to rule the world; Poppy Bush’s New World Order; the global domination of the working class by the ruling Plutocrats.
They go about their grim business with religious fervor, like the Puritans who set about methodically destroying the American wilderness and slaughtering the Indians. I call it predatory capitalism and it is not limited to just the Bush clan. It is equally championed by Congress, the major presidential candidates, all of whom are in the pockets of their corporate funders; and it is preached in our educational institutions as economic gospel. Congress sold us out long ago but we continue to believe that reform is possible by exercising our right to vote and exchanging one Plutocrat for another. It is a wonder that any of them can keep a straight face. It is like taking candy from a baby—no challenge at all.
Understanding requires little more than a willingness to connect the dots and to comprehend the patterns of history from the working people’s perspective. It is literally that simple.
The core idea of predatory capitalism is to rule by force, to subdue the earth and her inhabitants to the will of the world’s wealthiest men. Under this model, less than five percent of the global elite will lord power over the remaining ninety-five percent of the population. This philosophy is embodied by the Bilderbergs and the Carlyle Group (do a Google search to learn more).
The U.S. military is an appendage of the corporations that have hijacked the government from the people. The Pentagon is the iron fist of oppression that smashes the face of resistance to Pax Americana and absolute corporate rule. Only in the perverted language of capitalism is the military a force for freedom—corporate freedom to rule the world by sheer force. If those in control of the government succeed in executing their agenda, ninety-five percent of the world’s people will become the property of the wealthiest five percent or less.
So we must understand what predatory capitalists mean when they use the word freedom. As conceived by the people running the government, the world is one vast resource ripe for the stealing. This includes the raw materials necessary for industrial production and human beings as an inexpensive or, ideally, a free exploitable source of labor. By freedom the capitalists mean the private ownership of everything and everyone. Such are the twisted dreams of the American Plutocracy. The rich man’s dream is the poor man’s nightmare.
While political reformists continue to be fooled into choosing between political parties, both of them the servants of the same corporations, the way is being prepared for the final solution. Anyone opposed to Pax Americana are terrorists in the minds of the ruling elite. That is why Bush is using the NSA, FBI, CIA and the Pentagon against law abiding U.S. citizens. These cryptogamous organizations are monitoring the resistance and planning a pre-emptive strike against any democracy that shows signs of sprouting and organizing itself into a populist movement. The pitiless iron boot of capitalism stands ready to snuff it out like a smoldering cigarette butt on a city sidewalk.
So profitable are the spoils of war that the capitalists have created a permanent war time economy. War is the cash cow that keeps the money flowing from our pockets into theirs’. They have no intention of relinquishing power through the electoral process or by any other means. They are creating a world-size gulag; a labor concentration camp of global proportions in which there will be two classes: master and servant.
According to Donald Rumsfeld (Foreign Affairs, 2002), “Wars in the twenty-first century will increasingly require all elements of national power: economic, diplomatic, financial, law enforcement, intelligence, and both overt and covert military operations.” Rumsfeld has thus defined the core of the Bush agenda: Economics as a weapon against democracy.
Therefore, any nation, individual, or group of people that resists Pax Americana is an enemy of the state—the corporate state. Any efforts to divert a nation’s wealth from the multi-national corporations to social programs for the public good will be summarily abolished by the strong arm of the U.S. military. The respective governments of Venezuela and Bolivia are prime examples. The CIA’s economic hit men are already on the ground in Latin America and it is a safe bet that the death squads have already formed. If these attempts to decapitate Democratic Socialism fail, a full scale military invasion will be launched. That has been the pattern of history.
The unapologetic corporate media is already fervently portraying two of the most popular democratically elected leaders in the world, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, as terrorists. This is the writing on the wall and it is finger painted in human blood.
If we treasure anything above our own selfish comfort; if we believe in the ideals of freedom and democracy for people; if we believe in peace and justice, we must not sit by idly and allow these good men to be overthrown or assassinated by illegitimate Plutocratic henchmen. We must take our country back and give it to the people.
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Hello ffg! Good afternoon to you! Its a waste of time replying, as the answer is obvious, and all you have is a pre-prepared, semantic based response based on reducing the issue to individuals, and not Corporations.
To entertain you and myself during this last but one day in a boring office until i go on vacation, i'll answer.
Simply, George W Bush is the figure head of the nation who represents the essence of Capitalism and Globalisation. The laws he passes aim, chiefly, to improve one thing. The profit of corporations.
I shal deal with just a few examples.
This is not a war on terror, it is a war for Carlyle, Haliburton, Bechtel, McDonell Douglas et al and the financial giants that stand behind those companies. The military industrial complex some have called it.
Katrina could not be avoided. The devastation could. In order to maximise the profit of a company in which family members hold shares, he took from FEMA, and gave control of disater preparation and evacuation over to a private company. This company, to maximise profit, did not prepare the procedures as laid down in the contract between government and the private contractor. But, as the company is a corporation, no criminal charges can be brought under this US system of capitalism, of giving rights to an organisation.
On a personal level, he is a failed, individual 'capitalist'. Not one of his ventures ever made money, (Arbusto, Texas Oil etc) not one ever enabled him to stand on his own two feet, the very basic 'essence' of your reasoning behind Capitalism. His personal wealth is based upon holdings his father and greater family have held for over 80 years, and which now form a large part of the Caryle empire.
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
And to answer an earlier point you made. You pulled me on the phrase "State Capitalism." Have you not heard of this? It's a common term used to simply describe the Stalinist / Maoist version of the 'Communist', planned economy.
quote
"What is State Capitalism?
State capitalism is defined as capitalism in an environment wherein the capitalist enterprise is a component part of the state bureaucracy and the receivers of capitalist surplus value are state appointed bureaucrats. Many social theorists have classified the Soviet Union and CMEA nations, in general, as state capitalist social formations because most of the GDP in those economies was generated by capitalist enterprises that were within the state bureaucracy and officials in the state bureaucracy were the appropriators of enterprise surplus value. For the most recent and best developed analysis of state capitalism in the USSR, see Class Theory and History by Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff. For a similar discussion of state capitalism in China, see Gabriel, Chinese Capitalism and the Modernist Vision. Also, see the following online publication, as another example, State Capitalism by Peter Binns.
State capitalism is often confused with communism: the social system that prevailed in many pre-colonial indigenous communities in Africa and the Americas and which is the underlying economic process of the kibbutz system in Israel. Although there are many variant forms of capitalism, state capitalism is given more weight in the social scientific literature because of the tendency to essentialize the state and state powers.
Neither the logic of Marxian theory" UNquote
A simple question ffg, out of interest more than anything.
In a sentence or three, and without confusing a simple question with tying it down to this thing you have about individualism and all that malarkey, and this is based on whether or not you accept that the vast majority of the worlds population do not have as comfortable a life as you or I have, and have not the means to change it. (See Africa and China, or the sweatshops in south/Central AMerica and Asia, tell me those people have a choice? It's a bullet, or work where you're told)
Do you want everybody equal, and happy, and fed and warm and educated, or do you wish for the current situation to continue, where the minority, of which you and I are a part, continue to be relatively free from disease, malnutrition, war, poverty, and have access to education and health services?
An example. 19000 African children die every day. If the worlds wealth and resources were divided equally, this could be avoided. It disgusts me, it makes me really uncomfortable to know that happens in this world of which I am a part.
Are you happy knowing, and defending, a system that supports this ongoing holocaust? Or do you want no part in the fate of your fellow human?
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Hello ffg! Good afternoon to you! Its a waste of time replying, as the answer is obvious, and all you have is a pre-prepared, semantic based response based on reducing the issue to individuals, and not Corporations.
What comprises a corporation? Demons?
Simply, George W Bush is the figure head of the nation who represents the essence of Capitalism and Globalisation. The laws he passes aim, chiefly, to improve one thing. The profit of corporations.
But profit cannot extend from law. And that's what he (and you apparently) do not understand.
This is not a war on terror, it is a war for Carlyle, Haliburton, Bechtel, McDonell Douglas et al and the financial giants that stand behind those companies. The military industrial complex some have called it.
Ok.
Katrina could not be avoided. The devastation could. In order to maximise the profit of a company in which family members hold shares, he took from FEMA, and gave control of disater preparation and evacuation over to a private company. This company, to maximise profit, did not prepare the procedures as laid down in the contract between government and the private contractor. But, as the company is a corporation, no criminal charges can be brought under this US system of capitalism, of giving rights to an organisation.
Ok.
On a personal level, he is a failed, individual 'capitalist'. Not one of his ventures ever made money, (Arbusto, Texas Oil etc) not one ever enabled him to stand on his own two feet, the very basic 'essence' of your reasoning behind Capitalism. His personal wealth is based upon holdings his father and greater family have held for over 80 years, and which now form a large part of the Caryle empire.
Do you want everybody equal, and happy, and fed and warm and educated, or do you wish for the current situation to continue, where the minority, of which you and I are a part, continue to be relatively free from disease, malnutrition, war, poverty, and have access to education and health services?
I've already answered this question:
- I am a human being and I am free. You have no ability to force me to think for you. You have no right to force me to act for your happiness at the cost of my own.
- You are a human being and you are free. I have no ability to force you to think for me. I have no right to force you to act for my happiness at the cost of your own.
An example. 19000 African children die every day. If the worlds wealth and resources were divided equally, this could be avoided.
Wealth created by whom? Resources made by whom?
It disgusts me, it makes me really uncomfortable to know that happens in this world of which I am a part.
You have every right to be disgusted.
Are you happy knowing, and defending, a system that supports this ongoing holocaust?
I am happy knowing and defending my system. It is the only hope in the face of the "holocaust" you speak of, not its cause.
Or do you want no part in the fate of your fellow human?
Does my fellow human want no part in my fate??? Or is your question only relevant when I'm not starving, when I'm not miserable, when I'm not in pain?
But profit cannot extend from law. And that's what he (and you apparently) do not understand.
Certainly.
Profit does extend from law. Primarily, modern Law exists to protect property and wealth, no mater how great, or small.
An example (seems to be a recurring theme, I present fact to back up theory, you bring a dictionary and a linguistics manual! All good fun though). When the US Government, on behalf of big pharma, threatened Nelson Mandela's South African goverment with sanctions and penalties if they went ahead with their plan to produce cheap, generic anti-HIV drugs, they used the LEGAL (and corrupt) processes of the WTO and the IMF. South Africa relented, the drug companies continued to sel their higher priced named drugs at over 400 per cent profit over the cost price. Therefore, Law extended profit of the Pharmaceutical corporations.
See also, the EU and canadian ban on Hormone treated beef, which the USA, on behalf of whom, the consumers? NO, the US Beef industry, tried to overturn by implementing the complicated yet extremely Corporation (I won't say US corporation as the UK has a huge share of the TNCs operating around the world) friendly GATT rules on restrictions on trade. THerefore, Law extended the profits of the US farming industry.
Catch my drift?
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Profit does extend from law. Primarily, modern Law exists to protect property and wealth, no mater how great, or small.
Do you understand the difference between extortion and profit?
A thief does not profit from his thievery. He does not create any wealth as a product of his mind....he simply transfers existing wealth created by other minds into his pocket with his gun.
Modern law does exist to protect property and wealth. It also exists to expropriate wealth in many situations. Do you see me defending modern law????
An example (seems to be a recurring theme, I present fact to back up theory, you bring a dictionary and a linguistics manual! All good fun though).
I certainly understand that in your world words have little meaning.
When the US Government, on behalf of big pharma, threatened Nelson Mandela's South African goverment with sanctions and penalties if they went ahead with their plan to produce cheap, generic anti-HIV drugs, they used the LEGAL (and corrupt) processes of the WTO and the IMF. South Africa relented, the drug companies continued to sel their higher priced named drugs at over 400 per cent profit over the cost price. Therefore, Law extended profit of the Pharmaceutical corporations.
The profit of a pharmaceutical company is generated by the minds of men who invent and produce drugs.
South Africa has every right to produce cheap, generic, anti-HIV drugs by their own minds and means. What they do not have a right to do is to force a pharmaceutical company to charge what South Africa sees as a fair price against the pharmaceutical company's will.
In the situation you described, a poor nation should simply reject the right of the WTO or IMF to dictate their sovereignty and to set the terms of their freedom. They should produce the drugs and tell the international goon squads to fuck off.
Regardless, such laws did not create a single dollar of profit. The 400% profit is generated by those who created the product and those who willingly purchase the product. The law has no effect.
See also, the EU and canadian ban on Hormone treated beef, which the USA, on behalf of whom, the consumers? NO, the US Beef industry, tried to overturn by implementing the complicated yet extremely Corporation (I won't say US corporation as the UK has a huge share of the TNCs operating around the world) friendly GATT rules on restrictions on trade. THerefore, Law extended the profits of the US farming industry.
Again, you're describing the actions of governments operating on the principles of goons. Again, the "restrictions on trade" you speak of do not create a single dime of profit.
ffg, i see your POV now. It is based on fear. Fear of other peoles, fear of losing your 'castle', your property, to people you feel as being beneath you. Africans, the poor, etc.
You are benefitting in a system that excludes the vast majority of the worlds population from enjoying the same luxuries and comforts you enjoy. To summarise your inane, semantics based rhetoric.
"I have this, my family and closed ones have this, and I will not help out anybody else outside of my minority of white, upper-middle class and affluent Americans. The world does not exist outside my pretty little town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina."
As for South Africa, well we know how you feel about Africans and their plight, in this thread;-
Originally Posted by farfromglorified
That's because you likely have little to counter the statement with, other than insults.
Africans can move to find additional food. How do you think you got to where you are?? You are a direct descendent of those who followed food out of Africa.
Africans can also find ways to restore decimated parts of their continent to produce all the food they need.
For those of you "shaking with rage" over a simple statement, why don't you try acting with purpose to accomplish whatever goals in your life that have been insulted? That said, you're free not to."
UNquote
This also displays your complete detachment from reality.
"The profit of a pharmaceutical company is generated by the minds of men who invent and produce drugs." AND ARBITARILY SET THE LEVEL OF THOSE PROFITS ABOVE THE GREATER NEEDS OF DYING FUCKING HUMAN BEINGS.
South African Government can say fuck you to the goons? Really? Do you understand the nature of the IMF, World BAnk. and the WTO? These Washington based organisations.
SA says fuck you, the comanies, through the US Government, imposes retalitatory punitive trade sanctions, through the WTO.
quote
"When the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was set up in 1995 it extended to all 140 member counties in ”one single undertaking” a range of trade rules which favour the rich countries and major corporations.
The WTO regime stands on three legs. In addition to the General Agreement on Trade and Tarriffs (GATT) which concerns trade with goods and General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) which covers services, there is the TRIPS agreement (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights). This agreement forces poor countries to respect the patent rights which give multinational companies a monopoly, usually for a period of 20 years. In other words rather than ”free trade” (a term which is absent from the WTO’s constitution) many aspects of WTO rules - such as on patents - involve blatant protectionism. TRIPS is binding on all WTO members although poor countries have been given until 2006 to comply with all aspects of the agreement. Despite this transition period TRIPS is a nightmare for third world countries who comprise 80 per cent of WTO members. World Bank economist Michael Finger estimates that a typical developing country must spend 150 million dollars to implement the criteria under just three WTO agreements including TRIPS. This sum equals a year’s development budget for many poor countries.
Because South Africa is not among the poorest countries it was obliged to comply with TRIPS from the outset. When the South African government passed legislation in 1997 allowing it to circumvent these rules in an ”emergency” and import lower price generic (non-brand name) drugs from India or Brazil, the pharmaceutical industry took it to court. This case was dropped last week for tactical reasons – the whole of Africa accounts for just one per cent of worldwide drug sales. A bigger battle looms in Brazil, which has a strong generic drugs industry and manufactures its own Aids medicine. On this basis 100,000 patients receive free medication for HIV. The country is under investigation by a TRIPS disputes panel accused of violating patent rules. Behind this action are the US government and pharmaceuticals like Roche, Merck and Pfizer. Brazil’s health minister José Serra called this ”another example of how the North adopts protectionist practices yet demands that the South does not”.
UNquote.
"Regardless, such laws did not create a single dollar of profit. The 400% profit is generated by those who created the product and those who willingly purchase the product. The law has no effect."
Huh? Do you not have any understanding of internation trade rulels and regulations? THe law specifically upheld the right of companies to charge SA, Brazil, and India whatever they wanted for the drugs.
quote
"In 1997 the government passed the Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Act, to make drugs more affordable and improve the functioning of the Medicines Control Council.
COSATU support this law because it introduces a legal framework to make medicines more available and affordable in the public sector. This framework introduces four important elements:
Generic substitution of medicines - manufacturing or importing cheaper 'generic' drugs of the same-quality active ingredient as branded drugs;
A pricing committee - to set up transparent pricing mechanism and force drug companies to justify their prices;
Parallel importation - to allow the government to import the same medicines sold by the same companies, or its licensee, at a lower price in another country.
International tendering for medicines used in the public sector.
In 1998 the PMA and 39 multinational drug companies took legal action against the government to stop this Act. Consequently for three years the government has had to suspend the implementation of the Act. As a result of this delay, more than 40 000 people have died of AIDS-related illness, most of them because they could not afford expensive drugs.
In 2000 alone, drug companies around the world made sales of more that $315 billion -more that the gross domestic product of all SADC countries. So why are these companies taking the government to court?
They claim the government is trying to "expropriate or confiscate their property" and giving Minister of Health "too much power".
They fear competition and being exposed as profiteering from medicines;
They say generic substitutions are unfair and discriminatory.
They argue that the quality of generics will be much lower.
Their main concern is that generic substitution will remove their ability to retain profits from their pharmaceutical operations, to which they are entitled as the result of substitution by default. They will not lose their normal profit but this huge unnecessary profit.
They are also worried that price controls will interfere with their constitutional right to trade and want this provision of the Act to be declared unconstitutional.
They always say they spend money on research and development and that parallel importation of generic drugs conflicts with the World Trade Organisation rules on intellectual property. They are so wrong. The rules do not cover parallel importation, which is used by many European Union countries and the USA.
The Medicines Act deserves the support of all people in South Africa and internationally. It attempts to improve the health care system by lowering the price of essential medicines. This is very crucial for people living with HIV/Aids. If the PMA succeeds, it will be an enormous blow for poor people in South Africa and the developing countries. "
UNquote
Simply, in your eyes, the world outside of you and yours can go fuck itself, can't it?
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
This coming from the guy who has shown little more than fear in all his posts.
Fear of other peoles
I don't fear other peoples. I need other peoples to help me achieve my happiness.
fear of losing your 'castle'
I have no castle, nor do I desire one.
your property
I have some property. If you wish to steal it by force, you may.
to people you feel as being beneath you. Africans, the poor, etc.
I'm not afriad of Africans. Why would I be? I've been to Africa twice. The people I met there didn't seem terribly dangerous.
You are benefitting in a system that excludes the vast majority of the worlds population from enjoying the same luxuries and comforts you enjoy.
I'm benefitting from a system that created the luxuries and comforts I enjoy. If others seek those same benefits, I support their right to do so.
"I have this, my family and closed ones have this, and I will not help out anybody else outside of my minority of white, upper-middle class and affluent Americans.
Try this:
"I have this, my family and closed ones have this, and I will not help out anybody else unless that help is given on my terms and received on their terms."
The rest of it is irrelevant to me.
The world does not exist outside my pretty little town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina."
It certainly does exist.
As for South Africa, well we know how you feel about Africans and their plight, in this thread;-
Originally Posted by farfromglorified
That's because you likely have little to counter the statement with, other than insults.
Africans can move to find additional food. How do you think you got to where you are?? You are a direct descendent of those who followed food out of Africa.
Africans can also find ways to restore decimated parts of their continent to produce all the food they need.
For those of you "shaking with rage" over a simple statement, why don't you try acting with purpose to accomplish whatever goals in your life that have been insulted? That said, you're free not to."
This also displays your complete detachment from reality.
Can you please attempt to counter one phrase in that quote, since you seem to be fixating on it???
"The profit of a pharmaceutical company is generated by the minds of men who invent and produce drugs." AND ARBITARILY SET THE LEVEL OF THOSE PROFITS ABOVE THE GREATER NEEDS OF DYING FUCKING HUMAN BEINGS.
It is not "abitrarily" set. It is set based on the will of those who set it based on the purpose of those who set it based on the value of those who buy it. If you do not like the price a pharmeceutical company charges for those drugs, make them yourself. Give them away for all I care.
South African Government can say fuck you to the goons? Really?
Yes.
Do you understand the nature of the IMF, World BAnk. and the WTO? These Washington based organisations.
Yes.
SA says fuck you, the comanies, through the US Government, imposes retalitatory punitive trade sanctions, through the WTO.
Likely, yes.
"When the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was set up in 1995 it extended to all 140 member counties in ”one single undertaking” a range of trade rules which favour the rich countries and major corporations.
Certainly. Who's defending the WTO?
Because South Africa is not among the poorest countries it was obliged to comply with TRIPS from the outset.
South Africa has no such obligation. They may simply reject it. Don't go to "court". Don't go to "mediation". Don't bargain.
"Regardless, such laws did not create a single dollar of profit. The 400% profit is generated by those who created the product and those who willingly purchase the product. The law has no effect."
Huh? Do you not have any understanding of internation trade rulels and regulations?
Do you?
THe law specifically upheld the right of companies to charge SA, Brazil, and India whatever they wanted for the drugs.
Yes it did. But such an "upholding" does not create a dime of profit. Someone still has to produce the drug and someone still has to buy the drugs. In the absence of such a law, the profits from such production and buying would be exactly the same.
What you want is a law that eliminates profit. No such law is necessary. Simply steal everything you can find. No one will profit, everyone will benefit until you run out of things to steal.
Simply, in your eyes, the world outside of you and yours can go fuck itself, can't it?
You don't seem to understand me. For whatever reason, you still see me as defending a system that holds profit as its highest standard. That system is known as materialism. I am not a materialist.
Profit is payment for a man's thought based on the value of that thought to the man who pays for it. That is the additional item added to the cost of goods sold that creates the price of a product. I am a capitalist, and I'll defend the value of the mind until I die.
I do not support the WTO, or the IMF, or the United States Government, or the Venezuelan Government. All are organizations that seek to protect wealth at the cost of the mind.
I do not support anyone who tells me that my mind is owned by another. The minds that produced anti-HIV drugs are the minds you should be celebrating, not condemning. It is those minds that make hope realistic. If you cannot afford the price of those minds, do not attempt to destroy them. Learn from them.
It is not the responsibility of those minds to serve your needs. You do not and cannot own them. Slavery is not an ideal.
If you wish to serve Africans dying of HIV, you have two choices: pillage or create. You are free to storm the warehouses and factories where those drugs are produced. You are free to expropriate the products of minds greater than your own. But ask yourself what happens when that disease mutates against those drugs you have stolen. What will save you then? The minds you've destroyed? The factories you don't understand? The pills that are reduced to nothing more than placebos?
But if you learn from those minds and combine that knowledge with your own you can create your own drugs that can be produced faster, cheaper, better. It's then and only then when you'll have the mind and the ability and therefore the power to accomplish your purpose.
Is it possible for you to write something and NOT edit it later?
DO you not believe in what you write so vehemently that you doubt yourself and seek to save face by editing posts?
An example.
"Quote:
Simply, in your eyes, the world outside of you and yours can go fuck itself, can't it?
If, and only if, they wish to, yes."
Original version said, simply, if they wish to.
Why edit? What have you to hide?
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Marginal difference, really. Both cases is telling people what to think and/or do. Whether it is getting behind you or getting away from you doesn't do much difference.
It does a lot of difference. It means you're free to live your life how you see fit. It means that I'm not telling you what to do. I'm simply asking for the same.
Yet, as I said, the consideration of interaction never enters your theory apart from economic exchange. You have little or no considerations of what happens when you have many people all pursuing their will, and how they will conflict, create new power constellations, and in the end reproduce class differences, especially without any mediating structures of redistribution. You talk of human interaction, but you don't really deal with it in your theory, you just put it aside. As for self coming before social interaction, I am not sure it is really relevant to put a sharp divide there, as all humans are from birth onwards engaged in social interactions continously, making it hard to see where the difference goes between faculties born with you, and faculties learned and raised by people around you. Hence, your individualist focus falls through for me as insufficient as a complete perspective.
Yet the "socialist perspective" fails to account for the individual. It declares that the individual's will should be subjegated to the will of something that has no will.
When I declare that people should be free, I mean it. Free to form the social structures they desire to form, free to come together in whatever organization they see fit. Even governments. But men have no right to enslave those that do not want to join them.
Men are hard-wired social creatures. But this does not mean that men should be chained to one another against their will.
Men are destined to conflict. Men need a system of justice in order to settle such conflicts if they wish to avoid violence. But a system of justice, again, does not imply a forced social structure. It might mean a government formed from shared purpose. It might mean private arbitration. It might mean a culture of respect towards the sanctity of a contract. The solution to conflict is not to deflect that conflict (man vs man) to a new one (man vs the state). The solution to conflict is justice, wherein all men benefit.
Class differences are not a thing to reject. Class differences that tie people to a social position regardless of their effort are what we should be railing against. And those class differences are the product of rigid social systems wherein people feel they have right to dominate each other.
First of all, to you a state is a state. Which is really preposterous. A working democracy does not have the same effect on its citizens as a totalitarian dictatorship. You always start from worst case scenario when it comes to these states. State power can for sure be abused, and is in many cases. But there is a difference of degrees here.
Certainly! I would never suggest that the Norweigan government is the same as the French or the same as the Sudanese. But all are based on the same flawed axiom: some men have the right to rule others.
As for the entire gun-to-head analogy favoured by anarchists, fair enough, but I dont see how it really applies to the society where i live. Sorry. Few guns to head and threats of violence to my person here. As for police and soldiers, you really reduce them to non-thinking brutes. Where-as I know that many of them have a conviction to help people, and keep them safe from eachother, aka the monopoly of violence. I find it interesting that you that focus so much on cooperation the moment we talk of private capitalism, fail to see it in regards to a state. In essence, just because something is instilled in you other than you choosing it consciously (which goes for most of your upbringing at least and much more), doesn't mean it is gun-to-head force. Influence, persuasion and facilitating does not equal gunpoint, although they can certainly hold power and make you do one thing over another. Perhaps stop you from doing things you'd like in your mind, but you choose not to because of what others might think for example.
I don't reduce police and soldiers to non-thinking brutes in total. But the part of them that is willing to hold a gun in the absence of objective standards of its use......that's an abdication of reason.
I focus on cooperation in the context of capitalism because corporations are typically built upon the essence of cooperation. People are there willingly, sharing a purpose, working towards their singular goal. However, those people won't let the corporation enslave them. Until the modern state functions on the same principle, I'm not going to pretend it's cooperative. When the state binds men together based on will instead of geography and guns then we can talk about cooperation.
Furthermore, if you view the power wielded by the state as being automatically gun-to-head, then what is the power of a monopoly corporation that have cornered a market (and not necessarily through fair competition) equal to? You put to sharp a distinction between power and state power. The state may have the monopoly on physical violence, sure. But it does not have the monopoly on power, and it is not the sole structure that limit people's freedoms. People limit people's freedoms just as much. Corporations can limit them. Power groups outside of state structure can limit them. I dont necessarily disagree with your analysis of power either, but I think you focus too much of just one aspect of it.
I don't view power wielded by the state as being automatically gun-to-head. It only becomes gun-to-head when the state starts putting guns to people's heads and saying "do this, or else". Every state that passes a "law" and backs it with force fits this description.
The monopolistic corporation is largely an invention of the forceful state. It is typically law and protectionism that limits competition. In the rare event that a corporation does create a true monopoly, some important questions must be asked. First...is the monopoly the result of open competition or its opposite? If the monopoly extends from brute force, men have the right to respond and dismantle it. Second....is the product worth upholding the monopoly? If not, people simply may choose to go without that product and thereby destroy the monopolizer. If it is, people have made the decision that the value of the product exceeds the lack of a monopoly. Third....is the product necessary for life? If so, no corporation has the right to hold a true monopoly over the means of living and hold men ransom to their own bodies.
The Weberian power term, which is pretty close to what you say actually, namely that power is the ability for one person or entity to make others act according to his will, even if the others dont necessarily want to. State is not the only powerwielding structure in society. Employers, capitalists, family, traditionally the head of the family and so on. The picture is a lot more complex
Sure.
The difference between the corporations is that the democratic state is for and by the people, and can be influenced by the people. The other corporation can listen to people, but can just as well choose not to, and people can do nothing about it. I'm a democrat to the bone, so my answer to that would be democracy, really.
People can do nothing about it?????? Revenue is the life-blood of a corporation. People hold full control over the blood of a corporation.
All of the above, I'd say. It is my responsibility to protect your rights and well-being, and you should in return try to protect mine in the name of reciprocity (although I'd protect yours anyway), and we both have the responsibility to respect each others rights. Dont see the big difference between the two either.
There is a huge difference between respecting your rights and protecting them. To respect your rights means that I will not take action to violate them. To protect them means that I am obligated to take action to defend them. I reject such an obligation because, in effect, that gives you the right to force me to die for you, and vice versa. And that creates a massive contradiction.
Yet the "socialist perspective" fails to account for the individual. It declares that the individual's will should be subjegated to the will of something that has no will.
To have a concept of chains of actions above the incividual level is not the same as a socialist perspective. But fair enough, if the "socialist" perspective fails to account the individual, then the "capitalist" perspective fails to account for structure
When I declare that people should be free, I mean it. Free to form the social structures they desire to form, free to come together in whatever organization they see fit. Even governments. But men have no right to enslave those that do not want to join them.
A noble sentiment. But you assume no baggage in this. Most of your examples are if you take individuals and put them somewhere else and then apply your principles, it will work. Quite possibly. But what is your plan of transition for this?
Men are hard-wired social creatures. But this does not mean that men should be chained to one another against their will.
Oh but we are. Heard of family? We are chained to eachother, most of us. Against our wills? Perhaps at times. But you assume active choice about every decision, and view which I doubt people really exercise. Hence talk about choice and force may be largely irrelevant for most people. Norms for instance. We do alot of things because we just do. We dont really think about it. These things have no place in your theories other than that they can be latched on in a pinch.
Men are destined to conflict. Men need a system of justice in order to settle such conflicts if they wish to avoid violence. But a system of justice, again, does not imply a forced social structure. It might mean a government formed from shared purpose. It might mean private arbitration. It might mean a culture of respect towards the sanctity of a contract. The solution to conflict is not to deflect that conflict (man vs man) to a new one (man vs the state). The solution to conflict is justice, wherein all men benefit.
Sure.
Class differences are not a thing to reject. Class differences that tie people to a social position regardless of their effort are what we should be railing against. And those class differences are the product of rigid social systems wherein people feel they have right to dominate each other.
Certainly. But to avoid that, you need a meritocracy where children are taken away from their parents or something so to make for a completely equal start. Somehow I dont think you'd want that.
Certainly! I would never suggest that the Norweigan government is the same as the French or the same as the Sudanese. But all are based on the same flawed axiom: some men have the right to rule others.
No, not really. Some are given limited mandate by the people to decide for them. They can be recalled, kicked out and influenced by their voters. Not quite the same as a dictatorship that rules on the whim of one person.
I don't reduce police and soldiers to non-thinking brutes in total. But the part of them that is willing to hold a gun in the absence of objective standards of its use......that's an abdication of reason.
But they have objective standards of its use. It's the point of a military and police force that they do. That they may not in cases is another matter.
I focus on cooperation in the context of capitalism because corporations are typically built upon the essence of cooperation. People are there willingly, sharing a purpose, working towards their singular goal. However, those people won't let the corporation enslave them. Until the modern state functions on the same principle, I'm not going to pretend it's cooperative. When the state binds men together based on will instead of geography and guns then we can talk about cooperation.
Perhaps to an extent that would be true. How would you organize it? Seriously? If all men needs to hold a job to survive in current society, the premise of voluntarianism you posit is severely flawed.
And I was really being very general about cooperation. The state cooperates with it's smaller municipalities, with businesses and people and so on. The state easily enters as a link in the cooperation between people. So ignoring all conflict in private enterprises, and seeing only conflict and force in all official doings is very one-sided and skewed.
I don't view power wielded by the state as being automatically gun-to-head. It only becomes gun-to-head when the state starts putting guns to people's heads and saying "do this, or else". Every state that passes a "law" and backs it with force fits this description.
So law is gun-to-head. Got it.
The monopolistic corporation is largely an invention of the forceful state. It is typically law and protectionism that limits competition. In the rare event that a corporation does create a true monopoly, some important questions must be asked. First...is the monopoly the result of open competition or its opposite? If the monopoly extends from brute force, men have the right to respond and dismantle it. Second....is the product worth upholding the monopoly? If not, people simply may choose to go without that product and thereby destroy the monopolizer. If it is, people have made the decision that the value of the product exceeds the lack of a monopoly. Third....is the product necessary for life? If so, no corporation has the right to hold a true monopoly over the means of living and hold men ransom to their own bodies.
Noble principles. But these are just worming away from the point about how power, and limitation of freedom can come from other quarters than the state, and that the removing of it will not necessarily change any of that.
People can do nothing about it?????? Revenue is the life-blood of a corporation. People hold full control over the blood of a corporation.
Really? Apart from "consumer action" which is great for deciding ont he new brand of chips, how can people stop corporations from doing things they dont like? It only works if people act in concert (dirty word coming up) collectively. And for them to do so, there must be a channel they can utilize to that end. This would only work in a society of dedicated anarchists, where the free market was de facto achieved. It also assumes that there actually will materialize all options, so you may choose the one that fits you, and assumes that businesses does not cooperate to a large extent on what they do and make. Currently, what is seen in durrent society, is that the means of the democratic state is the best way people can influence what goes on around them, and they have a channel for venting frustrations and complaints.
There is a huge difference between respecting your rights and protecting them. To respect your rights means that I will not take action to violate them. To protect them means that I am obligated to take action to defend them. I reject such an obligation because, in effect, that gives you the right to force me to die for you, and vice versa. And that creates a massive contradiction.
Who's forcing? You dont want to die for me, then dont. I'm just saying that it is something deeply engrained in human morality, and something many, if not most people would do without really thinking about it. If you feel obligated through this, well, sorry. I'd rather have a society where people are obligated to eachother than a society where everyone is always first and foremost after their own interests. Am I my brother's keeper? Yes.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
I need to preface this response with a warning: you seem to have misunderstood my post a bit. Pretty much nothing I said in regards to communism assumes the totalitarian dictatorship we see in many communistic or "socialistic" structures. What I described is the philosophy of communism and, 9 times out of 10, the logical end of that philosophy is a totalitarian dictatorship. But everything in that post applies whether or not that dictatorship exists, except for this one sentence:
The communist tells me – “you need security”. Exactly, I say. The biggest threat to me is the state that enforces the subjective law of another’s “need” with their guns.
You describe totalitarian dictatorship with a communist slant, is my initial obection really. But fair enough, that is the versions of communism we have seen. And you did say that socialists are different, although you didn't say just how. I'll do some points again:
Both share basically the same philosophy.
Your interpretation of communism is in the totalitarian vein, in which freedom is certainly removed. That is not communism at it's core. I could let it all slide, but since you as the alternative continually pose the theoretical utopian capitalism, I guess I can argue some theoretical utopian communism. To Marx, man's purpose is to be creative. So the point of Marx' vision is creating a society in which man needs to "work" for the common good as little as possible in order to provide the necessities for all, so that they have as much free time as possible in which to be creative. He envisioned this through the proletariat taking over the means of production from the capitalists and utilize them for their needs only. This is way before consumerism, so that was actually palatable in it's day. So communism is very much about freedom. It is about being free from being exploited and forced to work more and harder than necessary, and rather being free to pursue your own creativity. The providing for others on which you focus, is just a small part of it.
Man, I really wish I wouldn't have promised you to reply paragraph style. There are a lot of contradictions here
Just like you and me, Karl Marx has no ability to contradict reality with his words. We do not live in the world of five year old children, you know. Let me tell you a little story to illustrate. When I was five, my family was pretty darn poor. Not abject poverty by most standards, but pretty damn poor. However, my Mother (who was the only one around for a while and the only one that worked), used to save every penny should could in a bank account. And sometimes, she would go to the ATM and take a little money out of that bank account and use it to buy something she'd wanted for a long time. This concept fascinated me. One day, I saw an advertisement or something and asked her..."Mom, can we buy one of those?" to which she responded, "no sweetheart, we really can't afford it". I was quite confused. "But what about the green machine?", I asked (that's what I called the ATM because it was green). "That's only for special occassions, little one," she said. "But Mom", I said, "why can't we just take the money out of the machine and buy it???" A strange look crossed her face and she said, "you know Jeff, you can only take out of the green machine what you put into it." And that one statement probably changed my life for good.
Karl Marx, in short, wants men to get more out of life than they put into it. And, unfortunately for all of us, that violates the Natural laws of accounting that we know as Justice. He wants men to be free without being free. He wants men to consume without the means to produce. He wants ends without the means.
You cannot, for instance, say "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" without saying that men have a primary obligation to each other above all other things. And when a primary obligation supercedes will, men cannot be totally free. If I was to reword Marx's statement for capitalism, it would read something like this:
"From each according to his mind, to each according to his mind"
And that accounts for the will of both parties.
You say that communism "is about being free from being exploited and forced to work more and harder than necessary, and rather being free to pursue your own creativity". To which I simply ask: freedom for whom, necessary for whom? If a man's creative desire is to not subjegate his mind to the needs of others, communism grants you no such freedom. If man's creative desire is to form a business, communism grants you no such freedom. The very fact that communism claims the ability to grant freedom is a self-defeating contradiction. Freedom cannot be granted because that implies that it can be withheld.
Communism isn't any more outlandish than the christian tradition of caring for thy neighbour. That also goes against individualist theories and perspectives, whose only morality is selfishness (through the assumption that selfishness by all will be the best for all). Perhaps the individual in communism isn't "free" as the capitalist thinker would see it, but he could certainly be free in other ways.
I had to block this one off because it's important. You are exactly right.
A capitalist is a man who values reason. And a man who values reason disregards faith. Therefore, true capitalists tend to be agnostic.
The overarching control by a dictator which you assume throughout (with the you're just a means, not a goal) is not a part of communism. Mind you this has all been about theory, which your anarchist capitalism also is currently. I stay by my judgement that both requires a homogenity among people not found.
Again, the only dictator I assume is the dictation of need, not of the state.
Both anarchist capitalism and communism do require homogenity among people. But anarchist capitalism requires homogenity among those who have a homogenous purpose and will. Communism requires homogenity regardless of purpose.
Noone should own anything in the sense that we do under curent society. Every man owns his productive power and creativity. The point of this society is not consumerism and creation of loads of excess goods. It's about people being free to pursue, after basic necessities are met.
Pursue what? Happiness? You have no right to pursue your own happiness because the unhappy have the first right to it because they need it.
Certainly no healthy society can be defined by consumerism or loads of excess goods. But that's the essence of communism. The ultimate standard of the communist is the man who needs the most. He is the de facto ruler of all men. And that creates the contradiction of the consumer who cannot consume. He is a man that must demand everything but use nothing, no different than a deranged ascetic that demands compliance but can only hold power over those who fail to comply.
Not to be rude or anything, but I have gathered that you are an entrepeneurial type owning your own business, or at least running one, am I right? So of course to you the state is your biggest threat. For ordinary workers, the threat can just as well come from employers and capitalists juggling around on things, making living a lot harder for the employees. The problem is being subject to arbitrary forces over which you have no control. That can be the state, that can be your company. And we need security to a certain degree, that we do. And people less favourably placed than you, or indeed me, need it even more.
Certainly in America and Europe there are many workers and ordinary citizens who are threatened by corporations. But that threat largely arises from the undue influence corporations have over the state. A robber is no threat without his gun and a corporation is no threat without its state.
I do own my own business. I deal with my employees and my customers based on the standards I espouse.
In other words, you reduce people to profit?
Where is the reduction? Reread: "Profit is the payment to people for the product of their minds. The rejection of profit is a rejection of the mind, the rejection of people." To suggest that a man's mind has value reduces nothing. It expands on the philosophy of communism that turns men into lifeless lumps of clay where their minds are not their own. You seem to be reading the statment like this: "The mind is the product of profit." That would be a reduction and a fallacious statment.
Certainly. But you imply that thoughts have their sole creation isolated in your mind, unaffected by others.
Not at all! Our minds are affected by everything they come into contact with. But that does not give that everything the right to own our minds. The fact that your consciousness is held and can be held only by you is what gives you the right to own it.
Noone has ever asked you to ignore your mind. Possibly under your speculative version of communism
The philosophy that tells me there is no objective reality tells me that my mind is superfluous. And that which is superfluous has no value.
The selfish principle. That you also want others to be selfish does not salvage it for me. And we dont necessarily talk about forcing anyone to think for anyone, we are rather talking about letting what one does and think come to the benefit of others. Not be a selfish scrooge demanding things in return for any action.
You speak as if it's an inevitable process to "let what one does think come to the benefit of others" being blocked by the "selfish". It is not an inevitable process, and it is not being blocked by anything but reality.
The products of my mind are out of your reach unless I act upon them or communicate them. I have no fundamental obligation to do so. If you seek to force me, you may try, but my mind does not bargain based on the price of fear.
But yes, as an indictment against totalitarianism, I agree almost fully with you here. I am merely raising the theoretical argument here, since you rely on that to oppose it.
A corrupt theory can only create a corrupt conclusion. Communism, in practice, fails because of what I describe.
(edit) preface: I am not advocating communism. I am merely questioning your reasoning. I fundamentally agree actually, if not with your reasoning, then with your conclusion.
I need to preface this response with a warning: you seem to have misunderstood my post a bit. Pretty much nothing I said in regards to communism assumes the totalitarian dictatorship we see in many communistic or "socialistic" structures. What I described is the philosophy of communism and, 9 times out of 10, the logical end of that philosophy is a totalitarian dictatorship.
In practice, sure. But as long as we're talking utopias here...
Both share basically the same philosophy.
In your view, ok.
Man, I really wish I wouldn't have promised you to reply paragraph style. There are a lot of contradictions here
*snip*
Karl Marx, in short, wants men to get more out of life than they put into it. And, unfortunately for all of us, that violates the Natural laws of accounting that we know as Justice. He wants men to be free without being free. He wants men to consume without the means to produce. He wants ends without the means.
No, not really. He envisions that first of all we stop the fetishism of goods, and scale it all down to what we basically need, and provide that. That really isn't much. But it is an idea of times past, certainly.
You cannot, for instance, say "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" without saying that men have a primary obligation to each other above all other things. And when a primary obligation supercedes will, men cannot be totally free. If I was to reword Marx's statement for capitalism, it would read something like this:
"From each according to his mind, to each according to his mind"
And that accounts for the will of both parties.
Can man ever be totally free? And is it really desirable? Sounds awfully lonely to me.
You say that communism "is about being free from being exploited and forced to work more and harder than necessary, and rather being free to pursue your own creativity". To which I simply ask: freedom for whom, necessary for whom? If a man's creative desire is to not subjegate his mind to the needs of others, communism grants you no such freedom. If man's creative desire is to form a business, communism grants you no such freedom. The very fact that communism claims the ability to grant freedom is a self-defeating contradiction. Freedom cannot be granted because that implies that it can be withheld.
You are bent on the need aspect arent you? If we're talking a marginal amount of work that needs to be done to secure the bare basics, covering the needs of your neighbour isn't that much of a task. Why should a man need to start a business? He could rather set out to create what he wants, without having to worry about profitability or anything like that. That this vision also leaves out any technological progress etc, I am aware. But it could be done. Perhaps not now though. And I'm not really advocating it in its full form, just pointing out the brighter sides of it.
I had to block this one off because it's important. You are exactly right.
A capitalist is a man who values reason. And a man who values reason disregards faith. Therefore, true capitalists tend to be agnostic.
And those who are not capitalists are irrational, disregarding of reason in general and locked in their faith, is that it?
Both anarchist capitalism and communism do require homogenity among people. But anarchist capitalism requires homogenity among those who have a homogenous purpose and will. Communism requires homogenity regardless of purpose.
In both cases a larger, missing homogenityis needed. Capitalism on the grand scale you posit requires a larger homogenity in society. Think about it. If you are not to be "locked" to one project (which would make you unfree and perhaps involuntary in the end) you need full interchangability and mobility in that society. For that to remotely work, the right kind of individual traits are needed. As I said, people that society with true-believer anarchists, and it could certainly work. But people arent in general. Which is why I view both poles as untenable.
Pursue what? Happiness? You have no right to pursue your own happiness because the unhappy have the first right to it because they need it.
And you would never be the one in need?
Certainly no healthy society can be defined by consumerism or loads of excess goods. But that's the essence of communism. The ultimate standard of the communist is the man who needs the most. He is the de facto ruler of all men. And that creates the contradiction of the consumer who cannot consume. He is a man that must demand everything but use nothing, no different than a deranged ascetic that demands compliance but can only hold power over those who fail to comply.
Que? As I outlined earlier on, communism in Marx' sense would be to lock off technological progress and minimize all required down to the bare minimum. How is that consumerist? Consumerism is what we have now.
Certainly in America and Europe there are many workers and ordinary citizens who are threatened by corporations. But that threat largely arises from the undue influence corporations have over the state. A robber is no threat without his gun and a corporation is no threat without its state.
Perhaps. Providing corporations live by your pure rules.
I do own my own business. I deal with my employees and my customers based on the standards I espouse.
In my experience, anarchists of the capitalist persuasion usually are entrepeneurs. Just an observation.
Where is the reduction? Reread: "Profit is the payment to people for the product of their minds. The rejection of profit is a rejection of the mind, the rejection of people." To suggest that a man's mind has value reduces nothing. It expands on the philosophy of communism that turn men into lifeless lumps of clay where there minds are not their own. You seem to be reading the statment like this: "The mind is the product of profit." That would be a reduction and a fallacious statment.
Perhaps.
Not at all! Our minds are affected by everything they come into contact with. But that does not give that everything the right to own our minds. The fact that your consciousness is held and can be held only by you is what gives you the right to own it.
Right to own it? Your mind is your own, and cant be taken away from you. There is no need to own it.
The philosophy that tells me there is no objective reality tells me that my mind is superfluous. And that which is superfluous has no value.
No, it tells you that you are one mind of many, and that your view doesn't necessarily hold more truth than the next man. Not superfluous, not just necessarily right. And maybe there is objective reality, but can we see it for what it is? We've been down this road.
You speak as if it's an inevitable process to "let what one does think come to the benefit of others" being blocked by the "selfish". It is not an inevitable process, and it is not being blocked by anything but reality.
Who said it was inevitable? Just saying how one shouldn't always consider one's own selfish interests first and foremost.
The products of my mind are out of your reach unless I act upon them or communicate them. I have no fundamental obligation to do so. If you seek to force me, you may try, but my mind does not bargain based on the price of fear.
Certainly. But it would be a lot nicer of I told you my mind, and you told me yours. Why should I force you? You seem a bit overdetermined not to let anyone "do you over".
A corrupt theory can only create a corrupt conclusion. Communism, in practice, fails because of what I describe.
Communism fails because it is utopian, and has premises and prerequisites that are unattainable.
Out of curiosity, what is the difference between socialism and communism as you see it?
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
To have a concept of chains of actions above the incividual level is not the same as a socialist perspective. But fair enough, if the "socialist" perspective fails to account the individual, then the "capitalist" perspective fails to account for structure
Structure of what?
A noble sentiment. But you assume no baggage in this. Most of your examples are if you take individuals and put them somewhere else and then apply your principles, it will work. Quite possibly. But what is your plan of transition for this?
Transition from what? The current state? Repeal controls. Not all at once, necessarily. But the entire state structure could probably be removed within a generation at most.
Oh but we are. Heard of family? We are chained to eachother, most of us. Against our wills? Perhaps at times. But you assume active choice about every decision, and view which I doubt people really exercise. Hence talk about choice and force may be largely irrelevant for most people. Norms for instance. We do alot of things because we just do. We dont really think about it. These things have no place in your theories other than that they can be latched on in a pinch.
A family is chained together biologically. And the will typically follows. But people have no inherent obligation to their families over and above. It took me years to realize that Catholic guilt is not an instinct.
I don't assume "active choice". I advocate active choice. People are welcome to ignore their minds as much as they want and are able to.
How do my theories ignore Norms? Where do you think my own opinions and beliefs come from? They are a product of my culture. These theories allow people to excercise their culture rather than sacrifice it.
Certainly. But to avoid that, you need a meritocracy where children are taken away from their parents or something so to make for a completely equal start. Somehow I dont think you'd want that.
For some reason I read "meritocracy" as "motorcycle" and got very confused for a minute....anywho...
Why must I take children away from their parents? All children in my world have the same start: their minds and their bodies. All else is the product of the parents, not the product of the child. For example, inherited wealth is a product of the inheritee, not a product of the inheritor. The man who earned it earned the right to do what he pleases with it.
Each child is born into a unique environment. Why is this a bad thing? It generates the differences we see in the people we encounter. Some children have more resources and "healthier" environments than others, but why pretend that this should not be or could not be? If you want to raise a generation of clones, this becomes an issue. Otherwise, the only relevancy is what barriers are preventing people from achieving their goals. The system I'm describing is a system where people are free to work towards their own destiny, rather than forced to work against it.
No, not really. Some are given limited mandate by the people to decide for them. They can be recalled, kicked out and influenced by their voters. Not quite the same as a dictatorship that rules on the whim of one person.
When is the last time the Norweigan government considered their fundamental right to rule you and every other citizen and Norway? The process you describe asks the question: who is fit to rule you, not is anyone fit to rule you.
But they have objective standards of its use. It's the point of a military and police force that they do. That they may not in cases is another matter.
They do? I'm not intimately familiar with Norweigan law, but is it objective? Do your laws detail the exact situations requiring the use of guns, or do they provide officers discretion? Can your laws be arrived at via the logic of all, or only the "logic" of those who make them and enforce them?
Perhaps to an extent that would be true. How would you organize it? Seriously? If all men needs to hold a job to survive in current society, the premise of voluntarianism you posit is severely flawed.
Help me out here man. It's not mine to organize. This isn't a boy scout field trip.
All men do not need to hold a job to survive. All men need to eat, drink and sleep to survive. Men may seek jobs to help provide those things if they require trade with others. Other men may build communes to provide those things for all, regardless of jobs. Other men may simply provide these things for themselves. What business is it of mine?
Personally, I'd participate in a situation where men use their abilities to excersice their chosen purpose. I'd run a technology business. I'd trade with those who run other businesses. We'd all employ anyone that would wish and be able to help us. Would I give away jobs just because men "need" them? No. If those men are of no value to me, what would I be paying them for?
And I was really being very general about cooperation. The state cooperates with it's smaller municipalities, with businesses and people and so on. The state easily enters as a link in the cooperation between people. So ignoring all conflict in private enterprises, and seeing only conflict and force in all official doings is very one-sided and skewed.
But the underlying authority of the state extends from force. Certianly there is cooperation as you say in certain instances. But true cooperation is two sides working toward a similar goal, and the opposite of that goal is what they're working against. The proposition of the state is to work towards a bunch of goals, with the opposite of those things always being forceful punishment. The "cooperative" proposition of the state, regardless of purpose, is not "do this or don't achieve this" but rather "do this or get hurt".
So law is gun-to-head. Got it.
No. Gravity is not gun-to-head. Thermodynamics is not gun-to-head. Morality (personal law) is not gun to head. Contracts are not gun-to-head.
Here's a good example...my business's code of conduct is not gun-to-head. Why? Because a breach of it does not result in me (or any agent of mine) putting a gun to anyone's head. Every person agrees to that code of conduct as a prerequisite for working here. If they don't agree with that code, they can choose not to work here. If they breach it, they are no longer considered a value to me and therefore I no longer pay them. Pretty simple, yes? That is a code of true justice. The "punishment" is simply the logical end of their action.
[QOUTE]Noble principles. But these are just worming away from the point about how power, and limitation of freedom can come from other quarters than the state, and that the removing of it will not necessarily change any of that.[/quote]
Certainly! But that's the logic of "make peace with bombs". In the absence of the state, certainly a corporation or some other entity can amass powers of force. But that doesn't make it right to form a mass of power to prevent amassment of power.....
Really? Apart from "consumer action" which is great for deciding ont he new brand of chips, how can people stop corporations from doing things they dont like? It only works if people act in concert (dirty word coming up) collectively. And for them to do so, there must be a channel they can utilize to that end. This would only work in a society of dedicated anarchists, where the free market was de facto achieved. It also assumes that there actually will materialize all options, so you may choose the one that fits you, and assumes that businesses does not cooperate to a large extent on what they do and make. Currently, what is seen in durrent society, is that the means of the democratic state is the best way people can influence what goes on around them, and they have a channel for venting frustrations and complaints.
Ok...lots of good issues here.
First, your point about "materialization of all options". No one has an obligation to materialize an option for you. If you require an option and that option is possible but not provided....provide it. You have no right to simply demand it into existence.
Consumer action works quite well, it just doesn't always work for you. Personally, I'm anti-Wal-mart. Won't shop there, regardless of the reason. If no one sells something here other than Wal-mart, I'll do without. But my actions alone are not putting Wal-mart out of business. Why not? Because millions of consumers love Wal-mart. They shop nowhere else. This is the true mandate of the majority that a lot of posters here don't understand when they use the term.....a mandate linked to purpose and will and backed up by a just authority.
I have no problem with people organizing collectively as a consumer group. Is it harder to do without the state? Perhaps, but not necessarily. In the USA, our government is turning into little more than a collection of consumer action groups. Unfortunately, they simply cancel each other out half the time and everybody loses. One side gets the minimum wage raised, the other side gets the taxes raised....no one gains. One side gets environmental protection, the other side gets a loophole....no one gains.
The channels for consumer action are quite numerous. The media, the church, the community as a whole, the Internet.....the only prerequisite is that people pay attention. But that's already a prerequisite to thought and since I'm basing the entire thing off of everyone's ability to think, it's pretty much implied.
You say that the democratic state is the best way for people "can influence what goes on around them, and they have a channel for venting frustrations and complaints". I call bullshit. The modern democratic state is terribly inefficient and largely ineffectual at this. Perhaps for the Romans, for a while, sure. But not these days.
Who's forcing? You dont want to die for me, then dont. I'm just saying that it is something deeply engrained in human morality, and something many, if not most people would do without really thinking about it. If you feel obligated through this, well, sorry. I'd rather have a society where people are obligated to eachother than a society where everyone is always first and foremost after their own interests. Am I my brother's keeper? Yes.
You want a society where people are obligated to die in your place, while at the same time giving yourself the obligation to die for them? That seems, well, a bit conflicting. Can you build enough sacrifical alters for the whole lot of you?
Just wondering which is REALLY the ideal? I was watching a nice little German film the other night, Goodbye Lenin, which was about an East German boy whose mother went into a coma after suffering a heart attack. While she was in the coma, the wall came down and the whole world changed for them. When she awoke the doctor advised him not to give her too many shocks as it could trigger a fatal attack. So he had to pretend nothing had changed. In one incident she met some West Germans and saw some West German cars and he had to explain how the West Germans had fled to the East cos of their immoral capitalist ways and the East Germans were accepting West German 'refugees' into their homes and she was saying 'we must do everything we can to help', lol. Ok well enough rambling but it just made me wonder what exactly IS so fucking great about the way we're living these days?
wonderful movie! I suggest it to ffg
let's see, what's great.... what about spending four hours of your day in the traffic jam? what about spending 6/7/8.... hours of your day in front of one magic monitor doing something completely useless to the human mind evolution? what about spending other 2/3 hours of your day in front of another magic monitor which talks to you and shows you incredible things like...for exemple the collapse of the wtc? what about taking pills to sleep? what about taking pills to be happy? what about taking pills to make love? what about dying of cancer into a hospital after spending all your life eating things that they told you to be so good, like hormon-meat and pesticide-salad? of course, these are just few of some of the collateral damages required by a wonderful world assuring happyness and freedom to all.....happyness and freedom......happyness and freedom....yeah, the greatest commercial ever designed to daze all.
let's see, what's great.... what about spending four hours of your day in the traffic jam? what about spending 6/7/8.... hours of your day in front of one magic monitor doing something completely useless to the human mind evolution? what about spending other 2/3 hours of your day in front of another magic monitor which talks to you and shows you incredible things like...for exemple the collapse of the wtc? what about taking pills to sleep? what about taking pills to be happy? what about taking pills to make love? what about dying of cancer into a hospital after spending all your life eating things that they told you to be so good, like hormon-meat and pesticide-salad? of course, these are just few of some of the collateral damages required by a wonderful world assuring happyness and freedom to all.....happyness and freedom......happyness and freedom....yeah, the greatest commercial ever designed to daze all.
Let's see, what's great.....what about working from home and spending time with your family? What about spending 6/7/8....hours of your day in front of one logical monitor doing something that benefits thousands of people who are willing to exchange the products of their minds for the product of yours? what about the choice to not own a television and spending the rest of your day with your family and friends? What about the choice to not be a slave to a state whose actions in part lead to the collapse of the WTC? What about sleeping soundly? What about having the resources and the choice to learn about the foods you eat? Of course, these are just few of the wonderful products of freedom and of the men who hold their own happiness as their highest moral standard.
Love you lots Eva, but it might be time to check your premises.
(edit) preface: I am not advocating communism. I am merely questioning your reasoning. I fundamentally agree actually, if not with your reasoning, then with your conclusion.
Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, eh?
No, not really. He envisions that first of all we stop the fetishism of goods, and scale it all down to what we basically need, and provide that. That really isn't much. But it is an idea of times past, certainly.
One does not stop the "fetishism of goods" by suggesting that every man has a fundamental right to a good simply based on his need of it.
Can man ever be totally free? And is it really desirable? Sounds awfully lonely to me.
That's like suggesting that the prison warden is the world's most popular person....hundreds of friends that never leave.
Total freedom is certainly possible. Freedom is the measure of barriers between man's state and his desired achievement. Remove the barriers that force a man to work against his purpose and that man is free.
You are bent on the need aspect arent you? If we're talking a marginal amount of work that needs to be done to secure the bare basics, covering the needs of your neighbour isn't that much of a task. Why should a man need to start a business? He could rather set out to create what he wants, without having to worry about profitability or anything like that. That this vision also leaves out any technological progress etc, I am aware. But it could be done. Perhaps not now though. And I'm not really advocating it in its full form, just pointing out the brighter sides of it.
Yikes. Here we go. "Why should a man need to start a business? He could rather set out to create what he wants"....what do you think a business is? The creation of something a man does not want???? You suggest such men shouldn't have to worry about profit or "anything like that". How do you propose that man actually create what he wants? Magic? Creation implies resources. You cannot create something out of nothing. Resources imply thought. If your creation requires the thought of others, you "need" those thoughts. How do you propose to get them? Communism's answer is simple: steal them by convincing a man his thoughts are not his own or, more aptly, by force. Capitalism's answer is simpler: profit from the recognition that thought belongs to the thinker .
And those who are not capitalists are irrational, disregarding of reason in general and locked in their faith, is that it?
To a certain extent, yes.
In both cases a larger, missing homogenityis needed. Capitalism on the grand scale you posit requires a larger homogenity in society. Think about it. If you are not to be "locked" to one project (which would make you unfree and perhaps involuntary in the end) you need full interchangability and mobility in that society. For that to remotely work, the right kind of individual traits are needed. As I said, people that society with true-believer anarchists, and it could certainly work. But people arent in general. Which is why I view both poles as untenable.
I don't understand. What is this "one project" you speak of? Why would I be "locked" in it? And why wouldn't I have full interchangability and mobility?
And you would never be the one in need?
Being in need and forcing others to serve those needs are two completely different things. Certainly I've been at need in my life and will be so again. But that gives me the obligation to act, not the right to enslave.
Que? As I outlined earlier on, communism in Marx' sense would be to lock off technological progress and minimize all required down to the bare minimum. How is that consumerist? Consumerism is what we have now.
There are multiple paths to consumerism. The best way, however, to create a population of consumers is to suggest that everyone has a right to a product based only on their need for it. And, ironically, much of the Western world is starting to adopt this as a truth. They villify the men who produce while demanding access to their products. They buy, buy, buy, but never create. The damn profit but say everything it enables is their right.
What is the relationship between the "bare minimum" and consumerism? Nothing. You can consume the bare minimum as much as you can consume the excess.
Perhaps. Providing corporations live by your pure rules.
The corporation is free to try and amass an army. But the purchasing public, unlike a taxed public, is free to withhold that which creates that army.
The most profitable corporations in this world could not afford even the ancillary line-item appropriations of the US military.
In my experience, anarchists of the capitalist persuasion usually are entrepeneurs. Just an observation.
Are you suggesting that my anarchistic/capitalistic persuasions come from my entrepenurial efforts? Try turning that around.
Right to own it? Your mind is your own, and cant be taken away from you. There is no need to own it.
You've just defined ownership.
No, it tells you that you are one mind of many, and that your view doesn't necessarily hold more truth than the next man. Not superfluous, not just necessarily right. And maybe there is objective reality, but can we see it for what it is? We've been down this road.
Yep, and you told me the road doesn't exist.
Who said it was inevitable? Just saying how one shouldn't always consider one's own selfish interests first and foremost.
Ok.
[QUOT]Certainly. But it would be a lot nicer of I told you my mind, and you told me yours. Why should I force you? You seem a bit overdetermined not to let anyone "do you over".[/quote]
A social system can't tell me that it would be nice if I spoke my mind while telling me my mind has no value. That is a contradiction.
Communism fails because it is utopian, and has premises and prerequisites that are unattainable.
Yes, and those premises and prerequisites are found in its philosophy. And those failures extend from those fallacies.
Out of curiosity, what is the difference between socialism and communism as you see it?
Ugh...it's hard to imagine that at one point this was a simple answer.
Socialism is an economic system. Communism is a political movement/system. Both often go hand in hand, but that is not required.
Socialism is the worst one to try to define. Socialism is really just anti-capitalism. It grew out of a distate for markets and private property and capital, rather than growing out of a taste for something specific. Technically, socialism is a system where the economy is directed by a central authority...Marx's "proletariat dictatorship" for example. However, socialism has also been defined outside of the context of an authority which actually produces something much like capitalism except the primacy of need is still in place instead of the primacy of private ownership.
Communism is the political system that emerges from (or creates) a socialist (or at least anti-capitalist) economy. Marx's communism was pretty much a cultural movement disguised as a political system. It was a cultural rejection of social classes and of specialization, replaced by something he never really detailed. The Bolsheviks, however, made a political system out of it and from then on we had the implied quasi-dictatorship associated with the term.
The philosophies of both are practically equal, but the details swing widely because every socialist and every communist has a mind and their own selfish interests
The structure that is the aggregate, yet somewhat qualitatively different result from all the individuals' actions.
Transition from what? The current state? Repeal controls. Not all at once, necessarily. But the entire state structure could probably be removed within a generation at most.
OK. How? And how will it not just lead to state being reaplced by corporations or other which essentially changes nothing for 95% of people, yet would be a revolution to you?
I don't assume "active choice". I advocate active choice. People are welcome to ignore their minds as much as they want and are able to.
How do my theories ignore Norms? Where do you think my own opinions and beliefs come from? They are a product of my culture. These theories allow people to excercise their culture rather than sacrifice it.
And this is a source of confusion. When are you advocating, and when are you just stating? It's not always obvious. Your theories ignore norms, the same way it ignores structure, by having tunnel-vision locked on the individual and his active choices in all things. You dont disallow them, but you dont integrate them in the theory sufficiently.
Why must I take children away from their parents? All children in my world have the same start: their minds and their bodies. All else is the product of the parents, not the product of the child. For example, inherited wealth is a product of the inheritee, not a product of the inheritor. The man who earned it earned the right to do what he pleases with it.
Then it is not meritocracy. Inheritance repeals it, by giving people what they didn't work for, or more than the value of their input if you will. That their parents obtained it in a meritocratic way, doesnt make it meritocracy for them. Hence, if all start the same at square one, by second generation meritocracy is severely flawed, guve it a few more, and it is gone, and replaced with status of birth and privileges. Hence what I said.
Each child is born into a unique environment. Why is this a bad thing? It generates the differences we see in the people we encounter. Some children have more resources and "healthier" environments than others, but why pretend that this should not be or could not be? If you want to raise a generation of clones, this becomes an issue. Otherwise, the only relevancy is what barriers are preventing people from achieving their goals. The system I'm describing is a system where people are free to work towards their own destiny, rather than forced to work against it.
Nothing against different environments, but I am a sucker for equal(er) opportunity for all individuals independant of birth. The barriers will be severaly unequally distributed, and the same effort by different people will not yield equally, as true meritocracy would warrant. Maybe you dont really want full meritocracy. I dont really.
When is the last time the Norweigan government considered their fundamental right to rule you and every other citizen and Norway? The process you describe asks the question: who is fit to rule you, not is anyone fit to rule you.
Well, if "they" stayed the same and consisted of closed groups (often the case in "communist" states btw) then I see the problem. When those in power are moved upon, and answers to the public that elected them, the question is how much do they rule and how much do they just administer? The way and depth of rule is very relevant, even if it can be presented as "rule" in all cases. A formal likeness that has no bearing on experienced practice. The latter is what matters.
They do? I'm not intimately familiar with Norweigan law, but is it objective? Do your laws detail the exact situations requiring the use of guns, or do they provide officers discretion? Can your laws be arrived at via the logic of all, or only the "logic" of those who make them and enforce them?
I've stood at the gate as a guard in the military many times when I was in the force. In Norway police do not even routinely carry guns. As a guard in the military we were drilled on how much it would take for us to even consider loading a bullet into the chamber of the rifle, before considering shooting a warning shot. Laws and military regulations. The logic of these is not to unnecessarily exercise deadly force through very strict rules.
Help me out here man. It's not mine to organize. This isn't a boy scout field trip.
I'm not asking you to organize it. I'm asking you to lift the gaze away from the individual and tell me what you see in society, and how it must be ordered and on what principles for it to work like you want on the individual level.
All men do not need to hold a job to survive. All men need to eat, drink and sleep to survive. Men may seek jobs to help provide those things if they require trade with others. Other men may build communes to provide those things for all, regardless of jobs. Other men may simply provide these things for themselves. What business is it of mine?
Personally, I'd participate in a situation where men use their abilities to excersice their chosen purpose. I'd run a technology business. I'd trade with those who run other businesses. We'd all employ anyone that would wish and be able to help us. Would I give away jobs just because men "need" them? No. If those men are of no value to me, what would I be paying them for?
Okay. And what do they do in between? What do they do when in such a position either by own actions or through structural forces beyond their control (and most structural forces will be beyond their control under anarchy) end up unable to provide for themselves? How would those structures have to look if it was gonna be fairly frictionless, good and fair and unimpeding to the individuals' purposes? You cant just write it off as "people should provide for themselves the way they want", you are allowed to think aloud how you see these things resolve themselves in your utopia.
But the underlying authority of the state extends from force. Certianly there is cooperation as you say in certain instances. But true cooperation is two sides working toward a similar goal, and the opposite of that goal is what they're working against. The proposition of the state is to work towards a bunch of goals, with the opposite of those things always being forceful punishment. The "cooperative" proposition of the state, regardless of purpose, is not "do this or don't achieve this" but rather "do this or get hurt".
In a totalitarian dictatorship, sure. In a democracy it would be to follow the majority's decision or get fined. Difference there. Underlying monopoly of force, certainly. Necessarily an evil thing or worse than other limiting forces in the world, no.
Here's a good example...my business's code of conduct is not gun-to-head. Why? Because a breach of it does not result in me (or any agent of mine) putting a gun to anyone's head. Every person agrees to that code of conduct as a prerequisite for working here. If they don't agree with that code, they can choose not to work here. If they breach it, they are no longer considered a value to me and therefore I no longer pay them. Pretty simple, yes? That is a code of true justice. The "punishment" is simply the logical end of their action.
OK, you have a code. What if businesses end up with similar codes, and those that would work in those businesses didn't want those codes, then what? In a situation where they have to work or starve, and 1)they dont have the option of doing what they want and 2) while working have to conform to codes they dont want in order to keep/get a job. They get punished by you too. Logical end, sure. The logical end to murder is also prison under the state. Murderers know what they get....
You exert power in that way, and that power limits other people. You have the means to sanction, while your employees do not, if we're gonna stay with strict individualism and leave out the possiblity of unions etc. The difference is small in practice.
Certainly! But that's the logic of "make peace with bombs". In the absence of the state, certainly a corporation or some other entity can amass powers of force. But that doesn't make it right to form a mass of power to prevent amassment of power.....
But the democratic state amassment of power can be influenced and controlled. The power amassed by individuals, well, we had the middle ages here in europe where that was the norm. Perfect, not at all. Flawed, you bet. Better, yes.
First, your point about "materialization of all options". No one has an obligation to materialize an option for you. If you require an option and that option is possible but not provided....provide it. You have no right to simply demand it into existence.
Exactly, but ultimate freedom demands ultimately all options. Otherwise new power arises from those who get to define the options made available.
The channels for consumer action are quite numerous. The media, the church, the community as a whole, the Internet.....the only prerequisite is that people pay attention. But that's already a prerequisite to thought and since I'm basing the entire thing off of everyone's ability to think, it's pretty much implied.
But you require the anarchistic population to get it going off the ground. Getting attention is not the same as changing. You do not imply that people think, you imply that people will be forever vigilant and actively choosing and deciding in their every task every day. Noble as it may sound, people arent that conscious actors on the whole. Which is why I say, fine, in a society of dedicated anarchists.
You say that the democratic state is the best way for people "can influence what goes on around them, and they have a channel for venting frustrations and complaints". I call bullshit. The modern democratic state is terribly inefficient and largely ineffectual at this. Perhaps for the Romans, for a while, sure. But not these days.
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
You want a society where people are obligated to die in your place, while at the same time giving yourself the obligation to die for them? That seems, well, a bit conflicting. Can you build enough sacrifical alters for the whole lot of you?
What's your hangup with dying in regards to this? I want a society where people are obligated to eachother, yes. That does not mean people should line up and die for eachother or whatever you are on about here, I'm merely saying that people should (in my opinion, and often seen in practice) be ready to act for eachother, help eachother and generally have empathy and caring for eachother. You say "fine, do it on your spare time", where-as I first of all see it as such an integral element of human morality and values, that going around it is nonsense for most people. I dont need anyone to die for me, and noone would need to die for me. But we should have a moral obligation to support and help eachother, yes. Even if it violates selfish interest and thus skews the true capitalism. I am my brother's keeper.
I failed
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
I will shorten the communist sognificantly though, and refrain from small rebuttals I might feel inclined to. I dont really have that big of a beef with you here, except for a few things
Total freedom is certainly possible. Freedom is the measure of barriers between man's state and his desired achievement. Remove the barriers that force a man to work against his purpose and that man is free.
And if the barriers aren't a result of the state, what do you do?
to a certain extent, yes.
I'll try to keep my irrational faith-based initiatives to a minimum.
I don't understand. What is this "one project" you speak of? Why would I be "locked" in it? And why wouldn't I have full interchangability and mobility?
How would you have full interchangability and mobility unless all people in your society were anarchists like yourself? Without that homogenity, alot of people would feel outside your society, oppose it, and try to change it away from your anarchism. Oh I dunno, does this make sense? I am completely unable to formulate the thought behind it. Ignore it.
Being in need and forcing others to serve those needs are two completely different things. Certainly I've been at need in my life and will be so again. But that gives me the obligation to act, not the right to enslave.
Bravo. That's what is asked of you. To expect that your fellow man will help you, is not to enslave him, as he may very well prove to not meet your expectations. But a shared expectation, and an inclination to act on it yourself, in the spirit of reciprocity and idealism, makes for a better, warmer society.
The corporation is free to try and amass an army. But the purchasing public, unlike a taxed public, is free to withhold that which creates that army.
Until it is taken from them by an army over which they have no influence or say, to serve the purposes of individuals. That is worse than being taxed an amount that also provides you with a lot of insurance and security on top of it. The violent aspect of western states is pretty much curbed, at least in regards to their own population.
The most profitable corporations in this world could not afford even the ancillary line-item appropriations of the US military.
And you wouldn't need to either. Handguns kill just as well as apache choppers. Especially if noone has the choppers anymore.
Are you suggesting that my anarchistic/capitalistic persuasions come from my entrepenurial efforts? Try turning that around.
No, I'm saying that entrepeneurial types draw up the perfect entrepeneur society, where-as cowed and dominated workers draw up the perfect safe-from-adversity society. The leaders want opportunity, the manual bottomline workers want security. Both drives will always exist, and any wandering to any extreme will alienate a large part of the population.
You've just defined ownership.
Then you define ownership far narrower than most, as it would negate ownership of land and most external objects not the result of your own hands.
Yep, and you told me the road doesn't exist.
No I said, are you sure the road looks just like that, coz I dont think I agree.
A social system can't tell me that it would be nice if I spoke my mind while telling me my mind has no value. That is a contradiction.
What social system tells you that? I am not the authorized spokesperson for the opposite system. Sometimes I merely philosophize, and I must be able to do so without you seeing it as an integrated part of the system I seem to be defending. Dont hang yourself up in my philosophical background thoughts when I discuss something else here. I am not your anti-thesis or nemesis, but neither do I agree with your way of seeing things.
Yes, and those premises and prerequisites are found in its philosophy. And those failures extend from those fallacies.
Fair enough. I find it a bit on the harsh side, but ok.
Ugh...it's hard to imagine that at one point this was a simple answer.
Socialism is an economic system. Communism is a political movement/system. Both often go hand in hand, but that is not required.
Funny, I see it the other way around, really. Or rather people calling themselves socialists these days (not to be confused with those of 50 years ago) are talking of it in the way of a movement, not an economic system. It seems your socialism is just another aspect of what I would call communism altogether.
Socialism is the worst one to try to define. Socialism is really just anti-capitalism. It grew out of a distate for markets and private property and capital, rather than growing out of a taste for something specific. Technically, socialism is a system where the economy is directed by a central authority...Marx's "proletariat dictatorship" for example. However, socialism has also been defined outside of the context of an authority which actually produces something much like capitalism except the primacy of need is still in place instead of the primacy of private ownership.
Communism is the political system that emerges from (or creates) a socialist (or at least anti-capitalist) economy. Marx's communism was pretty much a cultural movement disguised as a political system. It was a cultural rejection of social classes and of specialization, replaced by something he never really detailed. The Bolsheviks, however, made a political system out of it and from then on we had the implied quasi-dictatorship associated with the term.
The philosophies of both are practically equal, but the details swing widely because every socialist and every communist has a mind and their own selfish interests
Of course we have our own minds, as do you capitalist pigs.;) The details of your vision varies a lot from person to person too.
But socialists as a term today, is more about indicating a leftish political leaning, where a focus on collective solutions to collective problems and concern is essential. Most socialistic thought needs a sort of redistribution agency to perform these solutions to problems. Just how and what that distribution channel should be is debatable. But to many the socialism is also a reaction against what is seen as materialist, selfish and unhealthy focus on me! and mine!, instead of focusing on how we should organize in a way to facilitate the best comrpomise and solution for all. A strong belief and conviction on behalf of democracy usually goes along with it. I am not completely on board on all things socialism these days, as I am rather a very left-leaning social democrat, but these things appeal to me. Does it jive with capitalist concepts and thought? Probably not. Is it about enslaving people? Certainly not. But in compromises, people must make concessions. It is essential for any society. But we should make as good compromises as possible. Just how this is, who knows. Direct democracy perhaps is proposed, at least on the smaller level. I advocate rather smaller units of democracy. Large democracies is almost an oxymoron as it makes it a lot harder to consider many different people and groups' interests and wishes. The strokes become so broad, and the diversity will so so wide that the standard will poorly fit a huge group of people. If you allow me a statistics term, the standard error becomes too great. The line may be through the centre, but people are anywhere but there. Same formal concepts act out differently with different degrees of magnitude in size.
Actually, we coincide to a certain extent here, only that you want corporations int heir pure good form, where I talk of smaller democratic units. These concepts overlap a lot actually. Even if we cant agree on the rhetoric supporting our different concepts. I want freedom as much as you do, but I want de facto, not formal freedom. You seem to focus more on the formal aspect of it. For me it is irrelevant whether I am working under a "corporation" or a "state", as both structures hold power over me, and forces/facilitates me to act a certain way. I see a lto of freedom coming to life for many through state orderings, initiatives, regulations and taxations that are good. Is it coersion, well maaaayyyybbeeeeee if you wanna be strictly formal and anarchistic about it, but ask yourself exactly what paying a bit of taxes has hindered of your choices and actions in life. If you perceive freedom, that you get rewarded from your initiatives, and lead a life along the lines you would wish, I'd say "What's the problem?". If the problem is of a formal character, I may dismiss it, unless it also have de factoi real tangible consequences for people.
Now dont pick apart this final monologue by me, as it is meant merely to show a bit more what I really mean, instead of me ending up being pegged as your anti-thesis, which I am not. (although I like to argue, obviously ) If you will comment this last, do so generally. You do not need to point out all the ways it is contradictory or senseless from a capitalist perspective. I am aware that I'm not a capitalist, and thus I rest my logic on different premises than you, as is quite evident.
There. See ya tomorrow
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
let's see, what's great.... what about spending four hours of your day in the traffic jam? what about spending 6/7/8.... hours of your day in front of one magic monitor doing something completely useless to the human mind evolution? what about spending other 2/3 hours of your day in front of another magic monitor which talks to you and shows you incredible things like...for exemple the collapse of the wtc? what about taking pills to sleep? what about taking pills to be happy? what about taking pills to make love? what about dying of cancer into a hospital after spending all your life eating things that they told you to be so good, like hormon-meat and pesticide-salad? of course, these are just few of some of the collateral damages required by a wonderful world assuring happyness and freedom to all.....happyness and freedom......happyness and freedom....yeah, the greatest commercial ever designed to daze all.
I was gonna say 'nicely put' but I don't think 'nice' really sums it up so... well said... unfortunately! Oh you've just made my life feel so pointless . Well on Monday I'm gonna be a homeowner - I'm getting a tent
And FFG - is there any chance you could do us a favour and watch the film? It's quite funny anyway and ya wouldn't have to be a communist to enjoy it
The Astoria??? Orgazmic!
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
let's see, what's great.... what about spending four hours of your day in the traffic jam? what about spending 6/7/8.... hours of your day in front of one magic monitor doing something completely useless to the human mind evolution? what about spending other 2/3 hours of your day in front of another magic monitor which talks to you and shows you incredible things like...for exemple the collapse of the wtc? what about taking pills to sleep? what about taking pills to be happy? what about taking pills to make love? what about dying of cancer into a hospital after spending all your life eating things that they told you to be so good, like hormon-meat and pesticide-salad? of course, these are just few of some of the collateral damages required by a wonderful world assuring happyness and freedom to all.....happyness and freedom......happyness and freedom....yeah, the greatest commercial ever designed to daze all.
Socialism is the worst one to try to define. Socialism is really just anti-capitalism. It grew out of a distate for markets and private property and capital, rather than growing out of a taste for something specific. Technically, socialism is a system where the economy is directed by a central authority...Marx's "proletariat dictatorship" for example. However, socialism has also been defined outside of the context of an authority which actually produces something much like capitalism except the primacy of need is still in place instead of the primacy of private ownership.
Communism is the political system that emerges from (or creates) a socialist (or at least anti-capitalist) economy. Marx's communism was pretty much a cultural movement disguised as a political system. It was a cultural rejection of social classes and of specialization, replaced by something he never really detailed. The Bolsheviks, however, made a political system out of it and from then on we had the implied quasi-dictatorship associated with the term.
:-)
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!
How can a clever, well versed bloke like yourself say that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" is directed by a central authority?!?!? Its the complete opposite!
What you are describing is what Stalin turned the Bolshevik Revolution into, not what it started out as in 1917. The Soviets (the original workers councils, not the people of the USSR as so described from 1930's onwards) of Petrograd in 1917 were based on the factories and the greater means of production, were being run by the workers themselves, without the need for ANY central, classically 'state' authority.
However, this was, as it was in Catalonia in 1936 and Paris in 1870, short lasted. The Russian Civil war and Lenin's death, followed by Trotsky's exile saw to this. The adoption of War Communism saw to thsi.
Then the NEP, as envisioned by Lenin and Trotsky (through Marx) but bastardised by Stalin, put an end to all hopes of the Proletariat ever holding the right to self determination through control of the means of production.
I don't know how you arrived at that conclusion above. Then again, you hadn't heard of the term 'State Capitalism' until 2 days ago ;-)
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
How can a clever, well versed bloke like yourself say that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" is directed by a central authority?!?!? Its the complete opposite!
Umm....I can say that because the man who coined the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" said it. Marx viewed the dictatorship of the proletariat as a concrete faction of the state achieved by a proletariat revolution and maintained then by the functions of the state.
If you view it as something different, that's cool.
What you are describing is what Stalin turned the Bolshevik Revolution into, not what it started out as in 1917. The Soviets (the original workers councils, not the people of the USSR as so described from 1930's onwards) of Petrograd in 1917 were based on the factories and the greater means of production, were being run by the workers themselves, without the need for ANY central, classically 'state' authority.
That's fine.
However, this was, as it was in Catalonia in 1936 and Paris in 1870, short lasted. The Russian Civil war and Lenin's death, followed by Trotsky's exile saw to this. The adoption of War Communism saw to thsi.
Sure.
Then the NEP, as envisioned by Lenin and Trotsky (through Marx) but bastardised by Stalin, put an end to all hopes of the Proletariat ever holding the right to self determination through control of the means of production.
And what about the "right to self determination" of the men they stole it from?
I don't know how you arrived at that conclusion above. Then again, you hadn't heard of the term 'State Capitalism' until 2 days ago ;-)
You've been here, what, 10 minutes??? I've certainly heard of State Capitalism my friend. It is a contradiction in terms.
Comments
You describe totalitarian dictatorship with a communist slant, is my initial obection really. But fair enough, that is the versions of communism we have seen. And you did say that socialists are different, although you didn't say just how. I'll do some points again:
Your interpretation of communism is in the totalitarian vein, in which freedom is certainly removed. That is not communism at it's core. I could let it all slide, but since you as the alternative continually pose the theoretical utopian capitalism, I guess I can argue some theoretical utopian communism. To Marx, man's purpose is to be creative. So the point of Marx' vision is creating a society in which man needs to "work" for the common good as little as possible in order to provide the necessities for all, so that they have as much free time as possible in which to be creative. He envisioned this through the proletariat taking over the means of production from the capitalists and utilize them for their needs only. This is way before consumerism, so that was actually palatable in it's day. So communism is very much about freedom. It is about being free from being exploited and forced to work more and harder than necessary, and rather being free to pursue your own creativity. The providing for others on which you focus, is just a small part of it.
Communism isn't any more outlandish than the christian tradition of caring for thy neighbour. That also goes against individualist theories and perspectives, whose only morality is selfishness (through the assumption that selfishness by all will be the best for all). Perhaps the individual in communism isn't "free" as the capitalist thinker would see it, but he could certainly be free in other ways. The overarching control by a dictator which you assume throughout (with the you're just a means, not a goal) is not a part of communism. Mind you this has all been about theory, which your anarchist capitalism also is currently. I stay by my judgement that both requires a homogenity among people not found.
And being devil's advocate, acting the communist here, in response to your attack:
Noone should own anything in the sense that we do under curent society. Every man owns his productive power and creativity. The point of this society is not consumerism and creation of loads of excess goods. It's about people being free to pursue, after basic necessities are met.
Not to be rude or anything, but I have gathered that you are an entrepeneurial type owning your own business, or at least running one, am I right? So of course to you the state is your biggest threat. For ordinary workers, the threat can just as well come from employers and capitalists juggling around on things, making living a lot harder for the employees. The problem is being subject to arbitrary forces over which you have no control. That can be the state, that can be your company. And we need security to a certain degree, that we do. And people less favourably placed than you, or indeed me, need it even more.
In other words, you reduce people to profit?
Certainly. But you imply that thoughts have their sole creation isolated in your mind, unaffected by others. Noone has ever asked you to ignore your mind. Possibly under your speculative version of communism, or totalitarianism which seems to be your real beef. The selfish principle. That you also want others to be selfish does not salvage it for me. And we dont necessarily talk about forcing anyone to think for anyone, we are rather talking about letting what one does and think come to the benefit of others. Not be a selfish scrooge demanding things in return for any action.
But yes, as an indictment against totalitarianism, I agree almost fully with you here. I am merely raising the theoretical argument here, since you rely on that to oppose it.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
By Charles Sullivan
06/20/06 "Information Clearing House" --- When George Bush and other capitalists speak of bringing freedom to the world you must understand that they do not mean freedom in the sense that most of us understand it. We must realize that they are speaking from the perverted, oddly-skewed language of capitalism. By freedom they do not mean the spread of democracy or the liberation of oppressed peoples. They mean the unfettered access to markets through the use of coercive military and economic force. The majority of the world conceives of freedom in human terms. Capitalists conceive of freedom in terms of corporate personhood, access to markets by any necessary means and absolute dictatorial rule. This is the face of free markets and fair trade as it relates to human beings.
Not only did capitalism give birth to the idea of corporations, it endowed them, by very questionable means, with all of the rights of personhood and none of the social responsibility of real persons. The idea of corporate personhood has to be one of the most twisted and bizarre creations ever produced by the human imagination. Like Frankenstein’s fictional monster, it is sociopathic and evil, and it has wrecked havoc wherever its monstrous tread has touched the earth.
By freedom Bush and company mean corporate freedom. They are speaking about the freedom of corporations to operate with impunity in all parts of the world without regulation of any kind. Simply stated, they are talking about corporations ruling the world backed by the strong arm of the U.S. military. They are covertly advocating the oppression of the world’s people’s, the plunder of the earth, the destruction of culture and language, the exportation of jobs to the cheapest, least regulated and most exploitable pools of labor. That is what they mean by freedom—the freedom for Plutocrats to rule the world; Poppy Bush’s New World Order; the global domination of the working class by the ruling Plutocrats.
They go about their grim business with religious fervor, like the Puritans who set about methodically destroying the American wilderness and slaughtering the Indians. I call it predatory capitalism and it is not limited to just the Bush clan. It is equally championed by Congress, the major presidential candidates, all of whom are in the pockets of their corporate funders; and it is preached in our educational institutions as economic gospel. Congress sold us out long ago but we continue to believe that reform is possible by exercising our right to vote and exchanging one Plutocrat for another. It is a wonder that any of them can keep a straight face. It is like taking candy from a baby—no challenge at all.
Understanding requires little more than a willingness to connect the dots and to comprehend the patterns of history from the working people’s perspective. It is literally that simple.
The core idea of predatory capitalism is to rule by force, to subdue the earth and her inhabitants to the will of the world’s wealthiest men. Under this model, less than five percent of the global elite will lord power over the remaining ninety-five percent of the population. This philosophy is embodied by the Bilderbergs and the Carlyle Group (do a Google search to learn more).
The U.S. military is an appendage of the corporations that have hijacked the government from the people. The Pentagon is the iron fist of oppression that smashes the face of resistance to Pax Americana and absolute corporate rule. Only in the perverted language of capitalism is the military a force for freedom—corporate freedom to rule the world by sheer force. If those in control of the government succeed in executing their agenda, ninety-five percent of the world’s people will become the property of the wealthiest five percent or less.
So we must understand what predatory capitalists mean when they use the word freedom. As conceived by the people running the government, the world is one vast resource ripe for the stealing. This includes the raw materials necessary for industrial production and human beings as an inexpensive or, ideally, a free exploitable source of labor. By freedom the capitalists mean the private ownership of everything and everyone. Such are the twisted dreams of the American Plutocracy. The rich man’s dream is the poor man’s nightmare.
While political reformists continue to be fooled into choosing between political parties, both of them the servants of the same corporations, the way is being prepared for the final solution. Anyone opposed to Pax Americana are terrorists in the minds of the ruling elite. That is why Bush is using the NSA, FBI, CIA and the Pentagon against law abiding U.S. citizens. These cryptogamous organizations are monitoring the resistance and planning a pre-emptive strike against any democracy that shows signs of sprouting and organizing itself into a populist movement. The pitiless iron boot of capitalism stands ready to snuff it out like a smoldering cigarette butt on a city sidewalk.
So profitable are the spoils of war that the capitalists have created a permanent war time economy. War is the cash cow that keeps the money flowing from our pockets into theirs’. They have no intention of relinquishing power through the electoral process or by any other means. They are creating a world-size gulag; a labor concentration camp of global proportions in which there will be two classes: master and servant.
According to Donald Rumsfeld (Foreign Affairs, 2002), “Wars in the twenty-first century will increasingly require all elements of national power: economic, diplomatic, financial, law enforcement, intelligence, and both overt and covert military operations.” Rumsfeld has thus defined the core of the Bush agenda: Economics as a weapon against democracy.
Therefore, any nation, individual, or group of people that resists Pax Americana is an enemy of the state—the corporate state. Any efforts to divert a nation’s wealth from the multi-national corporations to social programs for the public good will be summarily abolished by the strong arm of the U.S. military. The respective governments of Venezuela and Bolivia are prime examples. The CIA’s economic hit men are already on the ground in Latin America and it is a safe bet that the death squads have already formed. If these attempts to decapitate Democratic Socialism fail, a full scale military invasion will be launched. That has been the pattern of history.
The unapologetic corporate media is already fervently portraying two of the most popular democratically elected leaders in the world, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, as terrorists. This is the writing on the wall and it is finger painted in human blood.
If we treasure anything above our own selfish comfort; if we believe in the ideals of freedom and democracy for people; if we believe in peace and justice, we must not sit by idly and allow these good men to be overthrown or assassinated by illegitimate Plutocratic henchmen. We must take our country back and give it to the people.
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
Do you think George Bush is a capitalist?????
Hello ffg! Good afternoon to you! Its a waste of time replying, as the answer is obvious, and all you have is a pre-prepared, semantic based response based on reducing the issue to individuals, and not Corporations.
To entertain you and myself during this last but one day in a boring office until i go on vacation, i'll answer.
Simply, George W Bush is the figure head of the nation who represents the essence of Capitalism and Globalisation. The laws he passes aim, chiefly, to improve one thing. The profit of corporations.
I shal deal with just a few examples.
This is not a war on terror, it is a war for Carlyle, Haliburton, Bechtel, McDonell Douglas et al and the financial giants that stand behind those companies. The military industrial complex some have called it.
Katrina could not be avoided. The devastation could. In order to maximise the profit of a company in which family members hold shares, he took from FEMA, and gave control of disater preparation and evacuation over to a private company. This company, to maximise profit, did not prepare the procedures as laid down in the contract between government and the private contractor. But, as the company is a corporation, no criminal charges can be brought under this US system of capitalism, of giving rights to an organisation.
On a personal level, he is a failed, individual 'capitalist'. Not one of his ventures ever made money, (Arbusto, Texas Oil etc) not one ever enabled him to stand on his own two feet, the very basic 'essence' of your reasoning behind Capitalism. His personal wealth is based upon holdings his father and greater family have held for over 80 years, and which now form a large part of the Caryle empire.
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
quote
"What is State Capitalism?
State capitalism is defined as capitalism in an environment wherein the capitalist enterprise is a component part of the state bureaucracy and the receivers of capitalist surplus value are state appointed bureaucrats. Many social theorists have classified the Soviet Union and CMEA nations, in general, as state capitalist social formations because most of the GDP in those economies was generated by capitalist enterprises that were within the state bureaucracy and officials in the state bureaucracy were the appropriators of enterprise surplus value. For the most recent and best developed analysis of state capitalism in the USSR, see Class Theory and History by Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff. For a similar discussion of state capitalism in China, see Gabriel, Chinese Capitalism and the Modernist Vision. Also, see the following online publication, as another example, State Capitalism by Peter Binns.
State capitalism is often confused with communism: the social system that prevailed in many pre-colonial indigenous communities in Africa and the Americas and which is the underlying economic process of the kibbutz system in Israel. Although there are many variant forms of capitalism, state capitalism is given more weight in the social scientific literature because of the tendency to essentialize the state and state powers.
Neither the logic of Marxian theory" UNquote
A simple question ffg, out of interest more than anything.
In a sentence or three, and without confusing a simple question with tying it down to this thing you have about individualism and all that malarkey, and this is based on whether or not you accept that the vast majority of the worlds population do not have as comfortable a life as you or I have, and have not the means to change it. (See Africa and China, or the sweatshops in south/Central AMerica and Asia, tell me those people have a choice? It's a bullet, or work where you're told)
Do you want everybody equal, and happy, and fed and warm and educated, or do you wish for the current situation to continue, where the minority, of which you and I are a part, continue to be relatively free from disease, malnutrition, war, poverty, and have access to education and health services?
An example. 19000 African children die every day. If the worlds wealth and resources were divided equally, this could be avoided. It disgusts me, it makes me really uncomfortable to know that happens in this world of which I am a part.
Are you happy knowing, and defending, a system that supports this ongoing holocaust? Or do you want no part in the fate of your fellow human?
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
What comprises a corporation? Demons?
But profit cannot extend from law. And that's what he (and you apparently) do not understand.
Ok.
Ok.
Certainly.
I've already answered this question:
- I am a human being and I am free. You have no ability to force me to think for you. You have no right to force me to act for your happiness at the cost of my own.
- You are a human being and you are free. I have no ability to force you to think for me. I have no right to force you to act for my happiness at the cost of your own.
Wealth created by whom? Resources made by whom?
You have every right to be disgusted.
I am happy knowing and defending my system. It is the only hope in the face of the "holocaust" you speak of, not its cause.
Does my fellow human want no part in my fate??? Or is your question only relevant when I'm not starving, when I'm not miserable, when I'm not in pain?
Profit does extend from law. Primarily, modern Law exists to protect property and wealth, no mater how great, or small.
An example (seems to be a recurring theme, I present fact to back up theory, you bring a dictionary and a linguistics manual! All good fun though). When the US Government, on behalf of big pharma, threatened Nelson Mandela's South African goverment with sanctions and penalties if they went ahead with their plan to produce cheap, generic anti-HIV drugs, they used the LEGAL (and corrupt) processes of the WTO and the IMF. South Africa relented, the drug companies continued to sel their higher priced named drugs at over 400 per cent profit over the cost price. Therefore, Law extended profit of the Pharmaceutical corporations.
See also, the EU and canadian ban on Hormone treated beef, which the USA, on behalf of whom, the consumers? NO, the US Beef industry, tried to overturn by implementing the complicated yet extremely Corporation (I won't say US corporation as the UK has a huge share of the TNCs operating around the world) friendly GATT rules on restrictions on trade. THerefore, Law extended the profits of the US farming industry.
Catch my drift?
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
Do you understand the difference between extortion and profit?
A thief does not profit from his thievery. He does not create any wealth as a product of his mind....he simply transfers existing wealth created by other minds into his pocket with his gun.
Modern law does exist to protect property and wealth. It also exists to expropriate wealth in many situations. Do you see me defending modern law????
I certainly understand that in your world words have little meaning.
The profit of a pharmaceutical company is generated by the minds of men who invent and produce drugs.
South Africa has every right to produce cheap, generic, anti-HIV drugs by their own minds and means. What they do not have a right to do is to force a pharmaceutical company to charge what South Africa sees as a fair price against the pharmaceutical company's will.
In the situation you described, a poor nation should simply reject the right of the WTO or IMF to dictate their sovereignty and to set the terms of their freedom. They should produce the drugs and tell the international goon squads to fuck off.
Regardless, such laws did not create a single dollar of profit. The 400% profit is generated by those who created the product and those who willingly purchase the product. The law has no effect.
Again, you're describing the actions of governments operating on the principles of goons. Again, the "restrictions on trade" you speak of do not create a single dime of profit.
You are benefitting in a system that excludes the vast majority of the worlds population from enjoying the same luxuries and comforts you enjoy. To summarise your inane, semantics based rhetoric.
"I have this, my family and closed ones have this, and I will not help out anybody else outside of my minority of white, upper-middle class and affluent Americans. The world does not exist outside my pretty little town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina."
As for South Africa, well we know how you feel about Africans and their plight, in this thread;-
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?p=3189327#post3189327
And I quote,
Originally Posted by farfromglorified
That's because you likely have little to counter the statement with, other than insults.
Africans can move to find additional food. How do you think you got to where you are?? You are a direct descendent of those who followed food out of Africa.
Africans can also find ways to restore decimated parts of their continent to produce all the food they need.
For those of you "shaking with rage" over a simple statement, why don't you try acting with purpose to accomplish whatever goals in your life that have been insulted? That said, you're free not to."
UNquote
This also displays your complete detachment from reality.
"The profit of a pharmaceutical company is generated by the minds of men who invent and produce drugs." AND ARBITARILY SET THE LEVEL OF THOSE PROFITS ABOVE THE GREATER NEEDS OF DYING FUCKING HUMAN BEINGS.
South African Government can say fuck you to the goons? Really? Do you understand the nature of the IMF, World BAnk. and the WTO? These Washington based organisations.
SA says fuck you, the comanies, through the US Government, imposes retalitatory punitive trade sanctions, through the WTO.
quote
"When the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was set up in 1995 it extended to all 140 member counties in ”one single undertaking” a range of trade rules which favour the rich countries and major corporations.
The WTO regime stands on three legs. In addition to the General Agreement on Trade and Tarriffs (GATT) which concerns trade with goods and General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) which covers services, there is the TRIPS agreement (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights). This agreement forces poor countries to respect the patent rights which give multinational companies a monopoly, usually for a period of 20 years. In other words rather than ”free trade” (a term which is absent from the WTO’s constitution) many aspects of WTO rules - such as on patents - involve blatant protectionism. TRIPS is binding on all WTO members although poor countries have been given until 2006 to comply with all aspects of the agreement. Despite this transition period TRIPS is a nightmare for third world countries who comprise 80 per cent of WTO members. World Bank economist Michael Finger estimates that a typical developing country must spend 150 million dollars to implement the criteria under just three WTO agreements including TRIPS. This sum equals a year’s development budget for many poor countries.
Because South Africa is not among the poorest countries it was obliged to comply with TRIPS from the outset. When the South African government passed legislation in 1997 allowing it to circumvent these rules in an ”emergency” and import lower price generic (non-brand name) drugs from India or Brazil, the pharmaceutical industry took it to court. This case was dropped last week for tactical reasons – the whole of Africa accounts for just one per cent of worldwide drug sales. A bigger battle looms in Brazil, which has a strong generic drugs industry and manufactures its own Aids medicine. On this basis 100,000 patients receive free medication for HIV. The country is under investigation by a TRIPS disputes panel accused of violating patent rules. Behind this action are the US government and pharmaceuticals like Roche, Merck and Pfizer. Brazil’s health minister José Serra called this ”another example of how the North adopts protectionist practices yet demands that the South does not”.
UNquote.
"Regardless, such laws did not create a single dollar of profit. The 400% profit is generated by those who created the product and those who willingly purchase the product. The law has no effect."
Huh? Do you not have any understanding of internation trade rulels and regulations? THe law specifically upheld the right of companies to charge SA, Brazil, and India whatever they wanted for the drugs.
quote
"In 1997 the government passed the Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Act, to make drugs more affordable and improve the functioning of the Medicines Control Council.
COSATU support this law because it introduces a legal framework to make medicines more available and affordable in the public sector. This framework introduces four important elements:
Generic substitution of medicines - manufacturing or importing cheaper 'generic' drugs of the same-quality active ingredient as branded drugs;
A pricing committee - to set up transparent pricing mechanism and force drug companies to justify their prices;
Parallel importation - to allow the government to import the same medicines sold by the same companies, or its licensee, at a lower price in another country.
International tendering for medicines used in the public sector.
In 1998 the PMA and 39 multinational drug companies took legal action against the government to stop this Act. Consequently for three years the government has had to suspend the implementation of the Act. As a result of this delay, more than 40 000 people have died of AIDS-related illness, most of them because they could not afford expensive drugs.
In 2000 alone, drug companies around the world made sales of more that $315 billion -more that the gross domestic product of all SADC countries. So why are these companies taking the government to court?
They claim the government is trying to "expropriate or confiscate their property" and giving Minister of Health "too much power".
They fear competition and being exposed as profiteering from medicines;
They say generic substitutions are unfair and discriminatory.
They argue that the quality of generics will be much lower.
Their main concern is that generic substitution will remove their ability to retain profits from their pharmaceutical operations, to which they are entitled as the result of substitution by default. They will not lose their normal profit but this huge unnecessary profit.
They are also worried that price controls will interfere with their constitutional right to trade and want this provision of the Act to be declared unconstitutional.
They always say they spend money on research and development and that parallel importation of generic drugs conflicts with the World Trade Organisation rules on intellectual property. They are so wrong. The rules do not cover parallel importation, which is used by many European Union countries and the USA.
The Medicines Act deserves the support of all people in South Africa and internationally. It attempts to improve the health care system by lowering the price of essential medicines. This is very crucial for people living with HIV/Aids. If the PMA succeeds, it will be an enormous blow for poor people in South Africa and the developing countries. "
UNquote
Simply, in your eyes, the world outside of you and yours can go fuck itself, can't it?
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
This coming from the guy who has shown little more than fear in all his posts.
I don't fear other peoples. I need other peoples to help me achieve my happiness.
I have no castle, nor do I desire one.
I have some property. If you wish to steal it by force, you may.
I'm not afriad of Africans. Why would I be? I've been to Africa twice. The people I met there didn't seem terribly dangerous.
I'm benefitting from a system that created the luxuries and comforts I enjoy. If others seek those same benefits, I support their right to do so.
Try this:
"I have this, my family and closed ones have this, and I will not help out anybody else unless that help is given on my terms and received on their terms."
The rest of it is irrelevant to me.
It certainly does exist.
Can you please attempt to counter one phrase in that quote, since you seem to be fixating on it???
It is not "abitrarily" set. It is set based on the will of those who set it based on the purpose of those who set it based on the value of those who buy it. If you do not like the price a pharmeceutical company charges for those drugs, make them yourself. Give them away for all I care.
Yes.
Yes.
Likely, yes.
Certainly. Who's defending the WTO?
South Africa has no such obligation. They may simply reject it. Don't go to "court". Don't go to "mediation". Don't bargain.
Do you?
Yes it did. But such an "upholding" does not create a dime of profit. Someone still has to produce the drug and someone still has to buy the drugs. In the absence of such a law, the profits from such production and buying would be exactly the same.
What you want is a law that eliminates profit. No such law is necessary. Simply steal everything you can find. No one will profit, everyone will benefit until you run out of things to steal.
If, and only if, they wish to, yes.
You don't seem to understand me. For whatever reason, you still see me as defending a system that holds profit as its highest standard. That system is known as materialism. I am not a materialist.
Profit is payment for a man's thought based on the value of that thought to the man who pays for it. That is the additional item added to the cost of goods sold that creates the price of a product. I am a capitalist, and I'll defend the value of the mind until I die.
I do not support the WTO, or the IMF, or the United States Government, or the Venezuelan Government. All are organizations that seek to protect wealth at the cost of the mind.
I do not support anyone who tells me that my mind is owned by another. The minds that produced anti-HIV drugs are the minds you should be celebrating, not condemning. It is those minds that make hope realistic. If you cannot afford the price of those minds, do not attempt to destroy them. Learn from them.
It is not the responsibility of those minds to serve your needs. You do not and cannot own them. Slavery is not an ideal.
If you wish to serve Africans dying of HIV, you have two choices: pillage or create. You are free to storm the warehouses and factories where those drugs are produced. You are free to expropriate the products of minds greater than your own. But ask yourself what happens when that disease mutates against those drugs you have stolen. What will save you then? The minds you've destroyed? The factories you don't understand? The pills that are reduced to nothing more than placebos?
But if you learn from those minds and combine that knowledge with your own you can create your own drugs that can be produced faster, cheaper, better. It's then and only then when you'll have the mind and the ability and therefore the power to accomplish your purpose.
DO you not believe in what you write so vehemently that you doubt yourself and seek to save face by editing posts?
An example.
"Quote:
Simply, in your eyes, the world outside of you and yours can go fuck itself, can't it?
If, and only if, they wish to, yes."
Original version said, simply, if they wish to.
Why edit? What have you to hide?
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
I had nothing to hide. I simply decided that, based on your reactions to my posts, that the "and only if" would not come across as implied.
BTW, great response.
It does a lot of difference. It means you're free to live your life how you see fit. It means that I'm not telling you what to do. I'm simply asking for the same.
Yet the "socialist perspective" fails to account for the individual. It declares that the individual's will should be subjegated to the will of something that has no will.
When I declare that people should be free, I mean it. Free to form the social structures they desire to form, free to come together in whatever organization they see fit. Even governments. But men have no right to enslave those that do not want to join them.
Men are hard-wired social creatures. But this does not mean that men should be chained to one another against their will.
Men are destined to conflict. Men need a system of justice in order to settle such conflicts if they wish to avoid violence. But a system of justice, again, does not imply a forced social structure. It might mean a government formed from shared purpose. It might mean private arbitration. It might mean a culture of respect towards the sanctity of a contract. The solution to conflict is not to deflect that conflict (man vs man) to a new one (man vs the state). The solution to conflict is justice, wherein all men benefit.
Class differences are not a thing to reject. Class differences that tie people to a social position regardless of their effort are what we should be railing against. And those class differences are the product of rigid social systems wherein people feel they have right to dominate each other.
Certainly! I would never suggest that the Norweigan government is the same as the French or the same as the Sudanese. But all are based on the same flawed axiom: some men have the right to rule others.
I don't reduce police and soldiers to non-thinking brutes in total. But the part of them that is willing to hold a gun in the absence of objective standards of its use......that's an abdication of reason.
I focus on cooperation in the context of capitalism because corporations are typically built upon the essence of cooperation. People are there willingly, sharing a purpose, working towards their singular goal. However, those people won't let the corporation enslave them. Until the modern state functions on the same principle, I'm not going to pretend it's cooperative. When the state binds men together based on will instead of geography and guns then we can talk about cooperation.
I don't view power wielded by the state as being automatically gun-to-head. It only becomes gun-to-head when the state starts putting guns to people's heads and saying "do this, or else". Every state that passes a "law" and backs it with force fits this description.
The monopolistic corporation is largely an invention of the forceful state. It is typically law and protectionism that limits competition. In the rare event that a corporation does create a true monopoly, some important questions must be asked. First...is the monopoly the result of open competition or its opposite? If the monopoly extends from brute force, men have the right to respond and dismantle it. Second....is the product worth upholding the monopoly? If not, people simply may choose to go without that product and thereby destroy the monopolizer. If it is, people have made the decision that the value of the product exceeds the lack of a monopoly. Third....is the product necessary for life? If so, no corporation has the right to hold a true monopoly over the means of living and hold men ransom to their own bodies.
Sure.
People can do nothing about it?????? Revenue is the life-blood of a corporation. People hold full control over the blood of a corporation.
There is a huge difference between respecting your rights and protecting them. To respect your rights means that I will not take action to violate them. To protect them means that I am obligated to take action to defend them. I reject such an obligation because, in effect, that gives you the right to force me to die for you, and vice versa. And that creates a massive contradiction.
A noble sentiment. But you assume no baggage in this. Most of your examples are if you take individuals and put them somewhere else and then apply your principles, it will work. Quite possibly. But what is your plan of transition for this?
Oh but we are. Heard of family? We are chained to eachother, most of us. Against our wills? Perhaps at times. But you assume active choice about every decision, and view which I doubt people really exercise. Hence talk about choice and force may be largely irrelevant for most people. Norms for instance. We do alot of things because we just do. We dont really think about it. These things have no place in your theories other than that they can be latched on in a pinch.
Sure.
Certainly. But to avoid that, you need a meritocracy where children are taken away from their parents or something so to make for a completely equal start. Somehow I dont think you'd want that.
No, not really. Some are given limited mandate by the people to decide for them. They can be recalled, kicked out and influenced by their voters. Not quite the same as a dictatorship that rules on the whim of one person.
But they have objective standards of its use. It's the point of a military and police force that they do. That they may not in cases is another matter.
Perhaps to an extent that would be true. How would you organize it? Seriously? If all men needs to hold a job to survive in current society, the premise of voluntarianism you posit is severely flawed.
And I was really being very general about cooperation. The state cooperates with it's smaller municipalities, with businesses and people and so on. The state easily enters as a link in the cooperation between people. So ignoring all conflict in private enterprises, and seeing only conflict and force in all official doings is very one-sided and skewed.
So law is gun-to-head. Got it.
Noble principles. But these are just worming away from the point about how power, and limitation of freedom can come from other quarters than the state, and that the removing of it will not necessarily change any of that.
Really? Apart from "consumer action" which is great for deciding ont he new brand of chips, how can people stop corporations from doing things they dont like? It only works if people act in concert (dirty word coming up) collectively. And for them to do so, there must be a channel they can utilize to that end. This would only work in a society of dedicated anarchists, where the free market was de facto achieved. It also assumes that there actually will materialize all options, so you may choose the one that fits you, and assumes that businesses does not cooperate to a large extent on what they do and make. Currently, what is seen in durrent society, is that the means of the democratic state is the best way people can influence what goes on around them, and they have a channel for venting frustrations and complaints.
Who's forcing? You dont want to die for me, then dont. I'm just saying that it is something deeply engrained in human morality, and something many, if not most people would do without really thinking about it. If you feel obligated through this, well, sorry. I'd rather have a society where people are obligated to eachother than a society where everyone is always first and foremost after their own interests. Am I my brother's keeper? Yes.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Ok, on with the reply....
Both share basically the same philosophy.
Man, I really wish I wouldn't have promised you to reply paragraph style. There are a lot of contradictions here
Just like you and me, Karl Marx has no ability to contradict reality with his words. We do not live in the world of five year old children, you know. Let me tell you a little story to illustrate. When I was five, my family was pretty darn poor. Not abject poverty by most standards, but pretty damn poor. However, my Mother (who was the only one around for a while and the only one that worked), used to save every penny should could in a bank account. And sometimes, she would go to the ATM and take a little money out of that bank account and use it to buy something she'd wanted for a long time. This concept fascinated me. One day, I saw an advertisement or something and asked her..."Mom, can we buy one of those?" to which she responded, "no sweetheart, we really can't afford it". I was quite confused. "But what about the green machine?", I asked (that's what I called the ATM because it was green). "That's only for special occassions, little one," she said. "But Mom", I said, "why can't we just take the money out of the machine and buy it???" A strange look crossed her face and she said, "you know Jeff, you can only take out of the green machine what you put into it." And that one statement probably changed my life for good.
Karl Marx, in short, wants men to get more out of life than they put into it. And, unfortunately for all of us, that violates the Natural laws of accounting that we know as Justice. He wants men to be free without being free. He wants men to consume without the means to produce. He wants ends without the means.
You cannot, for instance, say "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" without saying that men have a primary obligation to each other above all other things. And when a primary obligation supercedes will, men cannot be totally free. If I was to reword Marx's statement for capitalism, it would read something like this:
"From each according to his mind, to each according to his mind"
And that accounts for the will of both parties.
You say that communism "is about being free from being exploited and forced to work more and harder than necessary, and rather being free to pursue your own creativity". To which I simply ask: freedom for whom, necessary for whom? If a man's creative desire is to not subjegate his mind to the needs of others, communism grants you no such freedom. If man's creative desire is to form a business, communism grants you no such freedom. The very fact that communism claims the ability to grant freedom is a self-defeating contradiction. Freedom cannot be granted because that implies that it can be withheld.
I had to block this one off because it's important. You are exactly right.
A capitalist is a man who values reason. And a man who values reason disregards faith. Therefore, true capitalists tend to be agnostic.
Again, the only dictator I assume is the dictation of need, not of the state.
Both anarchist capitalism and communism do require homogenity among people. But anarchist capitalism requires homogenity among those who have a homogenous purpose and will. Communism requires homogenity regardless of purpose.
Pursue what? Happiness? You have no right to pursue your own happiness because the unhappy have the first right to it because they need it.
Certainly no healthy society can be defined by consumerism or loads of excess goods. But that's the essence of communism. The ultimate standard of the communist is the man who needs the most. He is the de facto ruler of all men. And that creates the contradiction of the consumer who cannot consume. He is a man that must demand everything but use nothing, no different than a deranged ascetic that demands compliance but can only hold power over those who fail to comply.
Certainly in America and Europe there are many workers and ordinary citizens who are threatened by corporations. But that threat largely arises from the undue influence corporations have over the state. A robber is no threat without his gun and a corporation is no threat without its state.
I do own my own business. I deal with my employees and my customers based on the standards I espouse.
Where is the reduction? Reread: "Profit is the payment to people for the product of their minds. The rejection of profit is a rejection of the mind, the rejection of people." To suggest that a man's mind has value reduces nothing. It expands on the philosophy of communism that turns men into lifeless lumps of clay where their minds are not their own. You seem to be reading the statment like this: "The mind is the product of profit." That would be a reduction and a fallacious statment.
Not at all! Our minds are affected by everything they come into contact with. But that does not give that everything the right to own our minds. The fact that your consciousness is held and can be held only by you is what gives you the right to own it.
The philosophy that tells me there is no objective reality tells me that my mind is superfluous. And that which is superfluous has no value.
You speak as if it's an inevitable process to "let what one does think come to the benefit of others" being blocked by the "selfish". It is not an inevitable process, and it is not being blocked by anything but reality.
The products of my mind are out of your reach unless I act upon them or communicate them. I have no fundamental obligation to do so. If you seek to force me, you may try, but my mind does not bargain based on the price of fear.
A corrupt theory can only create a corrupt conclusion. Communism, in practice, fails because of what I describe.
In practice, sure. But as long as we're talking utopias here...
In your view, ok.
No, not really. He envisions that first of all we stop the fetishism of goods, and scale it all down to what we basically need, and provide that. That really isn't much. But it is an idea of times past, certainly.
Can man ever be totally free? And is it really desirable? Sounds awfully lonely to me.
You are bent on the need aspect arent you? If we're talking a marginal amount of work that needs to be done to secure the bare basics, covering the needs of your neighbour isn't that much of a task. Why should a man need to start a business? He could rather set out to create what he wants, without having to worry about profitability or anything like that. That this vision also leaves out any technological progress etc, I am aware. But it could be done. Perhaps not now though. And I'm not really advocating it in its full form, just pointing out the brighter sides of it.
And those who are not capitalists are irrational, disregarding of reason in general and locked in their faith, is that it?
In both cases a larger, missing homogenityis needed. Capitalism on the grand scale you posit requires a larger homogenity in society. Think about it. If you are not to be "locked" to one project (which would make you unfree and perhaps involuntary in the end) you need full interchangability and mobility in that society. For that to remotely work, the right kind of individual traits are needed. As I said, people that society with true-believer anarchists, and it could certainly work. But people arent in general. Which is why I view both poles as untenable.
And you would never be the one in need?
Que? As I outlined earlier on, communism in Marx' sense would be to lock off technological progress and minimize all required down to the bare minimum. How is that consumerist? Consumerism is what we have now.
Perhaps. Providing corporations live by your pure rules.
In my experience, anarchists of the capitalist persuasion usually are entrepeneurs. Just an observation.
Perhaps.
Right to own it? Your mind is your own, and cant be taken away from you. There is no need to own it.
No, it tells you that you are one mind of many, and that your view doesn't necessarily hold more truth than the next man. Not superfluous, not just necessarily right. And maybe there is objective reality, but can we see it for what it is? We've been down this road.
Who said it was inevitable? Just saying how one shouldn't always consider one's own selfish interests first and foremost.
Certainly. But it would be a lot nicer of I told you my mind, and you told me yours. Why should I force you? You seem a bit overdetermined not to let anyone "do you over".
Communism fails because it is utopian, and has premises and prerequisites that are unattainable.
Out of curiosity, what is the difference between socialism and communism as you see it?
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Structure of what?
Transition from what? The current state? Repeal controls. Not all at once, necessarily. But the entire state structure could probably be removed within a generation at most.
A family is chained together biologically. And the will typically follows. But people have no inherent obligation to their families over and above. It took me years to realize that Catholic guilt is not an instinct.
I don't assume "active choice". I advocate active choice. People are welcome to ignore their minds as much as they want and are able to.
How do my theories ignore Norms? Where do you think my own opinions and beliefs come from? They are a product of my culture. These theories allow people to excercise their culture rather than sacrifice it.
For some reason I read "meritocracy" as "motorcycle" and got very confused for a minute....anywho...
Why must I take children away from their parents? All children in my world have the same start: their minds and their bodies. All else is the product of the parents, not the product of the child. For example, inherited wealth is a product of the inheritee, not a product of the inheritor. The man who earned it earned the right to do what he pleases with it.
Each child is born into a unique environment. Why is this a bad thing? It generates the differences we see in the people we encounter. Some children have more resources and "healthier" environments than others, but why pretend that this should not be or could not be? If you want to raise a generation of clones, this becomes an issue. Otherwise, the only relevancy is what barriers are preventing people from achieving their goals. The system I'm describing is a system where people are free to work towards their own destiny, rather than forced to work against it.
When is the last time the Norweigan government considered their fundamental right to rule you and every other citizen and Norway? The process you describe asks the question: who is fit to rule you, not is anyone fit to rule you.
They do? I'm not intimately familiar with Norweigan law, but is it objective? Do your laws detail the exact situations requiring the use of guns, or do they provide officers discretion? Can your laws be arrived at via the logic of all, or only the "logic" of those who make them and enforce them?
Help me out here man. It's not mine to organize. This isn't a boy scout field trip.
All men do not need to hold a job to survive. All men need to eat, drink and sleep to survive. Men may seek jobs to help provide those things if they require trade with others. Other men may build communes to provide those things for all, regardless of jobs. Other men may simply provide these things for themselves. What business is it of mine?
Personally, I'd participate in a situation where men use their abilities to excersice their chosen purpose. I'd run a technology business. I'd trade with those who run other businesses. We'd all employ anyone that would wish and be able to help us. Would I give away jobs just because men "need" them? No. If those men are of no value to me, what would I be paying them for?
But the underlying authority of the state extends from force. Certianly there is cooperation as you say in certain instances. But true cooperation is two sides working toward a similar goal, and the opposite of that goal is what they're working against. The proposition of the state is to work towards a bunch of goals, with the opposite of those things always being forceful punishment. The "cooperative" proposition of the state, regardless of purpose, is not "do this or don't achieve this" but rather "do this or get hurt".
No. Gravity is not gun-to-head. Thermodynamics is not gun-to-head. Morality (personal law) is not gun to head. Contracts are not gun-to-head.
Here's a good example...my business's code of conduct is not gun-to-head. Why? Because a breach of it does not result in me (or any agent of mine) putting a gun to anyone's head. Every person agrees to that code of conduct as a prerequisite for working here. If they don't agree with that code, they can choose not to work here. If they breach it, they are no longer considered a value to me and therefore I no longer pay them. Pretty simple, yes? That is a code of true justice. The "punishment" is simply the logical end of their action.
[QOUTE]Noble principles. But these are just worming away from the point about how power, and limitation of freedom can come from other quarters than the state, and that the removing of it will not necessarily change any of that.[/quote]
Certainly! But that's the logic of "make peace with bombs". In the absence of the state, certainly a corporation or some other entity can amass powers of force. But that doesn't make it right to form a mass of power to prevent amassment of power.....
Ok...lots of good issues here.
First, your point about "materialization of all options". No one has an obligation to materialize an option for you. If you require an option and that option is possible but not provided....provide it. You have no right to simply demand it into existence.
Consumer action works quite well, it just doesn't always work for you. Personally, I'm anti-Wal-mart. Won't shop there, regardless of the reason. If no one sells something here other than Wal-mart, I'll do without. But my actions alone are not putting Wal-mart out of business. Why not? Because millions of consumers love Wal-mart. They shop nowhere else. This is the true mandate of the majority that a lot of posters here don't understand when they use the term.....a mandate linked to purpose and will and backed up by a just authority.
I have no problem with people organizing collectively as a consumer group. Is it harder to do without the state? Perhaps, but not necessarily. In the USA, our government is turning into little more than a collection of consumer action groups. Unfortunately, they simply cancel each other out half the time and everybody loses. One side gets the minimum wage raised, the other side gets the taxes raised....no one gains. One side gets environmental protection, the other side gets a loophole....no one gains.
The channels for consumer action are quite numerous. The media, the church, the community as a whole, the Internet.....the only prerequisite is that people pay attention. But that's already a prerequisite to thought and since I'm basing the entire thing off of everyone's ability to think, it's pretty much implied.
You say that the democratic state is the best way for people "can influence what goes on around them, and they have a channel for venting frustrations and complaints". I call bullshit. The modern democratic state is terribly inefficient and largely ineffectual at this. Perhaps for the Romans, for a while, sure. But not these days.
You want a society where people are obligated to die in your place, while at the same time giving yourself the obligation to die for them? That seems, well, a bit conflicting. Can you build enough sacrifical alters for the whole lot of you?
wonderful movie! I suggest it to ffg
let's see, what's great.... what about spending four hours of your day in the traffic jam? what about spending 6/7/8.... hours of your day in front of one magic monitor doing something completely useless to the human mind evolution? what about spending other 2/3 hours of your day in front of another magic monitor which talks to you and shows you incredible things like...for exemple the collapse of the wtc? what about taking pills to sleep? what about taking pills to be happy? what about taking pills to make love? what about dying of cancer into a hospital after spending all your life eating things that they told you to be so good, like hormon-meat and pesticide-salad? of course, these are just few of some of the collateral damages required by a wonderful world assuring happyness and freedom to all.....happyness and freedom......happyness and freedom....yeah, the greatest commercial ever designed to daze all.
Let's see, what's great.....what about working from home and spending time with your family? What about spending 6/7/8....hours of your day in front of one logical monitor doing something that benefits thousands of people who are willing to exchange the products of their minds for the product of yours? what about the choice to not own a television and spending the rest of your day with your family and friends? What about the choice to not be a slave to a state whose actions in part lead to the collapse of the WTC? What about sleeping soundly? What about having the resources and the choice to learn about the foods you eat? Of course, these are just few of the wonderful products of freedom and of the men who hold their own happiness as their highest moral standard.
Love you lots Eva, but it might be time to check your premises.
Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, eh?
One does not stop the "fetishism of goods" by suggesting that every man has a fundamental right to a good simply based on his need of it.
That's like suggesting that the prison warden is the world's most popular person....hundreds of friends that never leave.
Total freedom is certainly possible. Freedom is the measure of barriers between man's state and his desired achievement. Remove the barriers that force a man to work against his purpose and that man is free.
Yikes. Here we go. "Why should a man need to start a business? He could rather set out to create what he wants"....what do you think a business is? The creation of something a man does not want???? You suggest such men shouldn't have to worry about profit or "anything like that". How do you propose that man actually create what he wants? Magic? Creation implies resources. You cannot create something out of nothing. Resources imply thought. If your creation requires the thought of others, you "need" those thoughts. How do you propose to get them? Communism's answer is simple: steal them by convincing a man his thoughts are not his own or, more aptly, by force. Capitalism's answer is simpler: profit from the recognition that thought belongs to the thinker .
To a certain extent, yes.
I don't understand. What is this "one project" you speak of? Why would I be "locked" in it? And why wouldn't I have full interchangability and mobility?
Being in need and forcing others to serve those needs are two completely different things. Certainly I've been at need in my life and will be so again. But that gives me the obligation to act, not the right to enslave.
There are multiple paths to consumerism. The best way, however, to create a population of consumers is to suggest that everyone has a right to a product based only on their need for it. And, ironically, much of the Western world is starting to adopt this as a truth. They villify the men who produce while demanding access to their products. They buy, buy, buy, but never create. The damn profit but say everything it enables is their right.
What is the relationship between the "bare minimum" and consumerism? Nothing. You can consume the bare minimum as much as you can consume the excess.
The corporation is free to try and amass an army. But the purchasing public, unlike a taxed public, is free to withhold that which creates that army.
The most profitable corporations in this world could not afford even the ancillary line-item appropriations of the US military.
Are you suggesting that my anarchistic/capitalistic persuasions come from my entrepenurial efforts? Try turning that around.
You've just defined ownership.
Yep, and you told me the road doesn't exist.
Ok.
[QUOT]Certainly. But it would be a lot nicer of I told you my mind, and you told me yours. Why should I force you? You seem a bit overdetermined not to let anyone "do you over".[/quote]
A social system can't tell me that it would be nice if I spoke my mind while telling me my mind has no value. That is a contradiction.
Yes, and those premises and prerequisites are found in its philosophy. And those failures extend from those fallacies.
Ugh...it's hard to imagine that at one point this was a simple answer.
Socialism is an economic system. Communism is a political movement/system. Both often go hand in hand, but that is not required.
Socialism is the worst one to try to define. Socialism is really just anti-capitalism. It grew out of a distate for markets and private property and capital, rather than growing out of a taste for something specific. Technically, socialism is a system where the economy is directed by a central authority...Marx's "proletariat dictatorship" for example. However, socialism has also been defined outside of the context of an authority which actually produces something much like capitalism except the primacy of need is still in place instead of the primacy of private ownership.
Communism is the political system that emerges from (or creates) a socialist (or at least anti-capitalist) economy. Marx's communism was pretty much a cultural movement disguised as a political system. It was a cultural rejection of social classes and of specialization, replaced by something he never really detailed. The Bolsheviks, however, made a political system out of it and from then on we had the implied quasi-dictatorship associated with the term.
The philosophies of both are practically equal, but the details swing widely because every socialist and every communist has a mind and their own selfish interests
The structure that is the aggregate, yet somewhat qualitatively different result from all the individuals' actions.
OK. How? And how will it not just lead to state being reaplced by corporations or other which essentially changes nothing for 95% of people, yet would be a revolution to you?
And this is a source of confusion. When are you advocating, and when are you just stating? It's not always obvious. Your theories ignore norms, the same way it ignores structure, by having tunnel-vision locked on the individual and his active choices in all things. You dont disallow them, but you dont integrate them in the theory sufficiently.
Then it is not meritocracy. Inheritance repeals it, by giving people what they didn't work for, or more than the value of their input if you will. That their parents obtained it in a meritocratic way, doesnt make it meritocracy for them. Hence, if all start the same at square one, by second generation meritocracy is severely flawed, guve it a few more, and it is gone, and replaced with status of birth and privileges. Hence what I said.
Nothing against different environments, but I am a sucker for equal(er) opportunity for all individuals independant of birth. The barriers will be severaly unequally distributed, and the same effort by different people will not yield equally, as true meritocracy would warrant. Maybe you dont really want full meritocracy. I dont really.
Well, if "they" stayed the same and consisted of closed groups (often the case in "communist" states btw) then I see the problem. When those in power are moved upon, and answers to the public that elected them, the question is how much do they rule and how much do they just administer? The way and depth of rule is very relevant, even if it can be presented as "rule" in all cases. A formal likeness that has no bearing on experienced practice. The latter is what matters.
I've stood at the gate as a guard in the military many times when I was in the force. In Norway police do not even routinely carry guns. As a guard in the military we were drilled on how much it would take for us to even consider loading a bullet into the chamber of the rifle, before considering shooting a warning shot. Laws and military regulations. The logic of these is not to unnecessarily exercise deadly force through very strict rules.
I'm not asking you to organize it. I'm asking you to lift the gaze away from the individual and tell me what you see in society, and how it must be ordered and on what principles for it to work like you want on the individual level.
Okay. And what do they do in between? What do they do when in such a position either by own actions or through structural forces beyond their control (and most structural forces will be beyond their control under anarchy) end up unable to provide for themselves? How would those structures have to look if it was gonna be fairly frictionless, good and fair and unimpeding to the individuals' purposes? You cant just write it off as "people should provide for themselves the way they want", you are allowed to think aloud how you see these things resolve themselves in your utopia.
In a totalitarian dictatorship, sure. In a democracy it would be to follow the majority's decision or get fined. Difference there. Underlying monopoly of force, certainly. Necessarily an evil thing or worse than other limiting forces in the world, no.
OK, you have a code. What if businesses end up with similar codes, and those that would work in those businesses didn't want those codes, then what? In a situation where they have to work or starve, and 1)they dont have the option of doing what they want and 2) while working have to conform to codes they dont want in order to keep/get a job. They get punished by you too. Logical end, sure. The logical end to murder is also prison under the state. Murderers know what they get....
You exert power in that way, and that power limits other people. You have the means to sanction, while your employees do not, if we're gonna stay with strict individualism and leave out the possiblity of unions etc. The difference is small in practice.
But the democratic state amassment of power can be influenced and controlled. The power amassed by individuals, well, we had the middle ages here in europe where that was the norm. Perfect, not at all. Flawed, you bet. Better, yes.
Exactly, but ultimate freedom demands ultimately all options. Otherwise new power arises from those who get to define the options made available.
But you require the anarchistic population to get it going off the ground. Getting attention is not the same as changing. You do not imply that people think, you imply that people will be forever vigilant and actively choosing and deciding in their every task every day. Noble as it may sound, people arent that conscious actors on the whole. Which is why I say, fine, in a society of dedicated anarchists.
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
What's your hangup with dying in regards to this? I want a society where people are obligated to eachother, yes. That does not mean people should line up and die for eachother or whatever you are on about here, I'm merely saying that people should (in my opinion, and often seen in practice) be ready to act for eachother, help eachother and generally have empathy and caring for eachother. You say "fine, do it on your spare time", where-as I first of all see it as such an integral element of human morality and values, that going around it is nonsense for most people. I dont need anyone to die for me, and noone would need to die for me. But we should have a moral obligation to support and help eachother, yes. Even if it violates selfish interest and thus skews the true capitalism. I am my brother's keeper.
I failed
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
And if the barriers aren't a result of the state, what do you do?
I'll try to keep my irrational faith-based initiatives to a minimum.
How would you have full interchangability and mobility unless all people in your society were anarchists like yourself? Without that homogenity, alot of people would feel outside your society, oppose it, and try to change it away from your anarchism. Oh I dunno, does this make sense? I am completely unable to formulate the thought behind it. Ignore it.
Bravo. That's what is asked of you. To expect that your fellow man will help you, is not to enslave him, as he may very well prove to not meet your expectations. But a shared expectation, and an inclination to act on it yourself, in the spirit of reciprocity and idealism, makes for a better, warmer society.
Until it is taken from them by an army over which they have no influence or say, to serve the purposes of individuals. That is worse than being taxed an amount that also provides you with a lot of insurance and security on top of it. The violent aspect of western states is pretty much curbed, at least in regards to their own population.
And you wouldn't need to either. Handguns kill just as well as apache choppers. Especially if noone has the choppers anymore.
No, I'm saying that entrepeneurial types draw up the perfect entrepeneur society, where-as cowed and dominated workers draw up the perfect safe-from-adversity society. The leaders want opportunity, the manual bottomline workers want security. Both drives will always exist, and any wandering to any extreme will alienate a large part of the population.
Then you define ownership far narrower than most, as it would negate ownership of land and most external objects not the result of your own hands.
No I said, are you sure the road looks just like that, coz I dont think I agree.
What social system tells you that? I am not the authorized spokesperson for the opposite system. Sometimes I merely philosophize, and I must be able to do so without you seeing it as an integrated part of the system I seem to be defending. Dont hang yourself up in my philosophical background thoughts when I discuss something else here. I am not your anti-thesis or nemesis, but neither do I agree with your way of seeing things.
Fair enough. I find it a bit on the harsh side, but ok.
Funny, I see it the other way around, really. Or rather people calling themselves socialists these days (not to be confused with those of 50 years ago) are talking of it in the way of a movement, not an economic system. It seems your socialism is just another aspect of what I would call communism altogether.
Of course we have our own minds, as do you capitalist pigs.;) The details of your vision varies a lot from person to person too.
But socialists as a term today, is more about indicating a leftish political leaning, where a focus on collective solutions to collective problems and concern is essential. Most socialistic thought needs a sort of redistribution agency to perform these solutions to problems. Just how and what that distribution channel should be is debatable. But to many the socialism is also a reaction against what is seen as materialist, selfish and unhealthy focus on me! and mine!, instead of focusing on how we should organize in a way to facilitate the best comrpomise and solution for all. A strong belief and conviction on behalf of democracy usually goes along with it. I am not completely on board on all things socialism these days, as I am rather a very left-leaning social democrat, but these things appeal to me. Does it jive with capitalist concepts and thought? Probably not. Is it about enslaving people? Certainly not. But in compromises, people must make concessions. It is essential for any society. But we should make as good compromises as possible. Just how this is, who knows. Direct democracy perhaps is proposed, at least on the smaller level. I advocate rather smaller units of democracy. Large democracies is almost an oxymoron as it makes it a lot harder to consider many different people and groups' interests and wishes. The strokes become so broad, and the diversity will so so wide that the standard will poorly fit a huge group of people. If you allow me a statistics term, the standard error becomes too great. The line may be through the centre, but people are anywhere but there. Same formal concepts act out differently with different degrees of magnitude in size.
Actually, we coincide to a certain extent here, only that you want corporations int heir pure good form, where I talk of smaller democratic units. These concepts overlap a lot actually. Even if we cant agree on the rhetoric supporting our different concepts. I want freedom as much as you do, but I want de facto, not formal freedom. You seem to focus more on the formal aspect of it. For me it is irrelevant whether I am working under a "corporation" or a "state", as both structures hold power over me, and forces/facilitates me to act a certain way. I see a lto of freedom coming to life for many through state orderings, initiatives, regulations and taxations that are good. Is it coersion, well maaaayyyybbeeeeee if you wanna be strictly formal and anarchistic about it, but ask yourself exactly what paying a bit of taxes has hindered of your choices and actions in life. If you perceive freedom, that you get rewarded from your initiatives, and lead a life along the lines you would wish, I'd say "What's the problem?". If the problem is of a formal character, I may dismiss it, unless it also have de factoi real tangible consequences for people.
Now dont pick apart this final monologue by me, as it is meant merely to show a bit more what I really mean, instead of me ending up being pegged as your anti-thesis, which I am not. (although I like to argue, obviously
There. See ya tomorrow
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
And FFG - is there any chance you could do us a favour and watch the film? It's quite funny anyway and ya wouldn't have to be a communist to enjoy it
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
www.amnesty.org.uk
:-)
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!
How can a clever, well versed bloke like yourself say that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" is directed by a central authority?!?!? Its the complete opposite!
What you are describing is what Stalin turned the Bolshevik Revolution into, not what it started out as in 1917. The Soviets (the original workers councils, not the people of the USSR as so described from 1930's onwards) of Petrograd in 1917 were based on the factories and the greater means of production, were being run by the workers themselves, without the need for ANY central, classically 'state' authority.
However, this was, as it was in Catalonia in 1936 and Paris in 1870, short lasted. The Russian Civil war and Lenin's death, followed by Trotsky's exile saw to this. The adoption of War Communism saw to thsi.
Then the NEP, as envisioned by Lenin and Trotsky (through Marx) but bastardised by Stalin, put an end to all hopes of the Proletariat ever holding the right to self determination through control of the means of production.
I don't know how you arrived at that conclusion above. Then again, you hadn't heard of the term 'State Capitalism' until 2 days ago ;-)
are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious: Aristotle
Viva Zapatista!
Umm....I can say that because the man who coined the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" said it. Marx viewed the dictatorship of the proletariat as a concrete faction of the state achieved by a proletariat revolution and maintained then by the functions of the state.
If you view it as something different, that's cool.
That's fine.
Sure.
And what about the "right to self determination" of the men they stole it from?
You've been here, what, 10 minutes??? I've certainly heard of State Capitalism my friend. It is a contradiction in terms.