I had a political science professor say pretty much the same thing- that all the actual important stuff Marx ever wanted is basically realized now in the United States, and further pushing in that direction isn't warranted. Of course, that makes Marx pretty off base if true, since we did virtually nothing that he recommended in order to get here other than public education and some relatively half-assed social welfare.
Necessary? I figured it WOULD increase because socialism creates a system where only those skilled at manipulating the bureaucracy can enjoy luxury, so that’s where all the talent is going to go. But is it mechanically necessary by how socialism works?
Parkinson’s law neatly explains why socialists, feminists, and race-baiters are as busy now as ever.
But if those other people are stupid wastrels, like you say, who cares what they think? How is that an adequate measure of you being more knowledgeable about other people than other people? The thing seems either circular (people are stupid, therefore I’m more knowledgeable) or self contradictory (stupid people saying I’m knowledgeable, therefore I’m more knowledgeable than them).
In any case, I reject your view of people. I don’t see people in those terms, I think that sort of cynicism is always open to being used as a justification for ordering people around and forcing them to do things. I’m not interested in forcing anyone to do anything.
I called you a Marxist because you’re a Marxist, or at best a post-Marxist. You identify the problem as capitalism per se, you believe in socialism, you are a Marxist. I don’t necessarily use that label as a derogatory term but regardless, it fits. Given that this is fundamentally an argument about what humans are, and therefore what kind of politics naturally flows from that, this tendency you refer to is very important to our disagreement. I would genuinely appreciate it if you would take the time to outline it.
The electoral system (indeed ‘democratic’ culture in general) is one of the main reasons they squander their abilities. They think someone else is taking care of stuff in roughly the right way because they expressed their opinion a few times.
Can you give me a couple of examples of when socialism has been open, transparent and factual in the last couple of centuries of human history? I’m someone who has a lot of time for socialism in some senses of the word, but is radically opposed to socialism in other senses of the word. Thus, I can only work with actual examples rather than theory - the anarcho-capitalists insist that the ‘true free market’ will function in a way that is akin to what you’re outlining, but they never seem to be able to give me examples substantiating this. Hence my scepticism regarding capitalism and socialism, and my attempt to see what it good in each that can be preserved and encouraged and advanced, and the bad in each that must be attacked and overcome if we are to actually make a better world for what is already an inherently good humanity.
I think they adopted ‘socialism’ because it was a good myth to sell to the public, and at the time a popular one amongst the working class. The idea that we all work to ‘pay into’ this massive system of managed interactions and thus we all ‘get out of’ this system the things we need and many of the things we want is enormously attractive. It’s just a massive, horrible failure in reality, and I think the reasons for that could only be overcome by turning humans into something else, which I’m also radically opposed to doing.
It depends on what mechanism you use and how you define ‘playing mean’. This is why I ask for examples, I want to know what you think this would actually look like, beyond the Marxist rhetoric because trust me, I’ve read all that, considered it for a long time, and not found it persuasive. What persuades me about socialists is when they actually do things that benefit their fellow humans, which quite a few have done at various times and in various ways. Even the welfare state as it was originally conceived and set up in the UK wasn’t such a bad idea and certainly benefited a lot of poor people, but the long term consequences of that have been that it has turned into an enormous system for social control. It hasn’t made anyone free, and hasn’t produced the sort of society you have described (which for the record, in theory, I think is rather nice-sounding and not one I’d have much objection about living in, if it could be achieved).
Do you mean stuff that Marx considered important ot that the proefessor considered important?
Marxism was instrumental in realizing the things I mentioned in Europe.
But yes, America realised a number of things which may be considered Socialist without Marx.
I’m not an expert on Marx, though.
I think so. As Socialism is a statist system, meaning that the central value-standard (moral and economic agent) is the state. Such an arrangement has value gravitate to those who represent that agent - the people who enforce it, who ‘‘are’’ it.
It also explains why half of the governments budget is spent on time-wasting, obstructing and obfuscating of purpose, and thus why mankind is utterly incapable of doing anything other than blindly groping for short term gain.
If the planet becomes uninhabitable in 40 years, it is wholly due to the principle of the State. In the end it only serves to prevent people from checking the destructive influence of other people. The exact opposite of what it is intended to accomplish.
A good way to express it.
The socialist world becomes merely one living entity.
The rest are merely drones serving it.
… easily replaced by much more efficient machines.
I mean that we managed to keep private property private, income more or less up to the income-provider, and profit-driven capitalist investment as the financial model that drives business, and still have a world in which people can get fulfilling labor if they work towards it as a goal, aren't slaves to a company, and in general have 'outs' to reduce or avoid being alienated from their labor. Oh, and we managed to do it in an age in which almost everybody was religious. So we've come a long way towards curing his problems, without taking the extreme measures he suggested. If Marx was born in the 70's, it seems unlikely that he would have seen enough wrong with labor to have bothered proposing Marxism.
People who push for a socialist state now are basically ideologues who just want it that way, not because there are grave problems to which it would be the solution.
Ya, I’m speaking of the U.S. here.
Eh! One of the benefits of being a conservative is that I see all most such situations as being a both/and rather than a either/or. The State prevents us from checking the destructive influence of others in some ways, helps us do so in others. There's no ideologically pure answers, just an infinite series of individual cases requiring individual scrutiny.
They’ll be forced into situational anarchism by default of the world’s destroyed infrastructure. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t.
Murphy’s law.
Wow, you have a lot of disturbing faith in the system.
Yeah, so you’ll have anarchy for a little while, then eventually a state will reemerge. It’s not a faith in the system, it’s an understanding of human nature.
The hunter gatherer period lasted ten thousand years. Events unfolding within each year has the possibility of destroying modern civilization knocking back humanity to the stone age. You never know…
I’ll settle for seventy five to a hundred years in my lifetime. If only I can be so lucky. Well, here’s to hope anyways…
This whole kind cares what each other thinks, and they are the majority.
Consider the huge popularity of tabloids and trash magazines.
A phenomenon for you: consider internet forums, including this one. It’s the flawed arguments that attract the most attention and get the most publicity. Further, it’s mainly stupidity that ends them - a stubbornness on the part of the loudest shouter, and the stupidity of others in dealing with such people.
And no, my evaluation of my abilities is little less than summing up the scientific method with regard to a specific subject.
I’m interested in relatively restricting people who are proven to be economically irresponsible, and relatively liberating those who are economically responsible. The current degree of justice in social matters is fine by me for now, though that is not to say it doesn’t need improvement - just that I have little concern for it compared to our massive economic problems.
I do not worship ideals, such as “freedom”, which is meaningless unless qualified and applied to real life.
Marx wasn’t the only anti-Capitalist.
I don’t buy all of Marx’s arguments, and I’ve only even read one of his books fully.
I even have sympathy for ideologies incompatible with his.
If you are trying to crudely summarise of my position as “Problem = Capitalism” and “Belief = Socialism” therefore “Silhouette = Marxist” then you’re guilty of being ignorant, lazy and wrong. A pre-mature eagerness to box people into pre-existing categories for the sake of either dismissing or condoning them will not serve you when it comes to all-important distinctions as well as finer details that can make all the difference.
I’m not a revolutionary, which is essential to Leninist/Trotskyist Socialism. I am concerned with the politics of change to something co-operative, and Marx wrote no concrete political plans. Whether you meant your label as derogatory of not, it doesn’t sufficiently fit. In fact it does more harm towards understanding my position than good.
For indirect democracy, yes.
If you’re only going to consider the past then you’re only as good as a Conservative or any other reactionary. Why would I be interested in repeating something that has failed exactly how it was done before? Learning from it is fine, but expecting the past to be a complete set of possibilities for each broad label so far conceived is just an argument for things staying the same.
“Playing mean” is using deception and abusing power imbalance to take from others more than you give back to the point that so many are so restricted and trapped in their poverty, whilst some are so ridiculously rich that they are more powerful than their government and able to essentially direct the politics of entire countries.
I agree that people who are physically “being the change they want to see in the world” are the most impressive. I do this in the intellectual realm, and as such, my powers are limited compared to those who physically act out their plans. But they need direction and confirmation, which I can provide. My purpose here is to iron out difficult points that are well guarded so as to help others understand them and apply them to their own lives.
Concerning the welfare State - in conjunction with modern Capitalism and neo-liberal values it was always a combination doomed to fail. But the State is a much more obvious target for the failure of such a concoction than an obscured though simple ideology that requires a modicum of intellectual consideration in order to understand it.
Importantly, the welfare-State is not actually Socialist. It’s a very American propaganda move to associate an element of a conflicting ideology to their own failing system, and then blame that. Socialism is distinct from modern Capitalism, there is no overlap. It’s not a sliding scale of “more Capitalist vs. more Socialist”.
Yet another deception for me to clarify for the benefit of others ^
Ok, I believe I’ve covered it before while you’ve been around but maybe you missed it.
Riddle me this, Batman:
How can an economic state in its own right (no pun intended) defined as coming after Capitalism has been undone, as distinct from and incompatible with Capitalism, co-exist with/along-side Capitalism?
It was Marx who defined the necessary sequential historical conditions that must be met in order for Socialism to come about and exist.
It was Lenin who necessitated revolution’s role in violently seizing control of the State in order to make it function as a body of armed men whose sole purpose is to prevent counter-revolution and nothing more. Formerly capitalist institutions are taken over by their own workers who need only to do their own work just as before, just without suffering someone else making money from the work that they are the ones actually doing. Using money to make money is outlawed, only using money as a means to consume is permitted: aka there only being one class of people - those who work for their money, and no longer those who make money from others working for their money. So personal property is fine, only the means of production become owned by the people (as distinct from being “publically” owned in the sense of being controlled by an indirectly democratically elected elite known today as “the State”). Does any of this (apart from what I just put in brackets) sound remotely like what we have today?
Has Capitalism ended? Have we had such a revolution as I describe? No? Then we don’t yet have any “degree” of Socialism at all.
Not even in Russia did Capitalism first occur and then get pushed through to its inevitable limits before turning into Socialism.
Neither did China go through any of these necessary processes.
What they had/have is an authoritarian totalitarian dictatorship, which is something entirely distinct from Socialism.
Sorry I asked.
As I expected, some people have a “word salad” problem.
You seem to have a “thought salad” problem.
Something that I have to keep reminding myself of is that to socialist, “socialist = anything and everything good” and “capitalist = anything and everything bad”, despite having no idea of good from bad because “it is all relative and subjective”.
If you find Marxist and Leninist definitions too difficult, which are all I’m relaying, then of course Socialism is going to go over your head. It’s a shame, because if you understood, you would agree. It’s basically an improved version of your own politics.
That is all a good description of Communism (of which Socialism is an approaching state) but unfortunately it is based on a horrible mistake.
“The People” does not exist as an entity.
You can not have “The Means Of Production” (also not an entity) owned by “The People”.
Two categorical mistakes in one plan.
No fucking wonder it produced arguably the most horrific travesties in the Earths history.
Economy can not be based on anything other than individuals.
These do not exist in Marx’ universe. He thinks they do but he describes completely different entities. He did not understand the most basic thing about humanity and he didn’t think through the requirements of industry, among which is cooperation based on personal trust.
Marx basically said “Man can not be trusted with power” and “we require that all men trust each other with power”.
Fuck him. Belief in God is a thousand times more rational than to believe in “The People” as an agent of anything except human nature.
Desire for wealth and power is human nature. So is desire to share and be fruitful. If you want to take the second and kill the first, you will represent the first and kill the second. So logic tells anyone who considers the means that have to be used, and so history has proven. Get over this idiotic idea and start from the ground up, with logic, philosophy, value-psychology.
Also, you can’t have personal property being privately owned with the means of production being controlled “By the People”.
Controlling the means of production means controlling what is produced, how much of it, where, under what circumstances, and who it can be sold to and for how much.
You end up with a world where everybody gets their grey jumpsuit, food ration, state-approved entertainment, living quarters, and happy pills. At that point, who gives a shit if they are 'truly yours' or not? Did workers back in the day truly own the company scrip the received for their labor and could only spend at the company store?
Private ownership of wealth entails the freedom to exchange that wealth as one sees fit, which entails free market driven economics. My wealth is only worth something because there are people competing to provide things I want to spend it on.
Apparently as soon as you back up an idea, you are a ist.
TO ALL: ^ Please pay attention ^
I’ll say it again, I’m neither a Socialist nor a Marxist - I just happen to know stuff about these doctrines that basically everyone on this so-called philosophy forum does not, ESPECIALLY the most vehement detractors from these ideas.
Which pisses me off monumentally.
My bad for using a couple of bits of terminology that I know to be well-defined, but which are frequently used colloquially and irresponsibly by those who don’t know what they’re talking about, and therefore if I use them too I am just as irresponsible and lacking in concrete definition.
No, a group of people are not a single person - I know that. But there is existence in the collective group behaviour of individuals that does not exist when these people are by themselves. A group of people can interract in a very real and existent way, just as organs and cells do in a single human body. Oh, if only the air between us were solid and visible such that individual people could be seen as part of something greater than what they see as themselves, without which they could not continue to be individuals…
The means of production include all individual entities that workers interract with in order to produce something (no shit). Instead of referring to each individual item on the list, for some crazy reason we just say “the means of production” instead.
An artifact of language is not why the USSR etc. happened. I’m well aware that some pretty shitty stuff happened in the name of Socialism and/or Communism. All but a minority of Socialists/Communists are against these things. Seriously, go ask your nearest Socialist “Are you a Stalinist?” or “Are you a Maoist?” etc. They will almost all say no. And why? Because they’re Socialists and/or Communists, and not Authoritarian Totalitarian dictatorship proponents. Go figure. I feel like I’m one of the 99% of Muslims being wrongly accused of terrorism and literal fundamentalism.
I disagree (N.B. even though I am neither a Marxist nor a Socialist).