so given my last post, what is Marxism?
an attempt to create a unified, coherent picture of
the world and our place in it… both individually and collectively…
and what is Socialism? an attempt to create a unified, coherent picture
of the world and our place in it.
and what is capitalism? another attempt but a failed one… failed?
why is capitalism a failure? because the key factor in capitalism is
this idea of the “hand of god” that somehow steers the system correctly…
this hand of god, the market forces, is a “Deus ex Machina” and nothing more…
the “hand of god” is a contrived plot twist that allows the system to
exploit and dehumanized people and their values……
as exhibited by our current economic situation…
we have the concept of supply and demand…
thus when we have many workers, wages go down,
but when we have few workers, wages go up…
and in our current economic situation… (well before CV blew up
the economic world) wages didn’t go up in the way it ought to have if
supply and demand were truly the way the system worked…
wages went up modestly when they should have gone up quite fast to
reach the supply and demand part of the American economy…
supply and demand doesn’t work in regards to wages and thus supply
and demand as a theory doesn’t work, and yet we still believe…
our ad hoc belief system has a hard time keeping up with
the current situation…beliefs, once believed in, become
hard as a rock part, of our belief system…
we hold our beliefs even in the face of evidence that disproves
that particular belief……. we are human in this way…
and this is true of beliefs we were indoctrinated with as children…
we have a young kid who is transitioning from male to female at work…
his name is Thomas but now he wants to be called Jazz… I am having
a very hard time making the adjustment… once I learn someone name,
I have a hard time breaking away from that name…being old means
we don’t handle changes well…
but that is different then holding beliefs… Thomas or Jazz doesn’t
impact my belief system…it is a temporary matter what he/she calls
themselves and I don’t really care…because it doesn’t impact my life
whereas holding a belief and finding that belief is wrong or misguided,
is impactful, very impactful in one’s life…and potentially life changing…
whereas learning to call a person Thomas or Jazz isn’t life changing for me…
however from Thomas/Jazz viewpoint, being called the right name does
have an impact… life changing? I couldn’t say… but it is impactful…
and that is the next point, viewpoint…some people are willing to go to war
over oil or resources or ism’s and ideologies but not everyone is willing to
go to war over the same thing… different viewpoints allow us to
take actions over different things… whereas some things don’t move me,
they might move you… I can’t say…
but if we hold different diverse beliefs, then at times we might go to
war over something and other times we might not, depending…
our belief system being ad hoc, will often then lead to us taking
actions at different points… we might fight at one point being called
a jerk, whereas at another time, we laugh at them for calling us a jerk…
our responses to events, people, ism’s and ideologies is wildly
different because we have ad hoc beliefs and ad hoc beliefs
don’t remain in one place…they are every changing and moving…
and so one day, we might be moved to action and another day, we might not…
depends on our mood and that is because we don’t hold to beliefs as a “way of life”…
beliefs for the modern man is simply what is convenient at the time…
not being for use yesterday or tomorrow, just useful today…
and we cannot build a coherent, unified belief system if our beliefs only hold
true at some points but not at other points…
so what is capitalism? it is a ad hoc understanding of how the world works…
Kropotkin