Marx Was Right All Along
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whether you got a communism or capitalism the economy got to be backed up by productoin and the biggest problem in the us is that it's not.I dont think neither ideology is any good both serves as good tools for analysis but to belive in one or the other blindly is kind of fanatic and utopian.I think the best system is in between the to you need ideas from both!
Capitalism that we have today did not exist for very long (if you look at the big picture). That's my point. I hope we can at least agree on that. We shouldn't have to go back and forth on this.
Mankind, societies, everything, changes. That's a fact and cannot be questioned.
You're confusing me. Are you talking about capitalism or communism here? Please clarify.
No, this is where we disagree completely. I've touched on human nature before and I will quote myself because it's becoming too redundant for me:
Further, how do you explain those of us that are not greedy? I'm not greedy. I don't care about money, share everything with my comrades and do charity work from time to time. I'm also a product of Seattle, a very leftist region compared to the rest of the country. Take that even further, if you and I were born into socialist communities our values would be different. Greed would be virtually absent.
And go back even further in mankind to the hunter/gatherer societies (also refereed to as primitive communism). Where was the greed? There wasn't any, they all had specific roles to play in their communities in order to survive. Greed was absent then. This confirms what I stated early, mankind (and human consciousness) is in a constant state of change and is determined by the conditions in which one lives.
How so?
Again, this isn't something that happens overnight, it's the process of evolution of mankind. We cant get from point A to Z without going through all in-between letters.
See above. Further, greed is a product of certain conditions, take this example from nature. If you were to take 100 rats place them in a large cage with enough food to feed all 100 rats, you'll see a friendly environment. However if you take that same cage with 100 rats and put only enough food to feed 50 of those rats, you'll see how quickly the environment turns to violent, greedy and murderous situations. Greed often arises from these types of situations, scarcity of wealth and times when there are those that have and those that do not. When people are fighting to survive, surviving to make it, they will become greedy in order to get a head, to be one of those that makes it (unlike the rest of us who are left poor, left to die or left to be zombie's at our 9 to 5's).
Human nature like all things, in a constant state of change.
No that's not any better. Stalinism/N.Korea were actually anti-marxists. The ideology was not the same. Listen, many modern day, so-called "socialist" or "communist" parties are nothing of the sort, and most people associate "communism" in general with Stalin's totalitarian USSR or North Korea (which is modeled after Stalin). But for scientific socialists (the original term for Marxists), "socialism is a transitional phase between the exploitative capitalist system of private property of the means of production, and the classless society of communism, where there is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word, no compulsion to work, no national borders, etc." If any party does not have these goals, they are not socialist or communist by very definition.
Further, as with all things in politics, there are many false banners, that is to say, many parties that say one thing but practice another.
yes, it was the "lesser of two evils" in most cases.
The importance of democracy. In a socialist society, there must be a dictatorship of the prolitariat (meaning the Workers have complete control). If an individual became greedy it wouldn't matter because the communities themselves would overpower any one individual. All decisions made could only be made to benifit the communities as a whole.
Mankind, societies, everything, changes. That's a fact and cannot be questioned.
You're confusing me. Are you talking about capitalism or communism here? Please clarify.
No, this is where we disagree completely. I've touched on human nature before and I will quote myself because it's becoming too redundant for me:
Under capitalism, the ruling class does everything they can to effect the way we think. Through media, education, religion, etc. we are raised with values of a capitalist system, which is that 'dog eat dog', 'every man for himself' "bling bling" mentality. This isn't human nature, this is something we have been conditioned to think. Or in Marx's explanation - a form of false consciousness.
This kind of mentality doesn't benefit the common man...only the very rich.
This mentality would slowly go away under socialism. Since conditions determine consciousness, new generations would see the world entirely different. Think about when a baby is born. It does not know about race, violence, sexual harassment, being materialistic, greed, etc. it only learns about these things when they are passed down by society.
But in reality self-interest remains under socialism. Workers will form a class consciousness by understanding where their true self-interest lay. The bourgeoisie on the other hand have a self-interest under capitalism, in this case a class interest in controlling the class consciousness of the workers - shoring up the false consciousness of the workers that their self-interest lay with the promotion of the class system (remember the old slogan that what's good for GM is good for America--nationalism is a good tool for propping up false consciousness as is religion).
This kind of mentality doesn't benefit the common man...only the very rich.
This mentality would slowly go away under socialism. Since conditions determine consciousness, new generations would see the world entirely different. Think about when a baby is born. It does not know about race, violence, sexual harassment, being materialistic, greed, etc. it only learns about these things when they are passed down by society.
But in reality self-interest remains under socialism. Workers will form a class consciousness by understanding where their true self-interest lay. The bourgeoisie on the other hand have a self-interest under capitalism, in this case a class interest in controlling the class consciousness of the workers - shoring up the false consciousness of the workers that their self-interest lay with the promotion of the class system (remember the old slogan that what's good for GM is good for America--nationalism is a good tool for propping up false consciousness as is religion).
Further, how do you explain those of us that are not greedy? I'm not greedy. I don't care about money, share everything with my comrades and do charity work from time to time. I'm also a product of Seattle, a very leftist region compared to the rest of the country. Take that even further, if you and I were born into socialist communities our values would be different. Greed would be virtually absent.
And go back even further in mankind to the hunter/gatherer societies (also refereed to as primitive communism). Where was the greed? There wasn't any, they all had specific roles to play in their communities in order to survive. Greed was absent then. This confirms what I stated early, mankind (and human consciousness) is in a constant state of change and is determined by the conditions in which one lives.
How so?
Again, this isn't something that happens overnight, it's the process of evolution of mankind. We cant get from point A to Z without going through all in-between letters.
See above. Further, greed is a product of certain conditions, take this example from nature. If you were to take 100 rats place them in a large cage with enough food to feed all 100 rats, you'll see a friendly environment. However if you take that same cage with 100 rats and put only enough food to feed 50 of those rats, you'll see how quickly the environment turns to violent, greedy and murderous situations. Greed often arises from these types of situations, scarcity of wealth and times when there are those that have and those that do not. When people are fighting to survive, surviving to make it, they will become greedy in order to get a head, to be one of those that makes it (unlike the rest of us who are left poor, left to die or left to be zombie's at our 9 to 5's).
Human nature like all things, in a constant state of change.
No that's not any better. Stalinism/N.Korea were actually anti-marxists. The ideology was not the same. Listen, many modern day, so-called "socialist" or "communist" parties are nothing of the sort, and most people associate "communism" in general with Stalin's totalitarian USSR or North Korea (which is modeled after Stalin). But for scientific socialists (the original term for Marxists), "socialism is a transitional phase between the exploitative capitalist system of private property of the means of production, and the classless society of communism, where there is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word, no compulsion to work, no national borders, etc." If any party does not have these goals, they are not socialist or communist by very definition.
Further, as with all things in politics, there are many false banners, that is to say, many parties that say one thing but practice another.
yes, it was the "lesser of two evils" in most cases.
The importance of democracy. In a socialist society, there must be a dictatorship of the prolitariat (meaning the Workers have complete control). If an individual became greedy it wouldn't matter because the communities themselves would overpower any one individual. All decisions made could only be made to benifit the communities as a whole.
Then you have A LOT of reading to do my friend. Read up on Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
From Wikipedia to give you vague understanding:
Further:
From Wikipedia to give you vague understanding:
Lenin identifies the merging of banks and industrial cartels as giving rise to finance capital. According to Lenin, in the last stage of capitalism, in order to generate greater profits than the home market can offer, capital is exported. This leads to the division of the world between international monopolist firms and to European states colonizing large parts of the world in support of their businesses. Imperialism is thus an advanced stage of capitalism, one relying on the rise of monopolies and on the export of capital (rather than goods), and of which colonialism is one feature (Bowles 2007).
Further:
Marx referred to colonialism in Das Kapital as an aspect of the prehistory of the capitalist mode of production. Using the Hegelian dialectic, Marx predicted the phenomenon of monopoly capitalism in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), hence the slogan "Workers of the world, unite!"). Lenin defined imperialism as "the highest stage of capitalism" (the subtitle of his outline), the era in which monopoly finance capital becomes dominant, forcing nations and corporations to compete themselves increasingly for control over resources and markets all over the world.
The exact system of regulated capitalism that we have today has only existed for a few hundred years, agreed, but again, capitalism itself has exited since one of our ancestors developed the technology to produce something that created a demand from his peers. His peers were inclined to come up with a some form of payment they felt was fair to exchange for whatever it is they wanted from their peer. The two would agree on a price set by the forces of supply & demand interacting on the transaction.
As you asked before, my definition of capitalism is any economic situation in which the product/technology/wealth is privately owned and left up to the forces of supply & demand to determine relative value.
The published definition of capitalism is pretty consistently something like this:
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
Now you tell me. When our ancestors in our primitive hunter gather societies, traded items between the hunters and the gathers and could individually determine at what price they were willing to exchange the goods, was that not capitalism?
Even further, lets suppose that a certain hunter gather tribe was a "primitive communist" society and that they all shared the wealth of the technologies and resources equally. What would happen when that tribe traded with another tribe as they often did? Would each tribe not have ownership over their respective items? Would each tribe not determine the price at which they were willing to trade their items? Is that not the definition of capitalism?
Man kind does change, and one of the biggest driving forces behind that change is evolution. The process of evolution is very efficient and magnifying traits that increase the fitness and reproductive success in a species.
The difference between being selfish and altruistic is very similar to the Prisoner' Dilemma scenario which has been made very famous.
It has been shown in numerous studies that humans have evolved traits to maximize their ability to survive and pass on their genes to the next generation (the basis of evolution). It has also been shown that we have the highest success in accomplishing in that objective by being selfish and only altruistic when it benefits us. In other words, the charity you and I feel compelled to do is nothing more than our evolutionary derived psychological barometer telling us that it will increase our fitness to do so.
This is like the Prisoners Dilemma because if there are two individuals and one is selfish and altruistic when it benefits him, and the other is always altruistic, the one that is selfish will have a higher probability of success and therefore pass on his genes to the next generation.
It's simple math. If each person has 1 (amount of energy) to expend and person A expends 1 on himself & 0 on person B; and person B expends .5 on himself and .5 on person A; well person A now has 1.5 energy expended on his survival while person B has .5; it is obvious which one has a higher probability of surviving.
Evolution has selected these genes and therefore the will be magnified throughout the species, meaning that anyone who does have purely altruistic tendencies will find their genes slowly decrease to a point of almost non-existence in our species.
Mutations and genetic variance will keep those people in our population, but at a very low percentage similar to homosexual people.
What about the fact the adopted children have a much higher likely hood of being killed or attacked by their step-parents and particularly their step father? Is that a learned behavior by step-parents when they are passed down through our society or is it possible that trait has developed because it increased the genetic success of our ancestors who possessed it? Not all bad traits are learned or passed down by society.
Defining greed in terms of money significantly narrows down the scope and excludes many of the factors that contribute to envy.
What about the fact that some the highest murder rates in tribal societies today who are relatively untouched by our "capitalistic" society are attributed to men being envious of another man's wife? Is that not envy and jealousy? It does not have to be related to money.
I spent four years studying anthropology in college, and I continue to be active in the field of evolutionary psychology today, and I can definitively tell you that greed existed in hunter/gather societies.
I'll tell you what. Go find two young children who have been uncorrupted by our society and are too young to have been influenced by it. Give one of them some shinny new object. What happens to the other one?
Due to a major blunder in my Mod abilities (or lack thereof), haha, this post is actually 2-0-Sixx.....
Do you agree or disagree with the statement, conditions create consciousness?
Keep point in bold. this statement basically is denying human evolution and social evolution, as if we are stuck with the same mind set since the beginning and until the end of time.
Yes, absolutely. It was only 30 years ago when revolutionary consciousness existed in the US and throughout the world. As the economy continues to worsen, as the global trends continue, poverty increases, etc., so to will the level of consciousness of man, the workers. Real change will be demanded, not asked for. The capitalist system that exists today cannot survive forever. I'm not saying it wont exist for another 50 years, because it most likely will, however it cannot maintain. It wont collapse on it's own, no matter how bad things get, it will need to eventually be pushed by the people. In order for there ever to be a push, several things need to occur to reach that point - such as the want and desire of the people for real change (and in order for that to occur, things will have to get worse (which they will)). If the working class does not eventually succeed in revolution and creating a democratic socialist society, the humanity will descend into chaos and brought back into barbarism (lots of the world already has in fact such as places in africa and asia).
Do you agree or disagree with the statement, conditions create consciousness?
Keep point in bold. this statement basically is denying human evolution and social evolution, as if we are stuck with the same mind set since the beginning and until the end of time.
Yes, absolutely. It was only 30 years ago when revolutionary consciousness existed in the US and throughout the world. As the economy continues to worsen, as the global trends continue, poverty increases, etc., so to will the level of consciousness of man, the workers. Real change will be demanded, not asked for. The capitalist system that exists today cannot survive forever. I'm not saying it wont exist for another 50 years, because it most likely will, however it cannot maintain. It wont collapse on it's own, no matter how bad things get, it will need to eventually be pushed by the people. In order for there ever to be a push, several things need to occur to reach that point - such as the want and desire of the people for real change (and in order for that to occur, things will have to get worse (which they will)). If the working class does not eventually succeed in revolution and creating a democratic socialist society, the humanity will descend into chaos and brought back into barbarism (lots of the world already has in fact such as places in africa and asia).
I just wanted to magnify this for one moment. It only takes one to start a mob. At one point does one group sway the mind of enough to revolt? It is the osmosis effect and can happen, especially if a new system is put in place and is not very old. Who is to say that one person could not sway 2, 2 sway 4, 4 sway 8, and so on? People are subjective to a point where they can turn objectivity into something they THINK they believe in and make it theres, preach it like the bible, and do the same to the next. Look at the armed forces....
Absolutely not, it was not capitalism because it was fair trade, there was no capital being gained.
Humans are social creatures, we are social by design. It was essential in the survival of mankind to work together, not against eachother for personal gain.
They maybe "untouched" by capitalist values but they are still touched by whatever societies they belong to, backwards as they may tend to be.
That's basically the exact same shit I wrote just worded differently. What happens when you give both those kids shiny new objects, rather than just one?
Humans are social creatures, we are social by design. It was essential in the survival of mankind to work together, not against eachother for personal gain.
They maybe "untouched" by capitalist values but they are still touched by whatever societies they belong to, backwards as they may tend to be.
That's basically the exact same shit I wrote just worded differently. What happens when you give both those kids shiny new objects, rather than just one?
