Submitted by Maxwellsdemon17 t3_ymq8z6 in philosophy
Reply to comment by TheManInTheShack in "A socialist society has no room for parties or trade unions. [...] The struggle is for the simultaneous abolition of both market and production relations, [...]for the abolition of the differences in the working class brought about by the capitalist division of labor." by Maxwellsdemon17
Too many marxists here on Reddit - which is surprising knowing what we know about the communists states of the 20th century.
One can both critique capitalism and not espouse communism.
Individualism vs collectivism is the political spectrum. What you prefer is somewhere along the gradient from one extreme (anarchy) to the other (communism). Liberalism is critiqued by Marxism and I guess anarchy. So, yeah, you could espouse being an individual bandit also.
Indeed. Every time I say anything pro-capitalism I get downvoted despite the fact that it’s the reason we are no longer hunter-gatherers.
Communism is the worst of both worlds because those in power become corrupt and optimize around themselves. At least with capitalism, everyone has a shot.
> At least with capitalism, everyone has a shot.
except that, exactly like communism
> those in power become corrupt and optimize around themselves.
Thats just the reality of social and economic systems. Basic human greed means there will always be people wanting to take advantage of the system to benefit themselves, and will twist and manipulate the system however they can in order to do so.
Monopolies, price fixing, buying politicians, etc
and now that much of the western world has moved from capitalism into corporatism, where the assets available to those in power are so massive that the general public have zero chance to really compete against that manipulation of the system.
That basic human greed is the result of being shaped by evolution to make sure we survive and reproduce.
In the US 50% of Americans work for small businesses. If you want to work for yourself and you’re willing to do whatever it takes, you can. It’s not easy. I have worked for myself 32 of the 38 years of my adult life. There were times when I was working 16 hour days for weeks at a time.
Having said that, we need to overturn Citizen’s United. Corporations are not people. They are not allowed to vote for example. Given that they can’t vote they shouldn’t be able to donate to political campaigns. They are part of the reason our politics in the US are so divisive.
Yes, basic human greed has been a survival mechanism.
However now that humanity has transformed from hunter gathered tribes into a globally connected society, it has become a massive liability to that society
I’m not so sure. It’s also part of the reason we have our modern society. I certainly would not want to go back to living as a hunter-gatherer.
Which system sounds more shelfish to you:
One person owns everything
Or
All persons own their share?
Given that they are to decide before the existence of any rules. Measured in Paretian terms.
why do they need to decide before the existence of any rules ?
Clearly thats never going to happen, any tribe, society or group is always going to have rules of some sort. There is absolutely no reason why a society can't decide on a reallocation strategy at any stage of their existence to try and make the allocation of resources more equitable (if they think they can do that without destroying their society in the process).
And, during that period, those with more will scream about being made worse off as reallocation occurs. And, compared to their previous position of wealth, that may be true, but compared to the rest of their society, is almost certainly untrue in real terms.
Before rules is the moral apriori viewpoint for the inductive process of discovering a coherent set of rules. Also only such a system can truly be voluntary, something the libertarian and the capitalist would agree on. If you start from an existing set of rules that would be illogical potentially. It is like assuming that the moon is cheese and building the rest of the theory regarding the cosmos in an incorrect manner around that assumption.
indeed, however "before rules" assumes a blank slate, which is, sadly, as far from reality as one can get. It does provide an interesting academic exercise, but very little else of value.
and developing a "coherent set of rules" without a viable mechanism to move from current state, to the idealized state, is also meaningless, and ignores the reality that all societies are transitory, evolving and changing over years, decades and centuries, and your coherent set of rules rarely caters for that reality.
The best your rules can cater for is something to handle the current situation, with an acknowledgement that they need to be flexible enough to evolve and adapt as the society and situation evolves and adapts.
Your rules may, possibly, be able to provide an adaptive framework for change, but not much else.
How is it a blank state? People would be as they are, unlike assumed in those academic thought experiments. They just need to revise their moral judgments, not pretend to be suffering from a collective amnesia which is a view from nowhere. The real problem of politics is that we know that the box of statism is not right but we don’t want to step out of it. So here we are, always carrying our blind spot of judgment.
"before rules" assumes that no rules currently exist, and hence you have a blank slate on which to build your idealized rule set.
and People clearly would not be as they are, because they currently exist within a set of rules, societal practices and pre-existing mindsets that you're choosing to completely ignore in order to build that set of rules.
> "They just need to revise their moral judgements"
Yup, they need to discard all their life experiences and societal upbringing from their entire life, discarding their current mindset and attitudes completely, in order to make the change to your new ruleset. I believe that may be semi-possible with mass brainwashing and massive propaganda campaigns, but its hardly reliable, nor achieves a consistent result across society.
People's moral judgements are based on a wide variety of things, and are specific to an individual, as shaped and molded by their circumstances, environment, upbringing, society etc.
"Revising" that in everyone in order to generate some form of conformity with your new rule set isn't a viable option by anything except force and brainwashing, because everyone's experiences are different, hence their moral attitudes are different.
Why are you not able to comprehend the difference between moral judgments regarding social justice and individual identity? This actually sums up the communitarian thinking that poses that the methodological neutral subject is both too thin and thick to make a theory. But if you deconstruct moral judgments regarding the division of property that are a political thing not part of individual belief, you don’t need to touch personal history or identity.
Although in some cases as in the idea of american citizenship some moral judgments are part of one’s identity. But this is like a poisoned well that only poisons its drinker farer and farer away from reality. Not good.
So system x is bad because it is not x or people don’t live according to its principles? I’m not much assured.
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