Questions for the surprisingly far right CFC population

Marx, like Freud, Nietzsche were students of What This Is. Economy became a dominant force in driving What This Is, and there was a guy, Marx, who did a really good job describing it at the time it happened.

If you are a student of What This Is, you can focus on any number of angles and dimensions to see reality/your reality. But once the dazzle wears off, and sobriety returns, all the other things mediating What This Is come back into view. At this juncture you can carry your fetish for your own pet discipline, believing that It Is The Thing, disregarding other information, or you can accept that you have studied one piece of a rich and complex dynamic puzzle.

There are so many things that be the human experience. The mode of production, or economy, is just one thing. To base all decisions of how best to mediate humans downriver of only that thing is not going to provide the necessary What This Is diversity to give humans a complete and healthy experience.

If you want to reshape all of humanity based on principles of one of these Things (some form of [prefix]ology), you will make us sick.

 

I don't think that oppression or poverty need to be parts of a "diverse human experience".

 

Hopefully they won't be in the long run.

 

Or in the short run, if we all start doing something about it

 

This is a terrible definition in my view. But if we are going off that definition, then indeed, markets and private ownership of the means of production are essential to creating enough wealth to end oppression and poverty. I also believe that diffuse private ownership is more conducive to conditions of political freedom than either state ownership or concentrated private ownership.

I don't see anything wrong with profit per se, but there are some industries (namely those whose economies of scale tend them toward monopoly and oligopoly) that I believe should be run not-for-profit, whether simply nationalized or regulated as nonprofits.

In my view, replacing the current militaristic-and-upward-redistribution-obsessed state with one that makes social welfare its top priority would be an improvement on the current system. So would reconstituting most current economic enterprise along democratic lines. And to me these things would constitute a displacement of capitalism from its current position as the dominant mode of production.

Related point: in actual society, as opposed to theory, multiple modes of production coexist at once. This is why I don't agree with Marx's revolutionary politics, because I think Marx was plainly wrong to view capitalism as a "totality" that completely displaced all social forms before it. We still have residual feudal and slave relations in our capitalism, and we have plenty of insurgent socialism/communism as well (though communism is arguably the oldest mode of production rather than something new and revolutionary).

What should we do?

 

No, that won't happen.

 

That's a bit like saying the cure for obesity is hunger. Sure, the latter does negate the former, but neither are good.

I think the problem space is more meta than an iron law of simplistic, taken-for-granted human psychology (i.e. "human nature"). With a lot of free time, people have more time to do bad things, but in more than a few ways, they also have fewer incentives to do so. Then it becomes a question of how we make sure that there are zero or close to zero incentives to do bad things. It becomes very difficult to think about this when we subscribe to the notion of Original Primate Sin, though.

 

Okay. What's your solution that doesn't mandate a high-modernist, single lens?

 

More like exercise helps with depression, if you want what I was aiming for.

 

Classic FB side-stepping. Always works with the crowd

 

Well, you don't actually think I want people hungry, do you? I'd rather have them fat if I have to choose. Diabetes is less bad than malnutrition.

But yes. Sidestepping. Sure. I suppose the need for exercise to function well might be able to be construed as similar to original sin making the concepts approximate. Though I usually tend to think of sexual selection as a closer match for that, so I'll leave it to you to make that particular argument if you want. I've attempted to clarify the intentions behind my speech.

 

For poverty: Keep the status quo to keep the trend? http://data.worldbank.org/topic/poverty
Or adopt Taiwan's model, along with its people? https://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=69
Oppression is another story.

(I think instead of poverty, a better feeling/metric is fairness and equality)

 

Yes, but we will never all do the same thing about anything. Even if we do, if the new thing is half baked, and it solves some problems while creating others, it will not last... Plus, we are dynamic. The world is. We change, and we evolve, and we adapt. The system has to be robust enough to address that. If you consider the entire species, it kind of is. Systems are shaped by major driving forces - they stand, they fall, they adapt.

 

Hunger vs. obesity was my analogy. Your issue was between a lot of free time or not enough free time due to having to work. That's not quite as harsh as purportedly thinking that you prefer people to be hungry, so don't put that on me.

And, also, I'm skeptical of stated intentions. I usually read how a message is positioned.

 

Ok, so you respond with a problem with my point as you read it, and I clarify that what I'm attempting to say is in fact closer to the argument you would advance.What am I supposed to be getting out of this other than you going vaguely Joe Wilson?

Edit: I mean, I used satiation as a value in post #105, so it's not like I mind the hunger analogy. I kinda like it even. Also works with your "no incentives to do bad things" point. It's satiation.

 

For those not following... that's the "You Lie!" guy during one of Obama's State of the Union speeches...

 

My solution is down the road but it starts right here with dialectics. First we need to come to a more perfect agreement and mutual understanding of the social ideal. So far I think we actually agree; I agree that human experience necessitates diversity, and that any social system needs to be capable of great adaptation. I think that capitalism has proven itself quite incapable of adaptation, given that the profit-minded continue to deforest and pollute despite the inevitable trajectory this sets us on. I think an economic system with collective ownership (I'll preemptively say this doesn't mean state property) would be way better able to adapt, as well as to progress. The capitalist insistence that competition is the greatest motivator is inconsistent with modern psychological and sociological science, and I think anyway that motivation comes more from culture than from inherent biology. I do think there are some inherent motivators when it comes to biology and survival, but I definitely think that on a broader level, especially post-civilization, culture is more important to motivation.

Anyway after the dialect comes education. Once we can agree on a message, bring the message to the people. Now this sounds vanguardist, but in fact it prevents vanguardism of action. If the entire revolutionary class is educated, then that prevents a vanguard party from seizing control through action. It still has characteristics of a vanguard party, but it's what I like to call ideological vanguardism as opposed to direct vanguardism. And it seems rather inevitable in this world of such diverse thought.

And I do think that the entire global proletariat can understand and come to the same conclusions when presented the same set of evidence.

Anyways after education comes things that will scare and excite and I think that I've already said enough for the reactionaries out there to analyze for the time being. I wasn't planning on going this deep into discussion, and I definitely maintain/accept that this forum about a video game probably isn't gonna be the foundation of a revolution, I just wanted to make sure y'all know I do have some ideas instead of proceeding with your strange assumption that I'm just saying these things to complain.

 

That's interesting, because I would say exactly the opposite. Capitalism has proven to be the most adaptable social system ever to exist. Capitalism has proven capable of subsuming every rebellion against it.

Out of curiosity, have you ever done any labor organizing?

 

@inthesomeday Some thoughts.

1) Who gets to decide how these people will be educated? You? Is that not the same old hierarchy with a new face?
2) You said collective ownership won't be state property, so how's it gonna work?
3) Couldn't motivation come from both culture and competition?
4) How are you going to stop people from polluting without a hierarchy of some sort?

 

Well that got scary really quickly.