Calling all marxists

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No, he's right. That's the point of the state: you can't depend on people's generosity, but you can coerce it.

Last edited by enrico_dandolo on 07 May 2012, 1:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No. It is a true view. Study history. Check the recent and current news. Humans are born selfish and they cannot be made unselfish, by and large.

Face facts. Face human nature. The human beast is not a lovable beast.

ruveyn

From the 11th to the 13th century, European economy was expanding. The welfare system, managed the Church, was the best ever seen (at least until recent times), and being poor was dignified way to live, in line with imitatio Christi. In the 14th and 15th, the economy was stagnating or falling. With more poor people and less money to cater for them, they were less attended to, and poverty quickly began to be an ill in society: beggars and others were forced out of town, etc.

Ruveyn is right.

Cut it out with those pesky facts. And don't you dare mention the Pax Dei movement.

Meh, it is not directly related to economic policy, so I would not have.

EDIT: I maybe be wrong on the timescale for the changes in mentalities, though. It is a little rusty in my mind, so I don't know.

I'm using a copy of Heaton's Economic History of Europe for a mousepad, so I had a look. It looks to me like the period runs about 1150 to 1300, collapsing with the rising power of exclusionary guilds and mercantile associations.

So, in essence, communism/socialism can only exist in a system where all other economies are socialist. Furthermore, can only exist once a level of wealth is created wherein each citizen can be given what is in essence a middle to upper middle class lifestyle while effort still being required to the degree each citizen is capable of. I'll be a supporter of socialism once the world government is in place, there is only one nation on earth and the societal minimum for resources required can be satisfied at an "effort-rate" which is A: Highly variable and B: Independent of individual rewards.

In other words, I'll agree with socialists once we have about 100 - 200 years of Moore's law and once we've attained at least type 1 on the Kardashev scale. Of course, at that time we will have highly advanced industrial robots (created and paid for by capitalism) doing a majority of all required work, states can then simply tax the capitalist enterprises that now generate a lot more revenue due to not having to put up with workers, and socialism isn't needed. The funniest bit, is that in capitalism the capitalists want to get rid of the workers if possible since workers are innately inefficient, in socialism the workers want to get rid of the capitalists, both systems consider their system the idea.

I will never deny that human nature has some nasty parts. But it is absurd to say that they can't be changed, at least to some degree. Consider children. In the beginning they are pure id, expecting to have all of their wants and needs satisfied, regardless of the cost on others. As they grow they develop the superego (if I'm remembering my Freudian terms properly) and learn to constrain some of that selfish behaviour.

You also discount the role that society plays. For instance, hardly any Canadians would object to universal healthcare. We look at the American claim that it is an assault on freedom as laughable (I did understand your point after you'd explained it but I still disagree with some important aspects of your argument). And speaking of recent news, a group of Canadian doctors have started campaigning to increase tax for those with high incomes so as to maintain social services. Including, incidentally, the tax bracket, incidentally, that they fall into. Everyone is selfish huh? News article here.

And look at Tequila. He's a pretty hard core classical liberal, and yet even he accepts the necessity of some degree of welfare. Why? Probably the fact that he's from the UK, a society where most people believe in helping each other at least a little.

There are plenty of examples of selflessness. The human condition is not entirely cruel and selfish. And society can act to promote the selfless aspects while constraining the selfish ones, as can be seen in differences in attitudes in different countries.

By the way, why do you feel the need to enter a conversation that was intended to be a debate among socialists about socialist theory? The idea was to discuss paths to socialism, degrees of socialism etc., not the validity of the ideology itself.

Last edited by AstroGeek on 07 May 2012, 8:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, that I know. I was more uncertain about the timescale of the perception of poverty.

Interest or support in welfare systems can be self-motivated, for instance there is a correlation between poverty and crime rates. There is also a correlation between a persons labor-value and their health. Therefore, it is in everyone's best economic interest to keep people at a living standard where they are less likely to commit crimes and at as good a level of health as possible within a set cost to gain the most tax-revenues from the person. In both cases there is a strong argument to be made that social welfare systems are both in the best self interest of the individual and the community.

I've repeatedly mentioned that the only path I view as possible to socialism is through abundance with a minimum required amount of effort. IE through the need to put effort in to reap rewards being reduced to as close to nothing as possible. A collectivist view makes sense in a very small society (a family to 50 - 100 individual human beings) since in such a group the best interest of the individual is the best interest of the group and in very large groups (half the world or more, distributed as to have access to all required resources internally) where the case is the same. However, no-one seems interested in discussing it.

If the best interest of each individual lies with the collective regardless of the size of the collective, then socialism naturally establishes itself as it is the only ideology that makes sense. However, if socialism is not in the best interest of each individual then socialism implodes due to being undermined by those individuals for whom it's existence is not in their best interest.

I feel the need to enter the conversation because I have something to contribute in a discussion of socialist theory and find it interesting.

Comrades lets gather, the last we must face
The Internationale unites the human race.......

One world government is a world wide tyranny and with no place to run. No, thank you.

I don't want to live in a social order where I have to ask permission to be original and creative. And I do not give a flying f*ck about the collective either. Voluntary association is the only way for free folks to live.

Humans are not cattle, so to live in herds, nor are they social insects like ants and bees.

ruveyn

I wouldn't be too surprised if it coincided with those economic conditions. Pax Dei did (started a bit earlier and ended a bit sooner, but roughly speaking), and it's a tangentially related value system, which likely dovetailed neatly with the notion of poverty as a virtue.

Oh... I thought we disagreed. Do we?

I think the Pax Dei movement is not really related, though. I see it as part of a different evolution in Christianty, namely the attitude towards violence and warfare. It might fit the same chronology, but only in the same way that many other things did around 1300. You seem more knowledgeable about it than I am, however, so I won't be assertive on this.

You seem to have a rather odd view of what socialism entails. There are such things as libertarian socialists remember:

Not that I was aware of.



Little more to it than that - remember whose province violence and warfare was, and the relationship of the church to that group (the nobility). Pax Dei did not attempt to challenge the practice of nobles warring against one another, and as such, it was not truly an anti-war movement. What it aimed to do, was establish protected noncombatant classes, chiefly, the peasants and the clergy. This is in contrast to the practice of an earlier age, when feudal society was just emerging from Germanic tribal roots, and the population was frequently called up for war (eg the fyrds of Anglo-Saxon England) - the concept of noncombatant classes was novel.

When the population at large couldn't be protected, Pax Dei aimed for the less ambitious goal of protecting certain groups and their choices are telling: virgins, widows, and children were a common prohibition it sought to establish.



Historical fact is one thing, interpretation is usually in the eye of the beholder. Drawing connections between these things is always pure speculation, lacking certainty. I'm uncertain that I am more certain than you.

Okay... fine then!


It is still a far distance from the Early Christian complete rejection of violence, and still a jump from the Augustinian just war. Besides, bishops were of the same origins as secular lords, and the clear Gregorian separation of the spiritual and temporal worlds was recent.

(Whenever I write somewhere, it goes off-topic. Unbelievable.)