Whats with the leftwing bent of Wrongplanet?

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Don't know if anyone here's quite so far left as me...I'm Trotskyist, for the most part. I believe proletarian revolution should only happen as a last resort, though. Democratic methods should be tried first, in my opinion.

I think I'm a lefty. I believe people that who hoard money that others have worked for should be barred from politics and that workers should be paid (in part) with shares in the company they work for and should have much more to say in how the company is run.

I also oppose that raw materials, goods and food are transported on a large scale from one continent to another. Goods should be produced in the country where the raw materials are found and not elsewhere so the local population may benefit economically.

LEFT... BAD!

I'm beyond good and evil.

The Internet as a whole leans liberal. Also, taxes aren't some bogeyman; taxes serve a purpose: to finance the common infrastructure (roads, schools, defense, justice, etc.). These would be ill fitted for supply by the private sector (can you imagine every little road being a toll road? can you imagine competing security firms staking out control of a city?).

Sure. Taxes aren't a boogeyman though, they are a thing. As a thing they are a moral action, they are a purposive action, and as an action they preclude other actions. No side should be irrational in regards to taxes.

I am an anarchist. I am neither left nor right because it is not about wealth distribution, but about the definition of property, ownership, and freedom in itself.

Capitalists often claim that they have rights to certain property; I would agree with this statement if it was concerning personal property, but it truly isn't. What capitalism allows is the private ownership of industry; in essence, it is the individualistic ownership of a collective effort. We live in a system where capital can buy voting power in a company, but work cannot. This system exploits workers by not giving a fair trade for their work, and it keeps an elite in power because of accumulated money. Capitalism is inherently exploitable and corruptible.

Communism and socialism is exploitable in a similar fashion, but instead of a corporate elite, you have an aristocratic government elite. The only logical solution for a free society is to eliminate government and industry by incorporating their power in to a collective society in which individuals are empowered through larger and more pervasive voting systems.

Industry isn't a collective effort, industry is a bunch of bricks and machines. There is nothing inherently collective about it, only that most individuals would not want it for themselves. Well, work is hired by capital, and work signs a contract to capital, why would a hired worker get a say beyond the contract? What is a fair trade? Both sides had to agree to the contract, certainly the laborer had to contract with somebody, but that is only the state of nature, beyond that he had freedom of contract, or even freedom to not contract. How is capitalism exploitable? How is it corruptible?

So, the only logical solution for a free society is to give us more masters? And these masters will have monopoly over all sectors of society? It seems to me that the logical solution is that a free society is a contradiction, let's abolish the society, for otherwise we are only left with the collective. I mean, democracy is only slavery to the masses.

Of course industry is a collective effort. Who makes the bricks? Who lays the bricks? Who makes the machines and works them? Who manages those people's efforts? Who designs these machines? It is a collective effort of scientific labor, manual labor, and managerial labor. However, only one of these groups owns the industry, the owner-manager types.

Work is only hired by capital in capitalism. I suggest an anarchistic system without capital, but equal and free distribution. The very nature of "hiring" itself is flawed; you haven't presented an argument for capitalism, but rather you merely explain it through it's own frame. This is part of the trickery of capitalism; they both technically "agree", but workers really don't have much of a choice. Even if they went to another company, they would be in the same essential situation. Capitalism is inherently exploitable because industry can control what we define as truth, what we see, what we hear, what we use, and what sort of people we work for. It is designed so that finding an acceptable free working condition is very difficult. It exists, so they can call it free, but at the same time they control the masses, which is what really counts.



We have to understand that under my proposed system, collective matters and ownership are defined by collective effort, while individual matters and ownership are defined by individual effort. For example, the collective owns and votes on what we should produce and how to produce it, but once the products are distributed they are under the individual's domain because he gained that particular item through his own work. So, the manufacturing and designing of computers would belong to the collective, but the individual computer would belong to the individual. Thus, voting on personal matters (for example, drug use and homosexuality) is not even an option. The collective can only control what pertains to collective effort and what is public property (streets, for example).

They also cannot be defined as "masters", since every individual has equal say on how things are run. They also have personal control over how they get their work done, and what they do with what's theirs. What we need to do is distinguish between "freedom" and "authority"; just because society decides it's own fate doesn't mean you've lost any freedom, it just means you're not allowed to control them as an individual. Freedom is not to do whatever you want; freedom is the ability to direct you life from your ego alone and to only engage in consensual behavior. Freedom is not the ability to trump society's decisions based on your own personal whims. You get a say, which is free, but if you were to control it that would be the absence of a free society, for you would be a tyrant.

And then if we argue, then all things are collective efforts, and you have explained away the individual. I say that individuals exist, and that all efforts are not those of collectives but of these individuals. Every individual in this group is compensated for their effort, but the capital still belongs to the capital provider. The issue at heart is property ownership, the owner-manager type simply exchanges one type of property to another. He coordinated all of the effort and hired every member to this task to recompense them for their efforts.


Well, I know I haven't. I haven't sought to simply because you are explaining capitalism from a different view point, and so there is nothing to argue as we are simply disputing the nature of structures. Well, the issue is that unless we say all companies are the same entity, we still have freedom of contract, and given heterogenous wages, it seems as if the situation is one of agreement, competition, and markets as economists tend to suggest. Ok, yes powers that be define the truth on some level, but it seems to me that industry really does not do a lot to control the masses. They still publish your Chomsky after all.


The issue is that collectives are terms used to define ants. Individual effort characterizes every activity, even the collective ones. I argue that we should reduce everything to that level for the sake of the individual. Um... the collective, if it has control, has control over all elements of this. The individual may be able to participate in purchasing decisions, but the over all production process is collectively controlled. I think we'd both agree that economic control is important for human realities, and I fear the power of the collective than that of a bunch of selfish, purposeless machines. Voting on personal matters is always an option, homosexual pornography, production of drugs, and etc are under collective control, and that is the major issue. Collectiveness in one section means domination by the collective throughout.

The issue is that each individual has a say over what every other individual does. The "collective" elements define human realities under a developed state. Yes, societal decisions deny me freedom, because society, being an aggregate, cannot make a decision without me, unless that society is better described as an aggregate of individuals, and if we deal with the latter then the term "society" is only a confusion anyway. Freedom *IS* to do whatever the hell you want, if others hate it, they will do what the heck they want. Society has no right to decide for my labor above myself.

I wouldnt call WP left wing. I would call it largely secular though.

Secular and right libertarian, IMO.

Yes. I would be closest to a right libertarian.

Largely secular.

Largely under 30. I forget what that cliche is about left/rightism and having no heart and no head, you know the one.

All things are not collective effort. Building a series of cars is a collective effort, but building an old car from near scratch is an individual effort because the original creators have already been compensated.

That is why we end the capital provider. The capital provider gained that capital through the efforts of previous workers anyways, so why should the proletariat work for what could already be theirs? They may be compensated, but it is not compensation decided through an equal bidding process or contract. The capital only belongs to the provider because capitalism allowed it.

The issue is that coordination does not entail ownership unless the law defines it that way. Coordination is merely another form of work, but coordination is the only sort of work that allows extreme exploitation. This entire system of investment merely complicates what is quite simple. All industry requires is materials and workers to produce something. In capitalism, you need investment. The investment came from other workers producing something. Why not cut out all the nonsense and distribute these goods amongst the public? There is a reason there is all this unnecessary trading; it allows people to accumulate without explaining exactly what's going on.



This is simply not true. The public relations industry was literally created by Freud's nephew; he used psychological theory to manipulate people through our information networks. Industries hire psychiatrists all the time.

Contracts after the collectivizing of industry exist as contracts with society, rather than contracts with the bourgeoisie.

Publishing Chomsky is part of their control method. The public today is concerned with freedom, thus the powers that be cannot be seen as censors. Instead, they overwork and barely educate the people so that all they see and hear comes from blow-hards like Bill O'Reilly. They don't need to control a minority of truth-seekers, they just need to control the masses. Therefore, they publish Chomsky, but they would never promote him, and they will put a spin on him as well.



Individual effort does characterize collective effort, which is why individuals are compensated. They are merely not compensated unevenly. Capitalism is individualism for a spoiled minority.

Production of drugs and pornography are not necessarily under collective control (at least not in my ideal). For example, industries could be started regardless of what the collective thinks. If we design the collective to always allow new efforts, then a "business" could be started. The difference is that each person working in this industry has a vote directly to that industry, and expansion will only occur when demand increases. So, it is not necessarily the collective as a whole that votes on the pornography industry, but only the collective involved. Everyone can vote on community-wide issues such as plan setting, but not everyone can vote on the very inner workings of the porn industry. Only the workers.

Or, something like drug production could be done privately. It's easy to grow marijuana and mushrooms on your own, for example. We need a system that allows people to do whatever they want, but are accountable to all involved. So, you can start a business, but it doesn't follow an exploitive model. Expansion is determined by demand, like capitalism, and if a business fails the people involved will be expected to try something else.

Involvement should define power. The individual is empowered by having a say in whatever his work is put towards.




Maybe in anarcho-communism or something of that sort. In the unnamed system I propose, people only have a say in what others do within that industry or specific collective. People only have a say in what the direction of the industry is, but not necessarily the detailed rules that govern people.

Society and the collective are really nothing but a collection of individuals. Society's "choice" is really nothing more than weighing the desires of each individual. It is literally impossible to work together and still be able to do whatever you wish within it, no matter what the economics are. I propose a society which allows individuals to work wherever they wish, yet are still expected to produce goods that others will use and consume. As long as they can distribute what is produced, they can continue to do whatever they wish. It follows models of supply and demand, and it allows people to create industry and business, like capitalism. Unlike capitalism, all involved have ownership, there is no money, and the interests of society are collectivized rather than distributed amongst contrary institutions. This is not a socialistic system as much as it is an even individualistic system. It keeps the concept of individual freedom in the economy while not allowing the flawed property conception that capitalism has. It allows society as a whole to govern, but not any say in individual and consensual matters. The individual has say wherever he or she may be, but not a say where they are not. Society is not in your home, therefore only you and your family have a say. Society is not in your industry, thus only you and your colleagues have a say. Industry has a say in society, not the other way around.

What I'm explaining is individual freedom through political power at all levels relevant to the individual. Not collective freedom through political powers at all levels relevant to society.

Last edited by SertraOD on 28 Jul 2008, 1:11 am, edited 2 times in total.

As a religious socialist, I am actually almost as far as one can be from what appears to be the normative stance on Wrong Planet.