Arguments for Socialism
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‘Your reticence indicates that, at minimum, you do incline toward the proposition that “Socialism universalises misery”.’
I do believe that today’s so called socialists want to share out the misery.
‘Have you ever stopped to consider why these [unspecified] “scientific and engineering problems” are driven by the inhuman need for commercial profit instead of by the thoroughly human drive to comprehend the world we inhabit, and to make life better for all who dwell in it?’
Err… I would think it was because we’re living in a profit driven society.
‘..to make life better for all who dwell in it?’ But that it subjective. What you consider a “better life” might be different to my definition.
‘Maybe think a little more about becoming a socialist.’
No. I don’t think I’ll bother. Thanks
TomandBob wrote: “No. I don’t think I’ll bother. Thanks”
TomandBob, what’s the point of coming to a Socialist site, when you’ve no real interest in Socialism?
If you fundamentally believe that Capitalism is a better form of society, why ask questions which will get answers that you dislike?
Most people start to ask questions about Socialism precisely because they’ve already become disenchanted with Capitalism through their own experience, so that their ‘beliefs’ are already being undermined.
I’m no fan of twc (in fact, I consistently argue with them), but they’ve done a good job of challenging your ‘beliefs’ about Capitalism, of which you’ve made no attempt to justify.
If you’ve just come to ‘win an argument’ with Socialists, you’ll always ‘win’ it, given your pre-existing ‘beliefs’.
However, if I’m wrong, and you do have some disagreements with Capitalism, you should express them, and allow argument to develop those disagreements, and to pose some alternatives.
I have said in my previous posts that the problem with capitalism is that it results in obscene disparities in wealth. I would like to see a society in which there is an abundance for all. The rich man/woman can have their 10 cars, but there should at least be a minimum. The living standards of the average middle class American would be a start. However, my problem with so called ‘socialists’ is that they seem to want to temper societal aspirations and to share out the misery. No comments I have read have persuaded me otherwise. I think the problem is about ‘need’. Want I want or need for a happy life may be different to you and this is where conflict may arise in a “socialist” society.
Maybe you’d like a mansion with 140 rooms. Be our guest. But good luck persuading any suckers to clean them for you, in a world without wages and without any admiration for anyone with such decadent proclivities. They’d say you were either ill, or a bad actor playing at being a member of a dead class.
But you wouldn’t be harming anyone, so good luck. Except your ten cars better not be polluting ones. Also, cars will probably have been replaced by different modes of transport, in a world where technology has been released to serve safer means, and where it is no longer necessary for millions of people to rush somewhere every day in the service of the god profit.
That you would want ten cars just for you is a statement that you don’t give a damn about pollution either.
Are your meals also of proportions fit for George IV or Louis XIV?
Do you get through a barrel of mashed potato each day? Do you wear two sets of clothes a day and then chuck them?That’s the snag. How do you decide what is enough? One person’s met ‘needs’ are another person’s ‘poverty’.
TomandBob wrote: “…my problem with so called ‘socialists’ is that they seem to want to temper societal aspirations…”
Socialists argue that ‘society’ should ‘temper’, through democratic means.
If you’re arguing that each ‘I’ should ‘temper’, through individual means, then we have a difference of opinion, not least about ‘aspirations’ and their origin and realisation.
Perhaps this is our point of difference: capitalist ideology stresses ‘individual’ (thus undemocratic) power, whereas socialist ideology stresses ‘social’ (thus democratic) power.TomandBob wrote: “…to share out the misery”
Why would socialists share out ‘misery’ rather than the ‘fruits of their own production’? Where does this ‘misery’ come from, is it a ‘natural’ state of humanity (as some religions would argue)?
TomandBob wrote: “[What] I want or need for a happy life may be different to you and this is where conflict may arise in a “socialist” society.”
Yes, conflicts will arise, and will be solved by discussion and voting. If you want a society where some individuals have the power to override the majority’s wishes and to damage other individuals’ wants or needs ‘for a happy life’, then you’ll disagree with socialists.
I said be our guest where no harm is caused. We won’t force you to see a doctor, just suggest you do.
I don’t think [about becoming a socialist].
I don’t think, therefore I am not.
‘..to make life better for all who dwell in it?’ But that is subjective. What you consider a “better life” might be different to my definition.
I imagine that you and your partner seek a “better life” for each. That is the analog of what world-socialists seek for humanity on a global scale.
World socialists, following Marx (especially in Capital), seek to get rid of capital’s socially-necessary machinery for extracting surplus-value from the working class and carving it up among the capital-owning class.
What will vanish is wage-labour, hiring and firing, buying and selling, banking and insurance, advertising and manipulation, stocks and shares, policing and gaoling, military and armaments.
Removing the machinery of capital will render “intellectual” mediocrity and moral vapidity, indispensable concomitants of a lifetime of self-serving anti-social activity, socially unnecessary.
[In passing, on abilities and needs, you may get inspiration from Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program.]
Finally, your limited horizon of “living standards of the average middle class American” is poor Oliver Twist in the workhouse daring to ask “Please sir, can I have some more [gruel]”.
Socialists demand so, so much more—a far, far, better world!
The so-called Middle East is just a fantasy created by the capitalist class to make some wage slaves believe that they are in better conditions than other wage slaves. They are living in fantasyland
This is a world of masochists; millions of people love capitalism and their own exploiters, and they are willing to die defending the interests of the capitalist class
Capitalists have done a great job in the minds of many workers; they are completely alienated, like Warren Buffett said: There is a class war, and my class is winning that war. Capitalists have more class consciousness than the working class
The new trend is to elect and support members of the capitalist class because they are not corrupt, according to their analysis, but the biggest corruption takes place at the point of production, where a small number of parasites steal their own labour
As one of the articles in the June issue of the socialist standard says: Do not blame the politicians, blame it on capitalism
The problem in the ‘so called middle-east’ is radical Islam, mainly propagated by Iran.
—————————————————————————————The problem in the Middle East and any part of the earth is capitalism, the cause of wars is capitalism, and capitalism is war, and the so-called peace among the capitalists is just the continuation of wars by other means. The problem in that region is not religion; religion is the ideological vehicle used by the ruling class around the whole world to alienate the working class and divert them from the real social, political and economic causes of our world
Nationalism is the vehicle used to divert the working class. In parts of the world where religions are still strong, nationalism wears religious garb; in secularist parts, like Europe, it appears as itself, or as “freedom” and “democracy.”
The more secularist regimes in the near East, Iraq and Syria, were obliterated by western secularist regimes supporting Islamist extremists who were also enemies of Iran.
If only…. 😀
You want capitalism without its “disadvantages”. Fair enough?
What if capitalism’s “disadvantages” aren’t bugs but features, expressions of its heartless heart and soulless soul.
OK, suppose you can’t eliminate capitalism’s “disadvantages” then you’ll soften their effects with a “minimum” proposal:
Let the “rich man/woman have their 10 cars, but there should at least be a minimum.”
If you understood Marx’s Capital, you’d realise that giving workers more to spend on commodities is not “disadvantageous” to the accumulation of capital. It’s beneficial.
Your “minimum” would usher in a capitalist paradise of increased profits for capitalists, and bread and circuses for workers.
Perhaps you don’t realise that you are mouthing capitalism’s perennial anxiety over the risk and uncertainty that is part and parcel of capital accumulation.
You suffer anxiety paralysis “I no longer think”.
This is evident in your naive expectation that Socialists will rush to soothe your unavoidable insecurity within a social system that is totally dominated by risk and uncertainty.
Meanwhile you blithely continue to tolerate capitalism’s exploitation of the working class, and its attendant anti-social machinery (“advantageous” to capital because it is solely productive of capital accumulation)—wage labour, hiring and firing, buying and selling, banking and insurance, advertising and manipulation, stocks and shares, policing and gaoling, military and armaments.
Let’s hope your own insecure wealth remains safe.
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