The state is violent and community is violent and privacy is violent
Can anyone come up with an ideology that is not violent and can actually be implemented in the real world with real actors that aren’t smelling roses and giving out hugs?
Side note, any ideology that claims your neighbors are the enemy aren’t worth a damn.
What is your criteria for “can actually be implemented in the real world”? This varies by the individual. I need to know what your perspective on this is. Could you explain why capitalism isn’t violent?
There will always be antisocial behavior (the basis for what we call crimes), yes. However, that doesn’t mean your neighbor is the enemy because they might be one of the few people that do antisocial things.
I disagree. A person who would intentionally cause me or my family harm despite having their needs met is both my enemy and the enemy of a reasonable society.
I understand where you’re coming from. But it seems like you’re assuming that anyone capable of causing you or your family harm is a threat. What I’m saying is that no one is a threat until proven otherwise.
You misunderstand the hypothetical. All, or nearly all, people are capable but only a few would. My point is that evil exists and to ignore it is a problem. Several people in this discussion have attempted to say that capitalism is the cause of evil. This is obviously untrue. Capitalism can enable evil, but to claim that a different economic system would eliminate evil is ridiculous.
Capitalism exacerbates many things, including crime, violence, and instability. From a leftist perspective, private property is given rights, which artificially increases the amount of crime statistics. If private property were abolished, the only crimes that would occur are between people. It will still happen. But most crime is committed out of desperation to meet their needs.
This is due to artificial scarcity. The world is abundant in resources. In an equitable society, people may steal, but when everyone has their needs met, anything else is extra, and surprisingly many may be happy with “enough” or “enough plus a little with storable necessities belonging to everyone.”
This is simply incorrect on so many levels. There are people who will simply not abide by the social structures you are talking about. You are assuming an idolized group of people where there is no evil. Evil doesn’t magically disappear without capitalism…
That’s a very disingenuous assertion. I quantified my statement, you are the one assigning absolutes, and unfortunately, absolutes are idolized and probably not realistic any exact sense. Variables exist but not equally, everywhere, always (unless we’re talking about carefully controlled labs, and human error and unforeseen events still happen that may not be immediately apparent.
My position is that evil exists and that using socialism or communism doesn’t fix that… and you say I am being unreasonable. How do we continue the discussion from this point? I’m not even defending capitalism. The implied argument you are making is that capitalism causes evil. I don’t agree with that. I don’t dispute that capitalism enables evil people to prosper and I think unregulated capitalism encourages evil behavior.
Personally, I think the only reason evil exists is because the world is unfair, some are advantageous and some are not. This causes people to refuse to “play” fairly which causes bad behaviors such as deception, exploitation, murder, etc. The only way to eliminate or reduce evil is to make the world fairer. One of the ways I can think of is for the fortunate to help the unfortunate.
I don’t believe this to be true. Fairness only matters to people who value fairness. Many people value fairness, but it is irrational to believe that everyone values fairness. Some, not most or even many, don’t care about fairness fundamentally. For these people, interesting fairness does nothing for them. These are the people we need to protect others from while also providing an environment that didn’t necessarily mean removing or killing them.
But what causes people to value fairness so little or so much? When I support equality, I don’t just mean wealth or resources, but everything, and in this case it’s intellect or knowledge. When people have different intellect or knowledge, there is bound to be misunderstanding or miscommunication or other issues. People who have low empathy or are ignorant or dumb to realize how fairness affects people can make things worse. I guess in this case we can make everyone equally smart so no one can deceive and no more misunderstanding. Can’t make smart people dumber so I suggest making dumb people smarter which is to give education to those who need it.
Humans are different between individuals. Some people are dumb. Some people are mean. Some people are evil. Fundamentally the paradox of tolerance applies to fairness as well.
Well you wouldn’t like this answer probably. I suggest to eliminate the differences but i think it’s impossible. As long as there is positive, there is negative. To eliminate the negative is to eliminate the positive too, which is neutral and can make life very dull. So my other suggestion is quite radical which is to eliminate life itself. Or just make life or the world as fair as possible even if it’s impossible.
Ah, good old fashioned Nihilism. Another thing that I think is silly.
It is irrelevant what you think personally. Other people don’t necessarily think those things and assuming that they will or do abide by your positions without an incentive is folly.
Except for those deformed by conditioning into abject servility, everyone values fairness at the moment of being unfairly deprived of the means of one’s own survival.
Valuation of fairness is a rather robust human trait. In some individuals it may be less pronounced, but as a tendency it is robust, not only among humans, but also among various non-human species.
Members of societies with low levels of inequality generally have more favorable subjective experiences, even those within the cohorts with greater privilege.
Nurturing the vitality of society as a whole, and the health of relations in community, has been a facet of human behavior indispensable for our survival.
Capitalism, in theory and in practice, guides behavior be providing incentives for producing value.
However, REGULATION is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to remove incentives from antisocial things, and incentivize pro social behavior that isn’t profitable.
People keep fucking up that second part, and then wonder why corruption is so widespread. Corruption is perfectly predictable. We need to build incentives to reward and promote good behavior.
Edit: corruption exists in every system and it’s why things like pure communism and socialism don’t work.
I’d actually love to hear more about your perspective. I totally agree with the idea that regulation is required to disincentivize antisocial behavior, but how does that relate to “pure” socialism? What do you mean by that phrase?
In capitalism the system is supposed to work like:
-private ownership of value producing assets
-individuals seek profit
-legal system/government force protects the individuals
-competing for market share protects the consumers
-market forces regulate prices and spending
-logistics become the responsibility of the businesses, incentivized by profit - ie don’t let people starve because you make money by selling food.
Under socialism and communism, the people or the state own the value producing assets…
-now the state is supposed to pursue profit, instead of the individuals.
-now protecting the people is against the interests of the state
-there is no competition against the state because it’s all state-owned monopoly
-there are no market forces regulating prices and spending, it’s just committees or something? And it’s an impossible problem
-because black markets form for valuable things that aren’t available
-etc etc etc
We just have too many examples of systems that promise the population that they will be rewarded for “trusting the party” and “working hard for your neighbors” but in the end it’s state propaganda, policing our neighbors, starving by the millions, etc.
Capitalism can be shit too, because there are problems that are profitable to ignore. Like the housing crisis.
-houses and rent extremely profitable
-buy more properties and rent them for profit
-as population grows and density increases, value increases
-market says just raise rents
In this situation:
-I don’t want traffic to improve. Because I don’t want people to be able to move further from the city center where my over valued properties are.
-i don’t want people to be able to work from home
-i don’t want more houses built, because I don’t want to dilute the market and reduce my value
-the only incentive for developers to come in and build more homes is … The price they can sell the homes for. So the system keeps the problem in place.
Consumers want to buy homes. The government wants votes. So we get policies like George Bush letting families but homes with no down payment, which just raises prices because now there are more shoppers but not more product.
There are many solutions to the housing crisis, but all of them require owners and landlords to take a haircut. I’m probably a fan of decentralizing cities and shifting to increased work from home with zoning improvements for mixed commercial/residential in suburban environments. That shifts the market away from the dense areas it’s currently focused. That could (hopefully) interest developers to build commercial/residential properties in these areas, so everyone wins in the long run.
The other issue is this development needs to be fast. The push for green buildings with fully sealed envelopes and intense insulation, etc, makes it harder for Joe schmo to get into the homebuilding business, or just build his own home. We need grants and other incentives to promote that kind of behavior, too.
Michael Parenti has written several books and given a lot of speeches on how neoliberal countries in the imperial core use imperialism to force countries in the global south to accept unequal exchange. I highly recommend him as a source. I posted a few of his speeches here about a month ago if you want to watch them
There is no particular way that capitalism is “supposed to work”.
It is a system occurring in a particular historic period, having emerged from particular historic antecedents.
You seem to be characterizing capitalism as though it has some kind of character that is natural, metaphysical, or even teleological.
Anyone extolling capitalism as essentially benevolent, as framed around some set of pure ideals, is engaged in apologetics.
As for your characterizations of socialism, I think you are emphasizing specific historic developments more than the broader history and objectives of the movement.
It might be helpful for you to investigate the differences between statist and anti-statist tendencies within socialism.
Capitalism is the societal system that began to take form within the historic period following the gradual collapse of the feudal order in Europe, but that became truly well formed in the wake of the industrial revolution.
Capitalism is characterized by the unbounded accumulation of private wealth by a small cohort of society, by asserting exclusive control over the means by which wealth is generated, and by claiming as profit a share of the value generated by the labor of the rest of society, depriving them from realizing the full value of their labor.
You’re describing the social systems that form around capital and capitalism, which I agree are largely both presently and historically bad.
“Should” statements are moral statements. When it say capitalism should work a certain way, I mean that it must work a certain way in order to be moral.
What we have doesn’t work that way.
Socialism and communism treat capital differently. As far as I understand the definitions:
Socialism refers to social/government ownership of capital, which is then supposed to benefit all members of the society.
Communism refers to no ownership of capital, or community ownership of capital the the broadest sense. All revenue produced is distributed to the people based on their needs.
I use these definitions outside of structure or information or morality, because we can talk about those once we agree on what we’re talking about.
Private ownership of the means of production leads to division of society into classes with mutually antagonistic interests, boundless accumulation of private wealth, and workers being deprived of the full value of their labor.
Such are the inevitable structural consequences following from the protection of private property.
They cannot be wished away. If you accept private property, then you also accept a fantasy, from not understanding the material criticism of capital as a totalizing societal system, or you accept the consequences as I have identified them.
Socialism, and equivalently communism, is the political movement seeking the abolition of private property, and the class antagonisms that it requires and produces, toward the development of a classless society, in which the public asserts direct cooperative control over the economy.
Some movements have invoked the strategy that substantial state control over the economy would characterize a transitional stage occurring before the economy would be directly managed by the public.
However, socialists broadly reject state control of the economy as an ultimate objective, because state bureaucracy simply reproduces the same kinds of class antagonisms characteristic of capitalism, placing those within the state against those outside.
Anti-statist tendencies of socialism seek for the public to develop direct control of the economy without the control of the state.
“Privacy” is not violent, nor implicated in the discussion. Private property of course is mentioned and is pivotal.
Private property is a social relationship, entrenched as a social construct, and protected by the capacity of the state to inflict violence.
Without violence, neither the state nor private property would continue to exist, because both represent power imbalances, which would not long be respected by the disempowered, except by the invocation of force by the powerful.
Community is not bound in violence as an indispensable feature.
Surely, violence occurs in community, generally as a consequence of conflict that had previously escalated incrementally. Within community, members generally may resolve the root cause of conflict, including by directly addressing imbalances in power. Communities are not characterized by the necessity of violence for them to preserve themselves.
Healthy communities both seek to resolve conflict before any erupts into violence, and seek to contain violence when it emerges.
Any community that is not prevented from doing so by outside powers can achieve such a level of health.
A capitalist society at large cannot prevent violence, because violence is both an inevitable consequence and an indispensable requisite for the overarching conflict within capitalist society, of the irreconcilable and conflicting interests between those who own private property, versus those who must sell their labor to survive.
The state is violent and community is violent and privacy is violent
Can anyone come up with an ideology that is not violent and can actually be implemented in the real world with real actors that aren’t smelling roses and giving out hugs?
Side note, any ideology that claims your neighbors are the enemy aren’t worth a damn.
What is your criteria for “can actually be implemented in the real world”? This varies by the individual. I need to know what your perspective on this is. Could you explain why capitalism isn’t violent?
I think it’s important to note that your neighbors might be the enemy… most people are great, some are not.
There will always be antisocial behavior (the basis for what we call crimes), yes. However, that doesn’t mean your neighbor is the enemy because they might be one of the few people that do antisocial things.
I disagree. A person who would intentionally cause me or my family harm despite having their needs met is both my enemy and the enemy of a reasonable society.
I understand where you’re coming from. But it seems like you’re assuming that anyone capable of causing you or your family harm is a threat. What I’m saying is that no one is a threat until proven otherwise.
You misunderstand the hypothetical. All, or nearly all, people are capable but only a few would. My point is that evil exists and to ignore it is a problem. Several people in this discussion have attempted to say that capitalism is the cause of evil. This is obviously untrue. Capitalism can enable evil, but to claim that a different economic system would eliminate evil is ridiculous.
Capitalism exacerbates many things, including crime, violence, and instability. From a leftist perspective, private property is given rights, which artificially increases the amount of crime statistics. If private property were abolished, the only crimes that would occur are between people. It will still happen. But most crime is committed out of desperation to meet their needs.
Seriously? Do you not have the ability to understand hypotheticals?
This is due to artificial scarcity. The world is abundant in resources. In an equitable society, people may steal, but when everyone has their needs met, anything else is extra, and surprisingly many may be happy with “enough” or “enough plus a little with storable necessities belonging to everyone.”
This is simply incorrect on so many levels. There are people who will simply not abide by the social structures you are talking about. You are assuming an idolized group of people where there is no evil. Evil doesn’t magically disappear without capitalism…
That’s a very disingenuous assertion. I quantified my statement, you are the one assigning absolutes, and unfortunately, absolutes are idolized and probably not realistic any exact sense. Variables exist but not equally, everywhere, always (unless we’re talking about carefully controlled labs, and human error and unforeseen events still happen that may not be immediately apparent.
Wtf seriously?
No I wasted my time to come up with a simple way to describe complex nuances and typed it up on my device for lulz. :-|
My position is that evil exists and that using socialism or communism doesn’t fix that… and you say I am being unreasonable. How do we continue the discussion from this point? I’m not even defending capitalism. The implied argument you are making is that capitalism causes evil. I don’t agree with that. I don’t dispute that capitalism enables evil people to prosper and I think unregulated capitalism encourages evil behavior.
Personally, I think the only reason evil exists is because the world is unfair, some are advantageous and some are not. This causes people to refuse to “play” fairly which causes bad behaviors such as deception, exploitation, murder, etc. The only way to eliminate or reduce evil is to make the world fairer. One of the ways I can think of is for the fortunate to help the unfortunate.
I don’t believe this to be true. Fairness only matters to people who value fairness. Many people value fairness, but it is irrational to believe that everyone values fairness. Some, not most or even many, don’t care about fairness fundamentally. For these people, interesting fairness does nothing for them. These are the people we need to protect others from while also providing an environment that didn’t necessarily mean removing or killing them.
But what causes people to value fairness so little or so much? When I support equality, I don’t just mean wealth or resources, but everything, and in this case it’s intellect or knowledge. When people have different intellect or knowledge, there is bound to be misunderstanding or miscommunication or other issues. People who have low empathy or are ignorant or dumb to realize how fairness affects people can make things worse. I guess in this case we can make everyone equally smart so no one can deceive and no more misunderstanding. Can’t make smart people dumber so I suggest making dumb people smarter which is to give education to those who need it.
You answered it yourself, but I will elaborate.
Humans are different between individuals. Some people are dumb. Some people are mean. Some people are evil. Fundamentally the paradox of tolerance applies to fairness as well.
Well you wouldn’t like this answer probably. I suggest to eliminate the differences but i think it’s impossible. As long as there is positive, there is negative. To eliminate the negative is to eliminate the positive too, which is neutral and can make life very dull. So my other suggestion is quite radical which is to eliminate life itself. Or just make life or the world as fair as possible even if it’s impossible.
Ah, good old fashioned Nihilism. Another thing that I think is silly.
It is irrelevant what you think personally. Other people don’t necessarily think those things and assuming that they will or do abide by your positions without an incentive is folly.
I’m simply just providing my solutions or opinions. Better than nothing i guess, unless you have a better plan.
Of course, it’s impossible to please everyone. Can’t take some without losing some. So maybe just brute force it? Idk.
So your suggestion is to force people to agree with you and to submit to your interpretation of fairness… with violence…
Except for those deformed by conditioning into abject servility, everyone values fairness at the moment of being unfairly deprived of the means of one’s own survival.
Valuation of fairness is a rather robust human trait. In some individuals it may be less pronounced, but as a tendency it is robust, not only among humans, but also among various non-human species.
Members of societies with low levels of inequality generally have more favorable subjective experiences, even those within the cohorts with greater privilege.
Nurturing the vitality of society as a whole, and the health of relations in community, has been a facet of human behavior indispensable for our survival.
Capitalism, in theory and in practice, guides behavior be providing incentives for producing value.
However, REGULATION is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to remove incentives from antisocial things, and incentivize pro social behavior that isn’t profitable.
People keep fucking up that second part, and then wonder why corruption is so widespread. Corruption is perfectly predictable. We need to build incentives to reward and promote good behavior.
Edit: corruption exists in every system and it’s why things like pure communism and socialism don’t work.
I’d actually love to hear more about your perspective. I totally agree with the idea that regulation is required to disincentivize antisocial behavior, but how does that relate to “pure” socialism? What do you mean by that phrase?
It’s just the “trust me bro” thing.
In capitalism the system is supposed to work like:
-private ownership of value producing assets -individuals seek profit -legal system/government force protects the individuals -competing for market share protects the consumers -market forces regulate prices and spending -logistics become the responsibility of the businesses, incentivized by profit - ie don’t let people starve because you make money by selling food.
Under socialism and communism, the people or the state own the value producing assets…
-now the state is supposed to pursue profit, instead of the individuals. -now protecting the people is against the interests of the state -there is no competition against the state because it’s all state-owned monopoly -there are no market forces regulating prices and spending, it’s just committees or something? And it’s an impossible problem -because black markets form for valuable things that aren’t available -etc etc etc
We just have too many examples of systems that promise the population that they will be rewarded for “trusting the party” and “working hard for your neighbors” but in the end it’s state propaganda, policing our neighbors, starving by the millions, etc.
Capitalism can be shit too, because there are problems that are profitable to ignore. Like the housing crisis.
-houses and rent extremely profitable -buy more properties and rent them for profit -as population grows and density increases, value increases -market says just raise rents
In this situation:
-I don’t want traffic to improve. Because I don’t want people to be able to move further from the city center where my over valued properties are. -i don’t want people to be able to work from home -i don’t want more houses built, because I don’t want to dilute the market and reduce my value -the only incentive for developers to come in and build more homes is … The price they can sell the homes for. So the system keeps the problem in place.
Consumers want to buy homes. The government wants votes. So we get policies like George Bush letting families but homes with no down payment, which just raises prices because now there are more shoppers but not more product.
There are many solutions to the housing crisis, but all of them require owners and landlords to take a haircut. I’m probably a fan of decentralizing cities and shifting to increased work from home with zoning improvements for mixed commercial/residential in suburban environments. That shifts the market away from the dense areas it’s currently focused. That could (hopefully) interest developers to build commercial/residential properties in these areas, so everyone wins in the long run.
The other issue is this development needs to be fast. The push for green buildings with fully sealed envelopes and intense insulation, etc, makes it harder for Joe schmo to get into the homebuilding business, or just build his own home. We need grants and other incentives to promote that kind of behavior, too.
Etc etc.
Michael Parenti has written several books and given a lot of speeches on how neoliberal countries in the imperial core use imperialism to force countries in the global south to accept unequal exchange. I highly recommend him as a source. I posted a few of his speeches here about a month ago if you want to watch them
There is no particular way that capitalism is “supposed to work”.
It is a system occurring in a particular historic period, having emerged from particular historic antecedents.
You seem to be characterizing capitalism as though it has some kind of character that is natural, metaphysical, or even teleological.
Anyone extolling capitalism as essentially benevolent, as framed around some set of pure ideals, is engaged in apologetics.
As for your characterizations of socialism, I think you are emphasizing specific historic developments more than the broader history and objectives of the movement.
It might be helpful for you to investigate the differences between statist and anti-statist tendencies within socialism.
Can you define capitalism, real quick?
Capitalism is the societal system that began to take form within the historic period following the gradual collapse of the feudal order in Europe, but that became truly well formed in the wake of the industrial revolution.
Capitalism is characterized by the unbounded accumulation of private wealth by a small cohort of society, by asserting exclusive control over the means by which wealth is generated, and by claiming as profit a share of the value generated by the labor of the rest of society, depriving them from realizing the full value of their labor.
Alright so we’re talking about different things.
Capitalism is private ownership of capital.
Capital is a revenue producing asset.
You’re describing the social systems that form around capital and capitalism, which I agree are largely both presently and historically bad.
“Should” statements are moral statements. When it say capitalism should work a certain way, I mean that it must work a certain way in order to be moral.
What we have doesn’t work that way.
Socialism and communism treat capital differently. As far as I understand the definitions:
Socialism refers to social/government ownership of capital, which is then supposed to benefit all members of the society.
Communism refers to no ownership of capital, or community ownership of capital the the broadest sense. All revenue produced is distributed to the people based on their needs.
I use these definitions outside of structure or information or morality, because we can talk about those once we agree on what we’re talking about.
Private ownership of the means of production leads to division of society into classes with mutually antagonistic interests, boundless accumulation of private wealth, and workers being deprived of the full value of their labor.
Such are the inevitable structural consequences following from the protection of private property.
They cannot be wished away. If you accept private property, then you also accept a fantasy, from not understanding the material criticism of capital as a totalizing societal system, or you accept the consequences as I have identified them.
Socialism, and equivalently communism, is the political movement seeking the abolition of private property, and the class antagonisms that it requires and produces, toward the development of a classless society, in which the public asserts direct cooperative control over the economy.
Some movements have invoked the strategy that substantial state control over the economy would characterize a transitional stage occurring before the economy would be directly managed by the public.
However, socialists broadly reject state control of the economy as an ultimate objective, because state bureaucracy simply reproduces the same kinds of class antagonisms characteristic of capitalism, placing those within the state against those outside.
Anti-statist tendencies of socialism seek for the public to develop direct control of the economy without the control of the state.
“Privacy” is not violent, nor implicated in the discussion. Private property of course is mentioned and is pivotal.
Private property is a social relationship, entrenched as a social construct, and protected by the capacity of the state to inflict violence.
Without violence, neither the state nor private property would continue to exist, because both represent power imbalances, which would not long be respected by the disempowered, except by the invocation of force by the powerful.
Community is not bound in violence as an indispensable feature.
Surely, violence occurs in community, generally as a consequence of conflict that had previously escalated incrementally. Within community, members generally may resolve the root cause of conflict, including by directly addressing imbalances in power. Communities are not characterized by the necessity of violence for them to preserve themselves.
Healthy communities both seek to resolve conflict before any erupts into violence, and seek to contain violence when it emerges.
Any community that is not prevented from doing so by outside powers can achieve such a level of health.
A capitalist society at large cannot prevent violence, because violence is both an inevitable consequence and an indispensable requisite for the overarching conflict within capitalist society, of the irreconcilable and conflicting interests between those who own private property, versus those who must sell their labor to survive.