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Does anyone else find it ironic that a thread about socialism starts with three posters claiming personal ownership of slots to respond in?
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Nov 5, 2020 04:44
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:24 |
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Ruggan posted:If you’d like to write a post I can put it in my slot. We can call it a post-share. No thank you, but well played.
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Nov 5, 2020 04:47
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Does socialism only have room for people who agree with / are cooperative with the drive to produce economic growth? Or, in a larger sense, people interested in cooperation of any kind? What about people who are anti-growth, for example anti-natalists or monkeywrenchers? What about people who are uncooperative or misanthropic by nature? Does one have to be a team player to have a place in a socialist system? Or is there room for the antisocial socialist?
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Nov 5, 2020 05:08
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Does any society have room for anti-social behavior? Oh yeah, I'd say most societies have room for anti-social behavior, because there are lots of antisocial people who still live in those societies. I don't think it's unreasonable at all to suggest that a significant percentage of humanity just wants to be left alone. Treating that as some kind of sickness to be cured, that's the kind of scary stuff I hear people say about socialism, and I don't want to believe it because those people believe all kinds of wacky conspiracy nonsense. But if you're telling me the society's goals will engulf my own if mine are too selfish, that brings up questions of enforcement that lead scary places, and I'm left wondering if there's some truth to the classic suburbanite fears. Forgive the extreme example but really it does come down to this: can I be utterly self-absorbed on the fringes of a socialist society? If not, I don't see the majority of human beings meshing well with it. The percentage of humankind that isn't at least partially self-absorbed is so, so tiny.
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Nov 5, 2020 05:27
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The Oldest Man posted:This is sort of a weird question since if you just want to keep to yourself, draw your paycheck or goods voucher, do your work, and punch a clock then the only difference for you under socialism vs capitalism is that the rest of society - the engaged part - is going to try make sure what you are taking home equates to the value you added through your labor. Yeah but that's the whole point: what if my work, or even my entire existence, adds only subjective or even dubious value? What then? Let's say I'm a professional entertainer with a niche audience that barely keeps me fed, and I live on the edges of society avoiding people wherever possible, and I'm just barely getting by under capitalism but I'm not dead yet. That describes a lot of even the greatest artists ever, like it's a cliche that artists are only appreciated after they're dead. So under socialism would I be allowed to devote my life to that? Is there gonna be some bureau or office with a chart that determines how much value my work adds to society based on reviews of my latest poetry reading and how much I got in my busking hat (if that's still allowed)? It's very neat and tidy to say we get rewards based on the value of our work, but, to get back to my original question, is value only defined as something that leads towards growth or expansion, or the wellbeing of others? What if my work does zip-all for the material well being of others? What if my entire life is devoted to unpopular art with no provable material value? Am I just not welcome in the socialist society?
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Nov 5, 2020 05:45
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Well, you may be forced to produce works that other people can see. Or you may be asked to spend some time teaching. However, the underpinning of any Socialist society still would require "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" (although, that's technically late stage communism). So you will always receive the necessities for life just like the disabled would be provided with the same even if they unable to labor at all. Oh wow so I just get a free ride even if my art is singing "gently caress everyone, especially youuuu" to passersby while I play a rubber band guitar and make rude gestures, as long as I have like a Ted Talk about how I tune the rubber bands? Sign me up comrade!
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Nov 5, 2020 05:59
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readingatwork posted:One of Capitalism's biggest selling points is that you can do the stupid thing you like and potentially make ten million dollars doing it. What does Communism offer a YouTube video creator? or a cartoonist? Or even a philosopher? I think that if we on the left want to get people on board we need to have a good answer for that. This. Everybody wants to dump on Horatio Alger rags-to-riches thinking because it's unsustainable and self-destructive, which are totally valid points, but they fail to address the key benefit on the other side which is drat what a sexy premise!. Do whatever I want and get rich!?!? Yes please!!!! There's a reason that one of the classic anti-soviet views was "their art is ugly and joyless", because a lot of it really really was. If the only art that is allowed is big inofensive concrete sculptures of fearless leader, that's not a very appealing pitch. But I agree there is an answer out there for this, and it probably involves some kind of UBI that treats avant garde artists as essentially disabled people, freeing them to do whatever crazy thing they want and not starve. And a larger society that sees the value in this and doesn't whine about the "lazy artists" getting access to medicine and such. What a lovely world that would be.
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Nov 5, 2020 06:29
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Okay a bunch of people are using similar arguments about art that has "value" vs art that doesn't, and I want to stop y'all for a moment and ask you, who gets to determine which art has value and which doesn't? By what rubric, and with what extent of authority? If you're gonna have laws in your society that hinge on this, you better get it down. And that is not historically an easy task. The example I always think of is Nocturne in Black and Gold by Whistler:  What do you see when you look at this painting? Do you see a bunch of dribbles and drops? Or do you see a photorealistic portrayal of fireworks over a body of water at night? Both views were fiercely defended during a famous 1878 libel case where art critic John Ruskin defended his right to say Whistler was "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face", and thereby drastically devaluing Whistler paintings at the time, pushing him to destitution. It also didn't help when a prominent gallery displayed the painting upside-down. Spoiler alert- Whistler wins the but goes bankrupt anyway because it was only a "gentleman's sum" of 1 farthing. My point is, art is not only highly subjective, it's also constantly trying to be ahead of the culture that's judging it, and therefore the goal is actually to skirt unpopularity. That doesn't mesh well with the idea of objective values being attached to things. The advent of widespread cheap photography and the changes it made to the shared public aesthetic made paintings like Nocturne in Black and Gold far more relatable for the average person, Whistler was ahead of his time. But if criticisms like Ruskin's can tank a painter's career in a capitalist society like Victorian England, what hope is there when that kind of judgement has been institutionalized? How do you assure fair judgement of a field that intentionally defies expectations and spits back at all judgements?
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Nov 5, 2020 06:54
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:The social order created by capitalists carving divides in the working class in order to hamper challenges to their power has resulted in "musicians" being shuffled to the bottom of the social totem pole and as a result you were beaten to death by a drunken gang of your fellow workers one night while busking with your rubber band guitar. Whoops! You're correct, there is absolutely no logical reason to want it. But logic is only a third of a convincing argument. The other two thirds, emotion and ethics, overpower it completely with most people, because the only feelings they really engage with are the emotional triggers associated with consumption, and the only ethics they deal with are mangled protestant-work-fetish stuff that tells them hard work = good behavior. So yeah, being rich makes little sense logically, but it sounds fun and it has society's approval. Two against one!
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Nov 5, 2020 07:05
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:I've already addressed that (twice), but to spell it out more clearly: those desires are generated by capitalism, and the project of overthrowing capitalism will necessarily include work to dismantle the general sentiment of maniacal greedy hoarding that capitalism upholds as its principal virtue (which is not anywhere near as universally felt as you want to paint it as, by the way) I see your point, and I respect your optimism! Personally, I think people don't need to have greedy desires "generated" by anything, it's the natural state of man, but that could still wind up in us overcoming it some day. Different directions but the same destination. This is all very fascinating and I'm prepared to move to your new country as soon as it's open to settlement. I will be taking the "insane artist living off the state" package please. Line starts here.
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Nov 5, 2020 07:11
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:Greed isn't some sort of intrinsic part of human nature. Again, I greatly appreciate your optimism, but my personal experiences in life have repeatedly screamed the opposite to me. Now, if that's the result of just living inside Capitalism's fun-house mirror, I can maybe see that. But so what? It's not like we can wipe that away at this point, the damage is already thoroughly done. I don't see the value in guessing what people would have been like if Capitalism had never happened in the first place because it clearly did, we ended the Holocene era with it for pete's sake. Even if you're 100% right and greed is just the result of a false scarcity enforcing system, you can't write it off because it's not "natural". Is it not human nature to farm and build permanent structures just because we didn't used to do it?
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Nov 5, 2020 19:19
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:It's important to make the distinction because if greed is intrinsic then the whole project's bust: we'll never achieve anything better than what we've got now because humans will inevitably reproduce societies in which greed can be expressed in the same way that they'll produce farms and permanent structures because the need for a constant food supply and protection from the elements are also human nature. It almost seems like you're saying there's an immutable human nature underneath our social evolution that doesn't change and can always be reverted to? So what, the ultimate goal is to revert to Bonobo chimps? What stage of our evolution do you set as "the real normal Humans" and why? It really seems like anthropological cherry-picking to say "oh this is the real state of humans, the one that fits my political ideology the best'. Animals horde stuff. Animals steal from each other, constantly. If anything, humans acting humane towards each other is a very brief bubble in the 3.5 billion year history of life on Earth. I'm not saying this is bad, it's great! I'm all for a more humane society! But we don't need this dumb idea of "oh it's our natural state to be kind and unselfish", it's patently untrue AND it sabotages our primary engine of growth towards such a society, which is us building up a better nature for ourselves despite our instincts, not leaning on what we used to be as a lost ideal.
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Nov 5, 2020 19:40
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Ruzihm posted:You seem to agree already that prevalence of greed or generosity is a function of material conditions, so this should not be a controversial claim. I do not, I have seen people horde massive piles of stuff and live in permanent fear of poverty despite their being extremely well-off and those concerns being completely nonsensical. I think greed persists no matter the material conditions of a person's life, because it's a simple animal response that exists inside their own head first and foremost, like the urge towards anxiety-driven binge-eating when you're not hungry. Ever left a dog alone with an open bag of food? It's in no way beneficial for them to gorge themselves until they throw up, there is no real scarcity in play, but they do it anyway on instinct.
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Nov 5, 2020 19:51
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Ruzihm posted:I'm now pretty unclear on where you stand on the question of if humans have gotten less needlessly greedy of late. Okay I see what you mean now. The distinction I'm getting hung up on is between actions and intents. I agree that we act less needlessly greedy than we did as dumb animals, but the part I can't agree with is that our intents are less needlessly greedy. I think the real success has not been in changing our desires but in learning not to always humor them. Our gains are made despite our instincts, not in getting back to them somehow. All in all I agree with most of the posters ITT about what we should do and how we should get there, I really do. My issue is in saying that it's gonna be a natural thing for us and it'll just feel right because a fair society is what we all inherently desire. I've just met too many people who display zero signs of that, and I know that if we make advances towards a fairer society it will be in direct opposition to their deepest held beliefs. If anything, it's MORE impressive that we find the way to be kind against our instincts, rather than just saying "oh the bad stuff was a smokescreen, this is what we're really like inside". Overcoming your worst instincts is a very hard process, that's the part I worry we lose sight of when we assume our "real" instincts are the good ones we like.
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Nov 5, 2020 20:01
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Yeah you guys calling it "biotruths" does hit home, I had not thought of it that way and I'm reconsidering now. But I feel like saying the opposite, that generosity is the natural state of man, also qualifies as that. In the interest of a more productive argument, I'll just say I hope you're right and it is possible some day.
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Nov 5, 2020 20:17
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Cpt_Obvious posted:This is a very productive argument. Don't sell yourself short! These types of discussions are the exact reason why this thread is here. Okay so are you saying ALL greed is the result of social conditioning? Or just that our cultural prevalence of it is? I can see the latter but not the former. Because again, squirrels horde food, and they forget where like 4/5 of their food caches are every year which seems like a pretty clear-cut example of desire outstripping actual material need. Unless your argument is that the squirrel is justified in hedging his bets against disaster, in which case why not argue the billionaire humans are doing the same thing?
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Nov 5, 2020 20:29
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that humans can and must relate to one another. Some might call it love, but it can also be aggression. The point is, it is incredibly natural humans to interact outside of just reproduction. If there is a universal truth about humans, it's that we keep building societies. Because if there's no one to talk to, we'll just paint a face on a volleyball and talk to that instead.
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The Oldest Man posted:The point isn't that a socialist economy will define and ban hoarding as a universal concept, it's that the reward incentive structure to hoard capital wealth that exists in capitalism won't. Socialist economies will still have people trying to collect all the bottlecaps, keep more food than they 'need,' and so on. What a socialist economy makes extremely difficult is the snowball effect where hoarding control of factories and data centers and so on provides an unbounded, compounding ability to dictate terms to everyone else and thus incentivizes that specific type of capital hoarding. Ohhh okay, that explains a lot. There's a scale of social degradation to actions, and the higher up misdeeds are the ones you're really trying to address, not the piddly stuff. It's top-down reconfiguration that removes the cascade effect that leads to the extremely egregious examples, not micromanagement of day-to-day examples. That figures- a lot of the pro-capitalist arguments out there do a very good job of making people think their personal finances and the finances of multi-billionaires work exactly the same when that is not at all true, and a lot of the anti-socialist arguments strive to concentrate on what's gonna happen to an individual's right to own 2 screwdrivers when one would certainly be enough, comrade! It's a stratification issue (but then what isn't?) So if my own personal rinky-dink abuses of capitalism aren't really what we're out to defeat, what can I do to move us towards these transformative overarching goals? If all we're changing is stuff at the top, I don't see how I can have any effect on it (but I'd love to be proven wrong!)
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Nov 5, 2020 21:07
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Just throwing this out there, what if a meaningful section of society is just, on a personal level, completely and totally bat-poo poo wrong about how their interests and actions are connected? Like what if an understanding of basic causality is not a safe assumption for a huge number of people? I understand this is another case of "well what if everyone's terrible?" thinking, but... seriously, what if they are??? How does any of this work out if enough people's primary action in service of their own interest is rubbing a lucky rabbit's foot or praying to Odin to save them? Is there like a threshold of rational people in society that we need to make rational plans for society to work? Or are we assuming those people could just be transitioned to worshipping Thor and tithing to a new box every week?
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Nov 5, 2020 23:06
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I don't understand what this is supposed to prove. I think they're offering this as an example of a priori selfishness, in response to this: Ytlaya posted:My general belief with this sort of "nature vs nurture" question is that the "null hypothesis" should always be that "nurture" is the cause of something, with there needing to be some sort of direct proof that "nature" was the cause. Which seem to be a full-throated rejection of a priori knowledge in general? But I could be misreading it. Edit- yeah I think we're on the same page here.
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Nov 5, 2020 23:24
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Ruzihm posted:i dont think anyone is suggesting that socialism could be self sustainable in a society predominantly populated by toddlers so the relevance that has is a little unclear I dunno, "society predominantly populated by toddlers" is a pretty good description of the last few days in the US at least.
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Nov 5, 2020 23:28
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So we're down to "is selfishness the absence of altruism, or is altruism the absence of selfishness?" I always love the moment when words start breaking down in a complex argument...
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Nov 5, 2020 23:47
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Crumbskull posted:Setting aside the idea that 'is greed human nature' is basically an incoherent question, society already significantly mediates 'human nature' to the extent that even if 'greed is human nature' it would not meaningfully tell us wether or not socialism was ultimately sustainable. Yeah I'll agree with this. I do believe that a socialist society could be sustainable. The difference, I think at least, is that I think such a thing would be accomplished despite our instincts, not as some kind of return to them. If anything I have more faith in humans saying we can overcome our base nature, vs having to lean on some idea of us being naturally good or kind, which in a way takes the accomplishment away from people who strive for altruism.
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Nov 6, 2020 00:41
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:24 |
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Larry Parrish posted:im just gonna let Mao Zedong speak for me on this Yeah, this is where you lost me friend. Trying to paint Mao as a champion for the interests of others is just flat-out ignorant. He starved his own people and rewrote the history books to cover it up. None of that is admirable or worth emulating. You all have made some excellent points, and this doesn't change that. But please be aware, by quoting mass murderers, you just play into the absolute worst stereotypes about the beliefs you're trying to defend.
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Nov 6, 2020 06:12
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