why do you want to separate corps from the govt if corps are not so bad? is the govt corrupting the corps?!?!
do you concede that corps are bad?
both. everything. a corporation should not exist for any purpose other than to help people. that is the one reason why anything should ever be created. right?
Look, we’ve been through all this. A million times. It’s all in the other topics.
Seriously, FM. C’mon. Just between you and me. Can’t you allow for the possibility that your perspective on humanity might just - possibly - bias your opinion of what the proper function of government should be? I’m willing to admit that my optimism about people (individuals within corporations, individual who are consumers, my neighbors, my countrymen) might bias my opinion. Can I get you to do the same? It’s okay. It’s not a sign of weakness. Hell, it might actually take a bit of courage. You can do it. I know you can…
no its not a bias, a bias is an irrational extrapolation from some indirect experience.
a bias is created when some corporation polluted my hometown and killed my sister so therefore i hate all who are rich. thats a bias.
to say that corporations are the one single thing that is polluting the govt is an irrefutable fact. i mean seriously, its a freaking fact that money is the one single thing that hurts the govt and the one single thing that donates money for non-human centered reasons is the corporations.
i want to know how you can possibly have any optimism about the effectiveness of the current system and how you can possibly believe that allowing corporations to function on their own will be better than it is now. dont you know that they are currently acting on their own? you think the govt enforces all of its laws? you think any laws apply at all when you leave the usa?
my perspective on humanity is that we are all potentially nice, and only corrupted by bad experiences or a misplacement of priorities. money is a serious priority, job security, serious. those two things are in direct conflict with helping strangers, which is a much lower priority. i am completely willing to accept that a good nice human being is going to put his own job security above the health of a few strangers. billionaires, i dont know what the hell their problem they are really the devil, theyve clearly been corrupted, but most of the people who enact these things are not horrible people, they just slipped up a little bit in order to help their family. its understandable and its unnacceptably preventable.
the only way to prevent corporations from doing what they are naturally designed to do is to put arbitrary restrictions on them. right? is the pursuit of money equal to or greater than the pursuit of human happiness? do corporations currently pursue human happiness above all else??? shouldnt they!!!
Okay, Future Man.
hooray for altruistic corporations
oh right i forgot, anecdotes dont have anything to do with my subjective bias.
As far as Iam aware communists (both anarchists and marxists), as well as liberals tend to have a more positive view on humanity and its ability to govern themselfs, while conservatives and statists (<---- think they are called so in the USA) often have a more negative view, but ofcource these are just generalizations, there are also examples of the opposite.
I do believe that the law of value rules in capitalism, and that the bourgoisie must strive to satisfy it, unless they want their business to fail. Capital wants to grow as quickly as possible, it wants to become more and larger, it is in its nature. And sometimes, quite often I must say, this interest will conflict with the interest of other people, or with nature.
Without for example environmental laws, Iam sure nature will fare ill more quickly. Ofcource there will be those that even without laws will create products with little negative effect on environment, because this gives their products some advantages above others - some costumers are intrested in buying such products even though it is more expensive, but most wont. Ofcource the boureoisie realise that this way is not stable, just as you realise that it is not good for the environment to throw paper in the streets, yet most do so (this might be a silly example, but I think you’ll get the point) because they think like “one more bit of paper, it will not matter and I really don’t have the time to find a trash can”, the problem is that every one thinks that way. In the same way the bourgeoisie realise that it might not be good to try having very low wages (result: all the products wont be consumed - overproduction/underconsumtion) or destroying the environment, but using resources to make this things better will give their compeditors an advantage (they will have more resuources to invest in the production and raise the productivity, etc), and that might lead to disaster for the cooperation.
My point is that even though the bourgoisie might be really nice people and have good interests as individuals, they still have other interests as a class, as bourgoisie. They can not always act the ideal way, because that might put them in disfavor in their business. Thus I believe that capitalism needs some regulations to function.
I think that this kind of freedom work in some areas, but not all.
And as stated above I don’t see this as a question of having a positive or a negatibe beliefe in the individual, but a question of interest. Even you want laws against acting in a way that do not benifit you or your society.
For example I guess you want laws against most forms of class struggle, all nations have those today. Communism is practically illegal, (iam never talking about communism as an ideology, or as an ideal. Always as a material movement) as are alot of other things. A proletarian pursuing his goals and dreams will be beated and arrested. Only dreams and goals within the capitalist society are legal to pursue.
[quote]
Socialists/Communists, on the other hand, seem to regard humanity with a suspicion that borders on contempt. Socialists/Communists seem to maintain that man, left to his own devices, without the collective “wisdom†of society to show (or force) the way, will choose to live selfishly, greedily, and without pity or sympathy for others. They seem to believe that man is unable to handle true freedom and those that believe otherwise are hopelessly naive. [/qoute]
I do not believe that, not neccessary. And Iam not even against egoism, rather the opposite. Iam not a communist because I feel pity for some starving children in Africa whatever. Iam a communists because it is in my interest, I want and feel the need of communism; communism is not about filantrophy, humanism, giving a way money to the poor and some other stuff like that, it is about interest.
I found an interesting text on the net. Influenced by Hegel, Marx, Rand (!), The situationists and Marx Stirner amongst others, this is an approach to a communist egoism / radical subjectivism. It is quite interesting accually. Read!
home.teleport.com/%7Emalchick/ed … y-v1_0.pdf
i think that communism vs capitalism earned a category on this forum…
first, i would like to make a distinction that i find useful: capitalism is a economical theory, derived from the ideas of liberalism. capitalism si concerned with economy, whereas liberalism is concerned with soceity and government. socialism is rather a social/political theory and communism is socialism with an economic theory. so i would say that this tread should be called socialism vs liberalism, since out view on mankind gives a social/political theory rather than an economic one.
i myself am a liberal and therefore i support capitalism. free market capitalism as we dream about it never really existed. however, we managed to create systems close to the ideal capitalism, but none even remotley close to the ideal communism. i’m not saying that communism is a bad thing. i’m just saying that we have EVOLVED to the curent system (probably 1000 years ago everybody thought that feudalism is the peak of social organization). If we will evolve to communism, i don’t know. but i do seriously doubt it.
i am also an optimist and, although i see some people acting selfishly around me, i do not see the fall of mankind in that.
as for you Future Man, your reasoning in terms of good and evil makes me think of Mr. Bush, who also speaks about international politics in terms of good and evil. It just seems… out of place…
Naaah, I do not agree. I would say:
Capitalism = A way of production and a social relation.
To simplify: Wage labour + commodity production = capitalism.
Communism is also a way of production and a social relation, but here neither any commodity production exists (in the feodal society for example, a form av commodity production did exist) nor wage labour do exist. Neither does any classes and thus not the state. The means of production as well as forests, mines, the seas, etc are owned by all/none.
Liberalism is a pro-capitalism and pro market ideology. (a market economy is not the same thing as capitalism) Liberals also support the liberal freedoms (well duh) and other stuff, that you allready know.
But also other ideologies support capitalism, knowingly or unknowingly;
some support capitalism, but in a totaly other form (ex a planned capitalist economy), while some support capitalism, but want just a few changes, etc.
Socialists (I rarely use this term, it is way to broad) generally strive for a communist society. They can be anarchists, marxists or of other theoretical traditions. Other socialists just want a planned economy, and are thus not communists (for example the marxist-leninists/stalinists) while others want “market socialism” and all kinds of strange stuff. And others are social democrats (dont know if those still call themselfs socialists) and want…well, the same society as today, but with a strong state to make capitalism a little more equal, etc.
Well, accually we have seen communist societies. Mostly primitive societies, but also some modern (19th century) communist societies, but only in smaller areas like a city and often religious. This is not the same thing as the communism that marxists and anarchists talk about, (the future communist society is in a much larger scale and thus harder) even though it has similiarities. It does however prove that such a way of production, consumtion and organization is not against human nature, as a few right-wingers have claimed.
Yes, those who benifit from the current system have always claimed that yhis is the peak of society, this is the end of history (Francis Fukuyama), nothing can be changed, it will remain this way forever, maybe with a few changes, etc. It is thus useless to resist and struggle, nothing else than the current can exist! Nothing can change…but it always does and always will. History never ends, nothing lasts forever. Not even capitalism.
I humbly disagree! 
primitive (or archaic, to be politically corect) soceities are communist with regard to property, since most of the modern economical concepts did not apply back then. some sort of common property over land and means of production existed for a long time (examples have been found dating as close as the 1930s) in russia and eastern europe. however, the point is that this alwatys happened with rather small communities and never with groups of tens of thousands individuals.
and i find it difficult to put anarchism on a liberal-socialist scale. some of their ideas are very intresting (and liberal i might say) but they are very optimistic with regard to human nature.
One can indeed be an optimist. I have seen some of them.
Also, I think that you guys are confusing communism for Stalinism.
Hi. This is where I see some of the pessimism I’m referring to. Us capitalists don’t even really think in terms of “classes.” We’re all just a bunch of individuals. Some of us work for others. Some of us work for ourselves. Some of us have others working for us. We all move up and down the ladder depending on where we are in life. I have been rich and poor and in-between in my life and have never considered myself part of any class. We’re all people with a vested interest in making sure society functions. The same guy that owns the local factory shops at the local grocery store, fishes in the local stream, sends his kids to the local school. I just don’t see “class” as being part of the issue. Seems divisive to me and the result of a more pessimistic outlook.
The problem, though, is that if I don’t feel the same way, in your communistic society, I’m stuck with communism. Everybody has to be on board or it falls apart. That doesn’t happen without force, but now I’ve gone beyond the scope of my topic. Here, I’m only interested in the mental states of the two sides.
Your reading recommendation looks very interesting from the little I saw of it. I’ll take some time and read it. Thanks.