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Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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If the benefit of any economy is not general it will weaken the whole society. Whether you look at capitalism as national or international it is one system. The producers of today must be the consumers of tomorrow, but no one can afford to sell cheap and buy dear except at the expense of their own wealth. Since that is what all working people must do they have nothing left to sell but their own liberty, and that is a moot point when debt has already made you a slave. So, what is the strength of capitalism if it is existing on promises that are too numerous to enforce. You see that when the goverment has to give us money to spend, that they will gladly collect later, if they can;- that the rich have sucked too much wealth out of people too quickly. And Marx pointed this fact out in Das Capital, that high profits are synonymous with glut, that is depression. If you can keep money flowing there is no limit to the amount you can bleed out of a nation. But we have reached that point where we have nothing left to give up. They have cut the fat, and the meat, and are into the marrow. Where are the family farms? All most people own is debt on property that has sunk in value below what is owed. We need markets at the very moment when hatred of america is making people reject our goods. So, let us see if the tangled web of capital flowing out of a thousand banks all over the surface of the globe can keep a sinking America afloat. If they will save of capitalists, it will be to make them the actual owners of this Nation, and will show again what traiters capitalists are to all that America stands for.
And I have not forgotten a fraction of what I have read, and feel free to test me, because if I don’t know it outright I have it near at hand. Oh, and something else Marx said, Every capitalist want the wages of his workers low, and the wages of other workers high, because every worker is also a consumer. Driving wages lower drives the country into ruin. My words.

I am not making anyone do anything. I have not once kicked a baby out of a womb. I do recognize that we need more than a common feeding frenzy to hold this country together as a nation. The more we are exploited the more we take sides and the more hate grows. And they have the guns. The last ones on the land, with their hands on their bibles and their guns and their backs to the wall who think they are being force to feed us for nothing, all hate our guts. They don’t look at the ones feeding off all of us. Just as the bankers took all the profit out of slavery, they drive people into slavery for profit. Why should I lift a finger? I have done well enough, like intelligent people do. I simple point out that every society is the equivalant of a family, and as such, one part does not feed off the other. Sure, people have children and give the suck, but then children grow up and feed their parents. We either stand together for liberty and justice for all, or we hang up the idea all together.

I am not going to molest their wealth. They have written the book on property relations, and I would urge you to look at the foundation of property law. They are quite crude; and as Melville pointed out in Moby Dick, a fast fish belongs to he who is fast to it. If you own the government you own the property, and can make property law to suit yourself. It can be done to make property serve a private purpose, or a public purpose.

Not so. This country was stolen first from King, and then from natives, and then from the entire population. It looks like the thieves are doing well, except for one simple fact: When property comes with political power, that is to say, rights, then more property makes one more powerful than one with less property so that before long all property is in few hands. Which make it dangerous for them, since they refuse to pay for their own defense. Maybe I have stated that wrongly. There are more private police in this country than public police even while the rich demand much more of public police protection. And the poor suffer more from crime.

That would be Aristippus, of Cyrene (435? to 356? bc.) considered a Sophist, who knew Socrates, and led a colorful and adventurous life. Shipwrecked and Pennyless in Rhodes, he went to a gymnasium, discoursed, and so fascinated the men there, that they provided him and his companions with all comforts; whereupon, he remarked that parents should arm their children with such wealth that even after a shipwreck it should be able to swim to shore with its owner. From the Life of Greece, page 504, chpt: the Zeneth of Philosophy, and Volume II of the historical work called- The Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant, Simon and Shuster, copyright 1939

They have no morality. They love that which can love them not back. They are orphans, bastards, changlings. They have no nation, so they have no natural affinity.

Great wealth in few hands destroys the whole notion of law and spreads insecurity far and wide. I am not going to do anything but try to stay out of the way. I am sure what I have will look good to somebody for nothing. Too many revolutions eat their babies. This baby will be laying low.

That is what happened to the French. The wealth of the church and the lords was handed to the capitalists class, and the peasants were sent to slaughter, and there was opportunity for all after. But what a price to pay.

Sure, but I don’t want to be precise. Property taxes supported this country exclusively until the civil war, and after until the constitution was changed in 1913, when it affected only 8% of the population. Now that income taxes are paid by something like 60% of the population they provide the bulk of federal revenue. Considering that a pole tax was entirely legal when the country was formed, which excluded the participation of the poor in government, I feel it is safe to say it was made for the rich. The common saying in the enlightenment was life, liberty and property as common rights. The revolution was fought for a higher notion of rights, Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The constitution has it back in the former position. Yet I do believe it is significant, that the preamble does not mention theprotection of property as a goal of government; and if the people see that it is protectionof property that is pushing all the goals of good government aside, they may reconsider the relationship. Now, you will have to check my percentages above; because they are not from reading, but rather from tv history, or the news.

Let me suggest some reading for you. One is the Age of Capital, 1848-1875; by E.J. Hobsbawm, hows that for a name. And the Robber Barons, and I can’t find that book which I just moved days ago in my seven kitchen cabinets, china cabinet, and five bookshelves on three floors, or I would give you the author.

unite to steal from the rich…

-Imp
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I am blowing the rest of this off, and I will try to reply later. How old are you? Are you just trying to tie a rag on my tail?

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I am blowing the rest of this off, and I will try to reply later. How old are you? Are you just trying to tie a rag on my tail?
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blowing it off? does it ring too true for your marxist ears? my age? what does that matter friend? you have tied your own rag on your own tail with your proclaimations about economies and histories that I have demonstrated were entirely false…

-Imp

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Imp., you cannot both dismiss all morality and community, and invoke notions of “stealing” throughout your post. You see, “steal” is a normative word, that assumes “rights” and invokes such things as “permission”. What did you say earlier, something about “your morality is not everyone’s morality”.

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I did not dismiss morality or community, I merely emphasized that his morality was not the same as everyone else’s…

-Imp

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The first quote shows you dismissing notions of community, and the second shows you taking morality off the table for discussion. Yet, you employ it constantly.

Now, imagine that every time you say “steal” or “parasite” or their equivalent, someone simply responds with “your morality is not everyone’s morality”. Would you feel like they’re discussing this issue with you, or simply ignoring your points? Moreover, could you even discuss the issue with such a person, or would that be impossible and pointless? Now imagine, further, that while they dismiss your conceptions of morality they, at the same time, continuously advance a Marxist conception of ethics, but do so without acknowledging that it is normative. Now, you’re having fun, aren’t you.

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You have shown me your age and your iq, and I don’t think either admit much room for growth. Have a nice life. I got the rag off.

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morality is an afterthought from the victor.

let’s have another revolution soon…

-Imp

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All my life I have been a revolutionary, and it is not just retirement and approaching old age that makes me cautious in the use of that word, revolution. You see; We have been divided as nearly equally as is possible by parties in this country, have had our rights threatened, and diminished at every turn, and have to spend so much time with our economic survival that we cannot keep watch on our political process which in any event is too far removed from our influence. So we are bound up like the earth before an earthquake, seeming at peace, seething, and straining within, urgent for change, dieing for change, and too many of us are willing to kill for change.
Now, do you know how often revolutions have disolved into blood baths, and how many were for nothing? I don’t, because they are beyond my count. Is that your fantasy, to see blood in our gutters? Grow up. There is a better way. We need to change our forms of relationships. It does not have to be a painful or violent bloody process. We have to understand that the problem, the economy, the doctrine, the religion, the government, the institution, the corporation are all forms of relationship; and it is the relationship that is the gold, and the form that is trash. Forget the old form and construct a new form. Expect some resistence from those who benefit without merit from the old form. Don’t build for the ages. Build for tomorrow, because what we have now did not work yesterday, and does not work to day, and will not work tomorow. And forget the ideal. Forget the past all over again. Work on the practical. -What works today for today’s people. And concede to people the power and authority to decide for themselves. People only follow their own sense of right, and only hold to agreements they freely make. Facilitate agreement. Stand for right.

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Imp., as is often the case, I don’t know what to say to you - you pressure 35 ideas into 4 lines of unexplained semi-coherent hyperbole, without properly addressing anything I have said. What you need to understand is that “belong”, “steal”, “mine”, “yours” are all normative, socially imbued, moral ideas. Changing your phrasing does not change the message.

That is, perhaps, the exact opposite of what makes sense, but it is telling. Both, that you think “victor” is submission from all others, and that morality is an afterthought, is your morality. I don’t expect you to realize or acknowledge it, nor does it really matter if you do. Anyway, you should pay attention to Juggernaut, we both have something to learn from him.

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-Imp

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I have played this game far to many times…the game where you deny what you said one post earlier…and I don’t feel like even getting started this time… So, as per usual, enjoyarguing with yourself.

32

What language and morals have in common is that they have to do with ones own people, your own nation. Societies as they once existed, small and insular, treated their own ethically and with justice, and talked to each other to resolve difference, and talked with each other to organize defense against and attacks upon others who were thought little different from animals, having no claim to justice. So what you say may well be true of the moral system. But we have to redefine that moral system in light of greater knowledge and a changed condition of mankind. We have to recognize that we are all one family, with very little genetic variation, every bit of which we need. What was once true of the small communitee, that each had a voice, and each had a claim on justice we must concede to the whole world. Ancient nations did not exploit their own, and we should condem the practice today as it is clearly a first step to empire. The people of Rome were defeated by their own ruling class, and it was their smoldering sense of injustice that Caesar turned on the world. The same is true of Elizibeth in England who rode the broken people of England to a point of world mastery. Ditto for Napoleon who took a people robbed of rights and land and revolution and led them to slaughter. The first victory in any war for empire is over a native population. No president would dare run rough over our rights and take us to a fool’s war with former friends if our native population was not hamstrung, divided, defeated. Our ruling class has preyed upon us to capitalize our predation of the world, and when the world objects, they prey all the harder on us. If we have a class that has put itself outside of our moral system, and put itself outside of the human moral system in order to justify murder, poisoning, pollution, destruction of the environment and resources on a vast scale; then, they need to be broken up. The problem is that they hire our best, our brightest, our brains. They bribe our preachers, our teachers, and our leaders. And they are international, and show at every turn that their loyalty is only to their loot. So we do not have an easy task. But if we demand justice for ourselves and give it at every turn then we are at the beginning of a long jouney home.