I find it strange that capitalists can hold incompatible assumptions about economies, human interaction, and human nature.
For example, capitalists often mix the ideological standpoing that capitalism is good, human behavior is innately bad (or at least slothful). Capitalism is good seems to stem from the belief that it allows people to excel on their own merits, presumably leaving the slothful in the dust where they belong (although, according to alansmith's perspective if I understand it correctly, everyone is innately lazy and freeloading).
I guess the mechanism to spur people into action is the invisible market. This market functions to encourage innately lazy people into working. The detritus sifts to the bottom, while the more deserving overcome their personal stumbling blocks (I'm supposing).
Then we have the innate quality of greed. I'm not sure how capitalism keeps greed in check, in fact it seems to encourage it. Yet, greed is a "valid" critique of marxism (or communism, or whatever left of capitalism comes into being). And there is no data I'm aware of that has cemented the fact that greed is innate. It appears at least no small part is due to nurture. Since all of us have been nurtured in a capitalist society, I see no way one can adequately seperate the society we developed within and our notions of what we might be like without it. That is, would people be "innately" greedy in a socialist or Marxist world?
Clearly the idea that we are necessarily individuals and perhaps greed is somehow long ago critical to the survival of the species (if we go with the genetic transference theories) resonates with US citizens. Yet, that would seem to be counter to the historical evidence that humans coalesced into small and then increasingly larger societies. At least in the distant past, our ancestors saw fit to be less individualistic than we proclaim is our innate desire and trait today.
Marx has a different view of human nature, in so far as one can claim humans have a nature. I'm on one side of this debate (whether Marx believed in human nature) and a number of well respected sociologists on my floor are on the other side. I guess to try and do their argument justice, in so far as we might have something approximating a stable characteristic we would not know what it is since it's ever changing. I thought that perhaps we might "return" to our species-being, and that might be the best thing approximating nature. But those others reminded me that to Marx there is no going back, only progression toward what we will be. So there you go, in so far as we might reach species-beingness, I would have to conclude it would look nothing like the original state...
...ah rambling....
anyway, I can only suspect that people espousing the virtues of capitalism while denouncing human nature as greedy and lazy are operating in some odd sleight of mind movement that allows them to grasp the upper shelf. That is, perhaps they are the most crafty or wily. It wouldn't make much sense to believe in fairness and equality if one believed the rest of humanity were acting on the basis of greed and laziness--because then of course the others would take advantage of one's kindness and mistake it for weakness.
Once one starts to unravel all these assumptions loaded into capitalism, individualis, US-specific flavors of clusters of beliefs surrounding these notions, one actually begins to taste just how violently they collide. I don't comprehend how people can hold such incompatible assumptions in their head all at once. Well, I can, but the implications make me sad and weary. And there isn't any real way one can claim to adhere to an invisible market without reifying the dang thing, since it is after all only human interaction...
well, that should be expansive enough. certainly plenty of meat for one to pick through and quote a teensy bit and drill that into the ground. should open up some kind of commentary at some point in time I imagine. good to see you around roachboy, btw. and cool thread, city of angels, haven't seen you in here for like a year but I may be mistaken as I don't as a general rule stalk forum members
but nice to see yah again all the same.