Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Wealth Redistribution and a Moral Imperative

roachboy · 10-14-2008, 02:04 PM

well, ace, i would counter that with a simple claim: your ability to have wealth is contingent on a broader social system which enabled you to acquire the dispositions and background required to get to that place, and your ability to enjoy that wealth is contingent on a minimal level of social stability and so you woe much to that system and what manages to keep it operational. so if there's a stealing involved, it'd follow from your relation to the redistribution of wealth.

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other things that a democratic socialist system geared around full employment, for example, would offer: job retraining. high wages. relatively tightly regulated work conditions. profit sharing. shared control over the management of the workplace with employees (through proxies typically on the order of facility committees--personally, i'm in favor of a more radical form of direct-democratic control over the workplace, but that's another matter.)

to orient job retraining, for example, there'd have to be accurate and reliable information about the actual state of the system as a whole--so the entire reagan period idea that one can treat statistics as a simple extension of ideology would go out the window.

parallel points could be made about each of the features above.

because the state is involved more extensively and explicitly in the shaping of system parameters, those parameters become political. this makes them MORE responsive to democratic control. the american model of disappearing state functions behind an illusion of "free markets" is about REDUCING responsiveness to democratic pressure and LIMITING the ability of people to impact upon how the system operates.

i don't know why that's desirable.

you certainly cannot confuse sitting in front of your television watching the world happen as if everything about it is given in advance with anything remotely like democracy.

10-14-2008, 02:04 PM	#28 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	well, ace, i would counter that with a simple claim: your ability to have wealth is contingent on a broader social system which enabled you to acquire the dispositions and background required to get to that place, and your ability to enjoy that wealth is contingent on a minimal level of social stability and so you woe much to that system and what manages to keep it operational. so if there's a stealing involved, it'd follow from your relation to the redistribution of wealth. ================================= other things that a democratic socialist system geared around full employment, for example, would offer: job retraining. high wages. relatively tightly regulated work conditions. profit sharing. shared control over the management of the workplace with employees (through proxies typically on the order of facility committees--personally, i'm in favor of a more radical form of direct-democratic control over the workplace, but that's another matter.) to orient job retraining, for example, there'd have to be accurate and reliable information about the actual state of the system as a whole--so the entire reagan period idea that one can treat statistics as a simple extension of ideology would go out the window. parallel points could be made about each of the features above. because the state is involved more extensively and explicitly in the shaping of system parameters, those parameters become political. this makes them MORE responsive to democratic control. the american model of disappearing state functions behind an illusion of "free markets" is about REDUCING responsiveness to democratic pressure and LIMITING the ability of people to impact upon how the system operates. i don't know why that's desirable. you certainly cannot confuse sitting in front of your television watching the world happen as if everything about it is given in advance with anything remotely like democracy. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite