urville

I have posted this in philosophy because at its root that is what it is, a philosophy. It just happens to have an economic and political element to it.

I am a socialist. I dont think in my limited posting I have made that a secret. I know there is a vast field, like any amongst this belief. The purpose of the thread is to see where we stand in this forum, assuming some of you are or lean that way, and to discuss (and I imagine argue) where it is and should go.

I have alot of ideas, I am actually writing something on it in my spare time. here are some questions to get us going.

Is there still a need for revolution? If so can the gap be fixed that has allowed so many to hijack the revolution for thier own means (dictatorship of capitalism)?

Is it time to retire the name socialism due to the associations with Kimism (non revisionist), Stalinism, etc that it conjures even though they are not true socialism or communism. I have reason to do this anyway due to changes I'm making in my "Version" of socialism.

Perhaps, violent revolution is not the way, but that slow change vis the political system is not either.

What of the complete abolition of money?

I caqnt post more this very minute due to Work, but I will be back..

Baraka_Guru

I'm going to make a brief first post, and then see how this thread unfolds.

First, I don't think you can take the "social" out of socialism. Though perhaps you can take the "ism" out of it.

For the record, I'm a social democrat. In a nutshell, I'm a socialist who believes in the democratic process, that a revolution isn't necessary, that the democratic process should strive to reform the capitalist system into a mixed system that incorporates socialist ideals. These ideals include (to use loaded terms that can be unpacked later) but are not limited to: social justice; egalitarianism; reducing poverty; progressive taxation; human rights; public health care; affordable if not free public services (transportation, education, job training); fair trade balancing free trade; humanitarian, diplomatic, and peacekeeping foreign policies; and workers' rights.

Social democrats aren't against capitalism in principle, but we believe it needs to be tempered with public policies to avoid exploitation and damaging class inequality. This doesn't require a revolution, but it requires public and political will.

These are realistic and applicable aims. Most economies are already mixed economies. Social democracy is at work right here in Canada (a social democratic party---the New Democratic Party (NDP)---is the Official Opposition in the House of Commons, being the party with the second highest number of seats) and in Europe, among other places. It's more widespread than you may think.

As I said, I'll keep this first post brief. I just wanted to bring my own position on socialism into the thread to perhaps garner some conversation around the different aspects of a concept that does have varying degrees.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Charlatan

I am, pretty much, in line with Baraka_Guru on this... but then I am also a Canadian.

I would also say that talk of revolution is rather antiquated. I would suggest that all democracies today (true rather than sham democracies) have elements of both socialism and capitalism. It is really just a matter of how the two are mixed. Further, systems pushing for absolutes (socialism or capitalism) are less likely to succeed than ones that seek a balance of the two.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Mantus

Socialism is a fairytale - the poor person's version of heaven on earth. It can never work in it's purest form because we are human and humans are violent, petty, naive, and greedy.

We'll resort to cigarets.

...I don't believe in utopia. I've never experienced it. I've never seen proof it can exist.

Baraka_Guru

Socialism is just as real as capitalism.

And it's happening outside my window. It's even happening in the United States, despite what people will tell you.

If socialism is the poor person's heaven on earth, then capitalism is the rich person's heaven. Neither really exist in pure forms.

I'm assuming by "socialism" you mean a "socialist nation." If you mean that, then I suppose it does have a mythical aspect to it, but, then again, so does a free-market nation. There is no such thing as a free market, but that doesn't stop people from trying to apply those ideals. The same goes for socialism.

Generally speaking, and to reiterate what Charlatan was getting at, socialism + capitalism = mixed-market economy.

A mixed-market economy is the norm for a vast majority of nations around the world, though they're set up in varying degrees.

Both the U.S. and China have mixed-market economies. To call the American economy free/laissez-faire and the China economy communist/socialist/planned is to use misnomers.

You can look at extreme examples of command economies like in Cuba and North Korea and point out how dysfunctional they are. That's easy. But that's not necessarily what we talk about when we talk about socialism. Plus, there are indications that Cuba is doing what China did, which is shift away from a command economy to a mixed economy by opening up the market to capitalist ideals. This doesn't mean they're going to dismantle all the socialist stuff.

---------- Post added at 08:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:11 PM ----------

It would seem that the most stable nations are those with deeply entrenched mixed economies.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

urville

Me either. No such thing as perfect, but why would not having money immediately mean utopia?

See thats a misconception in my mind that it is a heaven for poor people. Maybe I suppose in the traditional meaning, in complete marxism.

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Yeah, i'd say the rampant unchecked accumulation of capital seems to really be working out... exactly as Marx said it would. Badly, destructively.

It's the greatest trick communists (as we know them) ever pulled was to sully and soil the word socialism and communism with a dictatorship of the very thing the people tried to eradicate.

I think its hard to really say that as we have yet to see a truly socialist nation, the closest thing might be the netherlands I think, followed by Finland, Norway and Switzerland.

---------- Post added at 11:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:52 PM ----------

Side not only kind of related. thought you might find this interesting:
Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Left in the Canadian Elections | The Activist

I support this mode and method of thinking. As i do many of the forms of it. However, I differ on capitalism. A mixed system is vulnerable and eventually it will revert under the weight of greed, once they've devastated the US, they will just move on to the next healthy tree and suck it dry as well. It's done in smaller scale in everything they touch, mining, deforestation, work forces, etc. How long until Canada is next?

It's easy to take over because they use money and have huge amounts of it at their disposal. Everyone has a price, that is how it happened here. I don’t care what anyone says, if you have corporate funds, especially protected in anonymity in your political and governmental system? Your in a pretty damn free market.

You have the misconceptions. Socialists want to get rid of private land ownership because thatch how they assert totalitarianism, when i think the idea was really to put it in the hands of the "people". Another is the always omitted tenant "The man who does not work, does not eat."

I guess what i am on about is identifying what I find the problems with Marxist/Trotskyist and Leninist beliefs, and improving it. I'm divided on some things.

I am against state control within reason.

The term from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Some say From each his ability to each according to his production.

I look at what is going on, and I begin to wonder if there is hope to stop what is happening in America from spreading to the entire world without revolution. I don’t know, but its enough to make me question it.

At the end of the day though I can see a world in which a pure socialist system actually works, but not as Marx saw it and not utopian. there will always be liars and cheaters and thieves. The world is imperfect. However, i hardly think this adolescent (obsessed with fame and power) version is the end all be all of our evolutionary path. We can do better than this. We can do a better job of compensating for all of these issues we have no matter what system we use.

i guess i don’t see an argument for a systems whose only real purpose is to allow some to be better than others and lord it over them. Because I think if you paid everyone the same, hypothetically eradicating the poor via wealth, there would be many people angry only because they were not unequal, weren’t better.

I want to say more and discuss more, but... I’m exhausted and I'm losing things as I type them which means I'm probably not making sense like i want to... tomorrow...

Mantus

Baraku_Guru

I agree with every single word you wrote and have to thank you for such a wonderful response.

As someone who was born and lived in Russia during the soviet era I was exposed to propaganda and group-think that went along with communism. Even though Gorbachev was bringing freedom to Russian people there were many who hated him. To this day seeing a portrait of Stalin in people's living rooms is not too uncommon. So I know first hand that a political movement can be just as dogmatic as religion.

When my family moved to Canada and I studied the US political system I the same zealous traits withing capitalism supporters that were common in communists. I suppose this is a legacy of the cold war era. While free-market capitalism and communism are completely different paths it takes the same type of mind to adopt a blind faith in these systems. I believe that they are equally dangerous to societies.


Three reasons,

Money is just a tool. It serves a function that is desired by people. I fail to see how socialism can strip materialistic desires from humans. Removal of currency will simply cause us to revert back to a barter system until a replacement comes into play.

We are human and behave irrationally.

Utopia is a fictional concept.

urville

Of course. I disagree about money returning. The system can exist in a state where people work for outcome not a financial reward and it can be done in a manner that compensates for greed and all the negative behavior. It wont be perfect but better than this, imo. I dont expect to see it in my lifetime, but if we keep going down these roads successfully we will find ourselves there anyway. Sure people are materialistic, I see that as a negative trait that could be changed like many others we have outgrown. It doesnt mean we have to give them a system in which they can easily abuse and run rampant with that materialism. I think it could work better... honestly, this is the best we can do? An antiquated system with obvious huge flaws? Like I said we temper it with a mixed system and we keep moving that way, how long until we are there anyway?

I'm not talking about utopia. Utopia is perfect and like you said, perfect is impossible.

roachboy

if folk imagine socialism to be a state in the sense of solid state nothing changes the best of all possible worlds then no wonder the conclusion follows that it's a pipe dream. that's how circular arguments work. you land where you started.

at the same time, it's obviously a problem what the whole stalinism thing did to the language that had been developed in the marxist tradition to critique and posit alternatives to capitalism....which of course they did by way of a single-minded application of a version of marx, processed through lenin (materialism and empiro-criticism anyone? i felt bad for the guy when i slogged through it in grad school) and comrade stalin himself, friend of the children, hero of nations, genius of linguistics, mass murderer, paranoid, etc.

at the same time, though, capitalism is not a thing. it's more a social form and one that keeps changing like any other complex social-historical phenomenon keeps changing. the baseline analyses that marx developed in the middle part of the 19th century for the critique of capitalism have been in trouble since pretty early on, really---at least since the development of the stock trade in the 1870s complicated the schema for thinking about the concentration of wealth, which in turn complicated the scenario that defined capitalism as a kind of giant jurassic technology that would, by running, destroy itself.

and then there was the actual success of the trade-union movement. in the old schema, that would not have been predicted as the nature of wealth concentration (and other things) were such that demands for things like power-sharing and higher wages would have exploded the system. except they didn't.

anyway, the problem i suppose with socialism in any revolutionary sense in 2011 is that no-one knows what it would mean or entail. there's not a lot of systematic critique of contemporary capitalism from a progressive political viewpoint. it's not clear that there is any reason to think in terms of The Revolution outside of a messianic viewpoint. it's not obvious what revolution would mean---the term is getting redefined before our teevee-eyes in places like egypt.

democratic socialism is basically a politics of resource allocation.
at it's simplest, it centers on a full-employment economy as its central political objective.
democratic socialism does not seem to me to square real well with the national-security state.

at the same time, old-school democratic socialism is kind of problematic because of the changes in the geography of capitalist organization.

but as a general way of thinking about what kind of social system with captialism at or near its center is desirable and in seeing the state as a powerful mechanism for both directing resources in ways commensurate with those goals and for extending public power at the expense of the (non-accountable) private sector, it's a good orientation.

certainly more ethically sound and sustainable than the still-dominant neo-liberal lunacy has turned out to be.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Baraka_Guru

It's not universally the case. Just mostly so. We can talk about specific systems that seem to be balanced enough to try to emulate if you wish. Maybe even how to improve them further.

I believe most of what people know of socialism is based on the corrupt rule and extreme measures taken as a means of applying it to society, which is unfortunate, considering socialism likely is going on right under their noses.

I think it's important not to overlook Sweden and, to an extent, Germany, mainly for their strong social democratic aspects.

Yes, a lot is changing in Canadian politics; however, I'm uncertain how long the current conservative influence will last. They won a majority with only around 40% of the vote. What this means, is that they control 55% of Canada's government with only 40% of the popular vote. As a comparison, the social democrats in second position have 33% of the seats with nearly 31% of the vote. How fucked up is that?

The changes from last election saw the conservatives go from a minority government to a majority by garnering a mere 2% increase of the popular vote. This extra 2% managed to increase their seat count by 23, pushing them into a comfortable majority.

The social democrats? Their popular vote total surged by about 12.5%, but their seat count increased by 66. Do the math. 1% = 12 seats vs. 1% = 5 seats.

The problem is in the electoral system being "first past the post." People blame "vote splitting" between liberals and social democrats for handing the majority to the conservatives. All together, between liberals and social democrats, the popular vote consists of nearly 60%. This means that 60% of the electorate chose either social democracy or liberalism, but the 40% of conservative voters ushered in a majority conservative government.

So the political will for left of centre to the left is there. The problem is the way the system works. (Sorry for the info dump.)

I think any pure system is less stable than a comprehensive mixed one that is managed year to year, election to election. Canada is a stable economy. Why is that? Some say it's because of all the natural resources, but the fact is that a vast majority of our wealth is generated by services and manufacturing. Our system is stable, in my opinion, because of the balance between the market economy and social democratic/liberal policies.

I don't think revolution is required. I think changes will come when the system starts to fail on a wholesale level. When people start to panic, they vote for changes they see as meaningful, especially if these changes emulate systems that are proven to work (universal heath care, for example).

A lot has to do with perspective. In Cold War America and in the former Soviet Union, people knew mostly from extremes. In a post-Cold War world, there is an opportunity to shift that perspective, as you have pointed out. In my own case, being born and raised in Canada, I know mostly deep-seated liberalism tempered with Canadian conservatism. It doesn't get much more moderate than that. This is why you get free-market principles mingling with regulatory bodies and social programs like universal health care, welfare, and social security. It's a mixed system and it has been doing us well. This is all I know. I don't know communism. I don't know what it felt like living under the Red Scare, etc. That give me a different perspective from yours, clearly.

I agree. Blind faith is never healthy. This is why it's good to look at facts and to work towards meaningful change, to measure success and to tackle problems that are a concern to the electorate. Not everyone is a free-marketer, and not everyone is a socialist. It's about doing what you can to benefit the population as a whole. Sometimes this requires biting the bullet. In the end, it also requires some hindsight to see what works and what doesn't.

* * * * *

And, guys, the whole money thing is a non-issue to me. I don't see the sense or the practicality to abolishing money. It's a medium of exchange. I don't see money as the problem. If anything, the profit model is the problem. You can look at profits as a motivator for production and development of society, or you can look at profits as "surplus value" or "overcharge." I think that's a better starting point than whether we should abolish a medium of exchange. I don't consider the medium the problem.

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The real challenge of this is how the lines between the state and the private sector have become blurred. Especially so in the States, you have a problem of influence in matters of state where you get political decisions made based on their impact primarily on the private sector. It's as though government has become merely a intermediary between the people and the private sector—one that is hired by the private sector but selected internally by the people. It's a game that's played where your score is based on the amount of capital you control personally.

It's a game with few winners and many losers.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

ASU2003

I've been trying to figure out what I am in the past few weeks. The closest I have come is a Green Syndicalism. Or maybe it is small government eco-socialist, where the federal government sets the standards and helps everyone out when they need it, but people would lead simpler lives based less on consumption than on friends, family, and nature. Technology that is low-cost and Earth friendly should be adopted to improve lives. Linux is the model of a small group of people sharing and improving something for fun, not for profit. Only a small group of people need to do the work, yet everyone benefits. The rest are able to use the tools to gain information and entertainment. People help and volunteer as their primary job.

Eco-socialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Green syndicalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If I were in Canada, I would like this party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_Less_Party
http://timeday.org/posters/skyscraper_12x18_KL.pdf

urville

That remark was admittedly hyperbolic. My bad.


Indeed, in fact I rather meant Sweden rather than Switzerland in that convo.... I was tired. Leaving out Germany was just... Germany is probably in my opinion the most successful socialist country i can think of.

No way... gives me perspective on a subject i know little about. Let me give you the chance to do it again. What of the HUGE talking point here in America in which the Canadians are spilling over the border to utilize our amazing health system due to multi-year waits and substandard care. (Not that i believe this for a second since I've been using our system for my whole life and here you have to see 6 different doctors to even be sure your not getting screwed or treated by an idiot.

Okay. Are we not essentially... eventually... inevitably headed there if we continue to progress? I am of course saying that i find the other option and its philosophy to be the opposite of progression.

I hope that is right, that you are right... I think the revolution is education. An education system that is as well funded as our defenses, where books and the info in them arent determined by the biggest buyer (texas), where we have a social side to it that not just educates knowledge of the general studies but of coping skills, living skills, etc. One that can at a bare minimum that is needed, compensate for any home life. One that gears students towards their wants and talents. That isnt utopia and if you do that, the kind of educated and well adjusted students you would get would greatly reduce the populations of our prisons, welfare systems, non senior based aid needs and simultaneously by a majority vote for more of this kind of change. At least thats my prediction.

But why must it be utopia to imagine a world where the majority works for the satisfaction of being successful in their trade or their profession for the sake of creation and self worth and knowing that their contribution is, like all others, a deciding factor... instead of one of the exact opposite kind? Bringing up the earlier point that its just as possible to be centered more to that side than this side as it is now.

I can agree with this to some extent. I guess for me, I cant help but see greed and capitalism as a drug and a junkie who, despite their best intentions to only do just "a little", just "enough to get by, to function", are really just addicts who will eventually die from their addiction, the only question is when/how long.

Yes yes, the great corporatocracy making a real industry of imperialism. They think Obama is going to make a socialist evil empire but in reality its all of them playing for the same outcome. "The Company" is the ultimate bureaucracy and the ultimate goal. Private money in public elections and judge assignments and the electoral.

---------- Post added at 12:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:15 AM ----------

Why not the Coop/council model for distribution rather than the state? A compulsory short term limit political and coop/council system?

---------- Post added at 12:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:17 AM ----------

I too have been looking into these. i cant make a full determination yet though.

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I still need to respond to roachboy, always so late and no time... homework... bah

kowalskil

Me too.

By the way, the word "socialism" means different thing to different people. To some people it means "proletarian dictatorship--a transitional stage between capitalism and communism. The second S, in the name of USSR, stood for "socialist."

Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia)
.
.

__________________
Ludwik Kowalski, author of a free ON-LINE book entitled “Diary of a Former Communist: Thoughts, Feelings, Reality.”
It is a testimony based on a diary kept between 1946 and 2004 (in the USSR, Poland, France and the USA).

Happy recluse

The question I have concerns the founding principles of any social-political system. What principle allows you to compel other people to behave as you think they should? Such a principle could be religious, as found in Islamic Sharia law. Maybe you appeal to a principle of majority rule, but we know the mistakes the majority can make. It can institute slavery and prevent women from voting. Another principle might be what you think will produce the greater happiness, then we cannot be sure that you know what is best for me. So, if you think we should become a socialist society, then upon what principle may you compel others to live as you see fit?

I also wonder about the concept of “ownership” in political systems. If I own something, then I may do anything I wish with it provided that my use doesn’t infringe on someone’s freedom to do as he chooses. But if at some future time government may take my ownership of something, then in fact I cannot own it in the first place. Or if government may restrict my use of something I own, beyond my use to infringe on someone else’s freedom, then I cannot be said to own that thing. For example, if I own the land around my house, then no government has authority to tell me to cut the lawn in a timely fashion, nor can it prevent me from opening a business in my garage. If government has legitimate authority to prevent my use of my land, then in fact I do not own it.

Willravel

I'd like to live in a society where people genuinely care about each other's well-being, not necessarily to the point where personal responsibility doesn't exist, but to where community is valued. I think human beings work better as a team than as enemies, and regardless of what competitions exist between us, at the end of the day we're all each other have. I'd like governmental and social systems to stem from this basic belief.

Happy recluse

I understand your wishes, your likes and dislikes, but they are not sufficient for someone to compel me to live along those same lines. I can't get from the idea that you or I like something to the conclusion that we are justified in passing laws just because we like them. So, I wonder what justifies the desire to force other people to live a certain way?

Willravel

An example of one such justification is that you're standing in the way of our society succeeding. If you choose to, for example, break laws we've all agreed on, you will be compelled to follow them again with punitive measures. You can bitch about it, but that's the prices for living in a society. The alternative is anarchy, and you don't want to live in an anarchy because someone stronger than you will kill you, rape your wife and steal all your shit. In a society with rules, people like this are isolated or otherwise generally kept in check.

Happy recluse

Strike Two, my friend. That I am standing in the way of our society succeeding isn't a justification for a socialistic society or any other kind of society. And since it isn’t a justification, it also isn’t an example of a justification. (I’ve given some examples above.)

I'm not sure how I'm standing the way of society succeeding mostly because I don't know what such “success” is. I also don't understand how a society "works" or "doesn't work." I hear complaints that a capitalistic or socialistic system can’t “work,” but what does that mean?

Do we judge the success of a society by the number and intensity of its wars? Maybe we should look at crime statistics or drug use. Usually I think people are thinking of general happiness. This or that society is successful because it produces the greatest amount of happiness. But then I’m not sure how we know what happiness is. Can we determine when or how it can be achieved? For a while we thought society was better off with slavery, then we changed our minds. We thought preventing women from voting put us on the path to success, but we changed our minds on that, too. Maybe success, whatever it is, can be achieved by prohibiting the consumption of alcohol.

Of course, one way of determining that a social theory doesn’t work is to find contradictions in the theory. I think that socialism supports the laws requiring businesses to have handicapped parking spaces and demanding that no one smoke cigarettes in building owned by businesses. The problem is that these laws interfere with the ownership of those businesses. If I own a business and the land it rests on, then I may have special parking spaces for whomever I choose: that’s what ownership allows. If government has the authority to demand I set aside spaces for some people, then I guess I don’t really own the parking lot after all, even though I am listed as the owner on the deed to the land. Socialism is a wrong theory because it claims the government is justified in compelling people do things with their own property, thereby employing while at the same time negating the possibility of ownership. This “tug” between my rights to something I own and the government’s rights to tell me how that thing should be disposed produces the contradiction showing that there can be no justification for socialism.

No matter what conception of society you advance, the question remains, “by what authority do you compel other people to behave as you determine they should?”

Willravel

Have you ever entered into a contract? Societies have contracts, social contracts. By being a part of a society, you agree to follow certain rules, and in exchange, you get the benefits being a member of a society entails. If you are unhappy with the terms of the social contract you find yourself in, you can either attempt to change it or you can opt out. If you choose to change it, though, you can't simply disobey the rules you don't like because other people can't justify them by your subjective metric. If you do, you run the risk of finding out there are consequences for breaking the rules and because you've been all to happy to reap the reward for being a member of society, you also must accept punitive measures when you're in breach of contract.

Success, the way I meant it, means the least amount of suffering. Societies exist to decrease suffering. Rules in societies exist to reduce suffering in societies. This can be demonstrated using any number of and combination of metrics. An example would be low crime rates, access to clean water, food, and drugs, economic and financial stability, access to affordable and quality healthcare, adequate defense both military and civil, and any number of other things which can objectively be demonstrated to reduce suffering. By these metrics, the social democracies of Northern Europe and Canada, which are more socialistic that the United States, beat the United States's more capitalistic society rather soundly. I can go into much greater detail on this if you wish.

roachboy

socialism is a politics of resource allocation. period. it's not about "making you live a certain way" any more than any other social order is. you "live a certain way" in the reactionary united states already. you support a politics of resource allocation that privileges military and police procurement, that prefers incarceration as a mechanism for addressing class conflict, the has developed a quite efficient form of soft authoritarian cultural domination one effect of which is that people often don't have even a rudimentary understand of either the order they live in or what alternatives to that order might look like. it's all just one happy stream of consumer options and everyone is a happy consumer and feels all free-like because they can buy commodities that help them pretend they're unique---that many many many people buy the same commodities and feel the sense sense of being unique in the same way doesn't matter because in amurican consumer-land, it's all about you. and anything that forces you to think about something that's not you is socialism. that's wrong.

what forces you to think about something that's not you is awareness.

it is of no consequence what your fantasies about democratic or any other form of socialism are. those fantasies are based on a wholesale misunderstanding of the term being discussed in the thread. it's like trying to talk with someone who confuses ayn rand with a philosopher. the errors are so basic that it's often just a waste of time.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Happy recluse

I don’t see that you want to reduce suffering. I see that you want to control everyone with the (stated) goal of reducing suffering. The liberal argument never calls upon us to give to charity; it never calls upon us to work charitably. The liberal argument demands that government take control of people so it can spend the citizens’ money in the way it sees fit. If liberals were truly interested in reducing suffering, they’d work to develop charity. But their first goal is not to reduce suffering. It is to control other people.

Conservative or libertarian philosophy, as I understand it, holds that society arose to protect individual rights. By banding together we can produce a military to protect us from invaders and police to protect us from internal crime, so that we are all free to live as we choose.

Borrowing from Immanuel Kant, there can be only ONE right. A multitude of rights, such as the right to an education, to health care, to a job, etc., contradict each other. For example, my right to health care forces you to pay taxes that reduce or remove your right to an education.

Since a “right” is a freedom of action such that one’s action doesn’t interfere with someone else’s freedom of action, that singular right must be the right to be left alone. This right is the only one that can be exercised equally by everyone at the same time. This right is fundamental and basic. It is a natural right.

As I live I realize that I can interact with others in society through contracts to improve my own life. I hire you to educate my children, for example. In your agreement to the contract you pledge to give up some of your right to be left alone during certain hours of the day for specific purposes—so that you don’t become my slave—and in turn I give up my right to be left alone, i.e., my money used to pay you. Thus, everyone’s amount of the right to be alone is always constant. I “sell” my right to be left alone, to perform specific tasks, in order to get your right to the money you promised in the contract.

The only valid reason government has to take any of my money, property or time is to insure protection of my right to be alone and the rights you traded in any contracts we have together. Thus, a government may tax me for a police force, military, penal institutions, courts, etc.

There is no justification for the government’s taking my money to educate your children or provide your health care because you have no rights to those things in the first place. Such alleged rights interfere with my right to be left alone, and so they cannot be genuine rights in the first place.

Reducing suffering, helping needy people and the like are not rights that can be forced against me, but they are moral obligations. I have a moral duty to help other people.

I know that liberals are unsatisfied with a mere “moral obligation” to help other people. Liberals and socialists are unsatisfied if they cannot compel people to give up money for their worthy causes. Naturally people are charitable. There are countless instances where we are charitable simply because human beings are “bent” to help each other. The book, Who Really Cares, by Arthur C. Brooks, cites instance-after-instance where conservatives are clearly more charitable than liberals. Again, this evidence shows that liberals are not interested in helping other people so much as they are interested in forcing the rest us to help other people, but only as liberals see fit.

Happy recluse

I think I understand the point found in the quotation above. If allocating my resources means that I am compelled to surrender them, then I am being forced to live a certain way. If I give up my resources freely, then I am not forced to live a certain way. In the first instance I am left without a choice to give up my resources or not, while in the second instance I am left with a choice.

Your idiosyncratic style is difficult to follow. The rest of what you wrote makes little sense. Your comments about people buying things to be unique and something about self-awareness have no context that I can see. Is it possible that they are simply angry rants, or maybe that English is not your primary language?