reasons why people say anarchism could never work
Sweetleaf
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03 Feb 2012, 4:25 pm
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
See none of those examples in history are actually Communism....communism by default cannot have any sort of ruling class, that would defeat the purpose of communism.
Just a thought for reflection:
Look up 'ABN Jihad Exposed: Can Islam Be Reformed?' on Youtube. There was a four-way debate somewhere in this series between one libertarian/reform muslim (Zuhdi Jasser), one former terrorist now Christian, and two debaters who are defenders of fundamentalist Islam. BOTH of the the defenders of fundamentalist Islam say the exact same thing about sharia, caliphate, and the barbarism that we see in countries that supposedly practice it - real sharia hasn't been done yet.
I do not see how that has anything to do with communism.
The impression I'm getting is that the 'it hasn't been done yet' is something utopians of all stripes will never stop saying, likely in that it has the same genius to it as a theist saying 'prove that a God doesn't exist'. In one side you have an infalsifiable claim, on the other and in this context we have a claim that could only be falsified after we try a utopian system perhaps another hundred times and failed until everyone is sufficiently satisfied that everything they tried to blame previous failure on (capitalism, Christianity, biggotry, etc.) wasn't present and that every excuse subsequent to that had been exhausted as well.
Get whatever impression you want, but all I was saying is true communism has not existed yet........so one cannot argue that it would not work because it hasn't existed so it has yet to be seen.
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Sweetleaf
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03 Feb 2012, 4:37 pm
fraac wrote:
'True Communism' hasn't existed because it's imaginary.
No it has not existed yet because a communist society has not been created on a large scale.....it has been proven to work on a small scale, but the goal would be to create a large communist society I guess as in trying to make it work on a larger scale. that does not mean calling the proposed system communism to gain the support of the people but instead turn it into another system with a ruling class and call it communism.
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techstepgenr8tion
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03 Feb 2012, 4:42 pm
fraac wrote:
'True Communism' hasn't existed because it's imaginary.
I think what can be said about your analogy between NT thought an autistic thought; an autistic will believe that an asymptotal line can be reached and even crossed, an NT still understands that its an asymptote.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
03 Feb 2012, 4:43 pm
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
fraac wrote:
'True Communism' hasn't existed because it's imaginary.
I think what can be said about your analogy between NT thought an autistic thought; an autistic will believe that an asymptotal line can be reached and even crossed, an NT still understands that its an asymptote.
I don't know what that means.
techstepgenr8tion
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03 Feb 2012, 5:32 pm
fraac wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
fraac wrote:
'True Communism' hasn't existed because it's imaginary.
I think what can be said about your analogy between NT thought an autistic thought; an autistic will believe that an asymptotal line can be reached and even crossed, an NT still understands that its an asymptote.
I don't know what that means.
An asymptote is an algebraic term for a line that a linear equation can approach and get closer to all the way out to infinity but never touch. Its like having zero of something; it exists in that its a characteristic but one that's implied in how it doesn't exist. In a political sense Ayn Rand's fully fluid greed-based utopia is another that's literally impossible for the same reasons - ie. needs to pretend, for the sake of hypothesis, that all of the human factors that keep her perfect world from happening ever could disappear.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
04 Feb 2012, 3:23 am
snapcap wrote:
Anarchy is supposed to work in the short run, not in the long run.
no it's not.
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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?
Adam Smith
04 Feb 2012, 4:30 am
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
peebo wrote:
people who run for elected positions in local or national politics don't tend to come from the bottom, though.
Ah, so they're the oppressor not the oppressee already.
no. i mean simply that those who are actually on the bottom have no recourse to enter politics since just getting by in life, having food to eat, a house to live in etc. is a full time struggle.
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peebo wrote:
this may be beside the point however, as once they are in office they become part of the power structure. they are prey to vested interests, lobbyists and corruption. government progressively serves the powerful and wealthy, rather than the masses. the trajectory of government policy over the course of the 20th century, and particularly since the thatcher/reagan era until now demonstrates this.
My analogy wasn't federal government though. To clarify I meant city, county, etc.. Probably not major city either where you have political machines, just small local stuff or, in big city counties its the suburbs.
understood. i don't think this analogy is particularly good in that case. the argument that a small minority of people who live in small towns or rural areas can take up a career in local politics and have some influence over a limited set of local policies doesn't make a bottom up system. besides, in the uk at least, even local politics is rife with nepotism and corruption.
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peebo wrote:
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A dynamic takes place where people become aware that there is a problem with the current legal structure. Take the mortgage meltdown around the world where mortgages have a fixed principle value, at the time of their inception, and that the drop in value caused calamity because so many people found themselves under water. Ideas from private industry? Lets introduce the SAM - shared appreciation mortgage, where the lender and borrower share the appreciation and depreciation of property equally with a significantly lower interest rate for the borrower. Surprisingly, when a bubble hits this hard, what a bank loses in profit from SAMs it gains in prevented defaults. Solutions like that come from ground level, not from Washington.
multinational corporations are not at ground level. this is an example of top down structure. corporations have the power of wealth and protection from the state.
I'm a bit confused. I think you meant to post this to the next blurb? Anyway I think innovations for fixing problems and appropriately sharing liability - in a capitalistic system can come slowly, can take a disaster or two, but they get through quicker via the private sector than they would congress. Another thing to note - I'd like to know how M1 and M2 would be handled under an anarchist system. Say I want to start a company and need funds, would there still be fractional reserve? Would the banks be able to loan me money? Would I need to go see a venture capitalist for everything from starting a business to buying a house?
no, it was posted in the right place. you implied that a bank coming up with an innovative type of mortgage to protect their investment during an economic downtown is evidence of a bottom up system. i disagree.
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peebo wrote:
this is all true, but not valid in the context of this discussion. mass influence over product development decisions by means of purchasing power can not be argued to empower the populace in any real sense. especially given the majority of people on earth live a subsistence existence. what purchasing power do they wield?
I have to detail what you're saying to try and sort it out. You're claiming that the business to business sector trumps human demand or trumps what the media can do to a company who is in violation of the laws or even public interest - as I take it.
no. i'm saying that the ability to influence to a limited degree the behaviour of multinational corporations via the notion of purchasing power doesn't imply that we live in a bottom up system.
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Also, I'd love to know what 'empowering the populace' means. Aside from something that would be good for Rage Against The Machine lyrics I'm trying to understand what kind of empowerment you're talking about, what they're trying to achieve with that empowerment, and what the hoped for end result is.
for example, my day job involves helping to empower people with mental health issues, who are generally among the most disempowered in society, in terms of care and treatment decisions and social, accommodation and financial issues. this is understood to be a valid and necessary profession and is enshrined in law here. empowerment simply means asserting more control over the trajectory of the life of an individual. people living in socio-economic deprivation are equally disempowered, and this disempowerment is a product of the system of social and economic organisation in which we live.
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Clearly self or group empowerment in the traditional sense through NGOs, political and non-political organizations or urban revitilization plans at a local level don't work given that those are tools of the current system, what plan of empowerment are we talking about?
fundamentally, a fairer distribution of resources and wealth, equality of opportunity and more control over decision making processes that affect their lives directly.
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peebo wrote:
also, purchasing power has no direct influence on policy decisions etc. it doesn't facilitate workers receiving the true value of their labour.
The question back to you - how would you facilitate them receiving the true value of their labor, what would define and who would define the true value of their labor?
marx explains it in detail in theories of surplus value, 1861-3
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... plus-value
and in chapter 2 of a contribution to teh critiwue of political economy, 1859
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... l-economy/
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peebo wrote:
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Another likely bigger thing: common law systems. A tort goes to court, a judge reviews based on previous legal cases and outcomes, the jury votes, or in the case of a surpreme court (state or federal) the decision is made by a panel of judges. Case law only goes up directly to federal if it involves an issue between states. Law has always been, when done properly, a bottom-up thing and tort/common law is alive and well in the US as well as many other countries who practice majority-capitalism blends.
legal decisions being based upon precedent doesn't imply a bottom up legal system either.
No, it absolutely does. Local law comes from local law, state law draws from experience it was able to draw from both state and local law, federal law draws from experience of its own as well as state and local. I think the thing you're forgetting at least with America is that the state and federal governments aren't significantly older and have significantly less legal practice than the sum of the localities. States and federal governments, in a common law system, draw from everything relevant that they can find. Obviously a trade dispute between two states may not be something they'd be able to go back to a local level on as easily but in other senses they can. The appelate system starts the majority of cases and law suites at the local level, they only start elevating past the local level when they're that difficult to solve that they keep getting appealed upward.
my lack of knowledge of the american legal system notwithstanding, i would suggest that the fact of the legal system being presided over by an elite group of decision makers with whom ultimate power rests precludes any notion of it being a bottom up system regardless an emphasis on precedent. i believe your legal system is somewhat different from what operates here also, by way of precedent being a means of establishing principle rather than example here, however this i suppose is beside the point.
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?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?
Adam Smith
04 Feb 2012, 4:33 am
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
fraac wrote:
'True Communism' hasn't existed because it's imaginary.
I think what can be said about your analogy between NT thought an autistic thought; an autistic will believe that an asymptotal line can be reached and even crossed, an NT still understands that its an asymptote.
i would have thought the exact opposite, but perhaps you can expand on this a bit such that i may see what you are getting at?
_________________
?Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.?
Adam Smith
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