Kinda referencce the 'All doomed' thread..

To some, globalization means shifting factories to emerging nations and letting them pollute 'their' air, 'cos their labour is cheaper.. and CO2 emmissions may well be greater too because they can get away with it (less legislation).

Pandering to the pockets of shareholders rather than the common good is what will drive us under.

'Globalization' is the unacceptable face of capitalism gone crazy. It shows that eventually capitalism will destroy itself (like communism) and probably take the planet with it.

I agree... somewhat....

I think people, no matter what the method, will eventually end up killing something... the planet... everybody... something vital...

It's entropy....

EDIT:
I'll expand on that, for arguement's sake...

Even in socialist countries, the economies are capitalistic, so there's room to blame everyone for that one. In capitalism, you have to make money or nothing happens and everything dies, so it's only natural that competition controls what the corparations do in order to make money.

The alternative of 'state owned everything' so the 'people' have control is even worse. Because once power like that is had, there's nothing to stop them form doing what ever they want.

Either way, we get screwed in the end. Either everyone's gonna do it, or no one is... it's just that way....

Sad but true...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: IamWhatIam,

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Pandering to the pockets of shareholders rather than the common good is what will drive us under

I tend to think of it more it terms of culture.

That a group of people are allowed to take responsbility for (control the autonomy of) other people, and then profit from their work, speaks volumes.

Or if you prefer, shareholders are given the benefit of investments, without having to take responsibility for their harm.

A society that desires such a situation to exist, on an individual, and social level, may very well dominate and flourish - but other areas, such as the common good, concentrated in the decisions of the few - will suffer for both wisdom and sympathy.

All right, but if we're going down the tubes, I get to ride the bomb a la Slim Pickens.

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Originally posted by Janos:
I tend to think of it more it terms of culture.

I wonder, where is the line between culture and nature? Military historian John Keegan (in A History of Warfare) argues that even armed struggle is a sociological--rather than innate--behavior. In other words, just another cultural affectation that we may or may not outgrow. It's encouraging to know that someone of his credentials feels that he can afford to be so optimistic.

If it could be said that the only thing opposite nature is art(ifice), I certainly view civilization as an artificial arrangement. Like a garden that's always threatening to go to seed.

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Originally posted by Janos:
Or if you prefer, shareholders are given the benefit of investments, without having to take responsibility for their harm.

A society that desires such a situation to exist, on an individual, and social level, may very well dominate and flourish - but other areas, such as the common good, concentrated in the decisions of the few - will suffer for both wisdom and sympathy.

And let's not forget about natural selection.

"Nature is the heart of indifference." - Nietzsche

This message has been edited. Last edited by: the_Etruscan,

Not so much capitalism, as the stupidity and lack of long-term vision of too many people.

If one wants to be pessimistic, that visual analogy from the documentary 'The Corporation' seems apt: modern industrial civilization as one of those pre-Wright Bros. non-aerodynamic plane prototypes, a jumble of wires and canvas, with the inventor ridiculously flapping the wings. It seems to be flying off the high cliff, but it's just tumbling down. That's our civilization: down the cliff, we just don't see the rushing ground below us.
Ah, but what a way to go.

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Originally posted by fuldog:
... that visual analogy from the documentary 'The Corporation' seems apt: modern industrial civilization as one of those pre-Wright Bros. non-aerodynamic plane prototypes, a jumble of wires and canvas, with the inventor ridiculously flapping the wings. It seems to be flying off the high cliff, but it's just tumbling down. That's our civilization: down the cliff, we just don't see the rushing ground below us.

Yeah, the scary side of that Keegan book is it demonstrates just how haphazardly experimental the evolution of warfare has been.

In 'The Corporation', I liked the carpet CEO, Ray Anderson(?), who said that if humanity is going to survive, then in the future they'd have to put people like him in jail.

What else does "unsustainability" mean but "extinction"?

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Ah, but what a way to go.

Dum spiro spero.

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Not so much capitalism, as the stupidity and lack of long-term vision of too many people.

I try to resist that kind of thinking. It leads to the worst sort of education for the many.

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Originally posted by Janos:
That a group of people are allowed to take responsbility for (control the autonomy of) other people, and then profit from their work, speaks volumes.

Or if you prefer, shareholders are given the benefit of investments, without having to take responsibility for their harm.

A society that desires such a situation to exist, on an individual, and social level, may very well dominate and flourish - but other areas, such as the common good, concentrated in the decisions of the few - will suffer for both wisdom and sympathy.

But isn't that what socialism does? Doesn't it give control of the very lives of people over to a few people?

Remember, someone has to be in charge and that means someone will be under their 'control'. I'd rather see this in the hands of private citizens than the government. They are near as well armed as the government is!

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Originally posted by IamWhatIam:
Remember, someone has to be in charge and that means someone will be under their 'control'.

I'm guessing that Janos will challenge this assertion in a much more eloquent manner than I can manage at the moment. I'm kind of looking forward to it.

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But isn't that what socialism does? Doesn't it give control of the very lives of people over to a few people?

Remember, someone has to be in charge and that means someone will be under their 'control'. I'd rather see this in the hands of private citizens than the government. They are near as well armed as the government is!

You're mistaking socialism with what became of communism in the Soviet union.

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I'm guessing that Janos will challenge this assertion in a much more eloquent manner than I can manage at the moment. I'm kind of looking forward to it.

Hurry up Janos!

Trust me, I can't wait either!

I remind you that Janos is a functional anarchist (as opposed to all those utopic ones) so although I suppose he considers socialism a better place to live than capitalism, it is at the end an opressive and unequal system. So I do not suppose he will defend it, except in comparison.

The difference is mostly philosophical, so you can have practically identical formally capitalist and socialist entities, but different just due to their mentality.

Socialism is centered in, obviously, a social contract. The basic unit is society, and all people are responsible for it, and have a series of rights and duties because of it. Society is expected to improve as a whole, and people with it.

Capitalism is an individualist system, where there are no automatic obligations to your fellow human being. I will try to improve my lot, and will not expect a break, nor give it.

Both can be exploited, but accountability will be higher in a working socialist system because there is, at a functional level, no area where society has no interest. So it can and may well interfere in how you handle your land, how you behave at home, or how much money you have. Or to meddle in a discussion between you and your employees.

To keep society working, some traces of socialism are present both in capitalist and in oligarchic systems. But they are there despite the systems, not because of them.

The big problem for working socialist systems is who is a member of society? Or, putting it in other way, what do you do with those that benefit from society but do not fulfill their duties to it?

José

I'd like to add that a further difference is that neither Socialism nor Capitalism are strictly forms of government. The Socialist ideal would be all value of human labor be honored. It in fact implies the deterioration of the State if only because everybody gets what they want because they get the right value for their work.

Capitalism itself idealizes the "value" part of the equation, and finds ways to maximize the monetary value of something by alienating it from the worker that produced that thing (this has gotten to the point where, often, the worker doesn't have that much role in producing, in some industries; in other industries, the worker does nothing other than produce paper and discourse).

Neither of these imply a system of government except insofar as both want government to go away. In ideal Socialism, the government withers away; in Capitalism, the government shouldn't be there in the first place, since it gets in the way of the (hopefully) constant upward spiral of value and profit.

Now, the question of government systems is interesting, because they *do* tie in to what economic system you've got. You could have a Socialist democracy (this is, of course, supposedly what the USSR was in the early years. You'd have committees in every community that made community decisions. It's like having a Union as your city council.) or a Socialist Republic, or, of course, a Socialist dictatorship.

A Republic (which most of the "Free World" has: Parliaments, House of Representatives, Senates) are representative democracies, allow there to be government without the participation of absolutely everybody. We delegate somebody we ostensibly trust to make the big decisions, because we simply don't have time. This can get abused. But this system of government does not have to be tied to a Capitalist economic system. It can also apply controls to the economic system to undertake things like stewardship of the planet and preventing exploitation, but, again, this depends on who the elected representative actually represents: the people who elected the rep. or those who try to influence the rep's opinion through money? And then, of course, there's the ideological makeup of the representative.

I'm not sure you can so much blame the system as the fact that any system has *people* in it, who have differing ethical boundaries, different opinions, and so-on. Of course, we're people too, and the best we can do is make sure the people we elect know what we want. The worst thing about the current state of the system in the US is the creeping alienation from the system. Those who care deeply also doubt deeply their ability to have an effect.

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In the U.S. people are allowed to be political as long as they don't actually have an effect on anything. So, the purpose of these gatherings [demonstrations] was for the like-minded to see each other, try to get thirty seconds on the evening news and remember that they were not as alone as they felt reading the paper that morning. Throughout, there was an unspoken hope that sooner or later someone would figure out a more effective method for accomplishing their goals.

-- Sarah Schulman, Girls, Visions and Everything, 1986.

It sounds like I'm cheerleading (and I *know* I'm being simple; I'm basically parroting my civics class), but I guess I'm trying to keep us thinking. Wouldn't like to end up like those people in the old Encyclopedia Brittanica short Gibson blogged about.

So, we should say 'people' will kill the planet and not capitalism....

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The Law
A Fatal Tendency of Mankind

Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.

But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man — in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.

I believe that the only way to limit the impact of Humans on each other, is to restrict their power to do this, especially with regards to government.

By no means am I saying that Capitalism is the be all, end all system. But it does allow for more comtrol by US, the people. Remember. Law if Force and forcing someone to do something is never a good thing, so that, in my mind, is the limiting factor. Limit access to Force (law, government) limit power.

Let me say that I believe one of the basic problems is the artificial distinction between "the government" and "private citizens." If the citizens do not feel they have a voice in government, that is a failure of their system of democracy (or an outright lack of democracy), and not a feature of either capitalist or socialist ideals. The problem is power, specifically that the power is "over there" and not "here." I don't really care if it is government or private, as long as it pays attention to the needs and desires of the citizens (which neither governments nor private organizations have a very good track record of doing).

^^ What colin said (Mindgangster?)

The we all agree! (except maybe Janos)

I do have a bit of trouble separating money from power, largely because those with power tend to have a great deal of money. So would "redistribution of Power" necessarily also be "redistribution of wealth?"

Sorry for the delay, been busy.

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But isn't that what socialism does? Doesn't it give control of the very lives of people over to a few people?

Yes - and as predicted, I'm very much against Socialsm. I find most utopian philosophies offensive to me as a human being, partly because I place a lot of value on the plasticity of the human animal - and these philosophies and discourses effectively change us into subjects - whether we are consumers or workers, etc.

The thing about Socialism, or Laissez-Faire Capitalism as concieved by most of the respective advocates is that they are a telelogical philosophies, and end in a form of material and social apocalypse - a profound war in which the 'true' emerges victorious.

For capitalism, this may mean the truth of free-trade (neocolonialism), or in socialism it may mean a more externalized war. Both ideas (and that's what they are - ideas which act in and with nature) justify most anything in their defense because the posit a pastoral vision after the apocalypse.

I'd say then, that in many ways, the vision of capitalism and socialism in the West is a marriage of catholicism with progressivism.

What we are seeing are religious structures that are also part of Enlightenment sciences (economics, marxism and it's fields). Progressivism and capitalism are "ism's" - positions of being for humankind.

Functional anarchists (good name) such as myself don't claim to practice anarchism - just anarchy - and it's partly for this reason.

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Remember, someone has to be in charge and that means someone will be under their 'control'. I'd rather see this in the hands of private citizens than the government. They are near as well armed as the government is!

This is such a broad assertion 'someone has to be in charge' that it's very difficult to argue against it.

I can say that it most basically comes from the idea of the social contract, which is bunk. In the social contract, the king, for example, is no longer the king because of a connection with God (truth) or because of an accumulation of power - but rather, because he fufills a necessary social role.

To the counter-argument about democracy etc, let me say this:

Government is one of the most widely-used, and ill-defined words around. Government is simply, who is in power. Those who govern - ie - those who make choices affecting a broad number of people, who are mostly conditioned to be 'subjects.'

Whether there is a formal nation-state system, whether the subjects can vote or not, etc, is really beside the point.

So, for me, the US government is a terribly imprecise term. For me, government is landlords, business owners, corporations, the biomedical complex, etc - basically, whoever has the power to govern me.

I try to define a government not by the socio-political entitiy and vision that it states, but rather by where it's subjets are - what it controls.

The governments of the world then, have subjects in wildly disparate places, doing different things. With neocolonialism (free trade) we can see a reassertion of this fact. Those clothes sold at the US Wal-Mart from China essentially includes the workers in that Chinese factory as partly their subjects. Wal-Mart has as much control over their lives as the 'Chinese Government' does. It is possible for a human being to be a subject of multiple forms of power and yet, only identify as belonging an idea of one.

So, you can see, by this measure, the 'United States' is not a republic, but rather, one of many concentrations of autonomy and the power of truth (object) over those who experience, produce knowledge and truth (subjects), in the world.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that the social contract shouldn't be measured by the terms presented by power - ie - the nation-state. It has to be considered within the full realm of power relations, in a global sense. I think you will quickly see then, it doesn't really exists.

In many ways, the social contract is an extended form of 'noblese obige', formalized in 19th century science. But it's BS. It was dreamed up by 'armchair philosophers' such as John Locke, who intuited a poetic explanation of their society from what they saw.

Their vision of a history of brutality, in which the enlightened escaped and defended the weak through the invention of power-sharing and contract has no actual basis in a precise history, or a critical scientific discourse. It's a narrative - and one that fit their time well.

Partly this goes to the judiciary. By the time the social contract was invented, the king had taken an interest in the personal conflicts of common people. This was entirely new. By placing himself by proxy in the place of the victim (the invention of the prosector) - the king had established a new role in the 19th century West. A role that of course, allowed for huge gains of territory and property in compensation.

The armchair philosophers came up with a pithy explanation of this system of power, and we quickly saw a birth of new sciences that also were essentially ways to control the king's subjects (psychology, criminal psychology particularly, etc).

Not all areas had a king, some had other forms of power, such as aristocrats, some had a 'form' of democracy, but this idea was retained and spread throughout the conquered world - and it found a place very comfortably in biological science.

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someone has to be in charge

Most of the biological studies suggesting hieraarchy in nature came from the above time. As scientists have learned a slightly more critical discourse, we've seen plenty of studies of altrusim and other forms of relationships in nature as well.

Of course, this doesn't prevent bourgeousie society, for example, in enshrining their values on a group of unsuspecting cold-weather waterfowl.

But none of these really speak to the human experience, and in all honestly, they should probably be considered silly. This isn't to say that humans aren't animals and don't act as social animals, but rather, that given the variety of social behaviour in nature there are no clear conculsions (and the animal is, so man is, theory is almost a form of ritual magic to being with ).

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You're mistaking socialism with what became of communism in the Soviet union.

The thing about progressive philosophies are, their work is always incomplete. The failures of those philosophies to reach a pastoral vision is always the failure of technique, never a problematic within the philosophy itself.

So we can see huge schools of critical function form around these various reglions of Marxism, Socialism, Captialism - always aiming at producing the Catholic-like purity required for the formation of final truth in practice (apocalypse).

You can see this very clearly in prison reform (prisons have never worked), hospital reform, school reform, etc - it's always a failure of resources, not enough people knowing or 'ignorance', a failure to control, a failure of leaders, etc.

This sort of thinking is narrow-minded and agressive. It is probably better to define things not by their experience, or their posited ideal, but rather - their structure and discourse as a position in human philosophy and change.

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Capitalism is an individualist system, where there are no automatic obligations to your fellow human being.

Not true. There are probably as many social obligations in captialism as it's alternatives. (come to work on time, how you dress, punch clock, work, etc). The capitalist workday is full of obligations to another person or a group of people, if you are in a 'service industry'.

Those obigations are as 'automatic' - artificially constructed mechanism of power, as any created by another form of government, that identifies itself as the nation-state, as opposed to say, Bennigans.

What form has more variation if probably dependent on how you measure it. Try talking to a thoughtful person who grew up in East Germany, for example, and you'll find a range of experience and human connection in the communes that probably isn't seen as frequently over here. I'm not defending socialsim by saying this - I'm only pointing out capitalism utopian vision is not realized on earth (and cannot be), and it shouldn't be defined by it's pastoral any more than say, Christianity should be defined by heaven.

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The big problem for working socialist systems is who is a member of society? Or, putting it in other way, what do you do with those that benefit from society but do not fulfill their duties to it?

That is one of the larger problems of all religions - how to treat those who do not believe; or do not practice.

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Capitalism itself idealizes the "value" part of the equation, and finds ways to maximize the monetary value of something by alienating it from the worker that produced that thing (this has gotten to the point where, often, the worker doesn't have that much role in producing, in some industries; in other industries, the worker does nothing other than produce paper and discourse).

Glad to see you've read Marx
Although I should bring up two words "tractor quota" - that's certianly doing nothing but producing discourse as well.

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We delegate somebody we ostensibly trust to make the big decisions, because we simply don't have time.

Is that how power occurred? Because I may have missed that meeting, and I don't remember doing that. It would seem I was simply born into the condition of power existing. Someone must have made this decision for me, for the sake of "effiency", some time ago.

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The worst thing about the current state of the system in the US is the creeping alienation from the system.

it's been 'creeping' a long time. This is a critical, religious refrain. I will actually say that the US as a nation-state is as democratic as it's ever been.

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But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies.

Not all histories - just some.

I think the idea of a war as a moral failure, or exploitation as a desire, is silly. It panders to the idea that we need to 'just all get along'. There is a reason why that idea was made fun of so harshly when Rodney King said it - it's because it completely ignores the condition of reality as created by power and it's functions.

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This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man — in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.

Positive-reinforcement can occur in all manner of ways. We don't create governements and war machines by accident, in the wild. I believe our nature and how this occurs is much more complex and plastic than a placement of evil.

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By no means am I saying that Capitalism is the be all, end all system. But it does allow for more comtrol by US, the people. Remember. Law if Force and forcing someone to do something is never a good thing, so that, in my mind, is the limiting factor. Limit access to Force (law, government) limit power.

Or how about, limit power and you limit power? Power is a far broader and hegemonic thing than can exist within a single idealized institution. To advocate limiting government without understanding and defining power changes little - and is often just a shibboleth for the worst forms of racial and spirtual denigration.

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The problem is power, specifically that the power is "over there" and not "here." I don't really care if it is government or private, as long as it pays attention to the needs and desires of the citizens (which neither governments nor private organizations have a very good track record of doing).

I'm mostly down with that.

If we only understood that power is an accumulation of our own autonomy, rather than some biological or social fact, we would probably have an easier time of dealing with it.

As weird as it sounds, blaming people for their own problems, as opposed to the government is often a liberating act - when it takes into account the construction and use of power.

Phrases like "you get the government you deserve" are stupid, since you don't. It borders on racism and the worst forms of class-prejudice.

But, when you realize everyday people of all classes as still having their own autonomy and power, despite the fact that every day, they give it to the few, then we have some possibility at changing the discourse. And you make more friends, in my experience.

We won't benefit from thinking this way - but it does make life more fun. Thanks for encouraging me to share my opinions, I've got a lot.

In Vino Veritas!

Janos