SPECIAL NOTE : Ongoing political debate that you may or may not want to
read.
Uli : Anthony, this is the only logical conclusion for a capitalist
because capitalism means acquiring more and more for less and less.
Communism doesn't care about that, it wants to have everybody live
equally good. That this turned out to mean "everybody lives equally
bad" was a flaw in execution.
Anthony : No, it's a flaw in the theory: the two are logically
equivalent, just different ways of measuring. With communism, since all
live equally bad/good, there is no incentive at all to try and live
better -- because you can't, at the point of a gun - that is, there is
no reason to innovate.
Alain : It is because it was NOT the case that "all live equally
bad/good" that it failed. Systematic inequities sap motivation, that's
for sure.
> Uli : I think if you're really interested in
> continuing this discussion, we should do this off-list
> so we don't annoy people interested in OC, and you
> might want to recapture the differences between
> Marxism and Leninism.
Anthony : We might want to take it off list :)
Alain : Agreed, but I cannot host it yet because my EIMS/Macjordomo is
still not working.
> Anthony : What happened to the soviet union is the
> only thing that can happen when one tries to implement
> Marx's concepts: Starvation. Death. Destruction...
> Uli : Nice to see the McCarthy's words didn't fall on
> deaf ears.
Alain : What an ominous comment !!!
> Anthony : A lot of them did. I don't agree with
> putting people to death and/or imprisoning for their
> beliefs.
Alain : A very dark period of American history. :(
> Uli : Why is it unfair to help the unable? If you were
> not able to care for yourself, wouldn't you want
> someone to care for you? The unwilling are the thing
> that Marx didn't account for (which was his biggest
> fault), but besides that he understood the "things
> that be" pretty well.
Alain : Political Theory and History are quite different.
> Marx and I will never agree because we believe in
> different axioms; one of mine is the unalienable right
> to life, liberty, and property. Anything that abridges
> those is, by my definition, is wrong; is unfair.
Alain : Nothing wrong with property. The political philosopher Rousseau
would indeed agree with us that property is important. To be truly
free, Rousseau states, every citizen should not be a tenant (own the
land that they inhabit) and he should not be obliged to sell his
workforce to insure his security. Otherwise, freedom would be merely an
illusion because you're at the mercy of your employer and/or your
landlord.
>While Marx ideas would of worked if his assumptions
>about people were correct, and if everything went
>exactly as he wanted, I argue that such cannot be the
>case, and that Marx's ideas are thus doomed to failure.
Alain : There's more to it than that. Marx was merely one theorist,
albeit an important one. After we finish up with Marx, we can continue
our debate by discussing other flawed political philosophies, like
Capitalism for example (and other alternatives too).
> Let me add in "Altruism causes war" to the list, too.
Alain : What leads you to this conclusion?
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