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Theory vs Practice
(lemmygrad.ml)
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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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People everywhere have always been exactly the same since the dawn of time. Mitochondrial Adam and Eve were literally McDonald’s franchise owners. I am extremely intelligent.
I mean, not to be glib. It does look like we are functionally then same as our recent ancestors. Like, hundred thousand years ago on the plains of Africa the homo-sapians there would be indistinguishable from any person off the street today after a wash and shave.
It's not a question of of similarity in terms of how we look, or our intelligence. It's a question of whether "human nature" is an immutable thing that exists. Marxists say that it doesn't, it's merely a consequence of material conditions, and that changing material conditions would change what people call human nature
I mean, we do have some nature. It just isn't as pronounced as people like to talk about. And it specifically isn't what capitalism calls it.
Did capitalism exist at that time?
No, that wasn't invented till like the 1600s. There were signs of extensive and complicated trade networks as far back into prehistory as we can look. They simply didn't form the moral basis of society like we see in capitalism
And if capitalism had a beginning, that would mean that it could also have an end?
God yes, it has long outlived it's usefullness.
Nothing to do with what I've said, but ok.
Yes, you are!
You said that communism can’t work because of human nature, thereby implying that everyone everywhere has always been exactly the same, ignorant of the fact that the concept of private property was invented about five thousand years ago in a few isolated places. For hundreds of thousands of years and for the vast majority of people who have ever lived, they never knew anything about private property and probably would have considered the idea absurd (which it is). No private property = communism. If we can say that anything is human nature (nothing actually is, since human nature changes depending on context), it would actually be communism. Capitalism is not only collapsing right now because it’s a terrible idea, it’s collapsing because of its fundamental contempt for human beings and even nature itself.
I didn't say that communism can't work. I'm just saying people try to fuck it up for their benefit, whatever it is.
Maybe people will get better over time and be less likely to do that. Really though I think it's just something we have to account for, by developing robust social systems that can't easily be abused, not without being caught.
People are self interested yes. Eliminating rent seeking behavior that is enabled by private property makes the social system harder to game for helping themselves at the cost societal good. Communists want to eliminate private property for this reason. Does this mean that all anti social behavior will be eliminated? No, but most crime is committed due to lack of economic opportunity. Politicians not doing what is in the interest of the people that elected them is often due to capitalist funded lobbying firms. Not having private property addresses those problems and other problems that are caused by those problems.
Marxism has an answer to the idea of people getting better. "Human nature" as you see it is a result of material conditions. If we change the material conditions we change "human nature"
The same was true of capitalism when it was getting started in rural late medieval England, but here we are.
Democracy in every home and workplace (also known as communism) should take care of this.
“Maybe people will get better over time”—it’s certainly a choice people have. We can kill ourselves with capitalism or build a better world for everyone with communism.
People, particularly the wealthy, try to fuck things up for their benefit because capitalism has so deeply engrained in them a sense of rabid and egocentric individualism, and has taught them that having more than others makes them good, and if they have more than others it’s because they’re good.
The poor are “abusing” social systems because many of those systems lock them into poverty, where they’re forced into a game of economic limbo, which withholds any/all benefits if they earn too much (which is still not enough to live on), or they do things to receive more support than what the state says they are owed with the goal of having an acceptable standard of living, if they can even achieve that.
Neither of these problems will be solved by people “getting better over time”, and in fact, we are all observing these things getting worse and worse. Reforming social safety nets can maybe provide a solution to the latter problem, if they’re drastic enough. But, imo, communism provides the solution to both.