Freedom, Capitalism, and Work

[Naturyl]

Forgive me if there is a more appropriate forum for this, as it is my first DU thread.

The following is from my essay entitled http://naturyl.humanists.net/work.html">Freedom, Capitalism, and Work: A Progressive Humanist Analysis. It discusses the work ethic in modern society and how our views about employment can be influenced by a variety of ideological factors.

Some would insist that capitalism has never claimed to be moral (outside the radical theories of Ayn Rand and certain conservative political movements), but this assertion does not survive even a superficial analysis. The concept of the "invisible hand" is clearly an ethically-motivated one - we are to rest assured that capitalism is a "good" system because it not only provides economic freedom but also ensures the common welfare. "A rising tide lifts all boats," we are told - but in reality, this is only true as long as we make an unspoken pact to ignore the sinking ships.

Nature is creative but unforgiving. In an economic system based on leaving the common good to be established by natural principles, it should be clear that only the strong are equipped to experience the good. How then, does capitalism address the problem of the common good with a straight face? I would submit that it does so by tautologically redefining the commonality to include only those well-equipped to do well. Those who are physically, mentally, or temperamentally ill-suited to economic activity are simply ostracized, considered irrelevant, or otherwise removed from society's consideration. The common good no longer applies to them, so there is no problem. Those who can do well are are doing well, and everything is alright.

But even for those who are "making it" under capitalism, a deeper problem remains. In the animal kingdom, the role of individuals is governed by "dominance hierarchies," and in capitalism, which uses the natural order as its economic theory, the situation is no different. Consider for a moment a typical day in the life of a "free citizen" in the capitalist world...

I would be interested in the opinion of those who have read the full essay, particularly DU progressives. At a time when serious discussion of economic justice has been limited to "working people," it is especially important to understand the ideological reasons why we are encouraged to ignore the poor, disabled, unemployed, etc.

[The Straight Story]

1. Kick - will reply tomorrow

off to bed for now, kick for later reading.

[liberaldemocrat7]

9. I believe in work, capitalism, and freedom.

However I do not believe in the cheap labor exploitation type of capitalism linked with the laissez faire, Ayn Rand type of government that conservatives believed in in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century.

This manifested itself as slavery in the 18th and 19th century mostly in the South. in the 20th century this manifested itself in the great depresssion which the conservatives allowed to happen and in the 21st century it has happened under Bush II and the people woke up and decided they did not want to wait for another depression before removing the conservatives from power in the congress. We will complete this task in 2008.

Freedom in my view does not include the conservative philosophy of exploiting other people for their own gain.

[Greyhound]

38. But... that is the very basis for the whole system.

Capitalism is just the evolution of the "divine right to rule" we have been subjugated by for over 6000 years.

Did you read his work?

[lonestarnot]

2. Nicely done! And welcome to DU!

:applause: Be ready for some here to label you a commie. Don't take it personally.

[Naturyl]

3. Thanks, and I fully expect it.

I've shared this elsewhere, and there has always been a mixed reaction from appreciation to outright attacks.

[newyawker99]

13. Hi Naturyl!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[OneBlueSky]

4. kicked and recommended . . . thanx . . . n/t

.

[fasttense]

5. Ok, I read the essay over my morning cup of coffee.

I have always felt that when civilization looks back on us in 50 or 100 years, the common man will say, "Why didn't they see they were enslaved?" "Why couldn't the common man see how unethical the system was?" Just like when we look back on our history. Why did the common man allow five year old children to work in factories where the child's limbs and often their life was at risk? Why did they allow slavery and Jim Crow laws to flourish when they were inherently evil systems?

Our founding fathers were intelligent thoughtful men and yet when it came to slavery, they seemed to have dropped the ball. Thomas Jefferson wrote of freedom all the while taking advantage of a slave system. He, and many men like him, had a blind spot where slavery was concerned. Our blind spot is our cut-throat economic system. The employer and employee relationship is very similar to the slave and master relationship.

A woman, while driving for her employer, flipped off the President (the President got her fired but that is not the point of the story). Many people here on DU, who are more progressive than the majority of US citizens, wrote in and said she had no right to express her political opinion while working for her employer, while representing her employer. They acted as if that employer were a god or master. If that employer makes it a condition of our work that we do Not express our political opinion, then these progressive individuals were unconcerned about the woman being fired. Since when does an employer or boss have so much control over our lives that they can tell us when to express political opinions and when we can not? We tend to treat our bosses like our masters and gods. But should we? In a truly free society, shouldn't our ability to express our political opinion (as long as it doesn't slow down or interfere with the work) not be hampered by our boss's arbitrary political notions?

The essay summarizes the current employer/employee relationship well. I believe it is the blind spot of this society. We can not see how ridiculously corrupt and unethical it is because we are steeped in it's philosophies and caught in the attraction for the carrot and the fear of the stick.

[Naturyl]

8. Thank you, you clearly understand it

Good response. It's always nice to encounter other people who really "get it." I can't add anything to what you've said.

[sweetheart]

6. 2 things on that essay

Ricardo's comparative advantage presumed that capital did not flow freely across borders.
Adam smith likewise based conclusions on this assumption. As well, Adam Smith had well
considered that humankind needs a kick in the pants to do the right thing, and overusing
his 'invisible hand' metaphor, avoids the real complexity that Adam Smith is not so 'wrong'
as the essay portrays.

Choamsky puts it very succinctly:
We are instructed daily to be firm believers in neoclassical markets, in which isolated
individuals are rational wealth maximizers. If distortions are eliminated, the market
should respond perfectly to their 'votes', expressed in dollars or some counterpart.
The value of a person's interests is measured in the same way. In particular, the
interests of those with no votes are valued at zero: future generations for example.
It is therefore rational to destroy the possibility for decent survival for our
granchildren, if by so doing we can maximize our own 'wealth' -- which means a
particular perception of self-interest constructed by vast industries devoted to
implanting and reinforcing it. The threats to survival are currently being
enhanced by dedicated efforts not only to weaken the institutional structures
that have been developed to mitigate the harsh consequences of market fundamentalism,
but also to undermine the culture of sympathy and solidarity that sustains these
institutions.
pp 234:235 'hegemony or survival' - noam chomsky

[rhino47]

7. K&R

Very well done! Welcome to DU.

[Chulanowa]

10. Spot on

If you don't mind, I'd like to snip here and there out of your essay to beat some libertarians about the head and neck with?

[Naturyl]

15. Thx, and that would be fine (n/t)

.

[eallen]

11. You fail to distinguish between the limits of nature and the limits of society...

If you could describe a social system where all 300 million Americans, could make do with no one having to work, then and only then would it be reasonable to view the necessity of work as purely a social construct, rather than a more obdurate fact of biology and economy. Of course, it's possible for an individual to follow Thoreau, and get by on very little, thus freeing himself largely from such demands. Stay single, recognize that many things that others view as necessities (cell phones, internet, air conditioning) are in fact luxuries you can do without, and you'll find that you can get by with very little effort expended. This is easier in a capitalist system, where goods are cheap and work is commoditized and hence something that can be done here or there often without much formality or commitment.

There is a strange strand in progressive thought that simply wants to ignore the importance of economic production. Anyone who raises this as an important issue is accused of "buying into the system." Yet, simultaneously, there is a great hue and cry about the distress caused by economic poverty, which is the simple lack of goods and services, such as internet access, air conditioning, cell phones, modern medical care, etc. As a liberal, I will point out that most of the goods and services we now enjoy owe their invention and relative availability to capitalism and capitalist business, and press that as something that must enter the discussion before so blithely discarding capitalism and corporations as inherently evil and something to be eliminated. (As a liberal, I also avoid the tendency of the market fundamentalist to worship these as ideals. So don't go there.)

[Naturyl]

14. It's definitely not possible for all to quit work

I agree that a certain amount of economic production and growth is beneficial and even necessary. Fortunately, as studies have repeatedly shown, a majority of people will continue to work regardless of economic coercion. Not everyone wants to quit work. In fact, studies show that only a relatively small percentage would totally drop out of the workforce, even if the necessities of life were gauranteed to all. So, I'm not saying that we need to do away with employment or capitalism. We just need to remove the coercive aspects. In short, we need to stop telling people "work or starve." Most will work anyway, for a wide variety of reasons.

[rman]

18. most of the goods and services we now enjoy

were created in a capitalist system - because we had a capitalist system when those were created. That doesn't prove they were created "thanks to" a capitalist system. In order to prove anything like that we'd have to run a parallel experiment with a non-capitalist system.

[eallen]

20. That experiment was tried during much of the 20th century.

The Soviet Union was parasitic on western technology throughout its existence. China leaped forward in its ability to produce technological innovation only when and where it also started to allow capitalism. Israel saw much the same change when it shifted its economic policies. There is always uncertainty about history. But the co-development of capitalism and modern technology is one of the best established trends. Of course, every people every where will develop some of technology. But there is something both quantitatively and qualitatively different about how it is done in western capitalism.

So, yes, cell phones, internet, inexpensive blood tests, air conditioning, personal computers, Ipods, PDAs, DVDs, and the content that people enjoy on those last, are not just produced in capitalism, as a matter of happenstance, but thanks to capitalism, and likely would not exist had it not been for the development of modern capitalism. That doesn't mean capitalism is to be worshiped or that we shouldn't address its warts. Marx was absolutely correct that the alienation goes hand-in-hand with the commoditization of labor. Cheap Ipods and cell phones require people working in fabs, many now located in southeast Asia, and that work is neither pleasant nor interesting. But the political discussion should be based on a rounded understanding of what capitalism accomplishes, good and bad. Anyone who wants to eliminate capitalism should first go a year living with only 19th century technology -- which is still the product of the industrial era! -- before making that argument.

[Selatius]

22. The soviet union was no experiment at all in a viable alternative

The term "state capitalism" is apt for the USSR for the fact that the state owned the means of production, and the state and those who ran the state benefitted from control over those resources at the expense of everybody else. All that happened was industrialists were replaced by state oligarchs, but the underlying power structure remained largely unchanged.

[eallen]

26. It's far from clear that there is any "viable alternative."

I agree completely that the kind of socialism implemented by the USSR is not viable. I disagree that it can be accounted any kind of capitalism. A defining feature of capitalism, and part of why it is so dynamic and innovative, is the private ownership of capital, with the concomitant destruction of non-competitive businesses, and the many arrangements that generates for businesses acquiring access to capital (lines of credit, secured loans, bonds, angel investors, public stock, etc.)

State ownership of the means of production is one form of socialism. It's far from clear that any other form is stable. Syndics, were they to survive long, would need some legal framework that prevents them from implementing other arrangements for capital access, lest they "degenerate" into capitalism. A syndic that is allowed to borrow, to contract outside labor, etc., pretty quickly looks just like an ordinary business. Especially if it faces market risk for its product. A syndic that is not allowed to do those things starts to look like a branch of the state.

I find it ironic that so many people so quickly dismiss the centuries of historical evidence that show what capitalism can do, but so easily believe what can be accomplished in a system that by their own words has never been tried.

:hippie:

[Naturyl]

27. Economic humanism is a viable alternative

"Economic humanism" does not mean throwing capitalism out wholesale. I agree that capitalism has positive aspects which cannot be reasonably dismissed. What we need is not so much a radical change in the existing system, but a radical change in attitude. Most economic activity should remain connected to free markets, but we need to get rid of the Reaganite idea that "government is the problem" and instead recognize that the highest function of government is to ensure that the growth and prosperity generated by a market economy is used in the service of the common good. In other words, we need to stop being afraid of the word "welfare" as the right-wing has successfully programmed us to do and embrace what some analysts call "welfare capitalism," meaning capitalism which is managed by government to work in the service of all the people.

In pragmatic terms, this means progressive taxation and a strong social safety net which provides a guaranteed minimum income as a right of citizenship. It is often forgotten that democracy is founded not only on liberty, but on equality as well. Liberty and equality together amount to social and economic justice.

[eallen]

30. Well, see. That sounds liberal, not socialist.

[Naturyl]

35. It is liberal, but on the highly progressive side

Most Americans on either side of the aisle are not particularly comfortable with the idea of a guaranteed minimum income that is not tied to employment. There is often a deeply-rooted feeling that only those actively seeking work are deserving of life's necessities. The view that we should consider every citizen entitled to basic subsistence as a right of citizenship is fairly radical in the moderate to "mainstream liberal" sectors of the Democratic party.

So yes, this idea is compatible with capitalism, but it's progressive enough that it looks like "socialism" to many mainstream eyes. For example, Bill Clinton was elected partially on a platform of purging the "undeserving" from the welfare rolls. I believe that everyone is deserving by virtue of being human. Would Clinton have been elected if he had openly advocated this? It seems unlikely, and "socialism" would have been the charge used to discredit him.

[Selatius]

40. But capital in the Soviet Union was privately owned

It was owned by members of the Soviet Communist Party. Everybody else worked for the Party in the Soviet Union. They were, in essence, employees of the enterprise, and the Politburo was the board room.

The USSR was no example of state socialism. I haven't met a socialist who says socialism can exist in the absence of democracy. That's not socialism; that's just a monopoly with the ability to dictate law.

[eallen]

43. Do we need to get into what constitutes the state?

Do you have any idea how many millions of people belonged to the Communist Party in the USSR? Membership was just about mandatory for any kind of advancement. In any case, the individual members did <i>not</i> own the means of production. The state owned it, if not directly, then through various cooperatives. And there was, by the way, significant participation by the workers in cooperatives and enterprises on how to manage these.

Trying to deny that the Soviet Union was state socialism is one of the silliest things I see by those who still advocate socialism. Please. Say it was badly implemented socialism. Or not the kind of socialism you advocate. But don't insult our intelligence. The Soviets did their damnedest to implement Marx's socialism as they understood it. Socialist theorists would be more honest if instead of trying to wholly disown the the USSR, they tried better to understand why it didn't work out as it was supposed to.

[Selatius]

45. The fact that millions were members of the Party was meaningless

You had to be a member of the Ba'athist Party to hold many jobs in Iraq, but that didn't mean you were the same as the Party leadership.

The same was true of the Soviet Communist Party. Most people had no say in how the state was operated or how the resources were allotted. To say otherwise is ignoring fundamental facts of life in the USSR. Only those in the upper echelons set policy, not the workers, no matter how much you want to state that millions were members of the Party. It operated much the same way a privately held monopoly does with the exception that it also had the power to print money and set law and build a war machine. Only those whom the members of the Party trusted gained more power and gained "management positions." Everybody else was simply left to work and obey orders from the bosses. If workers really had ultimate input in levels of production, I'm sure they wouldn't have decided to spend a whopping 14% of the annual GDP on defense expenditures at the expense of consumer goods and services and everything else.

Trying to deny that the Soviet Union was state socialism is one of the silliest things I see by those who still advocate socialism. Please. Say it was badly implemented socialism. Or not the kind of socialism you advocate. But don't insult our intelligence.

I seek to insult no one's intelligence. The notion of workers' self-management of resources flies in the face of what the Soviet Union was. No democracy? No socialism, at least any meaningful expression of socialism. That's why the USSR failed.

If it pleases you, I've had to use the term "authoritarian socialism" to describe authoritarian methodology (Stalin, Mao, etc.) toward change compared to "libertarian socialism" (or "anarchism") advocates of which support collective change (education, popular organization, direct action, etc.) outside of a highly hierarchical, centralized decision-making structure (i.e. the state), to those who have difficulty denoting the difference between, say, a Maoist and an Anarcho-Syndicalist.

Mikhail Bakunin famously remarked after he was kicked out of the 1st International by Marx and his followers that any revolution won under a Marxist revolutionary party would end up as oppressive if not worse than the ruling class it sought to replace. Bakunin had characterized Marxist methodology as inherently authoritarian and condemned it as such.

[eallen]

47. I understand the difference between Bakunin and Marx. There are two issues...

One is semantic. As much as anarcho-syndicalists may dislike Marxists, it seems to me to strain the historical usage of the term to say that the latter aren't socialist. It's perfectly fair, of course, to say that anarcho-syndicalism is something completely different, and shouldn't be judged by Marxism's failures.

The other issue is deeper, and that is whether anarcho-syndicalism is possible. The problem, in an anarchy, is what prevents a syndic from behaving in a very non-socialist fashion, when it finds that to its advantage? In an economy of syndics trading with each other, there would be significant economic advantage -- to all parties involved in the transactions -- to some syndics doing precisely the things that socialists disapprove in the capitalist economy, from selling off syndic equity in order to capitalize expansion to hiring fee labor. Or to put it another way: there is nothing in capitalism that prevents worker-owned and managed companies, and these do indeed exist. They are simply rare, because restrictions on organization and manner of capitalization will, in various markets, act as limits on competitiveness. The only answers I've seen to this are either economically ignorant (essentially, claiming that syndicalism is everywhere and in every pursuit the most economically efficient organization, so that there never would be economic motive to do differently), or reliant on their own form of New Man, who will uniformly turn down economic opportunity in order to preserve anarcho-syndicalism.

FWIW, I think anarcho-capitalists suffer the same problem. There are some libertarian novels of how private courts and private armies would implement purely libertarian justice. They aren't great novels, and not even close to a convincing argument that that would indeed be the result. Somalia is the closest example of anarchism in the modern world, and I don't think it fits the ideal of either the anarcho-capitalists or the anarcho-syndicalists. Anarcho-capitalists imagine that somehow contracts would be respected, without a state providing the legal framework for that, while anarcho-syndicalists imagine that somehow syndics will behave as socialists dream, without a state enforcing that. I'm skeptical of both claims.

[Selatius]

49. I general, I believe a state organ is necessary to a certain degree

What I generally oppose is that state controlling everything.

I guess my views would make me more of a market socialist or something not too far removed from Mutualism. The state would have a role as a regulator. It should be democratic in nature, and perhaps even some sectors of the economy such as health care and some heavy industries would be state operated, but I don't think non-market socialism, however stable, would prove as dynamic as a form that incorporated free-market elements, and anything that requires the state controlling everything is inherently vulnerable to authoritarian abuses.

I couldn't describe market socialism as detailed as mathmetician/philosopher David Schweickart could describe with respect to economic democracy, but I generally find most agreement with Schweickart's on reconciling socialism and free-market forces.

[fasttense]

24. The countries you mentioned Eallen may have suffered

not from their lack of capitalism but their crack down on free expression and thought. Even in today's China only a few political leaders tied in with a few very wealthy property owners are getting much rewards for all the products they make. The common man in China still suffers horrid working conditions and severe limits on their expression of thought. The Chinese have not really invented anything, simply offered a cheap work force to US and European monopolies. The remains of the Soviet Union have not fared much better.

Current technology was not a result of capitalism, but a result of free expression and exchange of ideas. Capitalism probably helped distribute the products and technology (while at the same time distributed the labor to poorer rural impoverished areas with minimal compensation). But without the ability to exchange ideas and build upon other's discoveries our technology would be mute despite capitalism.

[Naturyl]

25. Technology is often fueled by government innovation

The idea that technological advances owe their existence exclusively to market forces is not consistent with the facts of history. In reality, many major technological advances result from large national projects funded and overseen by government, related to scientific research and national defense. Computer technology, for example, comes from advances fist made during the WWII period and later during the Apollo moon missions, which were intended at least partially to send a message to Soviet Russia. The internet owes its existence to research and devlopment conducted by the Department of Defense during the 1960's and 70's, and to later government support such as the famous legislation sponsored by Al Gore.

[eallen]

32. Government does indeed fund a lot of basic research. HOWEVER...

Government does a poor job of converting research results into consumer technology. I think the US has done well, in the decades following WW II, in finding the productive balance, where government funds basic research, especially research that the private sector might not, while leaving it to the private sector to turn the research results into consumer goods and services. ARPAnet was a government project. Very few people in the US had access to it. The internet, with cheap DSL to most neighborhoods, and hot access points in many public venues, is what capitalism did with that research. The government was a primary customer for the UNIVACs. But it was pure capitalism that turned that early computer technogy into the laptop, the IPod, the cellphone, etc.

There is another aspect to this that oft gets overlooked. Research is enabled by the kind of mass technology that capitalism makes available. If you go to any university lab today, doing research from government grant, you'll see that those dollars are spent on PCs, signal analyzers, centrifuges, routers, software, cameras, etc., bought on the open market. While it is true that a lot of scientific research might not get done if the government didn't fund it, it is also the case that a lot of research wouldn't be possible were it not for the technology infrastructure that capitalism provides.

[Naturyl]

34. Fair enough

You make some reasonable points, and I have no quarrel with them. I do think there is a place for free markets in an ideal society. My chief concern is that we turn away from "markets as religion" and embrace a more balanced, realistic view, as you seem to have done. And in doing so, we should find that there is no compelling reason for a prosperous nation to withhold a basic guarantee of life's necessities from anyone under any circumstances.

[rman]

28. So-called communist USSR was in fact state-capitalism -

hardly an alternative for a capitalist-controlled state.

And there was intensive cooperation between scientists from Russia and the US; apparently Russia did have something to add. Unless you think science and technology have nothing to do with one another.

[Odin2005]

41. The USSR was State Capitalist, not Socialist.

The USSR was far closer to Fascism then it was to real Socialism. Socialism is not necessarily anti-market (though we have been conditioned to think that way because Corporatist propaganda labeled Soviet State Capitalism as "Socialism"), either. What defines socialism is the elimination of the parasitic investor class that steals most of the wealth generated by employees as profit for a rich few.

[eallen]

44. See my responses above. BTW, how do you have a market without an investor class?

The market works by destroying businesses that fail in it, and rewarding businesses that succeed in it. That requires various kinds of investment markets to supply capital to new businesses. How do you propose to do that without an investor class?

[Odin2005]

46. There are tons of socialist writings on that subject.

One model I have read about replaces corporations with co-ops and private investors with government-run investment banks. You are making the assumption that private investment is the only good way for businesses to get capital, which is false.

[eallen]

48. Just the opposite: I think that a broad variety of mechanisms are needed.

Loans, bonds, public offerings, venture capital, and angel investors all serve overlapping but different purpose. Each is best suited to different kinds of enterprise, for different funding purposes, sometimes at different stages of a business's lifecycle.

I see several problems to replacing all of this with government-run investment banks. First, it retards one of the most important functions of the market: killing off businesses that aren't economically competitive. A government-run investment bank will be loathe to close a coop's doors, for the simple reason that it disgruntles the workers who lose their jobs. The problem is that killing off failed businesses is much like exercising regularly. At each point where the choice is made, it is easier to knock back with your favorite snack, but the long-term result of taking those easy choices is ugly. Because the interest of a creditor or VC is different from the interest of the worker, they will make the hard choice to liquidate a company because they don't want to burn good money chasing lost money. But what incentizes a government-run investment bank to do that? Second, those running the investment bank are likely to be risk averse. That only makes sense if you're running a bank, and even more sense if you're working for the government. That essentially eliminates the kind of investment that VCs and angel investors provide to startups. To the extent that a government bank makes such investments, there will be complaints about it wasting government funds on long shots. Once made, those co-ops will be hard to close, for the reasons stated above, when they should be the easiest concerns to shut down. That in turn will lead to political pressure against that cycle. Third, without a public equity market, government-run investment banks essentially have little means to see a liquid return on their investment, to keep the cycle going. It ends up being simply government ownership of business. This is why it was so important to China to create a public equity market.

[fasttense]

21. Good point Rman

Many benefits we have today are attributed to our wonderful capitalist economy. But I've often wondered how much our wonderful capitalist economy actually discourages and suffocates. The social worker who is helping society so much more than the actor gets so much less financial reward from it. I wonder how many inventions, works of art, philosophies and discoveries have been ignored and suppressed because there was so little financial reward, and negative financial results to others, from them.

[Pharaoh]

12. Brilliant K&R

I have always felt this way but have never been able to put it in words so profoundly.The capitalist are so afraid that your ideas and socialist ideas might catch on that they have demonized socialism through the media. We are all culturally hypnotized to believe everything is normal the way things are. It is not normal ethical or moral the way the power elite have this slave system set up. Yes capitalism is a pyramid scheme and as in all pyramid schemes it will collapse upon itself.We are in the midst of this collapse now,but have not yet seen the shit hit the fan.Unfortunately I think that event is very very close, and I am hopeful people will then wake up and we can find a better way to take care of one another.

please see sig line..........

[Naturyl]

17. Good post, but I don't think it will collapse

At least I'm hoping it won't collapse. I am a humanist and I don't want people to suffer just to advance my economic agenda. Happily, I don't think it will come to that. Over long time scales, socialist policies advance by evolution rather than revolution. Western Europe is a good example of how mature capitalist societies can develop a strong sense of social justice. It is taking considerably longer in the United States simply because this nation was founded on specifically capitalist principles, but it's gradually coming along here. Progress is not an uninterrupted, linear process. Rather, it is often more like "three steps forward and two steps back." The neocon period, which began in 1981 and ascended to full power in 2000 was one such regressive period. It was dealt a severe setback last week and hopefully it is behind us now, allowing us to move forward again. It could have lasted much longer, but luckily for all of us, they put an idiot in charge.

[porphyrian]

16. I don't disagree with you.

My only problem with capitalism is in putting profit before humanity.

[Ron Green]

19. Thanks for your essay. One thought I have is that

BALANCE is the key to sustaining a healthy society, just as it's the key to a healthy individual. Using the "Parent, Adult, Child" model of transactional analysis, the free-market economy represents the Child, whether playful and energetic or fearful and needy. As you point out, the corporate slavemasters have successfully manipulated the message of "You're not OK" to fearful consumers who respond with money and work. Social structures and supports, along with controls on the market, provided by the government (the "Adult") fight a constant battle for their very existence in the face of the overwhelming mix of fun and fear on which the Market runs.

The missing part here is the Parent. Without the Church (and by that I mean charities, educational foundations, scientific organizations, non-profits, etc., as well as religious groups) in balance with the Market, the State is ruled by a fearful and sugar-addicted Child rather than a critical (or nurturing) Parent.

I suggest that we are out of balance toward the Market in our national personality, maybe even to the extent that Islamic states are out of balance toward the overly critical Parent of their fundamentalist religion.

I'm not sure the founders of the United States laid out a clear enough definition of "The pursuit of happiness" to withstand the permanent adolescence of a society so able to communicate with the flesh and so loath to deal with the spirit.

[Selatius]

23. Welcome to DU.

Not all DUers may agree with your views, but on the same token, you will find many who do agree with your assessment.

[kineneb]

29. from a (former) worker

(now a caregiver)
1. we all work... or at least parts of our bodies do (try telling your heart to stop "working")

2. I figured the system out, half-way through my last job. The workers in the old Soviet Union had it right. The saying there was: "I pretend to work and you pretend to pay me." (Why bust my buns for your profit, when I don't see anything but this crappy wage.)

[Pharaoh]

39. Ha that's good

of the former soviet union and our dissapearing "good" jobs to the slave labor of asia we are starting to see much in common with our soviet brothers......

[Greyhound]

31. Excellent, K & R and a most hearty welcome to DU.

It is nice to have the belief that we are not alone confirmed. Your essay is very well done and points out the basic fallacies that our society is built on.

I wonder if you considered the religious aspect of this conditioning?

As absurd as this assertion may seem it first glance, it is clearly supported by the very basis of the "work and consume" message - the idea that anyone can do it. Somehow, we are supposed to believe the plainly absurd idea that any of us can be the next Bill Gates, no matter how different our own circumstances may be from his. It is a form of magical thinking - encouraging us to believe that the laws of nature can somehow be disregarded. The fact that capitalism, which is explicitly based on a natural approach, promotes this abandonment of naturalism can only be a calculated deception - but it is a deception we tend to willingly embrace.

The fact that the overwhelming majority of us are inducted into one religion of another from birth sets up the cognitive dissonance required to accept all of the other absurdities that we unquestioningly accept as the "rules" we must live by.

[Naturyl]

36. Absolutely. Good point.

I didn't touch on that in the essay, but I think it's very valid. It definitely helps the Kool-Aid go down easier if we are instructed to believe unlikely and implausible things from an early age, simply because an authority figure tells us so or we experience some kind of "good feeling" from believing them. As you suggest, religion can be an important element in preparing a society to accept things without examining them critically. It's the power of faith, and there's no doubt that conservative economics relies heavily on faith and willful disregard of reality.

[Jim Warren]

33. Bravo

Good on you for at least bringing this to the fore. I read your essay and the many intelligent subsequent comments here, anything that makes
us think things through raises the bar.

So as not to be redundant and cover ground adequately touched upon by many posters already, I'll limit my reply to this:

After recently rereading Das Kapital in the somewhat more studied manner of late middle age, something that went by unremarked in my first youthful take on the work is that Marx was applying his theories of economic determinism where socialism would FOLLOW capitalism IE a more humane socialist agenda would follow as antidote to the inevitable over-ripe excesses, corruption, cronyism and privilege of a matured capitalist system

[Naturyl]

37. Yes, and I think he was right.

Marx was not necessarily a revolutionary. He believed in an evolving socialism which developed as a natural response and refinement of capitalism. In other words, he was a progressive. This aspect of Marx is often missed, thanks to the various revolutionaries and radicals who have fought in his name. Certainly there is a very real concept of struggle in Marxism, but struggle does not always equate to revolution. Rather, it can mean the ongoing interplay between opposing views which results in gradual qualitative change. This interpretation is consistent with the philosophy of Marx and Engels themselves, which is known as dialectics.

[Odin2005]

42. The Leninist wacko types really gave Marx a bad name.

I don't agree with all of Marx's stuff (he was a blank-slatist and had a teleological theory of history, both of which I reject), but most of his economic stuff was good.

[Greyhound]

50. Friday kick, because this is just that good.

:kick: