KARL MARX ROCKS!!!

[chervilant]

We humans are our own worst enemy, because we blithely and greedily engage in economic behaviors without examining the import or the impact of such behaviors. Our economic behaviors have become more important and more influential than ALL of our other behaviors, comprising the framework within which we do all things political or spiritual. Please note that I mean WE as in our entire species, but those of us from the United States are perhaps the worst offenders.

Humans are now a systems-stressing economic resource, yet we seem incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. All other economic resources are being taxed beyond the system's capacity, yet we sustain a rhetoric that smacks of the blame and shame game (warring with one another, blaming others without examining our own roles, etc...), when we should be seeking ways to fix the problem.

A great philosopher once predicted that capitalism would eventually collapse, and that economic behavior would evolve into a more egalitarian, cooperative means of production. Capitalists, politicians, and others with a vested interest in maintaining an oppressive status quo promoted a pejorative meme that taints this great man's scholarship to this very day. We should take note of the enormous energy expended to denigrate this man's collected works--even to this very day.

We too can attack Karl Marx on the strength of his detractors' red herring meme, or we can emulate his courageous endeavor to examine human economic behavior as it exists today and envision the changes that MUST occur if we are to progress as a species. Do we have to throw out the baby (capitalism) with the bath water (Corporate Megalomaniacs)? Is communism the inevitable alternative to capitalism, and would that really be a bad thing? Can we continue to subsume our spiritual selves in servitude to the almighty dollar?

Change is often a big scary barrier to personal growth, isn't it?...

Still, as another great philosopher said, "We MUST be the change we wish to see in the world."

So, this starts with you. Your awareness of the core issues described herein above should shape and inform your activism every day. You must refuse to buy into the divisiveness that the Corporate Megalomaniacs promote to keep us from examining these real issues, and that includes divisiveness predicated by education, status, or any other hierarchical measure. We The People are on the verge of a major change--perhaps cataclysmic--and we have the intellectual capacity and the spiritual framework within which to propel ourselves into an amazing future.

Despite all that has happened in the last eight years, I anticipate success. I remember how We The People responded after 9/11 and after Katrina and after the BIG Tsunami (etc...). We rolled up our shirt sleeves and got to work (well, sans most of the Corporatists, who seem to view such events as handy ways to thin the masses...) I believe that The Human Spirit evident in our times of crisis will prevail.

[Towlie]

1. No, that may be you but it's not us. All you're doing is arming the freepers with hate material.

[chervilant]

9. hmmmm...

that would make me terribly powerful, now wouldn't it? And, the "us" you think you speak for may have a different take on what I've said.

[GliderGuider]

2. Any long-term vision of human behaviour that assumes centralization or rationality is doomed

The article Political Will, Political Won't contains an analysis of how and why power hierarchies are created and subsequently defended. There is no chance that a centralized system can be created without a hierarchy. As a result all such systems, regardless of their political or economic ideology, fall victim to the problems intrinsic to hierarchy. It's an unavoidable fact of the human animal, especially given our current global culture of separation and growth.

The second problem is one of rationality. All current economic systems, from free-market capitalism to Marxist Communism, assume that man is a rational actor. This is demonstrably untrue. Man is better thought of as a rationalizing actor. We make most of our decisions at a pre-conscious level, where they are informed by the unconscious influences we all carry: our self-image, our emotional state, the residues of early childhood experiences, our genetic programming for self-interest etc. Then some short time later the decisions emerge into our conscious mind, where they are immediately dressed up with socially acceptable justifications. The result is a decision that feels like it was rational, even though it was not. This is why appeals to reason are notoriously ineffective at shifting group behaviours.

Any "solutions" that require egalitarianism but rely on hierarchy are doomed, as are those that do not take into account all the unconscious influences on human behaviour. Marxism fares no better at this than "free"-market capitalism.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. Ding ding ding...we have a winner here

Marx is dust, his approach is dead, and there are few adherents left. Not surprising for a flawed system that assumes things about human nature that do not exist.

I do not abhor some forms of collectivism, but a family or a kibbutz is about as big as it can get without issues arising. Too many people have died in the name of Marxism already. Lets just let it go

[GliderGuider]

4. Thanks. It's not just Marxism that is dust, though.

I say the same thing about all political and economic systems in the world today. As far as I can tell, the last time we had a truly sustainable socioeconomic structure (and by implication one that was in harmony with basic human nature) was about ten thousand years ago.

Once we transcended tribalism we set ourselves up for ultimate failure, though the roots of that transcendence may be even deeper -- in the Faustian price we paid for self-awareness, namely our sense of separation.

[tama]

7. Yup

Damn those certain hays using us poor humans to participate in their agricultural revolution, clearing forests so that the hays can gain more lebensraum to spread their genes... :)

Perhaps the Monsanto hubris was too much for the hays and they find it offensive, so they are no cancelling their deal of coevolution with us believing they can do better without humans... ;)

[upi402]

8. who has died for marxism?

it has never been tried as far as i know. authoritarianism was the russian state's paradigm. just curious, not advocating.

[tama]

14. Good question

No doubt many have died for revolution & resistance, but was it ever really for dictatorship of the class of industrial workers (aka proletariat) and/or socialist technocracy promising the carrot of communist anarchism somewhere in distant future? How many have died for anarchism/communism/native connection to land and balance? Lenin and Trotsky and their stalinist followers excelled in slaughtering anarchists and betraying revolution in Kronstadt, Spain and where not.

Centralist-hierarchic avant-guarde parties have nothing else to give but their opportunism and hunger for power. They are wannabes.

Self-liberated anarchists (hippies, native peoples, Amish etc. peoples of the land) have nothing else to give but their bodies, their lives and deaths. They belong.

[Hannah Bell]

18. not dead at all. prescient.

"In every stockjobbing swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbour, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety. Après moi le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation. Hence Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society." - Capital, Volume I, Chapter 10.


“A necessary condition, therefore, to the growth of the number of factory hands, is a proportionally much more rapid growth of the amount of capital invested in mills. This growth, however, is conditioned by the ebb and flow of the industrial cycle. It is, besides, constantly interrupted by the technical progress that at one time virtually supplies the place of new workmen, at another, actually displaces old ones. This qualitative change in mechanical industry continually discharges hands from the factory, or shuts its doors against the fresh stream of recruits, while the purely quantitative extension of the factories absorbs not only the men thrown out of work, but also fresh contingents. The workpeople are thus continually both repelled and attracted, hustled from pillar to post, while, at the same time, constant changes take place in the sex, age, and skill of the levies.” - Capital, Volume I, Chapter 25.

[tama]

6. If "rationalism"

means sense of proportion (lat. 'ratio' means relation, proportion) and ability to relate, then this species has well developed potential of rational behaviour.

I don't believe any anti-hierarchical anarchist is calling her or his political philosophy anti-rational...

[chervilant]

10. Well, now,

a rational response is much appreciated. Thank you.

I do not embrace Marxism or any other extant economic behavior. All have proven to require and reinforce hierarchy, just as you've noted. It is Marx's questioning about and analysis of economic behaviors that most intrigues me--look at how many capitalists got their panties in a twist over his works. Why not explore how we can behave economically to benefit the greatest number (or all?) of us?

And, with regards to your assertion that man is a rationalizing actor, I could not agree more. Kleinberg (and, later, Gilligan) found that more than 70% of adults process and emote on the level of a 13 year old child--concrete either/or thinking, trust issues, poor relationship skills, etc. etc... No surprise, then, that most of us externalize responsibility and fervently play the blame and shame game.

However, I remain hopeful that the imminent catastrophic change will help compel the human animal to let go its reptilian hedonism, and fulfill its spiritual potential. You won't fault an old gal for wearing her rose-colored glasses, will you?

BTW, I have no love of hierarchy, having gotten a clearer understanding of how damaging is such an arbitrary social system after reading Beyond Power by Marilyn French.

[GliderGuider]

12. Catastrophic change sets the stage for transformation

I remain hopeful that the imminent catastrophic change will help compel the human animal to let go its reptilian hedonism, and fulfill its spiritual potential.

You're speaking my language. :-) Much spiritual transformation is born out of crisis. Mine was, and through that experience I've come to realize that the only realistic response to the converging crisis of civilization is spiritual change, in whatever form it manifests for each of us.

While I think questioning and analysis of all sorts is crucial, I think that any critique that confines itself to the economic sphere is defeated before it begins. If one is going to look for root causes one needs to look a lot deeper into the human animal than that. Economics is a symptom, not a cause.

[tama]

13. Reptilian hedonism?

What's that - enjoying the warmth of sun, bathing unmoving, just being... touch of skins...

I feel the other way - to feel and be whole, we should cherish also our reptilian brain, our worm neural network, our bacterial "mind", the living soil and fire beneath, the heart of the planet, our atoms, particles and waves and all that lies beneath the smallest smallest measurable "absolut" beneath Planck's scale, inner structure of prime numbers - as above, as below...

[GliderGuider]

15. Good point. The hedonism that's destroying our planet isn't a reptilian problem

It's the result of the Faustian price we paid for our self-awareness -- our sense of separation. Lay the blame where it belongs, at the feet of our all-too-human neocortex.

[chervilant]

17. Well, now...

I hesitate to embrace your assertion that anything is "destroying our planet." I think we may be destroying ourselves, but I suspect this planet will continue beyond our species' existence for millions of years.

I like "Faustian price we paid for our self-awareness" -- is our free will a gift from our Creator, or a challenge?

That being said, I remain hopeful we humans will learn to be responsibly self-aware.

[chervilant]

16. First, I was being

fametious (nee facetious) in using that phrase to describe the animalistic nature of the human species. It is, indeed, an undeniable part of our collective selves.

Second, I agree that those of us who are walking a path of spiritual growth cherish everything about the Universe, and recognize our essential membership in this amazing dream.

Thank you for your response.

[tama]

5. Dalai Lama

is a marxist in his political thinking, because he feels that marxist philosophy is more ethical and compassionate than predatory capitalism.

And the top financial shark (who used to be stalinist in his rebellious youth) in my country says the same, corporations are not ethical or moral as those are human qualities, not qualities of legal persons, corporations function purely to fill the stockholders' pockets.

In other words, privatizing the profits, socializing the costs. But what to do when these predatory legal persons have become slave masters of us humans who created them or allowed them to be created, forcing us to behave against our own interests, ethics and to rob future from our children?

[chervilant]

11. Dalai Lama

is one of my heroes. He lives to be purely a spiritual being. Consequently, he has little use for hate, greed, fear, and other spiritual imbalances--although he must know such imbalances, having to contend with the Chinese government. Could we all walk his path? May I hold tight to that dream?

BTW, I just used the title "Karl Marx Rocks!!!" to encourage DUers to read what I've written--just to see if anyone had similar thoughts or input that would help me. I appreciate your feedback.