Socialist Party of Canada
- Thread starter Jroc
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No, it's not. It's part of the innate nature of a person. Some people are born ambitious, some are born lazy.
If what you said was true, siblings would be the same - either lazy or ambitious. They aren't.
I think genetics is far more likely to make siblings similar, rather than conditions. Rather, if what YOU said was true, siblings would be the same, either lazy or ambitious.
Humans have very little instinct, because we have a very developed brain, that bases decisions on rational thought rather than instinctual knowledge.
Humans have very little instinct, because we have a very developed brain, that bases decisions on rational thought rather than instinctual knowledge.
You're giving humans way too much credit!
OK, sorry for the humour there, but yes I will agree that proper moral education could improve our society much. However, that education would thus be a prerequisite before we could ever have a socialist state. But then if we did succeed, socialist objectives would be naturally achieved by people willingly sharing their wealth, thus leading to any socialist state becoming redundtant.
I see a thread merge coming with this new socialism obsession .....three socialist threads on the front page....:roll:
I think there are many reasons for laziness, but I doubt if it's necessarily the innate nature of a person. One sure cause of laziness is chronic low blood pressure and no doubt other health conditions. Ever see a person's work habits change when he changes from being an employee to operating his own business? In many cases it's just a matter of having a reason.
I beg to differ, one could inherit the mother's tendencies the other the father's.
So if I understand from what you're saying here, you'd want to get rid of all money. So, how would we determine how much of any given product to produce? How would we know what peopel want produced. Heck, I'll give the benefit of the doubt here that we'd allow ant to contribute and work not for profit but for love of the community. Even then, how do I decide if I should build cars or trucks, and how many, or if perhaps we already have a glut of trucks sitting there that no one wants because everyone has two trucks each anyway and what they really need is a car? We'll have to have monthly community meetings to determine what needs to be built and in what quantity? Then we'll need local representatives to meet at the national level each year to discuss what ech community has to offer and what each community needs, and then find some mathematicians to make all the calculations to figure out what to produce and sent where? And then we'll need national representatives to meet at the world level every five years to repeat the process to find out what each country is producing and what each country needs? That seems a little more than bureaucratic and highly inefficiant, no?
And as for the link, it talks about common ownership and democratization. Now while I can agree with economic democracy (which is not only a socialist concept but a corporatist one too, so socialists certainly don't have a monoploy on that one), I don't see the benefit of common ownership of resources just for the sake of common ownership? With private ownership, we know that the owner will have an incentive to maintain the place. With common ownership, even if we all have a natrual incentive to want to maintain the place, I still don't see why it should matter who owns it, seeing that corporatism can achieve the same practical objective of democratizing the workplace. Why is economic democracy not enough? Why must we all own everything too?
Oh wow. While it is true that each civilization had experienced its golden age, each one fell into its own dark age too, since the beginning of time. You seem to have a very distorted view of human history. There have been periods of peace, and indeed progress. But don't fool yourself into thinking we've have little bloodshed and barbarism during many periods of our history.
And as for egalitarianism, all civilizations in all ages have had hirearchies, except in periods of revolution and turmoil.
Again, there have been golden ages when there was more justice, but even then there was still a hirearchy.
Not entirely true. For example, Germany has co-determination laws granting workers votig rights on the board of directros of major corporations without necessarily having to own stocks in them, and without government ownership too. Torally privatized corporations. So how do you explain that workers can have a voice in the decision making process in Germany without having to actually own it? If your claim were true, this would be impossible. So clearly economic democracy is separable from ownership of resources and the two needn't necessariy go hand in hand.
Also, why would we not give peopel an incentive to invest their moenty to promote further economic growth?
Oh, sorry. At that time we organized to kill mammoths. And even then I'm sure people fought over the meat until they'd evolved somewhat.
The problem is that today some of us are vegetarian or even vegan!
Supply and demand would be determined pretty much the same way it is now, through inventory. Most of the things we consume could be kept track of with computerized stock control. The bigger things, such as building bridges, roads, large buildings etc. would be determined through a democratic process.
This is simple, we would just keep track of everything with computer inventory programs. This is already done in all retail and manufacturing companies.
You have the right idea, but again, we would not really need the mathematicians. Its not really all that complicated, it is already done today under capitalism.
Under capitalism the means and instruments of production are privately owned. Because of this, the vast majority do not possess the means to independently produce their own livelihoods. The only thing that most people fully own is their labour power. Because do not own and control the means for producing their livelihood they have no choice but to sell their labour to another in return for a wage. Here is where capitalism becomes exploitative. The employer MUST pay the worker less then the full value that is produced through that workers labour.
The value of a thing, i.e., its monetary worth, is the embodiment of labour, both physical and mental, contained within it. Through the process of production, labour adds value to the thing being produced, and in this way, profit is created.
For example, lets say I am a capitalist and have $100 to invest something, for a return of 10%. The way this works is as follows;
From the 100 dollars lets suppose 80 of it goes to cover capital costs such as rent, electricity, equipment, and raw resources and other supplies. All of these things suck up a portion of my initial investment without adding any value to it. Now with the leftover $20 I am going to pay the wages of the workers needed to utilize the tools I have supplied for production. It is this portion of my investment, the $20, which adds value to the thing being produced. When the process is all done, and my $100 dollars has been eaten up, I am left with a finished product that is worth $110 dollars. Where did this extra $10 come from? It is the value of labour, transferred into the thing being produced. Now what am I going to do with my $110? Reinvest it of course! And the cycle continues.
In order to end this exploitation, democratic common ownership is needed. Furthermore, by instituting a system of democratic common ownership we could open up production to areas that, under capitalism, were not profitable enough to exists. Things such as; producing enough food for everyone, housing for all, efficient transportation, health care, etc.
Consider also, under capitalism a massive proportion of the work done is non productive and exists only to keep the system running. Accountancy, actuarial work and risk management, banking, financial management, investment management, marketing, etc. etc. These jobs would all become redundant. Jim Stanford (economist), writes that only 1 in 4 jobs is actually involved in producing things for consumption. If we could eliminate all those redundant jobs, think how big our labour pool would be. We would only have to have a 5-7 hour work week in order to maintain our current living standards.
If you study the work of any anthropologist or paleo-archeologist, you would understand why, up until around 8,000 years ago, humans lived in fairly egalitarian communities with very little social hierarchy, and fairly even division of labour.
See Egalitarianism - Hunter-Gatherer Wiki