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For those who believe in revolution by force, a question?

It's not nonsense, though. The fact is that human beings are intellectually and organisationally capable of creating a political and economic system in which people who are dying for avoidable reasons do not die.

Capitalism is not a fact of nature. Depending on how you define capitalism, it emerged with the industrial revolution, whereupon it replaced merchantilism, in the mid 18th Century. So 200-300 years ago. (If you want to include merchantilism in your definition of capitalism - I wouldn't because of the role of aristocracy in it - then you're talking about capitalism arising early to mid 16th century, so add around 250 years to that total).

Humans have been around for about 200 000 years. Industrial capitalism has been with us for 0.13% of our history. Including merchantilism that's still only 0.25% of our time on Earth. If we add our genus, which has been around for two and a half million years, capitalism as a way of organising society disappears into nothingness.

There are enough resources on the Earth for us all to have plenty. The person starving on the street is not a fact of nature, but a product of how we choose to arrange social affairs. Unnecessary deprivation is very much everyone's business.
Danny I’d love to believe this I really would. But every single year of my existence disproves to me that people have any capability to overcome their base instincts of self interest for them and theirs. We need a system that takes that into account, where that acts as the engine, that can then be modified by laws made and enforced by our better natures.

With capitalism, at least you know what you’ve got. Material conditions are improved for people. Yes we’re getting shafted by the nepotistic corrupt shower of networked cunts at the top. But better that than some shadowy authoritarian state with the same corruption and favouritism but added on suppression of religion, art, trade, and no freedom of speech.
 
Danny I’d love to believe this I really would. But every single year of my existence disproves to me that people have any capability to overcome their base instincts of self interest for them and theirs. We need a system that takes that into account, where that acts as the engine, that can then be modified by laws made and enforced by our better natures.

With capitalism, at least you know what you’ve got. Material conditions are improved for people. Yes we’re getting shafted by the nepotistic corrupt shower of networked cunts at the top. But better that than some shadowy authoritarian state with the same corruption and favouritism but added on suppression of religion, art, trade, and no freedom of speech.
There's always more than two ways of doing things.
 
I think it's a two-way thing.
To an extent. We certainly evolved as a cooperative species. It was an adaption that permitted us to exist in the savanna. We are also capable of selfishness. But it is a trait universally punished in human societies.
 
To an extent. We certainly evolved as a cooperative species. It was an adaption that permitted us to exist in the savanna. We are also capable of selfishness. But it is a trait universally punished in human societies.
I'm pretty sure we must live in different human societies.
 
People had to be co-operative in order to survive prior to, correct me if I’m wrong, the advent of agriculture. Farming reduced the daily grind for Hunter gatherer tribes and freed up time. Which should have benefitted all until someone dreamt up ownership of the land / livestock.
 
With capitalism, at least you know what you’ve got. Material conditions are improved for people. Yes we’re getting shafted by the nepotistic corrupt shower of networked cunts at the top. But better that than some shadowy authoritarian state with the same corruption and favouritism but added on suppression of religion, art, trade, and no freedom of speech.
Fortunately, I don't think anyone here is proposing some shadowy authoritarian state, quite the opposite, in fact.
 
Danny I’d love to believe this I really would. But every single year of my existence disproves to me that people have any capability to overcome their base instincts of self interest for them and theirs. We need a system that takes that into account, where that acts as the engine, that can then be modified by laws made and enforced by our better natures.

With capitalism, at least you know what you’ve got. Material conditions are improved for people. Yes we’re getting shafted by the nepotistic corrupt shower of networked cunts at the top. But better that than some shadowy authoritarian state with the same corruption and favouritism but added on suppression of religion, art, trade, and no freedom of speech.
if you don't think art is being suppressed in this country you really haven't been paying attention.


and lots of people have commented on trade issues since 2016
 
I'm pretty sure we must live in different human societies.
There are examples from every culture in the world of how selfishness is punished. I didn’t finish my thought because of events in real life, but if you are thinking of how power and privilege has been hoarded and defended by elites, then of course that is also correct.

The point is choice. We have choice. We can choose to do things differently. I so choose. Join me.
 
Danny I’d love to believe this I really would. But every single year of my existence disproves to me that people have any capability to overcome their base instincts of self interest for them and theirs. We need a system that takes that into account, where that acts as the engine, that can then be modified by laws made and enforced by our better natures.

With capitalism, at least you know what you’ve got. Material conditions are improved for people. Yes we’re getting shafted by the nepotistic corrupt shower of networked cunts at the top. But better that than some shadowy authoritarian state with the same corruption and favouritism but added on suppression of religion, art, trade, and no freedom of speech.

That isn’t a given under capitalism. Look at autocratic states such as Russia or China. The freedoms we get under neoliberalism are linked to how the political consensus in the west want the market to operate.
 
There are examples from every culture in the world of how selfishness is punished. I didn’t finish my thought because of events in real life, but if you are thinking of how power and privilege has been hoarded and defended by elites, then of course that is also correct.

The point is choice. We have choice. We can choose to do things differently. I so choose. Join me.
as long as we don't need to join the acg too :p
 
That isn’t a given under capitalism. Look at autocratic states such as Russia or China. The freedoms we get under neoliberalism are linked to how the political consensus in the west want the market to operate.
not to mention we're frankly lied to, who can forget being told numerous times that there's no political police in britain, we're not like the ussr or east germany? at least in the soviet union and the german democratic republic everyone knew there was a political police, there was no secret about it.
 
not to mention we're frankly lied to, who can forget being told numerous times that there's no political police in britain, we're not like the ussr or east germany? at least in the soviet union and the german democratic republic everyone knew there was a political police, there was no secret about it.

They like to dress up as up as workmen for some reason and do a bit of theatre in their costumes.
 
People had to be co-operative in order to survive prior to, correct me if I’m wrong, the advent of agriculture. Farming reduced the daily grind for Hunter gatherer tribes and freed up time. Which should have benefitted all until someone dreamt up ownership of the land / livestock.
This is not universally accepted; there have been plenty of studies that suggested that hunter-gatherers had more leisure time than early farmers, and that the transition to farming was not even really about trying to create more free time to invent art and philosophy or anything like that; it was more about a desire for geographical stability and not to have to wander around all the time.

 
This is not universally accepted; there have been plenty of studies that suggested that hunter-gatherers had more leisure time than early farmers, and that the transition to farming was not even really about trying to create more free time to invent art and philosophy or anything like that; it was more about a desire for geographical stability and not to have to wander around all the time.


Cheers, I’ll read that. But the concept of land ownership did lead to the class system.
 
This is not universally accepted; there have been plenty of studies that suggested that hunter-gatherers had more leisure time than early farmers, and that the transition to farming was not even really about trying to create more free time to invent art and philosophy or anything like that; it was more about a desire for geographical stability and not to have to wander around all the time.

That's interesting. I've read about how things like material comfort and dietary quality were reduced by the agricultural revolution and really wondered whether they thought settling was worth it - on loads of measures it didn't reap benefits for a really long time.
 
Human progress has accelerated exponentially in the last 200 years. Capitalism has been a massive success in helping to drive it but it's hubris in the extreme to imagine that our current society is the best that can it be. We're confident that technology can advance further so why not society? Of the systems we've tried so far it has turned out to be the most successful (note I use that word rather than best) but it's clearly flawed and we can probably find something even more successful (and hopefully fairer) given time. Whilst it might very well take some ideas from Marxism (even some of the current variants of capitalism have) I very much doubt it will be that to be honest. It's track record this century has been too poor for it be seriously considered.
The thing with social change is that the people who can never see it are usually the people who live through it. Look at what the world was like in 1921 or 1821, I suspect the Urbs of 2121 and 2221 will view us in a similar light.
As for Revolution Now it isn't going to be achieved because virtually no-one wants and most people support the current system. OK lots of us want to 'tweak' it somewhat and even more of us want to promote their own personal positions in society but support for overthrowing it is virtually non-existent.
 
Freedom of speech and so forth could well be argued to have arisen at the same time as the capitalist turn in the west because the emerging new classes threw their lot in with the general agitation against "Old Corruption" to secure their place at the trough but those rights gains were from the point of view of their business activities largely incidental and were rather won by the more radical elements that included the early working class corresponding societies and so on, though there was that crossover between religious dissenters and early capitalists. Sort of a messy stumble into modernity by the early adopters and has been pointed out above, turns out not to be a required element in the more recent iterations.
 
Anything good that happens is the unintended consequence of a bad person doing bad things for bad reasons.
 
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