Look again at this sentence:
Your angle on all this is different from most of the other folk here Aldebaran. You re trying to argue this is a false and artificial definition of different groups in this society that i am creating.
Instead of appreciating my explanatiohn for your misunderstanding, you take a rather mysteriously hostile, if not arrogant position.
I don't “ignore” anything. I give my view. I do not have any mistaken preconceptions about Marxism or what it represents. I do not agree with the idea that his work and vision can be applied to current situations. That has absolutely nothing to do with my religion. I note however that this is the second time you refer to my religion as if for you it is a given that would play any role in what I write on this issue.
Why is that?
Next you invent a linkage between my views and “nationlism”, “racism”,”slavery”,”enforced covering of women”
Excuse me?
Do we discuss “class” or was it from the start your intention to push somle strange own agenda here? If that is the case there is no point – nor any interest from me - in discussing any further.
Like I said, Marx was not the first and not the last. (In fact it was a Muslim, ibn Rushd, who first described inequities in societies and linked them to poverty and poverty to them. There is reason why he is considered to be the first sociologue ever) Why would I feel “uncomfortable” about anything?
Next you try to make it sound as if I bring “Western bias” into it. What on earth are you talking about (again)? Of course I used the word Western because obviously Marx lived in a Western society and obviously the dynamics of Western societies were and still are very different from others and no, Western frames, patterns, ideas are can not automatically be transferred and applied elswhere.
the boss steals by only paying you a percentage of your labour value back to you. this is called profit (ie once material costs have been taken out). This is specific to the class relations of capitalist society
Thank you so much for Lesson -100 in Basic Economy but you are wrong. It is not specific for class relations of capitalist society, it is how economy functiones everywhere and always functioned everywhere. What you don't want to understand is that in order to invest, profit first must be made.
where did that investor's wealth come from in the first place. as you said earlier - 'more carefully read human history'. when did that investor's wealth belong to that 'investor'? is this a natural thing or is this something that is the result of imposition?
Again you state that nobody can own anything, but still there must be jobs because you want to earn from it.
it is common for 'investors' to underinvest I see not problem in workers pointing this out - this does not make a marxist explaination of the underlying reasons why the nature of private property leaves the investor's workforce - thier lives, families and futures - dictated to by the whims of capitalist contradictions any less relevant. The questions that arises is - do that workforce need to live with these contradictions? You assumption seems to be that they should be grateful to these 'investors' - so how did humanity survive prior to the arrival of these 'investors'? or are you going to tell me this has always been so?
For any economy - even a very basic one - to be able to come into existence, investment is needed. There were always investors, there was always capital, be it expressed in money, land, tools, whatever needed for any specific industry.
The parasitical relationship for me is that it is the vast majority that CREATE THE WEALTH - not those investors - so it is the investors who are surplus to requirements
The vast majority does not “create” the wealth, it must exist - in whatever form - before they can come into play. The “vast majority” contributes with their work and skills to expand it and in return they can profit from it too.
There is a reason why marxists talk about class and it honestly was not drawn out of a hat or decided in advance by reading some book written in the middle ages...
I imagine this would reflect your own utopian religious ideology - where you tend to try and make reality fit the words from a book written in the middle ages.
There is a reason why I say that “class” is an artificial division and why I say that the ideas of Marx, utopist they were but nevertheless of great value and insight in his time and age, are not tranferable onto to contemporan, modern Western societies.
There must obviously also be a reason you again resort to tearing my religion into it (and in a manner that is utterly ridiculous in its childishnes, at that)
Far from believing that 'everybody is the same' as you try to imply
Again that was your post I replied to
I want a classless society - it does not mean i think people should stop producing ('working') - I just don't think people need to be defined by their work alone, I want equality -
Please try to remember what you wrote.
- marxists point out that class society destroys individual development and achievement. The truly 'individual' individual is held back by class society
Of course. Reason why it is long overdue to get rid of it.
No YOU are the one who simply does not question what that poverty and deprivation is a result of. Or are you accepting that the non-western world was unable to develop economically due to a lack of raw materials, knowledge or 'investors'?? If so - weird for someone who tries the old 'looking through western eyes' excuse early on in his 'expose' of the 'limits' of the idea of class.
I said there are a lot of intertwined factors that hold societies back and in fact, I do not favour the development Capitalist Consumerism anywhere. It is a system doomed to implode on its own failures since the very beginning. By the way (just to make you choke in your prejudices) I am as much European as I am Middle Eastern. To picture it for your blinded eyes: My father abducted the White Woman from her homeland to put her in his harem. Covered and all.
I have an excellent study for you, it is even written in English:
Alan Richards and John Waterbury “A political Economy of the Middle East.” Second edition 1998 (with some table contents updated 2005) Westview press, Boulder Colorado/Oxford. ISBN 0-8133-2411-4. Best study I ever read.
I think that people being underfed, starving, working in intolerable conditions etc etc are concrete indicators of class inequality.
Just as much as they are linked to all other factors. By the way, are you sure you never buy import from so called “low wages” countries? Do you buy “normal” food or exclusively “fair trade” label, and do you know how “fair” that is in reality.
I am fully aware of the 'relative' wealth of the western working class. Marxist explainations can give better reasons why this is than any middle ages religious tome (I keep coming back to this in the hope you will react to the point and in so doing be more honest as too your real opposition to a marxist idea of class).
Yes, you keep coming back to this an in fact, I have enough of it.
Bye. Try again when you actually can debate the issue at hand instead of trying to forcibly implement a strange own agenda.
salaam.
