Naturalistic Socialism

[MKS]

Do the masses have to be governed?

First off I am a devout Socialist, however lately I have been questioning the necessity of state governments. Can men live without government, live peacefully and harmoniously? I don’t think they can. While I do not believe in strict government restrictions on a person’s personal life, I do believe that in order to maintain peace, security and the welfare of the masses than they must be governed.
Anarchism is great theory but it is not practical.
I think the perfect model of a socialist state are the civilizations of the Native Americans, in which there was government but it was enacted for the benefit of the tribe. Leaders did not rule, they led, and every person worked as a necessary part of a community. I don’t think I’ve heard of a Native American Tyrant, and it is from this model that we should base a socialist government. Honestly I think Karl Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky constructed perversions of a system of government that existed centuries before any modern revolution.
It is my theory Socialism is not an invention of the modern age it is a recreation of ancient civilizations, a mechanization of naturalistic societies that thrived in past years.
Furthermore people like Stalin, Mao, and other brutal socialist (communist) leaders have made it almost impossible for true socialism to evolve in the modern world.

[NovelGentry]

First off I am a devout Socialist, however lately I have been questioning the necessity of state governments. Can men live without government, live peacefully and harmoniously? I don’t think they can. While I do not believe in strict government restrictions on a person’s personal life, I do believe that in order to maintain peace, security and the welfare of the masses than they must be governed.
Anarchism is great theory but it is not practical.

To answer this objectively one must first question, what is the state? What is it's purpose.

Marxists see the state as a means of class oppression, as I imagine anarchists do as well. We differ in that the Marxists would seek to use a state (a worker's state) to oppress the former bourgeoisie in order to ensure the survival of our system bare anything but a seriously organized counter-revolution, which is likely to be impossible due to the numbers of working class people outweighing that of the bourgeoisie heavily.

If indeed the state is a tool of class oppression, which I believe it is, you destroy classes and you destroy the purpose of that tool and thus can destroy the tool itself.

There is nothing that makes me feel inclined that people cannot make decisions on their own, and for decisions that affect more than themselves, cannot organize and democratically decide what is to occur. We see this every day on issues we DO have control over. For example, when my family decides what to have for dinner. While this may seem like a foolish example, the point is, we are perfectly capable of making decisions on things which affect our lives, and if we all have a say in that, we are all given equal opportunity to ensure our lives are NOT controlled by others (i.e. the state).

What makes you think man lives peacefully and harmoniously with the state? All I see is wars, trade disagreements, verbal attacks towards nations our government dislikes, fear propaganda, unjustified restrictions of our liberties.... and when I look at what our state comprises of, I see a miniscule representation of the people, if indeed one wants to pretend these people actually represent the vast majority of the county's population.

There is a true amount of rediculousness to the state.


I think the perfect model of a socialist state are the civilizations of the Native Americans, in which there was government but it was enacted for the benefit of the tribe. Leaders did not rule, they led, and every person worked as a necessary part of a community. I don’t think I’ve heard of a Native American Tyrant, and it is from this model that we should base a socialist government. Honestly I think Karl Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky constructed perversions of a system of government that existed centuries before any modern revolution.

And I think you've failed to understand anything Karl Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky were trying to say. Even if the practical implementations of the USSR cannot be considered ideal, Lenin's overall idea from a state is not so different from the so called representative democracy we see today. And in much the same way, you saw the state as a tool of class oppression, who exactly that class was is a bit blurry, as some will argue it truly did represent the workers while others will say it formed a class of it's own so to speak.

Marx never made a formal argument for what the organization of the state and communist society should look like, at least not to my knowledge. His detail on the practical implementation is nearly nill. What we know about Marx from his writing however, ensures his vision is one of ultra-democracy and worker's control until of course classes no longer exist, and then we are well aware he sees the existence of the state as moot and it's destruction based there on.

While Native American culture may serve as an interesting model, it cannot be our end all be all answer. When you think about the design of communes, and the small and localized communites with democracy, you begin to realize it does share much of the same principles. However, materially conditions are a far set different, population has increased, and the roles we play as producers and consumers are not nearly as simplified -- for this reason alone, I would ask that you dismiss any direct modeling after ANY pre-existing society and look to something very new and very flexible.


It is my theory Socialism is not an invention of the modern age it is a recreation of ancient civilizations, a mechanization of naturalistic societies that thrived in past years.

Maybe true, but again, with those materially differences there is a lot more to take into account. It is not a mere rehash, but an evovled society that forms from that material reality that none of us can escape. As such, if it is by chance similar in any fashion, it is by chance that our relation to these material conditions, is similar.


Furthermore people like Stalin, Mao, and other brutal socialist (communist) leaders have made it almost impossible for true socialism to evolve in the modern world.

There's a lot of things stopping socialism from evolving in the modern world, dead leaders is probably not at the top of the list.

[redstar2000]

I think you should be careful not to lump "Native Americans" all together and then romanticize their social arrangements.

They were very different from each other...as well as being different from the European invaders.

Most Native American societies were evolving into or had already become class societies...in Central and South America, they had already developed despotic states.

Had their societies been allowed to evolve unmolested by Europeans, they would have gone on to follow the same path that Europeans followed. Although they were several thousand years behind the Europeans, that's a trivial difference in the whole sweep of human history and one that they would have made up in the due course of time.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[workersunity]

so are you like a utopian socialist, like a fabian, cause you clearly go against karl marx

[NovelGentry]

so are you like a utopian socialist, like a fabian, cause you clearly go against karl marx

Who exactly are you referring to? Maybe you could expand a bit on your reasoning for the statement.