interesting article

[adreamofequality]

http://www.vivalarevolution.net/index.php?...rt_from=&ucat=& (http://www.vivalarevolution.net/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1106546697&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&)

interesting article. read it and tell what you think

[LSD]

Just the same old capitalist "human nature" crap, only less elequently explained than normal. <_<

Here we go anyways.


First we must start by discussing the human mind. One must realize that humans seek to: 1)reproduce, 2)become wealthy and powerful, and 3)to gain pleasure (which in general includes numbers 1 and 2)

Notice how he snuck the capitalist argument between two biological imperitives?

I guess he was hoping that if he sandwiched "wealth and power" between reproduction and pleasure, we wouldn&#39;t notice&#33; :lol:

How can the human mind, which evolved millions of years before the invention of capital, have an innate need for "wealth"? What did humans do then when wealth didn&#39;t exist?

What the author should have written is that in capitalism pleasure is "generally" defined as "wealth and power", which is true enough but is also wholly irrelevent.

Wealth is only nescessary for pleasure because capital is a prerequisite for material aquisition. In a non-capital society, "wealth" is a meaningless concept. In such a social context, this "basic" need that the author speaks of disappears.


A society without money, for instance, is impossible because human nature seeks to have more than others.

And how does he know what "human nature seeks"?

By his own categorization, humans desire pleasure, reproduction, and "wealth and power". Into which of these categories does "oneupmanship" fall? "Power" I suppose; one of the two interpolated values that he tried to "sneak" past us.

Again, he&#39;s analyzing the world from a capitalist paradigm. In a society in which the accumulation of material possestions is the primary motivation, of course people compare their relative accumulations. But there is no more a "natural" basis for this then for any other societal phenonmenon.


Revolution requires organization, heart, hard work, and love.

Organization? Definitely.
Hard Work? Definitely.
"heart" and "love"? WTF&#33;?

I&#39;m not even sure what these sententuous nebulous terms are meant to mean. Love of what? Of whom?

If he means basic human compassion and respect, then yes, of course it&#39;s needed. But if he means that revolutionaries must act out of some "higher" purpose, he is completely missing the point of a revolution.

The workers won&#39;t revolt because they "love humanity", but because it improved their material conditions. A post-revolutionary society will be better for them, and they know it. Indeed, it will be better for almost everyone.

Sound selfish? Maybe, but it&#39;s a whole lot more realistic than appealing to "heart"&#33; :lol:


Organization and hard work are easy enough to force on a great number of people, but heart and love are not.

That&#39;s fine though, since we&#39;ve established they are unnescessary.


You see, people want revolution to gain money, power, and pleasure.

um...what?

People revolt against capitalism to "gain money"? Sorry, but that doesn&#39;t make sense. If they really wanted to gain money, there are much easier ways to do it (crime comes to mind). In terms of "pleasure", protracted civil war isn&#39;t exactly my idea of a "good time", I don&#39;t know about the author.

Emotionaly speaking, people fight revolutions because they believe that they can make a better society for themselves and for their family/friends and because, often, they believe that it&#39;s the right thing to do.


We cant just pretend like revolution is being fought for moral purposes.

No one is pretending that. Revolutions are fought for material purposes; to materially improve people&#39;s living conditions. There is no such thing as a "moral" revolution.


The people in charge of these governments are the very same people who fought so long and hard for money.

No, they were the ones who fought for the revolution. The ones who "fought for money" were the bourgeousie. Do try and keep up.


And again, this is why the governments established by revolutions very seldom work.

"Seldom work"?

Well, that implies that they sometimes do&#33; But how can this be if they are fundamentally opposed to human nature?

If this were really an issue of immutable "human nature", then no post-revolutionary society could ever succeed. If, on the other hand, "seldomly" we can overcome this "nature" then it&#39;s not really "natural" at all, it&#39;s just socialization, something that, as communists, we are intimately familiar with.

The very fact that the author admits that revolutions can succede belies the fact that, at some level, even he acknowledges that humans are not incapable of successful revolution ...and his argument collapses.

[KrazyRabidSheep]

A society without money, for instance, is impossible because human nature seeks to have more than others.
Let&#39;s try to understand the author here for a minute. . .


Definition: "Money is any marketable good or token used by a society as a store of value, a medium of exchange, or a unit of account."

Definition: "A society is a group of human beings distinguishable from other groups by mutual interests, characteristic relationships, shared institutions and a common culture."



Therefore it is implied that without money, there is no human nature, therefore no humans. . .

Therefore it is implied that the Yanomamo, the Tsembaga (and many other tribes of people; too many to list), who have had no capital (they instead share what they needed) are not human beings. . .



I must say, I disagree with the authors logic.



It all comes down to nature vs. nurture.
The reason that human beings are so sucessful adaptors is because they have very few natural instincts.
People aren&#39;t born with skills and behaviours; they learn them as they go along.

Using "human nature" to prove anything is thus flawed.
http://websmileys.com/sm/cool/269.gif

[freedumb]

Humans, if anything, have a desire to belong to a community or society. This is something entrenched in our development as a species. We have to belong to a group in order to socialize and ultimately reproduce.

That&#39;s why so many in Western countries feel depressed and lonely, individualism has very little time for &#39;community&#39;. If any economic system appeased human desires to socialize and belong to a community it would be communism.

Many in third world countries who have strong local communities are happier despite lack of material wealth. I think there was a poll somewhere that showed that the self-esteem of Iraqi teens before the invasion was greater than that of American teens. There are strong bonds through families and communities in places like this.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Why is it that that most dismissals of communism (because that is what they are) either state that human nature makes it impossible, as refuted above. Or is a so called impiricist, insisting that it hasn&#39;t worked yet and therefore never can. Is there anyone with a better, and fairer critique of communism?

[Publius]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...883243?v=glance (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670031518/002-6927746-4883243?v=glance)

[KC]

That link does nothing, you&#39;re going to have to provide quotes from the book.

[Hegemonicretribution]

The blurb and reviews give an idea, sounds interesting. However socialisation would still appear a major enough factor to make ideology possible. Not that I have read the book yet.

[Ele'ill]

How can the human mind, which evolved millions of years before the invention of capital, have an innate need for "wealth"? What did humans do then when wealth didn&#39;t exist?

Wealth probably started out with individual material goods that had their own worth. If you diagree or fail to see where i&#39;m going at this point let me know. Too late. Food can also be seen as wealth if you aquire more of it it gains value if it&#39;s rare. Wolves as an example are protective of their food source. It&#39;s valuable to them. They form a heirarchy in order to control their food and will fight off other packs when their food sources are encroached apon. This goes for many other creatures if not all living creatures on this planet including bacteria etc..


People revolt against capitalism to "gain money"? Sorry, but that doesn&#39;t make sense. If they really wanted to gain money, there are much easier ways to do it (crime comes to mind). In terms of "pleasure", protracted civil war isn&#39;t exactly my idea of a "good time", I don&#39;t know about the author.

Emotionaly speaking, people fight revolutions because they believe that they can make a better society for themselves and for their family/friends and because, often, they believe that it&#39;s the right thing to do.

The poor working class revolt to better their living conditions which includes money. People fight against revolutions for the same reason the revolutionaries are fighting. There is no right or wrong neccessarily just two factions battling for ideological supremecy. Try and go into the hood and rally support for a revolution and tell them they&#39;ll feel good inside afterwards but there wont&#39; be any money involved. It is a battle for money and power in this sense.

[adreamofequality]

The poor working class revolt to better their living conditions which includes money. People fight against revolutions for the same reason the revolutionaries are fighting. There is no right or wrong neccessarily just two factions battling for ideological supremecy. Try and go into the hood and rally support for a revolution and tell them they&#39;ll feel good inside afterwards but there wont&#39; be any money involved. It is a battle for money and power in this sense.

read the 1st article in this link. http://www.vivalarevolution.net/index.php?...rt_from=&ucat=& (http://www.vivalarevolution.net/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1106276238&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&)

[Ele'ill]

I&#39;m a bit confused. Explain yourself.

[Karl]

1) the denial of human nature and a book about it is supposed to provide legitimate reason and proof as to why revolution is not possible or unrealistic?

This is my opinion, not fact. The notion that one man has the ability to explain how the majority of human beings "deny" human nature, is like saying most climates are the same and writing a book about it. call it crazy but im a bit skeptical of one mans ability no matter how educated he is, to describe human nature and how we object the idea of human nature. you cant generalize humans/sensient beings and describe how they think "in general". sure i agree their are basic human needs and behaviors but saying something like revolution isnt possible because humans are predictable and i understand all humans and their behavior is ignorant. the reason people pull out the psychology card when someone mentions revolution is becuase in their subconsience, they dont want revolution. They dont want revolution to be possible and they truly believe that it isnt becuase psychology says it isnt. wow, psychology sure is funny....

[Ele'ill]

you cant generalize humans/sensient beings and describe how they think "in general". sure i agree their are basic human needs and behaviors but saying something like revolution isnt possible because humans are predictable and i understand all humans and their behavior is ignorant. the reason people pull out the psychology card when someone mentions revolution is becuase in their subconsience, they dont want revolution. They dont want revolution to be possible and they truly believe that it isnt becuase psychology says it isnt. wow, psychology sure is funny....

You can generalize a species. It&#39;s very easy and can be done with any species on the planet. I would love revolution but i&#39;m realistic. It isn&#39;t going to happen the way it&#39;s described on this forum. They dont&#39; understand individual humans and what they are thinking from day to day but there are very blatant patterns that are fairly easy to detect. Many of them relate to natural tendencies as a species. Psychology isn&#39;t really funny but it is quite interesting. Many psychologists after talking with you for 15 minutes would know more about you than you do. It might scare you but that&#39;s just the way it is.

[CoyoteCzarfish]

well, before currency or some sort of open markets, people would fight to the death over sticks and women. they&#39;ve always fought, even within their own groups. Humanity is often fighting over things they don&#39;t need to survive, which is what seperates us with any sort of logical creature. We could have everything but indeed we would still be lacking something in our minds. I&#39;m not saying it&#39;s impossible to repress such an instinct, but it still is indeed there and basing a society on a discipline is rather hard. certainly if like minds got together communist societies would be possible but when introducing new and sometimes different minds with an entirely different mindset is introduced whether you want it to be or not.

Which is where the opression starts, usually in any form of government.

[LSD]

Wealth probably started out with individual material goods that had their own worth.

Which didn&#39;t really exist before the neolithic revolution and the invention of agriculture.

Paleolithic hunter-gatherer socieites didn&#39;t have "material goods".


The poor working class revolt to better their living conditions which includes money.

Only if they are fighting for a society that "includes money".

You&#39;re damn right they are revolting to better their living conditions, but if they are fighting for the abolishment of money, they are hardly fighting for money, are they&#33;


Humanity is often fighting over things they don&#39;t need to survive

Because "survival" isn&#39;t nerely enough.


Which is where the opression starts, usually in any form of government.

Government, money, any kind of power disparity is intrinsically oppressive. One you give a select group of people any kind of control over others, even if it&#39;s in the name of "higher" principles like "law" or "markets", you create a coercive relationship.

The only way to have a truly free society is to abolish all forms of hierarchy, including government and including money&#33;

[Ele'ill]

Which didn&#39;t really exist before the neolithic revolution and the invention of agriculture.

Paleolithic hunter-gatherer socieites didn&#39;t have "material goods"

Something that has value to you is a material good. Right? Take a bottle away from a baby, or a toy away from a toddler and they get upset. Slowly reach towards the food bowl of a dog while it&#39;s eating and you get a fun reaction. This is what I am refering to.


Only if they are fighting for a society that "includes money".

You&#39;re damn right they are revolting to better their living conditions, but if they are fighting for the abolishment of money, they are hardly fighting for money, are they&#33;

Yeah they hardly are&#33; These days trying to get someone to say good morning back to you basically costs money. Good luck with revolution.


Because "survival" isn&#39;t nerely enough.

When people see luxaries or even things that aren&#39;t neccessarily considered luxary but personally like &#39;it&#39; they want &#39;it&#39;. There will always be a value on items that the majority of any group considers unique or valuable to them.


One you give a select group of people any kind of control over others, even if it&#39;s in the name of "higher" principles like "law" or "markets", you create a coercive relationship.

The only way to have a truly free society is to abolish all forms of hierarchy, including government and including money&#33;


How can you abolish hierarchy when engaging in combat operations? How can there be no hierarchy when there is still a minority?