Matty_UK
21st September 2006, 01:57
Originally posted by t_wolves_fan+Sep 20 2006, 09:57 PM--> (t_wolves_fan @ Sep 20 2006, 09:57 PM)
[email protected] 20 2006, 06:41 PM
What do you advocate?
Your sig implies that maybe you consider yourself "moderate." How can someone be moderate because surely that is subjective? Social relations change and the structure of societies change; at the time of the bourgeois revolutions across Europe towards the end of the feudal system you could not say "oh I'm a moderate, all these bourgeois extremists are nutcases!!!"
Do you suppose we have reached the end of society and there will never be any conflict between classes ever again and life will continue like this till we die out? Do you suppose that workers going on strike and protestors taking to the streets every few months is going to just stop happening? Do you suppose the bourgeoisie are going to desist trying to pay less wages and less tax whilst the workers desist trying to get higher wage and better working conditions?
Do you suppose nothing like the great depression will ever happen again?
"Moderates" are dipshits, you have to be a moderate something. I consider myself a moderate anarchist, but to be a general moderate is just to be a soft conservative.
I advocate common sense policies that help the poor without removing any incentive to work or achieve.
Policies not based on fantasies where people always act rationally and have perfect information (pure capitalism) or where people magically lose their need for material gain and self aggrandizement (communism).
Classes will always fight. Herodotus' history of ancient Greece talks about despots whose soldiers walked off because he wouldn't pay enough. This is like arguing with a biblethumper over homosexuality. Eventually a few thousand years of human history ought to provide some clue.
Moderation is inherently objective because it relies on data and common sense to make a decision. Extremist hacks will only choose policies that make sense according to their subjective philosophical frames.
Being a hack is easier. It meets your needs to belong and to fight the mythical "other". [/b]
In the case of most of the people here we all started off as moderate liberals and eventually found that our concerns cannot ever be dealt with without major social change.
Saying you advocate "common sense" policies-i.e. social democratic is what you seem to advocate-does not mean you're balancing out the best of both worlds. What really made me want a revolution rather than just liking the idea of everyone being equal is when I began to understand that under capitalism my life is never really going to improve when it really could. The bourgoisie have abolished private property for anyone but themselves; most likely for my entire life the bank will own all my property because of debt-and when/if I'm free from debt I sell everything and go to a carehome....there is no reason for me to be enslaved for so long just to have a roof on my head, there's enough houses to go round. Secondly the cost of living is increasing at a faster rate than wages; but the fact is outside of capitalism most goods could be so much cheaper. The full productive capacity of technology like GM foods, robotics, and hydroponics is ignored because if too much was produced prices would drop-Tesco's destroys 40% of what it DOES produce in order to keep prices high. This is a ridiculous system that is stifling progress and in my mind it must go at some point in the near future. Pretending to be a "moderate," as if communism and capitalism are 2 absolutes (false they are different stages of historical development) is meaningless as you're still agreeing with the major problems of the capitalist system.
Classes WILL always fight yes but the material conditions of how production is managed is not always favourable; the shift from agricultural subsistence economies to industrial market economies because of technological change led to the bourgeoisie class supplanting the noble class. And now the seperation of society into only 2 classes, proletarian and bourgeois, and the ability for the proletariat to organise easier makes a worker led society look like the only possible next epoch. Capitalism is too inefficient to last forever and the global economy has been seeing less and less growth since the 1960s, and the only way it recovered from the Great Depression was through fascism and world war. And a permanent state of war is what we're gonna get as long as capitalism is around as rebuilding and starting new markets slows down decline of profit.
If that's how you define moderate then I guess I'm a moderate as data and common sense discrediting capitalism has convinced me it is a system that must go. (although I'm anarchist not communist)
And I think trying to imply anyone who criticises capitalism is automatically an irrational extremist merely finding a new religion is an incredibly insulting and simplistic generalisation, not to say narrow minded.