Help please!!

[letsgetfree]

A lot of these ideas sound good in theory, but it would be impossible to get 6+ billion people to work cohesively as one functioning unit. There will always be those who want to lead or stray from the conventional methods of the group. We are talking about trying to change a thought process that has existed since man's conception. There is rank and leadership even within the animal kingdom. We are nothing more than highly developed animals. Conflict ensues in those kingdoms also as leaders try to maintain their position and ensure their genes are passed on to the next generation. Even, if by some miracle, you could organize those 6+ billion people, it wouldn't be long before the group self destructed. Mass re-programming would have to be an unavoidable requirement.

Could someone help me out with this :), im having a debate with a cappie on another forum and this was his latest post, and im kinda stumped :blushing:

[Dust Bunnies]

*sigh* the old human nature argument. I'd reply along the lines of

You said we are developed animals, that means we are different than the animals. To compare us to animals is to say we are no better than some dog. Humans have empathy, compassion, and you can't predict what else we have. If you look at some ancient hunter gatherers sure there is a leader but everyone was around the same wealth, and no one was exploited. They all did their best to work, and in return, lived peacefully as a tribe. If you think its human nature we can't achieve our utopia, you must be some all knowing being because centuries ago people probably thought that we could never get past the killing of the Middle Ages. Looks like they were wrong. Human nature is made from the thinking of the time, if everyone knows the truth, and all children are educated about it, the next generation after the revolution will have a different human nature.

[Bright Banana Beard]

Don't take mine, wait for another to add.

Ask him even if he sounds authoritarian, it doesn't mean that taking care of 6 billion people impossible, provide the back up that this can't.

but it would be impossible to get 6+ billion people to work cohesively as one functioning unit - he stupidly thinks that we forming a state on Earth (assuming on 6 billion, nope that not what we are. We forming many organization that just adapt to the community itself.

you could organize those 6+ billion people - organizing for what?

Conflict ensues in those kingdoms also as leaders try to maintain their position and ensure their genes are passed on to the next generation. - not if we highly developed that leader is the fallacy that lead to stupid quest

it wouldn't be long before the group self destructed. - yeah, people will not fall for the organization not will not benefit them

Mass re-programming would have to be an unavoidable requirement. - it takes time and we don't think worldwide revolution is the only way.

but let the other mend my post better, don't do it yet.

[Oswy]

Humans have the power to transcend the forces which have brought about their evolution; people do it all the time when they decide not to have kids for example. Even so a significant element of our human evolution is as cooperative social animals; it is this, and not blind dog-eat-dog competition, which characterises our abilities and our future potentials. Cooperation makes for a win-win outcome and we should be smart enough to recognise that.

[apathy maybe]

We don't organise 6 billion plus people at once. That's just silly. We organise locally, and these local groups cooperate as and when needed. Even capitalism doesn't try and organise 6 billion people. Heck, the two biggest states (China and India, both 1 billion plus) don't organise centrally, they are decentralised (China to a lesser extent, but still). Why would any post-capitalist society try a centralised 6 billion plus system?

Others have all ready noted that the "human nature" argument is bunk, but ask them to provide links scientific journals which provided evidence for his claim.

[bezdomni]

6 billion people functioning together as a cohesive unit is no less impossible than 6 billion neurons functioning together as a cohesive unit, or 6 billion cars driving on the same highway.

Capitalists like to think that billions of people can divied up to be exploited as a cohesive unit, but they can't function if they're working together...while the opposite seems to make more sense.

[Dean]

Could someone help me out with this :), im having a debate with a cappie on another forum and this was his latest post, and im kinda stumped :blushing:

I'd point out that associative, rather than competitive, human relationships are in the self-interest of human beings. It is not unlike the Mutually Assured Destruction on a small scale. People want to live and be happy, prosper, etc.. It follows that it is in their interests to allow and help others to do the same, which is associative rather than competitive, and necessarily rules out war, inequity and subjugation depending on how widely the logic of this rational self interest is applied.

In other words, I want to live, prosper, and not be jealous of my neighbors. If I accept that they, too, have similar goals to me (an aspect of psychological maturity) than I understand that if I act competitively with them, in other words against their interests, I will create a relationship in which I may sometimes prosper at the disadvantage of my neighbor, but sometimes I will be subjugated by him. However, if I work with him, and understand he has the same goals as me (more or less) than I can not only have help in my own enterprise, but he will never have reason to fight with me, or want my subjugation. This is an extremely communistic way of life, and it is a logical development from the understanding of basic human drives for life, prosperity, social closeness, etc.. I cannot see how capitalistic societies can work with human drives.

[EscapeFromSF]

Dean has it right, but Kropotkin put it more succinctly in Mutual Aid, when he asked which species is better adapted to survival: the one constantly at war with itself or the one which has learned to cooperate?

Kropotkin points to a lot of examples in the first chapters of that book of cooperation among animals, sometimes even between species. While I think he anthropomorphises, it remains that vast numbers of species live mostly in harmony, and fights to the death within a species are very much the exception rather than the rule.

Kropotkin continues by addressing history that I haven't been able to corroborate elsewhere, of free cities and guilds that were gradually overcome by militaristic central authority. I wish I could have more faith in this analysis; he cites numerous primary and secondary sources that I'm compelled to respect, but his analysis is, after all, an interested analysis.

I tried a quick literature review through the resources at my university and the best I can honestly say is that either I was using the wrong search terms or not a lot of historians have looked at this. The book is a good read, nonetheless. You might find it a help.

[Guerrilla22]

Yeah, Kropotkin gave the examples of wild horses, which will gather in a circle so that none of their back ends will be exposed in case of a wolf attack. Wolves, themselves hunt in packs, as do many other animals and work together when hunting prey, as well as share the kill with other members of the pack.

He also gave the example of cooperation within individual villages in Europe. Point being, species were meant to compete with one another for resources, as advocates of capitalism would have us believe, but to work together to make life easier. Marx also shared this view point. He believed that humans were "species beings."

[mikelepore]

A lot of these ideas sound good in theory, but it would be impossible to get 6+ billion people to work cohesively as one functioning unit. There will always be those who want to lead or stray from the conventional methods of the group. We are talking about trying to change a thought process that has existed since man's conception. There is rank and leadership even within the animal kingdom. We are nothing more than highly developed animals. Conflict ensues in those kingdoms also as leaders try to maintain their position and ensure their genes are passed on to the next generation. Even, if by some miracle, you could organize those 6+ billion people, it wouldn't be long before the group self destructed. Mass re-programming would have to be an unavoidable requirement.

It's amazing how many errors can be packed into a short paragraph.

1. It's not necessary to get 6 billion people to work together as a "unit". People can just do their own part. If you're a plumber, fix the plumbing. If you' re a nurse, bring me my pill. The "functioning unit" will come about because of the structure of things -- departments won't be told that they are required to be in competition with other departments, they won't be forbidden to share their technical discoveries, they won't be forced to work overtime to beat the other department.

2. But there has to be some system of management, whether we call it the board of directors, the industrial headquarters, or the workers' congress, it doesn't matter what it's called. Today a small propertied class gets to elect the management. Socialists say that the management should be the working people's representatives. If today the stockholders are called upon to to elect the directors, the writer sees that as quite normal, but if the workers are called upon to elect the directors, that would require "mass reprogramming" in us? Some people just make hasty assumptions.

3. It's not true that some people get to rule or lead today because they "want to lead." Hasn't that writer every heard of someone telling others what to do and those others just say, "No, buzz off"? People get to lead because formal institutions are currently set up to give them that power. As Marx explained in 'Capital', chapter 13: " It is not because he is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist; on the contrary, he is a leader of industry because he is a capitalist. The leadership of industry is an attribute of capital, just as in feudal times the functions of general and judge, were attributes of landed property."

4. The writer mentioning people's "genes" is ridiculous. If social hierarchy were based on genes, the system wouldn't have needed the law makers to pass those laws to outline the procedure so that when capitalists dies their children will inherit their assets, and the courts of law, and the sheriff with the gun, to enforce it. When you have to daily force something into existence, that's a pretty good hint that it's not inherent in nature.

5. As for the "thought process that has existed since man's conception", the writer is simply uneducated about anthropology. During the first 99 percent of human existence there was no such thing as private property except for personal belongings that a person could hold and carry. There were distinct moments when society's laws began to allow the productive resources that the whole population needs to survive to be classified as someone's private property.