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Well, excess refined sugar can be downright deadly to a diabetic. But that does not mean that the recreational user of sugar can't suck on a Jolly Rancher every once in a while, nor does it mean that they should be illegal.
Most of our medicines come from plants. IMO it's critically important to assess MJ for medicinal properties, not because it's fun to get high, though it is, but because it's critical to assess all plants for cheaper and better cures for our diseases. There are already studies showing that it causes apoptosis of tumor cells. There are enough reasons why the powers that be would want to spread deceit about this that I don't have to go into it...
And yeah, loonyleftist is obviously right (no pun intended)--the most harmful drugs are the legal tobacco and alcohol.
(
Actually, though, as other people have mentioned, I really do think that drugs became illegal because of their perceived social effects. The purpose of life isn't to maximize personal possessions or live a quiet life of never getting into trouble or be a cog in a social machine or unquestioningly follow the state apparatus or whatever, it's to be as happy as you can be while living ethically and passing your way of life and knowledge to future generations. Drugs have a way of cutting through the bullshit to allow people to express their emotions or engage in self-therapy or otherwise gain perspective on their lives. And that's not something that the capitalists masters would really like to see people doing. Why did Reagan launch the War on Drugs in the mid 1980s? Isn't that when the children of the Baby Boom generation, responsible for the 1960s, would start to come of age themselves? That's my conspiracy theory.It's nice that it's finally letting up as the Clintons and Obamas take office...
It's its own little site of socioeconomic conflict...
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Last edited by argeiphontes; 18th March 2014 at 08:56.
"This is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like the cat because the cat is free, and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
"The intellectual and emotional refusal 'to go along' appears neurotic and impotent." — Herbert Marcuse.
"Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!" — Carl Gustav Jung
I think it had more to do with his administration's heavy involvement in the Latin American cocaine trade and the desire to limit the domestic political repercussions of, say, ordering the DEA and FBI to back off of CIA-backed cocaine traffickers.
"to become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly"
^ Fair enough. I don't think that domestic considerations weren't a reason, though. Of course, I could be completely wrong. It's my favorite "conspiracy theory" but could be completely wrong.
"This is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like the cat because the cat is free, and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
"The intellectual and emotional refusal 'to go along' appears neurotic and impotent." — Herbert Marcuse.
"Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!" — Carl Gustav Jung
I think there have been specific "conspiracies" regarding the drug war. I tend not to believe the "cia-crack" theories, but I think much more banal conspiracies such as needing rationales for profiling and stopping people, etc are involved.
But on the whole I think it comes out of the need for capitalism to control and manage labor and therefore people's behavior in society generally. The bougeois always loves a good moral prohibition campaign when it comes to the lives and behaviors of workers and the poor.
In a way, drugs and alcohol cause problems, but these are by and large problems in terms of the order of capitalist life. It is a "problem" if someone in capitalism can not meet the demands on labor required by capitalists at that moment. So chemical dependancy makes some people have problems keeping a schedule and so on... but so do physical or mental or emotional issues. Capitalism isn't very good - or very interested - in solving these "problems".
Drug prohibition of course doesn't solve any of these problems (decades of "war on drugs" in the US and yanks still love their drugs more across class and ethnic lines). So more specifically the war on drugs provides ideological scapegoating which goes hand and hand with moralist campaigns (people are poor or homeless because they "choose" to be addicts... our society is violent because drug addicts are so obesses and dependant that they become like sociopaths). Neither claim is really that true: drug-addicts have a dependency, but still can make rational decisions and class and poverty determine if an addiction makes someone poor or not - pleanty of rich people do tons of hard drugs.
In the US there's also a sort of connected beurocratic-dynamic involved since so much police funding and perks (and ability to justify beatings or harassing people) comes from the war on drugs. That's why there's still some hesitancy to stop anti-pot laws even though politically/electorally there is no "apparent" reason in terms of popular opinion.
In the communist society, as the old truism goes, the "government over men" will have been abolished and replaced with "the administration of things". That is, while there would still be a public authority - and unlike many anarchists and councilists, I don't for a moment imagine this authority would be local and decentralised - but it would deal with matters like production quotas, the logistics of arming a universal militia etc. etc. It wouldn't prescribe how people are allowed to live their lives - surely at this point we're all aware of the dangers of such an approach.
Laws don't prevent addiction or the use of hard drugs. They simply stigmatize, punish, and demonize addicts and users. They take no consideration into the people who are able to take addictive drugs recreationally, and not become addicted.
Drugs are used, for the most part, as an escape... targeting what the person is escaping from, not how they are escaping, is the point that people are missing.
"The revolution is the political and economic affair of the totality of the proletarian class. Only the proletariat as a class can lead the revolution to victory. Everything else is superstition, demagogy and political chicanery. The proletariat must be conceived of as a class and its activity for the revolutionary struggle unleashed on the broadest possible basis and in the most extensive framework." - Otto Ruhle
...The Myth of Council Communisms Proudhonism
FKA Subvert and Destroy
Personally I think that drugs are illegal mainly to protect the public exactly the way its illegal to drive a car without a licence. It is true as this thread originally said that it does provide some to the capitalist society but that being said even socialist societies have laws against drug use. A key idea behind communism is that the government expects the public to work but in return the state provides protection, regulation and distribution of all goods and services. Ideally drugs should not be illegal because in the perfect communist soceity they wouldnt even have been produced to begin with if they dont have practical use to the public.
Um.
Communism pretty much precludes forced labour or the existence of the state. At least going by the usual Marxist notion of what communism is. If you have another notion, you might want to spell it out.
And honestly I can't understand this "potentially harmful things should be illegal" line. Should hamburgers be banned as well? Anal sex too?
The commune will decide what's right.
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
Well I never said that potentially harmful goods should be illegal. I said they wouldn't have been produced to begin with. I actually specifically said that they should NOT be illegal since there wouldnt have been put any effort into producing them in the first place. In the ideal world anyway. They therefore wouldnt exist and a ban would be redundant. If only complete regulation and therefore complete destribution was possible we wouldn't have to illegalize any goods only distribute the ones we create as a society. And therefore dangerous drugs with no practical purpose wouldnt have to be illegal since they wouldnt exist.
Furthermore making things like unhealthy food illegal wouldnt be a problem either. If we could distribute food into rations to everyone the most practial and healthy foods would only be available and therefore there wouldnt be reason to force a healthy lifestyle upon the population. Unhealthy and long-term dangerous food wouldnt be produced creating both a healthier society and removing the need to ban products as all products being created would already be aproved by state.
Not really. As I said, communism means the end of the government over men. This means the public authorities, or the commune (I think the word is too federalist, but this is perhaps a discussion for another time), can't dictate what the workers should eat, who they can and can't sleep with and in what way etc.
This doesn't really answer my questions. And obviously some people are going to want opium, or hamburgers, or "immoral" books, whatever. Assuming the resources required to produce these goods are available, refusing to manufacture them is a de facto ban, on the minimal assumption that in the communist society members of the society will have an input in decisions concerning production.Originally Posted by TheMask
Im afraid much of what you're describing here isn't communism but anarchy whitch is a latin term for ''Leaderless''. Communism can have and does in many cases have leaders and a state to regulate both destribution and manifacturing of goods.
Returning to your new question I think that you're right that part of the population will want those ''hurtful'' goods that you describe and yes that is probably one of the largest problems communism faces: The undereducated masses. Because of this needed be that there is a state present to regulate the manifacturing of namely drugs with no special purpose. The basic idea is to prevent the manifaction of these goods to protect the masses. To some degree this should also apply to the manifaction of unhealthy food. Although given yes this does to some degree go against a part of the communist foundation I think that to some degree all societies have to have some sort of regulation to protect the masses from their own ignorance. Like the idea of ''prevent to protect''. It is a moral question to which degree you can control other peoples faithes in order to protect them from themselves but personally I would go as far as say that at least drugs with no practical purpose should be prioritized very low in a regulated-production based system.
I don't know if it's been mentioned in this thread yet, but the film "The House I Live In" probably has the best brief synopsis of why drugs are illegal that I've ever seen.
If you're interested in the subject I'd definitely recommend watching that film.
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
Here's a relevant clip:
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It's not shown in that clip, but the film also draws some interesting parallels between "crack hysteria" and "meth hysteria" of the late 90's/early 2000's, only the stereotyped targets then were poor white people/gay people rather than poor black people.
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
Yeah I would have thought so too. I think the motto around here is "the most complex explanation is always the best"
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
Marijuana is not "very harmful to a person's body". The propagandists may have been able to get away with that a few decades ago, but not in the era in which two minutes on Google will be more than enough to contradict their claims. Even constantly re-iterated claims such as the ones regarding the effects of cannabinoids on schizophrenia are open for debate.
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
Hello,
Most people here who descibe themselves as communists, I think would probably agree that communism as a society is one without a state or class differences. I think this is important to point out in this discussion because this conception has ramifications for this question.
I'm going to be frank and say that I strongly disagree with your argument here. I think that the idea that the "masses are uneducated" in terms of behavior doesn't hold up today and would certainly not hold up in a classless, stateless society: communism. Workers may be kept from organizational knowledge, leadership and critical thinking skills and are generally educated in developed capitalist countries in how to be good workers, to follow tasks, to do what is necissary in isolation from the bigger picture of why: we are taught to be mannaged and to dicipline ourselves for a life of sitting or standing for 8 hours a day completing some specific sub-divided task. The education for the sake of self-betterment and personal fufilment and being a confident and critical person would probably be desired and prioritized by most workers if there was a revolution. I don't think we'd want to re-create the kind of management of our personal behavior that capitalism tends to generate... and I don't think it would be necissary.
In, say, feudalism, no one cared if a weaver or farmer was drunk when they did their work (unless for personal safty reasons... like the drunk guy has the sythe) because what was valued was the product of the labor... the result. In capitalism, what matters is our labor power and drunk or stoned workers mean workers who might not show up on time or might work slow or might get sick. In fact part of the reson there is tea-time was so that British workers would be convinced to take a stimulent rather than drink a beer in the afternoon.
Management, control, over our labor and even our movments in performing our task is central to modern capitalism and out of that comes a general desire to control and discipline the masses. More specifically too is controlling the "rebeliousness" of the masses, controling behavior that deviates from what is promoted as the best way to organize our personal lives, getting us to discipline ourselves. This is why moral crusades have generally been the answer from the middle class to problems in the lives of workers.
I must say I find your point interesting. In my opinion though a society without the division of workforces which I think some people misunderstand as "class society" wouldnt be able to exist. That being said I think a society that is regulated by state with the goal of securing equality and distribution of recources in such an order that everyone gets what they need not what their work is valued as (and almost all work is valued equally) AND the state attempts to look out for the interests of all of us looked upon equally is still a desireable communist society.
What Im getting at is that I think that communism should, although value all people equally, still look upon every individual as different but all working and doing their best for a soceity.
Well dividing up tasks seems like it's common in any kind of organized activity - it's what allows people to do something collectivly that's greater than what their numbers could do if working autonomously. But I'd argue that the division and management of labor under capitalism is much different than that - like how walking in a crowd is different than an army marching even though both are essentially just groups of people going somewhere. But besides all that, class is much different than just a simple division of labor. Class is a relationship in society whereas a division of labor is just a relationship between people accomplishing a specific task. People can mutually divide up labor, or a manager can divide up taks and the workforce as they see best fit for creating profits - but these are very different in implication.
If people all wanted to make a fancy cake, they might divide up tasks, but they are all together on wanting the end result. For "classes" it's not a relationship towards one task that's divided up, it's actually the relationship to production itself. So mixing flower as part of making a cake with your family is a division of tasks, but in capitalism you sell your labor power to mix flower and the capitalist sets you to stirring at a set speed for a length of time to make... it dosn't matter, not to the laborer, she only gets a wage whereas the capitalist gets the cake to do with as they please.
It is not "natural" for people to do a simple task or a series of simple tasks, divorced from the product of the task, for a set length of time and at a speed determined by machines, computers, or just supervision from superiors. In pre-capitalist wage-labor, people usually just worked a few hours a day (they would probably farm or gather from common lands for the rest of their sustinance) and they sold the product of what they made. If they were tired or preoccupied, well they got paid for what they did. This is not the case in capitalism where the capitalist buys our labor power and therefore wants to maximize all the labor possible from that commodified unit. Because of this a great deal of coersion and discipline are needed. I think if regimes that have called themselves "communist" have employed similar methods, it's less about communism than about the need to keep pace with capitalist economies and accumulate rapidly from a low starting point.
As I see it "work" in communism would only be about the use-values produced and the usefulness of it. People would not under normal circumstances try and control eachother to maximize surplus values for exchange. I think this carries on to society in general where personal things which are not interfering with others would remain personal... recreational drug or alcohol use, free love, etc. Workers might make some safty rules... like don't be fucked up at work because then we have to work harder to cover you or you drive a big machine so we can't have you drunk.
Finally, on a practical level, prohibitions just don't work very well. US Prisons are far more restrictive than general society - even under dictatorships and yet people make alcohol, people smuggle, people find/make substances which alter their senses - usually these are less satisfying and safe than alcohol or popular street-drugs. Alcohol is something almost every culture developed and used as an intoxicant - if not, they had something else. Even if workers didn't produce alcohol, people would set up stills. Would revolutionary workers want to then spend time and resources survying the hills for illegal stills or pot-farms? No, people like to alter their senses. The best way to deal with it from a non-control, non-top-down way, would be for people to do what they have in pre-capitalist societies which was just develop customs around using substances and then peer-pressure if people behave in disruptive ways, drunk or just sober and jerky. That and actual medical treatment for people who aren't just being socially obnoxious but actually develop some kind of unwanted dependancy.
Last edited by Jimmie Higgins; 28th March 2014 at 12:49.
I am pleased to see you write this since I think it matches my point from my last message in almost every aspect. (Although yours was probably more carefully and well formulated) I must say I agree with you on all accounts in this case and I think a misunderstanding (probably just a wrong turn of phrase on my part) has turned this misunderstanding to an argument where we largely already agree on everything. We agree that a class-based society and division or work is not the same thing (which is what I meant to say from the beginning but unfortunately didn't formulate it as well as you) and that the dividing of work is inevitable and necessary while a class-based system should be avoided at all costs for the good of society and every person who lives under it. I am ever so happy to have a peaceful discussion on this forum with a fellow comrade only to find out that I agree with him completely.
Good day my fellow comrade
Hasta La Victoria Siempre!
- Che Guevara
