Shorbe,

Do you acknowledge that your causal claim that Stalinism is the “inevitable excess” of Marxism is flawed?

Do you acknowledge that your “falsifiability concept” proves nothing other than that YOU can have no positive knowledge that YOUR THEORY - that Stalinism is the “inevitable excess” of Marxism - is correct?

Do you recognise that your “falsifiability concept” also means that YOU can have no positive knowledge that YOUR THEORY - that humans are inherently selfish, greedy, lazy, irresponsible, capitalists, whatever and that therefore a better economic system and world is impossible – is correct?

Do you recognise that your “falsifiability concept” also means that YOU can have no positive knowledge that YOUR THEORY – that poverty is caused by individual irresponsibility – is correct?

Until you can acknowledge these things – that there may be other explanations for the phenomena you are describing, and that not everything you say is automatically the truth, and that others quite legitimately see things from a different perspective than you and could have valid points, then we are going round in circles.

Your propensity to make unsubstantiated, nonsensical, and logically invalid comments was amusing, but is now, in your words “embarrassing”.

For example you know claim that it is the fundamental of human nature to be capitalist. You must be frigging joking. Human beings have a history of 40,000 years or more, yet the capitalist economic system has only existed for 300-400 of them.

You claim that my “ideology” is a personal power grab, or can be manipulated for someone else’s personal power grab. Yet you don’t appear to see or acknowledge that your ideology can be manipulated in exactly the same way, and is actually the ideology of those in power at the moment. You are progressing through all of the variations and tricks to justify capitalist ideology, your latest being Social Darwinism.

Don't judge others by your own standards Shorbe. You might only be after personal power, but there are plenty of others who are not, me included.

"that is when the revolutionary-struggle will begin in earnest"

Tao, you want to put down the Marxist books for a minute and
perhaps pick up some evolutionary psychology books, to educate
yourself a little.

Fact is that yup, people, as other species, are driven by
self interest. You cannot ignore evolution theory.

Altruism and reciprocal altruism are all part of the
evolutionary psychology debate. When we study why people
are altruistic, there are in fact good reasons. Firstly
cooperation is one way for a species to achieve more.
Secondly if we fmri scan people doing altruistic things,
we find that reward/pleasure centres of their brains light
up. In other words, being altruistic, makes some people
feel good. As its in peoples interest to feel good,
they are in fact doing it for quite selfish reasons :)

Tao, its high time you educated yourself beyond the
old Marx dogma, the infomation is out there, if you
are interested.

Posted by Yabby, Saturday, 31 March 2007 1:58:28 PM
"Altruism and reciprocal altruism are all part of the
evolutionary psychology debate. When we study why people
are altruistic, there are in fact good reasons. Firstly
cooperation is one way for a species to achieve more.
Secondly if we fmri scan people doing altruistic things,
we find that reward/pleasure centres of their brains light
up. In other words, being altruistic, makes some people
feel good. As its in peoples interest to feel good,
they are in fact doing it for quite selfish reasons :)"

Valid observations, invalid conclusion. Just because there is a sound logical explanation of a link between behaviours and rewards does not necessarily imply that the explanation describes a causal relationship. Also the fact that something is true in some cases does not necessarily imply that it is true in all cases.

You may know a lot about evolutionary psychology but your grasp of logic leaves something to be desired.

tao: I'm still not going to answer the question about the inevitability of Stalinism from socialism until you answer the question about what to do about the masses of people who won't accept the revolution, or who want to change back after the revolution.

You want to say my claims about Marxism are unsubstantiated. Fine, I'll accept that. Now admit the same about capitalism. You'll never do that though because you're as dogmatic as you claim me to be, and so it does go around in a circle.

When exactly did capitalism begin? Were Phonecian merchants capitalists? Whenever people trade they engage in capitalism, and that this has been happening for a long time in human history.

I realise that my ideology could (and should) very easily be manipulated as a personal power grab, although I think that it wouldn't be particularly successful to say, "I'm going to manipulate you so I can have power over you". People are gullible, but not that gullible. Hence, if I really wanted to do that, I'd become a TV evangelist or union boss.

You're using all the usual Marxist tricks to justify the Machiavellianism of socialism -- paint the world as a dichotomy, never concede a point, ignore any questions, turn your opponent's points back on him and keep throwing mud until something sticks. We're both doing it. You're being Machiavellian by claiming you're not doing that and I'm being Machiavellian because I'm claiming I'm being honest about doing it (whilst still doing it). Of course you're not after power. No one ever is. I know, and send me a cheque in the mail and I'll post the warranty to you later.

Ultimately, I don't have to worry about who is winning this intellectual pissing contest because my ideology is omnipresent. The irony of your position is that it's confined to third world hell holes dependent upon nefarious capitalist organisations for handouts, or to individuals in the West who have to do likewise, and that must really, really grate on socialists.

Say hi to your boss on Monday for me!

Thanks for the comprehensive response tao.

You wrote; “Well what a load of twaddle. The only bright spot was Rob.”

So it was pretty clear that you had just cast ol’ Ludwig on the junkpile along with shorbe and TRTL.

I considered it to be of poor form to strongly offside a new participant who had not thrown any dirt at you nor criticised your views at all. But I appreciate your complaints about the insults that have been thrown at you on this thread. So let’s put it behind us and get into the debate.

“… the massive and myriad problems humanity faces will not be solved within the capitalist framework.”

I think that ultimately they will be addressed within this framework… but not before we have huge economic, social and environmental turmoil.

“…many of the problems are actually caused by the profit system itself”

Absolutely.

“The only solution is to change the economic system to one in which human need is the driving force, not profit.”

Yes. But does this mean embracing socialism or adapting capitalism, or what precisely? I am particularly interested in the Australian situation. I can’t imagine a radical departure from capitalism, but I can envisage a significant refocusing of primary principles. But not before a major catastrophe.

I can see how socialism or communism with the right leadership and community support could very effectively address our problems. Similarly, the right benign dictatorship could do the trick. But there is no way that we could get one of these systems implemented in Australia, although we could probably increase socialistic aspects.

continued

The very system we have could work, if we could just get the right motives in place. And it seems to me that the right motives will come….after we realise the consequences of being ruled by the wrong motives. In other words; after we face the social and environmental catastrophe caused by the profit motive and expansionist policies.

So I wonder whether the political system really that matters that much. It is the realisation that we have to live within our means that matters. And if we collectively have that, then just about any form of governance would work, as far as sustainability and the protection of out future are concerned.

“The capitalist system contains fundamental contradictions which cannot be resolved by capitalist measures – and we need to think outside the box”

It is all very well to think out side of the box. But we also need to think within the parameters of possible change. I doubt that something that is completely outside of the box of capitalism is even within the realms of possibility in Australia.

So that leads us back to “twaddle” – type arguments. I think that the things that shorbe and TRTL have mentioned simply must be the sort of things that we need to look at. We need to modify our system from within, not put up a whole new system and expect it to be embraced.

But of course we have got to get to the point where human need, not profit, is the main driving force, before we can expect significant change. And again, I can’t see that happening to a significant extent until it is basically too late to prevent a major societal crash.

So obviously what I would love to know tao is how we can develop this fundamental motivational change before we are forced to do it, and within a timeframe that we can prevent the worst of the consequences of our current profit-above-all-else folly.