When you put it this way you imply that swapping the greedy for those who are not greedy would work.
Liberals analyse the world using idealism. Marxists analyse the world using materialism.
It will not work, because greed is not the cause, you’re making the mistake of performing an idealist analysis instead of a materialist one. The idealist analysis lands you on “change how people think and things will get better” whereas a materialist analysis lands you on “change the system and it will change how people think”.
The problem will never change without changing the system. No matter how hard you try.
cancer doesn’t fail on any moral level. It simply is.
a misfolded protein is the most efficient structure a protein can be in.
there are billions of dollars being churned around in running for congress, and they’re getting a salary of like, 200k a year. good luck running for congress without representing some very deep pockets.
I don’t judge cancer. It’s just efficient at growth, very efficient, and in a way that is unhelpful.
I don’t think the system is evil, i think it needs treatment.
Yeah, almost all of what hexaglycogen wrote is true and well said, but the system can be evil at the same time as all of that. We can say that its evil because of the harm that it causes and the cruelty of its effects, but we likewise have to call cancer evil for the same reasons. The claim of course is that the system (like cancer) is not evil because it has no conscious intent, it just is, an amoral thing devoid of consciousness doing what it does. But even though that’s true on the whole, the capitalist system unlike cancer is made of components where many of them are beings with intent, conscious human individuals aware of the harm they do, in other words: evil people. The system selects for them, rewarding sociopathy, embedding itself with that evil even if as a system it has no awareness. In my book, that makes it more than fair to call the system itself evil.
There is nothing wrong with denouncing American plutocrats like Bezos and Gates for greed, but we cannot stop there: we must understand that the system of exploitation is not held together by any individual’s vices. As Lenin put it, “The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits.” [10] If one of them had a major change of heart and stopped pursuing ruthless accumulation, they would quickly be ousted by stockholders for endangering their investment. In the unlikely event that their stockholders were cooperative, a competitor would swoop in and relieve them of their commanding market share. This is not apologia for Bezos, but we need to understand that there is a talent to being a capitalist exploiter, or else we will underestimate our enemy. The market selects for profitability, and it selects well — it just doesn’t select for environmental responsibility or decency or who can bring the most benefits to the greatest number. From Marx, to Lenin, to Deng, we can observe a baseline level of respect for the enemy: “Management is also a technique.” [11]
On my view, the core Marxist insight is the following: Feudal lords were the masters of Feudalism. Capitalists, however, aren’t the masters of capitalism. They are merely the high priests of capitalism. The master of capitalism is Capital itself.
Most people are there because our society is poorly run. The politicians have failed us with their greed.
No. Please stop with this “greed” bullshit. The system is running exactly the way it was designed to run. Cruelty IS the point.
When all politicians in similar systems, proceed to systematically succumb to greed, the problem is in the system
When you put it this way you imply that swapping the greedy for those who are not greedy would work.
Liberals analyse the world using idealism. Marxists analyse the world using materialism.
It will not work, because greed is not the cause, you’re making the mistake of performing an idealist analysis instead of a materialist one. The idealist analysis lands you on “change how people think and things will get better” whereas a materialist analysis lands you on “change the system and it will change how people think”.
The problem will never change without changing the system. No matter how hard you try.
cancer doesn’t fail on any moral level. It simply is.
a misfolded protein is the most efficient structure a protein can be in.
there are billions of dollars being churned around in running for congress, and they’re getting a salary of like, 200k a year. good luck running for congress without representing some very deep pockets.
I don’t judge cancer. It’s just efficient at growth, very efficient, and in a way that is unhelpful.
I don’t think the system is evil, i think it needs treatment.
Yeah, almost all of what hexaglycogen wrote is true and well said, but the system can be evil at the same time as all of that. We can say that its evil because of the harm that it causes and the cruelty of its effects, but we likewise have to call cancer evil for the same reasons. The claim of course is that the system (like cancer) is not evil because it has no conscious intent, it just is, an amoral thing devoid of consciousness doing what it does. But even though that’s true on the whole, the capitalist system unlike cancer is made of components where many of them are beings with intent, conscious human individuals aware of the harm they do, in other words: evil people. The system selects for them, rewarding sociopathy, embedding itself with that evil even if as a system it has no awareness. In my book, that makes it more than fair to call the system itself evil.
An alternative thing to consider: they were selected for their roles because of their greed.
They are lieutenants of this society, not generals.
from https://redsails.org/why-marxism/