SolarCross wrote:Seemingly you are more forgiving of differences that POD, he would rob richboy blind to make him as poor as poorboy and also, hilariously, enslave poorboy so that he works as hard as richboy, all for his equalitarianism but not for either of the boy's happiness for which he has no care at all. It seems both would lose rather badly under POD's egalitarianism. Everybody expects the rich to be eaten by egalitarians but what is less often appreciated is that the poor suffer also, just in a different way.
You seem to deliberately misunderstand how Marxism works.
Mostly so you can run around accusing me of wanting to rob people.
I will move onto Potemkin’s criticisms as they are more intelligent.
Potemkin wrote:People can be rich or poor in different ways. The rich brother is money-rich but time-poor, whereas his brother is money-poor but time-rich. PoD's view is that all forms of wealth must be 'taxed' in some way so that extreme forms of inequality are (more or less) smoothed out. This means that the 'poor' brother's wealth of time will be taxed as well as the 'rich' brother's wealth of money. The 'poor' brother will then have less time but more money, while the 'rich' brother will have less money but more time. This does not necessarily have to lead to absolute equality; in fact the system we have right now is essentially what PoD is advocating, but in a mild form.
Communism is a form of egalitarianism in that it seeks to dismantle the hierarchy associated with wealth and the class system. Please note that I did not say anything about taxes, as taxes may be irrelevant in a state controlled economy, depending on how it was done. In a socialist state, where the state as we currently know it still exists, ta es may be the way to do this.
But it would make sure that the rich brother would not be able to use his wealth to create a power imbalance that he could then exploit.
The poor brother, like any other citizen of a communist nation, would also be required to contribute according to his ability. With modern technology, this may not actually be very much. Buckminster Fuller advocated a system where people would be paid to stay home and not work, as their labour would be done by automation and the society would save money, have less pollution, etc. because these people would be doing less. This, to me, seems consistent with a modern Marxist society.
In other words, PoD is a left-of-centre liberal masquerading as a 'revolutionary'. Marx criticised this sort of petty-bourgeois egalitarianism in his Critique of the Gotha Programme as being a symptom of an inability to think beyond the horizon of 'liberal rights'. The point Marx made was essentially the point you are trying to make - that people are not equal, and to treat them equally is unjust.
Perhaps. It does not really matter. I long ago stopped calling people bourgeois or liberals, and stopped listening to accusations that I am one. What is more important is that we keep fighting against capitalism in whatever way we can, as often as possible.
Since I am an Allendista, I see no contradiction between socialism and civil rights. Many liberal rights are compatible with socialism, and in fact are necessary for a socialist society to effectively address the needs of the populace and keep it from falling into a dictatorship.
Nor am I advocating that all people should be treated equally. For example, I pointed out that people with disabilities require additional resources, and this is because it would be useless to ague that all people should use the stairs regardless of whether or not they use a wheelchair even though “everyone will use the stairs” is a type of equality.
After all, “each to their ability, each to their need” is not a description of seeing all people as equal, nor is it saying that all should be treated equally. If we are going to reconcile this with equality, we are looking at a more complicated sytem than mere equality of opportunity or equality of outcome.
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As for the cheap alcohol conversation, I inherited an allergy to some of the chemicals used in cheap, large scale alcohol manufacturing. This means I cannot drink cheap alcohol, unless it is somehow inexpensive and natural. This, in turn, means I drink a lot of microbrews, though I did find a good inexpensive Irish cream.
- By Rancid
- By Godstud
- By FiveofSwords