I've played with these themes before, but we as individuals in this society have already lost. We play out the game other people have designed from a technological, economic, and political point of view.

Being born into a framework where you have self-awareness AND you (the self-aware creature) cannot possibly know the hows and whys that sustain your being, is already an insurmountable setback.

Political democracy without economic democracy is a rigged sham — 180 Proof

100%!

Doubt there will be economic democracy then if large corps dictate pure politician policy via lobbying bribes etc

I've played with these themes before, but we as individuals in this society have already lost. — schopenhauer1

"In this society" or in any society?

We play out the game other people have designed from a technological, economic, and political point of view. — schopenhauer1

Yes, we internalize it so it seems like our own game.

Being born into a framework where you have self-awareness AND you (the self-aware creature) cannot possibly know the hows and whys that sustain your being, is already an insurmountable setback. — schopenhauer1

Except that we can know the how's and why's, can't we? Not that knowing will automatically enable us to overcome. Maybe the truth will make us free. It depends...

Except that we can know the how's and why's, can't we? — Bitter Crank

Is it possible for the individual to “know” or more importantly replicate all the technology and processes that sustains him/her? Electricity, heating, plumbing, electronics, refrigeration, construction, transportation oh my.

The boring minutia that we monger to produce it all. So tedious.

Syād ...
:up: Marxism suffers from the same malady that Christianity & Islam does - the belief, conviction rather, that it is absolutely correct, it is the truth with a capital T. Any opposition then instantly amounts to (political) heresy, to be be dealt with an iron hand. This zero tolerance, hardline, attitude then becomes the spawining ground for dictators.

How else does one win the nation-building game?

I think that dictatorship, at least on the economic level, is exactly what's in place -- it's either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, but a dictatorship all the same. That's how we relate to property: by adjudicating who gets to dictate what happens to a thing. This is common between socialisms and capitalisms: they are dictatorships over property. When the investment banker decides you don't own a home, you're forced out on the street. When the boss decides you're not contributing enough, you're forced out of work. When the money-man says you're not worthy, then you die in a capitalist economy. The dictators just set it up in a way that they can alleviate their guilty conscience, saying that those who suffer deserve their suffering, for their imprudent individual actions.

But it's a dictatorship all the same, if you're born on the wrong side of the property line.

I strongly believe in social mobility although hard disrupting the status quo of the burgoise in the end I see nothing but acceptance and if they don’t then they do so at their peril

The lion (the electric chair) or the hyenas (the firing squad)? How do you wanna die? A no-win situation. :chin: :snicker:

Kind of. And kind of not.

I only mean to highlight that the problems of Marxism are problems of human organization on the international scale -- that they trade on the use of violence, and the usual way of going about making a nation will make it such that any nation that survives the nation-building game will have a dark history which can be used to make propaganda with.

But since we, ourselves, also live in a nation that survived the nation-building game, we lack the ethos to make such pronouncements -- it's like Ted Bundy calling Jack the Ripper a murderer.

Minority or majority rule is not the rule of the people, but the rule of some people over other people. And so long as democracy remains collectivist and statist this is how it will always be. All that we have to protect the individual are the threadbare and paper-thin human rights some institutions have agreed upon, but which are violated across the board nonetheless.

If we want true democracy, the rule of the people, we cannot rule over the people. We have to quit thinking in statist terms. Democracy in the form of government is a perversion of democracy. It isn’t nor can ever be the rule of the people.

So we eat in silence! :up:

Well, that's no fun :D. And I don't think it'd help much: if politics isn't in the business of talking, it's in the business of shooting -- so silence isn't right. But we can't go about acting like we're saint-like in this matter, either. History is bloody and amoral. Very few people are actually "in the right" -- if they are, they didn't survive the game: they were exterminated by the people who wanted to build nations.

Yeah, we havta make up our minds what to do.

... Communism =/= socialism... — 180 Proof

You beat me to it. :)

, what do you think would happen then? Rule of whatever group managed to round up most members anyway?

As far as I see it any criticism of democracy inevitably a by product of free speech is for it to adjust its leadership in that where pre-existing interests and conflicts of interest are exposed by the voter to the point of adjustment I.e. new leadership, head of state etc. reshuffling of cabinet etc.

As for capitalism well it in its unlimited exertion of influence by various corporate interests will always have a say in the legislative nature of democracy via various forms of lobbying or even bribes.