Great thread, its good to see people questioning capitalism, a previously seemingly unquestionable thing.

The way capitalism produces alienation is a big piece of the puzzle. Without going too deep into it, alienation can be undestood in this sense as alienation of a worker from what he produces. A craftsman who makes his own ox-cart is intimately bound up with the final product, and its production gives him power, autonomy, achievement, and all sorts of other things. A modern worker who screws in nuts and bolts or shiffles paperwork is alienated from these healthy experiences and from the finished commodity. there are other related types of alienation, too - alienation of people from each other, and from human nature itself on the deepest level. Fixing capitalism is largely a need to heal the various wounds caused by alienation.

Originally posted by Leftist
Great thread, its good to see people questioning capitalism, a previously seemingly unquestionable thing.

The way capitalism produces alienation is a big piece of the puzzle. Without going too deep into it, alienation can be undestood in this sense as alienation of a worker from what he produces. A craftsman who makes his own ox-cart is intimately bound up with the final product, and its production gives him power, autonomy, achievement, and all sorts of other things.

Agreed; but I've always felt that one mistake that Communist advocates make where Capitalism is concerned, is in assuming that the cause of the problem is a specific economic ideology, rather than human nature on a deeper level.

What I mean by that, is actually the human collectivist impulse itself. I've recently started wondering whether or not collectivism can really ever be a positive thing, (except at maybe extremely small scales) simply because there is an overwhelming human tendency, for a single psychopathic individual, to be able to dictate to the rest of the population, and said non-psychopathic population being entirely willing to go along with that. I'm not meaning to imply that that has only happened within a Communist context; it has happened with both.

I'm just not sure how we can get past the problem of the psychopaths, and I don't think that changing the economic paradigm we use, by itself, is going to go far enough. This is especially true, when I consider the possible evidence that I've seen, which has implied to me that Marx himself was under the control of the Illuminati, and that in terms of the entire Capitalism/Communism conflict, they essentially devised and have been manipulating both sides.

I think we really need to somehow create a situation where individual human beings are willing to be personally responsible for how they think, and which orders (if any) they follow. I can't see any other way to become immune to the cabal's influence, irrespective of which economic system we're using.

HA! I like how you got the 'capitalists' and the 'commies' fighting each other in this thread

Good job!

Personally, I feel the best system is a system whereby people create what is best for them from a mixture of social, free market etc. BUT this is just a system of economy. If I was to dream of a system of governance, I would say that we have already found the best formula which is to vote, chose and then criticize those people when they make bad decisions. The question is, how do you prevent people from becoming so rich and powerful that they are literally above the law? or that they end up lying through their teeth, taking their country to war, killing thousands upon thousands of people and still get away with it? You don't stop them. You simply support a justice system where they pay for their actions.

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Originally posted by nusnus
HA! I like how you got the 'capitalists' and the 'commies' fighting each other in this thread

Good job!

Personally, I feel the best system is a system whereby people create what is best for them from a mixture of social, free market etc. BUT this is just a system of economy. If I was to dream of a system of governance, I would say that we have already found the best formula which is to vote, chose and then criticize those people when they make bad decisions. The question is, how do you prevent people from becoming so rich and powerful that they are literally above the law? or that they end up lying through their teeth, taking their country to war, killing thousands upon thousands of people and still get away with it? You don't stop them. You simply support a justice system where they pay for their actions.

i don't even know where to begin to describe in which ways you are wrong here as there are so many reasons. suffice it to say that most of the people you describe as commies would consider communism to be idealistic and would advise you to educate yourself on economic terms. that would be a good start, but you still have a LONG way to go from there.