You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

RE: Was Marx's philosophy his own or can we say we will talk about marxisitc philosophy?

in #philosophy8 years ago

Interesting position.
The missing link in the discussion is coercion, though it was hinted at errantly in one of the statements.
Marxism - the idea that everything should be fair. In a sense, it's a great idea. But life isn't fair. We can do what we must to help make it so, but it'll never happen because people get sick, accidents happen, some are introverts while others extraverts. This will affect the dynamics of society.
But it comes back to coercion. How will people ever do this? Would it be made law? If it was, then there is no such thing as freedom, only tyranny. The great challenge is to realize that this has never been done successfully on a large scale. When it was tried, it resulted in disaster, largely because it was tried through coercion. Yet, without coercion, the population in general will not embrace these ideals (coercion includes brainwashing).
The errant statement is that

we can clearly see that the modern man[kind] ... is not aware with what the capitalism has its grip on us.

Capitalism, rightly understood, is not a political position. It can only work under certain political conditions, all of them embracing freedom. As soon as the state enters the market as anything but a competitor on a level playing field, it is no longer capitalism.
Capitalism is an economic ideal. It is the absence of coercion. It is free market. It is not perfect, but it is freedom. It is utterly impossible to be "in its grip", because it has no motive, no coercion and no volition, other than freedom.
To tell a person that capitalism is bad is to tell them that their freedom is bad. Today's young generation has attempted to redefine capitalism. But what they decry is another animal altogether, being a form of fascism, neo-socialism, crony-capitalism or corporatism. This needs to be understood in such discussions in order to rightly talk about capitalism itself. If capitalism is misunderstood, as in this article, then it leaves no room for true freedom. If it is rightly understood, then much of this article needs to be rewritten with a proper understanding of economics, in particular laissez-faire capitalism.
I would strongly recommend Ludwig von Mises' Human Action to help in attempting to understand these things.

Sort:  

Thank you for the great comment @anotherjoe
Coercion as you said in my opinion is of no use whatsoever. Like i said, i would rather do it another way. I would raise my children in a way that helping others would become their mission in life, alongside understanding themselves and others, and of course why must we do what we do in order to help each other. A nation or system based on coercion has no future. You are right about that. Let us not be foced to help each other, but rather let us decide for ourselves with our freedom to do this. Let us put the shacles of goodnes and empathy be placed on us with our own concent. I do not see capitalism as a political position. Rather i see it as a means to transefer goods from one place to another. Sadly all this focuses on one point, like the pyramid. Where in the end, only 0.00001% of the mankind will rule all the rest.

Capitalism has its coercion. It forces companies to produce more and more, the workers must work more and more. And when the time comes when the machines will replace the humans? What will we say to them then? This is one way of forcing people to achieve the utmost extreme productivity in exchange for their health. But after they lose their health what happnes? Most workers simply do not have the money to pay for the healthcare expenses then they die. Where is the freedom in this? Please tell me, for i do not see it.
I will gladly read your book, but it will take me some time. Real life is kinda busy :)

We are agreed that helping one another should be the goal of all mankind. I don't see a need to try to make things equal, but a pursuit of good health for all should be at the forefront of everyone's mind.
And we agree that coercion is evil.
You are misunderstanding capitalism though. If there is coercion, capitalism cannot exist. It is freedom in the marketplace, pure and simple.
In capitalism, a person has the choice as to whether they'll work for the company. If they agree to, then they also agree to the terms. They have no room for complaining, because they freely agreed to the terms offered. They can work or they can leave. They can try to renegotiate at any time. But the employer has no obligation to do any more than is initially agreed. That's freedom.
The business owner's responsibility is to profit. This should be done with integrity, but it still should be the pursuit. If robots will make the business more profitable, then the owner must decide whether he wants to keep paying employees to work or reduce his workforce in favor of robots (which would still require some higher paid workers to maintain).
How could this not be freedom? How could anything else be freedom?
The book is a classic in Austrian economics. You will be in the mind of a genius, but his writing can be difficult at times. He writes as if everyone else understands everything he knows. :) Rothbard is easier to understand, if you care to follow that direction of learning. This school of thought is antithetical to the cronyism you decry and the banking cartel that holds so many modern economies in its grip.