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View Full Version : The State: Polly vs. Alyosha



IMPress Polly
11-06-2014, 07:03 AM
Alright @Alyosha (http://thepoliticalforums.com/members/863-Alyosha), let's start out debate!

For our purposes here, the state refers to the following four institutions corresponding to the use of official force:

1. Police
2. Courts
3. Prisons
4. Military

We share the view that these institutions jointly constituting the state should ultimately be done away with, as the use of official force is intrinsically repressive in nature and therefore undesirable. However, this basic moral position is where the typical anarchist's argument on the subject ends, which I submit fails to take matters of the practical (the how) into due consideration. In order to adequately decipher how the state might be one day abolished we must ask ourselves how it began. I submit that whereas the state began in ancient history as a means by which the ruling classes enforced their will upon the rest, it therefore follows that the general abolition of class distinctions must historically precede the abolition of the state, lest the state spontaneously resurface. I further submit that, while it's both possible and important to steadily diminish the use of state instruments progressively as the global wealth gap shrinks, the force of the state can also actually be useful, potentially, toward the realization of the aforementioned aim (the abolition of class distinctions), namely in the way of enforcing the will of the poorer classes upon the richer ones. It is thus advantageous for the poorer classes to have states of their own, or at least to control the existing ones if possible, in the short run.

The ball is now in your court.

Alyosha
11-06-2014, 10:52 AM
I agree that the state is to the advantage of the elite, and that the poor must break away, decentralize, organize and implement governance of their own outside the confines of "the state". I would argue, however, that where we disagree is not on the need of governing mechanisms as even tribal communities had those, but how force is implemented and the voluntary or involuntary nature of it.

When consent is removed all that has happened is that you've traded one master for another, albeit a more benign one. The question then becomes are we a species that wants to be enslaved and it is only the degree of slavery that we disapprove of, or was and is the human animal a free creature? Lest I be misunderstood, man can be independent and cooperative, independent and tribal. One does not deter from the other. I believe us to be social animals, though we are predators.

I believe that to truly break the cycle of hierarchical rule we must forget about using the state to implement our desires, and take the long, steady path of voluntary cooperation and buy in for without it we trade one yoke for another and will create within the new order the mechanisms to revert to the old one.

IMPress Polly

I am having personal issues at present and may not be available to address your remarks as quickly as I could have. I will continue the debate, however. Thank you for engaging.

IMPress Polly
11-07-2014, 08:21 AM
Alyosha wrote:
I am having personal issues at present and may not be available to address your remarks as quickly as I could have. I will continue the debate, however. Thank you for engaging.

Believe me, I understand! That's fine.

Anyway, to address your response, so far we've been speaking to the issue at hand in the abstract, but now I think it has become necessary to get into the details of practical application a little bit, as I need a little further clarity as to just what your position is in order to know how to respond. To that end, I'd like to know your position on the Occupy movement of 2011. The Occupy movement of 2011 was a modern-day, native (well semi-native) example of the sort of proletarian mass movement that I believe can and will lead humanity into a new era at some point in this century. It was the Western expression of the populist squares occupation movement that began in Thailand in early 2010 months before more famously sweeping the Arab world. That movement made its way to America in late 2011 in the form of the Occupy movement, which touched off a larger expression thereof throughout the global northwest and then more recently in South America (as we have seen fairly recently in countries like Brazil, for example). The politics of the Occupy movement were proletarian in nature, centered around demands for increased economic and political equality (especially the end of the financial industry's supreme rule of national politics), and the organizational structure of Occupy encampments reflected that mentality: Occupy encampments typically offered whatever products and services the participants could afford on crowdfunding -- including basic food, shelter, medical care, entertainment, sometimes libraries for education, etc. -- free of charge to all Occupiers who had need or want of them (as applicable), and used direct democracy in the form of general assemblies as their internal system of government. (Note that, in contrast to the middle class neo-primitive hippie movement of an earlier era that often used similar organizing principles, Occupy was a political movement, not just a social movement, and featured a generally proletarian class composition and base of support.) I was deeply involved in Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Vermont and proudly earned for myself the nickname "Miss Occupy" on another message board that year, as I went to great lengths to promote it, including circulating the Occupied Wall Street Journal online, organizing Occupy Movement social groups, and so on. Did you support the Occupy movement, with its demands for increased democracy and whatnot, or are you more of a postmodernist who would oppose these sorts of movements because they're political (postmodernists often being too individualistic to really believe in politics at all)? If you belong to the latter category, by what alternative means would you aim to realize the goal of a more stateless future? And if you (like me) belong to the former camp, here's another question I'd pose to you:

At a certain point, Occupy Wall Street and some of the other Occupy encampments began organizing the rudimentary beginnings of a parallel state structure in the form of internal policing systems. Why? Because of the rape cases, basically. Here and there, because there was no formal legal system inside the Occupy encampments, there would be a rape case and the rapist would invariably evade any form of real penalty for fear that leaking the info out would invite the police in to suppress the entire movement. Well the info inevitably did leak out and the press protested, causing the movement as a whole to look very bad in a way that repelled many women and started causing female participants to leave the encampments out of basic safety concerns. Feminist participants organized an internal women's movement to respond to these developments that basically compelled OWS and some other encampments to develop safety policies on pain of losing the vast majority of their female participants. Curfews and rotational nighttime watches were the solutions agreed upon. The takeaway here is that not all oppressions are state oppressions. Spontaneous oppressions (like rape) occur too, and the women felt that these were worse than the inconveniences that a nominal, rotational police force might include. The existence of a policing structure was seen as better than allowing these things to go on unchecked. The position you take makes it sound like this is something you'd have opposed. Am I correct about that? Or would you concede that, in the absence of class equity (in this case gender equity), the use of state force to mitigate and reduce spontaneous class oppressions (in this case social class oppressions) can be necessary?

(As to my opinion on why this movement went down to defeat, that has to do with my assessment of overall bourgeois class composition of First World countries. The fact that most Americans belong to the middle and upper classes, and were therefore naturally unsympathetic to the demands of poor and working class people, led to a lack of pro-democratic majority-protest when the existing powers used state force to just simply crush the movement in very much the same way that those same powers hypocritically complain of other countries doing. In poorer countries, the use of state force by the class enemy in these situations usually broadens the protest movement's base of support instead of collapsing it. The said movement then organizes an army of its own to respond to said force, and thus a revolutionary conflict of two opposing states is birthed. In other words, it was structurally impossible for a proletarian movement like Occupy to succeed in a First World country like ours. America must first become a more re-proletarianized nation before such movements have the potential to succeed, as they currently lack adequate support. That re-proletarianization will happen.)

Alyosha
11-07-2014, 08:31 AM
My opinion on the Occupy Movement was that I supported the general methodology of being a fly in the ointment, versus passive sing alongs in some government approved location. It was exactly how a movement or revolution begins and should occur; with a show of force. Force is not always violent, sometimes it is passive resistance of the "we will not be moved" variety.

Wall St. and Bankers (yes, capitalizing) have robbed, coerced, stolen, and generally pilfered the pockets of humanity, consolidating money and power in near-monopolistic, definitely oligarchal ways but because they wear suits and use the government to steal and plunder they are ignored and given a free pass. Toppling their evil empires is not a crime, but true justice.

However, not all businesses are evil and I am not anti-business. I am anti-injustice. The pizza shop owner who invested his time and savings, worked 15 hour days for years to crate a successful store and chain is right to pay himself more than new employees, for example.

I'm not certain that I am explaining this right.

I will say that people have a right to organize and implement justice. They will make mistakes, but the state also makes mistakes. I believe free people should act free. They should say "no". They should "occupy".

This is where I think in so many ways you and I do agree. Our only real disagreements that I find are in the vanguard type process. I don't think you can use an evil mechanism to do good because it removes objection and destroys voluntary cooperation.

I am a communitarian. I have very social inclinations. I am just not of the belief that everyone should have to structure themselves around my personal ethos for communities.

Alyosha
11-07-2014, 08:32 AM
You know, Polly, I think this is why we ultimately became friends because we disagree but we agree.

IMPress Polly
11-07-2014, 08:35 AM
I agree! :smiley:

Anyway, if you're responding to my post, you might want to refresh your page because I just now finished editing post #3, sorry! :tongue:

I'll try and respond to post #4 tomorrow if I can!

Alyosha
11-07-2014, 08:37 AM
I'll reread and try to respond. I do believe we need a revolution --and you should look up "Georgianism" if you haven't already because I think that you and I would also agree there.

This will be a boring debate, lol. Too much agreement.

IMPress Polly
11-08-2014, 07:21 AM
Alyosha wrote:
I'm not certain that I am explaining this right.

I do gather what you're saying and agree when you say this:


My opinion on the Occupy Movement was that I supported the general methodology of being a fly in the ointment, versus passive sing alongs in some government approved location. It was exactly how a movement or revolution begins and should occur; with a show of force. Force is not always violent, sometimes it is passive resistance of the "we will not be moved" variety.

Wall St. and Bankers (yes, capitalizing) have robbed, coerced, stolen, and generally pilfered the pockets of humanity, consolidating money and power in near-monopolistic, definitely oligarchal ways but because they wear suits and use the government to steal and plunder they are ignored and given a free pass. Toppling their evil empires is not a crime, but true justice.

Obviously you're arguing that, at minimum, civil disobedience in the face of genuine oppression is merited, and we agree there. However, when you say this...


However, not all businesses are evil and I am not anti-business. I am anti-injustice. The pizza shop owner who invested his time and savings, worked 15 hour days for years to crate a successful store and chain is right to pay himself more than new employees, for example.

...I obviously disagree. We could argue even about the morality of what's in pizza, but that would kind of evade the larger point you're trying to make, so let's get straight to that:

The measure of a system's merits lies in what it looks like when they are properly implemented, not in what it looks like when their purity is sufficiently diluted. There capitalism obviously has serious natural problems that range from a structural tendency to truly exploit not only the Earth itself, but also both the worker and the consumer, as seen for instance in the 19th century when it yet was largely unreformed. (I highlight the latter point because communitarianism is essentially consumerism in political form.) Most people lived in poverty under capitalism until organized labor created a middle class in the proper sense. Furthermore, you're defending capitalism here by highlighting exceptions to the rule, as the average consumer does not spend their money in some mom-and-pop pizza shop, but rather gives it to Domino's, Papa John's, Pizza Hut, or some other multinational chain that does not underpay their workers out of necessity like the small business owner might, but simply because they can; because that is the business model that made them a powerful, multinational company in the first place. That is called exploitation. The Costcos of the world are not the rule. The Walmarts of the world are the rule. Warren Buffet, with his request to be taxed at a higher rate for the sake of the nation's fiscal well-being, is not the rule. The truly greedy Donald Trumps of the world who don't care are the rule. Most capitalists may be relatively small business owners, but 80% of all private sector economic activity is driven by giant national and multinational operations. Exceptions to the rule do not make capitalism in essence a good and moral economic system.


This is where I think in so many ways you and I do agree. Our only real disagreements that I find are in the vanguard type process. I don't think you can use an evil mechanism to do good because it removes objection and destroys voluntary cooperation.

In that connection, I can't help but notice that you neglected to answer my second question from post #3, which can be found in the second paragraph of that post. I'd be very interested to see what alternative response you'd propose to that kind of situation!

Let me also add one new question that relates to the paragraph in parentheses: How would you propose that the proletariat should respond when state force is used against it if not with a parallel armed force of their own? Anyone who is serious about making revolution recognizes the necessity of armed force to making it happen at some point. If the protesters do not eventually form an army of their own, then the only other way they ever win is by winning over the existing one (as per Egypt, for example). You see what I'm getting at? One simply does not bring down existing states without the use of state force in one sense or another! Civil disobedience may offend and threaten the powers that be, but it does not defeat them.

But yeah, here I'll admit that I'm kind of fishing for areas of potential disagreement, as we seem to agree on about 70% of the substance. I had, by contrast, originally expected that we'd only be in like 30% agreement on this subject and that this would wind up becoming a very basic-level debate on postmodernism and the merits of taking political action. :tongue: You're a different kind of anarchist than I thought, and one which I can relate to better. I'm still hoping to find an excuse to remark on the Spanish Civil War though, as you know that's the first place kilgram will want to go with this subject the minute we open it up to the general membership. :wink:

IMPress Polly
11-08-2014, 08:10 PM
Okay, you've got ample time to respond this time, as I won't be back until Wednesday morning, so no rush. I know you're very busy!

Alyosha
11-08-2014, 08:43 PM
Thanks Polly, I'm having a day. Wish you were here. :(

Point Small Chain vs. Dominos...

I don't believe that elitism is the historic result of the mercantile class, but feudalism and inherited wealth and poverty. Were individuals not shut out from land ownership, from the ability to rise above their station and take ownership of "free time" there would be no merchants and later no "capitalists".

The rise of merchants and merchant guilds was to give the lower classes and opportunity to rise above a sunrise to sunset day of hard labor, to rise above their daughters being absconded with and pillaged, and to have ownership of their life's course and direction. This cannot be inherently a bad thing, but it is a byproduct of an already predetermined class system that came about as a result of conquest.

I don't condemn humans to static engagement, but believe that we are dynamic creatures capable of change, and the majority of us are also altruistic. Science backs me on this. I do believe that the accumulation of wealth is a psychological disorder that takes our natural mammal propensity to meet our basic needs and to stockpile scarcity to the extreme. A skewed Maslowian response. I think that there will always be some who will attempt to return to this behavior even should we dismantle their regime, but that most people when not set against each other can be educated towards charity and cooperation as they are in our natural inclinations anyway.

Humans respond to suffering first with empathy and then our secondary response it learned. Combine the two and we can accomplish much. We can be voluntary, cooperative creatures building a moral society together. When people feel their basic needs are met, when they have free time, when they can achieve, they are satisfied. Remove one of those and the relative deprivation causes reaction.

So I do believe that in a voluntary society, without the enabling of government sponsors you wouldn't see a large corporate chain. That is the product of collusion and enabling.

You mentioned use of force, I believe that the use of force is required to topple our current systems, unfortunately. It is another reason why a peaceful person like me is anti-gun control. I may be a peace, love, and music type. I may wish to be "Jesus" and the "Buddha" but if the masses achieve any level of awakening, if we try to topple the bankers, remove the federal reserve system you will see TPTB use force against us. They subverted Occupy, the Tea Party, the Greens, the Libertarians through infiltration but that won't always work. When those groups find a common bond as Nader proposes, you will see the mask removed and the monster revealed.

Alyosha
11-09-2014, 08:36 AM
IMPress Polly

(I'm bored, lonely, and waiting for people to wake up, so...)

My query to you is on our area of disagreement, and that circles around using the state to produce a communitarian society. You seem to feel, and I'd like to know if a) I'm wrong and b) the justification, that it is acceptable to use controls/force to produce the society you want against the wishes of those who may disagree.

In a voluntarist society we foresee something similar to federalism so that force is not applied. To the voluntarist the nonaggression principle is the only "law". A community is an organic, voluntary collective and accept that other communities may be different and should handle their own "injustice". So for example, my ideal community would have a central garden that everyone can work. If you don't work, you don't eat from it. People would chip in on livestock. If you don't chip in you get no livestock. There would be medishares for health. Roads would be paid for by the community or by toll for those not in the community. Power is a cooperative, etc. Land ownership would be non-existent in the modern understanding of it but Georgianism (you own the improvements). Private paid security and something akin to neighborhood watch would be the method of protecting citizens from crime and fire.

If someone wish to aggress we'd have a militia.

We would not prevent a business owner from hiring because that is a voluntary exchange between that owner and the people who chooses to work for him or her. How a monopoly would be prevented is the organic approach where there are no special favors given, regulations would not be existing to prop up one over another.

You may ask how in my anti-state we'd prevent pollution or toxic dumping:

http://www.annemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Spartacus-crowd-scene.jpg


an active militia to defend the town from bad water, bad food, etc. The non-aggression principle allows for the defense of your person, property, or shared resources.

IMPress Polly
11-12-2014, 08:22 AM
First of all, let me say that your most recent post indicates that we're even more closely politically aligned than I'd previously thought (perhaps more like 80%), as honestly I'd be basically fine with the kind of economic system you propose in post #11 (which I would describe as socialist, personally), with the biggest difference between us being that I'd simply consider it the midpoint in a larger societal journey toward a more radically different society and world: one without things like money and classes and states. I likewise share your optimistic view of humanity writ large, recognizing it to be fundamentally both rational and altruistic in nature.

Now as to your proposal to replace formal police with neighborhood watches, armies with militias, and so forth, I think that those kinds of steps would be good ones to take over time, as class distinctions progressively shrink along this aforementioned path. Historically speaking, it is from the emergence of class distinctions that state institutions arose. (They were created to defend the property of those who could afford to buy the labor power of others, and thus stop the laboring classes from becoming disobedient.) It is therefore the abolition of class distinctions that will successfully eliminate the state, as equality translates into greater social peace. The anarchists have had these realities imposed on them every time they have attempted to "skip ahead" so far. As in the Spanish Civil War and all the other examples, the mere fact that your community chooses to have no professional army, for example, does not mean that hostile neighboring communities will also refrain just to be fair. Anarchist societies (which are invariably small and almost always agrarian, incidentally) invariably wind up either getting destroyed by invading, professional armies or integrated into a larger political infrastructure that includes a proper state. Hell, America itself has learned the hard way what happens when you try to fight a war without a regular army (see the War of 1812)! We were only lucky that Napoleon's forces were defeated when they were or else we would be a British colony right now! The moral of this story is that when you don't have proper state institutions, you had best the hell avoid war at all costs. The cost of doing so, however, can be total subjugation! Now methinks that Iceland is onto something in terms of how a progressive society can do this sort of thing right: they have no standing army, for example (and thus hardly pose a threat to anyone), but reserve the right to establish one at any time that the need should arise. I think that's an example of the best kind of nuance one can apply to this question along the way to a world of universally shared wealth. The principle that no standing army, no formal prisons, no regular police for or court system, shall ever be established again is for another, more civilized age than our own.

Now in post #10, you make the argument that "the accumulation of wealth is a psychological disorder" and that class distinctions (mostly) arise from states (i.e. the libertarian "crony capitalism" argument). The former point (the "psychological disorder" contention) defies the basic recognition that human beings are, in an overall sense, rational creatures. In reality, if class society has come to exist, then it has come to exist for a reason, not just because our species has become collectively stupid at some point. The accumulation of wealth on the part of some occurs because it is possible; because human beings tend to pursue the maximization of rewards for the least amount of output, i.e. the maximization of efficiency. In a world characterized by sufficient production to provide for some but not all, class distinctions and corresponding oppressions are inevitable. The preceding state of affairs -- the general absence of production -- was conversely characterized by sufficient poverty to more or less guarantee equality. And likewise one can then logically deduce that, since the rational character of our species ensures that production levels will only continue to increase over time, a time can be foreseen when scarcity will be done away with entirely, thus guaranteeing universal wealth and therefore at least relative equality once more. The eruption of new, and accelerating, democratic revolutions and the rebirth of communism as a human ideal since the first industrial revolution serves as evidence of where things are going in the long run: we are in a slow process of historically repeating the kind of revolution that the invention of language once brought about: a protracted revolution to establish political, social, and economic equality in proportion to the opportunity. Production revolutions are leading to improvements in communication and coordination amongst the poorer classes of society, which in turn are yielding accelerating waves of revolution that serve as the political expression of human society's growing ability to provide for all. Corresponding to all this, as I've pointed out on my blog, a new form of communist distribution is emerging in our era in particular (the Information Age) (http://thepoliticalforums.com/blogs/monkeyqueen/2014/05/24/redistributive-vs-reproductive-communism/) and it's sure to play a key role in any future distribution of the social product in general as we gradually move away from money and production for exchange (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-rifkin/collaborative-commons-zero-marginal-cost-society_b_5064767.html?utm_hp_ref=tw).

As to your latter argument (crony capitalism), what you've done there is reverse cause and effect. In reality, the emergence of class distinctions (which, again, became inevitable once a certain level of production was reached) precluded and motivated the creation of state institutions. The state was created to ensure the obedience of the laboring classes to the dictates of the propertied classes. And, as pointed out in an earlier paragraph of this post, it only then follows that attempts to forever do away with these institutions prematurely always result in failure. We thus see that mentally reversing cause and effect does not make all things possible. The big picture is this: the state cannot yet be forever abolished because class distinctions yet exist (obviously!) and class distinctions cannot yet be abolished because scarcity has not yet been fully done away with (though it certainly will be, and probably within a couple centuries' time).

In summation, human beings are both rational and altruistic creatures who seek to minimize the burden of labor through the creation of ever increasing wealth and then distribute that said wealth in a fair and equitable way. These two things, however, cannot occur in a way that's fully simultaneous amidst lingering conditions of scarcity. Rather, the one thing must be accomplished before the latter becomes fully possible. And it is only when the latter becomes possible that approximate social peace sufficient to abolish the use of state force in a way that's guaranteed to last can be realized.


Alyosha wrote:
Thanks Polly, I'm having a day. Wish you were here. http://thepoliticalforums.com/images/smilies/frown.png

*hugs*

I hope you made it through alright!

IMPress Polly
11-14-2014, 06:51 AM
Well it looks like we're almost done here @Alyosha (http://thepoliticalforums.com/members/863-Alyosha), as our disagreements appear to more in the area of theory (which I don't think we're about to reach reconciliation on) than of actual program. It's probably almost time to open this topic up to the general membership. However, before we do, there are two final programmic matters I'd like your opinion on related to this question of the state's role and eventual abolition:

1) We've discussed (and mostly agreed on) what a better society might look like and we've agreed that the path from here to there is a political one, but what about the actual process of making revolution? Do you think that ultimately armed force will be necessary to defeat the existing state (as I do), or do you believe that acts of civil disobedience can prove sufficient by themselves?

AND...

2) Do you think there's a role for electoral politics in between where we are now on the one hand and revolution on the other? (I do, as you know.)

Alyosha
11-16-2014, 08:44 PM
Well it looks like we're almost done here @Alyosha (http://thepoliticalforums.com/members/863-Alyosha), as our disagreements appear to more in the area of theory (which I don't think we're about to reach reconciliation on) than of actual program. It's probably almost time to open this topic up to the general membership. However, before we do, there are two final programmic matters I'd like your opinion on related to this question of the state's role and eventual abolition:

1) We've discussed (and mostly agreed on) what a better society might look like and we've agreed that the path from here to there is a political one, but what about the actual process of making revolution? Do you think that ultimately armed force will be necessary to defeat the existing state (as I do), or do you believe that acts of civil disobedience can prove sufficient by themselves?


Yes, or a large enough global disaster as to dismantle the current system and force mutual aid between the remaining masses.

So, either way, there will be bloodshed. I'm not of Chris or Ethereal's belief system this will all happen organically.




AND...

2) Do you think there's a role for electoral politics in between where we are now on the one hand and revolution on the other? (I do, as you know.)


No. I think religion was the opiate of the masses until about 1700 and not it's democracies and republics. People feel like their vote may count, even a little, so that tricks them into endorsing the current system which enslaves them.

You have no say in Washington. If you did you wouldn't be allowed to vote. When people vote at the local level (no judgments on the vote, just that they allegedly have the right) the state will intervene using judges.

Our votes don't count, but they extend the lifetime of the system and the elites who have created it. They no more want governments to go away than a business wishes to lose customers.

IMPress Polly
11-18-2014, 06:42 AM
Alyosha wrote:
Yes, or a large enough global disaster as to dismantle the current system and force mutual aid between the remaining masses.

So, either way, there will be bloodshed. I'm not of Chris or Ethereal's belief system this will all happen organically.

...Well this is boring. :laugh: I mean, the only thing here for me to disagree with is the likelihood of a natural disaster causing humanity to revert back to a primitive form of collectivism.


No. I think religion was the opiate of the masses until about 1700 and not it's democracies and republics. People feel like their vote may count, even a little, so that tricks them into endorsing the current system which enslaves them.

You have no say in Washington. If you did you wouldn't be allowed to vote. When people vote at the local level (no judgments on the vote, just that they allegedly have the right) the state will intervene using judges.

Our votes don't count, but they extend the lifetime of the system and the elites who have created it. They no more want governments to go away than a business wishes to lose customers.

Good, I was hoping for an excuse to hawk my blog a little more: I wrote an at-length blog entry on precisely this subject (http://thepoliticalforums.com/blogs/monkeyqueen/2014/05/01/what-is-plutocratic-democracy/) earlier this year dissecting the fact that yes, as you say, elections are basically fair, but that the results, left to themselves anyway, make only a minimal difference because political power under a republican system is measured in terms of the amount of time that one commands the attention of politicians. It is thus mainly things like lobbying and campaign fundraising that influence the decisions made on Capitol Hill, not your vote. Democracy still feels real though to most Americans because most Americans belong to either the middle or upper classes, who agree on policy prescriptions 89% of the time. The re-proletarianization of the general populace will solve that problem though. (Hint: A recently-concluded 30-year survey of the degree to which public opinion lines up with public policy has supplied the hard evidence as to how decisions in high places are actually made. More info can be found at the linked blog entry.) There is, however, an interim between here and there; an interim where proletarian revolution is structurally impossible due to the class composition of the nation, and yet wherein there do exist these minor venues of access to political power, like elections...and more importantly, protests. It is accordingly that I can't help proposing that the poor and working classes should definitely take advantage of them, especially in the said interim, if only to marginally defend themselves against the very worst that the ruling class might have in store for them...perhaps by working as part of a strategic, defensive class coalition with as many other class elements as will join (like the Democratic Party) as they naturally do whenever politically activated.

And that concludes my thoughts. We might, if you want, continue debating the merits of electoral politics, but I think we're sufficiently done with this debate to go ahead and open it up to the general membership, don't you?

Alyosha
11-18-2014, 09:07 AM
I don't use terms like proletariat and capitalist anymore as I find them to be meaningless in all actuality. They are specific to a brand of communism, Marxism, that also did not take into account the nature and composition of the middle class. It is far more diverse in categories and in culture than he gave it credit for and was disdainful of agrarian society which I am highly in favor of.

I lean towards anarcho primitivism and agrarian voluntarism.

I don't believe that there will be a revolution without catastrophe, but when that happens and it will, people should be prepared because the currency is fiat and meaningless. It is an ancient trick used by Chinese warlords to increase their own wealth at the expense of the rabble. What people should be doing is planning now by creating true "wealth": food, guns, ammunition, alcohol, metals, building supplies. The world markets are much like the juggler with the plates. They must be kept in the "spin" cycle and the more plates added, the more difficult it gets. Even the best juggler loses a plate eventually then they all topple.

IMPress Polly
11-18-2014, 01:51 PM
Ugh, I'm no primitivist. I don't have a romantic view of poverty, having lived in some measure of it for most of my life. I look forward to days when human beings will freely travel through both space and cyberspace. The future I envision is quite high tech, but also includes the localization of food supplies. I can foresee a time coming when basically everyone will live in cities and wherein they will hence be encircled by farmland instead of by suburbs...or alternately, humanity may gravitate toward one of these newer ideas in development for the future of agriculture, like stacking farmland in layers encased in skyscraper greenhouses, so that our agricultural land extends vertically instead of horizontally and can thus be located WITHIN city space rather than outside of it. I'm also about halfway to being one of those singularity people (http://www.computerworld.com/article/2528330/app-development/nanotech-could-make-humans-immortal-by-2040--futurist-says.html) who believes that human beings may well soon be able to achieve eternal life. I am, in other words, a future-oriented person. In fact, I'm probably more of a futurist than a Marxist these days, as I'm even finding myself gravitating toward embracing the Theory of Quantum Mechanics, which would cause me to jettison dialectics. What of Marxism I definitely retain is the idea that human history can be examined scientifically, that human civilization progresses through technological revolutions that lead to social revolutions, which in turn yield political revolutions, and the recognition of the central role that class plays in making political revolutions. I also retain some of the mass line politics that Mao introduced (which basically fuse populism with vanguardism in a back-and-forth kind relationship between the two poles). Aside from these things, I'm basically a futurist today. The past is not the path to a better future, IMO.

I do agree with you though that revolutions are born out of major crises. I don't think ecological degradation is going to lead its beneficiaries, human beings, to make revolution though. I really don't. (I kind of wish it worked that way, but I don't think it does.) Now a bankruptcy crisis might though, and that I think is something that's bound to happen. We're not going to solve global warming by consuming less energy, for example, but by finding clean ways of consuming more. Sustainable development is the path of the future, not opposing development.

Just my two cents. I think we've stopped discussing the state at this point, which is why I think we should go ahead and open up this topic to the general membership.

Peter1469
11-25-2014, 05:33 PM
Information: This thread is now open for the general membership.

donttread
11-29-2014, 10:49 AM
The state you describe in post 1 is a combination of the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex , both of which are over grown and have taken on a life of their own.
I believe 3 policy changes could drastically alter that pattern
1) Non-interventionism , including the CIA
2) Ending drug prohibition and spending much of the resulting savings/tax revenue on addiction prevention and treatment
3) Romeo and Juliet laws everywhere ( admittedly this would be the least impactful of the three , but still)
Even if we do all that there will still be dangerous criminals and the potential for aggression against us. We will still need, police, prisons and a Military in their proper scale.

Chris
11-29-2014, 10:56 AM
Sorry but there was no real debate here. It was interesting reading the expansion of two points of view, especially as both are anti-state--though only one truly wants to eliminate the state while the other merely wants to replace the state with another form of it. But it wasn't a debate.

Peter1469
11-29-2014, 11:17 AM
Was there any point in verbalizing your opinion that it was not a debate?

Trying to make them feel good about themselves?

What is that term that I am thinking of..., oh, social autism.... :shocked:

Chris
11-29-2014, 11:44 AM
Was there any point in verbalizing your opinion that it was not a debate?

Trying to make them feel good about themselves?

What is that term that I am thinking of..., oh, social autism.... :shocked:

Did you have a point, peter? No, I didn't think so.

As I said, I found their discussion of interest, just wasn't a debate.

IMPress Polly
11-29-2014, 12:01 PM
It did seem to wind up in fairly semantic territory, I agree. A lot more semantic than I thought it would be anyway. It was also very useful for me though in getting to know Alyosha's position a lot better (namely how much more we have in common politically than I thought), even if we can't totally agree on vision.

Chris
11-29-2014, 12:10 PM
It did seem to wind up in fairly semantic territory, I agree. A lot more semantic than I thought it would be anyway. It was also very useful for me though in getting to know Alyosha's position a lot better (namely how much more we have in common politically than I thought), even if we can't totally agree on vision.

Yes, you seemed to be looking for a topic to debate, but despite not really finding one, like I said, it was an interesting discussion. Perhaps your visions what to do once the state is eliminated would make a good debate topic, your discussion started heading in that direction.

IMPress Polly
11-29-2014, 12:28 PM
I think (unless directly invited by someone) my next one-on-one debate might be with Chloe over the question of transition forms of energy between here and a world that's able to rely solely on clean renewables. :grin: I have developed a pro-nuclear stance in the last year that I'd be up for advancing against someone else who is at least as serious and definitely more knowledgeable in an overall sense on ecological issues, and Chloe's the first person who comes to mind in that connection. It would be my instinctive guess, based on my experience in the environmental movement, that Chloe, representing sort of the advance guard thereof, would probably embrace a more puritanical position on the matter, insisting that society should dedicate itself in a single-minded way to the development of things like wind and solar power, where I'd be contending that that by itself is not sufficient to meet human needs or address global warming in an adequately timely manner. That kind of thing. And I know she can carry on a civilized debate.

Peter1469
11-29-2014, 12:41 PM
Did you have a point, peter? No, I didn't think so.

As I said, I found their discussion of interest, just wasn't a debate.

I made my point. Whether it went over your head or not doesn't concern me in the least. :smiley:

Chris
11-29-2014, 12:42 PM
I made my point. Whether it went over your head or not doesn't concern me in the least. :smiley:

You then seem to be the one with the issue.

Peter1469
11-29-2014, 01:01 PM
You then seem to be the one with the issue.


I completely understand your reaction. :smiley: I know you don't have a problem with making dickishh statement. You don't know that they are dickish.

Chris
11-29-2014, 01:09 PM
I completely understand your reaction. :smiley: I know you don't have a problem with making dickishh statement. You don't know that they are dickish.

Yes, normally I ignore such from you, peter.

Oddly, polly understood what I was saying, we discussed it, and she thanked me.

It's your reaction sticks out.

Paperback Writer
11-29-2014, 01:10 PM
I'd love to debate someone whom I consider a worthy adversary. Though he oft seems content to play the fool on here, I'd love to debate Animal Mother. Alyosha I would debate but it would have to be on something positively foolish as I think at our core most of our ideologies would meet in principle though not in practical.

This is why, no offence, IMPress Polly you won't be able to have a sparking debate with Chloe, either. In principle you agree, though not in practice.

Alyosha or yourself ought to have debated someone who actually believes in the necessity of the state, someone like del or matalese or sachem.

IMPress Polly
11-29-2014, 01:10 PM
Don't worry about it, Peter, it really is a statement of fact that Alyosha and I couldn't find much to disagree on. :tongue:

IMPress Polly
11-29-2014, 01:13 PM
Paperback Writer wrote:
I'd love to debate someone whom I consider a worthy adversary. Though he oft seems content to play the fool on here, I'd love to debate @Animal Mother (http://thepoliticalforums.com/member.php?u=1166). Alyosha I would debate but it would have to be on something positively foolish as I think at our core most of our ideologies would meet in principle though not in practical.

This is why, no offence, @IMPress Polly (http://thepoliticalforums.com/member.php?u=399) you won't be able to have a sparking debate with Chloe, either. In principle you agree, though not in practice.

Alyosha or yourself ought to have debated someone who actually believes in the necessity of the state, someone like del or matalese or sachem.

It was Alyosha's idea. Blame her. :wink:

Kidding! It was productive in spite of the minimal nature of our differences.

And no, one of the useful features of this particular forum IMO lies precisely in the ability to avoid unnecessary clutter from those with whom one cannot agree on principle (like whether or not global warming is real, for example). I would want for a debate such as I've referenced to be a constructive one wherein the basic principle (that global warming needs to be addressed) could be presumed. The ability to do things like that is a big advantage to having a forum like this! I just underestimated the extent to which Alyosha and I could find common ground is all.

Paperback Writer
11-29-2014, 01:15 PM
It was Alyosha's idea. Blame her. :wink:

Kidding! It was productive in spite of the minimal nature of our differences.

It was an interesting and informative discussion which could not have occurred with interference from the forum troglodytes. It was much appreciated reading by me.

Chris
11-29-2014, 01:18 PM
That's what I was saying. Perhaps the notion of a formal debate is not what's wanted but rather a good civilized discussion of a topic without the usual noise.

IMPress Polly
11-29-2014, 01:24 PM
Should we rename the forum One-on-One Discussions then? :wink: Nah, the format here was still that of a debate at the end of the day and would also be vis-a-vis Chloe and I in the aforementioned hypothetical scenario, as the dialogue would center around an area of disagreement that I'm presuming exists. (If we agree, then there's no point in having the exchange that I can see!)

Chris
11-29-2014, 01:31 PM
Should we rename the forum One-on-One Discussions then? :wink: Nah, the format here was still that of a debate at the end of the day and would also be vis-a-vis Chloe and I in the aforementioned hypothetical scenario, as the dialogue would center around an area of disagreement that I'm presuming exists. (If we agree, then there's no point in having the exchange that I can see!)

Nah, it was just a thought. Perhaps we shouldn't expect formal debate but informal.

IMPress Polly
11-29-2014, 01:41 PM
Yeah, I think that's exactly what I'm trying to say. It's not like two registered opponents standing up on a stage and getting scored by judges, or like a presidential debate where you know they're not going to change positions. Rather, what I think I'll often be looking for here is more aimed at dialoguing with the other person in an authentic way instead of trying to sway the audience.

Paperback Writer
11-29-2014, 01:46 PM
After reading Grassroots flamebait post in our thread on banking I perfectly understand wanting to label something debate as to keep out the off topic responses and diversions.

Chris
11-29-2014, 01:51 PM
After reading Grassroots flamebait post in our thread on banking I perfectly understand wanting to label something debate as to keep out the off topic responses and diversions.

After reading a lot of different flamebait, I agree. It was the initial purpose of having an "On the Serious Side" forum area.

Peter1469
11-29-2014, 01:56 PM
On the serious side was a great idea. However, there was almost no support for it- non serious members ruined it. We have had a big turnover in membership and maybe it would work now.

donttread
03-01-2015, 10:52 AM
Should the state ,as you have defined it here, act for the people or act upon the people?

IMPress Polly
03-01-2015, 11:01 AM
Is that a trick question?

Obviously I think it preferable for the state to serve the people rather than rule the people, though only so much can be done to ensure that, frankly. Armed institutions objectively have more power than those without arms. In as far as must have a state for the time being though, it should definitely be closely regulated by civilian institutions. In the short run, I suggest, for example, the creation of more community organizations tasked with, if you will, policing the police.

donttread
03-01-2015, 11:44 AM
Is that a trick question?

Obviously I think it preferable for the state to serve the people rather than rule the people, though only so much can be done to ensure that, frankly. Armed institutions objectively have more power than those without arms. In as far as must have a state for the time being though, it should definitely be closely regulated by civilian institutions. In the short run, I suggest, for example, the creation of more community organizations tasked with, if you will, policing the police.

That sounds like an excellent idea. But no ex-cops need apply