Kristine
Posts: 3061
Joined: Sep. 2006
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| Quote ("Rev Dr" Lenny Flank @ May 03 2007,19:15) |
But that question illustrated, I think, a difference between me and most of the radical lefties I've known; for most lefties, it's a matter of capital-ISTS being evil and bad -- they are simply greedy heartless people who don't care about their workers and are just out to squeeze as much money from them as they can.
But for me, on the other hand, it is capital-ISM that is evil. It's not the PERSON, it's the social/economic system that forces EVERYONE to act the same way. A business owner may be the sweetest person in the world; he may give money to the SPCA; he may help little old ladies cross the street -- but he MUST, absolutely MUST, treat his workers as "equipment" rather than as "people", if his business is to survive. If Mother Theresa were to become a business owner, she would have no choice but to act in the very same way as the most heartless ruthless uncaring clod who ran a competing business -- because if she DIDN'T, she'd be broke and out of business in a very short time. Capital-ISM, as a social/economic system, forces EVERYONE down to the lowest possible level, whether they want it or not. To me, THAT is its greatest evil.
So I don't view business owners as evil, greedy, uncaring people (although, of course, many individuals ARE, and I then treat them accordingly). It's the social system itself which FORCES everyone to be greedy, uncaring and evil, whether they want to or not. It is not the PEOPLE that are my enemy, it's the economic structure that forces even good people to act in an evil manner.
That is, I think, why I have no interest in putting business owners up against the wall and shooting them -- which many of my radical left compadres would have no problem at all with. For me, it's not the PEOPLE that are the root of the problem. My target is the entire social system which forces people to act in certain ways -- indeed, in many cases, I view the business owners as being victims of the social system just as much as their workers are. After all, a business owner who disposes of his toxic waste properly loses out in the marketplace to any competitor who avoids all that expense by just dumping it into the river --- and then BOTH business owners have to drink the polluted water (along with everyone else, of course).
So the economic SYSTEM is my enemy, not the people who are caught in it.
A subtle difference, perhaps, but, I think, a significant one . . . |
Yes, significant. But I must ask, Lenny, do you even think that our system is capitalist anymore? To me, with corporations having been deemed "individuals," something even more sinister is going on.
Who the hell owns a corporation anymore? Is it the board, the CEO, the CFO, the stockholders? It sure isn't the employees, the stockholders of GM screwed them over big time. But the top brass at Enron screwed both the employee and the stockholders.
I mean, who are the business owners anymore? Supposedly Cheney no longer runs Halliburton, but we don't believe that, do we?  And Halliburton has diversified into the Energy Group (now the Halliburton Energy Services Group) and KBR, which has filed bankruptcy I believe. (What a mess! Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace and is positioning himself for the Wall Street Journal, but who owns him? Anyone?
My point is, it's all such an unholy incestuous contrived vampiric cluster-fuck that I'm not even sure it should be called capitalism anymore. It's looking rather Soviet (as opposed to Marxist) to me. The supposed laws of supply and demand seem rather quaint in comparison, and irrelevant.
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"I happen to think that this prerequisite criterion of empirical evidence is itself not empirical." - Clive
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