Ukraine Crisis

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Immanuel Can
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

Post by Immanuel Can »

Gary Childress wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:49 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:48 am
Gary Childress wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:20 am If you don't believe in luck, then you literally believe that everything is God's will.
No, "luck" is not the only alternative to "God's will." For example, there is human will, which can be, and often is, quite contrary to God's will. So what you've claimed there, Gary, is what we call a "false dichotomy." It's an error in logic.
Per usual you evaded my question above,
Gary, I didn't "evade" it. I corrected it.

It was an absurd question, because it requires us to believe something that's simply not true. There is something that is not either "luck" or "the will of God." That's very plain.
...unless you believe that diseases are the fault of human beings.
In a way, they very much are. They are not the direct fault of the victims, but they are certainly the result of the fact that man, and the creation placed under his care, are alienated from God. There were no earthquakes or cancers before the Fall of Man. And the Fall was the result of a human choice.

And "'luck"? That's no property that actually exists in the universe. It's just a placeholder human beings use for the expression, "I don't know why..."
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

Post by Gary Childress »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 1:06 am
Gary Childress wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:49 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:48 am
No, "luck" is not the only alternative to "God's will." For example, there is human will, which can be, and often is, quite contrary to God's will. So what you've claimed there, Gary, is what we call a "false dichotomy." It's an error in logic.
Per usual you evaded my question above,
Gary, I didn't "evade" it. I corrected it.

It was an absurd question, because it requires us to believe something that's simply not true. There is something that is not either "luck" or "the will of God." That's very plain.
...unless you believe that diseases are the fault of human beings.
In a way, they very much are. They are not the direct fault of the victims, but they are certainly the result of the fact that man, and the creation placed under his care, are alienated from God. There were no earthquakes or cancers before the Fall of Man. And the Fall was the result of a human choice.

And "'luck"? That's no property that actually exists in the universe. It's just a placeholder human beings use for the expression, "I don't know why..."
OK. So like I stated to begin with you don't believe in bad luck. Now you seem to have some foggy notion that diseases are the fault of humans' "original sin". That tells me you basically believe that victims "deserve" our misery. I rest my case.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

Post by Immanuel Can »

Gary Childress wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 1:11 am That tells me you basically believe that victims "deserve" our misery. I rest my case.
Sorry, Gary; your "case" makes no sense.

A "victim," by definition, is not the cause of his or her own misery. Others are. If he/she is responsible, then he/she is not a "victim" at all.

However, you're failing to distinguish between how human evils operate and how natural evils are created. Human evils are directly caused by human choices. Natural evils are the result of the fact that human beings are not just living with other fallen humans, but in a fallen world, as well. One can be a victim of other human beings directly, or a victim of the fact of living in a fallen world. Or one can be not-a-victim, because one's misery is a product of one's own choices.

No victim, by definition, "deserves" his/her misery. However, some people do cause their own misery, and they are not "victims."
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:02 am
Gary Childress wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:52 pm As with many Christian evangelicals, he doesn't believe in bad luck, only in God's will.
Hmmm...apparently, you don't know what I believe, Gary. You're right that I don't believe in luck, but it's not because I think everything is simply "God's will." In fact, humans are free agents; they are quite capable of choosing things that are NOT the will of God.
So everyone gets what they deserve according to God's plan. Victims deserve their misery and the fortunate deserve their good fortune

That would be Hinduism. It's called "karma," and it has nothing at all to do with anything I believe.
...unless of course, the fortunate start talking about socialism and economic justice, then they're tyrants.
People aren't tyrants for "talking about Socialism." They end up supporting tyrants when they DO Socialism.

Tyrants love Socialism because it gives them exactly what they want...centralized power, under a one-party system. As for the tyrant's useful dupes, the "social justice" collectivist, big government types, what starts off for them as a posture about "justice" ends up producing the most gross kinds of injustices...and has done so in 100% of the cases in all of human history.

You can't really argue with a record of failure like that. Not much gets to be horribly wrong 100% of the time, but somehow, Socialism manages to do it.
You say "socialism under a one part system". A one -party system is not safely democratic as the one-party becomes the ruling oligarchy. An oligarchy or any tyrannical Tom Dick or Adolf may call himself 'socialist' . No totalitarian state is a socialist state.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

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Belinda wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 11:18 am You say "socialism under a one part system". A one -party system is not safely democratic
Worse. It's not "democratic" at all.

There's no such thing as genuinely "democratic Socialism," even though people try to fool you by using such a term. This is because Socialism, by definition, requires comprehensive and lasting control of all aspects of public life by one party. It cannot allow democracy, because democracy implies the people have a choice of party, agendas, ideologies and policies, and can choose non-Socialist alternatives every few years. Socialism cannot allow that to happen, since it undermines Socialism.
No totalitarian state is a socialist state.
But all Socialist states are totalitarian. 100% of them. You can't beat that record.
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

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Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 1:55 pm
Belinda wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 11:18 am You say "socialism under a one part system". A one -party system is not safely democratic
Worse. It's not "democratic" at all.

There's no such thing as genuinely "democratic Socialism," even though people try to fool you by using such a term. This is because Socialism, by definition, requires comprehensive and lasting control of all aspects of public life by one party. It cannot allow democracy, because democracy implies the people have a choice of party, agendas, ideologies and policies, and can choose non-Socialist alternatives every few years. Socialism cannot allow that to happen, since it undermines Socialism.
No totalitarian state is a socialist state.
But all Socialist states are totalitarian. 100% of them. You can't beat that record.
Do you call the British Labour party socialist?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

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Belinda wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 3:43 pm Do you call the British Labour party socialist?
No. They would be "Socialish." :wink:

That is, they naively hold to some Socialist policies, but they've never been able to construct a full-on command economy for Britain, nor have they been able to eliminate the Conservatives and also the traditional elites...both of which full-on Socialism would require them to do.
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

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Down with blanquism. The revolution must come from the bottom up. The people do not wish to have socialism imposed on them cuz that's when it backfires.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

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promethean75 wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 4:41 pm The people do not wish to have socialism imposed on them cuz that's when it backfires.
It's the only way it's ever happened.

Some group of people, fancying themselves as the "elite," in the sense of behing more sincere, more moral and more compassionate than everybody else, overthrows the existing order in the name of the common man. They take it on themselves to speak on behalf of everybody else, and force their Socialism on the majority in the name of compassion and the common person. You see this in every case: the Socialists declare themselves the ones who have the common man's interests at heart, and all the objectors are not real citizens...they're "deplorables." They're "fascists." They're "racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, transphobes, fat phobes," etc., etc. They're yokels from "flyover country." They're nobody, in the Socialist scheme.

So then the Socialists proceed to kill the common man. After all, he's either a "counterrevolutionary," if he doesn't agree with Socialism, or he's a traitor for being "secretly insufficiently committed to the revolution," even if he does.

The common man is immensely useful to Socialism, even after the revolution. You see, Socialism requires the permanent presence of an adversary, an "oppressor" or a "counterrevolutionary force" of some kind. That's because it's utterly lousy in any positive role. It can't make money, it has no particular concept of justice, it can't justify its own program, it has no fixed moral orientation, it has no achievable goals, and only a perpetually-deferred utopia to offer in the place of any real meaning or purpose. Like so many bad ideas, it only seems to work when it is operating purely in the negative, as an oppositional force to something somebody's already achieved or arranged. It's criticism without constructive power. It has some good things to say about what's wrong with everybody else; but in itself, it's really awful at getting anything done. So it never really wants to win completely...at least not in such a way that there are no enemies left from which its bitterness, anger, envy and resentment can draw their power and keep Socialism itself relevant.

It always fails to deliver. This requires it always to have a story about how somebody else is cheating us all out of our heaven-on-earth...the bourgeoisie, the nationalists, big business, the capitalists, conservatives, the colonialists, the patriarchy, the whites, the sexually normal, the healthy and beautiful, the able-bodied, the traditionalists, the Christians, the educated, the right-wingers, the American imperialists, and so on and so on -- and if nothing else is left, the "fifth column" of Socialism's own allies and supporters, who can always be turned to the useful purpose of being declared unstated enemies, and can be sent off to the gulags when everybody else is gone.
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 4:05 pm
Belinda wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 3:43 pm Do you call the British Labour party socialist?
No. They would be "Socialish." :wink:

That is, they naively hold to some Socialist policies, but they've never been able to construct a full-on command economy for Britain, nor have they been able to eliminate the Conservatives and also the traditional elites...both of which full-on Socialism would require them to do.

You can't get rid of elites. What I as a socialist want us to do is control the excess greediness of named elites. The state should be big enough to legislate in favour of the producers not the parasites.
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 6:16 pm
promethean75 wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 4:41 pm The people do not wish to have socialism imposed on them cuz that's when it backfires.
It's the only way it's ever happened.

Some group of people, fancying themselves as the "elite," in the sense of behing more sincere, more moral and more compassionate than everybody else, overthrows the existing order in the name of the common man. They take it on themselves to speak on behalf of everybody else, and force their Socialism on the majority in the name of compassion and the common person. You see this in every case: the Socialists declare themselves the ones who have the common man's interests at heart, and all the objectors are not real citizens...they're "deplorables." They're "fascists." They're "racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, transphobes, fat phobes," etc., etc. They're yokels from "flyover country." They're nobody, in the Socialist scheme.

So then the Socialists proceed to kill the common man. After all, he's either a "counterrevolutionary," if he doesn't agree with Socialism, or he's a traitor for being "secretly insufficiently committed to the revolution," even if he does.

The common man is immensely useful to Socialism, even after the revolution. You see, Socialism requires the permanent presence of an adversary, an "oppressor" or a "counterrevolutionary force" of some kind. That's because it's utterly lousy in any positive role. It can't make money, it has no particular concept of justice, it can't justify its own program, it has no fixed moral orientation, it has no achievable goals, and only a perpetually-deferred utopia to offer in the place of any real meaning or purpose. Like so many bad ideas, it only seems to work when it is operating purely in the negative, as an oppositional force to something somebody's already achieved or arranged. It's criticism without constructive power. It has some good things to say about what's wrong with everybody else; but in itself, it's really awful at getting anything done. So it never really wants to win completely...at least not in such a way that there are no enemies left from which its bitterness, anger, envy and resentment can draw their power and keep Socialism itself relevant.

It always fails to deliver. This requires it always to have a story about how somebody else is cheating us all out of our heaven-on-earth...the bourgeoisie, the nationalists, big business, the capitalists, conservatives, the colonialists, the patriarchy, the whites, the sexually normal, the healthy and beautiful, the able-bodied, the traditionalists, the Christians, the educated, the right-wingers, the American imperialists, and so on and so on -- and if nothing else is left, the "fifth column" of Socialism's own allies and supporters, who can always be turned to the useful purpose of being declared unstated enemies, and can be sent off to the gulags when everybody else is gone.
Wrong , Immanuel!
The earliest record of a co-operative comes from Fenwick, Scotland where, in March 14, 1761, in a barely furnished cottage local weavers manhandled a sack of oatmeal into John Walker's whitewashed front room and began selling the contents at a discount, forming the Fenwick Weavers' Society.
In 1844, a group of 28 artisans, working in the cotton mills in Rochdale, established the first modern cooperative business by pooling their scarce resources to access basic goods at a lower price.

Similar cooperatives were formed across Britain and began to spread internationally. By the early 1860s,
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

Post by promethean75 »

that's so weird! i wuz totally going to mention the scotland oatmeal incident of 1761 and the rochdale artisan cooperative of 1844, but then i wuz like 'nah everybody prolly knows about this already so I won't mention it'.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

Post by Immanuel Can »

Belinda wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 10:20 pm What I as a socialist want us to do is control the excess greediness of named elites. The state should be big enough to legislate in favour of the producers not the parasites.
Your assumption, it seems, is that there is some kind of malevolent, greedy, excessive "elite" out there, somewhere, who are getting too much of a limited supply of stuff. There may be a few such. No doubt, many belong to the Socialists of the WEF.

Here's the problem: a lot of the real elite are not like that. "Producers" are often wealthy, due to their creativity, industry, risk-taking, ingenuity, and so on. In this world, if you produce something, you generally get ahead, and become, in that sense, "elite." But there are also "elites" that thrive on parasitism of a kind, such as exploiting welfare schemes, taking government grants, sponging off the largesse of those more fortunate, or doing ideology-driven work of no productive value. These "elites" tend to be Socialism's advocates...not the productive folks.

They use big government to milk the productive. So Socialism is always pretending to side with the "parasite" set...at least until it attains power, after which it will dispense with them any way its totalitarian elites see fit. That's how it's happened 100% of the time.

Secondly, Socialism's view of economy is very foolish. They do not realize, or will not realize, that wealth is not a zero-sum game. It is not the case that by getting rich, somebody else makes me poor. There's not a limited supply of creativity, invention, investment, speculation, building, exploration, expansion, innovation, and other forms of production in this world. In principle, the supply of wealth is, in fact, unlimited. If, say, Gates or Musk makes more than I do, it's because they invented computers or electric cars. It's not because they robbed me, or anybody else. People freely pay for the products they have produced, and that has made them very wealthy. Good for them. I hope they'll be generous with the poor, and God says they have a duty to be. But that does not give me license to hate and rob them. That is yet another thing God forbids, in the tenth commandment, as I recall.

So envying the productive and successful is just that -- petty envy. It is, in fact, the thing we call "covetousness." Socialism thrives on covetousness, bitterness, resentment and extortion of other's wealth, but produces nothing itself.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

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Belinda wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 10:23 pm The earliest record of a co-operative comes from Fenwick, Scotland...
Nobody's against voluntary co-ops, B. But co-ops are not Socialism. Co-ops are local, voluntary associations that have always existed, often in agrarian contexts or in contexts of things like guilds. Socialism, by contrast, is a broad political scheme, a national scheme, and in its recent ambition, even a global ideology.

It really gets started formally in the Industrial Revolution. https://www.britannica.com/topic/socialism

I assume you're not campaigning to the effect that we need more grain co-ops, are you?
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Re: Ukraine Crisis

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 2:51 am
Belinda wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 10:23 pm The earliest record of a co-operative comes from Fenwick, Scotland...
Nobody's against voluntary co-ops, B. But co-ops are not Socialism. Co-ops are local, voluntary associations that have always existed, often in agrarian contexts or in contexts of things like guilds. Socialism, by contrast, is a broad political scheme, a national scheme, and in its recent ambition, even a global ideology.

It really gets started formally in the Industrial Revolution. https://www.britannica.com/topic/socialism

I assume you're not campaigning to the effect that we need more grain co-ops, are you?
Coops are non-state socialism in action. I do support coops. Coops may be local or international.
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