Consul wrote: ↑Wed Mar 27, 2024 2:00 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 9:15 pmConsul wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 5:40 pm
You are right only if socialism is equated with (Soviet-style) communism.
I'm completely right. There's not a single case of Socialism being the regnant economic plan, and there not being death and economic disaster. But if you think otherwise, just name this Socialist success story.
Not all socialists are absolute anti-capitalists preferring an anti-free-market, anti-private-property, & centrally state-planned economy. There are market socialists, and social democrats accept a private-property-involving mixed economy.
You're not rising to the challenge. Name one place where Socialism has been allowed to rule the economy (so not merely some place in which a limited socialist institution is payed for by capitalist means, but one in which Socialism has been fully accepted) that has not been a place of murder, repression and economic collapse.
Here are some interesting distinctions drawn by John Rawls:
Rawls hasn't said anything interesting in a long time. He's arbitrary. And he's frequently just dead wrong.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 9:15 pmConsul wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 5:40 pm
The social (welfare) state with its institutions of social security such as health insurance and unemployment insurance (as we have it in Germany) does have a record of
success! It's a very good humanitarian thing!
Until it crashes the economy. But that's what it does.
I don't think so. The big threat isn't the welfare state but global financial capitalism!
Just wait. The more control Socialism gets of the economy and the political scene, the more severe the dysfunction that sets in.
You must know this. Germany had it's flirtation with serious Communism during the Weimar Republic, and then rubber-banded into National Socialism, while Russia was busy turning into a Communist hellhole. And the result? 6 million dead Jews, 8 million dead Germans, 24 million dead Russians...
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 9:15 pmI'm all for free healthcare, if it could be made sustainable. Unfortunately, there's no example of it doing that.
For example, the public healthcare system in Germany is in fact sustainable.
Then you'd better explain to both the UK and Canada how to make that work. Their systems are collapsing their economies. I don't know what Germany is doing, but I'd bet it's not Socialism. It's a few Socialist-style institutions paid for by capitalist profits. Socialism itself is never sustainable.
But you can inform me if you know how Germany does it, and I'd be interested in hearing it.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 9:15 pmConsul wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 5:40 pmIf public schooling is (mis)used for ideological indoctrination by the (Far-)Left or the (Far-)Right,
Which "far right" has any influence in public education? It's always the Leftists.
Nope! The fascists and the nazis (mis)used public education for indoctrination!
Here's the problem: Fascism and Nazism are Socialisms.
Now, I know what you're going to say. You're going to say that Fascists and Communists hate one another. And you're right: and that fools many people. But this misunderstands the dialectic. Here's the hard truth: both Fascism and Communism are of the same essence, though oppositional in form.
If you know Kantian-Hegelian dialectics, which Marx relied on, you'll know a few things that most people misunderstand about dialectics. People think that thesis and antithesis are opposed like black and white, or like on and off, or whatever. But Hegel is quite clear that the antithesis emerges from the inherent contradictions produced by the thesis itself. In other words, Fascism, rather than being the opposite of Communism, is its "shadow" or evil doppleganger, which emerges from the same place as communism: from Collectivist Totalitarianism. The two conflict, alright: but only, according to dialectics, so that they will merge into a final solution called "synthesis," in which elements of both are preserved.
You can see this in Germany. The Communists produced massive social disruption during the Weimar Republic. In backlash, the country swung to Fascism. Fascism went into violent conflict with Communism. But the "synthesis," if that had ever happened, would not be one or the other, but some other form of Collectivist Totalitarianism.
James Lindsay puts this paradox extremely well. He says, "Fascism is the right hand of the Left, just as Communism is the left hand of the Left." They are both species of Collectivist Totalitarianism. And they share many features, such as the nationalization of industry, militarism, a one-party system, purges and camps, repression of individual autonomy and denial of rights, and most notably, always some guy like a Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Castro, Maduro, Ceaucescu, Hoxha...some strong man who takes over and runs the show.
They are nowhere near so far from each other as Communist rhetoric would like us to think. They're oppositional partners, or thesis-antithesis of the same problem.
Or what about the ultraconservative school laws in the US against gender theory, critical race theory, and liberal sexual education in general?
It's not "ultraconservative" to oppose Communist propaganda moves. Cultural Marxism loves to demonize its enemies, but it has no right to seize control of public sexuality, or of race, or of biology (far less of children), and to turn them to its propagandistic purposes. And that's what all the things you've listed really are. If you know their history, you know that's true.
To refuse them isn't "conservative." It's just realistic.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 9:15 pmConsul wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 5:40 pmGenerally, ethics is independent of theism and theology.
It isn't. Secular ethics has prove to be a total failure from a rational point of view. The current field, broadly speaking, is split between Deontologies of various kinds, Consequentialisms of various kinds, and Virtue Theories of other kinds. And there's no meta-basis for adjudicating between them, or even of saying that we owe any of them anything.
Divine-command ethics provides no rational alternative.
I don't know what you mean by "divine-command ethics," because the term is abused to cover far too wide a field. But it's obvious that if God does exist, then God must be involved in the moral field somehow. And then we'd have to debate how.
Anyway, it presupposes the truth of theism, which makes it inacceptable in principle for atheists like me.
Well, you really cannot be an Atheist and be rational, because the evidentiary bar for Atheism cannot be met. So you might want to rethink that. Even Richard Dawkins won't claim outright to be an Atheist, because he knows it's rationally indefensible. He prefers to be called a "firm agnostic" (His term).
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 9:15 pmConsul wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 5:40 pm
"A female, black, youthful, able-bodied homosexual" and "a fat, male, Chinese, elderly, disabled heterosexual" certainly cannot become
physical/corporeal equals, but they can become ones
in other respects (moral, legal, social, political, economic ones).
What are these "respects" of which you speak? Take any of your specific cases, and show how the Chinese man can be made authentically equal to the black woman.
For example, same basic liberties (e.g. freedom of speech), same human rights, same right to non-discrimination, same rights to political participation (e.g. right to vote and be elected), same right to education, (in the event of need) same right to access to and support by the welfare state (e.g. public healthcare).
Those are all "equalites of opportunity." The critique of the Neo-Marxists on that is that it's "unequitable" and "unjust" to leave the Chinese man still so disadvantaged relative to the black woman. A level playing field, they say, is not level if you started out worse off. So how are you going to make the two genuinely equivalent, equivalent in all outcomes?
For that is what Neo-Marxism demands: not equality of treatment, or equality of opportunity, but equity of outcomes, regardless of particulars.
They could as well be made equals with respect to their wealth, since it's not a law of nature that the one is poorer/richer than the other.
You can only do that by stealing from the industrious to pay off the indolent. And to take somebody's legitimate effort to create value, and to use it to pay off somebody who's created less or no value is surely an injustice of the first order. It's robbery.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 9:15 pmConsul wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 5:40 pmOf course,
can doesn't imply
ought; and there is an ongoing debate over
how much moral, legal, social, political, or economic inequality is justifiable.
Right. It doesn't imply "ought." So we can't even know that we owe the Chinese man and the black woman equality...or that we owe it to anybody. ("Ought" as you will know, is a contraction of "owe it".) That's why there's an "ongoing debate," and one without any possibility of adjudication.
You are not a metaethical nihilist, are you? You don't share the Foucauldian Left's antifoundationalist view that ethics & politics are basically nothing but a brute power game, an exercise of the will to power, do you?
No. And I'm glad you don't seem to be, either. But then, I have very good reasons for not being a metaethical nihilist, because I believe in a metaethical Arbitrator capable of adjudicating which ethical posture is right in a given circumstance. But, as an Atheist, you would be denying the existence of any such; so then, the Foucaultian critique (which he stole from Nietzsche, really, including the argument that all morality is nothing but an inauthentic power-game) would be very compelling. How would you resist it? There's no metaethical basis of arbitration anymore.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 9:15 pmConsul wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 5:40 pmYou've erected a straw man against egalitarianism here!
Not at all. It is precisely how calls for egalitarianism are actualized today. For instance, at Harvard University, Chinese students have much higher entrance demands placed on them than whites, or Hispanics or blacks. And this is done in the name of "fairness" and "inclusion" and "equity." So addressing the "egalitarian" needs of these minorities discriminates against the Chinese.
Any problem with that?
If the idea of helping disadvantaged members of minorities in the education system results in blatant reverse racism and sheer anti-meritocracy, I do have a problem.
Needless to say, though, Socialism is not meritocratic. It's adamantly against merit, because merit produces inequality every single time. When a person with merit takes on a task, and one with less or no merit takes on the same task (like, say, going into a university program), the one with merit comes out on top, and the one without it sinks. Socialists hate that. It automatically produces hierarchy, which Socialism regards as always oppressive, and does not consider to be based on actual merit.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 9:15 pm
Consul wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 5:40 pmFrom the socialist perspective, equity and equality are intimately connected.
They're opposites, actually.
Equity means "equality of outcomes." Equality means "equality of opportunity." They're opposites, because if you give equal opportunity, then the stronger/smarter/faster/healthier/or whatever instantly gains an upper hand, and that produces inequality of outcomes.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 9:15 pmWell, one of the hallmarks of Socialism is the belief that all evils are products of social systems and social conditioning, not of human nature. The shift from the personal responsiblity of the individual to the blaming of "structures of oppression" requires us to accept that the evils do not come from human beings, but from some other dynamic. And Socialists are notoriously vague on what that dynamic is.
Yes, from the combined perspective of Marxist socioeconomic determinism and postmodernist antihumanism, the individual human agent/person/subject is no relevant causal or moral factor anymore, being just a puppet on strings manipulated by impersonal power structures (as linguistically embodied by Foucauldian "discourses"), in which case there is no room for personal responsibility but only for universal victimhood.
Right.