No sooner had Keir Starmer arrived at the White House than he had disappeared up Trump's arse, the only sign of him left being a tiny hand, still protruding and waving a tiny, battered union flag. Nothing could more illustrate the nature of Brexit Britain's total impotence, irrelevance and subservience to the real holders of power than this exercise in prostration, or should it be prostate massage?
Two inveterate liars met, both of whom lied even more, as they tried to square the circles of their recent contradictory statements in relation to the Ukraine-Russia war. Trump indicating a more rapid onset of his cognitive impairment, said he could not even remember calling Zelensky a dictator only a couple of days earlier. Of course, for all intents and purposes, based on the US's previous definition of a dictator, Zelensky would qualify. He has cancelled the elections, meaning he has no democratic mandate to continue in office, and yet is doing so; he has closed down opposition parties; he has placed restrictions on workers' organisations; he has closed down Ukrainian TV, Radio and media companies that were critical of his regime; Ukraine continually appears in various western league tables of corruption, openness etc., as no better than Russia.
Trump's memory lapse was a means of him placating Starmer (or more correctly the press pack following him around) without the need to square the circle of his current lies about providing some vague “backstop”, which he has merged into his demand that the US be given its pound of Ukrainian flesh, from the minerals deal. Starmer and the petty-bourgeois media pack, of course, did not press that issue as they fall over themselves to believe that Trump is somehow going to go to war with Putin, or at least, continue to provide the weapons and funding that allow brave Ukrainian workers to continue to sacrifice themselves in the interests of western imperialism, and Zelensky's corrupt, oligarchical regime. But, tomorrow, or the day after, Trump will simply lie some more, and all of the hot air of Thursday will be forgotten.
The imagery was gut-wrenching. The US bourgeois revolutionaries, overthrew their King, George III, and established their Republic. Asked whether they had a Monarchy or a Republic, following the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Of course, in Presidential systems, as against parliamentary systems, a Republic simply means that you have an elected Monarch, rather than an hereditary Monarch, as the President alone claims a popular mandate – even though in the US, not even the latter is true as a result of the Electoral College – and the Constitution vests monarchical, prerogative power in the hands of the President, which is why such Presidential systems are always more amenable to Bonapartism. Trump clearly sees himself, not only as a Bonaparte, but, like Bonaparte himself, as a future Monarch or Emperor.
In the age of the Internet, e-mail, and of global electronic telecommunications, it was rather fitting therefore, that a British Prime Minister was reduced to the role of postman, to have flown 3,000 miles to deliver, by hand, a hand-written letter from his liege Lord, King Charles III, the incumbent of an institution that should have been abolished more than two centuries ago, at the time of the bourgeois revolution, and who is the descendant of that same George III that the American Revolution did rid themselves of! No wonder that the, now for all to see, totally ignorant, Elon Musk, has no idea about how the UK political system works, leading him to call on the said King Charles to remove the elected government, no doubt, in his fantasy, to, then, see his chosen candidate, Tommy Robinson, appointed, possibly to be supported by Trump's other buddies, the Tate Brothers, recently also relocated to the US.
Prior to Brexit, I noted that the vision of the petty-bourgeois nationalists was to turn Britain into the equivalent of Batista's Cuba of the 1950's, but I did not expect that it would be a Labour government that would be the vehicle of such a transformation. That seems to be the intention of Blue Labour, whose Brexit agenda requires Britain to be separated from the EU definitively, by tying it in to the US, if not as its 51st state, then as dominated by it, and its rules, standards and laws, much as, Trump now advocates for Canada and Greenland. If Starmer agrees to a trade deal with the US, it would remove any possibility of a closer relation with the EU, because it would involve the UK accepting all of those US food and other standards, in relation to chlorinated chicken, and so on. Its no wonder that a British media, which fell over itself to back Brexit, in order, mostly, to appeal to the sentiments of its largely aged, petty-bourgeois, nationalist readers and viewers, and, now, seeing the disaster that has resulted from it, try to double down on their previous lies about the benefits of Brexit, by hugely inflating the chances of, and benefits of a trade deal with the US, whilst, at the same time, attempting to claim that Starmer has been able to adopt this stance on the world stage, only because of being freed from the constraints of the EU.
Complete delusion, of the type that, also, lay behind the jingoism of the hype for Brexit in the first place. In fact, the delusion goes back way before that, into the hugely inflated role of Britain during World War II, a fantasy tale, largely constructed, as he claimed in advance, by Churchill, and readily snapped up by those that sought to cling to the idea of Rule Britannia, and rolled out repeatedly, as now, to draw parallels with standing up to dictators and aggressors. The reality was that, in the 1930's, the British ruling class and its media welcomed first Mussolini and then Hitler's rise to power, as they saw it smashing down uppity workers, and acting as a counter to the epitome of that in the USSR. They saw no reason to stand up to those dictators when they were attacking workers, or, as in Germany and elsewhere, when they were conducting pogroms against Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and so on.
Recently, I heard the otherwise, usually good, James O'Brien, making this same comparison, and fallacy, in relation to Ukraine. His conclusion that appeasement had been wrong in the 1930's, when Hitler went on to invade Poland, and so it would be wrong to appease Putin, by not acting to return Eastern Ukraine, did not follow. For one thing, he failed to ask the question of why it was that the Sudeten Germans saw becoming part of a fascist Germany as preferable to remaining inside a supposedly “democratic” Czechoslovakia. Secondly, he assumes that Germany's invasion of Poland, then left no other option than for other imperialist states to engage in a new slaughter of millions of mainly workers, in a war that was actually fought for the interests of their own respective exploiters and oppressors. The alternative, of course, was to have supported the workers in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Germany to have organised to fight fascism from within, to exploit its inherently contradictory and antagonistic nature, resulting from the heterogeneous nature of the petty-bourgeois masses that it rests upon, not to mention its function when in power of acting in the interests not of that petty-bourgeoisie, but in the interests of large-scale industrial capital.
But, the narrative presented is that the world could only be saved by being destroyed by World War, with the world's workers playing the role only of cannon fodder, and their own interests having to be denied until some future date. And, even there, the history is denied, and a fantasy constructed in its place. By 1940, Nazi Germany had rolled over western and central Europe. Just to put that in modern context, Putin's Russia is stretched just to take Eastern Ukraine, let alone be able to roll over the far more developed, and better armed, states of western Europe. Britain had been defeated catastrophically at Dunkirk, and, in every other confrontation, exposing the lie of the supposed superiority of the British military, it suffered similar losses, both in North Africa, and in Asia, where, for example, it suffered its worst ever defeat, even in Churchill's words, to the Japanese, in Singapore.
In 1940, Britain was already defeated, slowly starving were it not for the shipments sent from the US and Canada, at the great expense of the lives of thousands of brave merchant seamen. It was the USSR that defeated Germany, not Britain, nor even the US, though the US, after it, again, belatedly entered the war in 1941, did provide large amounts of equipment and material, to enable the USSR to take the war to Germany, and it was, again, the US that tipped the scales in North Africa, It is the fantasy of Britain's imperial past, and not the reality of even then, let alone the reality of Britain today, as a second, or even third rate world power that the Brexiters presented, and that they continue, now, in the form of Starmer, to cling to.
Britain, in 1982, barely was able to defeat Argentina in the Falklands War, and, today, would not be able to do so. But, nor is that a reason to try to go back to the fantasy of that previous military capability, by the increase in military spending proposed by Starmer, itself, as with the cuts in Foreign Aid, designed only to appeal to the sentiments of the bigots, and jingoists. An increase in military spending will act to further undermine the British economy.
It can only be financed by diverting a portion of surplus value away from productive investment/capital accumulation into destructive investment. If the state, appropriates a portion of surplus value/profits to finance investment in roads and infrastructure, or in schools, hospitals and so on, then the use-values created by that investment go back into the economy. Roads get used to transport goods to market, schools and teachers produce educated future workers, required to produce further goods and services, and, also, to produce new value and surplus value. But, that is not true with military spending, the bombs, bullets, tanks simply sit, if you are lucky, slowly rusting away, providing no useful benefit to society, a destruction of the value used up in the labour and materials for their construction. But, if you are not lucky, and they are used, the result is even worse, because, instead of increasing the wealth of society, instead of acting as means of production or consumption to assist further production, they act to destroy what already exists in the most violent manner. Such spending at the least reduces capital accumulation and growth, and at worst, results in expanded negative reproduction.
Starmer was already proposing to cut state spending, at a time when decades of spending cuts has led to the fabric of society, in terms of its infrastructure, being in a state of advanced decay. The idea that it can continue in that way, and even intensify it, by cutting spending further, whilst throwing money and resources into the production of arms, is simply untenable. As I wrote recently, it could borrow the money to pay for that military spending, but that will simply defer the problem of paying for it, and meanwhile will cause interest rates to rise further. It may seem hard to grasp at the moment, as right-wing populists, petty-bourgeois nationalists have been on the rise across the globe, whether in the form of Trump, or Blue Labour, or Le Pen and so on, but they have almost certainly reached a peak, and the contradictions inherent within them are set to explode. Its up to workers to seize the day.
16 comments:
Great read! I wish I could find something to disagree with ;) Yeah, England learned nothing from WWII. In hindsight the U.S. shouldn't have pressured France not to deliver those Exocets. If England lost against Argentina maybe it would have come to its senses. But no.
On the other hand, there's no amusement like the English! As for "workers uniting", people are people, to me. Call them anything you want, once they form groups nothing good happens. Unless it's very specific like "let's build a road and then go home".
I have set out in numerous posts why people are not just people, but are divided into classes, with antagonistic interests. It is not a matter of them consciously "uniting" into such classes, but that these classes form themselves, naturally, as a result of the development of society, and of its productive forces, and the forms of property which those productive forces generate.
The ruling class instinctively understands that, which is why they act collectively vis a vis the working-class to assert their interests. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend that situation does not exist. Workers have to likewise assert their own collective interests, and it is the job of Marxists to analyse the material reality and set out what those interests are.
I disagree because I have no class. What class am I? I work in tech so am I the tech class? Was there a tech class in 100 BC? Or am I in the capitalist class because I have my own business? What if I had been born in China, which still identified as socialist? I don't feel antagonistic towards anyone. I don't feel there are classes antagonistic towards me.
I understand that you see the world in classes. I'm not arguing it doesn't work for you and others. "Classes" just don't have enough explanatory power for me. One of my relatives is a super Socialist--will argue for "workers" endlessly--yet rents out properties to students at a profit. I have never bought property. I just don't like the idea for many reasons. I've never trusted money/property. Do you own a home?
I also find it demeaning to call anyone as part of a "worker" class or "oligarchs." Of course, I would be more respectful to an oligarch than a gardener, but I would fight that tendency.
The desire to belong to a class is what hurts us. So I'm anti class, all classes. But I recognize they are fact of life and I think that way too. I strive not to.
Of course you have a class whether you choose to recognise it or not, just as a dog is an animal, but is also a dog, as distinct from a cat whether it recognises it or not. Whether you feel antagonistic to others or not does not change the material reality. If you employ workers, your profit derives from the exploitation of the labour of those workers, whether you like it or not, want to exploit them or not. If you do not want to exploit them pay them wages equal to the new value created by their labour, in which case, your profit disappears.
The question of do you own a home is as meaningless as do you own a car, or a hairbrush. Socialists do not propose to do away with personal private property of that type, but only the ownership of property that is used so as to exploit labour. Why would you be more respectful of an oligarch? Why do you need to fight such a tendency to be so?
I also don't desire to belong to a class, but that is only possible when classes themselves do not exist, and so long as society is divided on the basis of ownership of the means of production, a condition that has existed for around 5,000 years, it requires more than simply pious wishes to change the reality.
Isn't that the root problem of socialism as government? Everyone is forced into classes. I don't recognize the class you put me in, sorry ;) One you have a 'you' and 'them' abuse is not far behind.
All ownership, whether it generates a "profit" or not, exploits labor. Because agreement can never be arrived at what should be built for everyone, property becomes unfair. Let's say we all build the same car for everyone, but then a flood washing away some of our cars. Will the car owners build cars for those who lose them? Not in my experience.
Nobody is "forcing" anyone into a class! Society for the last 5,000 years or so, from the time that it became possible for a social surplus to be produced so that some could live without working, divided into classes, because those that were able to find ways of living without working - shaman, or priests claiming access to the Gods and so on - usually on the basis of some ability to con others, were able to develop themselves intellectually, and make themselves appear indispensable to the rest of society. They acquired ownership of means of production, be it servants, slaves or land, and the ownership of capital is merely the latest manifestation of that.
Its no a matter of forcing people into different classes, but a natural process of evolution of society based upon adaptation and inheritance, as with biological evolution that creates this differentiation. Far from it being the basis of "abuse", Marx noted that this process, like with biological evolution, leads to development to a higher level, and so is progressive. I suggest you read my current series of posts, from the beginning on Anti-Duhring, or read the completed series of posts on The Poverty of Philosophy.
The idea of socialism as government, also indicates that you really don't understand what socialism is. The whole point of socialism is a society in which the above evolutionary process has reached the level in which classes do not exist. Essentially, we are already at a stage where the material basis for that exists. The material basis for the continued existence of a capitalist class has already vanished, just as as soon as capitalist farmers came into existence, who were the real organisers of agricultural production, the material basis for the existence of landlords disappeared. The role of the private capitalist was progressive at a time when they were the ones who centralised and concentrated the means of industrial production in their hands, who organised that production, and employed labour-power. But, that condition ended more than 150 years ago.
By the middle of the 19th century the process of natural capitalist development meant that to be competitive, firms had to become ever bigger, to enjoy economies of scale etc. The individual private capitalist could not cope with all of those functions. So, they employed professional managers, and so their own role in the productive process disappeared. Those professional managers, today, are, in fact, workers - production managers, sales and purchasing managers, administrators, book-keepers, and so on. But, as the scale of production increased further, even the role of the private capitalist as provider of the initial money-capital became redundant. Banks pooled society's savings which could be mobilised as credit for that purpose. Companies and cooperatives exist as legal entities in their own right, owning their own capital, and these companies likewise simply borrow money from banks, or on the stock and bond markets. The profits of companies, created by their workers, including managers - associated producers - provide the vast bulk of additional money-capital required for investment.
So, legally and rationally the associated producers in those companies should be the ones who exercise control over them, as it is their collective property. But shareholders have been able to cling to control they should not have, because they have controlled the state, and created laws to give them that right. Materially, there is no basis for their continued existence as a class. So, if classes disappear, the basis of that state also disappears, and also the idea of government also disappears, because as with the collective ownership of the means of production by the associated producers, so society is able to simply also administer its own day to day affairs, which is the condition you say you desire of there not being classes, but just people!
I'm afraid I really don't understand the point you make in your last paragraph. Its only an exploitation of labour if someone gets some of the product of labour for nothing, whether that something takes the form of the product of a slave/serf/servant, or of rent, or profit, or interest.
But to take your point about if everyone had cars, and some got washed away, surely that is the point of insurance. No one knows whether it is their car that might get washed away, stolen and so on, and so contrary to what you say about impossible to obtain agreement, the idea of everyone taking out insurance to deal with such events was arrived at. Someone may pay out insurance premiums and never claim on them, and in that sense, they have indeed, paid for a replacement of the cars washed away of other people.
I don't see it as farms, property, shaman. I see it as farms, protection, shaman. Shaman only rationalize the violence the "protection" must use to protect property. It's your blind-spot, don't mean to be insulting. Whether you're Russian, Ukrainian or Americans, you want whatever you have protected. Hunter-gathers don't need it because they consume as they go. Even then, there will be some petty theft of tools or women, etc. That's why we find hunter gathers with broken skulls.
People are possessive. Do you have children? From a very early age they fight over things. Even dogs get upset if you don't give them equal treats.
If you factor in human possessiveness I believe the Ukraine War will make more sense than in the framework of imperialism.
You make the same error as Duhring, which is why you should read those posts. The Shaman etc, must exist first in order for the private property to come into existence, because that private property comes into existence not as a result of violence, but of a voluntary agreement born out of a feeling of dependence, even if it is a con. Only on the basis of private property does a need for its subsequent defence arise, and only on the basis of that property does the inequality in wealth develop that enables the owners of that wealth to be able to mobilise the potential for that violence, as Rousseau noted.
You make the other assumption that there is such a thing as "people", and that the nature of these people "human nature" is a given, rather than that it is a consequence of the societies that they live in and so changes over time Again read the posts on The Poverty of Philosophy and Anti-Duhring.
History shows that you are simply wrong. For 90% of mankind's history it lived in communes based on communal property, not on the basis of private property. There could be no "petty theft" or any other theft if no one owned those things individually, which was the case during all that time. You have simply transposed the ideas of today to those past societies and past humans, who lived in different conditions and where their "nature" was correspondingly different.
On understanding Ukraine, you say that it is human possessiveness that explains it. How? For one thing, its not ordinary Russian workers hat will possess things in Ukraine. For another, millions of Ukrainians have left rather than fight, and thousands more are resisting being drafted.
But, for millions of Ukrainian workers, exactly what is it, what property that they are supposed to be being denied? If there was no fighting, no resistance destroying residential or other property, they would continue to go to work in factories, and come home to their houses and flats each day, as now. How would they know the difference between that condition under Russian tutelage rather than Ukrainian tutelage? In other cases, we can point to a change of political regime, and rights and liberties, but not even that really exists in Ukraine, because the Ukrainian regime is as corrupt and illiberal as that in Russia. It has withdrawn numerous workers rights and liberties.
The only difference would be that it might be Russian capitalists exploiting their labour rather than Ukrainian capitalists. In both cases, they are exploited. You can understand, however, why it is Ukrainian capitalists who might be aggrieved at the fact that it is now Russian capitalists not themselves that get to exploit Ukrainian workers, and why it is they, not Ukrainian workers who might feel that they have some reason to be possessive over the ownership of the means of production that makes that possible.
In fact, in those conditions, the Ukrainian workers could focus on the real issue, which is not that they are being exploited by Russian rather than Ukrainian capitalists, but the fact of their exploitation per se! In that, they should see the commonality of position with Russian workers, also exploited by those same Russian capitalists, and find the real material basis of their common interests, and their common cause in ending that exploitation itself.
You definitely don't have kids! HAHA! They don't need Shaman to punch each other when they feel cheated. They don't need a Shaman to cry when their mother pays more attention to the other child. One can witness this very, very early on before society could have any effect. Indeed, it is our social impulse to try to change such behavior. But the possessiveness comes first.
In many of my comments I feel you're pushing them into arguments I didn't make. I'm not explaining that Ukrainians are fighting because they're possessive. I'm explaining that possessiveness is an attribute of all humans which causes them to fight--like kids.
Two kids will fight. But if their parent is attacked they will join together to fight the attacker even if their parent is in the wrong. This can change as the children get older and more independent. But that is the natural reaction for starters.
Your powers of deduction I'm afraid have failed you. Not only have my kids never punched each other, but they always shared and cooperated with each other, and others. My youngest son, who did martial arts with me, on numerous occasions also defended his older brother, and his friends, even when that offered him no advantage in doing so.
I suspect the behaviour you have noticed in your kids is a consequence of your own behaviour and ideas transmitted to them from birth. The idea that kids like any other human exist as individuals separate from society is clear nonsense. But, this is largely irrelevant s my point was about how private property itself came into existence, not about the nature of private property once it has already come into existence in its myriad forms.
Possessiveness clearly is not some eternal, or universal attribute of human beings. It could not be because for 90% of human history there were no private possessions, only communal property. Someone I know who used to be an MP, related some years ago, about an official visit they made to an Inuit community, where the customs were the opposite of what you state, of it being a requirement of people in the community to prove to anyone that needed them, things like buttons for coats etc. The basis was that the lack of these things could be fatal, and at some future date, it might be them that required such buttons.
Although, Native Americans had their own hunting grounds, and so on, during periods of migration, they allowed other tribes and nations to cross them freely, and to hunt and fish, to meet their needs, as they did so.
The example of kids defending each other, or their parents is irrelevant in discussing a situation like Ukraine, because the material interests of Ukrainian workers and capitalists are themselves contradictory, and antagonistic. The workers have common interest not with the capitalists but with Russian workers. If kids have abusive, and exploitative parents it is not surprising if they fail to fight for those parents when they are attacked, and nor would it be surprising if they joined together with other abused kids to defend each other. That is what workers did spontaneously in forming trades unions, for example.
If your kids never hit each other that is truly remarkable! Interesting you did martial arts while claiming humans are naturally peaceful ;) So your kids never hit each other and you took them to martial arts so they could hit someone! I don't want this to get personal. I shouldn't have said it proves you don't have kids.
Anyway, I have always given away things. From a very early age. Indeed, my kids used to complain about it. But now they do the same thing. I always feel, if someone wants something more than I, let them have it. As I mentioned, I don't own real estate and I have only tried to make as much money as I feel healthy for my family, etc.
Everything I buy, I remind myself, prepare to lose it or give it away one day. There's is a lot I wish I still had--but I still feel worth it to follow that precept.
I'm sure I have plenty of bad behaviors I've transmitted to them from birth, so won't argue with you there.
You see people in classes. I don't. But that's doesn't mean I don't see them in categories too. We all categorize. Hard to have a conversation or communicate if you don't.
I used to work in private equity. I ran a company we were going to buy for a few of weeks. They took up most of my time about telling me the promotions they were promised, etc. Not fixing problems with the business. But they believed since it wasn't my money, and I would enjoy running the company, I would naturally do what I could so my investor would buy it. If I was most people I would have done that.
They were SHOCKED when I told the investor the company wasn't worth investing in. The reason was the software was too buggy, the CIO wouldn't be able to fix it, no one could, so might as well start from scratch. That put ME out of job too!
You'll probably tell me the problem was all with me. The workers were abused so deserved to vent. Sure. I didn't dislike any of them. But they lied. Over and over again. Each looking out for themselves. Each looking for "management" to give them more money when the company changed hands.
Not all of them were like that of course. But enough to make the endeavor not worth it.
I have to reply in several parts.
I find it remarkable that you take it for granted that siblings would hit each other. I never hit or got hit by my sister either. Similarly, its interesting that you can only see doing martial arts training as equivalent to being violent. None of the people I know from doing martial arts are naturally violent, and those that were usually got rooted out and asked to leave. I did martial arts, as an extension of doing Yoga, as a means of self-discipline, fitness training and for the aesthetic aspects of it, just as I linke dancing for similar reasons. When we spar, it is not at all in any way an act of aggression, and if anyone gets hurt, it is only by accident. I also have swords that I train with, but that does not mean I itend to go out and carve someone up with them. My kids did numerous activities when they were young, including archery. It didn't mean they were going to go out and shoot arrows at people!
I also never said that people are naturally peaceful. I said the opposite, i.e. that there is no such thing as an absolute or eternal natural condition, or truth, but that it is a function of social conditioning, and changes as social conditions themselves change. Again, read the series of posts on Anti-Duhring, and the rejection of the idea of absolute and eternal truths.
No I don't see people in classes. I see classes existing, consisting of forms of property, and those forms of property create antagonistic social relations, because as soon as property itself becomes private property, the private owners of those forms of property, are forced to act as its personification, and to represent its interests. That is true in the aggregate, and the role of individuals within that is subordinate, which is why I am interested in that aggregate, as determining social and historical development, not the actions of individuals. As an individual you may well have ideas completely contrary to those determined by the interests of the form of property you own, and from which you obtain your revenues. Frederick Engels' family were industrial capitalists, and he managed their textile company in Manchester. It didn't stop him being a communist, nor did the fact that, after he retired from business, he became a rentier capitalist, living off the £3 million or so (in today's terms) in stocks and bonds he owned.
As an individual, you may also, be in several classes simultaneously, as Marx sets out in Capital III and elsewhere. For example, you may be a landlord owning large amounts of land, and have an interest in obtaining capitalist rent from it. But, you may, also, have coal deposits on that land, which you mine as an industrial capitalist. You may also have your own stock of loanable-money capital, which produces interest, and which you use to finance the investment in capital equipment. In reality, the rent and the interest are deductions from the industrial profit, which is why industrial capitalists always sought to minimise rent and interest payments so as to maximise their profit available for accumulation. But, as an individual owning all of these different, and antagonistic forms of property – land, industrial capital, and money-capital – you will combine all of these different interests in your own existence. As an individual, which of these conflicting and antagonistic interests, deriving from the interests of these different forms of property, becomes dominant for you, in your actions will depend on the specific conditions.
But, taken in the aggregate, the truth is that these three different and antagonistic forms of property exist, and, in aggregate determine social relations, probabilistically, and the individuals concerned act more like quanta, in a state of flux and subterranean activity that only appears as movements on the surface, but which itself governs social development. You should read Engels account of that in his Letter to Bloch – https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21b.htm.
I think your example of the way you an the workers in the firm reacted illustrates the point. You say, most people, in the position you held would have looked after their own interest by getting an investor to buy the company. The important point, here, is most people, i.e. in aggregate, that is the way those in that role are led to act. What you did, individually, in this case, is from the point of view of society, and social development, in aggregate irrelevant. You should ask why "most people" would have acted differently.
The same with the workers, most of them, not all, acted in the way you say. Why did most of them, i.e. in aggregate, act that way? Because they wanted to hang on to a job, wanted, if possible to increase their wages. Why, because, not owning their own means of production, the only thing they have to sell, to earn a living is their labour-power, and they need to maximise the price they get for it. Whether this or that individual acts altruistically, which is actually irrationally in the given conditions - is irrelevant.
Taken at the level of society, all these things, in aggregate, may be irrational, and ultimately inefficient, but from the perspective of the different and antagonistic forms of property, and their personification in the individuals that own them, they are entirely rational.
Yes, most kids stop hitting each other at a certain age. I'm talking about when they're 2 to 8. Before socialization would have much effect.
Again, I agree, we have to categorize people in one way or another. I have no fix for our different ways of seeing things.
The workers I had couldn't care less about who owned the means of production. That's where we differ. Most people just want to get whatever thing that interests them, and once got, not have it taken away.
I think we both agree much of it is irrational. I think we both agree we are not immune in one way or another.
Your framework is much more hopeful about the progress of society, civilization. I guess I'm a fatalist, though I'd rather believe in what you believe.
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