Although well written, even moving in some passages, this piece falls short by not explicitly naming the path to total human emancipation. A group like DSA encompasses views ranging from a super form of Scandinavian social democracy to working class socialist revolution. Without taking this final step, we remain in the morass of academic verbiage.
"...We are invited to ponder whether “negative liberty” is superior to “positive liberty” and vice-versa, or whether the state can remain a neutral arbiter—a private hand, so to speak—while sitting atop a mountain of private wealth..."
From post WWII, I think the guise of a neutral state soon morphed into a neutered state where the ability and the will of the elected were usurped by the corrupting power of money. So the image of the state sitting atop a mountain of private wealth is more appropriately understood, I think, as empowered individuals unaccountable to any legal power.
America's current wars aren't the desired policies of any majority, but the strategic necessities of illegitimate organs owned by and operated for said individuals. This lawlessness is depressing Westerners and scaring the planet, and it appears that the declared enemies of the Western Empire are the only ones that are presently threatening the lawlessness.
There is a truth here that puts paid to any theory we hold about how the world should be constituted. You make a very good argument for material realism which is to take what is in front of us and apply basic human values of concern for others to what we find. The moment we go on to suggest that we codify this into some formal framework for the country, let alone the rest of world, we are effectively following the Liberal path. Once we codify a practice we stop the natural dynamism that is part of the living world and consign people and ecology to a model they will increasingly depart from.
Theories are abstractions which politics is very good at making real to the detriment of sections of the population and the ecology we exist in and ultimately themselves. Theories freeze an idea in time. They are, because of the incalculable complexity of our world and its constant dynamism, completely unable to accurately represent what is because what is is not completely knowable or constant.
The idea of a state is an imposition of a fixed frame on a moving entity. It is the extension of the Liberal idea of ownership as opposed to the stewardship you mention that is the only way to reflect the reality of life. We need to be able to respond to what we see in terms of our agreed values on a rolling basis which means we need to be able to evolve our practice to reflect our reality.
Large institutions are almost incapable of this because they are removed from many other people's reality and arrogate to themselves the power to impose conformity and the trappings of comfort as a reward for their civic role. We need processes that allow decisions to be made but we also need to keep the ability to be flexible to the changing reality and to resist the urge to leave power in the hands of the few. We humans seem to be unique in nature in this respect and it is not a practice that appears to have any universal benefit.
We are very far from anything like this but it starts locally with building local autonomy and that is already happening in pockets around the world.
This seems to succinctly and effectively summarise the socialist case against the capture of the human mind by the neurological conceptual implants of capitalist gaslighting , dispersed by its parasites in chief that slither about in the headquarters of extraction enterprises and the government's they control. It should remind us how the serfs of feudalism were replaced by the working class of today and set to work under carefully hidden exploitative conditions so they would swallow and keep down the blue pill of their alleged freedom . Apparently this class of forced labor would at some stage snap out of the hypnotic trance of the unequal wage system through the illumination of "scientific socialism" of the actual situation, a threat the ruling class hoped was permanently defused when they prematurely toasted the "end of history" after the Stalinist beauracracy resulted in the restoration of capitalism, and which could still see them hauled from their lofty electric vehicle castles, and trundled to a much to be desired consummation with madame Guillotine,
A fate noone can be assured against, however much the orange sack of faeces rails against the commies who have his number.
Although well written, even moving in some passages, this piece falls short by not explicitly naming the path to total human emancipation. A group like DSA encompasses views ranging from a super form of Scandinavian social democracy to working class socialist revolution. Without taking this final step, we remain in the morass of academic verbiage.
Anyone who claims to know the One True Path to Human Emancipation is a charlatan and an ideologue.
Hahaha
It's funny 'cause it's true. :P
"...We are invited to ponder whether “negative liberty” is superior to “positive liberty” and vice-versa, or whether the state can remain a neutral arbiter—a private hand, so to speak—while sitting atop a mountain of private wealth..."
From post WWII, I think the guise of a neutral state soon morphed into a neutered state where the ability and the will of the elected were usurped by the corrupting power of money. So the image of the state sitting atop a mountain of private wealth is more appropriately understood, I think, as empowered individuals unaccountable to any legal power.
America's current wars aren't the desired policies of any majority, but the strategic necessities of illegitimate organs owned by and operated for said individuals. This lawlessness is depressing Westerners and scaring the planet, and it appears that the declared enemies of the Western Empire are the only ones that are presently threatening the lawlessness.
There is a truth here that puts paid to any theory we hold about how the world should be constituted. You make a very good argument for material realism which is to take what is in front of us and apply basic human values of concern for others to what we find. The moment we go on to suggest that we codify this into some formal framework for the country, let alone the rest of world, we are effectively following the Liberal path. Once we codify a practice we stop the natural dynamism that is part of the living world and consign people and ecology to a model they will increasingly depart from.
Theories are abstractions which politics is very good at making real to the detriment of sections of the population and the ecology we exist in and ultimately themselves. Theories freeze an idea in time. They are, because of the incalculable complexity of our world and its constant dynamism, completely unable to accurately represent what is because what is is not completely knowable or constant.
The idea of a state is an imposition of a fixed frame on a moving entity. It is the extension of the Liberal idea of ownership as opposed to the stewardship you mention that is the only way to reflect the reality of life. We need to be able to respond to what we see in terms of our agreed values on a rolling basis which means we need to be able to evolve our practice to reflect our reality.
Large institutions are almost incapable of this because they are removed from many other people's reality and arrogate to themselves the power to impose conformity and the trappings of comfort as a reward for their civic role. We need processes that allow decisions to be made but we also need to keep the ability to be flexible to the changing reality and to resist the urge to leave power in the hands of the few. We humans seem to be unique in nature in this respect and it is not a practice that appears to have any universal benefit.
We are very far from anything like this but it starts locally with building local autonomy and that is already happening in pockets around the world.
This seems to succinctly and effectively summarise the socialist case against the capture of the human mind by the neurological conceptual implants of capitalist gaslighting , dispersed by its parasites in chief that slither about in the headquarters of extraction enterprises and the government's they control. It should remind us how the serfs of feudalism were replaced by the working class of today and set to work under carefully hidden exploitative conditions so they would swallow and keep down the blue pill of their alleged freedom . Apparently this class of forced labor would at some stage snap out of the hypnotic trance of the unequal wage system through the illumination of "scientific socialism" of the actual situation, a threat the ruling class hoped was permanently defused when they prematurely toasted the "end of history" after the Stalinist beauracracy resulted in the restoration of capitalism, and which could still see them hauled from their lofty electric vehicle castles, and trundled to a much to be desired consummation with madame Guillotine,
A fate noone can be assured against, however much the orange sack of faeces rails against the commies who have his number.