Historical change does not happen at a constant rate. It has been accelerating and the availability of education and communication has allowed ideas to spread faster and more widely. That and increased social mobility has allowed peoples' means to change. For example, a person may be very liberal because she is poor and sees the system works to her perceived disadvantage. Then over the course of her life she moves up in the system, becomes rich and because she perceived the system as benefitting her, she becomes a conservative/champion of that system. These shifts are symptomatic of individualism.
While this does happen (as the
Pursuit of Happyness film was so quick to remind us), the large majority of people don't experience such windfalls in their lifetimes. The possibility of social mobility is indicative of a liberal democratic system, you're right; but more often than not, that's all it is: a possibility with very little hope for actualization.
Furthermore, the speed at which "history" develops might be better perceived by someone with access to the latest technological gadgetry or information on current innovation. There are, however, still a large number of people throughout the world without access to television, computers, the internet, or even libraries. I still believe that history takes place at a kind of base, experiential level; not in the ideal realm of information where individuals can be changed in a matter of years. Yes, this certainly does happen to some people, but that number is far too small to influence any widespread historical change.
Zeph's breakdown is completely lacking economic education outside of some Foxnews/Huffpost level bullshit, as well as a lack of understanding of the household role of many negro slaves in the 18th and 19th century. The impersonal massive plantations were an exception compared to having a few "houseslaves".
His explication was of the Ancient Greek culture, in which the kind of liberal free-market system that you espouse would not have been seen as socially viable. It conflicted with what the Greeks saw as intrinsic and objective values. As an ancient and early example of organized civilization, there was no historical possibility for the Ancient Greeks to practice economics in a free-market system. They couldn't conceive of that.
We do not have capitalism in the West, we have corporatism, and the labor theory of value is utter nonsense.
Are you saying that the labor theory of value is utter nonsense in our society today; that is has no function in a corporatist system (which, I agree, is what we have)?
I'm only asking because, in the past, haven't you claimed that an individual's labor is what entitles him or her to the possession/ownership of an object as property?
zabu of nΩd;10254094 said:
I think we can agree that there are dehumanizing aspects to both capitalism and classical slavery (i.e. for people in the lowest social ranks they're both slavery in a certain sense). The questions i would examine at this point are (1) how avoidable is this dehumanization in either case, and (2) of the aspects of dehumanization that are unavoidable, do we really get enough value out of those to justify them?
Let me just say that we can argue specifically about these two historically opposed systems (i.e. capitalism and slave-based economy); but let's also keep in mind the possibility that these aren't, or shouldn't be, our only two choices.
I know that Dak's theory basically holds that anything other than free-market economics is slavery, because it relies on some kind of centralized political machine to guarantee it. The problem with politically guaranteed economics is that there will undoubtedly be
some form of dehumanization/exploitation/manipulation in order to ensure some kind of status quo. In the minds of the free-marketeers, any bondage at all constitutes a flaw in the system, and thus it deserves to be done away with.
So to address those two points, Grant, I think a radical free-marketeer would say: "Capitalism
may result in dehumanization committed by individuals against each other. Any politically-organized system will inevitably result in dehumanization in order to
prevent the possibility of dehumanization by individuals. This is a double-standard."
My question would be: is the enslavement of vast quantities of individuals even possible without some kind of strong, centrally organized political structure? Free-marketeers would argue that it is not, or at least not for an extended period of time. They would claim that if individuals in a free-market attempted to exploit the labor of others for their own economic gain, their venture would soon collapse due to either the impossibility to sustain a slave base without a politico-military establishment, or would face rebellion when its slave base grew too large.
In short: government isn't justified to prevent slavery, because slavery prevents itself; and furthermore, government involvement necessarily involves slavery.
Do we agree with this? I'm not entirely sure. I think that prolonged slavery is possible in a free-market system, if the economic institutions grow large enough. In time, economic institutions may even take on the role of political ones. This is where the lines begin to blur for me, and I have some other ideas/theories on this, but I'm going to save them for later because I feel like we have enough to discuss already.
