Open Questions For A Marxist/communist

[PhuturePriest]

Ok.  So some people need to suffer extreme want so you can be charitable with your money?  

 

What's wrong with the analogy?  That's how analogies work.  The details are different but the structure is the same.  You're opposed to programs to abolish poverty and want because it degrades man's opportunity to give freely.  So you should also be opposed to programs that aim at abolishing violent crime since it removes man's opportunity to exercise mercy.  

 

No. People shouldn't suffer extreme poverty. We should make every act we can to get rid of poverty. But I don't think we should do this by way of the government. Hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations exist that do a very effective job at helping poor people. I myself was involved with one this summer, and I helped poor people by fixing their houses and lawns and making them look really nice, all the while getting to know them personally.

 

I oppose government programs that abolish poverty because they don't work and because there are issues that will happen because of it. If the government takes money away from people without their consent and gives it to poor people, the people they took money from will become bitter and resentful. I'm of the opinion they should cowboy up and live with the fact that owning five yachts isn't necessary, but this causes problems because if we have the upper class bitter and resentful towards the lower class, this causes tension in the country, and God knows the last thing we need is yet another cause of tension in this volatile unstable volcano of a country we call America. Now, if government programs were guaranteed to work to abolish poverty, I would be all for it in spite of the consequences between the classes. However, Democrats have been promising to abolish poverty since their inception, and all these years later poverty still exists. Government programs to abolish poverty don't work, and this is easily seen recognized by the fact that we're having this conversation.

[4588686]

meh, I think there's a problem. One can still be merciful without having the power to kill or to spare people's lives seemingly at random, but how can you offer material assistance when your materials are taken from you and reassigned by a third party?

 

 

That's exactly my point.  It's silly to say that making murder illegal takes away from our capacity to be merciful.  Just like it's silly to say that, for example, universal healthcare or food stamps, take away from our capacity to be charitable.  There are plenty of ways to be charitable that don't involve another person's capacity to survive or not live in abject poverty being totally dependent on their plight stirring your good graces.  People are charitable on this board all the time.  

[John Ryan]

I am cringing at the squabbling between FuturePriest and Hasan, because the point I am about to make (below) completely circumvents the discussion they are having. 

 

Everything the Church says aside, my issue with Communism is this: If I'm a wealthy man and my neighbor is poor and in need of monetary assistance (Medical, food, clothing, etc.), it would be an act of charity for me to give him money to help him out. However, if the government takes money away from me and gives it to him, that is no longer an act of charity on my part. It takes away the ability to be charitable and give to others. It creates a dependence on the government, when our dependence should be upon God alone.

 

It might surprise you that I actually agree with this criticism. As someone who has a great affinity for virtue ethics and who absolutely loves reading Aristotle, I think there would be something truly wrong if there were no charity, liberality or generosity. My disagreement with you is that you do not understand what Marxian Communism is all about. You have discard your notions of an all-powerful state, as in the Soviet Union. That is not what Marx, Engels or even Lenin envisioned. V.I. Lenin actually warned the Communist party that they were moving in a disturbing authoritarian direction, before his death. If you want to understand Communism you are better to think of anarchism rather than Sovietism. I actually wrote something about this charity issue before, so I am just going to repost it: 

 

"It is my proposal that [in communism] liberality should still exist within the sphere of production itself. There are two ways to give charity: (i.) you donate your money and/or your resources; or, (ii.) you donate your time, your labor. The second and third kinds of common ownership would not allow us to be charitable by the first method. However, there is nothing in common appropriation preventing charity/liberality through the second method. Just as people nowadays donate their time to working in hospitals and at animals shelters, those under communism would show their liberality by the same token — and this is the crux of this post.

 

To show liberality towards friends, or the community as a whole, one could cook a special meal or work extra hard in constructing a desperately needed home. In truth, we tend to ascribe virtue to those who donate their labor rather than their wealth. A rich woman may donate millions of dollars to charity, and from a utilitarian perspective help many more people with her largesse, but we ascribe the greater virtue to the woman who spends a summer in Haiti reconstructing homes after a devastating earthquake."

 

Thus, in my humble opinion, Communism would be a society in which all labor is a kind of charity. Labor is not done for the express aim of receiving a paycheck at the end of the week, but rather to meet human need. 

 

the prohibition against theft presumes private property ownership, and the Church has always upheld the right of private property, most recently in Rerum Novarum, Quadregesimo Anno, and in the encyclicals of all the popes since John XXIII.  you may attribute this to some kind of capitalist corruption, but the economist they were most influenced by was Heinrich Pesch and his students which led to the idea of solidarism that maintained private property.  Distributism doesn't necessarily mean a return to the past, distributism needn't be agrarian or overly idealistic (of course any more than communism, for instance).  

 

communal property has only ever been supported by the Church among voluntary communities like monasteries, but for society as a whole she has always promoted private property ownership as important in her interpretation of the 7th and 10th Commandments.

 

I do not think that the idea of private property or communal property is a theological issue. There is no doubt in my mind that the ethics of communism coincide with my Christian ethos, but I do not believe the biblical literature has a meaningful socio-economic worldview or that it is the position of sacred tradition to decide these matters. Just as the biblical literature and sacred tradition are do not provide us with the answers of science — as many vulgar protestants assert — I do not believe they provide us with the answers to political economy.

Edited September 15, 2013 by John Ryan

[4588686]

I am cringing at the squabbling between FuturePriest and Hasan, because the point I am about to make (below) completely circumvents the discussion they are having. 

 

 

It might surprise you that I actually agree with this criticism. As someone who has a great affinity for virtue ethics and who absolutely loves reading Aristotle, I think there would be something truly wrong if there were no charity, liberality or generosity. My disagreement with you is that you do not understand what Marxian Communism is all about. You have discard your notions of an all-powerful state, as in the Soviet Union. That is not what Marx, Engels or even Lenin envisioned. V.I. Lenin actually warned the Communist party that they were moving in a disturbing authoritarian direction, before his death. If you want to understand Communism you are better to think of anarchism rather than Sovietism. I actually wrote something about this charity issue before, so I am just going to repost it: 

 

"It is my proposal that [in communism] liberality should still exist within the sphere of production itself. There are two ways to give charity: (i.) you donate your money and/or your resources; or, (ii.) you donate your time, your labor. The second and third kinds of common ownership would not allow us to be charitable by the first method. However, there is nothing in common appropriation preventing charity/liberality through the second method. Just as people nowadays donate their time to working in hospitals and at animals shelters, those under communism would show their liberality by the same token — and this is the crux of this post.

 

To show liberality towards friends, or the community as a whole, one could cook a special meal or work extra hard in constructing a desperately needed home. In truth, we tend to ascribe virtue to those who donate their labor rather than their wealth. A rich woman may donate millions of dollars to charity, and from a utilitarian perspective help many more people with her largesse, but we ascribe the greater virtue to the woman who spends a summer in Haiti reconstructing homes after a devastating earthquake."

 

Thus, in my humble opinion, Communism would be a society in which all labor is a kind of charity. Labor is not done for the express aim of receiving a paycheck at the end of the week, but rather to meet human need. 

 

 

I do not think that the idea of private property or communal property is a theological issue. There is no doubt in my mind that the ethics of communism coincide with my Christian ethos, but I do not believe the biblical literature has a meaningful socio-economic worldview or that it is the position of sacred tradition to decide these matters. Just as the biblical literature and sacred tradition are do not provide us with the answers of science — as many vulgar protestants assert — I do not believe they provide us with the answers to political economy.

 

 

Is this the same Lenin who wrote that Left-Communism was an 'infantile disorder?'

[John Ryan]

Is this the same Lenin who wrote that Left-Communism was an 'infantile disorder?'

 

If I am not mistaken, V.I. Lenin used the term "left-wing communism" to refer to those communists who refused to fight the class war from within the sites of opposition. They wanted to form their own organizations instead of participating in trade unions. Left-communism is word then that refers to those who opposed what they saw as authoritarian tendencies within the Bolshevik ideology. The end of both Bolsheviks and Left-Communists were the same, but their methods and practice to achieve those ends were different.

[Winchester]

I really thought this would all be resolved in one page.

 

I'm going to build a shoeshine stand and work weekdays. I'll oppress someone by renting it out on the weekends to another worker.

[Apteka]

Do you have any personal experience of life in a socialist/communist system?

[Nihil Obstat]

I really thought this would all be resolved in one page.

 

I'm going to build a shoeshine stand and work weekdays. I'll oppress someone by renting it out on the weekends to another worker.

You are the vilest of scum. How dare you benefit from your own effort.

[4588686]

I really thought this would all be resolved in one page.

 

I'm going to build a shoeshine stand and work weekdays. I'll oppress someone by renting it out on the weekends to another worker.

 

 

I know.  let's talk about real oppression.  Like a representative government imposing speed limits in a country that you're free to leave.  

[PhuturePriest]

I know.  let's talk about real oppression.  Like a representative government imposing speed limits in a country that you're free to leave.  

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_autobahns

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_autobahns#Safety

Edited September 16, 2013 by FuturePriest387

[4588686]

Representative governments make lots of bad decisions.  

[Not The Philosopher]

What are your thoughts on Hegel's views on Christianity?

 

It's been a few years since I've studied him, but it seems to me that Hegel's God is pantheistic, the main difference separating his conception from, say, Spinoza's being that it is entirely temporized - the God/the world is still 'unfolding' in history.

[Era Might]

(i.) Marx does not deny that needs should ubiquitously granted to the individual by society. He does not deny that certain needs are false. He calls the needs engendered by capitalism "crude" and "imaginary" needs, which he contrasts with human needs; (ii.) I am not sure where you are getting the idea that capitalism equals the pursuit of human happiness. Such is a proposition that I would strongly reject. Even Friedrich Hayek, the great Austrian economist — a man I greatly admire as a social philosopher — does not adhere to such romantic notions of capitalism; (iii.) I adamantly reject the idea that capitalism is a natural fit for Western civilization. It glosses over the very real conflicts both of the contemporary world and the past that capitalism had be crowned the victor within. Industrialization was a brutal and diabolical process that began with the dispossession of peasant farmers, who then made up an army of landless workers for the advantage of the urban bourgeoisie. History tells me, from my reading of it, that capitalism has only become "natural" and habituated from our perspective, because it won the brutal war. So you can claim that communism is not organic, but capitalism does not look any more organic. The word "organic" becomes pretty superfluous then.

 

I am not romantic about capitalism, but I don't see how it can be denied that it has SOMETHING going for it in the domain of freedom and happiness. Certainly, this is not just due to capitalism but also to political factors...the pursuit of happiness is part of the American political tradition.

 

And I agree that industrialization was a watershed in Western history. But it is a watershed for both capitalism and communism. Both have to make that jump, because they are both modern industrial systems. But in the context of Western civilization, capitalism has proven more in keeping with classical virtues like democracy and culture. And that's an understatement...Communist societies have not proven to be compatible with Western civilization, and the modern world order arose out of Western civilization.

[Winchester]

I know.  let's talk about real oppression.  Like a representative government imposing speed limits in a country that you're free to leave.  

Why should I leave? They're the ones that suck.

[4588686]

Why should I leave? They're the ones that smell of elderberries.

 

Why should I have to live in a system of private property that I never consented to?