4 ms·
So much of politics is a definitions game. If it's indeed possible to win a political argument by means other than proving your opponent's position internally i
by gametheoretic 13y ago
So much of politics is a definitions game. If it's indeed possible to win a political argument by means other than proving your opponent's position internally inconsistent-- i.e., to "prove" yourself correct-- then universal definitions are a must.
For example, part of your above argument goes: control of means of production => control of economic production => control of life itself; control of means of production => control of life itself.
Ergo, whosoever invented the very first means of production controlled the lives of everyone else in the world. Or, our definitions are incomplete. Or, one or more of the above assertions is fundamentally incorrect regardless of reasonable definition.
- einhverfr 13y agoI don't think that quite works. Here's why. The reason why control over economic production is the control over life itself is that we humans cannot live absent such production. We don't live naked in the trees without tools. Heck we now know even chimpanzees have tools so we can talk about a material culture beyond our species, and the same means this is means of production. But we are more dependent on more complex means of production than chimpanzees are. From what we know of hunter-gatherers, there is no employment so there is no unemployment. Even today we would not say a self-employed individual with no work is unemployed. Until you get to the point where people have currency, you don't have a possibility of a division between worker and employer. Instead you have other sorts of economic arrangements. The Marxist mistake here is to assume no social and economic stratification. There is such from what we know but it is not along employee/employer lines or the like.