4 ms·

Wow, it's hard to know where to begin with this post. It seems strange to me that you're trying to use Marx to justify a liberal position. After all, Marx wou

Wow, it's hard to know where to begin with this post. It seems strange to me that you're trying to use Marx to justify a liberal position. After all, Marx would be the first to disagree with you about the feasibility of using the state to check the market. Marx saw the state as little more than the 'executive committee' of the bourgeoisie, so using the state to check the market is just not going to happen until revolution leads us out of the capitalist stage of history. Your equation of evolution and capitalism has a nasty heritage of Social Darwinist thinking. I think it's a misunderstanding of both evolution and of capitalism. Better not to make such an analogy. Monopolies, deception, fraud, slaves, and so on are not at all unique to capitalism and have been with humanity throughout history. There's no compelling reason to believe that capitalism favors these practices for rational or irrational reasons. It's not clear why the government is the only institution in society that can avoid failure. It's moreover not clear that the government doesn't play a role in setting up failures as a consequence of its intervention. Marx (or Lenin at the least) would certainly hold that it's the state that creates the very phenomena like monopolies that you decry as "irrational."

Confusion 17y ago
My intention is not to use Marx to justify anything; I just want to lay focus on something he and Engels got exactly right and which is being forgotten: capitalism is amoral (a term that is not be confused with immoral). As a result of this, parts of their analysis are extremely valuable and it's a damn shame the anti-communist tendencies have swept that under the rug. By stating that evolution is an amoral process, I completely condemn any form of Social Darwinism: you cannot derive moral values from amoral principles. Evolution is completely amoral: that which reproduces itself, will continue to exist in some form, independent of our moral judgment about it. Social Darwinists are therefore guilty of the naturalistic fallacy However, the same goes for capitalism: that which increases capital the most stays in the best position to keep increasing capital. Because of irrationality and a lack of market transparency, the best moral intentions on the part of individual humans cannot prevent immoral consequences from arising. I'm not saying any of those immoral consequences are unique to capitalism. I am saying they are unavoidable when you let capitalism go unchecked. It's not clear why the government is the only institution in society that can avoid failure And I cannot prove it is. However, as far as I can see, no other institution has the power nor the mandate to guide capitalist forces. This is the exact reason you have things like the Federal Trade Commission and an Antitrust Division in the DoJ, both on a government level. Who else could do that job?

Confusion 17y ago

My intention is not to use Marx to justify anything; I just want to lay focus on something he and Engels got exactly right and which is being forgotten: capitalism is amoral (a term that is not be confused with immoral). As a result of this, parts of their analysis are extremely valuable and it's a damn shame the anti-communist tendencies have swept that under the rug. By stating that evolution is an amoral process, I completely condemn any form of Social Darwinism: you cannot derive moral values from amoral principles. Evolution is completely amoral: that which reproduces itself, will continue to exist in some form, independent of our moral judgment about it. Social Darwinists are therefore guilty of the naturalistic fallacy However, the same goes for capitalism: that which increases capital the most stays in the best position to keep increasing capital. Because of irrationality and a lack of market transparency, the best moral intentions on the part of individual humans cannot prevent immoral consequences from arising. I'm not saying any of those immoral consequences are unique to capitalism. I am saying they are unavoidable when you let capitalism go unchecked. It's not clear why the government is the only institution in society that can avoid failure And I cannot prove it is. However, as far as I can see, no other institution has the power nor the mandate to guide capitalist forces. This is the exact reason you have things like the Federal Trade Commission and an Antitrust Division in the DoJ, both on a government level. Who else could do that job?