Capitalism part 2
Capitalism part 2
Capitalism has an evolution just like the prophet motive. In fact they went, came, and are going hand in hand.
When thomas more wrote utopia, he himself was both a believer in the authority of the church and a idealist supporter of communal prosperity and the working class. Mind you, he was conflicted as all intellectuals, no matter who or what ideal they represent, should be.
Utopia coined from greek word meaning "no place". Also puns on greek word-eutopia, a happy or fortunate place.
Utopia and dystopia, contradictory perfections. Dystopia is a form of perfection whereby people function on a level that repetition and denial of reality seem to overwhelm any possibility of changing to a more efficient or improved social system less akin to a mouse on a wheel.
Utopia on the other hand is an imagined system (since no utopias are currently functioning in this world of disorder and dysfunction) whereby the social system is designed or redesigned in order to be more efficient and less dysfunctional, usually by a consensus, direct representation, direct vote,
Since dantes inferno and the catholic churchs official invention of heaven, after death, utopias and futuristic dystopia.
If one could write the perfect utopian novel, all characters will look like the perfect subjects of a rigid dictatorship, thus through the universal law of irony, dystopia becomes the novels theme.
Ideas of heaven, perfection of the soul, of god himself, are all tropes for the reasoning that perfection is possibility, constantly tinkering with control to reach an irreversible perfect society, where if argument exists, then its only to reach a consensus.
His perfect society as represented by Raphael, the utopian visiter narrator of the story, contained all of the idealisms-sharing of resources, equality of work between occupations and surprisingly, sexes, freedom of religion with the belief that most people would eventually see the light when it came to the Church, but, maybe most of all, the belief that human beings living in a stable and secure environment are basically good.
But in case utopians ran into less enlightened peoples, the narrator outlined how utopians would conduct their disagreements with other nation states, a sort of opposable thumb rendition to the fist like hard philosophy of machiavelli.
Utopians would avoid confrontation and war almost at all costs, preferring direct and immediate negotiations.
And there is a discussion of capitalism and communism ( remember this is 1520) that could be taken out of the red scare pamplets of early nineteen hundred arguments about the same thing. Will someone who gets the necessities of life, i.e. food, shelter, water, and attention, the same as everyone else through work and communal (read communistic social behavior) have enough incentive to live? Or if the individual has a right to use the work of others for their own profit without a commitment to the general social good, will there be stability, security, and cohesion?
Our history books are filled with inclinations to transpose some sort of communal idealism unto the profit motive, such as a belief that modern society has adopted the supposed good thing about communal life-equality, justice, security, universal commitment to the social order, etc- while demanding compliance to a larger, more unstable aspects of a nation state-war, economic instability by having a banking industry managed by profit and expedience and indebtedness), inequality within the hierarchy of various social and working classes, just to name a few.
Of course, this managed and controlled social orientation is deceptive since there is very little reason for anyone to believe an alternative can be considered. Most of the modern, powerful nation states have already institutionalized their weaknesses, without admittance there is any weakness, thus assuring their demise, which unfortunately is such a slow process, taking generations, it may always look as if its the beginning of the end until it is the end.
It is very hard for utopians of any sort to be believable these days, for most progressive, intellectual, or political idealists from both the left and right wings can barely see the real light of day. Many believe that universally, everyone can be brought up to the standard of a typical middle-class life by either believing there is enough to go around or there should be enough with proper management of resources. Some believe that humanity is innately inhumane so more authority in the right places is what needs to be done. Some say nuke em, others say de nuke.
How do we manage all these threats and possible alternatives?In todays world, thats part of the problem, too many choices that aren't really choices because we've come to believe everything's possible.
Our decisions arent about living anymore, at least for those who do have a middle class life. Those who dont have a middle class life, dont have so many choices and, to tell the truth, dont really care about those who think working to survive is outdated and let their trusts, 401s, investments, and gambling speak for them on the marketplace of ideas. No matter that nearly everyones pension plans now are so compromised by corporate/capital profits in weapons, defense, intelligence, space, risk taking that it is impossible to extract ones own progressive philosophy from the ulterior motives of making the most money.
And what about money itself? Aside from believing in it as a contrived management of value based exchange, the entire original premise that paper had value behind it in form of gold and silver has become obsolete since gold and silver were confiscated by governmental decree, weve had to accept another degree of separation of value for goods and services.
Another example of unproven concepts borrowed from social communalism is unionism. Partial unionism, as we have it here, is derived from old beliefs in the expertise of trade occupations over general "jack of all trades" type of services.
All working people should be vested in improving their own lives as well as the lives of others. We are all united in that way. Despite the nazi's confiscating the "Work will set you free" communal call and turning it into a holocaust trope, it is work that keeps us together.
Capitalism and Fascism use work as a weapon in order to control the outcomes within the social order. Marx also used work as the basis for revolution of an eventual classless society but the Russian revolution has gone far away from uniting the working class and now, just like the western capitalist nations, has usurped imperial and dynastic conquest as its motivation. We're all left between a rock and a hard place. which could be a good thing if we learn to use a hammer, a sledge hammer, to free ourselves, figuratively speaking, of course.
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