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Why can't government provided services co-exist with private services?
It can and does in many places, especially in Europe. We have that here too to some extent, although I'd prefer it if the private insurance companies providing basic healthcare coverage were non-profit organizations (i.e., using surplus funds to further improve care instead of distributing it to owners or shareholders).
This is what I say to any blatantly pro-free market person who is into Buddhism:
Please explain how a free market society would practice compassion and reduce suffering, especially in an Objectivist/Agorist/Libertarian sense? I see a wholly free market to be essentially Social Darwinism, with a few rich philanthropists donating money.
Hey, are you from revleft?:) I agree with your views on free market; socialism is the way to go, especially for a Buddhist or any religious person, for that matter.
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heres a question, does life expectancy egual a better healthcare system? consider that people die from causes that have nothing to do with healthcare. car accidents, homicides, all kinds of things.
the life expectancy of utah is 78.7 years while the life expectancy of nevada is 75.8. does utah have better healthcare?
studies WHO is the UN. the UN is not a freedom loving organization and there methods of determing data are suspect at best.
i dont pretend to speak for all libertarians, i can only speak for myself and the few i know. no one thinks government should be abolished. a well watched government with an involved populace is the best organization you could hope for, for the exact reasons you've stated. there are lots of things that a government has to handle that the private sector cant. prime example, prisons. did you know that a shit ton of prisons are privately operated? thats just wrong. i dont know how many are i remember hearing that its a booming business. making money off of prisoners is a really, really bad idea. as you can see, i dont think we should privatize everything. just most things.
i cant think of a single thing that the government runs efficiently. even things i dont want run by a private business, the government runs them terribly. not even the military is efficient. believe me i served for seven and a half years. i could give you countless exapmles of waste. as a result of governments natural inefficency, i really dont want them handling my healthcare. however, and this is important, i dont want the healthcare system to be without oversight. there are way too many chances for abuse to not have oversight.
we do have a government dunded health insurance already called medicare and medicaid, and they arent very good. many doctors wont even accept it.
also, heres something. how does a company grow if it is unable to make a profit? if the company doesnt make a profit it closes. non-profits rely only on the noble intentions of those who run it. as i said, not everyones a nice guy. also how many non-profits have helped to advance our society? im sure there are some, especially ones that help with diseases, but i am definetly curious to see a comparison of the good done by non-profits vs for-profits entities.
btw bill gates donates an insane amount of his wealth. if it wasnt for capitalism he wouldnt have been able to make the money in the first place.
also, heres something. how does a company grow if it is unable to make a profit? if the company doesnt make a profit it closes. non-profits rely only on the noble intentions of those who run it. as i said, not everyones a nice guy. also how many non-profits have helped to advance our society? im sure there are some, especially ones that help with diseases, but i am definetly curious to see a comparison of the good done by non-profits vs for-profits entities.
To me, this shows you don't really understand what a non-profit is or how it functions. Non-profits make money and pay all their employees, including administrators; they simply use surplus funds to expand and further improve services instead of distributing it to owners or shareholders.
jason, you keep asking me what rights are. your claim, if i have it correctly is that rights come from the society you live in. if this is true, where do basic human rights fit in? is it ok for a society to lock someone up because they speak out, as china has done to liu xiabo? if his rights come from the state then it is.
id like your thoughts on that.
or slavery for that matter? is slavery ok because the society says so? or is it inherently wrong to deprive someone of their freedom?
youre right im not up on the details of non-profits, but a quick google showed them to be mostly charities and such. i dont think a charity would be able to make all the societal advances we have.
studies WHO is the UN. the UN is not a freedom loving organization and there methods of determing data are suspect at best.
Surely that's not the best counterargument you can come up with. You can do better than that.
i dont pretend to speak for all libertarians, i can only speak for myself and the few i know. no one thinks government should be abolished. a well watched government with an involved populace is the best organization you could hope for, for the exact reasons you've stated. there are lots of things that a government has to handle that the private sector cant. prime example, prisons. did you know that a shit ton of prisons are privately operated? thats just wrong. i dont know how many are i remember hearing that its a booming business. making money off of prisoners is a really, really bad idea. as you can see, i dont think we should privatize everything. just most things.
Well, we can definitely agree that privatizing prisons is really bad idea. We can also agree that a well-watched government with an involved citizenry is one the best organizations we can hope for. I also don't think government should do everything, so we can agree about that too.
I think that people reaaaally don't know what socialism is... and the posts in this thread are a prove of it. I even think that there are lots of people, specially buddhists, whose ideas would easily fall in the side of left-wing thought... the thing is that they are scared (specially people from the USA) to admit some kind of relation of their thought to socialism, because they have been indoctrinated (as consequences of second world war mostly) that socialism is the same as saying: STALIN, CASTRO, CHÁVEZ, etc.
What interests us, at least the ones who study philosophy, is not the political ideology per se, neither the person behind it (that is, Marx), but Marx's philosophy. A philosophy that has strongly social consequences (as in reality any kind of thought has), and that shows a particular point of view on how to think the problem of social interrelations.
Think of it, things like capitalism deposits it faith on totally artificial and virtual entities and in petitio principii regarding human nature.
Outside the U.S. there is not this phobia of socialism. For instance the hysteria over "socialist medicine" in the American heathcare debate was unique to that cultural warpfield. The whole spectrum has shifted to the right, so that the right end of the spectrum is living in a paranoid fantasy.
Philosophy is nice and all, a lot of great things have spawned from philosophy. However, if it has no real world applications, then it's pretty useless.
Alfonso, how would you go about putting Marx's philosophy in action?
Also, where did socialism go wrong in Russia? When did it cease to be Marxism and became totalitarianism?
jason, you keep asking me what rights are. your claim, if i have it correctly is that rights come from the society you live in. if this is true, where do basic human rights fit in? is it ok for a society to lock someone up because they speak out, as china has done to liu xiabo? if his rights come from the state then it is.
id like your thoughts on that.
or slavery for that matter? is slavery ok because the society says so? or is it inherently wrong to deprive someone of their freedom?
As I've repeatedly said, I think rights are better understood as the product of social agreement and endeavour. Governments are composed of individuals, and a consensus among those individuals, as a collective group, is generally where we acquire the 'rules and regulations' we live by. While good ideas, I don't think what you call 'basic human rights' are some eternal natural laws like gravity that are always there and immutable.
Of course, it depends on what you mean by 'basic human right,' but I'd argue that we understand as basic human rights is something that predominately Western society has more or less come to some agreement on following WWII, thanks in no small part to the 'non-freedom loving' UN (e.g., see the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). These ideas aren't limited to the West, of course, this is just where I think their roots lie.
When it comes to prisons, I don't think it's inherently right or wrong to imprison someone, but our justifications for doing so depend on a variety of factors, such as a society's culture, history, the specific circumstances involved and how they're interpreted, etc.
For example, when a person who's deemed a danger to society is imprisoned, most people don't protest because they want to be safe from harm. The question is, how do you define who's 'dangerous'? In your example, the Chinese government feels his pro-democratic activities and writings are a threat to the state. Do I agree with imprisoning him? No. But China doesn't have a Constitution protecting free speech, and most Chinese are supportive of their government, so to them it's justified and perhaps even necessary. Simply saying that it violates his basic human rights won't change that fact.
As for slavery, I think it's a horrible thing. But what you have to realize is that our ideas about it have evolved over time. There's no cosmic law dictating that it's right or wrong, and there have been many cultures throughout history (including ours) that saw slavery in some shape or form as natural or justifiably necessary. Thankfully, we've matured somewhat as a species and now look upon slavery less favourably, but this is certainly not how it always was.
jason if youre view on rights is correct, that a persons life is subject to the approval of the majority, then lynchings are ok. do you see what im saying?
Philosophy is nice and all, a lot of great things have spawned from philosophy. However, if it has no real world applications, then it's pretty useless.
Alfonso, how would you go about putting Marx's philosophy in action?
Also, where did socialism go wrong in Russia? When did it cease to be Marxism and became totalitarianism?
I don't like discussing to much this, certainly not with people from the USA. I think you should study more... really. Socialism is not what they teach you in schools in the USA.
For example, the socialists international heavily dislikes communism.
Also, about the authoritarianism issue: Do you know about Chile in the '73? About how socialism (through Allende) got to power by means of legitimate democracy? About Pinochet? About USA helping the coup d'état? Not only in Chile, but also in almost every coup d'état in Latin america (and through the world). Who are the real authoritarians?
I think that anyone who really wants to criticize socialism, really should know about Chile's political history in the '73. Not because it is my country, but because we were building socialism in democracy... and guess who didn't let that happen.
Alfonso, I am not from USA. I am an Australian, born in Ukraine.
No, I know nothing about Chile in '73. Yes, I know America has conducted many coups and has overthrown many foreign Government... they're still doing it.
Alfonso, I am not from USA. I am an Australian, born in Ukraine.
No, I know nothing about Chile in '73. Yes, I know America has conducted many coups and has overthrown many foreign Government... they're still doing it.
Also, where did socialism go wrong in Russia? When did it cease to be Marxism and became totalitarianism?
Whew, that's a topic in and of itself. But the short answer is, Russia was never socialist to begin with. Technically speaking, socialism is an economic system, not a form of government. While governments can be more or less socialistic, socialism itself is a mass movement towards economic democracy—collectively owned and democratically controlled production based on need rather than profit.
While some types of socialism have taken the form of state socialism, whereby the state becomes the sole capitalist in the name of the people, this method has proven to be the best way to unsuccessfully implement socialism and lead to the installment of repressive totalitarian regimes that exploit their citizens more than capitalism ever could, e.g., the authoritarian and militaristic style of socialism that dominated China and Russia.
In most cases of 'socialism', the state claims they are the 'representatives' of the working-class, but the fact of the matter is that the state is almost always in charge of the country's means of production, not the workers themselves. If one defines socialism as an economic system characterized by worker control and ownership of the means of productions, then state control and ownership, even if it's in the name of the workers, isn't technically socialism. This very point was made by Wilhelm Liebknecht in 1896 when he said:
Nobody has combatted State Socialism more than we German Socialists; nobody has shown more distinctively than I, that State Socialism is really State capitalism!
Frederick Engels also made this distinction a decade earlier when he argued in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific that state-ownership of certain industries isn't the same thing as socialism, nor does it solve the problems inherent in the capitalist system, most notably the exploitation of its working-class citizens. In fact, he argued that "the more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit." The USSR is the perfect example of this.
Engels argued that state capitalism "does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces," and that it would be an even more oppressive system than capitalism on its own. The only bright spot he saw was that it would become so oppressive it would hasten the revolution and, with it, capitalism's iinevitable downfall. Unfortunately, this didn't prove to be the case in Russia.
Russia didn't have an industrialized capitalist economy to begin with (which is a key theoretical component for the successful transition of a capitalist economy to a socialist one) and was relying on other advanced industrialized countries such as German to join its revolution for it to succeed — which, of course, didn't happen — and that's one of the main reasons why socialism failed there. Both Lenin and Trotsky acknowledged this. To add to this, the Russian working class itself was decimated on the front lines of WWI and the Russian Civil War, as well as by famine, and the Bolshevik Party basically ended up substituting itself for the working class by taking over its role in the government.
After two relatively bloodless revolutions — the first being a spontaneous event that lead to the abdication of the Tsar in February of 1917 and the second being the removal the unpopular and ineffective Provisional Government by the Bolshevik Party in October of the same year — the country erupted into civil war, and the Allied Power's intervention in Russia's Civil War on the side of pro-monarchist and anti-Bolshevik forces didn't help matters any.
During this time, the Bolshevik-lead government became increasingly more brutal and repressive in an effort to hold on to power amidst the chaos and upheaval. They suppressed rival political organizations and began taking away power from what was left of the directly democratic workers' councils (i.e., soviets) that consisted of worker-elected delegates with both legislative and executive powers. Even after the civil war was over, however, the state kept control under the guise of protecting the revolution from the ever-present threat of counterrevolution. Russian workers were never really free to organize and make their own decisions. It was either the Communist Party's way or the gulag. (Ironically enough, it was the Communist Party itself that effectively killed the revolution in the end.) These events paved the way for Josef Stalin's eventual rise to power, his adoption of Bukharin's idea of 'socialism in one country' and the formation of the USSR.
Now, it could very well be that Russia would have ended up becoming a repressive, totalitarian state even if the Allied powers hadn't interfered in their civil war on the side of pro-monarchist and anti-Bolshevik (which was basically done to keep Russia in WWI), but I don't think we can say that with any real certainty.
As for government run economies, such as the kind that developed in Russia, I think they've failed miserably for the most part. But I still think that socialism in some form can work, and that a radical economic transformation in which the exploitation, alienation and commodity fetishism of the present system are gradually eliminated via a more socialized mode of production is possible. I don't think that socialism can be forced onto people through a violent revolution by a small band of professional revolutionaries and their followers, however. Like democracy, for socialism to have any chance of being successful anywhere, it must be an experiment conducted with the consent of the majority of the people. Positive change rarely comes from the barrel of a gun.
jason if youre view on rights is correct, that a persons life is subject to the approval of the majority, then lynchings are ok. do you see what im saying?
Yes, I see where you're coming from, but I think you're confusing rights with morality (I think they're related, but I don't consider them analogous); and to be honestly, I'm not a very big fan of moral absolutism. In fact, here's something I wrote about it once:
I don't like killing. I don't even like the thought of it. But that doesn't mean there's some cosmic dictate that states it's evil and wrong under any circumstance. And even if there was, what about people like Hitler? If you say that things like murder and genocide are always wrong, but people like Hitler are evil and must be stopped at any cost, does that mean it's OK to murder and entire group of people if they're all like Hitler?
If the answer's yes, then it'd appear that such moral 'absolutes' aren't very absolute, and if the answer's no, then evil has a natural advantage over good in that it's protected by these absolutes even as it transgresses them with wild abandon.
Objectively speaking, I can't say that anything is right or wrong, but I have no trouble doing so subjectively. I don't like the thought of killing or being killed, and it's easy for me to see how other people tend to feel the same way; therefore, I can at least see how such actions are relatively right or wrong based upon this point of reference. But I don't believe the universe is designed in such a way as to make any specific action done by human beings absolutely right or wrong (remember, we're not the only animals who kill, etc.).
The way I see it, we simply experience the results of our actions in ways that are interpreted to be right or wrong based upon a myriad of factors, some of which may be unique to our species. The main reason I take this relativistic position is the fact that I've yet to discover an immutable source or basis for such absolutes besides the fact that I find them repugnant.
If I knew without a doubt that there was such a basis, then my position would certainly change, but I'm currently unconvinced of its existence. I can see how these actions are morally right and wrong from a human-centric point of view, but I fail to see an objective seat from which they can be judged one or the other in any absolute sense.
If you can show me some immutable basis for morality and human rights, I'll be more than happy to change my mind and agree with you that they're somehow inherent and not contingent upon anything. As for the dangers of 'mob rule,' I think James Madison actually came up with an imperfect but ingenious solution to that in the context of governance.
Like most forms of government centered around property rights, the basic principle behind the establishment of our form of representative democracy had more to do with the ruling elites wanting to protect the small minority of property owners (including themselves) from the majority of the propertyless than anything else. As James Madison put it in Federalist No. 10, "… the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society."
The Federalist Papers were a series of essays arguing for the ratification of our Constitution. Federalist No. 10, written by Madison, addresses the question of factions, which he defines as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
Believing that an individual's "interest would certainly bias his judgement, and not improbably, corrupt his integrity," he saw a groups of individuals, or factions, as an even greater threat to individual liberty, even though paradoxically, he saw liberty as the cause by which factions arise. His solution, then, was to try to control the effects of factions within American society. This could be accomplished, he argued, by the establishment of a republic in favour of a direct democracy. (And the representatives in this new republic were initially elected by a select few, namely white, male property owners. Fancy that.)
While I agree with Madison, albeit somewhat reluctantly, about the dangers of having a majority of citizens who are united and motivated by a common interest who can take away the rights of the minority of other citizens, this can just as easily lead to the reverse, e.g., a minority of wealthy/propertied interests excluding the majority of poor/propertyless from voting. But all in all, I think it's still a good argument for a constitution-based, representative government in which the majority prevails while also including certain protections for minorities that discourage abuse, like lynchings.
Of course, lynchings still happened in the US, and they happened a lot, especially in the early 1900s. It's pretty horrific period in US history. The thing is, even if you say that human rights are natural, immutable, innate, etc., what good does that actually do? How will that in and of itself stop someone from killing another person and taking away their 'right to life'? The way I see it, if a person wants to kill you, the only thing that can stop them is you, a third party (e.g., law enforcement) or they can stop themselves. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I think we should make human rights a moral and legal standard; I simply have trouble saying that they've always existed as they're currently defined.
And just for reference, here's an interesting talk I watched recently dealing with the biological basis for morality: Morality: From the Heavens or From Nature? (Here I agree Dr. Thomas that morality is 'natural' in the sense that it comes from the 'evolved architecture' of our minds, and I'd argue that our conceptions of rights have evolved out this, as well as from the evolved architecture of human culture.)
i agree with you jason on the morality side of things. i find it hard to believe in an absolute morality. think on this, that madison purposefully created a set of rules (the constitution) in which various factions would continuously vie for more power only the structure of the system prevents anyone faction from gaining the upper hand.
its not a matter of what "good" it does if rights are natural. its the fact that individuals have an innate desire to do what they want. and your absolutely right it does require you (or a third party) to prevent someone from taking your freedom.
i know youve heard the saying freedom isnt free, and believe me it isnt. i spent 7 and half years in the army and going to iraq sucked balls. i believe, that the prinicples that amerca was founded upon are the absolute highest one can imagine. and the single principle that all others stem from is that individuals have the right to be free.
however i very much disagree with the idea of god given rights. i believe that anything given has no value. if you ran a marathon and came in third but they gave you first, would that trophy mean as much?
the idea of freedom comes from mans ability to think for himself. to reason. you cant take that away. even if you lock a man in an empty lightless cell, he still has his thoughts. and though his mind will most certainly crack, they are still HIS thoughts.
thats how i see it.
one more thing. while the founding fathers had this tremendous idea and did great things, they were still just men. smart maybe, but not entirely fallible. im pretty sure that everyone agrees that everyone makes mistakes. including the founding fathers. the two biggest mistakes were the treatment of blacks and indians. first, before anyone tries to say it, iam not condoning slavery. depriving anyone of their freedom, as ive said, is the utmost "sin" one can commit. and the handling of the indian affairs, was despicable.
however and i dont have the book on hand at the moment to quote this correctly, but shortly after the country was founded, while washington was still president he attempted to negotiate a peace with, i believe the creek indians. there were a lot of factors that prevented this from happening, but the "moral" of the story is that washington at least recognized the way the indians had been treated was wrong and that we desperatley needed to change it.
as for slavery, had the founding fathers attempted to erradicated at the outset, the united states would never have come about. the southern colonies would never have signed off on it, however the framers made certain that it would one day be addressed. one of those was changing the words "life, liberty, and property" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" this was done so the southern states would not be able to use the term "property" as an excuse to keep their slaves. many men, including john adams deplored slavery.
the only reason i bring those two things up is that everytime i talk about how awesome the founders were someone inevitably brings them up. youre right. they made mistakes. but they knew it, and made sure that things could be fixed by future generations. the very fact that you can ammend the constitution is proof that they recognized that they might have made mistakes.
its not a matter of what "good" it does if rights are natural. its the fact that individuals have an innate desire to do what they want. and your absolutely right it does require you (or a third party) to prevent someone from taking your freedom.
Which is sort of a dilemma if you think about it. If individuals have an innate desire to do what they want, and one individual desires to subjugate another because they're stronger, isn't that also 'natural'?
i feel like we are going in circles with the rights thing. we need to try to get this straight and maybe clarify what we are saying. just thinking out loud here. its gettin late for me.
it may be natural but it conflicts with the others desire to not be subjugated.
Exactly. So these 'natural desires' are sometimes in conflict, which is why I think it's better to approach the issue of rights from the perspective of social agreement and endeavour than conflicting natural desires.
i feel like we are going in circles with the rights thing. we need to try to get this straight and maybe clarify what we are saying. just thinking out loud here. its gettin late for me.
Perhaps you're right. It might not hurt to let this issue rest for a while. I've got a lot of work to do tomorrow, anyway.
John. This is an interesting discussion, and it is interesting to see the view of particular national mindset (we all have one), but this has no place on the cushion. The polarity of Individualism and collectivism is not fabricated on the cushion. Political theory is not fabricated on the cushion.
It means actually practicing Buddha Dharma. We can't be practicing and at the same time be attached to the views we are musing about on this thread. It is an opportunity to look at that attachment.
i see what youre saying. respectfully, i didnt start this thread, and political theory is the most important discussion you can have, shy of religion (maybe) because what the politicians do has a huge impact on your life. besides that a lot of what we have talked about requires deep contemplation.
also i feel much closer to jason now than i do anyone else on this forum, simply because we have shared a lot of our personal thoughts and ideas.
It's great that you feel close to someone through the exchange of these ideas. Political ideas are important, we do have to make choices. I was just bringing it back to practice.
Comments
It can and does in many places, especially in Europe. We have that here too to some extent, although I'd prefer it if the private insurance companies providing basic healthcare coverage were non-profit organizations (i.e., using surplus funds to further improve care instead of distributing it to owners or shareholders).
Hey, are you from revleft?:) I agree with your views on free market; socialism is the way to go, especially for a Buddhist or any religious person, for that matter.
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the life expectancy of utah is 78.7 years while the life expectancy of nevada is 75.8. does utah have better healthcare?
studies WHO is the UN. the UN is not a freedom loving organization and there methods of determing data are suspect at best.
i dont pretend to speak for all libertarians, i can only speak for myself and the few i know. no one thinks government should be abolished. a well watched government with an involved populace is the best organization you could hope for, for the exact reasons you've stated. there are lots of things that a government has to handle that the private sector cant. prime example, prisons. did you know that a shit ton of prisons are privately operated? thats just wrong. i dont know how many are i remember hearing that its a booming business. making money off of prisoners is a really, really bad idea. as you can see, i dont think we should privatize everything. just most things.
i cant think of a single thing that the government runs efficiently. even things i dont want run by a private business, the government runs them terribly. not even the military is efficient. believe me i served for seven and a half years. i could give you countless exapmles of waste. as a result of governments natural inefficency, i really dont want them handling my healthcare. however, and this is important, i dont want the healthcare system to be without oversight. there are way too many chances for abuse to not have oversight.
also, heres something. how does a company grow if it is unable to make a profit? if the company doesnt make a profit it closes. non-profits rely only on the noble intentions of those who run it. as i said, not everyones a nice guy. also how many non-profits have helped to advance our society? im sure there are some, especially ones that help with diseases, but i am definetly curious to see a comparison of the good done by non-profits vs for-profits entities.
btw bill gates donates an insane amount of his wealth. if it wasnt for capitalism he wouldnt have been able to make the money in the first place.
To me, this shows you don't really understand what a non-profit is or how it functions. Non-profits make money and pay all their employees, including administrators; they simply use surplus funds to expand and further improve services instead of distributing it to owners or shareholders.
id like your thoughts on that.
or slavery for that matter? is slavery ok because the society says so? or is it inherently wrong to deprive someone of their freedom?
Surely that's not the best counterargument you can come up with. You can do better than that.
Well, we can definitely agree that privatizing prisons is really bad idea. We can also agree that a well-watched government with an involved citizenry is one the best organizations we can hope for. I also don't think government should do everything, so we can agree about that too.
What interests us, at least the ones who study philosophy, is not the political ideology per se, neither the person behind it (that is, Marx), but Marx's philosophy. A philosophy that has strongly social consequences (as in reality any kind of thought has), and that shows a particular point of view on how to think the problem of social interrelations.
Think of it, things like capitalism deposits it faith on totally artificial and virtual entities and in petitio principii regarding human nature.
P.S.: Good thing to read Jason's posts
It is becoming bizzare and disconnected.
Alfonso, how would you go about putting Marx's philosophy in action?
Also, where did socialism go wrong in Russia? When did it cease to be Marxism and became totalitarianism?
As I've repeatedly said, I think rights are better understood as the product of social agreement and endeavour. Governments are composed of individuals, and a consensus among those individuals, as a collective group, is generally where we acquire the 'rules and regulations' we live by. While good ideas, I don't think what you call 'basic human rights' are some eternal natural laws like gravity that are always there and immutable.
Of course, it depends on what you mean by 'basic human right,' but I'd argue that we understand as basic human rights is something that predominately Western society has more or less come to some agreement on following WWII, thanks in no small part to the 'non-freedom loving' UN (e.g., see the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). These ideas aren't limited to the West, of course, this is just where I think their roots lie.
When it comes to prisons, I don't think it's inherently right or wrong to imprison someone, but our justifications for doing so depend on a variety of factors, such as a society's culture, history, the specific circumstances involved and how they're interpreted, etc.
For example, when a person who's deemed a danger to society is imprisoned, most people don't protest because they want to be safe from harm. The question is, how do you define who's 'dangerous'? In your example, the Chinese government feels his pro-democratic activities and writings are a threat to the state. Do I agree with imprisoning him? No. But China doesn't have a Constitution protecting free speech, and most Chinese are supportive of their government, so to them it's justified and perhaps even necessary. Simply saying that it violates his basic human rights won't change that fact.
As for slavery, I think it's a horrible thing. But what you have to realize is that our ideas about it have evolved over time. There's no cosmic law dictating that it's right or wrong, and there have been many cultures throughout history (including ours) that saw slavery in some shape or form as natural or justifiably necessary. Thankfully, we've matured somewhat as a species and now look upon slavery less favourably, but this is certainly not how it always was.
For example, the socialists international heavily dislikes communism.
Also, about the authoritarianism issue: Do you know about Chile in the '73? About how socialism (through Allende) got to power by means of legitimate democracy? About Pinochet? About USA helping the coup d'état? Not only in Chile, but also in almost every coup d'état in Latin america (and through the world). Who are the real authoritarians?
I think that anyone who really wants to criticize socialism, really should know about Chile's political history in the '73. Not because it is my country, but because we were building socialism in democracy... and guess who didn't let that happen.
From talking to the locals, that's not the vibe I got when I was there.
No, I know nothing about Chile in '73. Yes, I know America has conducted many coups and has overthrown many foreign Government... they're still doing it.
A short video with Allende's last speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZnEKw5pcc8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_presidential_election,_1970 (english translation in the description of the video)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende
Whew, that's a topic in and of itself. But the short answer is, Russia was never socialist to begin with. Technically speaking, socialism is an economic system, not a form of government. While governments can be more or less socialistic, socialism itself is a mass movement towards economic democracy—collectively owned and democratically controlled production based on need rather than profit.
While some types of socialism have taken the form of state socialism, whereby the state becomes the sole capitalist in the name of the people, this method has proven to be the best way to unsuccessfully implement socialism and lead to the installment of repressive totalitarian regimes that exploit their citizens more than capitalism ever could, e.g., the authoritarian and militaristic style of socialism that dominated China and Russia.
In most cases of 'socialism', the state claims they are the 'representatives' of the working-class, but the fact of the matter is that the state is almost always in charge of the country's means of production, not the workers themselves. If one defines socialism as an economic system characterized by worker control and ownership of the means of productions, then state control and ownership, even if it's in the name of the workers, isn't technically socialism. This very point was made by Wilhelm Liebknecht in 1896 when he said:
Frederick Engels also made this distinction a decade earlier when he argued in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific that state-ownership of certain industries isn't the same thing as socialism, nor does it solve the problems inherent in the capitalist system, most notably the exploitation of its working-class citizens. In fact, he argued that "the more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit." The USSR is the perfect example of this.
Engels argued that state capitalism "does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces," and that it would be an even more oppressive system than capitalism on its own. The only bright spot he saw was that it would become so oppressive it would hasten the revolution and, with it, capitalism's iinevitable downfall. Unfortunately, this didn't prove to be the case in Russia.
Russia didn't have an industrialized capitalist economy to begin with (which is a key theoretical component for the successful transition of a capitalist economy to a socialist one) and was relying on other advanced industrialized countries such as German to join its revolution for it to succeed — which, of course, didn't happen — and that's one of the main reasons why socialism failed there. Both Lenin and Trotsky acknowledged this. To add to this, the Russian working class itself was decimated on the front lines of WWI and the Russian Civil War, as well as by famine, and the Bolshevik Party basically ended up substituting itself for the working class by taking over its role in the government.
After two relatively bloodless revolutions — the first being a spontaneous event that lead to the abdication of the Tsar in February of 1917 and the second being the removal the unpopular and ineffective Provisional Government by the Bolshevik Party in October of the same year — the country erupted into civil war, and the Allied Power's intervention in Russia's Civil War on the side of pro-monarchist and anti-Bolshevik forces didn't help matters any.
During this time, the Bolshevik-lead government became increasingly more brutal and repressive in an effort to hold on to power amidst the chaos and upheaval. They suppressed rival political organizations and began taking away power from what was left of the directly democratic workers' councils (i.e., soviets) that consisted of worker-elected delegates with both legislative and executive powers. Even after the civil war was over, however, the state kept control under the guise of protecting the revolution from the ever-present threat of counterrevolution. Russian workers were never really free to organize and make their own decisions. It was either the Communist Party's way or the gulag. (Ironically enough, it was the Communist Party itself that effectively killed the revolution in the end.) These events paved the way for Josef Stalin's eventual rise to power, his adoption of Bukharin's idea of 'socialism in one country' and the formation of the USSR.
Now, it could very well be that Russia would have ended up becoming a repressive, totalitarian state even if the Allied powers hadn't interfered in their civil war on the side of pro-monarchist and anti-Bolshevik (which was basically done to keep Russia in WWI), but I don't think we can say that with any real certainty.
As for government run economies, such as the kind that developed in Russia, I think they've failed miserably for the most part. But I still think that socialism in some form can work, and that a radical economic transformation in which the exploitation, alienation and commodity fetishism of the present system are gradually eliminated via a more socialized mode of production is possible. I don't think that socialism can be forced onto people through a violent revolution by a small band of professional revolutionaries and their followers, however. Like democracy, for socialism to have any chance of being successful anywhere, it must be an experiment conducted with the consent of the majority of the people. Positive change rarely comes from the barrel of a gun.
And while I'm not sure how such a system could be successfully implemented, I like David Schweickart's ideas on what he calls "Economic Democracy" (e.g., see Economic Democracy: A Worthy Socialism That Would Really Work). I've also seen some promising examples of successful worker-owned companies whose dynamics are a lot different than the typical top-down structure, e.g., Alvarado Street Bakery, Big Carrot, Brainpark, Cooperative Home Care Associates, MONDRAGON and, to some extent, Weirton Steel, even though it eventually went out of business.
I've got uni exams right now, but after that I'll be sure to go through the links you have provided.
Yes, I see where you're coming from, but I think you're confusing rights with morality (I think they're related, but I don't consider them analogous); and to be honestly, I'm not a very big fan of moral absolutism. In fact, here's something I wrote about it once:
If the answer's yes, then it'd appear that such moral 'absolutes' aren't very absolute, and if the answer's no, then evil has a natural advantage over good in that it's protected by these absolutes even as it transgresses them with wild abandon.
Objectively speaking, I can't say that anything is right or wrong, but I have no trouble doing so subjectively. I don't like the thought of killing or being killed, and it's easy for me to see how other people tend to feel the same way; therefore, I can at least see how such actions are relatively right or wrong based upon this point of reference. But I don't believe the universe is designed in such a way as to make any specific action done by human beings absolutely right or wrong (remember, we're not the only animals who kill, etc.).
The way I see it, we simply experience the results of our actions in ways that are interpreted to be right or wrong based upon a myriad of factors, some of which may be unique to our species. The main reason I take this relativistic position is the fact that I've yet to discover an immutable source or basis for such absolutes besides the fact that I find them repugnant.
If I knew without a doubt that there was such a basis, then my position would certainly change, but I'm currently unconvinced of its existence. I can see how these actions are morally right and wrong from a human-centric point of view, but I fail to see an objective seat from which they can be judged one or the other in any absolute sense.
If you can show me some immutable basis for morality and human rights, I'll be more than happy to change my mind and agree with you that they're somehow inherent and not contingent upon anything. As for the dangers of 'mob rule,' I think James Madison actually came up with an imperfect but ingenious solution to that in the context of governance.
Like most forms of government centered around property rights, the basic principle behind the establishment of our form of representative democracy had more to do with the ruling elites wanting to protect the small minority of property owners (including themselves) from the majority of the propertyless than anything else. As James Madison put it in Federalist No. 10, "… the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society."
The Federalist Papers were a series of essays arguing for the ratification of our Constitution. Federalist No. 10, written by Madison, addresses the question of factions, which he defines as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
Believing that an individual's "interest would certainly bias his judgement, and not improbably, corrupt his integrity," he saw a groups of individuals, or factions, as an even greater threat to individual liberty, even though paradoxically, he saw liberty as the cause by which factions arise. His solution, then, was to try to control the effects of factions within American society. This could be accomplished, he argued, by the establishment of a republic in favour of a direct democracy. (And the representatives in this new republic were initially elected by a select few, namely white, male property owners. Fancy that.)
While I agree with Madison, albeit somewhat reluctantly, about the dangers of having a majority of citizens who are united and motivated by a common interest who can take away the rights of the minority of other citizens, this can just as easily lead to the reverse, e.g., a minority of wealthy/propertied interests excluding the majority of poor/propertyless from voting. But all in all, I think it's still a good argument for a constitution-based, representative government in which the majority prevails while also including certain protections for minorities that discourage abuse, like lynchings.
Of course, lynchings still happened in the US, and they happened a lot, especially in the early 1900s. It's pretty horrific period in US history. The thing is, even if you say that human rights are natural, immutable, innate, etc., what good does that actually do? How will that in and of itself stop someone from killing another person and taking away their 'right to life'? The way I see it, if a person wants to kill you, the only thing that can stop them is you, a third party (e.g., law enforcement) or they can stop themselves. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I think we should make human rights a moral and legal standard; I simply have trouble saying that they've always existed as they're currently defined.
And just for reference, here's an interesting talk I watched recently dealing with the biological basis for morality: Morality: From the Heavens or From Nature? (Here I agree Dr. Thomas that morality is 'natural' in the sense that it comes from the 'evolved architecture' of our minds, and I'd argue that our conceptions of rights have evolved out this, as well as from the evolved architecture of human culture.)
its not a matter of what "good" it does if rights are natural. its the fact that individuals have an innate desire to do what they want. and your absolutely right it does require you (or a third party) to prevent someone from taking your freedom.
i know youve heard the saying freedom isnt free, and believe me it isnt. i spent 7 and half years in the army and going to iraq sucked balls. i believe, that the prinicples that amerca was founded upon are the absolute highest one can imagine. and the single principle that all others stem from is that individuals have the right to be free.
however i very much disagree with the idea of god given rights. i believe that anything given has no value. if you ran a marathon and came in third but they gave you first, would that trophy mean as much?
the idea of freedom comes from mans ability to think for himself. to reason. you cant take that away. even if you lock a man in an empty lightless cell, he still has his thoughts. and though his mind will most certainly crack, they are still HIS thoughts.
thats how i see it.
one more thing. while the founding fathers had this tremendous idea and did great things, they were still just men. smart maybe, but not entirely fallible. im pretty sure that everyone agrees that everyone makes mistakes. including the founding fathers. the two biggest mistakes were the treatment of blacks and indians. first, before anyone tries to say it, iam not condoning slavery. depriving anyone of their freedom, as ive said, is the utmost "sin" one can commit. and the handling of the indian affairs, was despicable.
however and i dont have the book on hand at the moment to quote this correctly, but shortly after the country was founded, while washington was still president he attempted to negotiate a peace with, i believe the creek indians. there were a lot of factors that prevented this from happening, but the "moral" of the story is that washington at least recognized the way the indians had been treated was wrong and that we desperatley needed to change it.
as for slavery, had the founding fathers attempted to erradicated at the outset, the united states would never have come about. the southern colonies would never have signed off on it, however the framers made certain that it would one day be addressed. one of those was changing the words "life, liberty, and property" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" this was done so the southern states would not be able to use the term "property" as an excuse to keep their slaves. many men, including john adams deplored slavery.
the only reason i bring those two things up is that everytime i talk about how awesome the founders were someone inevitably brings them up. youre right. they made mistakes. but they knew it, and made sure that things could be fixed by future generations. the very fact that you can ammend the constitution is proof that they recognized that they might have made mistakes.
Which is sort of a dilemma if you think about it. If individuals have an innate desire to do what they want, and one individual desires to subjugate another because they're stronger, isn't that also 'natural'?
Exactly. So these 'natural desires' are sometimes in conflict, which is why I think it's better to approach the issue of rights from the perspective of social agreement and endeavour than conflicting natural desires.
Me too.
Perhaps you're right. It might not hurt to let this issue rest for a while. I've got a lot of work to do tomorrow, anyway.
also i feel much closer to jason now than i do anyone else on this forum, simply because we have shared a lot of our personal thoughts and ideas.
just sayin.
the above video is a a four parter that argues for capitalism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/france-riots-airports_n_769329.html
also i know alot of you think socialist states like france are awesome, so heres a link to the riots that are going on right now.