Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 08:02:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ryan McGreal <tofocsend-AT-yahoo.ca>
Subject: Re: Fw: GCG politics


It's like fluoridation of drinking water - all part of the 'commie plot
to weaken the West.'  ;o)

In any case, here's my two bits' worth, since I seem to be getting
these posts too: my problem with communism is the same as my problem
with neoliberalism. Communism is an ideology; that is, a self-contained
system of belief that offers an explanation of past social/economic
events, makes predictions about future events, and indicates what kinds
of behaviour are appropriate for people in a society. In explaining the
world and our place in it, communism espouses moral, social, and
economic systems which are consistent with its assumptions and analyses
of the world. As a result, it insists on specific answers to the
questions of how people ought to behave, in what people ought to
believe, and how the government of the society ought to be conducted. 

This means that a communist state would most certainly NOT accept that
the will of the people should be the basis of the authority of
government. The reason is that communism already provides the answers
to  the questions of government, so the involvement of citizens in
forming public policy is irrelevant and redundant. Similarly, freedom
of thought, conscience and religion are to be avoided in a communist
state. Communism as an ideology demands absolute obedience to its own
dictates, because people who were free to believe whatever they wanted
might not
believe in communism, which would make the structures of communism
fail. Even life, liberty and the security of person are dangerous,
because they might prevent the government from doing whatever is
required to command acceptance of the ideology.

All ideologies are like this, from communism to anarchism to capitalism
to right-wing libertarianism to Christianity. They are all models or
metaphors for how the world works that are built on assumptions and
prescribe certain morals, values, and socioecomic structures which are
consistent with those assumptions. They all insist that if we can just
get everyone to a) believe that the metaphor for reality is true, and
b) accept the moral imperatives of that metaphor, then everything will
become beautiful and we will be ushered into paradise. 

Karl Marx made this fundamental mistake in his book _The Communist
Manifesto_ (in spite of his excellent analysis of capitalism in his
book _Capital_) because he believed in an inevitable dialectic path of
history which would ultimately culminate in the overthrowing of the
capitalists and the collective ownership of the means of production.
Francis Fukuyama made this same mistake in his book _The End of
History_. He believed that market liberalism had finally beaten all
the other ideologies because it was true and that we would consequently
move into a lasting period of peace, the ideological war having been
won. When Ayn Rand explains that rational self-interest is the only
morally acceptable behaviour for people and insists that unregulated
capitalism would work properly if we all just behaved morally and
rationally, she is talking about a type of human that doesn't exist in
the real world. Ditto Noam Chomsky, when he argues that we would be
happier living in small-scale, anarco-socialistic communities, where
somehow real people would be transformed into consistently fair, kind,
cooperative people.

Ideologies prevent us from imagining creative solutions to our
problems, because they circumscribe the set of "orthodox" things we can
do. Only measures that are consistent with the ideology are acceptable.
Universal publicly funded health care, for example, is an excellent and
quite pragmatic solution to the problem, how can we best provide for
people's health? However, capitalist ideologues will argue that public
health care is "socialist" because it interferes with the allocative
efficiency of the market (i.e. it limits the ability of some people to
profit at the expense of other people's sickness). This in spite of the
fact that public health care is cheaper and more efficient and provides
care to everyone regardless of their ability to pay. This frees up
resources
to be employed in other areas of the economy, so it is actually a
benefit to market economics. 

Unfortunately, market ideologues cannot see this because their ideology
prevents reality from challenging their assumptions. Democracy, which
at its best embodies the values of the UN Universal Declaration, does
this by insisting that all viewpoints are valid and that the best
decision is the one that accomplishes what people want it to
accomplish, rather than the decision that conforms to a particular
ideology. It makes environmentalism possible by allowing people and
governments to decide that some things are more important than profit.
Incidentally, this is why international trade agreements like NAFTA and
WTO are so dangerous: they are constructed around an ideology of
unfettered trade and investment rights, so they constrain citizens and
their governments from
pursuing nonmarket solutions to problems. Communism is dangerous for
the same reason; it constrains citizens and their governments from
pursuing noncommunist solutions to their problems.

Regards,

Ryan

--- Globaltechnoscan <rsborar-AT-mantraonline.com> wrote:
> I WONDER WHY I RECIEVE THESE POSTS. I have not subscribed to the
> communism
> list, though I recieve these posts fairly regularly, at least in the
> recent
> past.
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda-AT-eircom.net>
> To: <communism-AT-lists.econ.utah.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 11:02 AM
> Subject: GCG politics
> 
> 
> > Hi
> >
> > Perhaps we can discuss the Global Communist Group's programme.
> Surely
> somone on
> > the list has bothered to read and has a some view on it.
> >
> > Karl
> >
> > To read or download our global communist programme click the
> following:
> > http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/FIST%20Programme.htm

====
The Triumph of Form over Content
http://www3.sympatico.ca/taylormcgreal
"Common Sense is that which tells you the world is flat."

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