Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Public House › Reading Marx on Halloween
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Billy_T.
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November 3, 2019 at 10:46 pm #107727
ZooeyModeratorI think the idea that human value is simply based on its productive value – muscular and cerebral – is interesting. Capital assumes that the only value humans have is what they can produce, what can be capitalized upon.
Smelling the roses, skipping stones in the creek, and so on, are a “waste of time” in a capitalist system. There is literally NO value in a person’s spiritual journey. Capitalism is a cannibal.
And that would be why pensions have to be taken away. They allow people to go off and enjoy themselves when they still have health left to be squeezed out and profited off. You can’t have perfectly good producers off doing their own thing. Make them work until they are without capitalist value, then cast them aside.
Why are humans so demented?
November 4, 2019 at 9:02 am #107733Billy_TParticipantZooey, you really should read Martin Hagglund’s This Life. He deals with those issues so well. It’s a deeply philosophical look at our existing system, and why it must be replaced with democratic socialism/secular humanism, as he sees it. Brilliant book.
We’re all born in the capitalist soup, so it’s pretty difficult for most people to envision something else. But I’ve always wondered why we accept others owning the work we do, in absolute, legal terms. I’ve always wondered why anyone would think that the purpose of the economy should be to make a few people rich . . . rather than to provide for everyone‘s needs, first and foremost. Hagglund adds a few other essential rationales:
To work for the Common good
The solve problems
To radically expand free timeOn the latter, he’s not just talking about the time we have when we get home from work, sit down on our couches, and watch TV in relative peace. He’s talking about slashing the time we spend working, and turning that into time we can pursue our most passionate interests, our life’s work . . . or, as Joseph Campbell would say, “finding our bliss.”
Reading between the lines of his book — he lays it out clearly enough so that’s usually pretty easy — capitalism has other ideas when it comes to the free time generated by innovation:
It folds that back into profits for business ownership, and workers still work the same number of hours or more.
Hagglund’s talking about taking the results of new innovations and handing those hours back to citizens instead. All of them.
Self-evident, to me.
November 4, 2019 at 9:14 am #107734Billy_TParticipantAnother recent read applies to the “why” of your question.
The Goodness Paradox, by Richard Wrangham.
It may just be that humans act as we do, at least in part, because we’ve been “domesticated.” We’ve survived because our ability to adapt is so strong. But that ability to adapt may well be the reason why we go along so often with hideous systems of oppression.
Wrangham talks about recent theories regarding that domestication, how it’s been shown in other animals, like minks and wolves (versus dogs), and at least partially involves the reduction of alpha males, seen as threats to the group, village, culture, etc. etc. That sets up a reduction in reactive violence, largely via an increase in proactive violence, if memory serves.
Chimps, for instance, fight at the drop of a hat, and will kill each other in the process. We humans have radically reduced this kind of thing, though, of course it still happens. Road rage, etc. etc. Wrangham and the scientists he cites think the group, in effect, “tames” those impulses through culling the herd. This is something that they believe was not the case in other similar species that predate us.
Fascinating stuff. We basically domesticated ourselves. Stands to reason, to me at least, that this might have something to do with our all too easy acceptance of being herded into our pens, in one form or another. There are some benefits from this, of course. We don’t try to kill each other twenty times a day. But the downside may be we accept far more than we ever should.
November 4, 2019 at 12:02 pm #107739
wvParticipantAnd that would be why pensions have to be taken away. They allow people to go off and enjoy themselves when they still have health left to be squeezed out and profited off. You can’t have perfectly good producers off doing their own thing. Make them work until they are without capitalist value, then cast them aside.
Why are humans so demented?
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Corporate-Capitalism + Capitalist-Christianity = ?
The capitalist-religion-thing kinda helps to super-charge the toxicity of capitalism. Ya know. Jesus as the guy who values ‘hard work’ and ‘keeping yer nose to the grindstone.’ The value of everyone, including immigrants, is judged on “how hard they work.”
Halloween — I have yet to see an American child come to my door dressed up as: Marx, Jesus, Any Intellectual, Any Writer, Any Artist.
This year it was all ‘Super-Heroes’ or Zombies.
I dont know what any of that means.
w
vNovember 4, 2019 at 12:36 pm #107741
JackPMillerParticipantMy eyes are getting real bad. I thought it said Reading IMAX. It made me think, why would wv be talking talking about the IMAX of Reading(PA)? Then I realized it was Marx, not the singer Richard Marx, by the way. Just in case some people get confused. Helping you out wv.
November 4, 2019 at 4:00 pm #107750Billy_TParticipantCorporate-Capitalism + Capitalist-Christianity = ?
The capitalist-religion-thing kinda helps to super-charge the toxicity of capitalism. Ya know. Jesus as the guy who values ‘hard work’ and ‘keeping yer nose to the grindstone.’ The value of everyone, including immigrants, is judged on “how hard they work.”
Halloween — I have yet to see an American child come to my door dressed up as: Marx, Jesus, Any Intellectual, Any Writer, Any Artist.
This year it was all ‘Super-Heroes’ or Zombies.
I dont know what any of that means.
w
vI think it’s interesting, and incredibly tragic, that Christianity developed as it did, and it does have that toxic effect (all too often) on a large portion of the electorate.
All organized religions tend to veer (wildly) away from the original messenger — real or imagined — though I’d argue there has never been a wider gap than the one between Jesus and his church. Perhaps it’s because it’s lasted so long, was taken over by the Roman Empire, and then exploited by dozens of other empires along the way. But there’s virtually nothing “Christian” about it — at least in its right-wing form.
Jesus, from what little we can gather about him, was a proto-communist and all-around DFH. He and his merry band of proto-communists went from town to town, owning nothing, sharing everything, refusing all remuneration for services rendered, while teaching a gospel of collectivism, community-action, sharing, cooperation and love. He flat out said no rich person could get into heaven or even follow him. They had to give away all their wealth to the poor before they could do that. He obviously would have been spit at by today’s right, kicked out of town, or worse.
“Get a job, you dirty effing hippy!!” would have been the mildest thing he’d hear from much of today’s right-wing.
It’s just incredible how a proto-communist prophet of peace, love and understanding gave birth to a religion of hatred, exclusion and profound selfishness, at least as interpreted by a certain sector of the populace.
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