They don’t, there is an empty void in them, typically from an insecurity in child hood. For example I know a very successful guy whos goals are amassing wealth because he said as a kid they were poor and it made him feel insecure and unsafe. So now his happiness is earning more and more. Billionaires have this trait. Whether that be financial, or I have to be better than the next guy to feel like I’m not a failure.
If life is happiness and living and not economic success, you’d see that billionaire trait die out, its a selfish trait that serves no need in a community
Yeah of course, this meme is meant to be making fun of the idea that “human nature” (whatever that may be lol) in any way disproves communist or anticapitalist theory
You’re right that the best arguments against Marxism are the falsity and over-simplification of economic determinism, and the falsity and over-simplification of the labour theory of value.
This is kind of the elephant in the room that every large scale political/economic model like to ignore.
While I don’t agree with a lot of what he writes about, Murray Bookchin makes some pretty persuasive arguments about how hierarchical structures themselves are an issue no matter what system theyre found.
Humans were constrained by their material conditions. Now that those material conditions have changed, their behaviors have changed to match. This is not a fixed state of affairs. Humans continue to transition between stages just like every other living being.
Greed is as much a part of modern human nature as fear and love. And it is the product of a social condition that rewards growth, punishes disobedience, and requires a larger community to reproduce itself. It is a consequence of social conditioning executed iteratively from parent to child. And a consequence of statistical survival and prosperity played out over populations.
What defines human action is not the basic libidinal impulse, but the interplay between people and their environments over lifetimes and generations. That’s not socialism or capitalism at its root. Socialism and capitalism are simply fruits grown from the post-industrial branches of the tree of human history.
Greed isn’t inescapably “human nature”, but results from it under some basic conditions. The nature of enjoyment and suffering means the pursuit of enjoyment and avoidance of suffering as a biological imperative. Desperation, lack of cultural/learned empathy, cultural normalization of disparity, etc., can quickly allow unchecked greed. The same thing, with different conditions, can be said for… not sure there’s a single word for it, but behavior motivated by empathy promoting equality and sharing and so on. The conditions actually kind of close to being the inverse of those for greed - some combination of not having desperation, having cultural/learned empathy, cultural normalization of economic equality, etc. Both types of thinking are just basically pro-social or anti-social thought with regard to material/economic gain, depending on what influences individual thinking.
Debt and capitalism are not the same thing if that’s what you’re insinuating. Markets are not a feature of capitalism either, they are simply tools for economic control.
Per David Graeber in “Debt: The First 5000 Years”, people used to record debt with “Tally Sticks”. You’d notch the debt you owed at the end of a branch. Then you’d bend it in half. Creditor would get one end. Debtor the other. When you wanted to call in your debt, you’d hold the sticks up together to confirm they matched and that’s what was owed. This practice goes back to the Paleolithic Era.
Incidentally, the Tally Stick would often be longer on the creditor’s end. This was the stock of the stick and thus designated its recipient the “stock holder”.
But assignment and collection of debts isn’t the same thing as assignment and collection of rents and interest, which is at the center of the capitalist economic system.
No matter how many wish communism to work and devote themselves to it, it will fail. They can hold back agorism indefinitely by great effort, but when they let go, the ‘flow’ or ‘Invisible Hand’ or ‘tides of history’ or ‘profit incentive’ or ‘doing what comes naturally’ or ‘spontaneity’ will carry society inexorably closer to the pure agora.
You know that humans lived in communal societies for a long fuckin time before all the bullshit we know today, right?
Human nature is not greed. That’s capitalism.
Pretty sure humans have been bashing in each others heads over resources since the dawn of humanity.
Capitalism made it worse and more efficient tho.
Thats the thing, if we build a system where all needs were met, it would seem that greed and bashing heads becomes unneccesary
He wealthiest already have all their needs met. Still greedy.
They don’t, there is an empty void in them, typically from an insecurity in child hood. For example I know a very successful guy whos goals are amassing wealth because he said as a kid they were poor and it made him feel insecure and unsafe. So now his happiness is earning more and more. Billionaires have this trait. Whether that be financial, or I have to be better than the next guy to feel like I’m not a failure.
If life is happiness and living and not economic success, you’d see that billionaire trait die out, its a selfish trait that serves no need in a community
They do have all their needs met, according to Marxism
I mean currently, not after growing up in a Marxist society that has healed generations of familial issues
Yeah of course, this meme is meant to be making fun of the idea that “human nature” (whatever that may be lol) in any way disproves communist or anticapitalist theory
You’re right that the best arguments against Marxism are the falsity and over-simplification of economic determinism, and the falsity and over-simplification of the labour theory of value.
But have humans have never had a non-hierarchical large scaled society?
This is kind of the elephant in the room that every large scale political/economic model like to ignore.
While I don’t agree with a lot of what he writes about, Murray Bookchin makes some pretty persuasive arguments about how hierarchical structures themselves are an issue no matter what system theyre found.
Humans were constrained by their material conditions. Now that those material conditions have changed, their behaviors have changed to match. This is not a fixed state of affairs. Humans continue to transition between stages just like every other living being.
Greed is as much a part of modern human nature as fear and love. And it is the product of a social condition that rewards growth, punishes disobedience, and requires a larger community to reproduce itself. It is a consequence of social conditioning executed iteratively from parent to child. And a consequence of statistical survival and prosperity played out over populations.
What defines human action is not the basic libidinal impulse, but the interplay between people and their environments over lifetimes and generations. That’s not socialism or capitalism at its root. Socialism and capitalism are simply fruits grown from the post-industrial branches of the tree of human history.
Greed isn’t inescapably “human nature”, but results from it under some basic conditions. The nature of enjoyment and suffering means the pursuit of enjoyment and avoidance of suffering as a biological imperative. Desperation, lack of cultural/learned empathy, cultural normalization of disparity, etc., can quickly allow unchecked greed. The same thing, with different conditions, can be said for… not sure there’s a single word for it, but behavior motivated by empathy promoting equality and sharing and so on. The conditions actually kind of close to being the inverse of those for greed - some combination of not having desperation, having cultural/learned empathy, cultural normalization of economic equality, etc. Both types of thinking are just basically pro-social or anti-social thought with regard to material/economic gain, depending on what influences individual thinking.
Mesopotamians tracked agricultural debt on clay tablets in 3000 BC
Debt and capitalism are not the same thing if that’s what you’re insinuating. Markets are not a feature of capitalism either, they are simply tools for economic control.
Per David Graeber in “Debt: The First 5000 Years”, people used to record debt with “Tally Sticks”. You’d notch the debt you owed at the end of a branch. Then you’d bend it in half. Creditor would get one end. Debtor the other. When you wanted to call in your debt, you’d hold the sticks up together to confirm they matched and that’s what was owed. This practice goes back to the Paleolithic Era.
Incidentally, the Tally Stick would often be longer on the creditor’s end. This was the stock of the stick and thus designated its recipient the “stock holder”.
But assignment and collection of debts isn’t the same thing as assignment and collection of rents and interest, which is at the center of the capitalist economic system.
Sure, but we freely traded with each other.