Is true socialism possible?

[Resurrection Man]

To say that human nature is competitive is tantamount to claiming it so in the light of past and present social and economic systems: a question of organisation - which of course is recognised in business models, most of which emphasise the indispensability of co-operation as much as extolling successful competition in the world beyond. As in war or threatened war, stress needs to be put on a putative enemy which must be kept in place or preferably exterminated in order to ensure our survival, in order for the co-operative gene to be triggered.

I was agreeing with you until we get to the next point.

Yet those urged to pull together have one eye on promotion, and indeed, in today's world, are expected to in order to get the job in the first place!

I see nothing wrong with this approach. If some people are competitive then so be it. Not everyone is. Some are content to ride on the backs of others...some are willing to be more co-operative. There are many psychological profiles..we are, at the end of the day, all different and each of us has our own drivers and goals - even sense of ethics.

The resultant personality model, seen either as a sign of human weakness or strength depending on how it is used and seen, is pulled in opposite directions, and thereby locked in a perpetuated childhood, where things were simpler, absolutes, this is mine and that is yours, and belongings and eventually property reinforce sense of self-worth, being prime indicators of status and the right to belong.

This just simply does not make any sense to me. We are not black and white....plenty of shades of grey...sometimes fifty of them. Not sure why you assume that property reinforces self-worth...I think you are putting your own prejudices to bear on this one.

That which governs civilised behaviour under this twisted view of ethics and morality would appear to be based as much on what one can get away with as the simple principles of reciprocity accepted in most if not all societies.

That is your own value judgement. Others have a different and equally as valid as yours and would not say that it is twisted. One could argue that your view as to how society works is, in reality, twisted

[Serial_Apologist]

Mr GG, Eine and Serial_Apologist

I have the vision thing on this!

My idea is that students would be taught to see their current age not as their age but as one of their ages. A 17 year old is also a 25 year old, a 40 year old and an 80 old. He or she just hasn't got there yet. The new mindset would not diminish the spirit of youth - that always exists and is also reinforced both by peers and the media - but it would remove the heavy emphasis on older generations being "a different race". The generational divide as generally perceived is an artificial separation from selves.

This change in mindset would prepare people better for life, it would present all stages of life as positive, it would in time reduce the tendency of young decision makers to kick matters into the long grass, and it might increase respect if not on its own merits then out of self-interest. In other words, respect would emanate in many from a greater identification with all others.

I don't think that there are risks of turning people into monochrome robots as long as you start with one word on the piece of paper - "choice". I think that this is a far better way than allowing everyone liberally to stumble from one calamity to the next while simultanously dictating or nudging with a rod of iron what adults can do from the moment they wake up to the time they fall asleep.

Role self-identification is the nub of what you are saying I think, Lat, and it is definitional and contextual, like anything else, rather than primarily characteristic, even though such things as relative memory and libidinal loss have something to contribute in later years, not to mention the disillusionment of raising offspring.

One is what one does - being is doing - but what the existentialists meant by being being doing went beyond ontology to consider how we view ourselves in terms of how society sees us - the "I" first becoming conscious of itself as a "me" - and that "me" goin on being defined by what society expects. RD Laing had an instructive story to tell about a man who had all his life been told what was expected of him, and had so come to identify with his role - after all, what else is there to identify with? (***cue big spiritual conundrum issue****) - that when he came to retire, he looked deeply at himself, and decided he was nothing but this construct. Whereupon he started behaving differently from the solemn, conventional man his family had come to expect, and reflected others' views of himself and themselves back at them with a lot of humour and irony. His family thought he must either be entering "second childhood" - which in a certain true sense he, like many of post-retirement age, was - or losing his reason. The called in the medical authorities and he was sectioned.

[Serial_Apologist]

That is your own value judgement. Others have a different and equally as valid as yours and would not say that it is twisted. One could argue that your view as to how society works is, in reality, twisted

True it is a view I have held for a long time, but it is one with which the common experience of many is increasingly coinciding as scales fall from eyes with each successive revelation over society's ills, the ambitious ones in charge, together with causes they feel powerless to put right. I take it, RM, you didn't enjoy the "benefits" of a public school education, like I, as one of the many varieties of human types you mention, did.

[Lateralthinking1]

Role self-identification is the nub of what you are saying I think, Lat, and it is definitional and contextual, like anything else, rather than primarily characteristic, even though such things as relative memory and libidinal loss have something to contribute in later years, not to mention the disillusionment of raising offspring.

One is what one does - being is doing - but what the existentialists meant by being being doing went beyond ontology to consider how we view ourselves in terms of how society sees us - the "I" first becoming conscious of itself as a "me" - and that "me" goin on being defined by what society expects. RD Laing had an instructive story to tell about a man who had all his life been told what was expected of him, and had so come to identify with his role - after all, what else is there to identify with? (***cue big spiritual conundrum issue****) - that when he came to retire, he looked deeply at himself, and decided he was nothing but this construct. Whereupon he started behaving differently from the solemn, conventional man his family had come to expect, and reflected others' views of himself and themselves back at them with a lot of humour and irony. His family thought he must either be entering "second childhood" - which in a certain true sense he, like many of post-retirm ent age, was - or losing his reason. The called in the medial authorities and he was sectioned.

Quite. The best exit from a sectioning is to present as socially acceptable rather than as being normal in any quantifiable way.

There is much to be said about the way people try to meet expectations. Teenagers want to be adults and their entire way of thinking about adulthood is that it is 16-20. 20-somethings do not necessarily say "I want to be in my 30s" but in their aspirations that is precisely where most of them are in their minds. 50-somethings who like the idea of retirement think of it in terms of being under the age of 75. It is as if to have anything but a short-sighted view of advance is like risking becoming old before one's time.

Well, it is understandable because it is an instinctive, only semi-conscious, defence against the final curtain. It wouldn't do to have every 20 year old walking around with the mindset of someone who is 90. But the balance in society is wrong. Older versions of selves are lacunas, seen only as residing in those who are already at those ages, and disconnected. I don't think that a bit of early contemplation via education of all the later stages would be a diabolical dampner. The natural instinct is such that any learning of that kind would not become deeply rooted. But it might just do enough to enable people to engage their brains at crucial times rather than finding themselves struggling. Just before signing on any dotted line, that lesson in 4D would suddenly be recalled.

It is wide-ranging this - what when I am less mobile, what when I am jobless, what when I am contemplating taking out a loan, what when I decide to take an illegal substance, what if I decide to be religious, what if I never learn to drive, what if I spend every day of the week in a gym, what if I become a vegan, and in each case not just looking at the day after but for all time. I would present even some of the worst circumstances and options in neutral terms morally but get people to think about impacts.

[MrGongGong]

This change in mindset would prepare people better for life,.

Picking up on just this point
this, IMV , shows one of the things that is wrong with the way we approach education (as we seem to be on that riff at the moment)
it's a very "adult brain" way of thinking to think that what i'm doing today isn't the thing I want to be doing but a preparation for the thing.
In music education we traditionally favour those youngsters who have this "skill" , those who can get their head round (maybe prematurely ?) the idea of locking themselves in a room for 8 hours a day with a piano and the complete Beethoven sonatas ......

However...... this "adult brain" way of thinking is completely at odds with many young people (and many adults as well !)
to see school as somehow a "preparation for life" rather than part of it turns the experience into a rather dull rehearsal for something exciting. It IS true that one needs to learn things now in order to do things tomorrow , next week or even in 30 years time BUT if that's all we do (which is how School has become and sadly how many people see University........ a preparation for a job ) then we miss so much.

Life is what is happening NOW whether we are 5, 15 or 85

[Anna]

Life is what is happening NOW whether we are 5, 15 or 85

Exactement! Don't get caught up with all this psychobabble stuff - Strut your Stuff and Grasp It

[Serial_Apologist]

Exactement! Don't get caught up with all this psychobabble stuff - Strut your Stuff and Grasp It

I thought people got arrested for doing that!

[MrGongGong]

I thought people got arrested for doing that!

It's OK I've got a CRB (and a Scottish one as well)

[Lateralthinking1]

Picking up on just this point
this, IMV , shows one of the things that is wrong with the way we approach education (as we seem to be on that riff at the moment)
it's a very "adult brain" way of thinking to think that what i'm doing today isn't the thing I want to be doing but a preparation for the thing.
In music education we traditionally favour those youngsters who have this "skill" , those who can get their head round (maybe prematurely ?) the idea of locking themselves in a room for 8 hours a day with a piano and the complete Beethoven sonatas ......

However...... this "adult brain" way of thinking is completely at odds with many young people (and many adults as well !)
to see school as somehow a "preparation for life" rather than part of it turns the experience into a rather dull rehearsal for something exciting. It IS true that one needs to learn things now in order to do things tomorrow , next week or even in 30 years time BUT if that's all we do (which is how School has become and sadly how many people see University........ a preparation for a job ) then we miss so much.

Life is what is happening NOW whether we are 5, 15 or 85

Yes and we can be 25 or 45 or 85 NOW at 15, at least in our minds and for the time it takes to have a few lessons. This is not "so if I play football all the time until 40, I may incapacitate myself in the future, cue anxiety". It is "I'm imagining 85, I played football until 40, it probably did have a detrimental impact, but I always enjoyed it and I could have experienced problems anyway". That sort of thing. Then people can mull it over and think, yes fair enough, I'll do it anyway or no, I'll probably stop at 35 just in case. The same applies to mortgages. "I am 52 and in a bread queue but still enjoyed owning a tenth of a house for eight years etc".

Footnote - If these contributions aren't strutting my stuff and grasping it, then I'm not the very youthful 93 I thought I was.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

But then if we look at South America today, we see a slightly different picture, perhaps, emerging. It's an area that I'm concerned with through my work at the moment, and am likely to be for some time, perhaps - particularly Chile.

As if if by magic we have this Times Leader Article today:

Constitutionality versus Caprice
President Chávez of Venezuela is ailing. State media, having been less than open about his cancer in the past two years, revealed yesterday that he was suffering from a severe respiratory infection after surgery. Mr Chávez’s incapacity is a personal tragedy that ought to have persuaded him to relinquish office. He can at least have the satisfaction that his style of government is not unique to Venezuela, but marks one of two principal models for government in Latin America. It is, unfortunately, radically the wrong one.

A generation ago much of Latin America laboured under autocracy. The only full-blown dictatorship that still exists, however, is the communist regime in Cuba. Some peculiarly foul right-wing military dictatorships have peacefully fallen elsewhere. But there is an increasingly stark division emerging in the region between countries that have replaced these tyrannies with vigorous constitutional mechanisms and those that operate by populism and demagoguery. Mr Chávez has been a model and mentor for that second, destructive manner of rule.

In Brazil, Chile and Uruguay most obviously, effective and stable constitutional government has superseded military rule. Some doubted that this would be true of Brazil when it elected in 2002 the left-wing Workers’ Party to government, but these apprehensions proved groundless.

In his two terms of office, President da Silva (popularly known as Lula) pursued social reforms to narrow the immense inequalities of Brazilian society. He also sought Brazil’s integration into the international economy and avoided the temptations of inflationary public financing. President Rousseff, his successor, is now considering plans to loosen constraints on public spending, but only because she judges that Brazil has won enough credibility in financial markets since the late 1990s to do this responsibly.

In Chile, the murderous regime of General Pinochet came to an end in 1989, when a referendum re-established democracy. A centre-left coalition governed for 20 years till Sebastian Pinera, a moderate conservative, won the presidency. His election was an inspiring sign that Chile had not only vanquished the memories of the Pinochet era but become a truly pluralist polity.

The strength of commodity prices has benefited several Latin American countries in the past decade, but not all governments have responded with equal wisdom. Mr Chávez has frittered away Venezuela’s oil revenues and pursued inflationary policies that squeeze the real incomes of the poor. Inflation last year was kept only just below 20 per cent owing to artificial controls.

With economic mismanagement comes a recurring temptation to blame others and exercise arbitrary authority. Venezuela’s opposition and media have been systematically harassed. The Government of President Kirchner of Argentina has responded to economic difficulty with absurd populist measures of price controls, export bans on hydrocarbons and the expropriation of foreign assets. In diplomacy, Mrs Kirchner has provocatively resurrected Argentina’s spurious claims to sovereignty over the Falklands. Meanwhile, Bolivia has this week nationalised two electricity companies owned by the Spanish utility Iberdrola, The future of Latin America is at stake in the division between two approaches to governance. There is no doubt which is the more effective.

Seems to me that socialism or capitalism might both work provided there's no corruption - that kills both, but odds-on capitalism for the UK.

[Serial_Apologist]

As if if by magic we have this Times Leader Article today:

Seems to me that socialism or capitalism might both work provided there's no corruption - that kills both, but odds-on capitalism for the UK.

Fortunately Britain is not a third world country - deformed examples of socialism will always be the norm in underdeveloped countries, whereas we at least have the productive means at our potential disposal to meet basic needs, and democratic practices that, extended, could at least work, in principle.

I only wish capitalism could be made to work along "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs" principles; the problem as I see it consists in capitalism's inbuilt need to expand anarchically and wastefully, and the equally contradictory effects these tendencies have on human behaviour, perpetuating greed, envy and insecurity, notwithstanding all the checks and balances said by both those of goodwill and questionable motive to be in place to deter excess.

[Simon]

As if if by magic we have this Times Leader Article today

Good to see that they agree with my assessment. I could have mentioned the hysterical German in Argentina in stronger terms, though. She needs watching.

Seems to me that socialism or capitalism might both work provided there's no corruption - that kills both, but odds-on capitalism for the UK.

Yep. It's a question of getting the right people in government. Unfortunately, in the UK, with the party system as it is, that's unlikely.

[amateur51]

Good to see that they agree with my assessment.

I didn't see the Times's commenting on your 'Jewish network', Simon.

Any chance of an explanation of what you mean by this please?

[Simon]

I didn't see the Times's commenting on your 'Jewish network', Simon.

Any chance of an explanation of what you mean by this please?

My Jewish network? I don't have one as such, and if I did I doubt the Times would comment on it.

Are you not, by the way, able to make a useful comment as regards your views on socialism and whether or not you think that it might largely be achieved some day? That, after all, is the topic of the thread. Perhaps you agree that in certain parts of South America there have recently been some interesting developments? Or not?

[kleines c]

c