The Socialist Dream Crumbles in Venezuela

[The Dharma Bum]

I guess I'll have to choose A

[exploited]

I just think that class is more about power than it is about having more stuff. If someone saves and then starts a side business for extra income, that is a good thing IMO. But the business they start would still be required to follow laws - if they had employees, those employees would have a direct say in the business, if they wanted it. And if they don't have employees, they are fully entitled to the fruits of their labour - which is, after all, the entire point behind socialism.

Dharma is the only one who thinks this can be done strictly by consent, so keep in mind that his thinking re: coercion is most definitely not the view of most socialists.

I have a bit of time, so I'll respond to your previous post today.

[Spider]

[The Comrade]

i guess spider doesn't feel like actually explaining how it's possible for a single person to completely shatter a socialist societies economy

[Spider]

[exploited]

[The Dharma Bum]

Here's the deal spider, if a government acts without the consent of the governed it is acting illegitimately. Bourgeois democracy is inarguably preferable to dictatorship, however it has no more legitimacy since it depends on coercion to exist.

No you can say that society will always have taboos, peer pressure, influence etc but what I mean specifically is the institutionalized methods of coercion that are in place in all state based forms of governance.

The fact is class society is what requires coercion to maintain itself. Without the institutionalized forms of oppression such as police, military schools, private property, media etc society would naturally adjust itself to a socialistic political economy since that is how humans naturally roll. Class society and capitalism require coercion so you are simply projecting cultural assumptions when you state that all societies necessarily require coercion in order to exist. The truth is coercive societal institutions are destructive, not constructive.

The article I referenced earlier named several existing societies that have little or no coercive social factor (these societies are noteworthy for the non-existence of mental illness among these peoples) so it is silly to continue to pretend that the facts show otherwise regarding the existence of societies which use coercion methods of social control. They simply do not.

[exploited]

Yet another argument fails due to the "human nature" fallacy.

[The Dharma Bum]

Were early human groups structured as in a class society with private property or were their societies egalitarian and communal?

I think that settles the question of whether that argument failed or not. lol

Clearly class society and private property require state violence to maintain the classes and for them to retain title to their private property. Without this threat of violence the masses would simply sweep the elite class away. On the other hand humans existed for tens of thousands of years without any of that just fine so it's hard to argue that the state and it's apparatus are necessary for human society.

[The Comrade]

they were both and they were definitely coercive because one person could cause so much more harm to a group back then you had to keep people in line.

every primitive culture was like this, every modern egalitarian culture like the iroquois were like this.