XPost: alt.anarchism, alt.politics, alt.politics.socialism   
   XPost: alt.politics.liberalism   
   From: jamesd@echeque.com   
      
   James A. Donald   
   > > But you are not talking about an inanimate system,   
   > > but people doing things to people.  And the words   
   > > that you use for these "causal relations" imply   
   > > crimes, gigantic crimes, requiring gigantic   
   > > punishments.   
      
   Haines Brown   
   > I meant what I said, not what you infer. I was not   
   > talking about inanimate systems or people interacting,   
   > but how we represent things in thought.   
      
   But you are discussing how we represent the economic   
   system in thought, how we represent people interacting.   
      
   And how we represent people is apt to have a strong   
   connection to whether we wind up murdering people.   
      
   James A. Donald:   
   > > And I am arguing that whosoever conceives of the   
   > > capitalist system in this fashion is apt to wind up   
   > > murdering large numbers of people, most of them   
   > > workers, and apt to wind up establishing a   
   > > dictatorship because that is the form of government   
   > > that can most efficiently murder large numbers of   
   > > people.   
      
   Haines Brown   
   > Weird. In what fashion? How can a conception of an   
   > economic system kill people or lead to dictatorship?   
      
   A conception of the an economic system can lead us to   
   the conclusion that it is just and necessary to kill   
   people by social category, whereupon in will be   
   discovered that a startlingly large number of people   
   belong to the social category that needs to be killed.   
      
   If we interpret social categories as acting, rather than   
   individuals as acting, many of those actions will   
   constitute crimes, for example "the kulaks" are starving   
   the cities by withholding grain.  It is then necessary   
   to punish the criminal, that is to say, liquidate the   
   kulaks.   
      
   If we describe the same phenomenon in terms of   
   individual acts "lots of people are reluctant to sell   
   their grain at the official price", then no crime is   
   apparent, and the obvious solution is to raise the   
   official price, rather than liquidate the kulaks.   
      
   > Perhaps you mean the implementation of a set of   
   > economic ideas has been associated with mass murder,   
   > but I did not offer any set of economic ideas, but a   
   > way to understand the economy.   
      
   If you understand the economy in this way, understand it   
   from a collectivist point of view, then whatever set of   
   ideas you wind up with is apt to involve the liquidation   
   of large categories of people, for it treats categories   
   as if they were actors, and the actions of these actors   
   are best understood as gigantic crimes.   
      
   > My terms were not Marxist at all but drawn from   
   > contemporary science,   
      
   The terms may be drawn from contemporary science, but   
   the meanings are not.  Science is empirical, in that it   
   demands that theory fit observation, not observation fit   
   theory, and it is atomist in that the wholes are to be   
   understood in terms of their parts.  Even more so, and   
   especially, economics is atomist that individuals rather   
   than social institutions and values are the proper   
   subject of analysis since all properties of institutions   
   and values merely accumulate from the striving of the   
   individual.   
      
   > Well, I won't disagree that social atomism (society   
   > should be viewed solely in terms of individuals, and   
   > social relations are not primary, but only emerge from   
   > individual actions) was once basic to the ideology of   
   > capitalism. However, I don't see it play much if any   
   > role in modern capitalist economic theory, which seems   
   > concerned with value, with supply and demand.   
      
   Value is what a particular person values, supply at a   
   particular prices is what particular people are willing   
   to supply at that price, demand at a particular prices   
   is what particular people will buy at a particular   
   price.   
      
   All these things are merely sums over individual   
   strivings, not actors in themselves, but merely   
   statistics about actors, accumulating together the   
   private actions of many private actors.   
      
   When an economist talks of the "supply curve" he means   
   that at one price, certain people will supply stuff, and   
   if you raise your offer, some more people will supply   
   stuff who would not have been willing to supply stuff at   
   the lower price.   
      
   All these things only have meaning as aggregate totals   
   over individual actors.  They do not act, they are   
   statistics about individuals who do act.   
      
   > etc. I'd be surprised to know that capitalists today   
   > hold to social atomism, for it has a range of obvious   
   > problems that I'll not bring up here because it is not   
   > germain. The capitalist view of things is not at issue   
   > here.   
      
   By classifying viewpoints as "capitalist" or   
   "proletarian" you reject the scientific method, and   
   instead argue what Mises called "polylogism" the   
   proposition that there is no truth - but rather one   
   truth for communists and another for capitalists, or one   
   truth for Jews and another for Aryans, a point of view   
   encapsulated in such phrases as "Jewish Science" or   
   "Phallocentric science"   
      
   This form of thinking isolates one from reality, and   
   sends those who think like this into a narrowing spiral   
   that ends in self destructive madness, as manifested in   
   the final years of the Pol Pot regime, the great leap   
   forward, the last days of Hitler, the great terror and   
   the red terror.   
      
   > As best I can make out, You have not attempted to do   
   > either. At most you have hinted that a working class   
   > view of society is in some mysterious way linked with   
   > the Nazi holocaust or with Soviet gulags,   
      
   Your view is not a working class view.  It is held by a   
   small elite, largely living, like Lenin, on trust funds.   
   It is view held by those who claim to identify with the   
   working class, not a view held by the working class.   
      
   It leads to mass murder in a direct and straightforward   
   fashion, and I gave many examples of this.  Its   
   propensity towards mass murder and self destructive   
   conduct (as for example, the red brigades) is   
   immediately obvious as soon as you speak in particulars,   
   which is why you immediately retreated to epistemic fog.   
      
   > but you have not argued the case at all.   
      
   I have stated the general principles by which your kind   
   of thinking leads to mass murder, and given concrete and   
   particular examples illustrating how your kind of   
   thinking did lead directly to mass murder in particular   
   cases.   
      
   --   
     ----------------------   
   We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because   
   of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this   
   right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.   
      
   http://www.jim.com/      James A. Donald   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)