When I think about human nature, I think about what I learned in the psychology
and sociology courses I studied in the graduate school of social work at the
University of Michigan. I refer to the kinds of personality traits which people
inherit and the ones that are formed within the first few years of life through
interaction with the individual's family or whoever it is who is caring for him
or her. So I'm talking about the ability to relate to others and the need to
have one's own needs met. Anger, frustration, a need for control, the quality
of one's relationships with others, the fear of being deprived of food and
care, all of those things start in infancy and determine what kind of person
one grows up to be. Obviously, the culture of the society in which one lives is
vitally important. But basic human nature includes at best, the ability to
relate to others and to care about their welfare, as well as an inborn capacity
for aggression for self defense. Whatever the culture, whatever the economic
system, it's going to be an outcome of human personality and it will, in turn,
influence the human beings within it. That infant who wasn't loved and cared
for by a maternal figure is going to show the results of that basic deficit as
an adult, even if he lives in a socialist society.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2021 8:21 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Reimagining Socialism: A Conversation
Miriam, I don't think you still understand what is and is not human nature and
it seems to be because of that phenomenon that I call social, political or
economic myopia depending on the context. That is the habit of assuming that
the way things are, in your personal experience, are the only way things can
be. The article does point out that there are some universal drives and
behaviors that are human nature because they occur everywhere and at all times
that there are humans. In fact, these could be called living being nature. The
examples given were the sex drive and the drive to consume food. However, there
are others kinds of behavior that are called human nature even though they
appear only in certain cultures and certain historical periods. I keep coming
back to the propensity to cooperate with one another for mutual benefit. If it
was not for that we would never have progressed from our prehuman condition.
Civilization would never have been achieved and we would be existing as
individuals in the wilderness trying to eke out a living for ourselves alone
and saying to hell with everyone else. But under capitalism you rarely hear
about that being a part of human nature even if it still goes on on a daily
basis even under capitalism. It is true, though, that capitalism does promote
competition over cooperation and the capitalist economic system could not exist
if everyone felt obligated to look after the welfare of others. And that is
what virtually all class societies do. The simple fact is that so-called human
nature is highly malleable. If the conditions require it then behavior that has
marked the human condition from its beginnings can be pushed aside by
necessity. As I have pointed out before, the vast majority of humans who have
ever lived knew nothing about the concept of money and they functioned
perfectly well without it. But try functioning under the present economic
system without money. You can't do it. The circumstances force everyone to
acquire and spend money whether they like it or not. That is, the prevailing
conditions force people to engage in certain behaviors and to put other
behaviors on the back burner or to downplay them so much that they do not
surface enough to be noticeable. And survival is one of those human behaviors
that is pretty much universal. But if you look at various cultures throughout
history that have functioned under other economic systems and if you count only
behavior that occurred in all of those cultures as human nature then you will
see that there is very little that even is human nature. Every culture
proscribes what behavior can be exhibited and what behaviors will be tolerated.
Then in each of these cultures people who have lived in them all their lives
will consider the behavior that they have always witnessed to be human nature.
Again, it is cultural or social myopia, the tendency to not be able to see past
one's own culture, often even one's subculture. However, human behavior - or,
if you prefer, situational human nature - can be changed by changing the
environment in which it is exhibited. For example, what if you wanted to
eradicate gambling addiction. Well, if all casinos or other gambling
establishments were abolished and everyone lived in a culture where gambling
simply was not practiced then the potential gambling addict would not even
think of gambling. That might be a form of social myopia too. If the
opportunity to do something is not there and you don't know anyone who has ever
done it then not only are you unlikely to even think to do it yourself, but if
someone explained the practice to you then you would likely tell that person
that he was crazy and proclaim that such practices are against human nature.
So, yes, if you think what was being talked about here was changing human
nature then it is entirely possible to change human nature. It is a matter of
abolishing some opportunities and creating new ones.
___
Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through disbelief
and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were so! Your
patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply a child's
wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the eveastingly
bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory scientifically
demonstrates God's redundancy—though Darwin himself had not the courage to
follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely, you must realize that we
created God, and that all of us together now have killed him.” ― Irvin D.
Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept On 6/18/2021 4:52 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
What this individual is talking about is how to change human nature, The goal
is the same as that of religious conversion, the good kind, in which people
think about the welfare of others, rather than focusing mainly on their own
welfare. Believers would say that, that was Jesus' goal, but it didn't work.
All those Christians didn't end up caring about everyone else. Only few of
them did like the Catholic Workers. So now he wants to train socialist
organizers to understand the same concept, that the purpose of socialism is
the welfare of everyone, and to help them teach that concept to the masses.
Good luck. Even he has doubts that it can be done, but he thinks it's because
of the effect of technology on people's consciousness. I think it's because
of innate human nature.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2021 2:56 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Reimagining Socialism: A Conversation
Reimagining Socialism: A Conversation
• May 18, 2021 • Hidayat Greenfield
Today I was asked to speak about ‘reimagining socialism’. I would like to do
so by rephrasing the topic. It’s not a matter of reimagining socialism, but
rather, of reimagining ourselves as socialists. This makes the task simpler
and more difficult.
Simpler because we do not need to construct a complete vision of a
post-capitalist society or even how the capitalist system will be dismantled
and replaced. We only need to focus on a socialist approach to explaining how
capitalism creates the problems we face (exploitation, injustice, inequality,
poverty, unemployment, violence, discrimination, pandemics, and the climate
crisis), and why solutions cannot be found as long as the capitalist system
prevails.
But it is also more difficult because we must reflect on our socialist
commitment and our ability to communicate a socialist agenda through
organizing, education, and agitation.
Understanding Capitalism
As socialists, how do we understand the problems created by the capitalist
system? How do we locate the root cause(s) of a problem in capitalism as a
system? We must ask this whether it’s brutal working conditions, poverty,
jobs destruction, massive inequality, gender discrimination, violence against
women, the lack of decent housing, or the failure to pay a living wage. Take
any one of the thousands of problems that we’re trying to address in
organizing workers for collective action and systemic change.
Both the causes and the solutions (in terms strategies for struggle and the
demands and policies that are articulated in that struggle) must expose and
challenge capitalism and the capitalist dynamic.
Blaming capitalism is easy. Explaining why a particular problem is integral
to the capitalist system is more difficult. But if we do not locate the cause
within capitalism, how do we arrive at a solution that is anti-, non-,
post-capitalist?
The fact is that much of our response to the crises created by capitalism
produces social democratic demands for state intervention and partial or
temporary state control that just help to ‘fix’ capitalism.
Nationalizing banks, nationalizing industry, promoting food sovereignty,
government subsidies and public spending, public sector job creation, minimum
wages, etc. are presented as radical solutions. In the context of crisis,
these are radical. But ultimately, they serve to promote the realignment of
the capitalist system – revitalizing, not replacing, capitalism.
(Nationalization usually involves nationalizing private corporate debt and
shifting the burden to workers. In the 2008 financial crisis, Newsweek
magazine declared on its cover: “We are all socialists now”).
The incredible propensity of capitalism to absorb whatever you throw at it,
to utilize it to restore itself, is something that we should not
underestimate. Consider how the very real problem of gender discrimination
and gender inequality has been reconstructed as advertising, branding, and
reputation – as something that now generates private profit. The problem of
gender discrimination and gender inequality is tackled without exposing the
convergence of patriarchy and capitalist authority, or subordination and
capitalist property relations. In other words, gender discrimination and
gender inequality are manageable problems within capitalism (and actually a
source of profit accumulation) if de-linked from patriarchy, class, class
relations, and class struggle.
Class, Party, Unions
The problem with ‘class’ is that the predominant understanding of class today
is liberal, not socialist. Class is understood as a hierarchy of wealth and
inequality, of comparative incomes and living standards, and even
occupations. This is a liberal notion of class that supports our moral
outrage (unfair, unjust, outrageous inequality and extreme wealth). But it is
not the socialist understanding of the class relations that are integral to
capitalism and the class struggle essential to challenging it.
With a liberal understanding of class (occupation, income, wealth), any
demand to rectify inequality and poverty is described as ‘class struggle’.
This then gives the impression of a socialist agenda, while, in fact,
accepting, if not revitalizing, the capitalist system. Using the terms
‘class’ and ‘capitalism’ does not make us socialists. We need a socialist
understanding of class, capitalism, and the capitalist dynamic.
I’m not suggesting we abandon our moral outrage and be dispassionate – many
socialist intellectuals appear dispassionate, often with a detached and smug,
‘I told you so’. We must retain our moral outrage and sense of urgency. But
we must ensure that it’s not simply a moral judgment (good vs. evil). We must
respond by tackling the fundamental capitalist logic that’s causing these
problems.
More than anything, this dilemma is reflected in political parties that claim
a socialist platform. These parties tend to use moral outrage to demonstrate
that they are speaking and acting on behalf of the people… that they
represent the oppressed, the exploited, and the mildly annoyed. This is a
source of political legitimacy. This moral outrage at injustice tends to
produce short-term responses in terms of new policies or legal reform. The
problem is always blamed on the incumbent government and rarely blamed on the
capitalist system itself.
Like the absence of any real class analysis (where class is understood as
social relations and property, not wealth disparity and income), there is a
lack of understanding of the capitalist state. The focus is on government,
which is the institutional representation of only one aspect of state power.
More often it is a narrow focus on the people who run the government – bad
people we don’t like. Again, moral outrage.
I think, at its worst, this moral outrage is driven by a desire to seek
popular approval through social media, rather than a desire to prevent the
systemic causes of whatever outrage we’re responding to. The fact that – due
to the digital divide – those who respond to social media are a tiny minority
doesn’t seem to matter. Those who Like, Heart, re-post and re-Tweet are ‘the
people’. Our populist response is trending! For populist political leaders
the task of reimagining themselves as socialists is much easier. They only
need to be as socialist as social media needs them to be.
To reimagine ourselves as socialists we must restore our socialist
analysis. The COVID pandemic, rising unemployment, poverty wages, wage
theft insecurity, and all of the vulnerability that we’ve been
discussing should be understood in terms of the capitalist dynamic. No
doubt private property and the drive for profit is already well
understood. (Although we need to understand profit not in terms of how
much money is made, but in terms of exploitation and the extraction of
surplus value.)
We probably need to pay more attention to commodification, which is essential
to the capitalist system. Commodification is a social process that transforms
every aspect of human life into a commodity that can be bought and sold for
profit. We must understand the intersection of property relations (as a
source of power) and the compulsion of capitalism through market forces that
transforms everything into a commodity. We then need to understand the
exploitation through which surplus value is extracted and the redistribution
of that value.
I’m sure it is well understood that the most fundamental aspect of capitalist
social relations and the capitalist system is that labour power is a
commodity. Workers sell their labour-power to capitalists (the owners of the
means of production) and capitalists extract profit (surplus value), which
constitutes exploitation.
Yet everything about labour organizing reinforces the politico-legal
framework that regulates the commodification of labour-power and how workers
sell their labour-power. Registration of trade unions and legal recognition
and a collective agreement are necessary goals of a labour movement. But it
is not a socialist movement because it does nothing to challenge the
commodification of labour-power. It could be argued that the institutional
fetishism of a legalistic approach to organizing diminishes workers’ capacity
for class struggle.
It’s worth considering that social movement unionism simply obscures this
contradiction. Coming as it does from a social democratic tradition, the very
purpose is to compromise.
To understand the distinction between a socialist understanding and a social
democratic or libertarian understanding, consider that the founding
declaration of the International Labour Organization (ILO) states that
“labour is not a commodity.” What is the difference between labour-power as a
commodity and labour as a commodity? Second, distinguish between the
libertarian notion of worker rights in ILO conventions as individual human
rights and our need for collective rights.
Commodification
Understanding commodification is vital. Sexual exploitation involves
commodification. Gender discrimination involves commodification. Indeed, the
current solutions to gender discrimination without disrupting patriarchy or
property relations is also a form of commodification. The current crisis and
pandemic (and the next pandemic) are rooted in commodification. If we can
understand the ‘disease drivers’ that created this pandemic (through
human-mediated action), we can see how commodification plays such a vital
role. For example, the issue of vaccines and access is not just a government
failure, but the failure of a system in which human health is commodified.
Commodification is not just about everything becoming a product (for sale).
It’s inextricably bound up in competitiveness and the relentless drive to
increase productivity. It’s the capitalist imperative or the compulsion of
capitalism.
As I argued – somewhat hopelessly – in a recent debate over the need to
restore public healthcare, a genuinely public service that serves society,
such as free, universal healthcare for all, can fulfill neither its
obligations nor guarantee the rights of people if it is subordinated to the
imperative of capitalist productivity. The compulsion that drives
productivity, efficiency, competitiveness – regardless of the absence of an
overt aim of generating profit – turns a service to society, a public need,
into a commodity. As a commodity, it is inherently unable to satisfy human
needs because people – as individuals competing for access – must seek out
that commodity in the market. More than anything, this prevents us from
protecting public health in this – and the next – pandemic.
The other aspect of reimagining ourselves as socialists concerns the complex
interaction of individual material interests and collective interests. It’s
complex because when we’re organizing, we have to consider how much time and
energy we put into trying to convince workers that whatever we’re proposing
is in their individual personal, material interests. ‘If you join us and do
this, you will benefit.’ ‘If you don’t do this, there will there will be
terrible consequences!’ ‘If we don’t take action now, you could be next!’
Fear of bad things happening to them as individuals drives much of what we do
when we attempt to convince people to join our organizations or to join our
struggle. But what kind of struggle is it if it’s just a collection of
individual, personal, and material interests? Progress on a day-to-day basis
will be measured against our ability to deliver on that promise: ‘What do I
get from this?’ ‘Why haven’t I gained anything yet?’ Even if phrased as we
(‘What do we get from this?’ ‘Why haven’t we gained anything yet?’), it still
means me.
Very rarely do we suggest that workers join struggles simply on the basis
that it is for the greater good, in the public interest, or social interests.
(Notice we refer to social problems but no longer speak of social interests.)
There is not much traction in arguing that there will be a collective
benefit. When we talk about climate change and the struggle for climate
justice, it’s still very much a libertarian approach to a capitalist problem.
It’s very clear to us that the capitalist system created this climate crisis.
It’s equally clear that capitalism cannot deliver or allow a solution to this
crisis. That capitalism will destroy the planet is pretty much a foregone
conclusion.
But our collective ability to prevent that from happening is diminishing. Day
by day.
Yet how much education, awareness, campaigning, and organizing for climate
justice involves an appeal to individual material interests? The impact on
individuals is the most predominant part of the discussion.
Even if we refer to ‘community’, we do so because that’s the
collection of people around us, all the people we know or identify
with, so it’s still about me. Look at the entire response to the
COVID-19 pandemic and the way in which personal inconvenience (wearing
masks, staying home,
distancing) trumped our collective need to protect public health.
When we are organizing, the need to bring in the personal is seen as a very
practical way to reach people and convince people in everything we do. It’s
practical. But from the outset, it undermines our socialist commitment
because we avoid the very difficult task of building a collective set of
values that gives real meaning to solidarity. We sidestep the need to build a
collective set of values to drive collective action, and a genuine commitment
to something greater than ourselves. Whether you want to say it’s societal or
the public good, or the greater good, it doesn’t matter at this stage. We can
barely have a conversation about this thing that is beyond the individual.
What we do is pretend we’re talking about social interests or societal
interests, and the greater good, by talking about the collection of
individual personal interests affected by this. There’s always that promise
of what it means for me. All subsequent collective action around this is
premised on that promise.
The final point I’d like to make in reimagining ourselves as socialists is
the dilemma of the imagination itself. Our collective imagination is
fundamentally inhibited by how we communicate, educate, and agitate.
It’s inhibited because we communicate within a system where human attention
has been commodified. Our attention has been commodified and is bought and
sold for profit.
The business of Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and other corporations that
produce and control social media is the business of capturing and selling
people’s attention. As critics of the attention economy have shown, the
product is you.
The commodification of attention transforms our ability to communicate,
perceive, learn, and ultimately, to think. One of the effects of the
commodification of attention is distraction, and the level of distraction or
inability to pay attention is massive. This perpetual distraction or
continuous partial attention syndrome is the result of both new technologies
and the commodification of attention.
Reimagining Socialism
So even if we develop our socialist analysis, what do we do with it? We have
a socialist commitment based on genuine collective interests that rise above
personal individual material interests, yet we can’t communicate, educate,
and agitate effectively because we don’t have people’s attention. Their
attention has already been captured or bought.
This is probably what leads me to be so pessimistic about our future.
Whatever we try to communicate, people are listening for phrases and sound
bytes to post or share. Already thinking of how it will look on Instagram,
TickTock, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and what reaction it will get – likes,
comments, re-posts – so we don’t really have their attention, just their
time. And all the while, they are thinking about getting other people’s
attention.
This constant inattention preempts any deeper thought or analysis or
reflection or internalization because it’s all completely externalized at
that point. It’s all for an imaginary audience. This is part of the
commodification of attention – it’s now what people’s brains are re-wired to
do. This perpetual distraction or continuous partial attention syndrome also
has significant consequences for mental health and well-being. It runs up
against how our brains are hardwired and we may have to consider how this
damages, inhibits, or redefines our ability to understand or imagine anything.
How do we reimagine ourselves as socialists if we are constantly competing
for the attention (not understanding) of others? How can the reimagining of
socialism take place if we are so distracted? Is it possible that the depth
of understanding needed to fight capitalism and replace it with socialism no
longer exists because understanding no longer has depth? In fact, I wonder
whether we’ve lost our ability to imagine.
Recapturing that attention and rebuilding our collective imagination
is a massive task. We must regain people’s attention sufficiently to
understand the causes of the crisis and problems we face and the
collective action that’s needed for the collective good. If we believe
we can still do that, then I think there’s hope. •
Hidayat Greenfield is currently the elected Regional Secretary for the
Asia-Pacific section of the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel,
Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF).
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Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through
disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something
were so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is
simply a child's wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a
wish for the eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'!
Evolutionary theory scientifically demonstrates God's
redundancy—though Darwin himself had not the courage to follow his
evidence to its true conclusion. Surely, you must realize that we
created God, and that all of us together now have killed him.” ― Irvin
D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept