People on the left seldom reflect on popularity of the NRA or the gun
lobby. The backbone of the NRA are mostly law abiding, quite sane,
hardly violence prone individuals who -quite rationally- fear for a
modest accumulation of private property and their personal safety
threatened by people Marxists have described as " lumpen-proletariat ".
Socialists think they can improve the social order by checking private concentrations of enormous wealth-without rendering any economic class permanently miserable. Under capitalism we have a condition best summed up by the Latin expression : HOMO HOMINI LUPUS. Freud reflects on this in " Civilization and its Discontents ".
Socialists like Albert Einstein were more optimistic than Freud . They did not think that human nature is forever bound to the social institution of private property. For thousands of years humans were a fundamentally group, tribe, family oriented species. SHARING and co-operation prevailed over competition and violent aggression. Possession was not the rule even in the mating game. Children were seen as belonging to the whole community-never as the private property of socially isolated parents.
Our social souls have been corrupted by a few thousand years of PRIVATE PROPERTY civilization-beginning with ancient slavery that first made PEOPLE into PROPERTY.
Capitalism made wage slavery seem as natural as once seemed ancient slavery. How is any apologist for capitalism today any different in wisdom from the Greek philosopher Aristotle who thought some humans were " slaves by nature " ?
The general force of CHANGE is not on the side of the status quo. Human society EVOLVES like everything else in nature.
I doubt if there will be a Stock Market one hundred years from now. And what guns still exist will be on display in museums of human history.
Socialists think they can improve the social order by checking private concentrations of enormous wealth-without rendering any economic class permanently miserable. Under capitalism we have a condition best summed up by the Latin expression : HOMO HOMINI LUPUS. Freud reflects on this in " Civilization and its Discontents ".
Socialists like Albert Einstein were more optimistic than Freud . They did not think that human nature is forever bound to the social institution of private property. For thousands of years humans were a fundamentally group, tribe, family oriented species. SHARING and co-operation prevailed over competition and violent aggression. Possession was not the rule even in the mating game. Children were seen as belonging to the whole community-never as the private property of socially isolated parents.
Our social souls have been corrupted by a few thousand years of PRIVATE PROPERTY civilization-beginning with ancient slavery that first made PEOPLE into PROPERTY.
Capitalism made wage slavery seem as natural as once seemed ancient slavery. How is any apologist for capitalism today any different in wisdom from the Greek philosopher Aristotle who thought some humans were " slaves by nature " ?
The general force of CHANGE is not on the side of the status quo. Human society EVOLVES like everything else in nature.
I doubt if there will be a Stock Market one hundred years from now. And what guns still exist will be on display in museums of human history.
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| Socialists are more optimistic than Freud |
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