[Peace-discuss] The Revolutiona ry Communist Party says…

[Bob Illyes]

John and Noam are addressing roughly the same issue, in my opinion. "An 
instinct for freedom" is a way for saying that human nature matters when 
designing a political system or strategy.

Oddly, both the radical Marxist and the radical Libertarian camps tend to 
ignore human nature, designing societies for hypothetical beings if pure 
reason. So I think they are not as different as they appear superficially.

I think that Christianity gets it right in a lot of ways. I would say that 
rights are inherent and that the capacity of people for folly is not to be 
underestimated.  A more orthodox Christian position would be that rights 
are God-given and that people are prone to sin. No matter which way it is 
said, if these statements are correct then human nature represents a severe 
constraint on what sort of political systems will work and how well they 
will work.

Bob

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Carl posted: "If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there 
will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there 
are opportunities to change things, there's a chance for you to contribute 
to making a better world. That's your choice."  --Noam Chomsky

John W. wrote:
>... The generic, unspecified "revolution" as the solution to all the
>enumerated ills of the capitalist system - which the Communists/Socialists
>always do a pretty good job of enumerating. *yawn*  Been there, tried to do
>that.
>In my dotage I disagree most profoundly with this statement by Chairman Bob:
>"What has proven to be possible—and what has proven NOT to be possible—has
>nothing to do with "human nature" or "personal responsibility"...and
>everything to do with the system that was put in place to ensure "the dreams
>of our founders."  I now know most assuredly and emphatically that there IS
>such a thing as "human nature", which goes a very long way toward determining
>the types of self-seeking "systems" we humans put in place and have ALWAYS
>put in place.  Unless "human nature" is understood and taken into account,
>there is absolutely no possibility that human society can ever improve.  Our
>Founders tried to take human nature into account with their system of checks
>and balances, but of course they did it in such a way as to leave many 
>loopholes in which they could protect their own privileged status.
>JBW