RE: [Peace-discuss] The Revolutiona ry Communist Party says.

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

Just for the sake of provoking the discussion, I offer the following
comments:

1. " 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."

Not so oddly; both do not tend to ignore human nature as much as they both
make the assumptions of the historic period that they came out of
philosophically (i.e., the Enlightenment) in that they both presume man to
be a rational animal and the world to be a rational place capable of
understanding, knowing, and controlling if not molding.  While the
Libertarians assume an English Liberal tradition of a Utilitarian bent
coming out of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, James Mills, Jeremy Bentham, and
J.S. Mills as their basic grounding; Marxists come out of the Continental
Idealist tradition assuming a less atomistic and more organic bent (i.e.,
the whole is greater than its parts and gestalt approach) which came out of
Comte, Saint-Simon, Hegel, etc. as their basis.

2. " 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."

Aside from disagreeing with the whole notion of "inherent rights,"  I think
that Christianity and its doctrines tend to be a little confused if not
uncertain about the estimating the capacity of people for folly, depending
on if one gives priority to pre-determination or free will.  If one holds
pre-determination as the prime directive, then people have no capacity for
folly; God has the capacity for folly and people do as they are
pre-ordained.  If one accepts free will as the prime directive, then the
notion of inherent rights as formulated is undermined; but people have great
capacity for folly although without some overarching absolute plan that is
capable of being known it is hard to define folly or irrationality, or
deviance/sin.


3.  "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."

Again leaving aside my disagreement and assuming for the sake of the
discussion that these statements are correct, then I have to ask if human
nature does not represent a severe constraint on what political system is
possible, if any at all will work, and/or if they could work well enough to
be significantly different from none at all.


-----Original Message-----
From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
[mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Bob Illyes
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 11:33 AM
To: peace-discuss at anti-war.net
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] The Revolutiona ry Communist Party says.

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

-------------
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

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