We have so many houses going unused. We have food and resources for everybody, but we’ve set up a system that arbitrarily concentrates most of it on a few people! Young children, with no understanding why society is this way, are suffering and dying because they live in a world that collectively agrees to let this happen unnecessarily
Fuck, I’m stoned but you know I’m right
Edit: and the sad thought hits me: the first step is realizing the system doesn’t have to be this way, the second step is realizing it isn’t going to change, at least not any time soon
It’s because guaranteeing positive rights requires cooperation or coercion. And it turns out we’re not great at cooperation.
It turns out capitalism actively disincentives cooperation. Cooperation is how humanity became the dominant life form. We’re fucking great at it when we don’t have a bunch of leeches siphoning off our surplus value and using that wealth to turn us against each other.
At a small scale, sure. When you reach the size of a country, not so much.
Maybe. We’ve also never had a classless country, so we don’t know for certain how very large groups of humans interact when we are free from the exploitation, division, and oppression that is inherent to class structures.
Why have we never had a classless country?
Because countries didn’t exist when humanity’s mode of production was primitive communism, and then since the agricultural revolution the means of production has always been held by individuals, which necessarily creates at least two classes, those who have, and those who have not.
There have been a few attempts by the people to seize the means of production, but they have always existed within the context of a global class system that prevents any attempt at a truly classless society. (IE, a strong centralized state is necessary to survive reactionary attempts to take back control, but a strong state creates a class system of those who have control vs those who don’t.)
Most Marxists actually acknowledge that after a socialist revolution you will still have class contradictions that society will have to work through, like the potential abuses a strong state can inflict. We generally agree though, that the key first step to creating a classless society is getting the means of production out of the hands of private individuals.
Seems to me if it was our natural tendency to treat everyone in the world the same way we’d treat our family, then it would have prevailed in some capacity, somewhere, after all this time.
Instead, it seems like we’re good at participating in that kind of communism you mentioned within smaller groups, and those groups can cooperate with other groups in increasingly less familial ways as this network of groups grow larger and larger.
I don’t see any evidence that our natural tendency is towards communism.
Right, and my point is that it’s not surprising that you don’t see that evidence (assuming you live in the US or elsewhere in the imperial core), given the effects that class dynamics have on social behavior. By its very nature capitalism alienates people and turns them into individualist consumers. If you travel to more communally-minded places, it’s clear that human nature is very much place- and context- dependent.
And my point is that such evidence doesn’t appear to exist.
It also requires empathy over group belonging