While pondering the rise and fall of British character, Theodore Dalrymple digs up a passage from an old book.

It was then a common French opinion that the British were less intelligent than the French; and in the book, Maurois? fictional alter ego,…

Now, it’s true that no sensible person goes into the arts or humanities to get rich. In general, it takes someone who truly cares about knowledge for the sake of knowledge to do that. So, why would anyone care about something so impractical? Well, it’s possible that, even though the arts and humanities don’t serve a direct, practical purpose in the same way, say, knowing how to build a house does, they do help to elevate the way people think. They serve to help us better understand ourselves and make better use of all those practical bits of knowledge we acquire. I would argue that isn’t useless at all.

As for intellectuals thinking they’re better than other people, yes, perhaps some do. But some powerful businessmen, some powerful religious icons, both of whom often decry intellectuals, certainly feel the same about themselves, they just B.S. the public better. But the truth is, the purpose of the arts and humanities isn’t to make people feel bad about themselves and what they like. Done properly, it’s designed to expand a person’s worldview, to allow them to decide for themselves what they like by giving them chances to experience things they might not have. I enjoy both Shakespeare and Marvel Comics, and I see no shame in either one.

As for intellectuals in favor of socialism, I don’t think it’s so terribly epidemic. While there are certainly smatterings of young, overly idealistic college students who think the world would be better if everyone shared, on the whole, intellectuals should know that socialism isn’t really for them. Who gets shot in communist societies right after the aristocrats? Teachers, doctors, and scholars.

Intellectuals are often more on the liberal side of the spectrum, and as to why that is I don’t care to debate, but I suspect this vast conspiracy of commie college professors is just an overstatement designed to demonize a group of people who are often misunderstood. The authors of these articles, who are themselves the type who write scholarly papers, ironically enough, work at creating an “Us vs. Them” mentality, while denigrating people who care about learning. It reminds me a lot of high school.

“it is the social relationship that requires large number of human beings to keep working, well after they have produced more than what is necessary for their own survival and leisure many times over”

How do you know how much a given person could have produced in their given job without the use of resources that others have put in place before them? How could an assembly line worker’s production and proper earnings be allocated in your system when he is able to work in the first place because of the plant, machinery, patents, technology, land, inventory, risk, capital infusion, advertising, etc. of others in his organization? You’re acting as if everything each worker produces today arises solely out of his own doing. Hint: He’s piggy-backing on the labor and capital of those before him.

“Notice nobody who is rich ever wants to become a wage laborer, yet they will extoll the virtues of a society which condemns 95% of the population to this same fate.”

Is an aversion to economic backsliding common to any other economic philosophy? Are communists special in that they don’t care if they work harder than others with equal pay? Probably not. The fact that people don’t especially like menial jobs isn’t an indictment of the whole system. The plain fact is that there is a natural hierarchy that humans naturally fall into. Communism and socialism is an attempt to jumble that hierarchy, whereas capitalism accepts it as part of the human condition. The best thing about capitalism is that, while accepting this hiearchy, people are free to attempt to move up and down that ladder. This is the best humanity can hope for.

The work that we do for survival is not the problem, it is the social relationship that requires large number of human beings to keep working, well after they have produced more than what is necessary for their own survival and leisure many times over, in order to retain the “privilege” of employment. ( They must compete against those poorer and more desperate than them. Notice nobody who is rich ever wants to become a wage laborer, yet they will extoll the virtues of a society which condemns 95% of the population to this same fate. )

Further, it is the fact that large number of people are prohibited from working, and thus forced toward poverty… regardless if that work they are capable of performing is productive, and useful, if that work does not meet the requirement that it can be purchased cheaply and sold for an acceptable level of profit.

You have a lot of thinking to do about the nature of work in Capitalist society, before you can truly say you are in favor of Capitalism. Don’t cheat yourself.

At the end of your post, you claim that the [sic] “dilemma” (Catch-22) is that those who want a socialist society are not those who are in power to bring it about. So let’s assume that you are the one in power. And you’ve done so.

I would like to continue to own a car and so would many other people. The auto industry today, I’d say, is capitalistic in that there are some CEOs and shareholders in charge, they have all the money and they hire workers like they buy steel and airbags. They get the surplus profits and the workers get a paycheck to spend on things like cars. (Let’s also pretend that the auto industry isn’t flailing. You can pick a different, large industry if you like.)

So, you’re in charge and when you said no more capitalism. The shareholders and CEO of GM or whomever flew to some other country that still has capitalism, like, I dunno, Mexico.

What needs to happen so that we can continue to have cars? I’ve read many a blog and been to a couple dinner parties and never did I get a car. Who makes the cars now? How much do they cost? Is there a profit? Who gets the profit? Are workers getting paid and how much? With what money does whoever is making the cars buy raw materials like steel and whatever else is needed?

I’m all in favor of the socialist society, I just want a picture of how it works. My inculcation has obviously been so thorough that I require an explanation!

I have a proposal – all those of us who are happy with the capitalist system should get together and all those who prefer a socialist system could get together. Then the socialists will be free of all the nasty dictators.

http://www.janehaddam.com/chd/marx1.html

Martin Regnens last blog post..A Call For a New Spirituality

And in either case, this rhetorical question of yours doesn’t quite grasp the reality of our historical situation. The technician who “invented” the assembly line was probably paid a wage for his genius. The person who paid him a wage, and owned the patent, would get the reward.

And you all seem to be ok with this. Defeated creatures that you are.

What I really think is that human beings are first and foremost animals. It is our nature, the same as every other animal, to have to “work” to survive. The inestimable advantage we have developed since our subsistence past is the division of labour which allows individuals to produce a “surplus” which can then be “traded” for products which we might never have been able to produce for ourselves. I.E. Humans have no choice but to labour in some way – by their nature. Whether an individual chooses to labour at a subsistence level or join in the more productive “capitalist” system is still a choice, even in a “capitalist” state (granted it is more difficult but it is still possible).

As to your scarcity comment – what reward should the inventor of the assembly line receive? Has he (and let’s face it nearly every invention is a man’s) not raised the productivity (and therefore value) of every worker to be employed on that line? Doesn’t he deserve much greater rewards and shouldn’t the “labourers” appreciate the enormous advantage he has bestowed on them?

I don’t think that’s the case at all. Can you think of a feasible situation in which everyone can be exactly what they want to be and make as much money as needed to fill their financial desires? It’s not possible given the scarce resources of this planet. There has to be a system, in this case the free market price system, that sorts out who gets what. It’s not perfect, but it is the best alternative thus far. Once cold fusion is discovered maybe this paradigm will change, but until then, good luck with that socialism.

If you aren’t willing to acknowledge that resources, people, land, air, water, raw materials etc, then you’re correct, we have nothing else to say on this issue.

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