30 Jan 2024 7:13 am
(PART I OF III)
Cannonpointer: "Divorcing authority from accountability is a fool's game, sir. The worker who votes HIMSELF and HIS generation extra cookies will not pay the long-term price for the short-term benefit."
What gives the impression that I endeavor to divorce authority from accountability? As a supporter of Daniel DeLeon's Socialist Industrial Government concept, I'm in favor of workers' ability in a futuristic socialist commonwealth to recall the elected members of the said industrial government immediately. http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf
The comment, "The worker who votes HIMSELF and HIS generation extra cookies won't pay the long-term price for the short-term benefit," is reminiscent of the fourth and final photo in this thread's first response post by "Skans," 05 Jan 2024, 6:03 am. It shows a bar of soap and two men in a shower with the caption, "How Socialism Works," with the subheading "Free Stuff, You, Government." And, of course, the bar of soap is the "free stuff."
That type of thing has been forever put forward by the apologists for capitalism and, sadly, their working-class supporters. It's a con job intended to prevent workers from understanding that they produce all economic wealth through their labor power alongside nature. Ergo, it's calculated to make workers feel guilty about accepting "free stuff" when they and they alone produce that "free stuff," what little there is.
Moreover, the manipulatively false assertion that taking "free stuff" is somehow harmful or "enslaving" is laughable. Scandinavian societies provide themselves with an abundance of "free stuff," and they're primarily excellent societies overwhelmingly populated by peaceful and well-adjusted individuals because of it. I surround the phrase "free stuff" with quotation marks because free stuff is indeed not free; it is, once again, produced/paid for by workers via their labor power - blood, sweat, and tears.
So, too, do such memes serve to distract workers from the reality that it's the members of the capitalist class that partake in free stuff. Starting from the axiom, "Without workers, capitalists would be nothing, and without capitalists, workers would be everything," we can understand that the capitalist class produces nothing while taking nearly everything. In brief, the capitalist class takes free stuff, not the working class. It's the capitalist class that's parasitic.
Cannonpointer: "Next, can we look for you to demand the enfranchisement of children? If not, why not? A smart six-year-old is less dangerous to a well-ordered society than a 25-year-old moron."
Since children are unlikely to be working members of any industrial government, I won't be demanding the enfranchisement of children for the reason given.
Cannonpointer: "You have emulated both Marx and Rand, who - opposites in the more obvious aspects - shared one character flaw: They spent more time thinking about how the people's business ought to be ordered than they did thinking about humans. The most ingenious systems are only of consequence if they're suited to the creatures for whose order they're intended."
But, as I explained in a previous post, neither Marx nor Engles ever "spent time thinking how the people's business ought to be ordered"; beyond the social ownership and democratic administration, they never delineated how a socialist commonwealth was to be ordered. And the genius of socialism is that it's suited to all creatures.
(END PART I)