6 Feb 2024 7:02 am
(PART III OF IV)
"Accepting 'free' healthcare or 'free' higher education doesn't constitute being enslaved by the government any more than getting 'free' police and fire protection embodies being enslaved by the government. Again, it's a bait-and-switch designed to ensure that the vast majority of free stuff keeps flowing to the non-productive capitalist class." --Yours truly
Maybe Cannonpointer agreed but didn't wish to say so. I also find it interesting that, although virtually all of this forum's right-wingers, its conservatives, neocons, and Nazis, agree that "taking 'free' stuff from the government screws workers," none of them have offered a counternarrative to my assessment. Maybe my position that "accepting 'free' healthcare or 'free' higher education doesn't constitute being enslaved by the government any more than getting 'free' police and fire protection embodies being enslaved by the government" is accurate.
Cannonpointer: "Ah, so racism is about economic motivations. Interesting.Now, does that mean that the black fellow was racist for stealing my **** or that I'm racist for distrusting black fellas after that?"
Whether a black person who steals from a white person is given to interpersonal racism or not, most black people who steal things do so because of the socioeconomic conditions dealt to them by institutionalized or structural racism. So, in nearly all such cases, interpersonal racism is incidental, while structural or systemic racism is the primary motivation. Although Nazis have a vested interest in perpetuating the false notion that "all black people steal," it's a baseless lie rooted in simplistic "thought" and a lack of discernment. Again, I have the impression that Cannonpointer resides in the mostly depressed southeastern US or has otherwise seen the worst of black people. But to extrapolate those experiences to where one assumes that all black people are dishonest is racist and childish. I have a very well-to-do black neighbor who steals large amounts of money every hour of every day. It's just that he steals it from his wage slaves through a system of bourgeois legality known as private profit. But hardly anyone sees this as a problem because most people don't understand the Marxist analysis of wage labor. After all, they're not supposed to understand it. But it's enormously problematic for individual workers and society at large. It leads to many of the vagaries that foster theft between workers and, in turn, perpetuates interpersonal racism. It's a vicious cycle that begins with the economic exploitation of workers.
Cannonpointer: "How might the Olympics work in a non-hierarchical socialist society? Will the workers vote on how to fix the bridge, or will they be exceptionally attentive to the engineer on the project (assuming that a society that eschews hierarchies is even CAPABLE of producing engineers)?"
Olympic Games hosted by a socialist society within a predominantly capitalist world are no different than any other Olympic Games, i.e., the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. The Olympic Games would be a simple matter of one-on-one and team competition in a world where capitalism and borders have been eliminated. With the needless - indeed the divisive spectacle of nationalism removed, athletes would be free of the politically-induced restraints that have forever hampered the Olympic Games. They would finally be about athletic excellence and nothing more. (Continued in PART IV)
http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf
(END OF PART III)