Fascism!
- Thread starter josef k.
- Start date
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I'd dispute 'always'. Who, exactly, has come off worse from the eradication of smallpox?
Maybe, though I can't think of any right now. Scientists tend overwhelmingly to be practical people - despite a widespread stereotype perpetuated by that photo of the aged Einstein with the crazy hair - and that's a mindset inherently opposed to grand sweeping utopian ideologies.
Marx considered himself a political scientist, but it's worth remembering he never advocated violent struggle and revolution.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
give me a minute, I'm thinking about it.
alright. my short answer is - I have no idea.
my longer answer - & I'm sorry if this seems like a sidestep - is that I would never try to force people to agree with me in the first place. it never works anyway - even at gunpoint. also, I'm not interested in telling people what to do. If you want to exercise power you have to make tradeoffs which I'm not willing to make.
unfortunately, of course, there's always someone else willing to step in & tell people what's best for them.
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...The issue is not only the winners and losers of smallpox-eradication, but the social-technological-complex which led to its eradication, and its (possible) costs...
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
But padraig was talking about particular scientific advances - not social-technological-complexes. Which of course is a much bigger and broader thing than science, or even Science.
vimothy
yurp
Why don't I just stop being obtuse and get on with it, eh?
Let's say we've rolled back the state and are on our farm discussing our next move. You want to do one thing; I want to do something else. Perhaps we are not violent people, and perhaps what we want is not mutually exclusive, but let's imagine, for the purposes of argument that there are costs associated with individual as opposed to collective action. We have a constraint -- a practical problem -- such as a limited amount of farm land and differing opinions on how to farm it.
How do we resolve this dispute? The obvious solution is to come to some kind of arrangement. Split the farm in half. You take this field and this field. I take this field and this field. We share the farm house and decide on who gets to use what tools when. What have we constructed here, aside from a peaceful resolution to our dispute and a pleasant social experiment, is an institutional structure that underpins our social relations.
To put it another way, you say that absent the state there would be no (or less) violence if economic incentives were removed, but this would not be possible without the state (in its most general form, at least). Similarly, altering unbalanced power dynamics implies the presence of the state (again, at least in its most general form).
Let's say we've rolled back the state and are on our farm discussing our next move. You want to do one thing; I want to do something else. Perhaps we are not violent people, and perhaps what we want is not mutually exclusive, but let's imagine, for the purposes of argument that there are costs associated with individual as opposed to collective action. We have a constraint -- a practical problem -- such as a limited amount of farm land and differing opinions on how to farm it.
How do we resolve this dispute? The obvious solution is to come to some kind of arrangement. Split the farm in half. You take this field and this field. I take this field and this field. We share the farm house and decide on who gets to use what tools when. What have we constructed here, aside from a peaceful resolution to our dispute and a pleasant social experiment, is an institutional structure that underpins our social relations.
To put it another way, you say that absent the state there would be no (or less) violence if economic incentives were removed, but this would not be possible without the state (in its most general form, at least). Similarly, altering unbalanced power dynamics implies the presence of the state (again, at least in its most general form).
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
This phrase fills me with a nameless dread.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
perhaps I wasn't clear but I much more meant the latter than the former. my point was mainly that science follows power, like anything else. which, again, is not an attack on scientists, in the least. I merely fail to see how they are "better" or "worse" than revolutionaries.
further tho, I think it depends on your POV. diseases have a function, like anything else, among other things they deter overpopulation. obv it's impossible & inhuman to say that any individual death from disease is a positive thing. but, still.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
As do pogroms, gas chambers and artificial famines, come to that.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
again, sorry if this seems like a dodge - the answer is to have made damn sure that you can get along & work with everyone before you start trying to live collectively with them. to specifically have strong emotional ties (akin to family/tribe/clan/etc) that go deep enough that they can withstand the need to makes such decisions & develop such informal institutional structures. people that you can compromise with - also, from experience, less people is always better, the more people, the more problems arise. all easier said than done, obv.
to be honest I'm not so hung up on what is or is not "the state". to me the main focus is really how you're approaching your life, your relationships with other people, with (hippie alert) the Earth. how you're trying to address power in those relationships & in the decisions you make collectively or intellectually, how you're examining your own motivations and those of the people around you.
I sense you're trying to tie me down on something very pragmatic & I'm sorry if I'm not obliging.
tbc, that is not what I necessarily believe - I said that that would be (one possible) anarchist response to the question of violence. I have mixed feelings about that line of reasoning myself. I guess it matters how you define "the state":
Nicely put.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
they certainly do. they are tools used by people against other people. that doesn't mean they're "good" things. I'm not sure if you're trying to invoke some sense of moral outrage?
one point about diseases: for the most part - aside from smallpox blankets & so on - are not being carried as policies by people against other people. caveat here about something like the accessibilty or lack thereof of AIDS medication, which is not as clearcut.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
right. but I'm not dodging the inevitability of such a meeting. just saying that the legwork you do to prepare yourself before the meeting ever takes place is by far the most important thing.