Miriam,
Yes. I made a mental note when I read the post, but that was not
going to get in the way of my point...whatever it was.
But I suspect that many Progressive people still feel that we will be
okay if only we can get a better handle on our Planet. We still think
in terms of "conquering", in order to "Win" the fight. But as I've
said in the past, our survival depends upon our coming to terms with
our Planet. Learning to live *WITH the life around us. And this
includes arriving at a place where we no longer have artificial
divisions such as Nations, or Religions, or Political Parties. And we
will need to find our way out of this phony Corporate Capitalistic
world, and end our worship of artificial materialism.
After saying all of that, I seem to have misplaced my pipe. Like, put
that in your pipe and smoke it.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/22/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Do we really want to maximize man's power over nature? Isn't that how we
got
into the environmental catastrophe we're in? Shouldn't the goal be for man
to live in harmony with nature?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Jarvis [mailto:carjar82@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, July 22, 2016 11:16 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Miriam Vieni
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Re: Replanting Paradise
Hi Roger and All,
"as Trotsky described it, our goals are to maximize man's power over nature
and to minimize man's power over man."
And yes, regardless of our "druthers", we all are involved in this eternal
struggle. To those who feel the hopelessness and drop out, hiding behind
many distractions offered by the Ruling Class, I remind you, your very
retreat is an expression of your involvement. No action is actually an
action.
Frustrating, huh?
Carl Jarvis
On 7/21/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whether it is corruption, greed, religion or a myriad otherwill have to deal with a forever war anyway.
manifestations of a class society the way to stop them is to remove
the objective conditions that make them possible. That is not done by
waving a magic wand nor by any other instant method. When the formerly
ruled class becomes the ruling class it rules. That is what a ruling
class is, a class that rules, and that opens the opportunity for
corruption, but the mere fact of the former ruled class being the
large majority tends to lesson that possibility. When there is a
revolution where the full productive capacity of capitalism has not
been achieved there will be shortages and that means that someone must
be in charge of distributing what there is not enough of. That is the
simple explanation of the rise of Stalinism and the rise of Stalinism
itself should be a lesson in how not to build a socialist society. The
kind of situation that should be striven for is one in which there is
plenty of production and what is produced need only be administered.
As Lenin said, the state as an apparatus for administering people
needs to become an apparatus for administering things. The trouble is
that revolution does not and virtually cannot work out just exactly
the way we want it to. There are just too many variables to keep track
of. So undoubtedly there will be corruption along the way that will
have to be fought down. We can only plan a forward line of march and
always look to the past to avoid mistakes that have already been made.
To paraphrase someone else, the price of socialism is eternal
vigilance. If this sounds like a forever war that you would not like
to participate in then remember that even if you do not participate you
Do nothing and the inequities of a class system continue and you arecloser.
caught in the middle whether you like it or not. Do something about it
and you are caught in a perpetual struggle in which you are helping
things to get better and it works too. Capitalism is a much better
system to live under than feudalism and feudalism was a much better
system to live in than slavery. The next stage will be even better,
But remember, as Trotsky described it, our goals are to maximize man's
power over nature and to minimize man's power over man. That goal does
not have an end in sight. There will always be opportunities to get
On 7/21/2016 4:06 PM, Bob Hachey wrote:
Hi Roger,
I have finally decided that there is little or no hope for capitalism
and that it cannot serve well the majority of us. But I keep thinking
about what would happen if we really do achieve the socialist
revolution often referred to in the millitant. The theory sounds
great, but it seems dependent upon no humans who will try to corrupt
the new system for personal gain at the expense of the rest of us.
Look what happened in Russia, China and Cuba. I know that Cuba is not
as bad as China and Russia, but I can't help but be suspiscious when
one leader, Castro, is in power for such a long time. Carl speaks
often and eloquently on this issue.
It seems to me that most humans when put into positions of ledership
would try to exploit the situation. What sort of safeguards would you
recommend in a new system that would prevent or eliminate this tendency?
Bob Hachey
