this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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That would literally be a capitalist state in every meaningful sense.
Sorta like a police force of some kind?
You know what is really fucking organized? A state. It is almost like at the beginning of the country all the large landowners and capitalists got together and made one of those to protect their interests.
Lol. I am literally asking how your hypothetical system would handle class antagonisms, the primary concern of politics. I am very directly asking "but can you make it work"
So you just want the violence you prefer meted out by the state.
Is this meant to be a gotcha? What I prefer has nothing to do with understanding how states function and why they coalesce.
Not really a gotcha. I just forget I'm pretty alone in my (particular) distaste for violence.
Edit: didn't really mean for that to sound so negative.
I guess I dont base my understanding of politics around morality, morality enters the field when determining what to do within that understanding
I'm certainly overly reductive of politics. When we're talking ideology, though, yeah I'm going back to my ethics. A government can't act on our behalf with more rights than us - we just end up creating our master. Pragmatic actions, in the real world, are different from ideological conversations, though.
I'm somewhat confused by your separation of ideology from practical actions. That sounds internally inconsistent.
I am willing to accept a state if it is necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and their toadies, so long as that continues to be necessary. I would prefer we lived in a communist society but we can't get there overnight and socialism is how you transition to it.
It's similar to your position. I just have a different path to a stateless, voluntary society. I also don't really care what the economic system looks like, so long as human rights are recognized.
What about human economic rights? What use does a homeless starving person have for the freedom of press?
I consider freedom of the press to just be freedom of speech, which we all have.
As for the homeless chap, it depends on their situation. I'd live in a community that would try to help them. I think we're ethically obligated to help people in need as best we can, but I'm not comfortable using violence to force you to help them.
The thing is we don't. There is no such thing as free speech, any speech that meaningfully threatens the government will be cracked down on. See Fred Hampton. Free speech is a legal fiction in our country.
But my point is that the limited bourgeois privileges you get don't matter if you're starving on the street. You can't meaningfully have those privileges without economic security.
So it is more violent to take food from a grocery store because that hurts the owners bottom line than it is to prevent a starving man from taking bread from a grocery store by kicking his ass and throwing him in a box? Is that your perspective on this issue?
I meant that freedom of the press shouldn't be limited to just people that work for CNN or whatever. I don't think they're separate rights. I didn't mean to say they're appropriately implemented.
Theft of small amounts of food isn't really something I care about. I'm not a fan of police or jails/prisons. We can handle these sorts of crimes more ethically. Robberies are a bit different. If you're someone that visits San Francisco to bip cars then goes back home, you could prolly use a good kick or two if you're caught by your intended victim.
Regardless, I think we, as a society, should be there with the bread. It shouldn't be an issue we have to face.
In the same way that a collective of workers getting together to control the means of production would be a communist state in every meaningful sense.
Yes. The difference is I'm not claiming a proletarian democracy isn't a state.