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David S. writes:
I am trying to think this through. Let me summarize my understanding of the
discussion. Your original argument was that the elimination of "private
property" would eliminate "material want."
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CB: Yes, basically I am using "poverty" and "material want" as synonyms here. I don't
mean people wouldn't want anything material. As Gar Lipow put it, we can provide
everybody with the "necessities of life".
This gets a bit tricky because human society creates new "needs" over time. An
automobile is a need in some cities in the U.S. today.. But the idea is that what
every the specific historical needs of the time, they are guranteed for all people.
This is what I mean by abolition of poverty.
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There are several assumptions
here. First, eliminating "private property" would result that all were
"guaranteed the material basics of living." The next assumption is that if
we "guarantee the material basics of living," we will eliminate "material
want."
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CB: I'm not sure of the difference between these two. They are one "assumption". By
eliminating private property in the basic means of production , that is by abolishing
exploitative productive relations, by expropriating the expropriators, society has the
necessary precondition for eliminating poverty. As Jim D. mentioned, it is a necessary
condition. There will have to be some finalizing actions, but basically there is no
stopping the elimination of poverty once exploitation ( private property in the basic
means of production) is abolished.
Recall , I also said we can abolish war ! That's a big one too. Worth struggling for.
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I assert, to the contrary, that "material want" is relative, and
that guaranteeing the material basics provides no assurance that
acquisitiveness will be eliminated.
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CB: Yes, material want or the necessities of life or the poverty line is relative
historically. But whatever it is at the historical moment , it would be eliminated.
Acquisativeness is basically part of the institution of private property. It is
learned , not part of human nature. People are acquisative today not because of their
genes, but because they learn it. If we eliminate the institution of private
property, we would of course stop teaching people to be acquisative. It can be
eliminated just as much as , say , the desire for knight errancy (sp) or to be a
slaveowner was eliminated. It can be tossed on the scrap heap of history along with
many other bygone human institutions.
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You argue that we have evidence of
hunter-gatherer societies in which acquisitiveness is not a feature. You
further argue that we can wed the consciousness of a hunter-gatherer society
to our modernized society.
Do I have this right?
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CB: Somewhat , yes. It wouldn't be wedding hunter and gatherer consciousness to our
modernized society, it would be persuading all that everybody would be better off
without poverty, war, alienation, and that we would have to eliminate the categores
rich and poor for that. The hunter and gatherer part is just to demonstrate that
acquisativeness is not inherent in human nature. Humans are not born acquisative , and
we know this because most of the societies for most of the time of human history have
not had acquisativeness or the unlimited acquisativeness and desire to be rich that
class exploitative societies have. "Rich and poor" is a relatively new phenomenon in
human society , so it is not human nature to want to be rich. It is learned.
The category "rich" requires that somebody be "poor" . Without poor people, the rich
cannot be rich . If there is no one whom I have much more wealth than, then I am not
"rich".
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Charles had written:
<<<To answer in brief, there is significant anthropological evidence that in
hunting and gathering and gardening based societies there is not the
distinction between rich and poor we know, for example in indigenous
American societies. These societies did not have private property in the
sense I mean here. Unlimited acquisativeness is not "human nature" as
perhaps implied in one of your questions.
On the other hand, capitalism especially has increased technological
development enormously, such that there is , well, a lot of stuff produced
shall we say.
Marx and Engels' idea was that a kind of combination of the old communalism
with the new level of technology would mean the "lots of stuff" distributed
without classes, without rich and poor, would mean no poverty or material
want in the sense that we mean poverty today. Everyone would be guranteed
all the material basics of living.
This does not mean that new problems would not emerge, such as global
warming or exhaustion of fossil fuels or issues we cannot anticipate now.
These problems would require new efforts, discoveries and solutions, but the
old problems of class societies would not be among the new ones.>>>
