11-20-2020, 09:35 PM
(11-20-2020, 02:39 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(11-20-2020, 01:27 PM)Einzige Wrote: The morality, or lack thereof, of individual capitalists or irrelevant. Capital is a systemic totality to which everyone, including the individual capitalist, is yoked.
Unfortunately, the Marxist revolutionaries come to own the means of production, and just come to replace the capitalists in exploiting the worker. If in some way (such as democracy) you could keep enabling the worker to put limits on the elite class, I might listen. Alas, the Elites provided the money during the recent unraveling, the racists provided the votes. Potentially, we could return to a newer deal configuration. The right promises were made. We will see if they can be kept.
All elites of which I have ever known have gone sour. They start living well, and they can't expect their kids doing anything else other than going into the family business, so to speak, whether as a shaman, a feudal lord, a civil servant, an intellectual, a plutocrat, an executive, or a member of the bureaucracy. The Soviet nomenklatura was no better than the priests, landowners, financiers, and executives that they replaced.
Freedom depends ultimately upon the decentralization of power. In commerce that means small business as opposed to giant enterprises that become feudal monstrosities or entities devoured in bureaucratic bloat. In religious organizations that means the prevention of an internal cult. In government of any kind that means free and competitive elections.
The survival of capitalism is far more likely when capitalists act in accordance with some moral compass. The first rule is to not do evil. The second is to not tolerate it. The third is to turn a profit. Mafia-like syndicates put the latter first, do evil, and corrupt the entire system.
...All in all we need a culture of moral decency (I don't mean prudery that is often a cover for nastiness). Maybe we would be better off if people attending business school had to take some courses in philosophy. Maybe we can get away with laborers being greedy, vulgar, superstitious, and callous -- but not our executives and professionals (including such 'low' ones as teachers and clergy). When the elites lack any semblance of goodness, then all Hell can break loose. The government can go criminal or things can get so bad that revolution breaks out.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
