Active discussions

Help protect children from gaming harms.

Take our survey

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Politics
Original poster

'The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power.' What do you think?

93 replies

Solopower · 06/03/2012 20:03

According to George Monbiot, Objectivism is a belief system that contends that selfishness is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion irrational and destructive. It's Ayn Rand's philosophy and becoming very popular in the US.

It's the perfect justification for capitalism. This seems to be what has informed Tory policy for most of the 20th century and is probably behind the government's desire to reduce the role of the State - they believe in the survival of the fittest. The rich survive because they deserve to. The rest of us are runts and parasites and they want rid of us.

'Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.'

Could it work?

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/05/new-right-ayn-rand-marx

OP posts:
claig · 06/03/2012 23:06

It's about checks and balances in a free democratic system. We are not doomed, the planet will not be destroyed, there is no catastrophe, whatever the elite say.

Original poster
Solopower · 06/03/2012 23:05

So they decide among themselves what to charge.

Capitalism isn't fair. I think it's a con trick. Socialism has better ideas - much more life-affirming, humane, caring and sharing. We'd all be happier if we were nicer to people, you know. (Though if you do it to make yourself happy, it's still selfish, isn't it?) If we weren't always trying to get money out of each other. More for me = less for you.

OP posts:
claig · 06/03/2012 23:04

'the 'elites' are behind anyone who is in government, whispering in their ears and stroking their hair.'

But an informed populace can force the elite to consider the interests of the people. The elite are not stupid, they may use propaganda, but once the populace has rumbled them, they change their tune.

claig · 06/03/2012 23:01

'The whole philosophy behind big (and small) business and capitalism is survival of the fittest - which just means selfishness, doesn't it? I will put my prices up to the very highest that I think you can afford to pay.'

Not at all. Capitalism is not an elitist socialist system where the planners can do what they like with no opposition or competition. In a free enterprise capitalist system, there is always competition which ensures that there is price competition and no one can charge whatever they like without regard to the fair value of the market, or they will go out of business.

Original poster
Solopower · 06/03/2012 23:00

We can't change the system by throwing out any one individual in an election. You said yourself - the 'elites' are behind anyone who is in government, whispering in their ears and stroking their hair.

I don't know what has got into me this evening.

OP posts:
claig · 06/03/2012 22:58

He is stopping it. 'Light-touch regulation' was New Labour's way of doing things. Remember the song played by New Labour so often, "Things can only get better", well it is finally coming true under Cameron.

Original poster
Solopower · 06/03/2012 22:57

The whole philosophy behind big (and small) business and capitalism is survival of the fittest - which just means selfishness, doesn't it? I will put my prices up to the very highest that I think you can afford to pay. I will lure you into debt by playing on your weaknesses (ie greed for stuff), which I sneakily encourage by bombarding you with advertising messages which make you want things in spite of yourself. I will undercut my competitors if I can or join up into huge protective cartels with our own code of practice (that we would all break if it were in our interests to do so). I will put pressure on governments to make them create a situation that is favourable to me and allows me to make a profit out of selling sweets to children that rot their teeth and make them obese (if I didn't do it someone else will). It's not pretty, is it?

That is what the freemarket is - no regulation, let a business sink or swim. The markets will regulate themselves because they are innately benign and love us really (but themselves more).

it seems to me that capitalism massively magnifies all that is selfish and greedy in human beings - and that can only lead to annihilation, eventually.

But with any luck, something else will come along. At some point enough of us are going to feel so sick of all this, and we'll want a change.

OP posts:
Original poster
Solopower · 06/03/2012 22:54

Well DC is in charge. If he is not responsible, why doesn't he stop it instead of making it easier for people to profiteer from the lack of regulation in the UK?

OP posts:
claig · 06/03/2012 22:46

Let's just throw the cowboy out in free elections, just as the peoples of Eastern Europe have thrown the communist out.

claig · 06/03/2012 22:42

We have a great free system that encourages enterprise. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's just throw the cowboy out in free elections.

claig · 06/03/2012 22:39

David Cameron was not responsible for 'light-touch regulation' of the bankers. Osborne is trying to institute effective regulation.

We are more prosperious than the Sovet Socialist Republics were because we believe in freedom. the liberalism of neloliberalism and free enterprise. We don't believe that all our private efforts and businesses should be appropriated by an elite who pretend that they know what is best for us.

We need regulation to prevent anyone "ripping us off". Most businesses do not rip us off. Cowboy traders are dealt with by regulation not by putting cowboys in control of us.

Original poster
Solopower · 06/03/2012 22:32

Could it be, let me think - David Cameron? The very richest people in the world? Bankers?

Aren't they the people who have used globalisation and capitalism to create their vast fortunes (whether or not they come from a nominally 'communist' regime), exploiting every single opportunity to feather their own nests? Isn't capitalism the perfect system for them, because they can do it openly, and even be admired for it and get knighthoods?

And then - and this is hilarious - we thank them for 'keeping our economy afloat', and we beg them to stay in the UK and keep on exploiting us! We try to make things comfortable for them, we make laws so that they will grace us with their presence and continue ripping us off and we help them to ensure the survival of the system that they benefit so neatly from!

OP posts:
SinicalSanta · 06/03/2012 22:30

SWC what do you think has informed the neoliberal agenda over the last 30/40 years?
Rand and Friedman seem quite comfortable bedfellows to me.

Maybe history is about to restart, eh?

claig · 06/03/2012 22:28

The elite are the super rich who exercise real power behind the puppets that represent their philosophies - be that Ayn Rand, the Marxists or the "climate catastrophists".

smallwhitecat · 06/03/2012 22:28

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

Original poster
Solopower · 06/03/2012 22:24

Who/what is the elite, Claig?

OP posts:
claig · 06/03/2012 22:23

'would it be fair to judge capitalism by the economic crisis it has created at this time and in this place?'

Capitalism didn't create the crisis. It was people who created the crisis - reckless gamblers and regulators who failed in their duty.

'They' are the elite. Of course, sometimes they wear the clothes of the left, of the Marxists or of "climate catastrophe", and sometimes they wear the clothes of the right, like Ayn Rand.

Original poster
Solopower · 06/03/2012 22:21

It seems to me that Rand's philosophy - and by extension the sort of rampant capitalism we have been suffering from in the last few decades - have their own self-destruct button.

Society can't survive if only the strongest survive, because the struggle for existence will get fiercer and fiercer until eventually they all kill each other.

Much better to work for a more caring, compassionate society. Mutual trust. Respect. You know you want to really.

OP posts:
claig · 06/03/2012 22:18

I have said it is a horrible philosophy and supports the elite over ordinary people. Just like communism, it sought to destroy religion, compassion and all the edifices of our civilization, for the benefit of the elite and to the detriment of the people.

Original poster
Solopower · 06/03/2012 22:16

Who is they, Claig?

There are ruthless capitalist dictatorships too, and right-wing states that do all of the above.

Would I have wanted to live in communist Russia or China at the time of the Cultural Revolution? No. But nor would I fancy being poor and black in the US right now.

The problem with this sort of circular argument is that none of us really knows what we are talking about. Few of us have first-hand experience of more than one or two ways of life. We all have to rely on what we're told by whichever newspaper we read, and the arguments we fling around about atrocities seem to cancel each other out.

If you want to judge communism by how it was applied in a certain country fifty years ago, would it be fair to judge capitalism by the economic crisis it has created at this time and in this place?

OP posts:
SinicalSanta · 06/03/2012 22:13

Never mind communism Claig - what do you think about horrible Rand's horrible philosophy?

Not that I'm putting words in your mouth - wouldn't dare Wink

claig · 06/03/2012 22:11

''They wanted the people to share the power, redistribution of wealth'

Then why did people try to climb the wall, to breathe the air of freedom? Why did they celebrate when the boot was removed from their necks and the tanks departed from their streets?

The people hoped and prayed that one day the "evil empire" would fall, that the gulags would be just a memory and that the elite would finally be off their backs and that they would be free.

They hoped that

"From each according to his crimes; to each according to his deeds"

SinicalSanta · 06/03/2012 22:07

It's a morality really, for all she deems it rational etc.
All that talk of 'deserving' & 'should'

Of course it's horrible.
No political philosophy is worthy of any serious consideration if it doesn't even aim to improve the lot of most people. Both communism and capitalism have that aim, whether they achieve it or not is a different thread.

claig · 06/03/2012 22:01

'They wanted the people to share the power, redistribution of wealth - that's what communism is about, isn't it?'

Was that why they rounded people up by the millions and sent them to gilags and to Siberia? Was that why they sent anyone who objected to psychiatric institutions?

Judge people by their actions, not by their words.
They stripped ordinary people of their private property, their private wealth and their private businesses and they placed it into teh hands of the elite, the planners who they said were looking after the interests of the proletariat.

They never allowed opposition parties and they shot people trying to escape their prison over the Berlin Wall. They were a ruthless elite who duped the people.

'From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs. What could be fairer than that?'

From each all their private wealth and to the elite all of their property - that is what it really means and that is what Orwell described in Animal Farm.

crazynanna · 06/03/2012 21:58

Are you drunk?

Swipe left for the next trending thread