Solving the 'Power Over' Problem That Plagues Politics - Including All Forms of Capitalism & Communism
My recent video post in response to @kafkanarchy84, inspired by an earlier chat with @dannyshine, got me thinking about how I see communism and capitalism as two sides of the same coin - both dysfunctional for similar reasons.. Here I will dive into this more deeply.
I wrote a few months ago in some depth as to why, for me, it is clear that anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron, meaning that it contradicts itself. The reason is that anarchism means 'no rulers' and therefore no power imbalances that result in one person having 'power over' another person and yet capitalism requires forms of ownership of 'things' and resources, plus typically the use of an artificial value measurement system that results in some having much more than others and therefore the common outcome is that some have 'power over' others just by virtue of their increased resources.
Therefore, capitalism is at odds with anarchism and is not really fully compatible. This was made abundantly clear in the piece shared from 'The Anarchist Library' by @freebornangel in the comments under my video to kafkarnarchy - in which it is explained in graphic detail, with references to history and well known authors, why anarcho-capitalism is not really what it claims to be.
Finding balance
Regardless of the political sub-genres, however, my only real interest is finding real balance. Not a balance where some are forced to give up what they need - since that would not be a real balance as free will would be over-ridden.
Communism, as I understand it, involves a centralisation of power which is alleged to be 'for the benefit of all', but which in practice typically is not for the benefit of all and which has usually resulted in a small group of people misusing the power more and more.
Capitalism, in my eyes, with it's inherent power imbalance - is quite similar to communism in that regard. In both communism and captialism the 'power' (power literally means - the ability to act) is centralised to some extent and in the case of capitalism it is centralised in the hands of whoever has the most power already.. In other words 'money goes to money'. WE CAN SEE THIS ON STEEMIT, since @haejin currently has the highest reputation on the network and is also the highest self voter.. This has created a situation where no-one can flag him in a way that he loses reputation (note: I made a post months ago that guessed this problem would happen and proposed a solution). The most wealthiest person on Steemit effectively becomes a dictator!
Through the Heart
The ONLY way to have real balance is through the heart. What does this mean?
We have free will, which means that we can do what we like as long as we don't overpower the will of others or ourselves. Therefore, no form of control is balanced and therefore no form of control will produce balance. Control will always deny free will in some way. So having balance requires that we are attuned to the needs of each moment and know precisely where people are being over-ridden and take steps to ensure that they are not over-ridden.
Such attunement cannot be a mental-only thing, nor can it be achieved through rules and regulations. Such sensitivity requires us to be evolved individually such that our own sensitive heart allows us to bond our thoughts and feelings in a way that provides the insights we need. When the heart is fully used and listened to, we can have a real and felt balance. When no-one feels over-ridden a new peace is allowed and new opportunities arise.
A great deal of the control that people think is needed is due to emotional imbalances that they see in society and do not know how to solve. The 'security forces' are often only defending against psychological and emotional disturbance in people - which would END when those people feel at peace due to our collective understanding of their problems and our helping them to feel better.
Therefore, I realised long ago that there is no system that can solve all of our problems and, in truth, ALL systems of political and economic control are problems in themselves.
Systemlessness is the way of the heart - as far as I am concerned. This does not mean we abandon logic or intelligent analysis - far from it.. I am simply saying that the rigidity of 'law' and fixed rules is redundant when we instead simply learn to discern where our actions are overpowering others. A mind and heart that are unhindered by presuppositions (closed mindedness) and regulations (control) are a force to be reckoned with and are truly free.
Before we can be enslaved by others, we are enslaved by our own thoughts.
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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Exactly If I choose to do some work for someone, or with someone (giving that someone temporarily "power" over me), it's my own free will choice, and I don't want someone else or a group of people overpowering that free will decision, because they think I may, or must, not do that, or whatever reasons.
Neither do I want someone to do anything for me, or with me against their free will.
Yes, the issue of checking whether others are going against their own will to do things for you is one which is hugely denied currently. Unfortunately though, if I go into a busy shopping center I am just not sensitive enough currently to tune in to every single employee and what their true desires are.. It is safe to say though that most of them would not choose to be working in a shop for relatively low wages if better options were presented.
Just asking is the only way to find out. It's not denied to ask people if they do things against their own will.
Yes of course everybody would want better options but they are never presented you have to search them.
Or if someone wants other people to find/have them, one has to provide them for the people.
So offer the person working in the shop for relatively low wages a job with higher wages or whatever it is they want.
Part of the problem is that many people will be lying to themselves (and others) about what they really want/need - so their claims cannot be trusted on face value. Many times, in private, people are triggered into their real feelings that they have been in denial of that hate what they are doing. I went through this myself, but since I didn't find any alternatives, I kept doing the jobs I didn't like.
It's still the best thing there is (asking questions) i.m.h.o.. It would be very arrogant of me to say: You can not trust your own choices, your own mind, and your own heart....trust me.
I can question if they agree with what they portray to the outside world. But that's it. Else I would find myself intruding in their lives telling them what to think, not to trust their own feelings or thoughts, making them even weaker by not trusting their own judgement.
I am not saying that anyone should trust me, but I do trust my own feelings more than I trust the thoughts of other people. That is something I have had to learn the hard way and the problem is that we collectively do not trust our own feelings. If we do not trust our own feelings and if the feelings are our way to find actual truth (Especially when it comes to empathic understanding of desire in ourselves and others) then we will usually find that once we do trust our own intuition, it will be more accurate than the words of others - even when they speak about themselves. As children we often are aware that adults are saying one thing and thinking another - yet as we grow older many of us fall pray to this same dysfunction and call it 'manners' or 'normal' when it is anything but. In short, when we end denial we know the truth and most of us are in huge denial.
I agree whole heartly with your concept of communism, my country went down a similar path of centralizing everything and in the end they ended up owning almost every industry in the country but the draw back is, the people that used to run those industries left and now our production is down by 80%+, so centralization doesn't help.
Capitalism is indeed the other side of the coin, its very efficient because it feeds on the greed of people looking for money, the rich get richer but if you play the game properly you may even come in green numbers if you are smart enough.
The world is not psychologically ready for an anarchist, systemless society, I love anarchist ideals but before implementing them (following them?) the educational gap must be fixed, illiteracy must be eradicated, because the lack of education is what leads people to the communist trap or to ignore the dangers of rampant capitalism.
One of the main problems with capitalism is that it requires a centralisation in the form of whoever controls the money. Even cryptocurrencies are controlled by a group somewhere, whether it be miners or the coding team.
The world is more ready for balance than it is for the suffering that comes with imbalance - it's just that many are disconnecting from the feelings that would let them know this. Solving Illiteracy would be a big help in increasing awareness of the needed lessons, yes - I agree.
Maybe you are right... I think i'm idealizing capitalist ideals because I've been under communism for a good part of my life and have lived through every single bad thing it provides and its not only me, but the young generation of my country, the ones like us that where born into this and not before it, all of us share this idealistic capitalism to solve our countries problems, privatization of lands, government companies, everything.
But if you look deep enough, in lets say, the United States, you can really see the centralization of economic power that capitalism has brought since the days of the dot com bubble with the tech companies, these companies today are way bigger and have way more influence in the US and in the world than what the Carnegies and Rockefellers had when Theodore Roosvelt dissolved their monopolies.
Behind the scenes, the old tycoon families continue to wield huge power - but they have been careful to embed the control in secretive ways that are so pervasive in society that few would dare to imagine that such a thing were possible. I highly suggest studying the work of the ivy league historian carroll quigley who published a book in the 1960s that exposed a secret 'network' of these families and described how they literally set up democracy to be fake and to ensure that they themselves control the world from behind the scenes.
I'll check it out ASAP! Thanks for sharing. I knew they still held some sort of power but i guess you can't really take out old money with a single blow.
I think that whenever we discuss about political systems we will face dilemmas, there will be no good or bad systems only useful. Your solution to this problem seems pretty good, but we both know that it is very idealistic, it is practically denying the instinctive part of the human being.
Although you educate many people, it seems impossible to eradicate greed or the desire to power, some may have a heart, but not all
The process of healing, balancing and evolving is one that gradually clears instincts from the sub-conscious self, leaving us feeling much free-er. These programs do not really protect us much and we are far safer when our energy is free to respond to the real needs of the present moment rather than a projection that what was called for in the past is called for now.
There is nothing wrong with the desire for power - sometimes we need more power just to be safe.. The problems arise due to a denial of the needs of others (and of self). Yes, many do not have heart and that is the problem that most needs to be addressed now. <3
ISO and the consequential basic property norms must be respected in general. Otherwise you will have a society or world full of people disagreeing and fighting over what is “overpowering,” as is already happening.
As someone commented, if he wishes to work for someone at a grocery store for whatever wage, nobody should be able to step in and say “that’s overpowering the poor employee” if that is not the case, and that is what the employee wants to do. If the employee hates it, in anarchy, he or she can work for someone else, or migrate to a non AnCap community.
As long as we follow your idea of anarchy without hyphenated descriptors—pure anarchy—then AnCap and non-AnCap societies can coexist in non-aggression. I think that’s excellent.
I'm not sure what ISO means in this context.
If the basic property norms themselves include no overpowering, then there should be no problem. Where I live, in Britain, the basic property norms are probably about 50%+ causing overpowering right now. But you probably means a different set to the norms around here.
Sure, I agree - if the individual has chosen this option of their own free choice then there is no issue. If, however, the individual is ladened down with unprocessed fears, denials and judgements that have them thinking they have less choices than they really do - then they are overpowering themself and they have lessons to learn. Nothing in what I perceive to be balance is contradicting what you are saying here, I am just pointing out that I have worked in shops for minimum wage and know for 100% certain that many people doing that are not doing it because they truly desire to do it.
Anarchy can only exist with non-aggression, yes.. I am just not sure that any form of capitalism can. ;)
How can we test this?
Hmm..
How does an an-cap society determine who owns what land? Do they use a registry of land ownership, as we have now?
If so, then there will be rules associated with that. It seems that the only way that the 'pure anarchy' and the 'ancap' approaches can exist side by side is if the rules relating to the land registry used by the ancaps (assuming they use one) includes within it an allowance for the existence of pure anarchy areas and the understanding that these areas cannot be owned by anyone through purchase etc. as long as those inhabiting the land say that is what they want. The problem then emerges that if someone in the ancap group decides they want the land, what is to stop them doing what capitalists are well known to do in our current world - namely, using whatever method they can use to take the land over..? In this case, they could, for example, merge in with the 'pure anarchists' and claim that they are also pure anarchists and then set about changing the culture from the inside, such that the people there will no longer want to stay there or for other reasons decide that they might even become ancaps. This would then open the door for the ancap individual to buy up the land through the highest bidding (having come from a reality previously where money was a norm and they therefore had more of it).
This might all sound convoluted and unnecessary, but this type of activity is happening every day on earth anyway. While it might be nice to think that ancaps would be so effective at what they do and so super honest that they would never do this - in reality there is nothing stopping this happening at all and given our history, I would expect it. The nature of a competitive culture is one where people compete - clearly - and therefore, it is entirely possible that when resources run low, some people might stoop to actions they otherwise wouldn't have done.
My point in all of this is that I find it difficult to envisage a practical way that the ancap and 'pure anarchy' approaches can live side by side unless the groups always remain small enough that there is always enough land and resources to go around. This is a relevant point and I think that much of the Earth is not really being used efficiently - despite claims that we are overpopulated. Maybe all such disagreements can be solved by learning to work in harmony with the earth to bring full abundance (the way of the heart/earth).. Ultimately, this is what I have been pointing at all along. That's the great thing about the heart - no matter what problems I try to work through, I can typically find a solution in the heart.
Agree with most of this but as a fan of Marxism I think it's important to separate the ideology of communism from what people have used it for. From my perspective, reality has most often offered a very right-wing perversion of communism. And while we should definitely be careful and learn from history I still believe it's not useless to "aim for the stars" in this case.
What I've learned is that great power comes with great abuse and the only way to liberate us from this is to improve and use trust technologies(basically the reason I'm on Steemit). Starting with the printing press I believe we've grown further away from state authority and I personally remember when I realized that basically my whole generation decided to not care about state law. Most people I knew downloaded a lot of mp3s off the early internet. We've also already come a long way proving the beauty of a sharing economy.
Now using blockchain and similar tech we for the first time have all the means for creating alternative societies on top of existing. This in theory means that communist as well as socialist and capitalist societies can all be created with "rules in nature" and therefore won't be defined by authority. Ironically I'm pretty sure the more socialistic alternatives will win this open market of societies. (because increased overall transparency makes people see theirs and others actions etc but this is another discussion.)
In conclusion, systemlessness isn't necessary to rid power imbalanses anymore. Or what do you think?
Thanks for your comment. I am aware that the implementation of communism was not much like the version that was sold to the people at the time. However, I am also aware that this was by design and that the original designers of communism were thoroughly corrupt and essentially from the same 'gang' as the barons of capitalism. I understand communism to be nothing more than a cleverly designed mind control stunt that was intended to act as a 'pressure valve' for those who were frustrated with capitalism to sign up to, thinking they were making a difference when in fact they were not.
I am not an expert on communism by any means - however I did study Russian history and the Bolshevik revolution for a year at college so have some understanding of it all. What matters to me is how power is allowed to be enacted within any system. One common definition of communism is:
The key here is in the 'organisation of labor' since typically this means a form of hierarchy. Can you explain how this organisation would take place without any form of 'power over'?
Thanks for the fast reply, really interesting topic! You're probably more educated than me on the history of communism. But even if say Marx was in the same 'gang' as the barons of capitalism I'm not convinced that his critique on it wasn't valid and important. Some would argue that today's democracy is cleverly designed to keep hierarchy in place but in the same way democracy probably isn't a bad idea in itself. If communism was used as a pressure valve, to me, would imply that theirs really something interesting there that people of power didn't want us to look more into.
For the organisation of labor we might have to stretch the definition as it seems to imply some authority organizing us to do things outside of our free will. My belief is that we can have organised labor by free will, given the right opportunities.
Do you think a small educated family on a lonely planet could achieve this kind of society? What I believe is that if they could, we should be able to with help of technology.
Today's democracy is absolutely a scam from start to finish. Direct Democracy is the only form of democracy that could even come close to being called 'fair' because everyone can vote on every issue - it does not use 'representatives'.. But even direct democracy is fatally flawed because it's outcome is that the will of some people is overpowered by the majority. Not only is this bad for the will, but it creates motivation for mind control to be applied to the majority to keep them controlled and able to be directed in a way that means that those who cannot be controlled by mind control can then be controlled by force of the 'democratic state'.
Yes, it is your own heart! <3
Voluntary organisation is the only form that can work, but to my understanding this is not what communism has ever been. I am no expert on the writings of Marx however.
A small, aware family would not have need of any kind of control or even a system, provided they are bonded by love in the heart and are willing to feel enough to know what the will of each other wants and needs. This is exactly the same for our giant family on our crowded planet ;)
Technology is always an outer reflection of our own inner capabilities - unfortunately we have lost some of our most powerful inner abilities and so we think that technology is more capable than we are.
Yes so the ideals of communism is basically love or at least disguised to look like it. And we've stopped looking for answers in that direction because of the bad "attempts" that we're really designed to fail.
We can forget the label communism for a while and focus on our giant family. If we lost those inner abilities from growing larger communities and needing hierarchy to organize. And if we don't want to go back to living in smaller communities, I think we need trust technologies to get a similar perspective back. Of coarse combined with heart since that must be the final motivation but what other ways do you see? I think communicating these ideas like you're doing here is really changing people, but what allows you to do so effectively(without authority crushing love using false symbols for it) is technology. And without us really pushing to create better trust systems, to me it seems like we're losing perspective and start moving in the wrong direction into a world of more inequality.
We're in a kind of hostage situation, otherwise we wouldn't have to focus so much on technology as our 'weapon'..
Your reply really helped to fill in where our definitions clashed a bit, thank you!
You are welcome!
My suggestion here is to notice that you are speaking of what you think, but not of what you feel. This is the standard approach in many cultures now, but the answers we need cannot be reached just by thinking. Without fully involving intuitive understanding will have to think 1000s of time harder than we would do if we correctly used feelings - since our feelings can provide many answers in a very precise way that thoughts alone cannot do. I am not saying that you are not feeling, but I am just pointing to the reality that nearly everyone has lost their real feelings and has been forced to become overly reliant on thinking.
The trust technologies, I feel, are intended to fill a gap in society that is partially related to the reality that there are so many of us that we can't all 'know' each other well enough to know who we are dealing with on a large scale. The idea of the technology, then, is to form a bridge among people who do not know each other. One problem with this is that when you are dealing with 'the unknown' (in the form of other people) you do not know just how 'bad' some of those people might be and thus you do not know the extent to which they may be lying to everyone else. The measures of trust, then, are always going to rely to some extent on the judgement of other people and it is judgement that is the cause of our lack of understanding. Judgements attempt to fill in the gaps with guesses and beliefs.
Fortunately, an attuned emotional body can know much more than our conscious mental minds typically do currently and so I recommend turning inwards to find that lost emotional understanding, rather than looking outwards to attempt to build a techno-map of something that is both constantly changing and also much larger than most of us appreciate at this point.... Namely, the collective and individual mind/will/soul/spirit/heart.
I highly recommend these books as being the best on this topic I have found - however, they are not for everyone.
I've been following your posts on and off before but I'm seriously impressed with your way to explain this. Perhaps because I've been touching on the same thoughts too..
Feels like I get pulled back and forth a bit as my spiritual side knows this to be so true and it's not possible to cover everything with technology anyways. At the same time I don't think I would have ever opened my eyes to this without being somewhat early on the internet and getting a larger perspective.
I'll look up the books and you'll probably see me in the comments again! ^^ Thanks again!
You are welcome - let me know how you get on with them if you do read them, they are unparalleled and very unusual!
Here's paraphrased quote from Carl Schurz that summarizes my feelings of highly idealized concepts.
Perfection is an interesting notion. I have been given the definition that we are an evolving perfection - therefore self acceptance is the highest ideal. :)
Firstly, the political systems allows for the rich to get richer while the poor gets screwed. No other system also suits completely. What suits is now comparative and relative. To get balance we need to watch within and allow for ourselves to be uncontrolled
Good post, I agree with you that the power over is not a good thing.
This only makes the situation more and more difficult for people who have less money and the people who have more power they get benifits.
Politics is always biased as far as I see.
I really appreciate the way of writing you have good work my friend I follow you and looking forward to see more from you
In my own Opinion , I’d say... communism and capitalism of this days are of the same goal and purpose. We practice communism in our democracy today but all we see is anachism. They say it is for the people, by the people and of the person but does the masses have a say no one listens .
Capitalism is a form of ancient government and which shouldn’t be encouraged today, powers should be evenly distributed and that’s the main point of partnership. I agree with you when you say the world is imbalance and it’s left to us all to make it better. Thanks