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RE: What is leftism? What is rightism? Why are there so many different interpretations?
As usual a good and well researched post that makes your point eloquently. Also as usual this Leftie socialist disagrees but I do love a different viewpoint to challenge my own thoughts.
Thanks for the comment. Hell, I pulled a great deal of this post from our previous discussions ;>
This isn't meant to be a "gotcha" question, but how would you implement economic equality without State control?
I think that level of cooperation CAN be had in small communities. I use the term communualism for this. Social controls replace State controls; the community "knows" who is a shitbird and who isn't.
But that approach requires some things:
And there is always the possibility the community itself is comprised of shitbirds.
Finally, at a certain point of social distance and or culture conflict, social control fails. This is what happens when folks move to big cities, as an example.
I haven't looked at communualism in any kind of scholarly way; these are just my impressions and guesses based on other things I've studied.
I agree that you can only have communualism with a society of a limited size, when there is strong ties that unite everyone. Once those strong ties weaken as the size increase to become multipal communities then human nature takes over and the need for 'looking after your own' takes over. There has to be something that unites people beyond nationalism, it has to be something more personal and shared. A Coal Miner won't relate to his boss he has met but will stand shoulder to shoulder with another coal miner he has never met from 100's of miles away or even another country. (I was brought up the son of a miner, I was in my teens during the UK miners strike of 1984 and Polish coal miners sent food that fed my family. Any story about miners such as an accident or deaths draws my attention as I can relate no matter where in the world it happens. That is communualism and defies any fake borders as it is shared experience.)
I don't think as a nation you can avoid state control to bring economic equality as money is the real god worshipped in the world. You can't unite a nation when there is no shared link of community without state control to give you the infrastructure and to work to ensure everyone can live.
This is a good point. communalism requires a common culture, and perhaps not a locality.
IF the actions of coal miners from across the globe can be used to maintain the "behavior" of any given miner, then yes there is social control.
money is needed by 99% of the population and wanted by 95%. it might not be able to buy love or respect but it can be used to buy a lot of other necessary or fun things