We already have a material solution to the problem of material scarcity, thanks to
capitalism's own encouragement of industrial development and of technological
progress. Of course, capitalism cannot, and will not, solve the problem of material
scarcity, largely because scarcity is itself the very backbone of profiteering capitalism.
In other words, the material productive forces of modern society already exist, thanks
in large part to capitalism, but equally primarily thanks to the unique human ability to
both see and solve problems. However, the existing capitalist relations of production
have become the fetters acting to curb the material forces of production. Capitalism
creates both prosperity and poverty. It is because capitalism has stimulated the
creation of massive industry and large-scale production that the very existence of
poverty has now become an artificial hold over from previous times. The solution
has been offered, and that solution to the capitalist relations of production is called
democratic-socialism -- economic and industrial democracy, workplace democracy.
If we socialize and democratize the material productive forces of modern technological
society, then we will have removed the capitalist relations of production which have
served both to expand, and to retard the forces of production. The profiteering capitalist
class harnesses the forces of production, managing these forces so as to tame
productivity in order to maximize profits.
If the principals and leaders of really-existing capitalism cannot solve the problem
of scarcity and poverty, then these masters and managers of capitalism ought to be
made to move out of the way, and allow the people and citizens, living and working
together in a democratic socialist republic, solve these problems. Capitalism solved
the problem of creating surplus wealth; but, capitalism has not solved the problem of
scarcity and poverty. Capitalism cannot solve the problem of scarcity and poverty,
largely because capitalism needs scarcity and poverty. This is why capitalism has
always appeared hand in hand both with extreme wealth and extreme want. This
antipodal reality is an aspect of capitalism's manifold and manifest contradictions.
Human evolution has been as much an evolution of human society as it has been an
evolution of the human species. We associate precisely because we need food, shelter,
and security. Because we must associate, we also have evolved those necessary
attributes and gregarious virtues which make for social unity. Mutual respect and mutual
regard are important sociable qualities, serving to unite us together. We live together
because we must work together in order to survive and prosper. We survive and prosper
as individuals because we survive and prosper as communities; and vice versa.
Socialism is all about bringing back the natural social virtues which constitute human
nature; socialism is all about exercising and cultivating those social virtues which have
been repressed by life in class-divided societies, in societies that have been all but
dissolved by internal competition and external warfare, by the war of all against all
(bellum omnium in omnes).
What the ideological capitalists call "brainwashing" is what ideological social-
democrats call self-education, moral edification, social development, etc. Besides,
the brain needs to be washed from all the idiocies we have been told and taught to
believe. Samuel Langhorne Clemens ("Mark Twain") once said that education
"consists mainly in what we have unlearned." I suppose that Twain's unlearning
could be called a kind of brainwashing. It seems to me that the word "brainwashing"
does not have to always connote or suggest something that is mischievous, villainous
or tyrannical. Brainwashing is itself a neutral word. A moral education can be as much
a brainwashing as an immoral education. A libertarian education can be as much a
brainwashing as an authoritarian education.
There are different schools of socio-biology. I contend that human beings are both
altruistic and avaricious, both generous and greedy, both liberal and miserly, both
benevolent and malevolent, etc. If human beings are morally free, then we are not
either one or the other; but rather, we can choose to be one or the other. In a capitalist
arrangement, some of us will choose those values and virtues which are necessary
for success in a capitalist world. In a democratic arrangement, most of us will choose
those values and virtues which are necessary for general social prosperity in a
socialist world.
"Religion, ethics, law, the family, etc., cannot be the same in a large society as in a
small one."
-- Émile Durkheim
"Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu regards aristocracy as a debased form
of democracy."
-- Émile Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau: Forerunners of Sociology, 1960
