Nuno Carneiro
Este e um blogue simples. Sera bilingue, muito pessoal, e e, principalmente, um estimulo para escrever. Porque eu adoro escrever. This is a simple blog. It will be bilingual, personal, and, essentially it's a excuse for me to write. Because I love to write.Friday, May 12, 2006
Models II
Nuno disagrees with my model theory.Not surprisingly: many of my theories aren't that good, really. But this time I think I have a point. I stick to what I've said.
My disagreement with Nuno's view is here:
Really? Why is that?
A society needs a set of rules about what you shouldn't be allowed to do. A Code of Laws. And a political organisation: who gets which slice of power (judiciary, legislative, etc) and how (nomination, election, tossing a coin...)
But that's it. Sometimes (too often, actually), Philosophers and Politicians go too far.
Take old Marx: living in London at the expenses of his rich friend Engels, he comes up with this idea: if we all give up our property, if we hand over the control of the means of production to the state and built a classless society, then the world will be a better place.
This was his model. He thought the whole working class would support and then impose it, with the use of force, to the upper class.
Lenine realised the reality was a bit different: Not the entire working class was up for the plan; many of the poor, of the people, loved private property and wished, not for a classless society, but (oh heavens, the blasphemy!) simply to be rich. In other words, the "model", failed.
What did he do when he realised this? Did he change his model? Did he say: "Fine folks, if you don't like it, I'm out of here, back to my gardening."
No. He went on and imposed the "idea", or the "model" anyway, by use of repression, violence and torture.
It's always like that. Whenever the State has an "idea" for society, inevitably some reject it. And then what? The state has two options: either to abandon the "idea", or impose it becoming a dictatorship.
Ironically, Hitler is, in a sense, an exception: He recycled Marx's idea (State control of means of production, classless society, hate of Capitalism) but with a twist ( he allowed private property) and eventually got elected. Obviously, after that, installed a dictatorship anyway. Just in case.
In a modern democracy there's none of that (well a bit, unfortunately). There's a little village in the north of Portugal where land is not owned individually; it belongs to everybody. They all work on it and share the products. The state doesn't impose any "model" so they've adopted their own, which is some sort of Communism.
The reverse isn't true. A dictatorship, either Socialist or Fascist, would never allow a little village to be Capitalist: they would send in the army and before the end of the day all peasants would be shot against a wall. So they wouldn't "contaminate" the rest of the population with their "wrong" ideas.
My disagreement with Nuno's view is here:
This [organisation of the society] has to be, somehow, agreed by the individuals that make the society (or a group of them) and then enforced.
Really? Why is that?
A society needs a set of rules about what you shouldn't be allowed to do. A Code of Laws. And a political organisation: who gets which slice of power (judiciary, legislative, etc) and how (nomination, election, tossing a coin...)
But that's it. Sometimes (too often, actually), Philosophers and Politicians go too far.
Take old Marx: living in London at the expenses of his rich friend Engels, he comes up with this idea: if we all give up our property, if we hand over the control of the means of production to the state and built a classless society, then the world will be a better place.
This was his model. He thought the whole working class would support and then impose it, with the use of force, to the upper class.
Lenine realised the reality was a bit different: Not the entire working class was up for the plan; many of the poor, of the people, loved private property and wished, not for a classless society, but (oh heavens, the blasphemy!) simply to be rich. In other words, the "model", failed.
What did he do when he realised this? Did he change his model? Did he say: "Fine folks, if you don't like it, I'm out of here, back to my gardening."
No. He went on and imposed the "idea", or the "model" anyway, by use of repression, violence and torture.
It's always like that. Whenever the State has an "idea" for society, inevitably some reject it. And then what? The state has two options: either to abandon the "idea", or impose it becoming a dictatorship.
Ironically, Hitler is, in a sense, an exception: He recycled Marx's idea (State control of means of production, classless society, hate of Capitalism) but with a twist ( he allowed private property) and eventually got elected. Obviously, after that, installed a dictatorship anyway. Just in case.
In a modern democracy there's none of that (well a bit, unfortunately). There's a little village in the north of Portugal where land is not owned individually; it belongs to everybody. They all work on it and share the products. The state doesn't impose any "model" so they've adopted their own, which is some sort of Communism.
The reverse isn't true. A dictatorship, either Socialist or Fascist, would never allow a little village to be Capitalist: they would send in the army and before the end of the day all peasants would be shot against a wall. So they wouldn't "contaminate" the rest of the population with their "wrong" ideas.
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