Is the case for socialism, one of morality, cold logic or long term survival of our species?

[Anonymous]

I don'y think the Socialist Party has ever offered a moral case against the results capitalism. To take war as an example:"In all these years no change has taken place in the Socialist Party of Great Britain's attitude of opposition to capitalism's wars, based as it is on socialist principles and the interest of the working class. Only Socialism will abolish war from the earth." http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialist-party-and-war To attempt to argue a moral case against war would be pointless and futile.   

[SocialistPunk]

Vin Maratty wrote:

I don'y think the Socialist Party has ever offered a moral case against the results capitalism. To take war as an example:"In all these years no change has taken place in the Socialist Party of Great Britain's attitude of opposition to capitalism's wars, based as it is on socialist principles and the interest of the working class. Only Socialism will abolish war from the earth."

Now we are getting back to the nuts and bolts of this thread. I ask what is wrong with war? It might seem like a stupid question and I anticipate a typical answer in that it is against our class interests as workers. But what makes slaughtering each other for anything wrong or right?

[twc]

SocialistPunk wrote:

What makes [war] slaughtering each other for anything [either] wrong or right?

Nothing outside of the opposing interests of all parties involved.

Marx wrote:

Between equal rights force decides.

War is conflict resolution between rival capitalists for ownership and control of the means of social reproduction.Yet another reason for opposing the violent capitalist social system.

[SocialistPunk]

twc wrote:

SocialistPunk wrote:

What makes [war] slaughtering each other for anything [either] wrong or right?

Nothing outside of the opposing interests of all parties involved.

Marx wrote:

Between equal rights force decides.

War is conflict resolution between rival capitalists for ownership and control of the means of social reproduction.Yet another reason for opposing the violent capitalist social system.

So what if people thousands of miles away are being slaughtered by a brutal regime. Or what if a serial killer is running riot in America again, or homosexuals being stoned to death in Brunei. What concern is it to you, me or anyone else on this forum?

[twc]

Almost nothing to do with socialism or war.

[SocialistPunk]

I don't think the brutality of capitalism starts and stops with just war. The examples of a brutal regime killing its populace or people being murdered for their sexual orientation and a "killer on the loose" in a foreign land are examples likely to arouse a sense of concern and compassion in most people. They may motivate a person to take some form of action. They may even be the motivating factors that lead a person down the path of socialist discovery. The link with socialism is the empathy part. Robbo203 hit the nail on the head in an earlier post on this thread when he talked of empathy and morality as the inevitability of being a social species. I feel compassion for those in the world who are starving, dying in wars etc. Once I understood it fully, I saw socialism as the formula to solve those ills. For me there can be no socialism without empathy, ethics, morality. Without the human, social, element it is a meaningless political theory.  

[stuartw2112]

SocialistPunk and Robin are so obviously right that it's worth wondering why we're having the argument at all. The answer is Marx. Where on earth could the ridiculous idea that humans are individualised, rational, self-interested, utility-maximising machines come from in the first place? From bourgeois society, and faithfully reflected in bourgeois ideology, especially, and even to this day, in economics. In Capital, Marx, being the clever old dialectical stick that he was, took the assumptions of bourgeois ideology for granted, and ploughed ahead "as if" they were true, in order to show that the logic of the argument led to socialist conclusions, even without bringing morality into it. Later Marxists, not being quite so clever as Marx, forgot the "as if" nature of the argument, and have ever since been going round saying the morality is bourgeois bunk. No! The argument that morality is bunk is bourgeois! Thoroughly bourgeois! The argument may sound all up your arse and philosophical, but it matters, as the history of Bolshevism and Stalinism readily attest.Stuart

[Anonymous]

Stuart,   Is morality confined only to the human species?  How would you explain the social and caring nature of other animals? Morality?   

[twc]

SP wrote:

So what if people thousands of miles away are being slaughtered by a brutal regime. Or what if a serial killer is running riot in America again, or homosexuals being stoned to death in Brunei. What concern is it to you, me or anyone else on this forum?

Well, you tell me what that has to do with socialism and war, which was the point of discussion.

[stuartw2112]

I once asked a primatalogist that very question, and he said that pretty much all social animals have something like a morality – how would it work otherwise? It's a controversial question, but I think most primatologists would agree with that. 

[Anonymous]

stuartw2112 wrote:

but I think most primatologists would agree with that. 

Do you mean the moral majority Seriously tho. Is it sufficient to merely assert it? Where is the proof? I think it is more likely that Perhaps it is built into our genes to be social and caring;  'morality' is a whip used to  beat the 'immoral' with? 

[stuartw2112]

If you want to consider the evidence even-handedly before coming to a decision, then I applaud you Vin, but you'll have your work cut out! I'd start with some books by Frans De Waal:http://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_moralsIs sociality and caring in our genes? It would be very surprising indeed if there weren't a genetic element. But again, if you want to look at the evidence, you'll have a lot of work ahead of you!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the link, Stuart. However, my first impression is not good. The research is seriously flawed from the start by its operationalisation of 'morality'The problem is that they defined 'morality'  BEFORE carrying out the rearch.The research takes for granted that Empathy, cooperation, fairness and reciprocity — caring about the well-being of others are moral traits. Christians still claim such traits belong to them.I believe such traits are genetic. which would explain why the  researchers are so surprised to find that animals have a 'morality'.The animals do not have a 'morality'; they have similar genetic make up.  

[twc]

SP wrote:

So what if people thousands of miles away are being slaughtered by a brutal regime. Or what if a serial killer is running riot in America again, or homosexuals being stoned to death in Brunei. What concern is it to you, me or anyone else on this forum?

What are you planning to do to the serial killer, or to the stoners-to-death, or to “your” own national brutal regime perpetrating “your” national slaughter “thousands of miles away”?You can’t ignore human practical sociability.If you want to transcend relying on insipid emotion that can be twisted, for-and-against, wringing your heart to shreds, the stock in trade of charities, religions, politicians, advertising agents—tendentious liars of all stripes—you need human practical socialism.

[twc]

stuart wrote:

SocialistPunk and Robin are so obviously right that it's worth wondering why we're having the argument at all.

So it’s self evident.  In which case it can only be common prejudice or bigotry.  Nothing else in this contingent world is self evident!

stuart wrote:

The argument that morality is bunk is bourgeois! Thoroughly bourgeois!

On the contrary, overt morality is essential to a conniving society like capitalism.  Overt, and ostentatious, morality, of your obvious kind, is inextricably built into capitalism.  It drips from the capitalist air you breathe, because it is indispensable to the functioning of class oppression.  That’s where you pick it up your overt, ostentatious, morality from; unlike Marx who saw through capitalist appearance and exposed its rotten core.I’m sorry, but you and robbo are falling for the veneer of capitalism, even while convincing yourself you aren’t by giving lip service to its rotten core.

stuart wrote:

The argument may sound all up your arse and philosophical, but it matters, as the history of Bolshevism and Stalinism readily attest.

Bolshevism and Stalinism could equally be condemned for being too zealous in their morality, like you and robbo.Actually, of course, they were going through one of that most terrible and protracted phases of human social transition, called the “primitive accumulation of capital”, which is currently working its terrifying way through Muslim, Asiatic, African, and South American nations, but swept through the Soviet block in the 20th century, and Britain, France, Germany, earlier.As Marx said “capitalism comes into the world dripping in blood from head to foot”.  But it comes in through horribly protracted revolution heralding decades of ruthless “primitive accumulation”—a great practical testing ground for your theory of morality—and “bloody” well disproves it.

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