From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Sun Jan 04 2004 - 19:06:02 GMT
Erin, Platt, (Rick), all,
Platt said (a while back at the start of this thread):
>>From the Declaration we read, "We hold these
>> truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
>> endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these
>> are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Steve:
With respect to the rights to Life and Liberty we can read "human rights"
while Pursuit of Happiness can be read "property rights." As historians
continue to do, we can disagree about what Jefferson was talking about when
he said we have a right to the pursuit of happiness. In East Meets West,
Northrop claims that Locke is the most influential philosopher behind
American democracy and freedom and makes the case for the centrality of
property in American style democracy based on Locke's philosophy. (He shows
how freedom and democracy follow from SOM.)
At any rate, I'd like to suggest that the conflict between socialism and
capitalism is a matter of balancing human rights and property rights. For
example, my right to own all the good farming land in Chile may interfere
with another's right to eat. Also, other's rights to education and health
care may interfere with my right to benefit from the fruits of my own labor.
Erin said on Dec 20:
> It may surprise you that Tom Robbins also said in
> his recent novel a line about capitalism taken to extreme is anarchy and
> socialism taken to extreme is totalitarianism.
Steve:
Socialism taken to its extreme is the idea of the worker's paradise. This
utopian vision has proven to be unattainable in the real world as we have
seen Communistic governments collapse all over the world. Some claim that
true Socialism or Communism has never actually been tried, but Marxist
philosophy is has some fundamental problems that are now fairly universally
agreed upon.
As Erin points out, capitalism taken to its extreme is also a utopian vision
that has never been achieved and I would say cannot be achieved. (See Ayn
Rand's Atlas Shrugged for a view of capitalist utopia.) Americans often
talk of our country as being a capitalistic, but there is no such thing as a
thorough-going capitalist society in the world. Europeans seem to have
agreed on the existence of some fundamental problems with unregulated
capitalism. Americans have not universally acknowledged such problems
while actually having a mixed economy where few would actually support an
Ayn Rand extreme type of capitalism.
Its really a question of the mix in a mixed economy rather than a difference
in fundamental ideology. The terms capitalist and socialist with respect to
the US and Europe do not refer to the extreme utopian ideals of each but
rather the balance that each has struck between human rights and property
rights.
Both American capitalists and European socialists have rights to property.
Both have governments that will take one person's property and give it to
others. These two statements seem mutually exclusive, depending on what is
meant by "right." Perhaps they can make sense if you think of rights as
context dependent rather than absolute.
How would you define "right"? I included Rick in the address line because he
might have some legal background to help clear this up.
Regards,
Steve
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