[ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute...

[giovanni santostasi]

>From Wiki:

Utopian Socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern 
Socialist thought. Utopian socialists never actually used this name to 
describe themselves; the term "utopian socialism" was introduced by Karl
 Marx and used by later socialist thinkers, to describe early socialist 
or quasi-socialist intellectuals who created hypothetical visions of 
perfect egalitarian and communalist societies without actually 
concerning themselves with the manner in which these societies could be 
created or sustained....
Although it is technically possible for any person living at any time in
 history to be a utopian socialist, the term is most often applied to 
those utopian socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th 
century. From the mid-19th century onwards, the other branches of 
socialism far surpassed the utopian version in terms of intellectual 
development and number of supporters. Utopian Socialists were important 
in the formation of modern movements for intentional community and 
cooperatives, such as Open Source and Techno Communism.
The term "scientific socialism" is sometimes used by Marxists to 
describe their version of socialism, specifically for the purpose of 
counterposing it to Utopian Socialism which was descriptive and 
idealistic (in a sense of representing an ideal) rather than scientific,
 i.e., developed by means of reasoning and based on social sciences....
Utopian Socialism in Modern Culture
Heaven is often described as something similar to a socialist utopia, 
but the most familiar utopian socialist society would be that of the 
United Federation of Planets in the popular television series Star Trek -
 particularly that depicted in The Next Generation. There is no money, 
no want, no poverty, no crime, no disease or ignorance in human society;
 everyone works for the advancement of all humanity--as well as the rest
 of the Federation.

--- On Fri, 9/10/10, samantha <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

From: samantha <sjatkins at mac.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] don't let your guard down, not for a minute...
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Date: Friday, September 10, 2010, 8:59 PM



  

    
  On 9/10/10 4:13 PM, giovanni santostasi wrote:
    
      
        
          
            I agree that on the
              book communism is a far superior social organization than
              capitalism. 
          
        
      
    
    Based on what exactly?  On what "book"?

    

    
      
        
          
            Capitalism has
              exploitation as a key element by design. 
          
        
      
    
    False.  Only freely entered trades and other contracts are allowed. 
    No initiation of force including fraud is allowed.

    

    
      
        
          
            In a way the fact
              that many people enjoy a modest level of benefits from
              capitalistic society is 1) the result of non capitalistic
              forces achieving rights for the individual 2) a clever
              form of exploitation similar to the roman emperors slogan
              "give them bread and entertainment and the people would be
              submissive". It simply makes us better consumers to be
              given crumbles of the big pie so we happily exploited and
              manipulated.

            
          
        
      
    
    

    Empty assertions with neither argument or evidence.

    

    
      
        
          
            Of course, so far
              any  real mass-scale communism experiment has failed
              mostly because has been hijacked by tyrannical figures
              that used communism as a cover up.

            
          
        
      
    
    

    Or it is broken by design as I and many others contend including
    many who are former communists.

    

    
      
        
          
            Communism is a very
              idealistic approach to society, that if maybe unpractical
              (at least given the level of development of humans at this
              point) shares a lot with the transhumanist ideal of life.

            
          
        
      
    
    If the "ideal" is not at all based in reality then how can it be
    ideal for producing the best living systems of real human beings?  A
    system that would work only for some poorly defined quite different
    beings than what humans are deserves scathing contempt - not
    admiration.

    

    - s

    

  

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