= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Multiheaded comments on Rationality Quotes May 2012 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (696)
That's decent and interesting criticism. Indeed, Alinsky appears to have been a hardcore Syndicalist, and both Buckley and me are to the right of him, although Buckley's a lot further. However, that last one is very dubious to me:
Since Marx, leftists have probably heard this kind of argument in most debates: advanced civilization generates - or will eventually - so much charity in all its forms (through both tradition and individual kindness) as to cure most of the lower classes' problems and thus make many concerns of unfairness and inequality irrelevant.
Alinsky clearly understood the problem with that: charity is in itself a status race and a status pump; it can be wielded with malice and used to keep people down. Just look at Africa and how we're trying to drown it in money instead of coming over there en masse and applying real help, manually. (Which is also problematic status-wise, but at least it might actually improve a society.)
The argument is not that, for example, the United States, is perfect. It's that whatever Marxists replace it with will be worse.
A lot of people "understand" this problem in the sense that they know it exists in the existing system. Unfortunately, they frequently have no better understanding of the causes and potential solutions than some version of "the current system has these problems because it is evil/corrupt, once we replace it with our new good/pure system these problems will magically go away".
That's what we were doing until leftists forced us to stop on the grounds we were "oppressing" them.
Note: If you think colonialism was indeed bad, what makes you thing doing something similar again will turn out any different?
I'm modestly familiar with the works of Marx, but I don't know what "syndicalism" is. And I don't know what proposal you're making, or alluding to, with this:
Sounds ominous!
I think the Africa reference is to perspectives found in books like Dead Aid
I think Moyo and other aid critics don't advocate that Russians come to Africa en masse and apply real help, manually.