Saturday, November 14, 2009

Why socialism is utopian...

Came across a Rosa Luxemburg essay and this snippet reminds us why the socialist ambitions of the 19th-20th century failed...

In a word: the workingman in a Socialist industrial state must show that he can work decently and diligently, without capitalists and slavedrivers behind his back: that of his own volition he can maintain discipline and do his best. This demands mental discipline, moral stamina, it demands a feeling of self-respect and responsibility, a spiritual rebirth of the workingman.

Socialism cannot be realized with lazy, careless, egotistic, thoughtless and shiftless men and women. A Socialist state of society needs people everyone of whom is full of enthusiasm and fervor for the general welfare, full of a spirit of self-sacrifice and sympathy for his fellow men, full of courage and tenacity and the willingness to dare even against the greatest odds.

It goes without saying that this holds true for its intellectual cousin... laissez faire capitalism.
 
When it comes to human beings/human nature I side with conservatives like Friedrich Nietzsche and Edmund Burke over the Enlightenment ideal of human beings...
 

Posted via email from Jim Nichols

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