Apathy And Envy For All
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Under a collective system, everyone degrades to a lower level whether they want to or not. Apathy, laziness, fear, and dependence become the norm, making central planning and totalitarian measures even more successful; thus the end of poverty, but the state of destitution also becomes the end – the lowest common denominator is achieved (See
How Collectivism Destroys Everyone). This highlights Reverend William J. H. Boetcker’s wisdom that:
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
John Bellamy Foster is editor of
Monthly Review and a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. Brett Clark is associate editor of
Monthly Review and a professor of sociology at the University of Utah. Hannah Holleman is a director of the Monthly Review Foundation and an associate professor of sociology at Amherst College.
The “turn toward the indigenous” in social theory over the last couple of decades, associated with the critique of white settler colonialism, has reintroduced themes long present in Marxian theory, but in ways that are often surprisingly divorced from Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism.
How Collectivism Destroys Everyone
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Collectivism coercively takes property from persons of higher levels of wealth and redistributes it to those of lower levels of wealth. This practice
must also exercise some level of totalitarian force as a central authority must decide how much to take and who receives it – otherwise the collectivist system cannot function. So, the first societal degradation is that, by design, some level of a central authority exercises totalitarian force. But a second societal degradation is that nearly all incentive is removed from individuals to excel, develop, and risk ideas which benefit themselves and society. This phenomenon creates a downward spiral of society to reach the lowest common denominator of individuals. If people are forced into being
In an attempted self-coup – an ‘
autogolpe’ in Spanish – a sitting ruler tries to hold on to power by suspending the constitution or by upending countervailing powers in the judiciary, executive, or legislative branches of government. The ‘steal’ of an election from a victorious opponent has been attempted only once in a democracy, twice if you include the recent putsch provoked by President Trump in the US – for which he was swiftly impeached by Congress. According to Chin, the sole self-coup in a democracy occurred in Costa Rica in 1948. This led to a civil war that lasted six weeks. Ever since, Costa Rica has been an unwavering democracy, scoring a perfect ten on (a scale from -10 to +10) by one of the most widely used measures of democracy, compiled under the Polity5 Project at the University of Maryland.