How do we overcome moral relativism? I'm asking for pragmatic reasons. My friend is indian, born to a high-class family of scientists/agriculturalists and he literally has a disdain for the lower-classes, partly because of their values and partly because they simply belong to a different class and he can't relate to them. How do I argue that it's wrong or irrational to disdain different classes and simply favor your own? How would you convince the upper-class to handicap themselves and their own interests in order to be more "fair" to others?
I understand how to do this if I'm talking to a person who believes in truth/goodness/right&wrong, but I don't know how to convince an egoist or relativist to have concern for other groups besides his own.
Every viable movement will need to recruit the elite and convert them. I'm afraid that often times this conversion is only a mask, and the new ruling elites don't actually care about humanity or life, instead they have their own ambitions and goals to achieve and use marxism as a ruling ideology.
how do you convert smart, high class, moral relativists to act against their own interests?
Cooper Moore
Its in (almost) everyones best interest to end the perpetual cycle of conflict and violence that having different classes results in. This includes even the 'high' class, as they tend to get their heads chopped off on occasion because of this.
To do this everyone must become the same 'class' (though class would not have the same meaning anymore). Because you need workers, if everyone becomes the same class that has to be working class.
The only way to be safe from another class trying to exploit or outright kill you which is guaranteed to periodically happen, is to remove class system. Thus the higher class are trading momentary comfort for long term danger.
Asher Nelson
Look's like someone doesn't know his history.
Sebastian Rodriguez
you can't convert by force, not in Islam or Christianity, it makes no sense, the only people who do that are LARPers and political actors, not real believers.
Thomas Lee
why are there still brutal conflicts within the same "class" even when they share nearly the same ideology, but end up squabbling and killing each other over minor differences?
how can you prevent classes from appearing when some jobs require extremely high levels of intelligence, study, and skill and intensity, while others are low skill, low effort, low stress? people will naturally honor and be more impressed by the former than the latter, and they should be rewarded more than the low-skill jobs and so stratification will occur.
Nathan Thompson
What you're really asking is "how do we defy our material conditions?"
Materially, upper-class workers (since I assume we're not talking about the ruling class) are so insulated from class conflict that they have literally no reason to support the left. They are the favored pets of the bourgeoisie and get bailed out any time capitalism goes into crisis, they live fat and happy off of the superexploitation of the rest of the working class, and aside from what they might see on the news they are totally removed from the violence which perpetuates the systems from which they benefit.
Your friend has zero reason to support the left at the moment. No amount of debate can change his mind, because you CAN'T argue that it's irrational to disdain different classes and simply favor your own. After all, that's what socialism is - when the proletariat oppresses the bourgeoisie. Only when the material conditions change and he needs to side with lower class workers will his mind and heart be changed.
Sorry user.
Jason Morgan
then you're admitting he has the right to exploit the lower classes simply because that's the reality of his material conditions. ?????????
Michael Walker
Easy there is no generic answer. Tailor to the individual. Appeal to their beliefs and interests.
Anthony Thompson
Socialism is materialist. Moralism is a spook. Deal with it.
Sebastian Adams
so it's a philosophy with no foundation.
Wyatt Hughes
no wonder it's leaders end up being egoists who take advantage of the dumb masses for their own ends, and the ends of communism are never actualized, instead there's a "permanent revolution" in which the State controls the means of production and money, the state being the new-elite.
Hudson Hill
Easy on the spooky ghost stories. It's not even Halloween yet!
Alexander Turner
there is no such thing as moral right. Legal right does allow for the exploitation of the lower class and this is such because the upper class has the pwoer to enforce it.
let's not vulgarize what material conditions mean, there are plenty fo wealthy people taht realize the only path forward for humanity is socialism, and there are many workers that happily betray their own material conditions because of cultural hegemony and false consciousness.
Never forget that society is both made by base and superstructure. The first may be dominant, but it still needs to win over the superstructure, which may require time and effort well beyond what is possible. The feudal world was collapsing, but it still took the French revolution and decades of unrest to transition from monarchies to democracies.
Brody Wilson
The socialist position was never a moral crusade against the evils of capitalism. It is in the self interest of the worker to protect himself from exploitation, that is the socialist position.
I talked about legal rights only because those are the glue that keeps this rotting society together. They do not hold weight by themselves, just like morality is nothing more than a set of beliefs built to preserve the current status quo.
What they both are is tools in the hands of the ruling class to control the lower class. Now I am not trying to imply that having laws or moral judgement is wrong, only that their existence is not trans-historical, in fact their specific forms can exists only in a specific type of society.
Caleb Richardson
But you have to convince the worker to give up his immediate self-interest [and probably make a lot of sacrifices] for the "good of his class", unfortunately you can't show how he is being morally exploited besides appealing to his greed and you can't show him why the future you propose is morally superior except by appealing to his egoistic greed. "Exploitation" divorced from morality is an empty buzzword. I think the elites who join this movement all understand this, very clearly, hence they form a new State dictatorship, seize the means of production, continue using money just as readily as their Capitalist counterparts did, and centrally plan what the ants (proles) get according to whatever schematic they think is optimal for them.
Camden Hernandez
Exactly, when we are talking about the proletariat's interests as a class and not as individuals we are inevitably enter the field of ethics Communist movements always started out as genuine emancipatory movements. Obviously the outcomes weren't perfect (owing to the fact that political inequality inevitably forms class inequality), but socialist countries were still massively more equal societies (see limits of bureaucrats pay in ratio to average worker's pay and massive subsidies) so please stop with this Orwellian whining. Btw this was the reason why the USSR and the Eastern Block were disassembled by the communist parties leading them. What you call money wasn't money in strictly Marxist terms because it had a different social content resulting from the planning of production
William Hernandez
I suppose the entire Arab world is just pretending to be Muslim then, lol. Scandinavia? Pretending to be Christian.
James Peterson
It's probably futile as pointed out. People ultimately act in their own material interests. Even disdain for the exploited classes is an expression of this: By disparaging the working classes as lazy, selfish, etc. the upper classes (including a portion of labor aristocrats) avoid systematic and moral culpability. Except in case of particular personal conditions, these sort of people cannot be made to act in - what is ultimately - their rational self-interest. Their expression of this may appear irrational, but it's rooted in class interests.
Nice petty bourgeois ideology you've got there
Jeremiah Smith
Those statues have an interesting history. The guy who built the bull was critiquing capitalism, and the installation itself was illegal but later adopted as a fixture. It's a beautiful statue with a lot of kinetic energy.
The girl was installed by porky a couple of years ago and is boring.
"Di Modica has asked that the statue of the girl be removed, arguing that the piece exploits his work for commercial purposes and alters the perception of the bull.[25] He has called Fearless Girl "an advertising trick" that he wanted relocated, citing its political messaging."
The people who installed it wanted something like a gender diverse index fund. It was a cheap trick.
Anyway, I hate your image OP. It's the bottom-of-the-barrel pseudointellectualism that runs like AIDs among incels. "Hubris", "ego", "discern", haha oh boy i passed pre-ap english and still remember these words so im going to use them to completely ignore art history and the point.
Kevin Taylor
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Isaac Bennett
Such as? The only time lower classes fight each other is when it is orchestrated by higher classes and the only reason higher classes can fight each other is their immense wealth. Political power comes from wealth, both in non violent influence and capacity to enact violence. Ones effect on things is based on their wealth. By make it so people can not profit from others labor we restrict the amount of wealth one person can ever control, meaning even if people are to some degree unequal they are still on roughly even footing compared to the massive difference of comparing one individual to an entire capitalists empire, something he only has because he is able to exploit the workers. This is like the slave vote, each slave gives you 3/5th an extra vote!
The realization that creating a stable system is a practical concern in the best interests of all humans in the long term is a reason for any class to come to socialism. Of course if it only cares about himself and not even his own descendants or humanity in general there is no way to convince him, as he will have a more comfortable life maintaining the status quo provided he dies before the next large scale revolution.
David Stewart
You can't. Moral universalism does not exist, it's moral relativism or no moral at all.
Josiah Robinson
he isnt wrong most of the time about really poor people, they're all kinda mentally ill past a certain point. same with the ultra rich, theyre inbred and think wealth they havent earned makes them entitled to certain privileges. most working class people are fine
Grayson Rogers
Poor OP is a ripe old, 15 or so. That or very stupid. You might want to ask yourself, why socialism has been pushed and funded by people with wealth. The Disneyland version some old jew has brainwashed you with isn't it. That's like Satanists who claim they're just noncomformists and anarchists and whatever other lame spiel they give the public. Read the people behind this, their own words. It's all freely admitted. Turkeys on this board try to ignore it, but it's there, in their own words. No ones opinion. Life failures on this board imagine they'd be running something but in reality, most of them would be killed by the people pulling the strings just like in the past.
