As I said before I don't think that's exactly true since Trumpism is gonna stick around to terrorize us all, but if there's any time to dump Trump it would be immediately after an election where you have about 2 years to hope people forget about it. — Mr Bee

Yes, we're in agreement. One reason there's not yet a SCOTUS push is simply it's not clear yet what ruling in what state is required to hand Trump the election; where are the hanging chads of 2020 so to speak. If such a thing becomes clear, I would predict ranks closing around Trump and repeating whatever this "great scandal" is 24/7 for the reasons you state.

I kind of wonder if the GOP leadership would get behind jailing Trump if he gets convicted after leaving office. You know, just to ensure he doesn't continue to bash the party that abandoned him through Trump TV or run again in 2024. With the exception of pathetic asskissers like Graham, I bet alot of them personally despise him anyways. — Mr Bee

I doubt they personally despise him, he makes them rich. I think they doubted Trumpism could work, but the fact that it does brings them significant pleasure. They now have a base completely loyal, completely unquestioning, completely impervious to criticism from the "liberal media", and who can be counted on to shout one thing one day and the exact opposite thing the next -- indeed, even hour to hour, minute to minute.

So far, I only see republican's criticise Trump whom Trump threw under the bus and humiliated, so understandable but potentially pre-mature. They have nothing to lose anyway, so better take this one brief moment to once again shine in the sun and breath the fresh air before returning to their GOP dungeon once again.

I.e. despite the results showing that trying to win over GOP voters is a complete failure, these fucking morons reckon the way to go is to push even harder in this direction. — StreetlightX

It's like competing against coca-cola with something "almost like coke" that leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth and genuinely makes you feel ill afterwards, but it's slightly better for your health (as in not quite as bad) and the company has slightly better corporate social responsibility lingo than does coca-cola the company. Then, after failing to convert coca-cola drinkers and dominate market share, conclude the problem is that the logo isn't quite a shitty enough imitation, within the trademark limits, as the real coca-cola logo.

But with regards to your point about the SCOTUS, it looks like it's becoming increasingly unlikely since the GOP looks set to drop Trump like a rock so they may not think it worth it to keep him. — Mr Bee

I agree that this seems like the case. But we've seen the GOP posture to drop Trump before and then suddenly the ranks close and any remaining dissenters are sidelined.

So we could see a turn around on this due to leverage Trump has, or it's simply the right pretext hasn't been found yet. When it is found the base will rally around it and the GOP will go along for the reason you state.

It almost feels like the media and the states counting the votes are intentionally withholding their results because they know that if they were the ones who called the race then they will be the target of Trump and his violent supporters. — Mr Bee

This definitely could be a factor, but there could also be genuine voter fraud (probably mostly by Trump supporters operating under any number of available delusions) as well as old people with early phase Alzheimer's and literally forgot they mailed in a ballot and woke up on election day and said to themselves "oh, an election, better go vote". Or people just generally going crazy in 2020 and doing doing crazy stuff.

Cross checking and verifying double votes has to be crazy labour intensive.

And of course, saying they've found double ballets would trigger pandemonium, so if I was them I'd want to get rid of them as silently as possible.

Likewise, they could have people who just literally can't keep count and the numbers just don't add up and they need to redo things.

You haven't followed the mail-in vote saga have you? Trump encouraged his supporters to vote in person on election day, insinuating that he would declare mail-in votes as invalid. Biden supporters with respect for COVID distancing practices were more inclined toward mailing in. The result is a huge disproportion of Biden votes in mailed in votes, now being counted, especially evident in Pennsylvania. — Metaphysician Undercover

Although there's always the possibility for a late surprise, most election analysts are pretty good at forecasting votes from certain demographics based on the remaining vote. Alot of the remaining vote is from urban areas and are mail-in. Thus far in this election alone, they've been heavily democratic, — Mr Bee

All I am pointing out is "there's always the possibility for a late surprise". The theory that late counting heavily favours Biden makes sense for the reasons pointed out, and also is retrospectively true in the large catch-ups we're already seen. I am simply pointing out that we cannot therefore conclude this effect will put Biden over the line in places like Pennsylvanian or Goergia nor that it is true for all the late vote counting, such as Nevada. Late counting may favour Biden but there maybe some factor that makes late-late-late counting suddenly favour Trump; if that happens, every forecaster for Biden will simply say "oh, well, we didn't know about this factor, but it makes sense because x, y, z things peculiar to these states and counties and counting protocols and logistics, put a bunch of Trump votes at the very end". For instance, there could be a tranche of a bunch of oversees military votes that favour Trump right at the very end; if this happens, forecasters will just say "yep, makes sense". If that doesn't happen and Biden wins all the close counts with the mail in, we'll also say "yep, makes sense".

We simply don't have enough information about the current situation to say Biden will win with near certainty. But I think you both agree with that. I think we all agree it is close.

The situation is similar to concluding it will rain the next minute because it's raining now; probably true, but the longer the time span we consider the less this reasoning holds as each minute there is some probability it stops raining and this probability accumulates over time. Maybe votes have been raining for Biden recently, but the rain suddenly stops and we all say "yeah, that happens too".

But, as I have said, the numbers look good for Biden right now. I'm not arguing there's some counter-intuitive thing happening that makes Trump the favourite. I'd rather be in Biden's position in terms of the numbers, but I'd rather be in Trump's position in terms of the Supreme court, which I believe could hand the election to Trump if the GOP machinery got in full swing to make that happen. However, the GOP may not want to play the supreme court hand, since as @Baphomet eloquently puts it:

A barely won Biden win with the Dems otherwise in a nosedive and losing on every other front. Yet the GOP still has them there as the foil. — Baphomet

Which I have also concluded in my analysis is the best situation for the GOP. Best let Dem's try fix the mess of the pandemic with only band-aid solutions the GOP can ideologically rail against, while their base ups the cult-crazy levels, all while pointing to the the inevitable failure due to GOP undermining any effective policy and ensuring that failure definitely happens (and weak democrats pointing to crumbs the GOP tosses them as some sort of victory while refusing any real conflict with the GOP because their donors, who are the same people, rather peace and civility). Of course, I'm fairly certain Trump does have leverage against his frenemies, perhaps enough for the GOP spin machine to dig up / invent the needed pretexts and get some SCOTUS action underway. Time will tell. At the moment, the GOP seems to be hedging its bets and distancing with Trump, but that could change overnight if the right threats are delivered to the right people, and if those threats are credible enough. We have yet to see the last of Trump.

The beginning of "oh shit" for Democrats. It will be very close.

One interesting detail is that Libertarians in Nevada got 10 000 votes about, and the constitution party 2000 votes, and "others" got 10 000 votes (which I hope is Kanye). Biden is currently up by about 8000 votes. So it would be of personal pleasure to me, and I think a lot of us, if Biden wins and this becomes a wedge in the Republican-libertarian-Kanye trinity.

I think this really depends on what sort of ballots still need to be counted. If it's all absentee ballots then they are all in play still, with pretty good chances for Biden due to the blue shift. — Benkei

Yes, I agree that there could be a large bias towards Biden, and lot's of simple models can be made showing Biden likely will win.

But the problem with those simple models is that it's too easy to miss something in which case, it's "oh, yeah, well didn't think about that" or "well, didn't think these votes would lean Trump".

The whole point of the election is we don't know how people will vote, and polls get more and more unreliable the more fine grained we look at things (i.e. individual counties can surprise, particular batches of mail in votes can surprise; maybe Biden voters voted very early but there was a surge of Trump mail in voters later to avoid Corona and/or they're older and it's convenient, and the mail-ins are counted sequentially -- even if the right wing spin machine is downplaying corona and claiming mail in votes are fraudulent, such cognitive dissidence may not be a problem; on top of polls being simply generally unreliable these days since land-lines are no longer a thing, and likely voters are much more erratic these days also). That votes lean one way during any range does not establish they will continue to lean that way for the next range. It's intuitively pleasing that if someone is "catching up" they will continue to close the gap and either make it or not make it over the line, but whatever is fueling the catch-up can dissipate at any point (and the point of the election is we don't have the data to make a solid prediction without the election actually happening).

In other words, a story can be told Biden is a heavy favourite at this point, but it's easy to come up with a counter story that also fits our current data, or then to just say "maybe we'll be surprised by these particular voters / these particular vote counting machines". Likewise, the data upon which such stories are based can simply be wrong; for instance: maybe a large amount of votes seem to be left to count from a heavily Biden leaning county, but it then turns out that was just some clerical mixup and the votes are almost all already counted or then there's some left but from a Trump leaning county.

My basic point though, is that it's not in a situation where Biden needs 1 more state to win and there are 6 states with 50% probability of going either way, which is what a first impression of some media may lead one to conclude. The situation is closer to being down to 1 state that will be close, than it is to 6 tossups in which Biden needs only 1 victory.

As an additional note Wisconsin is within 1%, with is conventionally within "recount range". Of course, a bunch of the states mentioned above where Trump is leading is within 1% to, but there maybe some far flung rational for recounting Wisconsin and eliminating some votes or somehow; just not applicable to the other states, maybe for the simple reason that the Democrats don't file a similar claim (as they know the SCOTUS would rule against them even if they use the same logic to bring victory for Trump). So, this is what a SCOTUS determined election could look like.

However, the Republican establishment may want Trump to lose, and so not pull the needed strings or then signal to the SCOTUS that they should actually use common sense this time.

Biden victory is not necessarily good for Democrats, as the pandemic situation essentially presents a no-win situation. Republican politicians and backers may very well be frothing at the mouth at the prospect of Biden needing to "curb civil liberties" instead of Trump being forced to do something when the medical system really is in state of collapse. Likewise, much better a Democrat push vaccines etc. than a Republican administration.

One thing keeping the lid on pure insanity on the Right is simply that Trump is in charge at the moment and it's impossible to blame absolutely everything on the Democrats and it's impossible for Trump to go too far in insane discourse because he has a power to act on what he says (it's crazy and contradictory, but it could be far worse). A Biden victory will bring out a birther type phenomenon multiplied by a thousand.

For progressives, a Biden victory will consolidate the right and move it further to the right, during which time Biden does nothing constructive and the state of disaster and dissatisfaction in 4 years will likely bring a much farther right wing president to power.

Whereas Trump victory will force Republicans to implement some of the basic left wing policies the pandemic situation will force, and the status quo democrats will simply no longer be relevant (and many simply too old), moving discourse to the left.

If you don't like American Empire, a Trump victory will likely continue the radical downward spiral of international credibility upon which most of the American empire is actually based, whereas a Biden victory will likely lead to an attempt to rehabilitate Imperial control where it is on the wane leading to wars. Paradoxically, Trump is so unstable that the US establishment cannot reach consensus around a new war since it's impossible to predict what Trump would do (whereas, Lybia and Syria were new wars the US establishment could consolidate around and convince allies, under Obama even if Obama was himself skeptical about them).

Likewise, as has been noted, Trump decredibilizes right wing ideology globally. He makes it very clear what viewing greed as good thing leads to, and also says all the quiet parts out loud.

As a European, it makes me sad to say it, but a Biden victory will be immediately followed by European leaders bending the knee (with a sexual connotation if you like), whereas a Trump victory will likely consolidate an US independent European policy project.

Just so people know, Trump is currently leading in (according to CNN numbers):

- Georgia: by 0.5% with estimated 95% counted, 16 electoral votes
- North Carolina: by 0.5% estimated 95% counted, 15 electoral votes
- Pennsylvania: by 2.6% estimated 86% counted, 20 electoral votes
- Alaska: by 30% with estimated 47% counted, 3 electoral votes

These do not look probable to change, in terms of random deviations in a non-biased model, with the remaining votes in question (though it is possible).

Added to the 213 electoral votes he has, these states would put him at 267.

In Nevada Biden is leading by 0.4% with estimated 89% counted. So if this flipped in the next 11% (which is more probable due to random deviations than the above) then Trump would win at 273 electoral votes.

There's a theory that all late counting favours Biden, so if that's true then Biden has a significant advantage; however, in some places Trump has been gaining late on Biden, so it's clearly not a certain theory, and may only be applicable in a general sense and does not happen to apply to whatever votes are actually remaining (a lot of factors affect when votes get counted and reported, so factors favouring Trump may happen to dominate now even if factors favouring Biden dominated the last X %).

So, it's definitely extremely close. If anyone was wondering, especially non-Americans here, if Biden standing at 253 right now was so close as to be "almost a sure thing", it is not.

I would intuit that Biden does have the advantage based purely on the current numbers, but I am still predicting a Trump win due to the supreme court advantage. Bush vs Gore was equally ridiculous, bad faith, anti-democratic, with lot's of outrage about it, as a SCOTUS determined election this time would be, didn't stop them then and there's even more crazy people on the SCOTUS now. Although I agree the reasoning pretext that would be used doesn't seem clear right now, the Republicans have a habit of inventing preposterous pretexts overnight and ramming them through (cause the democrats are week cowards and there's no actual credible threat that Republicans would actually deal with the precedent they lay down against themselves).

There is no way to enforce democracy by power politics. — Echarmion

Democracy is brought to you by revolutionary wars, or then the threat of revolutionary war.

Democracy can only be maintained by a pure power politics of the majority committed to maintain democracy as something worthwhile and worth fighting for, and willing to pay a real cost: for instance, threaten the system with revolutionary war when obviously anti-democratic and nominally illegal things emerge such as gerrymandering and followup with threatening to overthrow the judiciary if it obviously participates in maintaining such crimes by absurdly (and obviously corruptly) declaring gerrymandering a political issue that can only be resolved through voting in gerrymandered elections.

Your idea that when a minority criminal cabal breaks laws, abuses established customs, entrenches anti-democratic policies by passing anti-democratic laws or appointing anti-democratic judges, and does whatever it takes to gain and maintain power, that the only thing that can and should be done about it is "be nice", has no basis in reason nor history. It is the wishful thinking of cowards.

This is why the left sucks monkey balls at playing the game. — Benkei

You beat me to it.

Just listened to Trump's speech, where he claims he's "frankly, already won" and going to the supreme court to stop counting ballet's "found at 4 o'clock in the morning".

With the supreme court solidly "crazy" I predict Trump will come out on top after all this. It will of course trigger complete chaos.

As a European, Trump is likely the best result (for us). It's better to have a incompetent clown in charge of the mafia (which the US government should be classified as, at this stage) than a seasoned professional, even if an older model. Like, if you could vote for your local Mafia boss, I think Trump has a lot of favourable characteristics for this position.

I also predict actual mathematical analysis of "voting machine" results and other disenfranchising tactics results will show highly likely fraud in favour of Republicans, as in 2016. Somehow the "liberal establishment", so convinced the levels of corruption are totally fine and normal (as they benefit from it too), falls for the Republican trick of first accusing the Democrats of cheating, then Democrats (feeling confidence of the polls) fall over themselves to claim the election process is totally fair and no cheating or fraud is happening (which is largely true about isolated individual voter fraud the Republicans cry fowl about) and is not a problem and the result must be respected with a "good sportsmen" attitude, and then Republicans use every single trick they can logistically accomplish, all illegal just with varying degrees of the public being aware of such tricks and accustomed to such tactics as "of course the Republicans can do it", and then Republicans "declare victory" and that "the vote must be respected, just like the Democrats have been saying".

The only solution is to purge the Democrat leadership of politicians that "just want a little bit of the corruption" and who view a Trump victory better than someone arguably not corrupt like them. So maybe a Trump victory would lead to that, but I think simply the collapse of civil society in the US is likely to happen before that.

Of course, Trump victory comes at the risk of literal nuclear war, but life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

I feel as though the most defining victim of this infamous pandemic, aside from its egregious death toll, has been the socioeconomic mobility developing economies were characterized by prior to it emerging. Incomes have been either erased or diminished, and will not be recouped in entirety for several agrarian and industrial sectors around the world for at least 5 to 6 years. — Aryamoy Mitra

This was discussed a few months back in the context of "it's ethical to sacrifice people in rich countries by letting the pandemic run rampant, because the economic costs of lockdowns and social distancing will kill more people in poorer countries."

I completely agree that far more people in poorer countries will suffer and die due to the economic consequences of the pandemic than the disease itself globally, but it's a false dichotomy.

These are not victims of the pandemic, but of a global economic system that kept them poor before and will do little to nothing to help them now.

The solution to wanting to help poor people in poor countries is doing things that effectively help poor people in poor countries, pandemic or not; and, more importantly than that, stop doing things that keep them poor and under corrupt management, such as the full spectrum of neoliberal "market access" policies, debt peonage, as well as simply overthrowing or assassinating any leader that might nationalize resources or repudiate debts accumulated under previous corrupt client regimes put in place and propped up by external money, external intelligence information, external cloak and dagger operations, and external military training of domestic terrorist organizations (aka, the military and police, trained by western military and intelligence to carry out genocides of people with the "wrong political ideas", throw people off planes into the ocean and the like).

I'm not sure if you are or would make such an argument (economy over protecting people from Covid, because poor people suffer from a bad economy), but I feel it useful to paraphrase what has been already discussed on this particular topic, and of course I welcome your thoughts on the above or then continued analysis of simply the socio-economic consequences as such (given that we do live in a neoliberal world policy framework that will do little to help poor people).

This is just like 100% wrong. — frank

Lot of that going around. Do they have a vaccine for it?? — Hippyhead

These comments are so low quality and from people of such low analytical abilities -- and I would wager worth as human beings as well -- that they do not merit my attention; a general theme of the forum as of late.

However, for fun, and when I have the time of course, I'll post in my next comment a few jewels of Covid denialism these lowly-esteemed contributors made in the past, so further contrast the irony that they are now on the side of "science".

However, if others of better faith, sharper whit, more honorable character, to paraphrase my argument: it's simply fact now that vaccine technology did not stop Covid before major damage, and the idea pandemics can simply be ignored in a calculus of public health investments is absurd; given the disruption to society that pandemics engender they should be weighted not only in deaths but the cost of social disruption particular to them; already the pandemic has cost trillions; trillions that could have been invested before the pandemic in things that would actually prevent, stop, or significantly reduce the severity of said pandemic. Other policies could have prevented the pandemic or limited it's severity: vector control, outbreak protocols and general public health.

This does not say that vaccines would have no place in an optimum public health strategy, only that investments in vector control, outbreak protocols and public health as a primary defense against infectious disease would, by definition, displace funds for vaccines, but more significantly, reduce the chances and severity of not only pandemics but existing endemic infectious diseases, thus affecting the cost-effectiveness calculation for any particular vaccine (i.e. if a primary investment already deals with a problem, there is less reason to invest in other solutions to the same problem).

Also notable, I seem to be in very close agreement with on this issue, who brings up some good points I also agree with, and I am glad to see we share common ground on the foundational issues of public health and only disagree on some details as it turns out; the forum never ceases to surprise.

You think those billions now poured into various vaccine programs by major countries won't have an effect? — ssu

Maybe, but there is currently no evidence that they will. In my version of science I believe things when there is evidence to believe it. The experimental design of the current covid related vaccine trials, do not seek to answer the question of whether the pandemic will be significantly curtailed in one way or another, and the scientists running these trials do not make such a claim.

For instance, if the virus simply evolves to defeat the vaccine (how evolution works) the scientist will simply point out that their experimental design did not seek to provide any insight on this issue.

The reason I mention evolution is that in an exponentially expanding new virus there are many evolutionary paths available and with 7 billion people there are many hosts available in which those evolutionary events can take place. There are already now a diversity of strains of the virus, a vaccine developed against a certain strain may already not be effective against strains that already exist, which will of course then come to dominate once the conditions are such that they have an advantage. The virus has simple maths on its side. The long amount of time it usually takes to make an effective vaccine, for good reasons, means simple math is not on its side.

But my main point seems to be lost on you, which is that obviously vaccine technology cannot possibly be relied on to intervene to prevent major harms from infectious disease ... because those major harms have already occurred in the case of Covid, for basically the reasons you state.

Vaccine technology is simply not a reliable basis for protecting public health from infectious disease generally speaking and the disastrous consequences of a pandemic. You may say "But of course! Vaccines take time and aren't meant to intervene to strop a pandemic before there is already major health harms and economic disruptions! dum dum", but, of course, my response is simply to repeat, that for exactly that reason, "Vaccine technology is simply not a reliable basis for protecting public health from infectious disease generally speaking and the disastrous consequences of a pandemic". There do exist other policies that can have a much bigger consequence.

Other policy measures do not have this problem, and in the case of public health in terms of "healthiness", actually pay for itself. Therefore, focus should be first investing in policies that both intervene at all stages of a pandemic such as we are experiencing and moreover pay for themselves. Ultimately, relying on vaccine technology to control infectious disease was lazy thinking by the medical community. Does that make them idiots? I'm sure you are already confident my answer is yes, yes it does make them idiots. However, it was not a consensus; many experts predicted exactly this scenario and pointed out more effective investment strategies to protect global health against the inevitable "high impact" event we are seeing.

Also the speed that we will get a vaccine will likely be impressive. — ssu

There isn't really a basis for this belief. No vaccine trial, vis-a-vis covid, is designed to prove actual effectiveness at changing the course of the pandemic. Different experimental design would be needed for that and very likely different targets of efficacy.

Generally, there is healthy skepticism in the evolutionary biologist community whether a vaccine that cannot irradiate the disease is a good investment, as the obvious prediction based on science is the disease will simply evolve to defeat the vaccine. Vaccines of this kind also have the potential to simply shift harm profiles around without reducing total harm, which is difficult to capture in trials which may easily a confuse looking at a shift at one part of the harm profile and conclude a general reduction of harm can be inferred when there is no basis for such a conclusion (vaccines that reduce disease severity for most people, may increase transmission while significantly increasing the severity for a sub population; for instance, that a sub population has severe over-reaction of the immune system). So, we will find out, but there is no reason to have higher confidence than a skilled gambler down on his luck on this particular issue.

However, considering the harm the pandemic has already had on the global community, we can already conclude that vaccine technology does not protect public health from negative infectious disease outcomes, and investments in vector control, better outbreak protocols, treatment capacity, but most importantly simply public health in a general sense (preventing preventable diabetes, obesity, lung harm from bad air etc.) are more effective investments. In particular, investments in public health in the sense of healthy people is not even a cost but pays for itself many times over.

And yet, public health policy of the last decades has been based on under-investing in healthy foods, healthy city design, healthy habits, and healthy air -- which turns out to benefit fossil and food corporations -- and over-investing in medical technologies that "fix problems post-fact" -- which turns out to benefit pharmaceutical and other medical corporations. Certainly only coincidence and these policy failings will be swiftly corrected going forward.

When you say the class system is not sustainable - do you mean morally, politically, economically? — Judaka

In this context I mean ecological sustainability.

When we look at Amazon, we see a company utterly destroying local businesses that cannot compete and this has been happening since the industrial revolution. If mass production could be competed with by "local living" then why has this happened and what's going to happen differently? — Judaka

The usual answer is that the industrial revolution depended on the enclosure movement of kicking peasants off the land. Bourgeois economic theory both condemns Feudal definitions of ownership (serfs and estates etc.) but takes for granted the good Lords had a right to kick everyone off the land.

Likewise, bourgeois economic theory takes for granted that "urban culture" is superior to "rural culture" and the movement to the cities is just a natural cultural evolution to a better place. However, if we look closely, most people that have emigrated to cities over in the industrial revolution went to slums and horrifying working conditions and were clearly better off as peasants.

A peasant is not compatible with the capitalist mode of production, as peasants can produce food for themselves by gardening, build their own houses, make their own chairs and baskets etc. (of course, by "rural living" here I do not mean agribusiness that turns the land into a substrate for maximum commodity production, such "farms" and the illegal immigrants that work on them is not an example of peasant life and organization, of course with many terms and conditions on the "Lords" land, that existed in feudal times).

Therefore, we come to the question of efficiency for what? Efficient at living? or efficient at producing as many commodities as possible? Way more commodities than anyone needs.

In other words, in a narrow perspective, large industrial production seems efficient as it has massive throughput, but in a wider perspective it is inefficient in terms sustainable use of raw materials as well as inefficient in terms of producing "what people need" (rather than simply "producing as much as possible"; the dreaded overproduction).

We have seen since the industrial revolution how overproduction is absorbed: war, planned obsolescence, growing the population (at first a happy side-affect of medicine, and later by a policy of immigration), manipulative marketing and debt.

Bourgeois economics assumes people need to consume commodities all the time, that this is a natural thing to happen, but if we look closely at peasants of the past (as well as people who happen or choose to be in similar circumstances today - of course they don't call themselves peasants, but "homesteaders") such peasant economics naturally invites capital investment. Rural dwellers buy tools to do things for themselves; it's simply cheaper and quicker to learn basic maintenance and fabrication skills than hire someone for every task. Any food grown locally is far cheaper than food that needs to be picked, stored, transported (to multiple locations); any food waste is composted (without the re-centralization transport problem) simply because that's the easiest thing to do and the benefits are obvious. The idea of regular consumption has obvious immediate negatives since shops are not just down the road, and if one needs to (pay) to go someone regularly to get stuff, the question naturally arises whether there's some investment that can replace this commodity (i.e. planting some apple trees and making one's own apple juice).

Why this doesn't happen (in the West) is not an economic question, but the "who owns the land" question. In the West today if we talk about "gardening" and "fishing" the assumption is that we're talking about wealthy people that garden and fish for fun, not to save money; likewise, if we talk about "skiing" we assume we're talking about wealthy people skiing for fun, not a convenient rural transport winter technology. So, the question arises that if the wealthy are constantly playing at being peasants for fun, shouldn't we just organize society so that everyone can do these things both to have fun and save money: that we make our rural landscapes like the idyllic beautiful places where the rich go for vacation, just that people happen to also live there?

So, much more can be said why such a "return to the land" is more efficient in terms of resource allocation: that it's easy to garden in bio-diversity based way that's good for nature whereas it's hard to produce commodities with the same methods ("things" aren't produced in sufficient quantities at the same place to warrant the capital investments in sorting, packaging, storing and transport technology; such food is only fit to be picked and eaten, or stored in jars; totally useless to the capitalist system), that with more people living in such a way a network effect of trade occurs making it even more efficient (local artisan production displaces imported commodities), that lowering transport of commodities and commuting means both lowering the cost of living but also lowering the cost of transport infrastructure (which can still there, but with radically less throughput, it is much less costly and less environmentally damaging), and new means of production (3D printing, CNC machining etc.) constantly reduce the scale in which precision manufacturing is economically possible (further reducing the need of importing commodities), and also that communication technology would still allow lot's of existing jobs today to be done at-distance and further increase foreign exchange of the community.

The problem is of course land ownership. Since the industrial revolution to now, land consolidation to remove communities living on the land to turn land from living spaces to substrate for commodity production, has been a violent affair (first through enclosures, second through arranging to financially ruin small farm and other peasant-like people, and third through letting natural disasters, like drought, and economic disasters do the dirty business without anyone needing to pay attention, as well as constantly flooding rural places with subsidized commodities, whether as the go-to market entry tactic or as well as state subsidy of capitalism in general, to ruin the local economies and increase commodity reliance), we don't see this much in the West anymore, as the process is largely complete.

Technologically speaking, it's easy to go out into the country-side, look at agribusiness desserts and draw up a technical plan to make small houses, forest gardens and permaculture, water management systems or rain capture and contouring, renewable energy systems, etc. Worse, it's easy to go to the suburbs and conclude that the same resources could support much more people and vibrant communities.

Why this doesn't happen is buying this land is expensive and the people who's life would improve don't have that kind of money. Indeed, not only do they not have that kind of money, but they are in debt and the kind of idyllic living described above assumes one does not need to maximize commodity production to keep up with debt repayments (that everyone one does in this sort of decentralized community living arrangements is not just to save money, but for fun, for community team building, as exercise of the body and mind; it saves money too, but does not maximize the kind of commodity production that is needed to payoff debts; only wage labour provides those circumstances for most people, and barely so as it may still take decades of full tilt, at the the psychological limits of commodity production to maybe payoff a few debts for most people).

Of course, society could simply cancel all debts, take the land from agribusiness and setup homesteaders with the tools and materials to live in an obviously ecologically superior way that is good for everyone, and can still produce more food for the whole of society (forest gardens and other forms of permacutlure are more productive than mono-culture fields, even on agribusiness own terms of pound per acre, but the comparison almost can't even be made if water and fossil inputs and nutrients per acre as output is used, not to mention biodiversity and regional ecological resilience tree transpiration and roots provides is included in the analysis).

Society does not even need an excuse to take agribusiness land (could just say "we don't give a shit about investor complaints; other people can win the "battle of ideas" if they put in the effort, there's no metaphysical basis to put some ideas of limits for the winning") but if it wanted and excuse it could say "the promise that privately owned land by profit maximizing capital would preserve the land for everyone must now be a promise kept; we will analyse everyone's land, and anyone that did not accomplish this preservation of the value on the land of biodiversity and soil nutrients forfeits their land as part of a retroactive social contract based on the same precedence that our precious bankers retroactively pardon themselves for financial crimes now and again" or then just use imminent domain and pay the land-owners in a currency in the process of collapse (imminent domain laws do not preclude ecological necessity as a basis for land appropriation; maybe they will in the near future, but society could simply choose to not give a shit about that anyways).

This isn't happening anytime soon, in the West, but there are places in the world where people aren't currently trapped in commodity production maximizing infrastructure, often still own their land as a community, and so everything I describe above is simply an immediate improvement of their tool-set, quality of life, foreign exchange, and local environment that they still feel intuitively and obviously dependent on, and improving the means of this kind of peasant production is relatively easily advanced through cooperation between those communities and western hippies who have a bit of capital, a "proper" education required for systems analysis to be sure things are actually better and not worse, and a fevered dream (that's from the malaria though, also a solvable problem).

As climate change, resource depletion, moves in the "great game", disrupt our global industrial commodity throughput device, more and more places will essentially drop out of capitalism regardless of whether the propaganda people jealously guard tells them it's a good thing or not, and what I describe above will become the only game in town. Of course, people may choose to play the game of raiding other towns down the dusty road of entitlement instead; time will tell us who wins.

Nope, that refers to my quote from the Bible. The quote was basically used as an argument why monarchies exist and why people going against a monarchy are "un-Christian". People used those lines here even in 1918. — ssu

Your argument is that we can judge what Marx wrote based on what Stalin did. That's what you literally say:

Sometimes the dictatorship of Stalin is said to be where the Soviet Union lost it's cause. Yet it is simply ignorance to try uphold the fallacy of Soviet Union being a possible success "if not for Stalin". Stalin, the great scapegoat. How many times have I heard "if not Stalin" ...how benign the system would have been under Lenin. This thinking totally disregards the intrinsic problems of Marx's ideology, which do inherently lead to a totalitarian system. — ssu

Or at least, your only evidence so far that "Marx's ideology, which do inherently lead to totalitarian system" is the Soviet Union.

Just as Jesus Christ obviously doesn't talk anything that would justify a crusade, I don't. — ssu

Ok, so if what Christians do is not necessarily a good reflection of what Christ talked about, you do agree, after all, that what Stalin did may not be a good reflection on what Marx talked about?

Or, do you really not see what's going on here?

Well, I too find it as a ridiculous argument. If not Stalin, then some other. In the end all Proletarian dictatorships have become true dictatorships, if they have lasted long enough. — ssu

Did you even read what I wrote?

So, to be clear, you attach the genocides and slavery of "Christendom" to the teachings of Christ? If not, it seems the exact same argument structure.

Somehow Christians in liberal democracies and even in monarchies have gotten past this. — ssu

Well if it's just a question of time, then why not bring Stalinism back and see what happens?

Why not give Stalinism thousands of years of leeway?

I'll engage with your other comments if you're able to resolve this problem.

The issues are still pertinent today, of course, we can agree, actually it's worse than ever. Amazon as an example, is such an efficient producer and that has destroyed so many livelihoods and we know it's only going to get worse. The control over the means of mass efficiency are going to end up in the hands of fewer and fewer people because of ever-increasing efficiency.

I don't see a way to address the disease but it is possible to mitigate the damage by wealth redistribution and I think that has become what we're resigned to. Either wealth redistribution will occur in equal measure to the destruction caused or we will end up in a dystopia. That and limiting the profiteering by creating appropriate rights and protections for workers. — Judaka

Although this seems to be the case, I would argue that Marx is fundamentally right that class divisions cannot be maintained indefinitely, that simply redistributing wealth cannot be the end goal as it can't be maintained. A great argument for this is the incredibly high tax rate in the US during and post-WWII, if this was a stable state of affairs then this sort of policy simply would have "won" and not been reversed (just as once American revolutionaries defeated the English, the new state of affairs was stable, they simply "won" and there was little possibility for King George to reverse things) ... yet, as you note, wealth disparity is worse than ever (not simply within capitalist history, but you need to go back to things like Genghis Khan and Egyptian pharaohs to find comparable wealth disparity levels).

However, I would agree with you that the "communist revolution" as conceived by Marx (i.e. factory workers unionizing, striking and taking over democracy) is impossible today as you suggest. I would also argue that Marx's idea of "worker revolution" could only have ever given us the welfare state, basically because large scale capitalist production which Marx was witnessing the emergence of requires a state to manage and normal people simply don't understand it well enough for effective management (and, I would argue, can't understand it, as it simply takes too much time, being so far removed from everyday life, to do so; not that conservatives or pro-capitalist parties understand it better, but each fails in turn to accomplish managerial goals and is forced to let the other "give it a try"); so, through unionizing and party politics, such as Marx suggests, the workers can gain benefits in some states, as we see in the Nordic model, but these are neither global, due to capital being able to cross borders and simply find conditions suitable for labour exploitation (if not existing, then engendering "race to the bottom" inter-government competition), nor really adequate in themselves (welfare states clearly still have problems). Conditions which, regardless of worker protection and benefits in some places, give rise to Googles and Amazons and Apples and Facebook and other billionaires that clearly have incredible influence along with the collection of previous top-dog industrial-corporations such as Boeing, that are of course still around.

There is an alternative to this economic vision of large scale corporations, which is local living. The psychological argument that "it's in people's nature is to want the commodities that only large corporations provide to enjoy in the obviously superior urban culture" is irrelevant if such a state of affairs is simply not sustainable. If we have to live more locally, do more for ourselves and our neighbors, this is as impossible to imagine without also effectively owning the means of this local production as it is impossible to imagine workers effectively owning the means of production of an Amazon or Apple. Small is Beautiful makes the purely economic case that such a revolution is possible starting in the poor regions of the world.

[Note: I wrote the first half when posted his reply largely making the same basic counter-argument, so decided to continue with some more arguments on other things rather than just repeat largely the same thing.]

Sometimes the dictatorship of Stalin is said to be where the Soviet Union lost it's cause. Yet it is simply ignorance to try uphold the fallacy of Soviet Union being a possible success "if not for Stalin". Stalin, the great scapegoat. How many times have I heard "if not Stalin" ...how benign the system would have been under Lenin. This thinking totally disregards the intrinsic problems of Marx's ideology, which do inherently lead to a totalitarian system. — ssu

This is simply propaganda. Hitler emerged out of a liberal capitalist system, supported by capitalists, but it seems pretty clear you would not hold this against liberal capitalism but would argue that Hitler presented a different ideology that was able to emerge out of liberal capitalism, sure, but has nothing to do with liberal capitalism. Likewise, there was still a "market" in Nazi Germany, are you proposing that this fact is condemnation of all market theorist (from Smith to Keynes)?

If the answer is obviously no, as that's a ridiculous argument, so too is the idea the actions of Stalin somehow condemn the ideas of Marx to such a degree that it can be just assumed without even needing to know anything about Marx and what he wrote (which you obviously don't).

Likewise, can we assume all the genocides and slavery committed by European empires would be 'simply pure dishonesty and flagrant denial from you to try think that the teachings of' Jesus "had nothing to do with a society that had as it's state ideology' Christianity? That we need not even bother reading what Jesus had to say to know he was pro-genocide, pro-crusades and pro-slavery because nominal Christian empires did such things? They're calling themselves not just Christians but the literal body of Christ with a pope representing the word of God not just saying crusades and conquest is cool, but indeed demanding it happen.

Do you only bring this kind of argument against Marxism, but wouldn't against market theorists or Christianity, but rather in those contexts view it as pure idiocy?

Or, are do you share the same opinion as nearly all good-faith interlocutors both for liberal-capitalism and socialism, whatever brand, that things can go wrong. Markets and liberal institutions can and do fail leading to totalitarianism, which both liberal-capitalists and socialists can agree is a bad thing. Likewise, socialist revolutions against totalitarianism (or are you defending Tsarists Russia as a bastion of freedom?) can and do go wrong resulting in as bad or worse totalitarianism, which both liberal-capitalists and socialists can agree is a bad thing.

Mikhail Bakunin saw this flaw well in the ideas of Karl Marx and writes in Marxism, Freedom and the State: — ssu

You shouldn't quote Mikhail Bakunin if you have no idea what he was about and what was his basis of disagreement with Marx.

Bakunin believed Marx favoured totalitarianism because Marx didn't believe you could just wipe clean all state institutions and things turn out ok (a la. Pol Pot). Marx believed that getting piecemeal victories like working hours, worker protections was a good thing in itself but also actions through which the working class learns how "to do politics" and gain confidence. Bakunin believed simply wiping out the state and all state institutions, would bring society back to a natural community based tribalism and that humans naturally and spontaneously didn't fight or exploit each other absent the state.

Go research the Bakunin-Marx disagreement and come back and defend Bakunin.

Likewise, Marx viewed the Paris commune (direct democracy) extremely favourably and the first appearance of "workers managing their own affairs"; if he wanted a totalitarian state run by nominal Marxists theorists he would have said so both in his writing and through explicit, or at least implied, criticism of the Paris commune.

Bakunin's argument for Marxism leads to totalitarianism was basically that Marx recognized you're still going to need all the skills that exist in Bourgeois institutions and people for society to function, you can't just wipe the slate clean; hence, the revolution towards a classless society can't be achieved in one fell swoop of annihilating the state but is a complicated process of workers learning things and learning to work together to achieve goals (like working hours and mines not collapsing on them all the time due to under-investments - i.e. unprofitable outlays - in safety).

Marx was pretty moderate and argued to kick Bakunin out of the International not because Marx was a totalitarian that wanted all the power, but because he didn't believe in Bakunin's program of bringing down states through intrigue (i.e. assassinating government officials). Marx didn't advocate assassinating government officials to bring down the state, but rather gaining political power through organized worker actions like strikes.

Essentially the reasons Marx viewed workers as a revolutionary class is because you needed knowledge to work in a factory, innovate, and for a capitalist economy to functions, and so capitalists could not but help providing this education. Slaves was not a revolutionary class because it was predicated on keeping the slaves as ignorant as possible (in thousands of years of slavery no slave rebellion revolutionized slaving societies); rather, it's the bourgeoisie that are the revolutionary class against slave based society because they discover more efficient means of production that are incompatible with slaves (skilled manufacturing - which at first seems compatible with slave based resource extraction elsewhere, but eventually gets so efficient you can use skilled manufacturing techniques to extract resources also, so - why not? both on efficiency grounds, ethical grounds that the slaves aren't "practically needed" as well as on economic motivational grounds of selling capital equipment in the resource extraction market, resulting in a contradiction in the system resolved by the Bourgeoisie overthrowing the state and implementing liberal capitalism).

Marx does not "hate on the bourgeoisie", as propagandists like Peterson like to believe, but genuinely views slavery as worse than wage-labour and is happy the Bourgeoisie developed to a position of wealth and power to be able to overturn the slavery/serfdom (which, despite thousands of years of many slaves being motivated to overturn slavery, did not manage to do; racists would say it is because the slaves ere just weak and inferior, but to Marx it is due to the slave system both keeping slaves as ignorant as possible within a true totalitarianism of controlling almost every aspect of a slaves life; i.e. the means of production, doing all difficult tasks by brute force, in a slave economy kept slavery stable, and it required material changes in the economy, not simply the thought that slavery maybe bad, to result in a tangible revolution against slavery).

However, an antagonistic class separation remains in liberal capitalism (at first simply based on the end state of feudalism of who ends up owning the land and factories etc. when feudalism stops but gets worse and worse because capital accumulates in fewer and fewer hands) which is, largely speaking, a large proportion of people (having gained no wealth under feudalism, being slaves or serfs) have only their labour to sell in the new system and a smaller proportion of people effectively own all the means of production and therefore dictate the terms and conditions of when, how and to what purposes labourers can produce and therefore survive. The owners of the means of production, Marx does not care if you call them "capitalists" or not, have an enormous negotiating advantage in being able to use the immediate survival of workers as a bargaining chip. However, unlike slaves, workers are not entirely powerless as, although the owners of the means of production can threaten the worker's survival, the workers can threaten the owner's profits (all slave owning society's acted immediately, ruthlessly and as a community to put down any slave rebellion, breaking their spirit or just killing them all, as they could just get new slaves and it was obvious to them any real rights or any real better conditions for slaves would just lead to more slave rebellions) whereas such methods are not available in a liberal capitalist society and capitalists cannot depend on the goodwill of other capitalists, out of community bonds, to keep them in business (i.e. individual capitalists are motivated to negotiate a settlement to a strike by making real concessions, whereas slave owners were quite aware that slavery is only possible with complete and total subjugation of the slave and any real concession impossible; that if a slave owner needed to "put down" his entire crop of slaves to avoid any real concession, that's what he would do and he'd be helped out by other slave owners to get rolling again, by each plantation sparing a few slaves and no-interest loans to buy new slaves, in thanks for "doing what needs to be done", as it's clear to all the slave owners that no individual slave owner must genuinely fear breaking and killing slaves with the slightest hint of defiance regardless of the cost).

Why liberal capitalists hate Marx so much, even if he's thankful for them ending feudal modes of slavery, is because he points out that workers who have no means of production are not the "ideal of the shop-keep owner or the feudal black-smith" that owns their means of production, but are easily exploited in a structure that is akin to slavery. The economic heart of slavery is that the slave does produces for their own replacement (whether survival of the slave or then just kidnapping a new slave, whatever is more profitable) and the different between this substance value the slave produces and the total value is the profit that the slave owner pockets.

Liberal capitalist theory is adamant, indeed ferociously convinced, that a similar structure does not happen in liberal capitalist economies, that everyone gets their fair shake: that market forces are natural forces and therefore moral (as all natural forces cannot, by definition be immoral; it makes no sense to call a river or a thunderstorm or our feeling of hunger when we have not eaten "immoral"). Marx's critique of capital makes basically 3 arguments: 1. commodity production is not a natural thing; projecting it into the past makes no sense, feudal society was not a capitalist society and even less so clan, tribal and family society can be viewed somehow as natural capitalism at work 2. commodity production alienates workers from their environment and each other due to not producing for their own needs as a creative force in their own life but 3. commodity production inherently drives wages to subsistence levels and so workers do not ultimately benefit from increases in productive efficiency (productivity can increase 100 fold and yet workers are still tired and have precarious lives without real wealth; i.e. capitalist production does not naturally lead to everyone becoming capitalists and both working to produce and owning things, real security, but maintains the division between the haves and the have nots; on occasion a havenot can move to being part of the haves, but this doesn't change anything structurally speaking) 4. the economic and social problems commodity production creates leads to both a world market, as tapping into new markets and new labour pools is always the easiest resolution to capitalism's woes, and also leads to recurring crisis, the woes themselves.

There is many things to criticize in Marx, but he has a fairly coherent outlook on history that can be engaged with if you were interested in engaging with other ideas on a philosophy forum. When history professors talk about the "revolution of the printing press" they are putting forth a materialist conception of history. Likewise, when historians attribute feudal society as a result of technologies in warfare (the night of the samurai being the ultimate weapon of war and so easily setting themselves up as rulers) rather than because people just so happened happened to think feudalism was a good idea for centuries over large areas of the globe that had little interaction except the transmission of technology, again this is an idea of Marx (previous to Marx, it was essentially assumed power centers were the result of "superior people" and that political changes where the result of intellectual debate as such; someone "came up with arguments for liberalism, these arguments were good and so feudalism started to fall apart unable to defend itself on an intellectual level"), such historians are describing historical materialism as Marx does.

Marx does not deny that ideas also affect history, just notes that that they too must be produced, and in each epoch the ruling ideas just so happen to be the ideas supporting the rule of the ruling class: for thousands of years the divine rights of Emperors and Kings is a super credible, central political idea, and somehow as soon as feudal aristocracy is overturned the idea is laughable.

Of course, things change, for Marx this means that there must be a group that, within the old system, has, due to real changes to the economy that the system creates, gains enough power to start producing their own ideas. Slaves never developed a revolutionary theory of how to practically defeat their slave-owners (despite being very much convinced slavery was bad and motivated to become not-slaves), they were not a revolutionary class (not because they are "inferior people" or less morally relevant, but because the slave system never developed in a direction where slaves achieved the means of production of ideas to become a revolutionary class; slave owners were very careful to keep slaves in the conditions necessary for slavery; hence, why it's often said slavery "became obsolete", but if we ask ourselves why slavery could not innovate or integrate innovations elsewhere: Marx's idea of history is a good explanation: educating slaves to be skilled workers is simply incompatible with slavery).

However, merchants and manufacturers (who lived in burgs, and so people simply started calling them "bourgeois", who were not feudal lords (and, just like today the economic structure can permit some of us, but not all of us to work our way to having real capital, the feudal system could only give titles to some of the bourgeoisie and not all of them; resulting in dissatisfaction for every rich man left behind) - these men created the revolutionary ideas of liberalism that feudal rights had no natural or otherwise justifiable basis ... but, being rich men, just so happened to keep the idea that property rights, concerning their own property claims, did have natural or otherwise justifiable basis. They recognized that without aristocracy the only alternative to totalitarianism (incompatible with their property claims) was democracy, but were very conscious that there are more poor than rich and so needed to carefully craft a form of democracy in which the poor could not gain real power over property rights; hence, constitutional protections of property are based, not on democracy that people can vote for what is who's property if they want, but rather on the idea that their is a natural right to property and therefore there must be an independent judiciary (independent from what? from democracy) that sorts out property claims and the complicated contractual disputes that arise out of them.

“To assure the success of the revolution one must have ‘unity of thought and action’. [Marx is quoting Bakunin.] The members of the International are trying to create this unity by propaganda, by discussion and the public organization of the proletariat. But all Bakunin needs is a secret organization of one hundred people, the privileged representatives of the revolutionary idea, the general staff in the background, self-appointed and commanded by the permanent ‘Citizen B’ [i.e., Bakunin].”51

But in order for education to take place, the working class must be organized, and one such venue is the trade union movement: “It is in trade unions that workers educate themselves and become socialists, because under their very eyes and every day the struggle with capital is taking place.”

Here, in order to be able to offer energetic opposition to the democratic petty bourgeois, it is above all necessary for the workers to be independently organised and centralised in clubs... The speedy organisation of at least a provincial association of the workers’ clubs is one of the most important points for the strengthening and developing of the workers’ party; the immediate consequence of the overthrow of the existing governments will be the election of a national representative assembly. Here the proletariat must see to it:

I. that no groups of workers are barred on any pretext or by any kind of trickery on the part of local authorities or government commissioners.

II. that everywhere workers’ candidates are put up alongside the bourgeois-democratic candidates, that they are as far as possible members of the League, and that their election is promoted by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect whatever of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces and to lay before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection they must not allow themselves to be bribed by such arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the democratic party and giving the reactionaries the possibility of victory. — Marx - quotes lifted from this essay by Ann Robertson, The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict

*Note that at the time propaganda just meant spreading one's ideas, it did not get a manipulative connotation until WW1, when it started to mean accusing one's opponent of eating babies.

Anyways, it's pretty clear that Marx viewed democracy favourably and that revolutionary changes can be brought about through democracy; he doesn't say "we need to organize the working class, participate in democracy as best we can ... but then Pounce! when the bourgeoisie least expect it and setup a despotic dictatorship of enlightened revolutionaries"; which is basically what Marx is accusing Bakunin of doing.

The economists have a singular way of proceeding. For them there are only two kinds of institutions, artificial and natural. Feudal institutions are artificial, while those of the bourgeoisie are natural. They resemble in this respect the theologians, who likewise distinguish two kinds of religion. Every religion other than their own is a human invention, while their own emanates from God. In saying that the existing relations - the relations of bourgeois production - are natural, the economists assert that these are the relations in which wealth is created and the productive forces are developed in accordance with the laws of Nature. Consequently, these relations themselves are natural laws, independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus there has been history, because there were feudal institutions, and because in these feudal institutions are to be found relations of production entirely different from those in bourgeois society, which latter none the less the economists wish to present as natural and therefore eternal. — Marx

If you were interested in history, you'd know, or could quickly find out, that nearly all achievements made by labour (hours, safety, right to unionize, free education, universal healthcare, etc.) was advanced by communist, anarchist and labour movements; no gains were spontaneously tossed to the workers by the owners of the corporations; you may say "well of course! why would they; it's in their interest to pay the workers as little as possible and do as little for the workers conditions as possible, unless it happens also to be profitable", but then what is even such an argument other than that Marx was obviously right, that the market does not naturally protect workers via mysterious forces of balance and that therefore workers will need to organize politically for their own interests (if the capitalist is "good" even when opposing what we today agree is good - unions, working hours, etc. - then how are the workers bad in actually achieving them? More specifically, actually achieving those things through unions and so on while calling themselves Marxists; simply because Lenin and Stalin ultimately failed with Bukanin's strategy of taking over the state with "100 people, privileged representatives of the revolutionary idea" you dismiss the achievements of Marxists in democratic processes elsewhere?). That many of the organizations that lead these battles were directly descended from organizations Marx was involved in, or influenced by Marx's ideas, or then obviously very similar ideas, leading to the welfare state, is a history that you may be interested in: though we can't assign all the credit to Marx, we can't assign any credit to large owners of capital who were the opposition at every step, nor any of the credit to liberal economists decrying political action as "inefficient" because any state interference in the market will be bad for everyone.

Welfare state's, such as Finland, have massive levels of interference in the market both in regulation of what you can do with property as well as how you are able to treat and manage employees, along with direct government management, over 50% of GDP, of the economy, including direct state ownership of strategically important corporations. Oh, and they have healthy and powerful unions and "social" or even "socialist" parties since decades.

Are you arguing the welfare state is incompatible with Marx's ideas? Or just coming from totally different conception of society?

Likewise, the problems that welfare state's still nevertheless have, are these, to you, totally unintelligible in a Marxist framework. Would you argue that the problem of depression in Finland has nothing to do with alienation people feel as producers of commodities (or managers of producers somewhere down the line of commodities)? Would you argue the problems of sustainability for welfare states, both within and as a part of the global ecosystem, have nothing to do with the world-market's internal logic of requiring ever more commodity production; with any hick-up in commodity production and consumption creating an economic crisis?

Of course, Marx did not know the future (nor even very well the past), so there's a lot of things missing in Marx's theory, but you'll need to actually read Marx and demonstrate how his ideas are simply irrelevant (that there simply "is no class antagonism between workers and owners") or how, despite promoting participation in democracy and unions as the basis for revolutionary activity (Marx uses revolution to describe profound structural changes, not only violence; for instance, he views capitalism as constantly revolutionizing, "disrupting" in today's lingo, economic relations through innovation, and that the original revolutionary power of the bourgeoisie due, not to violence, but simply being able to organize produciton in a better way than serfdom and slavery), nonetheless has crafted some sort of secret linguistic virus that leads his readers to inevitably want totalitarian central planning, or something along those lines.

Essentially the entire world left views the welfare state of the Nordics, Switzerland and co. as obviously superior to "freer" forms of capitalism and obviously a better and more robust system than the Soviet Union. Where people on the left mention positives of the soviet system it's to contrast with the results of free market experimentation on post-Soviet Russia, that led directly to mob rule (as in gangsta) within a decade, lower life expectancy and the very predicable wide-ranging support for a strongman that can at least contain mob rule (granted, by fighting as dirty). People who get deep into this issue, argue that soviet democratic reformism (which Gorbachev was a nominal supporter of) could have led to a welfare state type system rather than total economic collapse under the brilliant advice of Washington consensus economists; obviously that didn't happen, but the end result being bad is neither an argument for the Soviet Union nor an argument for the free market policies that were tested out in post-Soviet Russia.

Welfare state policies being obviously superior to post-Soviet economic liberalism, is not an argument for free-market capitalism. Welfare states are obviously a mix of liberal capitalism and socialist (including Marxist socialism) ideas; refusing to engage with the Marxist roots of the welfare state (that you enjoy the benefits of!), which, again, aren't the only roots, simply because "Soviets bad" is to simply choose to live in ignorance of history. The welfare state is simply not an "achievement of capitalism, of what the market can do when it is left to it's natural inclinations"; the productive template is the achievement of capitalism (though, relatively quickly, with massive state subsidy in all sorts of areas to keep that original template dynamic going; just as must in the USA through warfare spending as European countries spending on things like healthcare, education and research of all kinds, notably CERN), but nearly all the things we can point to that make working life more secure and healthy (i.e. actually benefiting from this productive template) is due to "socialist agitation".

This is not an original argument on part it was Nietzsche's formation. — JerseyFlight

It seems obviously debatable to me, unless Nietzsche is a standard of truth. Furthermore, it's also debatable that Nietzsche's "God is dead, and we killed him" type arguments are saying "post-God" "Christians" are already nihilistic, or then this process of secularization is leading to nihilism or then the fear of nihilism. It seems debatable as we are debating it. I would definitely argue that conformists are generally not nihilists, but implicitly or explicitly assign universal truths as justifying their conformism (often the simple truth that "they" are good and the "other" is bad); now, it maybe true that a conformist that genuinely engages in trying to formulate a justification for conformity, will likely fail and be faced with either nihilism or needing to embrace some new radical truth (and it maybe true that Peterson is in such a state right now), but insofar as a conformist undertakes no such introspection I would not dismiss the meaning they find in their comforts and accomplishments (and I would say, in our culture, the bedrock of conformity is the full commitment to undertake no such introspection ever, and so the conformist is quite secure ... insofar as their external environment continues to reflect this internal peace of mind, the conformist need only to consume to fill the void; I would not dismiss the possibility that it truly is filled).

The statements I made are falsifiable, they are deduced from both Peterson's positive and negative affirmations, as well as his actions. — JerseyFlight

Statements about internal psychology are not falsefiable; psychology already had to face this in the 70s (because it was not a science and, unfortunately, did not rectify the fundamental problems since). Peterson seems to have not gotten the memo, psychologizing entire groups all the time (both real and imaginary).

Now, we can assume people do have some internal nature, but we cannot really claim to know anything about it. How would we prove that someone "fears reality"?

Further, this is a superior way to proceed because one is using the subject's own premises to arrive at a contrary conclusion. — JerseyFlight

This would be true if Peterson was coherent enough that his own conclusions were clear.

Witness his lecture on the question of God: https://youtu.be/TUD3pE3ZsQI.

His main question is the consequence on one's actions if one believes in god or not, while also proposing the bizarre idea that one may need to feel a "right" to believe in god. I don't have the time to transcribe the most ludicrous parts (starting with his complaint that "it's a private matter" without any sense of irony with his self-appointed position of providing critique and mediation of and between Christians and secular liberals) but even a cursory browsing should be enough for anyone to conclude Peterson is simply unaware of the theological debate that has been going on for thousands of years (that it can be discussed outside the context of Christianity ... which, again, he seems to be genuinely unaware of the most basic theological arguments; yet is constantly defending).

However, apart from Peterson's poor understanding and analysis of theology within Christianity, seemingly oblivious to theological debates within philosophy more generally (not to mention other religions), the his most fatal misunderstanding is that he seems genuinely unaware that one's concept of "good" in which to evaluate "will believing in God make me a good person" may change depending on whether one believes in God or not. And, this basic error of taking good and bad for granted, then proceeding to psychologize some groups as "good" because (regarldess of what they believe and if it is true) they are lead by these beliefs to do good things according to Peterson and psychologizing other groups as "bad" because (regardless of what they believe and if it is true) they are led by these beliefs to do "bad" things according to Peterson, is clearly just begging the question over and over and over again.

Rather, I would argue Peterson has no premises and has no conclusions, he goes in circles dizzying and mesmerizing his audience as he does so.

If this is the case, it seems simply more efficient to ask supporters of Peterson to contend with what he actually says, such as his views on health care or his speech on God.

Whereas, the weakness of bringing Peterson's premises to different conclusions creates an endless quagmire of what his premises and conclusions actually are; which are very unclear. To even make the attempt requires what I call tin-manning: reformulating Peterson in some plausibly coherent way in which to analyse the premises of such a tin-man; not to say it is isn't a useful exercise, but it is not Peterson, only a fabricated tin version, and his supporters are right to point this out. His supporters will simply say his "intentions are good" and "he's helped people" and invent all sorts of alternative tin-man versions of Peterson with different gears and hinges; seems more to the point to simply point out that's the core philosophical contention of ethics and make the simple challenge to his supporters, or Peterson himself, to find in all of Peterson's moralizing where he ever addresses this central issue, without which there is no foundation for anything he says. If the challenge can't be met, Peterson is simply empathetic and understanding of his friends and dismissive and scornful of his enemies, while professing allegiance to a religion that teaches: For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

I'm not exactly sure what language you are specifically referring to? — JerseyFlight

The specific language would be describing Peterson as a nihilist. Peterson doesn't describe himself as a nihilist and, indeed, perceives himself as fighting the nihilism and/or relativism of the post-modern cultural marxists.

As you also note:

Peterson doesn't have some comprehensive program. The guy is a conformist and back-seat Christian. — JerseyFlight

Which is debatable whether conformism and back-seat Christianity, as you put it, is a form of nihilism. Conformists generally find meaning in their conformity. Peterson proposes no coherent defense of why one should conform; and, worse, cherry-picks topics in which to be not "politically correct" and brandish about his courageous radicalism from the mainstream, while simultaneously, and unironically, reifying the enlightenment which was, at least a central part, about breaking with the conformity of feudalism.

If by "doesn't have come comprehensive program" we agree he has not coherent world view at all, my point here is that this should be firmly established as first step in a critique of Peterson.

Further, I am not merely psychologizing the man, and even if that's all it was, just so long as it was accurate, the fact that I was doing it, would neither be a refutation or prohibition, it would merely be a statement of fact premised in the negative. — JerseyFlight

Claiming someone "fears reality" is psychologizing, likewise "Peterson isn't even a believer in his own ideology", and "He knows this, he is still searching, and that is why he can neither be an example or a guide", are all psychologizing statements claiming to know Peterson's inner life. The problem with psychologizing a person's arguments is that claims about inner-life are not falsifiable.

Not necessarily uninteresting, as you say, they could be true, but an apologist will simply give a different, likewise unfalsifiable, account of Peterson's inner-world.

What can be much more constructively debated is if there's inconsistencies in Peterson's arguments and actions, then these inconsistencies can be exposed and a challenge to his supporters (or Peterson himself) made to resolve them.

Speculative psychologizing can support such an argument by providing potential explanations of why Peterson is motivated to maintain inconsistencies, but, at least for me, it's best to say things like "these contradictions seem to me evidence of a man 'complaining, traveling around the world to find doctors that would tell him what he wanted to hear so he didn't have to face the truth' " rather than positively claiming to know Peterson on the inside. In other words, the critical wound is exposing contradiction in an opponents own terms, that the ideology makes no sense in itself. Psychologizing is simply adding salt to the wound to make the sting more painful and aid in helping rouse supporters to the defense of the "injured deer, being separated from the heard" or then make it more clear they have abandoned their fellow dearling to the blinding headlights of critique, to be hit by its full force as they turn their cheeks away from the carnage.

However, I preambled my comment as my own view on how best to approach this sort of interlocutor. My goal is not to convince you that you should definitely adopt my method of first firmly establishing Peterson offers only glib analysis, and that, one of his main problems is psychologizing everybody and never engaging with the actual issues (such as the citation on health-care clearly demonstrates). Once Peterson's supporters abandon attempts to resolve these problems or apologize for them, then, again in my view, is the moment to discuss if what we see may express some deeper nihilism or delusional psychological problems, or both, and what we can learn from such tin-manning.

For instance, with your method the conversation quickly turned to "human nature" or then simply psychologizing you as psychologizing Peterson such as the following:

However, because you don't explain your reasoning or make any argument for your positions, the burden of proof is shoved entirely on me to dislodge or challenge every claim you made and honestly, I can't even do that because I'm not entirely sure what you're even referring to. It's just a narrative you constructed based on your interpretation and feelings on Peterson. You are free to just rant on Peterson all you like, call those who agree with you esteemed intellectuals and those who disagree ignorant and inept but you are deluded if you think you can have an actual conversation of substance with this type of behaviour. — Judaka

Which is an argument that cannot really be advanced. Judaka likes Peterson and attributes positive vibes to the man and so rejects your negative psychologizing of Peterson.

However, in simply bringing out what Peterson actually says and pointing out how it makes no sense and seems simply completely ignorant of who Peterson is talking about, we can see if Judaka is able to resolve such contradictions. If he or she can't, or she or he won't, then it maybe fruitful to move on and speculatively psychologize about why Judaka is unable or unwilling to do so.

Apologists for Peteron, as apologists generally do, usually want to quickly move the conversation to the "big" questions (human nature vs. socialization, relativisim vs. universalism, redistribution vs. competition, collective interests vs. individual interests etc.) which serves the function of first credibilizing Peterson by making it appear he genuinely engages with these issues in a coherent way as well as fruitful ground to fabricate the fallacy that as long as there is one credible position in such a philosophical debate we could imagine, that can be somehow associated with Peterson, then Peterson therefore has a credible position, while also focusing the conversation on issues that have not been resolved for thousands of years and there are plenty rebuttals for everything on-hand.

However, by focusing on what Peterson actually says outside the attempt to make some theory Peterson is imagined to be representing or then a theory of what ulterior motives Peterson has, but rather just the simple self-expression of the man and whether it's coherent or incoherent, then the challenge to supporters is much more acute: they must actually deal with Peterson and not their own noble conceptualization of Peterson.

For instance, in the citation on health-care, Peterson supports policy A, as it seems obvious to him that A is superior to B, and then somehow concludes with the idea that the people that also support policy A are to blame for the divisiveness between A and B supporters; therefore, it's his duty to oppose supporters of A. He does not even mention the possibility that if A is superior and A doesn't happen, then that's a recipe to making a worse society that will cause all sorts of problems that may manifest in all sorts of ways, including the people that support the obviously better A will get more and more angry and radical about it. Rather, he seems to think that conservatives have simply not encountered the idea that A maybe better for being more financially efficient for society, but if they do hear about it maybe they'll be tempted to jump on board (or then he simply feels his conservative children have no onus to think and take responsibility for their positions and can merrily jump and play while Peterson carries out the fearless defense of their peaceful idyllic shire, the calm of which need not be troubled with policy debate).

If is unable to resolve this, then clearly he or she is not a serious thinker and we can conclude is likely just projecting his or her own bad faith onto you.

To provide some broader context of Marx's central ideas on what private property means within capitalism as a real economic system:

Capital consists of raw materials, instruments of labour, and means of subsistence of all kinds, which are employed in producing new raw materials, new instruments of labour, and new means of subsistence. All these components of capital are created by labour, products of labour, accumulated labour. Accumulated labour that serves as a means to new production is capital. So say the economists.

What is a negro slave? A man of the black race. The one explanation is worthy of the other.

A negro is a negro. Only under certain conditions does he become a slave. A cotton-spinning machine is a machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain conditions does it become capital. Torn away from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold by itself is money, or as sugar is the price of sugar.

In the process of production, human beings do not only enter into a relation with Nature. They produce only by working together in a specific manner and by reciprocally exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite connexions and relations with one another, and only within these social connexions and relations does their connexion with Nature; i.e. production, take place.

These social relations between the producers , and the conditions under which they exchange their activities and share in the total act of production, will naturally vary according to the character of the means of production. With the discovery of a new instrument of warfare, the fire-arm, the whole internal organization of the army was necessarily altered, the relations within which individuals compose an army and can act as an army were transformed, and the relation of different armies to one another was likewise changed.

The social relations within which individuals produce, the social relations of production, are altered, transformed, with the change and development of the material means of production, of the forces of production. The relations of production in their totality constitute what is called the social relations, society, and, moreover, a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with a unique and distinctive character. Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois (or capitalist) society, are such totalities of relations of production, each of which denotes a particular stage of development in the history of man-kind.

Capital also is a social relation of production. It is a bourgeois relation of production, a relation of production of bourgeois society. The means of subsistence, the instruments of labour, the raw materials, of which capital consists - have they not been produced and accumulated under given social conditions, within definite social relations? Are they not employed for new production, under given social conditions, within definite social relations? And does not just this definite social character stamp the products which serve the new production as capital?

Capital consists not only of means of subsistence, instruments of labour, raw materials, not only of material products: it consists just as much of exchange values. All products of which it consists are commodities. Capital, consequently, is not only a sum of material products, it is a sum of commodities, of exchange values, of social magnitudes.

How then does a sum of commodities, of exchange values, become capital?

By the fact that, as an independent social power, i.e. as the power of a part of society, it preserves itself and multiplies by exchange with immediate, living labour power.

The existence of a class which possesses nothing but the ability to work is a necessary presupposition of capital.

It is only the dominion of past, accumulated, materialized labour over immediate living labour that transforms accumulated labour into capital.

Capital does not consist in the fact that accumulated labour serves living labour as a means for new production. It consists in the fact that living labour serves accumulated labour as the means of preserving and multiplying its exchange value.

What is it that takes place in the exchange between capitalist and wage-labourer?

The labourer receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour-power; but the capitalist receives, in exchange for his means of subsistence, labour, the productive activity of the worker, the creative force by which the worker not only replaces what he consumes, but also gives to the accumulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed. The worker gets from the capitalist a portion of the existing means of subsistence. For what purpose do these means of subsistence serve him? For immediate consumption. But as soon as I consume the means of subsistence, they are irrevocably lost to me, unless I employ the time during which these means sustain my life in producing new means of subsistence, in creating by my labour new values in place of the values lost in consumption. but it is just this noble productive power that the worker surrenders to the capitalist in exchange for the means of subsistence received. Consequently, he has lost it for himself.

But does wage labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e. that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage-labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism. To be a capitalist is to have not only a purely personal, but a social, status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion. Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social power. When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character. — The Social System of Capitalism - Marx

Of critical note, Marx clearly defines "capital" as "means of production" (further precised as accumulated labour in relation to nature) under capitalism, as a real economic system, as it really actually exists when he is writing (capitalists really do employ labour at subsistence wages in a way that treats labour as another commodity required as input into production in industrial planning, and really do want the labourer to completely accept this role as a commodity as passively as possible).

Furthermore, his critique of "private property" (as understood when he is writing, as he clearly notes) is really that it is not personal property as the Bourgeois like to believe but only has value as part of a social system (i.e. maintained by laws, custom, force) in which capital can exploit labour, which is really society allowing accumulated labour of the past to exploit living labour of the present. This exploitation of living labour by privately owned accumulated property has no moral justification of why society should allow this.

For instance, the entire setup, despite being based on feudal conquest (just taking other's property which the capitalist, and capitalist sympathizer, condemns as immoral in principle; well, if we're talking about their property), the usual justification is, that's just "history" and we can ignore that because private property is better "managed" and so good for everyone (if there's an original sin of the how wealth is distributed in the beginning, well, we've certainly grown enough apples by now to take the cake).

Marx directly addresses these moral justifications for capitalism:

The labour of the superintendence and management will naturally be required wherever the direct process of production assumes the form of a combined social process, and does not rest on the isolated labour of independent producers. It has, however, a twofold character.

On the one hand, all work in which many individuals cooperate necessarily requires for the coordination and unity of the process a directing will, and functions which total activity of the workshop, similar to those of the conductor of an orchestra. This is a kind of productive labour which must be performed in every mode of cooperative production.

On the other hand, this labour of superintendence necessarily arises in all modes of production which are based on the antagonism between the worker as a direct producer and the owner of the means of production. The greater this antagonism the more important is the role played by superintendence. Hence it reaches its maximum in a slave system. But it is indispensable also under the capitalist mode of production, since the process of production is at the same time the process by which the capitalist consumes the labour power of the worker. In the same way, in despotic States, the labour of the superintendence and universal interference by the government comprises both the discharge of community affairs, the need for which arises in all societies, and the specific functions arising from the antagonism between the government and the mass of the people.

In the works of ancient writing, who have the slave system before their eyes, both sides of the labour of superintendence are as inseparably combined in theory as they were in practice. So it is, also, in the works of of the modern economists, who regard the capitalist mode of production as an absolute mode of production. On the other hand ... the apologists of the modern slave system know how to utilize the labour of superintendence to justify slavery just as well as the other economists use it to justify the wage system...

The labour of management and superintendence, not as a function resulting from the nature of all cooperative social labour, but as a consequence of the antagonism between the owner of the means of production and the owner of mere labour-power (whether this labour-power is bought by buying the labourer himself, as it is under the slave system, or whether the labourer himself sells his labour-power so that the process of production is the process by which capital consumes his labour-power), as a function resulting from the servitude of the direct producers, has often been quoted in justification of this relation of servitude itself. And exploitation, the appropriation of the unpaid labour of the others, has quite as often been represented as the reward justly due to the owner of capital for his labour ...

Now the wage-labourer, like the slave, must have a master who will put him to work and rule him. And once this relation of master and servant has been presupposed, it is quite proper to compel the wage-labourer to produce his own wages and also the wages of superintendence, a compensation for the labour of ruling and superintending him, 'a just compensation for his master in return for the labour and talents devoted to ruling him and making him useful to himself and society'. — The Social System of Capitalism - Marx

Marx was also aware that the positive justifications of the market (that "productivity is increasing" that "wealth is increasing" without any analysis as to the effect of this productivity on society and who is benefiting, that "whoever gets money through market relations" clearly deserves such money) is so inconsistent as to be caricature (there is no actual basis for what is the "market" other than what is convenient in moralizing justification for the status quo of power relations).

A philosopher produces ideas, a poet verses, a parson sermons, a professor text-books etc. A criminal produces crime. But if the relationship between this latter branch of production and teh whole productive activity of society is examined a little more closely, one is forced to abandon a number of prejudices. The criminal produces not only crime but also the criminal law; he produces the professor who delivers lectures on the criminal law, and even the inevitable text-book in which the processor presents his lectures as a commodity for sale in teh market. There results an increase in material wealth, quite apart from teh pleasure which... the author himself derives from teh manuscript of his text-book.

Furthermore, the criminal produces the whole apparatus of the police and criminal justice, detectives, judges, executionerrs, juries etc. and all these different professions, which constitute so many categories of the social division of labour, develop diverse abilities of the human spirit, create new needs and new ways of satisfying them. Torture itself has provided occasions for the most ingenious mechanical inventions, employing a host of honest workers in the production of these instruments.

The criminal produces an impression now moral, now tragic, and renders a 'service' by arousing the moral and aesthetic sentiments of the public. He produces not only text-books on criminal law, the criminal law itself, and thus legislators, but also art, literature, novels, and the tragic drama, as Oedipus and Richard III, as well as Mullner's Schuld and Schiller's Rauber, testify, The criminal interrupts the monotony and security of bourgeois life. Thus he protects it from stagnation and brings forth that restless tension, that mobility of spirit without which the stimulus of competition would itself be blunted. He therefore gives new impulse to the productive forces. Crime takes off the labour market a portion of the excess population, diminishes competition among workers, and to a certain extent stops wages from falling below the minimum, while the war against crime absorbs another part of the same population. The criminal therefore appears as one of those natural 'equilibrating forces' which establish a just balance and open up a whole perspective of 'useful' occupations. The influence of the criminal upon the development of the productive forces can be shown in detail. Would the locksmith's trade have attained its present perfection if there had been no thieves? Would the manufacturer of bank-notes have arrive at its present excellence if there had been no counterfeits? Would the microscope have entered ordinary commercial life (cf. Babbage) had there been no forgers? Is not the development of applied chemistry as much due to the adulteration of wares, and to the attempts to discover it, as to honest productive effort? Crime, by its ceaseless development of new means of attacking property, calls into existence new means of defense, and its productive effects are as great as those strikes in stimulating the invention of machines.

Leaving the sphere of private crime, would there be a world market, would nations themselves exist, if there had not been national crimes? Is not the tree of evil also the tree of knowledge, since time of Adam?

In his Fable of the Bees (1708) Mandeville already demonstrated the productivity of all English occupations, and anticipated our argument:

What we call Evil in this World, Moral as well as Natural, is the grand Principle that makes us sociable Creatures, the solid Basis, the Life and Support of all Trades and Employments without Exception: That there we must look for the true Original of all Arts and Sciences, and that the Moment Evil ceases, the Society must be spoiled if not totally dissolved.

Mandeville simply had the merit of being infinitely more audacious and more honest than these narrow-minded apologists for bourgeois society. — The Social System of Capitalism - Marx

Marx is addressing here the justification for obviously wasted resources on frivolous luxuries of the rich (in terms of real needs of society we could possibly imagine) in that it creates busywork and keeps the whole system humming and buzzing. Clearly, the criminal is also creating such busywork and must therefore be as morally praiseworthy as the opulent captains of industry under such an argument.

But more can be said on this theme. Since this was written, to this day no proponent of "competition and personal success by accumulating money" has ever shown why crime isn't a coherent way to compete and pursue this happiness, if one has the skills for it and it's more profitable than other activities available; why the mobster really isn't just another businessman as he professes to be. I.e. only competition that reinforces the status quo is justifiable and any competition with the status quo (and real gain of wealth by all the poor; i.e. any actual competition between opposing interests) is condemnable: any labour that produces commodities (grain, iron, and paper to cigarettes, oil and pornography) is good regardless of what it is and what it's affect is on society and the environment, but any labour that doesn't produce commodities is bad regardless of what it is, the criminal in the above case is the extreme case, but also worth mentioning the labour of the union organizer to benefit a group of workers in pooling their negotiation power in mutual-collaboration under the right to associate with who you want (bad, bad, bad) or the labour of the political actor trying to change laws so workers can also benefit from accumulated labour and be less exploited as a baseline such as safety laws, overtime pay, minimum wage, health care, free higher education (bad! bad! bad! BAD!) and worst of all any research work into the sustainability of how commodities are produced generally (conspiracy I tell you!!).

But I will end here with this food for thought:

This is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within capitalist production itself, a self-destructive contradiction which is prima facie only a phase of transition to a new form of production. It manifests its contradictory nature by its effects. It establishes monopoly in certain spheres and thereby invites the intervention of the State. It reproduces a new aristocracy of finance, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators, and merely nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of company promoting, stock jobbing, and speculation. It is private production without the control of private property. — The Social System of Capitalism - Marx

In this thread I will critically examine the writings of Jordan Peterson. I will periodically update the thread from time to time with new criticisms. — JerseyFlight

Although I am quite sympathetic to this project, and the points brought up are interesting, I think discussing Peterson in philosophical terms is only useful after a discussion of his thinking in glib terms. Peterson seems quite genuinely unaware of what the philosophical problems are.

In philosophical language perhaps it is true that Peterson can be characterized by:

The reader needs to be clear, Peterson is a Nihilist, which simply means he accepts the false presumption that value must be rooted is some kind of Eternal, Absolute Idealism in order for value to exist at all. This means Peterson's entire approach to the world is dictated by the substrate of a false, negative idealism. When he says "thinking leads to the abyss," he has resigned himself to the unspoken premise that life must submit itself to delusion if it wants to partake of quality. Hence, his clinging to Christianity. His admonitions to conform are motivated by his deep fear of reality. In Peterson one simply gets a Nihilist void of intellectual resistance. This is the very opposite of what it means to be a thinker. — JerseyFlight

However, Peterson doesn't use this language himself. It's already psychologizing Peterson to say he "fears reality". Arguably true, considering his "anxiety" that developed after his debate with Zizek, where, as I noted at the time, it seemed Peterson wanted to be co-founder of Marxist Zizekism, just without the label Marx to make it more palatable. And Peterson's A-game is psychologizing his opponents, whether in his imagination like the "post-modern cultural Marxists" or then real opponents such as the LGBTQ activists, and so we shouldn't follow his example.

Rather, I think we should first point out the obvious contradictions in Peterson's analysis.

The first obvious contradiction is that his claim to expertise is in psychology. Where this is a contradiction is that he believes in "competence hierarchies", but propounds what are clearly meant as expert opinions in all sorts of areas (mainly political, philosophical, theological, logical, as well as other sciences from time to time) in which he has no basis to have climbed the competence hierarchy. By his own creed, he should submit to the experts on the top of other competence hierarchies: [insert quote of Peterson saying kids should submit to the competence hierarchies around them even if they don't understand why]. If post-modern neo-marxists have taken over knowledge institutions, just means they are the top dogs on the knowledge competence hierarchy and Peterson must go to his room, think about what he's done, give it a good vigorous scrubbing and only come out when he's ready to apologize and submit.

Of course, elsewhere Peterson praises his kind of "brave radical" ready to contradict established competence hierarchies with new truths (such as himself standing as a tiny David in the winds of the mighty transgender Goliath), without realizing this simply collapses his entire apologetics of conservatism as it provides no standard in which to judge a competence hierarchy's truthiness other than in hindsight because the new truths won out; i.e. winning is truth (when his issues win), which is why Peterson is so comfortable around fascists who are "just trying to win", even if they are at the bottom of the competence hierarchies they are trying to overthrow using the exact same post-modern neo-cultural-Marxist tactics Peterson decries.

Why Peterson can prattle on indefinitely without addressing such contradictions is simply because his analysis is glib, never goes farther than psychologizing his friends or his enemies; the harms caused by his friends are understandable whereas the harms of his enemies are condemnable, but he proposes no standard upon which to make such a judgement nor even analyse the harms in question beyond anecdote.

Of course, I don't want to pull a Peterson and never actually quote my opposition. All this is best represented on Peterson's views on Health-Care:

It seems indisputable, I would say, that the Canadian health care system is preferable to the US health care system, except at the very highest end. And there's a couple of reasons for that, that maye even appeal to conservatives, which is what is the amount of administrative overhead which is spent by Canadian health institutions is far less than it is in the US; partly because Hospitals don't have to collect money so they don't spend 30% of their intake on the financial end of the equation, which is approximately the case in the US. And because of that, our rate of individual entrepreneurship is higher in Canada than it is in the US, and that's because, becaues people don't have to worry about losing their healthcare if they switch jobs, they can switch jobs more easilly, and they can also take risks if they have a family. They can take entrepreneurial risks without putting the health of their entire family at stake. So these things can't be broken down really simply into right wing versus left wing issues, right; they're too complicated. But, the overall point is that Canada has done a very good job of having that, um, conversation. Even our socialists are basically fiscally conservative; right, although they're not socially conservative. But, their are signs of the kind of polaraization in Canada that is really plaguing the United States, and of course that's not good for the US, and it's not good for Europe where it's also happening, and it's also not good for our Country. I don't want that to happen, so that's partly why I've been objecting to the ill-advised and radical moves the so-called liberals have been managing over the last few years." — The Canadian vs. the American Healthcare System - Jordan B Peterson Clips

Several things are amazing about this quote.

First, he simply outlines the Nordic model social well-fare state argument and saying this would "appeal to conservatives also". What's so glib about such a statement is that he makes the false equivalence that the US right and left want the same thing and it's purely a question of administrative efficiency to achieve it (which the left happens to be right about), while at the same time throwing in his signature apologetics for the right that "except at the high end". However, the conservative argument against universal healthcare is that it's "not fair" to take people's money and redistribute it, even if it leads to better social outcomes measured in one dimension overall. More amazing, Peterson doesn't address corporate lobbying as a potential explanation of why the US doesn't already have universal health care but insinuates that it's a good faith debate that "fiscally conservative socialists" in Canada happen to have won on and implemented responsibly, but the other side is winning the debate in the US at the moment; or then maybe the idea is US socialists are not "fiscally conservative" so don't deserve to implement universal health care just yet. But it gets even more amazing when Peterson wraps all this up in the great apologetics trope of "polarization" and (as described above) the left is responsible for the harms caused by this polarization and must be called out on it, but the Right (we can only assume because of the only positive note for them in this analysis that "except on the high end") we need not discuss.

Peterson is unable to even create the mental space in which the hypothesis can be formulated that "perhaps if universal Canadian styled healthcare is 'preferable' then maybe it's the people denying or blocking this social advancement in the US that are the cause of the 'polarization' and share most, if not all of the blame."

Furthermore, Peterson talks like health care is some fringe issue to the "radical moves" the left really wants, rather than a central flagship issue, not only in itself but in being a microcosm of other flagship issues such as money in politics, corruption, a critical step in more equitable race relations, important example of people losing their homes to unjustifiable bankruptcy from a "social outcomes" point of view, and that if the general social welfare argument is true for healthcare maybe it's also true for other things like education, public housing, and the rich need to be taxed to pay for it. Again, incapable of creating the mental space in which implementing the "preferable" universal healthcare system might result in preferable results more generally, and alleviation of some of the young-white-man suffering because at least society functions with less overheads.

Most importantly, and most fatally to Peterson's project, he is clearly unable to conceive of the possibility that left wing radicalism is a completely reasonable response to right-wing money in politics in the form of inundations of propaganda, corrupting not simply politics but the judiciary and bureaucracies, exploiting to the limit gerrymandering and minority rule flaws. That, due to money in politics and minority rule, the left cannot advance with simply "friendly banter" between civilized people (i.e. white people who have nothing to gain from political change) as Peterson clearly views as the alternative to "dangerous radicalism" (as seen by the company he keeps), and so trying more and more radical things to overcome money is simply a reasonable response; unless, of course, money is truth (success on a competence hierarchy in Peterson's lingo).

Once it's firmly established that Peterson simply doesn't engage with any of the critical issues, and rather is simply bailing straw into the furnaces of his own locamotive (i.e. Asi conmigo enfrente ella se hace la gata en celo contigo, te cotorrea el oído pa tenerte en alta. Ella muere por ti, tu por mi es que matas. Sigo tranquila como una paloma de equina: mientras ella se pasa en su [BLM] - Cicero), then it makes sense, in my view, to address the question of what sort of philosophical framework might be inferred from Peterson's project as a potential heart if some wizard among us would be so kind as to make one: the heart we might place into the tin man of our own fabrication in this analogy. After doing so, we might ask why those frameworks don't really cohere to Peterson's project for the simple reason that he has no such framework and it would be a miracle if he just so happened to unwittingly represent one; in otherwords, that at best, we can only construct an apologetic for Peterson's conservative apologetics; which maybe interesting to explore why such an apologetic of an apologetic is unsatisfactory, but it should be made clear it is far removed from anything Peterson actually says and it seems clear Peterson himself doesn't seem to understand what the philosophical issues we are trying to resolve for him actually are in the first place.

But I benefit from the social institution — JacobPhilosophy

True.

whilst simultaneously suffering from it — JacobPhilosophy

Also true, but whereas the benefits are essentially endowed (what I described as favour from everyone who builds and maintains the institutions towards you personally), the suffering you have a choice to minimize: from mundane things like evading taxes, littering when alone and not bothering to vote (do more personal productive things relative to minuscule personal benefit of voting), to more extreme things like not paying any taxes at all and joining organized crime or running a toxic polluting business that kills people but hiding behind limited liability and extracting as much profit while institutions play catch-up (or going full corporate mobster and capturing the institutions by any means necessary, both legal and illegal, so they never catch-up and the profits are enjoyed indefinitely).

Without these rules, everyone would be dead. — JacobPhilosophy

Debatable, "lawless" society can and does exist, it's just far less complex. But I agree, we would mostly be dead without the "rules". However, the egoist only cares about themselves, affects that go beyond what affects them are irrelevant (a cost to think about but creating no personal benefit, outside what's necessary to simply establish that fact in itself in any particular instance).

This is how it benefits oneself. — JacobPhilosophy

Yes, this is how one benefits from complex society where people follow the rules, but enjoying this benefit in itself is not a reason to also follow the rules. Some rules can be bent, others can be broken; at great personal benefit and little risk of any negative consequences (net benefit). Doing so breaks down society on the aggregate, but each rule breaking act is only a tiny small step towards social breakdown and is easily outweighed by the benefits of the rule breaking (if one gets away with it; which, notably, is not some constant philosophical state of affairs but only because there are people willing to maintain these systems of rules at personal cost).

I don't see why societal righteousness contradicts egoism, but if it does then I won't use that word — JacobPhilosophy

The contradiction is in the cost one is willing to pay; a personal cost with a positive externality to society as a whole. The defining characteristic of egoism is being willing to receive a favour (indeed not only nonchalantly, but also ask or demand one) while not willing to reciprocate such favours the moment there's no perceived future benefit to doing so (the business man who takes subsidies because "of course if it's on offer I'm gonna take it" while also complaining about taxes being theft and engaging in as much tax evasion as possible).

One can benefit from complex society, "appreciate the benefits", while not being willing to defend complex society when under threat (as time is better spent, in terms of expected personal reward, taking advantage of the breakdown to loot as much as possible and then hightailing it to Switzerland).

Appreciation is not "moral value". I can appreciate getting a favour while not valuing favours in general as a way of maintaining a healthy society, and so not doing any favours myself (outside some scheme where the favour is profitable; i.e. not an actual favour, just the appearance of one).

Morality as has been developed in our society; yes, does start with a reflection of what are "good and bad experiences" for oneself (which may include pleasure, but may not include only pleasure while also accepting that pleasure isn't a constant but changes based on other realizations, that in themselves are not pleasurable to realize and may not, in themselves, lead to more pleasure but rather merely different pleasure, and so, considering the cost of the realization, leads to less pleasure overall); but morality as is normally used (what we interpret "moral and ethical" to mean outside philosophical discussion in which their meaning is up for debate), specifically refers to those actions undertaken to promote such "good experiences" for all, at the risk of a "bad experience" to oneself (as in itself or the opportunity cost). The greater the difference, the greater the hero inspiring us to do our part. There's of course lot's to debate about in terms of what are the good experiences and what effectively promotes them and what bad experience is worth it given purported effects on said good experiences (i.e. what's the social organization that best leads to this "more goodness" and "less badness", and what are the effective means, whether they be good or bad experiences in themselves, to get there, from reading a book to organizing a revolutionary war), but there are pretty clear examples that I think we all agree, in order to establish the general framework of what has led to the social organization we already have (if we are focusing just on what seems clearly the good parts of this social organization and what actions have created it and maintain it); in other words, the simple and heroic actions that benefit society of which there is little debate: Jumping on a grenade is a bad experience done for the sake of more good experiences of others (yes, one might have those good experiences one's comrades and countrymen, and humanity as a whole, may benefit from one's actions, directly or in some smaller far removed way, in mind when jumping on the grenade, but one does not actually experience those good experiences oneself: one experiences being blown up by a grenade).

As I have said previously, the origin of ethics is that of self-interest alone. — JacobPhilosophy

Unless you mean "origin" in some convoluted sense that ultimately rejects egoism, then ethics being self-interest leads to the obvious conclusions I have outlined. One does not care about larger social outcomes, only self interest. There is no duty to others as such.

One doesn't murder to ensure one is not murdered. — JacobPhilosophy

Not murdering does not ensure one is not murdered. The mobster murders precisely to ensure he is not murdered.

If you are not murdering because there are social institutions that make murdering inconvenient, then you are not murdering because of these social institutions.

The idea that not murdering in your personal case causes the protection of not being murdered you benefit from, is simply not the case. The institutions, and collectivist social ethic that maintains them, that are the actual cause of your protection from murdering pre-date your arrival on the scene.

If we look at these social institutions and find they require people to choose building and maintaining these social institutions in contradiction to their self-interest, and you reject paying any such similar price for a similar goal, then you are enjoying the fruits of this collectivist project but would not take similar actions to create or maintain it. You are a connoisseurs of civilization but not willing to pay the price (risk dying on the battle field, risk getting murdered by a mobster for the sake of justice, risk fighting real or potential despots at great personal cost to make only diffuse dividends of "just society", in both space and time, to everyone, far outweighing one's own gain in that diffuse benefit; i.e. not maximizing self interest but maximizing social interest: a positive externality to society at great personal cost, which is what the self sacrificing soldier represents).

You are engaging in a bait and switch fallacy where "the person" is both an individual ego as well as just "people in general". Yes, a society that limits murdering as a way to get ahead benefits "people in general", but particular individuals may have no self interest to help create and maintain these institutions in any significant way nor have any self interest to not-murder if murdering remains more profitable for them despite these institutions (people - detectives, judges, witnesses, politicians - fight against murderous mobsters all the time at great personal cost, not for their own benefit but for the benefit of society collectively construed, and yet, despite such altruism, mobsters still get away with murder at great personal benefit all the time); "crime doesn't pay" is a hope and not a reality. More importantly, we only have our concept of "crime" because of this altruistic ideal that we shouldn't pursue self interest at the cost of society; if society didn't have this altruistic idea then our concept of crime simply wouldn't exist; and such society's have existed in the past and still exist today as organized crime (in some cases in near complete fusion with government). If self interest is what's ethical, the thief or the mobster or the tyrant that gets away with it, is being ethical. If everyone adopted this ethic, there would simply be no value placed on maintaining complex society: our complex society would be looted down to the last lamp post and not rebuilt, and no one would think this is an odd or bad thing; moreover, no one would bother themselves with such questions, only ensuring they get what they can take in this looting process (the wealthy looting the US treasuring is an example of this process, and they don't fear the consequences to US society since they can easily enjoy the fruits of this looting in New Zealand or Switzerland; so, if it turns out not to be good for society to hand over trillions of dollars to the already wealthy, well who cares about that, what one cares about is getting as much of these trillion dollar loot pie as possible and storing it in a safe place like Switzerland; take advantage of "peaceful and just" institutions there if extracting value from similar purposed institutions back home collapses them, is simply the profit maximizing course of action; if such self-interested processes lead eventually to the collapse of Switzerland, well seems that would be far in the future, so again no need to care, and even if was a short term thing, no reason to pay any price to maintain Switzerland government, the self-interested thing would be to loot also Switzerland if such a process is underway and make sure one has the best cave and the guns to protect it).

That is not objective in the relevant sense. If it matters who or how many people think something, then it’s not objective. — Pfhorrest

I don't see what you mean by "not objective in the relevant sense".

The sense in the case I was describing was the contemporary use of "objectivity" as referring to the agreement of different subjects on a topic (whether contemporary subjects, such as witnesses in a case or experts in a field, or some hypothetical indefinite discussion between subjects - that what we mean by scientific truth is what scientists will eventually agree on given enough time). When a judge talks about the "objective facts" he is referring to the agreement of the participants in the trial, and not in a process of full consensus but in a process of further layers of agreement on who is acting in good faith and who may be lying. Likewise, when scientists talk about the "objective facts" about an issue they are referring to what a community of scientists (with some tangential support from exterior credible critical thinkers) agree about, and again excluding bad faith actors (which refers to some similar parallel agreement on who is acting in good faith or bad; that there is no experiment to differentiate between good and bad faith actors, is the crisis of contemporary science).

The point of bringing up the use of objective in this sense (the sense of objective as it's normally used in society: an assertion of agreement between good faith actors) is that it's clearly dependent on subjects and not independent from subjectivity. If we want to define "objective reality" as independent of subjective experience, we are essentially talking about the noumenon (of which, most philosophers would agree, we know nothing about as it exists independently of our experience, other than, for some, to presuppose that it does indeed exist somehow). If we want to define "objective reality" as simply the agreement of good faith actors - independent of the people that might be lying or delusional about it - then this is begging the question of how do we know who's lying or delusional (the concept still makes sense, and is what I mean when I talk about "objective reality", but it's not a simple concept, but bring with it nearly all the nuances and complexity of both past philosophical debate as well as what we debate now and may imagine debating in the future).

The point is, none of these definitions of "objective" can be applied to make a definition of "objective morality" that is clear and simple, and redefining a word far from what it normally means is a recipe for confusion.

The reason "universal morality" does not lead to such confusions is because it's simply stating that there are moral assertions that are true for all subjects; this still leaves open exactly why they are true for all subjects (because these moral assertions exist in some way independently of the subjects whether abstractly or by some common sense-data, or because all moral agents should eventually arrive at the same moral conclusions though entirely dependent on what it means to be a subject, or because God has so decreed all moral agents God has created are bound by the morality God has also created, or by any other argumentative structure that results in "there are moral assertions true for all moral agents").

"Objective morality" does not have the same on first appearance meaning as "universal morality", and so equating the two, sets up all sorts of bait and switch fallacies that now need to be constantly guarded against (for instance, "objective morality" seems to imply some secular scientific like reasoning process arriving at "facts", so seems to imply divine command or divine creation morality as not "objective", but "universal morality" easily includes divine command or creation morality; so if we need to constantly remind the reader that by "objective" we are not excluding a divine source for morality, then this is confusing at worst and simply clumsy at best).

Yes, society would be destroyed without our human construct of empathy and morality. This is why we engage in them: to prevent the dystopia in which one would not like to live in. — JacobPhilosophy

This is the basic error I was describing (if by "we" you include egoism / self interest): the egoist may appreciate what "Western civilization" provides for him, but will not sacrifice anything to maintain or advance it it. The egoist (by definition) does not value anything other than himself; exterior things are not valued and it is a self-contradiction to say the egoist "engages" with empathy and morality to prevent dystopia. That is the whole point of egoism: one owes nothing to society, has no duty towards social outcomes as a whole.

The fundamental confusion egoist "philosophy" engages in is confusing "appreciation" with "value". Both the egoist and the altruist appreciate a favour, but the egoist does not "value" favours in a general sense of maintaining social bonds as the altruist does. The egoist appreciates a favour to themselves, and cares nothing about doing favours in the sense of expecting nothing in return (if the self-interest maximizing egoist provides a favour it is by definition justified as part of a plan to get something greater in return, whether a direct implied debt relationship with the recipient of the favour or then as a stochastic process of being perceived as "generous", with the plan of leveraging this to get more than the favours cost; but only because society values generosity, not the egoist himself).

So, I would agree that egoists may "appreciate" complex society in the sense of having received the favour from everyone who contributed to complex society. However, the egoist, by definition, does not value complex society in itself and therefore feels no duty to take on any risk or cost for a better social outcome generally.

Of course, there are some instances where individual profit align with general social outcomes, but putting any emphasis on this only demonstrates a total ignorance of how complex society actually functions and the various duties required to maintain it.

The egoist engages in only the appearance of empathy and (other people's) morality to take advantage of people who will, due to these appearances, carry out duties towards the egoist. If we look at the morality of the egoism itself, there is simply no trace of such a duty.

It simply makes no sense to say the egoist "engages in empathy and morality" for a better collective outcome. Egoist morality is only concerned with the egoist's outcome; if other people have a different morality, that's simply wrong according to the egoist, and something to understand and take advantage of, but does not exist "side by side" internally with the egoists own conception of morality. The egoist engages with other people's ideas of empathy and morality only insofar as it benefits themselves (that's just what egoism means). Within the egoist morality, it simply makes no sense to say "the egoist, in pursuing self interest, can still be moral" as "moral" within the egoist system is simply pursuing self interest; it is a bait and switch fallacy to view "moral" within the egoists own logic as referring to "society's definition of moral" and that the egoist is concerned about putting in some effort to align with this conception (the egoist doesn't care: pursuing self interest is what's moral within the egoist system because moral is defined as pursuing self interest; if you want to believe moral also refers to something else, then the egoist is willing to tell you what you want to hear, if there is some benefit to them for telling this lie; indeed, perhaps willing to believe this lie themselves if they see some benefit to themselves to being more genuine in telling the lie).

Egoists that are constantly trying to prove that egoist morality happens to align with collectivist moralities about social outcomes as a whole, either do not understand their own assertions; if one only cares about oneself, by definition one simply doesn't care about society and what might happen if everyone else also cared only about themselves, or they do understand this obvious point, but are lying about it to build an audience for their own benefit.

So, if by "we" you are talking about people that engage in empathy and morality for a better social outcome, and willing to bear some cost to achieve it (from doing favours to promote social bonds, to paying taxes, to doing the not corrupt thing even at great personal risk or opportunity cost, to jumping on a grenade), then you are talking about altruists broadly construed, and excluding the egoist from this "we"; the egoist is happy to take advantage of these altruists, but is not contributing to the same goal in any regard: the egoist is happy to receive a favour, is happy get tax subsidies for his business, is happy to deal with incorruptible police and detectives (when the egoist is in the "right" even according to the erroneous conception of right that society has - of course wants to deal with corruptible police and judges when such conditions support his predation), is happy when another soldier jumps on a grenade for him, but the egoist, by definition, does not reciprocate any of these things for the sake of maintaining complex society in itself.

Nearly everyone has access to resources which train citizens for reasoning analytically at a high enough level that ideological discernments are a cinch and intellectual self-control strong if so desired, with the majority of the population easily seeing through any form of rhetorical b.s. via reflection. — Enrique

Nearly everyone has access as you say, but not everyone has the leisure, and perhaps innate capacities, to both develop and defend against deluges of propaganda; the rhetorical b.s. as you put it. Nevertheless, where we do see both the access to as well as the time and energy to develop, such as (Nordics, Switzerland, New Zealand) we do see more "enlightened" development of traditional organizations (rehabilitation based justice, free education at all levels, respect for nature) compared with both previous times in those countries as well as other contemporary places.

So, given these counter examples, I would argue that where the access is real and not hypothetical there is essentially the "enlightened society" enlightenment thinkers dreamed of.

A potential counter-thesis to corrupt institutions being due to the failures of commoner individuals to get enlightened, would be that those institutions were already sufficiently corrupt to simply keep the lid on enlightenment by corrupting education (indoctrination and control, rather than as free as feasible discussion and curiosity), depriving people of the energy and means to enlighten themselves outside education, and inundations of propaganda. Of course, the onus falls on those individuals that do happen upon the luxury of enlightenment to fight such corruption, but the situation is not a virtuous cycle as in the fully developed welfare states (where education, lack of corruption and functioning institutions, leads to even more education and even less corruption and even better working institutions).

I have lived in both kinds of places, and although cooperative primary and secondary education, strong tendency of higher education access not reinforcing existing class structures, low corruption and good institutions don't solve everyone's problems, it's a pretty radical difference in terms of social experience, and if we compare this social experience to 18th century Europe, it's clearly a "pretty good go" at enlightened society as was conceived of at the time. If everywhere was organized like Switzerland, our political discussions would be very different; there would still be problems to solve, but it's difficult to even imagine what the difference would be in such a scenario compared with the problems we face as a global society today.

That's not a false dichotomy though, that's exactly what is meant by it: not "subjective" in the sense of relative to any particular subject. — Pfhorrest

It can be true of a particular subject, doesn't exclude that it is true for other subjects or even all subjects.

If we're saying it's true for all subjects, the common terminology is to say "it's universally true" or "true for all moral agents". If all we're maintaining is that it's true for all subjects, it's clearly awkward to say that such a claim is "objective".

Now, if we're claiming it's true for all subjects due to the properties of objects or then due to some sense that is akin to how we sense objects (a sense object just like other sense objects like a chair), then it is less awkward to say we are "being objective". This diction choice makes sense, but is clearly not equivalent to universal moral claims and theories in general that are not referencing objects (as sense data or then as simply things existing independently of subjects).

Now, you can stick to a terminology where "objective" just means "universally true" or "true for all moral agents"; obviously nothing's stopping you. But clearly more effort is then needed to be clear that there's not necessarily any "object" with respect to which we are being objective; there could be only subjects and they're ideas that we're dealing with under the category of "objective", as nothing is stopping me from placing great emphasis on everything we can possibly say about this word choice.

Even empiricism about reality is "subjective" in that it has something to do with subjects: empiricism appeals to sensory experience, which is had by the subjects of that sensory experience. But besides radical empiricisms like subjective idealism or solipsism, it's not "subjective" in the sense that what any particular subject experiences matters more than any other; the objective empirical truth is that which is available to all subjects' sensory experience, without bias. — Pfhorrest

You seem here just illustrating how opposing "objective" to "subjective" creates a false dichotomy. The use of the word "subjective" does not immediately imply that one experience matters more than another; this is easily a straw man of "subjective" theories such as "transcendental idealism" of Kant. Saying something is subjective can simply mean it is a property of subjects and not objects, which in turn doesn't exclude objects being subjective properties of a particular insistent kind of which there seems relatively easy agreement between different subjects (again, agreement subjectively experienced).

This "objective is what many subjects will agree about" (what the expression "objective" usually means: we and other agree this chair weighs 5 kilos), is clearly still dependent on subjective experience and so in contradiction to the definition of of objective as "independent from what people think". In otherwords, we can get to an objective belief about the situation, but still posit the object we are objective about has a existence apart from such an objective process; i.e. the "thing in itself".

Facts do not usually reference "things in themselves" (as independent of experience) but rather the conclusions that we are able to draw from our sense experience. Saying "it's a fact" implies there's at least some subjective experience somewhere justifying the belief; a fact is clearly dependent on what people think. It is just sloppy to say "claims that are true for all subjects; universally true claims" are "claims that are true independent of what anyone thinks"; these are two different assertions which could overlap but need not to.

For instance, a "claim that is true independent of what anyone thinks ... simply because no one has any experience at all about the object of that claim", maybe true, but is clearly not a "fact" in the sense of something we know (seems irrelevant to say there nevertheless exists a fact no one knows about this object no one has any experience about about, but we can presume they exist for the sake of argument), but more importantly, by definition, whatever facts we presume to exist about the unknown are not and cannot be universal claims true for all subjects (that all subjects should make such a claim that no subject knows anything about, because the claim is about something detached, and thus independent, from all subjective experiences).

Kant uses the term "thing in itself" to refer to the objects existence or essence independent of people's thoughts and ideas about it (the noumena which Kant claims we can never know as it truly is); it's clearly making a mess of things to then claim Kant's beliefs about things and moral principles are "objective" in the sense of being things or claims independent of thoughts (he is very clear we can know nothing, i.e. have no specific belief, of the noumena, we can only form belies about the phenomena; we presuppose the noumena exists but we do not come to "know" the noumena itself, only the phenomena, which does depend on our minds). And this is only for "the physical world", it's pretty clear Kant does not view the categorical imperative as noumena.

There is further confusions that can arise as it's only a "universal moral truth" in Kant's system to carry out a duty to other moral agents as ends in themselves; there is still potential of a plurality of moral principles that satisfy the categorical imperative (if it means respecting others as having intrinsic value and not being a hypocrite, there maybe many moral principles with respect to many situations that satisfy this conditions). So again, it's not clear if the specific moral principles we need to make decisions are "facts"; being a hypocrite is wrong, but there remains many ways to be right (again, we can stretch the definition of fact if we want to cover this, but we're clearly far removed from physical facts; so far removed that it's just simply recipe for confusion; we do not have all these considerations when we ask "what the facts are" of a situation).

In other-words, "objective" isn't used by Kant to describe his moral theory, and doesn't appear in discussions of Kant's moral theory by major sources, and the reason maybe because it's better to follow Kant's reasoning through all these nuances rather than redefine what his theory means in terms of objective truths and facts.

Also, "object" in general doesn't only have the one sense that we use of physical objects, as a "being" or "entity". It can also mean "end", "purpose", "aim", "goal", etc. (As in, "the object of this exercise is ..."). A moral object is something that something can be good for. It's basically just a good, a thing to be sought after, what to work toward. Moral objectivity implies that there is something that is actually good to strive for and work toward, rather than just whatever various subjects feel like doing; just like factual objectivity implies that there is something that is actually real to know and understand, rather than just whatever various subjects perceive. — Pfhorrest

Sure, you can redefine "being objective" as "pursuing a goal" rather than "facts", but all the examples covered so far have been quite clearly using "objective" as relating to "facts"; the hypothetical that another meaning could have been used that is less confusingly related to morality as just stating basically morality is about "goalism" (... and relativists can also have goals ... so the whole point of the distinction with relativism no longer makes any sense), is simply more confusing.

Again, no one's stopping you from using confusing terminology and "striking true" regardless, but no one's stopping me from pointing out the potential confusions so people are prepared to evaluate the success or failure of the undertaking.

For those interested in the positive proof side of this small o "objectivist" debate.

The small o "objectivist", or even just the word "objective" itself, does not appear in wikipedia's entry on "normative ethics", and if you click through to the usual suspects of "deontology", "consequentialism", "virtue ethics", you do not get appearance of small o "objectivists".

Simply going through such material should be enough to convince oneself that small o "objectivist" is not a popular terminology; it is not usual to say of universalist ethical theories that they are "objective".

Where we do find a notable "objective" (though not small o "objectivist") is in the entry on meta-ethics under the heading "moral realism":

Moral realism

Moral realism (in the robust sense; cf. moral universalism for the minimalist sense) holds that such propositions are about robust or mind-independent facts, that is, not facts about any person or group's subjective opinion, but about objective features of the world. Meta-ethical theories are commonly categorized as either a form of realism or as one of three forms of "anti-realism" regarding moral facts: ethical subjectivism, error theory, or non-cognitivism. Realism comes in two main varieties:

Ethical naturalism holds that there are objective moral properties and that these properties are reducible or stand in some metaphysical relation (such as supervenience) to entirely non-ethical properties. Most ethical naturalists hold that we have empirical knowledge of moral truths. Ethical naturalism was implicitly assumed by many modern ethical theorists, particularly utilitarians.
Ethical non-naturalism, as put forward by G. E. Moore, holds that there are objective and irreducible moral properties (such as the property of 'goodness'), and that we sometimes have intuitive or otherwise a priori awareness of moral properties or of moral truths. Moore's open question argument against what he considered the naturalistic fallacy was largely responsible for the birth of meta-ethical research in contemporary analytic philosophy." — Meta-ethics

And, of note, both these moral realisms listed, use of "objective" is referring to objects, and employed in this way it has a clear meaning that we somehow "observe" these moral properties like we do other properties about objects (either we have a moral sense, or the moral information is derivable from the empirical information); a clear meaning that follows from "object" in the word "objective", but is not synonymous with "universal"; moral rationalism is opposed to moral naturalism, yet both can be formulated to be making universalist moral claims: that universal moral claims are justified through appeals to reason for moral rationalism, and that universal moral claims are justified with respect to sensing the physical world in some way in the case of naturalism. So, this is completely compatible with what I have stated in previous comments: that to say moral principles are "objective" makes sense if we're talking about sense data in the same way we have sense data of other physical objects (that we sense what is right and wrong, whether directly or through some synthesis of such data without invoking an implicit deontological or conequentialist or vitue based evaluation that is not itself derived from sense data in a similar way).

Moral Objectivism: The view that what is right or wrong doesn’t depend on what anyone thinks is right or wrong. That is, the view that the 'moral facts' are like 'physical' facts in that what the facts are does not depend on what anyone thinks they are. Objectivist theories tend to come in two sorts:
(i) Duty Based Theories (or Deontological Theories): Theories that claim that what determines whether an act is morally right or wrong is the kind of act it is.

E.g., Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) thought that all acts should be judged according to a rule he called the Categorical Imperative: "Act only according to that maxim [i.e., rule] whereby you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." That is, he thought the only kind of act one should ever commit is one that could be willed to be a universal law.

Clearly, 'moral facts' are simply not like 'physical' facts, but differ in very critical ways, and the example of Kant that immediately follows this is very debatable a "factual statement". It's also debatable as simply truth, if we want to quibble and say facts are just any truth, independent of what anyone thinks, as clearly the requirement to will the principle to be a universal law is a thought dependent process.

No where does Kant say moral facts are similar to physical facts.

Kant goes to some lengths to justify going from physical facts (sense data) to physical principles, and that this is not a simple extension of our collection of facts (Hume is fundamentally right about induction) but transcends all our facts to arrive at principles that we believe to be universally true (we nevertheless are justified in basically ignoring the problem of induction as everyone usually does, we'll just take 900 pages to do so on this occasion).

Kant uses or develops terms such as a priori, posteori, synthetic a priori, categorical, judgement as opposed to sense data, pure reason, practical reason, transcendental idealism, and so on, precisely because his views cannot be expressed as simply stating "physical facts" and "moral facts".

The categorical imperative is built on all these distinctions and arguments to arrive at true moral principles we must transcend our moral feelings about situations in the most general sense to arrive at a duty towards all moral agents as ends in themselves. It's misleading to say the categorical imperative leads to moral facts or is itself a moral fact; its simply not clear what facts mean outside verifiable physical phenomena just as "being objective" has no clear meaning if we're not "being objective about things that are objects" (to illustrate, it's not clear what it means to say "this painting is objectively more beautiful than this other painting" whereas it is clear what we mean when we say "this table is objectively 2 meters long as opposed to my subjective feeling that it was shorter than 2 meters").

As you may know, there's lot's to argue about, but whatever these arguments about what Kant really means (and if so, was he right), it is simply a complete misrepresentation of Kant to describe him as viewing ethics as discovering 'moral facts' similar to 'physical facts'; the situation is much more complicated than viewing 'moral facts' akin to 'physical facts' even insofar as we believe they are true independently of our own minds (which transcendental idealism we can interpret to preclude in principle the independence from our own minds; that we cannot actually get out of our minds and ideas to an objective view, the actual noumena, of even mundane facts if we're now interpreting facts as agreed on phenomena, but must transcend, which is opposed to just asserting whatever we believe are facts in a naive realism that 'moral facts' seems to imply).

Now, this definition may simply be reporting how people (since Rand and who have read and largely like Rand) have been defining "moral objectivism", and so accurately reporting this usage, but that does not make the usage "have nothing to do with Rand" nor even imply the usage makes any sense. It seems pretty clear to me Objectivists made "moral objectivism" a thing and by using this terminology introduced themselves this moral taxonomy in introductory material that they can now point to and say "see, moral objectivism is a thing". People who have not thought through that it's simply not a good term as simply doesn't relate to objects if we're talking about moral principles, may also adopt the terminology as they see it elsewhere, which is fine as far as it goes, but seems to me also fine to point out the confusions that immediately arise from this classification structure, likely influence of Rand one may expect around any corner once hearing "objectivist", and pointing to the alternative definitions that seem more current in the history of philosophy and in the rest of the world.

"Objective morality" is often used interchangeably with "moral realism," but that doesn't clarify things much. As Crispin Wright quipped, "a philosopher who asserts that she is a realist about theoretical science, for example, or ethics, has probably, for most philosophical audiences, accomplished little more than to clear her throat." (But the same can be said about many philosophical terms of art.) — SophistiCat

I definitely agree that, on first sight, "objective" seems to be harmless enough as meaning "it's true of reality". However, if we're formulating moral realism as "there are real moral truths out there ... but they are not physical things ... not physical objects" then if we use objective as a substitute for realism we arrive at "objective truths about things that are not objects". It's clumsy speech at best, which is why, in my opinion, it simply didn't catch on. Rand chose "Objectivist" precisely because it wasn't referring to a clearly defined philosophical tradition at the time (and is a good contrast to bleeding heart liberals and other collectivists, bringing their subjective empathy for the poor into things), as she viewed herself as skipping over and superseding all of philosophy since Aristotle, she was fairly clear about not being part of any philosophical tradition since Aristotle.

Though I agree if one was not really aware of Rand it can seem fine to start an analysis with defining "objective moral truths" to mean "universal moral truths" (until one starts to analyse moral principles as clearly pertaining to subjects and not objects, and sticking to "objective" will simply cause confusion), but if one is aware of Rand, then defining small "o" objectivism seems very clear to me a form of historical revisionism to place Rand in a broader philosophical tradition to relate her to other more well regarded philosophers (possibility for the reasons that they made more sense).

So, this historical revisionism is of curious interest to me, but also that this particular "term of art" sets up directly the false dichotomy with moral subjectivism. And it's not only me that has pointed out the association with Randianism.

There is simply none of the "great philosophers" I am aware of that uses this term small o "moral objectivist", so creating the taxonomy tree with "moral objectivist" as the broad class of theories in opposition to moral relativism is clearly a contemporary attempt, that considering the close association with Randianism, I feel it's entirely valid to question the claims that it's not associated with Randianism and a revisionist or apologetics or nudge-nudge-wink-wink to Randians in some way. It seems pretty clear to me this whole "moral objectivist taxonomy projects" is a clear favour to Randians of putting their precious foundational identity word "objective" as a shining star atop of the mighty moral Christmas tree.

The third link you post is a book by Michael Huemer, who I've already cited, and who has long critiques of Rand.

The following responds to "The Objectivist Ethics" by Ayn Rand. I assume the reader is familiar with it. I begin with a general overview of what is wrong with it. I follow this with a set of more detailed comments, which make a paragraph-by-paragraph examination of her statements in the essay. The latter also elaborates further some of the points made in the overview. — Critique of The Objectivist Ethics - Michael Huemer

The first link you post is indeed more scholarly but is arguing for moral realism, as "objective in some way". Perusing the book (what pages are available for free), a central theme is analyzing "rational egoism" and different analytical approaches, but mainly seems to be refuting "objectivism" as a justification for believing something is true. From what I gather, a main purpose of the book is to demonstrate that moral realism is not "objectivism". My guess is the author is aware of the popularity of Objectivism arguments, as the book is published in 1989 by an American author, and the rejections of "objectivism" in various specific contexts, and focus on "rational egoism", but transposed into scholarly terms, is a terminology chosen to be both scholarly and analyzing "big O" Objectivism at the same time (big "O" Objectivism is not worth considering directly, but the basic themes of rational egoism and universal moral truths based on realism, which we can call "objective" if we want, are still relevant for analysis).

I don't know why you make so much of this. — SophistiCat

The reason I dwell on this point is that there's simply lot's of Randians in the US (on the Supreme court to boot), and simply using the term "objectivism" they clearly view as some small victory for Rand, whether they are explicit or closet supporters. I've had lot's of debates with explicit or closet Randians and setting up the terminology "Objectivist" is a very important starting point, and since it sets up false dichotomies (as they use it, such as in the OP here), I find it's best to simply keep to this point than to accept the terminology and then try to explain later that subjective truths can be universal. I have simply never encountered the term "Objectivist" outside people influenced by Rand. In doing some digging, the term does appear from time to time before Rand, but for different things, not in the way the OP uses it; opposing "objectivism" to "subjectivism" seems pretty clearly a framework started by Rand and is a false dichotomy as it pertains to morals, as I've explained (so, perhaps why the term was not used in this way before).

As the OP states:

I mean only what's also called "moral universalism" — Pfhorrest

However, moral universalism is compatible with moral subjectivism formulated in the sense that moral properties (where moral principles are said to "exist") are a matter of subjects and not objects. So, to use the terminology "moral objectivism" as equivalent to "moral universalism" seems to quite clearly setup either confusion or straight-up contradiction when talking about moral universalism that is also moral subjectivism. Likewise, if we try to more rigorously define "objective", a usual formulation is simply what different subjects will agree to, so objective depends on subjective, just many subjects perhaps debating for many a time; so, if we have a sort of Popperian view of objective built upon subjects, it's again simply confusing to then say objectivism is opposed to subjectivism. Of course, if we view "objective" as only a process or a quality that can be said of objects, measurable things, then we avoid all such confusions. If we're not using "objective" in anyway apart from saying "it's true" then it's just a confusing extra emblem that contains no meaning, as it then takes time to determine that nothing is meant more than "it's true"; but then, of course, everyone will claim to be objective in this way, including moral relativist (they are just "being objective" that no moral truths are universally true; i.e. everyone is objectivist).

This fallacy has already been addressed by Plato, and others, but probably the go to is by Kant.

To paraphrase, the idea the self sacrificing soldier feels some "noble pleasure" presupposes that the act is indeed noble according to some non-pleasure based standard of ethics.

If there was no such conception of duty apart from self pleasure or self interest, then there would simply be no conception to self-sacrifice to begin with. Anyone who did that would be just viewed as foolish and misguided; that the only reasonable approach to soldiery is to fight only insofar as it maximizes self preservation (the basis for both pleasure and interest) which would mean to desert, commit treason, kill one's own side and run off with the food, if it is expedient to survival (i.e. only fight the "enemy" if it's likely an easy enough victory with a low chance of death).

The "egoist" theorist can of course repair the situation by simply claiming that societies have developed ideas to manipulate people to sacrifice themselves for the "good" of society, but that good is actually bad and you shouldn't listen to it; in other words that, as expected, societies that survive do so due to people willing to defend and buildup those societies, but it's not reasonable for an ego to partake in such defending, only opportunistically extract benefit from the chaos of war or then the naivity of peace; that society as we know it should disintegrate if everyone was reasonably egotistical: police are worse than the mob, soldiers don't hesitate to kill their officers or each other and switch sides or run as soon as their in any real personal danger, judges only rule based on the biggest bribes, no one does business in good faith out of principle, all supply lines are full of dangerous counterfeit etc. and we would return to a system of hunter gatherer with at best close-kin ties (that we continuously try to repress for own benefit rather than our literal sons and daughters). And the critical part, is that all actors would view such a process as reasonable; of course no one would act any differently than what maximizes their gain, and if complex institutions can't exist under such conditions then complex institutions are bad and shouldn't exist.

And some do make this coherent argument, but mostly the "egoists" want the benefits of a highly prized "Western civilization", but just take all the institutions for granted and deny the altruistic component of their own conformity to the law, or enough of them as a reasonable basis for civilization. For, it sort of gives up the game that the egoist approach would lead to social break-down if everyone was extracting value and no one willing to take any risk for the sake of building value for the group without getting any in return (the self sacrifice of the soldier being the most extreme example) - reaping where another sow as it were - (i.e. collectivist actions of one form or another). Most people simply don't want to devalue the soldiers altruistic sacrifice on their behalf, so the "soldier sacrificing him or herself is for a short term pleasure" is a sort of ego-projection onto altruism; i.e. I like when people do altruistic things for me or for the good of society (the incorruptible judge, the relentless alcoholic detective, the firefighter, the police officer), but I'm not going to do those things and I don't want to conclude such people are better than me nor are doing something radically different to selfishness upon which complex society is built and I highly appreciate as a sort of refined civilization connoisseur (the only true gentlemen) ... so, I'm going to claim seemingly selfless acts are as selfish as my own selfishness just deriving a different form of pleasure.

In some cases, I get the sense the author does not agree with the self sacrificing soldier, but realizes their audience expects such actions to be praised and they'll lose attention if they don't say "yes, the soldier that jumped on a grenade to save his comrades isn't bad in my egoist framework that seems on first viewing, and perhaps every subsequent viewing, incompatible with the soldiers actions; indeed, not simply the self sacrificing but all loyal soldiers in all places and at all times as the only loyalty is to oneself, which is what egoism obviously means; therefore, considering this, here's some bullshit that paints over the picture".

In other cases, such authors seem to be genuinely committed to the idea the soldier's sacrifice for freedom is "good" and also committed to "egoism" as the only ethical foundation, and so concluding the self sacrificing soldier is actually acting fully egotistical for some short term perceived benefit or pleasure or forward looking reverse-nostalgia to being remembered nobly, is the only available solution if the idea these two notions are simply incompatible is investigated, as it's clearly "unfair".

However, in both cases, if "the good" is self-interest of one form or another, then taking on harm for the benefit of others is clearly "bad" and following this logic nowhere appears that there's some "pleasure" based on some perceived virtuous actions toward others (we don't care about them) or a pleasure based on the opinion of others (we don't care about the opinions of others in themselves, only insofar as knowledge of them can be used for self benefit, which is logically impossible to do if one is dead). So, clearly the pleasure the soldier feels is not a "good pleasure" but a pleasure born from social conditioning that is bad, of which the entire egotistical project is to rid oneself of; the short term pleasure, if it is there, clearly can only come from social manipulation which we want to avoid in the egoist framework. An "enlightened egoist" would simply not consider jumping on the grenade, but would only be considering self preservation; appreciative if some fool did jump on it, but otherwise just trying to get out of the way of the impending shrapnel. If the pleasure isn't even there for the foolish soldier that does jump, maybe the soldier really is acting selflessly and this whole "it's a pleasure to be blown up in the short term" is hapless psychological projection onto a non-refutable hypothesis (which can be ever guarded preciously within the self as totally true).

Also of note, when adopting this system there does not remain standing some "standard of ethic" apart from self interest in this pleasure maximizing sense. The question "the dictators benefits from doing something ethical" simply doesn't make sense. We simply don't care about other people and their misguided ethical notions that are not egotistical nor society as a whole and if it's going in a "good direction" or not. All other ethical standards other than selfishness are simply false. There can't be two mutually exclusive definitions of ethics within a coherent ethic; it simply makes no sense to say "only selfishness is reasonable ... but ... nevertheless I can tweak my actions to be compatible with (i.e. be an entrepreneurs and not a mobster) and I can tweak institutions (support them being not totally corrupt) to still result in good social outcomes' see, I'm still a good person according to social norms, which I just started by saying are false if not selfish"; if only selfishness is the reasonable ethic, then there simply is no standard upon which to judge the law abiding entrepreneur is better in principle than the mobster (or the entrepreneur that is also a mobster and captures the institutions meant to regulate his activity by exploiting the selfish philosophy or simply cowardice of the, so called, public servants within that institution) and there is no standard upon which to judge society as a whole as "better off with non-corrupt judges"; we simply don't care whether judges are corrupt or not in some general sense if we are only focused on ourself, they should be corrupt if they can get away with it and they obviously can get away with it if they are all trying to be corrupt (which they all should be trying to be), good for them, but, what matters to me (which is all that counts in such a philosophy) is simply understanding whatever the judge believes, in order to get what I want if we happen to make an encounter in a trial (if he's a fool, I'll need to invent some socialist bullshit to justify my actions are in the public good, or maybe just kill all the witnesses if I can get away with it; if he's smart, then I'll need to have the bigger bribe or bigger threat to get a satisfactory exchange for the service I want).

I've lived in the US my entire life and associating lower-case "objectivism" with Randianism sounds very weird and parochial to my ear — Pfhorrest

That's because Randians put some effort to reformulate Randianism without explicitly defending Rand (as she said the quiet pars out loud, and that becomes a nuisance in the long term). Turning the "O" in "Objectivism" to an "o" is another small step in this process. I have simply never encountered the term "objectivism" outside the Randian tradition (i.e. people who have read Rand and appreciated her work, empathize with her and her protagonists and agree with the main point).

FWIW, a quick Google for "moral objectivism" shows only #6 out of the top ten results having anything to do with Rand, and the rest using the more general sense that I'm using here. — Pfhorrest

I ran the same experiment, so here we can be objective about something.

#0

This site can’t be reached, www.ucs.mun.ca took too long to respond.
Try:

Checking the connection
Checking the proxy and the firewall
ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT — Moral Relativism and Objectivism

#1

Robust moral realism, the meta-ethical position that ethical sentences express factual propositions about robust or mind-independent features of the world, and that some such propositions are true.

Moral universalism, the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics or morality is universally valid, without any further semantic or metaphysical claim.

The ethical branch of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism (Ayn Rand). — Moral objectivism - wikipedia

So either talking about something we already have a word for ... or talking about Rand.

#2

Moral objectivism is the position that moral truths exist independantly from opinion.

There are several versions of moral objectivism, of varying levels of strentgth. They area, from weakest to strongest:

Moral universalism
Moral realism
Moral absolutism — Moral Objectivism -

"Philosophy Index" is made for homeschooling by North Gate Academy. Essentially every link is broken; going to the home page and clicking "Camus" (or any other philosopher) just gets to a "404 not found" page. According to North Gate Academy: "Northgate strives to foster a culture of excellence in learning based on biblical teachings, in a flexible and nurturing online learning environment." So, not dedicated to philosophy as such.

If this is google's second choice, rather than Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or Oxford, or even just any university online material ... maybe this tells us something, but moving on.

#3

On a side note: Don’t confuse moral objectivism with Objectivism. Objectivism is an ethical theory
proposed by Ayn Rand which is related to Ethical Egoism, a theory we will discuss later in the course. — Introduction to Ethics - Indian Hills community colledge

I can only help but notice the close association with Rand and that Randiasm will be taught in this "introduction to Ethics".

#4
[quote=Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism - Mitchell Silver
;https://philosophynow.org/issues/83/Our_Morality_A_Defense_of_Moral_Objectivism]
Among the rules that can motivate actions and determine judgments are those that classify all possible actions as either permissible or impermissible. I call such rules ‘categorical permissibility rules’ (henceforth, simply ‘permissibility rules’). Common examples of permissibility rules include: it is always impermissible to act in a way that will not increase overall happiness or reduce overall suffering (John Stuart Mill promoted that one); it is always impermissible to treat someone merely as a means (a favorite of Immanuel Kant’s); never do to others that which is hateful to you (the Talmudic version of a commonplace in religious ethics); always obey whatever the priest tells you God has commanded (another commonplace in religious traditions); and, never act against self-interest (Ayn Rand). Less common, but equally possible permissibility rules include: never run for a bus (Mel Brooks); and, never act against Mitchell Silver’s interests (no one, alas). There are an endless number of possible permissibility rules.]

This is simply a bizarre essay in terms of making new labels for things referred to within the essay.

Why makeup the term "categorical permissibility rules" without explaining how it is either exactly the same or then in some way different than Kant's "Categorical Imperative", and, moreover, go onto to reference Kant as an example of a categorical permissibility rule in the next sentence? Also, if all these previous authors such as John Stuart Mill, Kant, Talmudic authors, common place religious traditions, Ayn Rand, Mel Brooks, it makes us wonder whether there was a term for these contrasting ideas with moral subjectivism (which the author clearly doesn't understand that moral principles existing subjectively does not necessarily imply they cannot be universal, as they can nevertheless be true for all subjective view points in one way or another; so he is just ignorant about the subject matter) and to contrast with moral relativism.

The author also doesn't follow the above quote with the obvious followup claim that insofar as these "categorical permissibility rules" are incompatible with each other, some or all of them are wrong and have no justification for believing in them, but rather goes on to defend commitment to one's chosen "permissibility rule" as a reasonable thing, which is moral relativism.

We could go on, but the casual mention of Ayn Rand along side Kant, Mill, the Talmud, is clearly someone who is self consciously reformulating the foundations of Randianism (either to attract that Randian audience or then to show Randianism as "reasonable" for the authors own empathy with Rand). We can also notice in passing how the only principle mentioned in "other religions" is to " obey whatever the priest tells you God has commanded" rather than "do onto others as you would have them do onto you" (Jesus) or "Love the whole world as if it were your self; then you will truly care fore all things" (Tao) or "Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity" (Buddha) ... but nope, the "commonplace belief" in religion outside the Talmud is "do as the priest says".

#5

"My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues…"
— Ayn Rand , Atlas Shrugged .

For thousands of years, people have been taught that goodness consists in serving others. "Love your brother as yourself" teach the Christian scriptures. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" preach the Marxists. Even the liberal Utilitarian philosophers, many of whom defended free market capitalism, taught that one should act always to attain "the greatest good for the greatest number." The result of this code has been a bloody trail of wars and revolutions to enforce self-sacrifice, and an endless struggle in society to achieve equality among people. — What is the Objectivist Position in Morality (Ethics)? - Atlas society

I suppose this is the one of the six that was indeed associated with Rand.

#6

"Objectivism" denotes the thesis that morality is objective. Subjectivism holds that morality is subjective. Relativism holds that morality is relative. In the sequel, I am interested in distinguishing moral objectivism from its denial; therefore, I assume that "relative" and "subjective" both mean "non-objective". If they do not already mean this, then I stipulate that meaning hereby. There are a number of people who believe moral relativism so defined. — Moral Objectivism by Michael Huemer - This is an undergraduate paper from circa 1992

... just, wow. Xism is X, Yism is Y, Zism is Z; I assume Y and Z both mean not-X; I don't know if this is true ... so in case it's not I'm stipulating it anyway??? :(

Sigh, again, subjectivist approach to ethics can be simply that moral principles are properties of subjects, not objects, but this does not stop moral claims from being true for all subjects (universal to all moral agents).

Michael Huemer has long essays critiquing Rand's "Objectivism" while building his alternative "objectivism", and is really a great example typifying this group of people in the US who see Rand as worthy of lengthy reflection and critique, whether water to fill one's vase or an anvil to sharpen one's blade.

General Conclusion:

On just the quality of the sources and authors alone, without reviewing the content, one can conclude that "objectivist" isn't really a thing in world philosophical debate; it is confined to the US and not associated with major publications nor major authors and philosophers.

If we look into the content, we find the authors specifically reference Rand in their discussion of "objectivism". It is simply the history of the term that it was posited by Randians as a more "proper philosophical" reformulation of the basic Randian approach (inventing a philosophical tradition after Rand in which Rand is just one formulation; that Rand was right for being a "moral objectivist" even there's some fault in her particular "Objectivism"; but then denying small "o" objectivism has nothing to do with Rand is like positing small "k" kantianism has nothing to do with Kant; it's just juvenile hair splitting of terminology distinctions that have no basis in history and clearly don't make sense; it's simply not reasonable to use the label small "k" kant, have a similar starting point and terminology, a "Categorical Permissibility" if you will, but refuse any relation to the big "K" Kant). The labels of moral universalism, moral absolutism, moral rationalism, deontology, moral naturalism, already exist, so to rename one or all of these concepts "moral objectivism" without any need is, in the contemporary scene, to place oneself in the Randian tradition and not these other traditions (in searching around "objectivism" was used a bit as an expression, but was synonymous to moral naturalism; "objectivism" as simply moral universalism is not naturalism, as there are universalist moral theories not founded on nature but logic and "moral agents" in the most general sense or then founded on the divine, neither of which are based on nature as we find it).

Equating "objective" with "reasonable" is a Randian invention, and all the top 6 google hits for "moral objectivism" are American sources or authors, most mention Rand explicitly.

The small "o" objectivists I have encountered are people who are trying to reformulate Rand's basic program (wittingly or unwittingly), are deep in her frame as red pillars would say, and see "objective" as the natural alternative to "relativism" based on the mistaken association of relativism with subjectivism (they see Rand's basic terminology, aka false dichotomy, as making sense but want to draw slightly different conclusions than Rand; rather than see Rand as total nonsense and joining the philosophical conversation and using the common terminology, and lack of an obvious false dichotomy between "subjective" and "universally true", found within the debates that happened between Aristotle and Rand as a superior idea; and, to be sure, we should also be clear that Aristotle didn't view moral principles as similar to physical objects).

All philosophers of note view moral principles as subjective, a property of subjects and not objects, because it's obviously true; how we subjects might justify moral principles and are those justifications true of all subjects (through reason or divine decree or happenstance) or then fundamentally arbitrary or then individually contingent (somehow neither arbitrary nor universal) being the key contentions. Likewise, nearly all philosophers would say their approach is "reasonable", and so whatever moral principles they decide on (for themselves or for everyone or for some) follows reasonably from reasonable things to believe; moral relativists are also saying their moral principles, which they are free to choose, follow from the reasonable conclusion that moral relativism is true and they are thus free to choose (just as having a preference for blue over red without insisting everyone have the same preference doesn't make one unreasonable; so, another false dichotomy to say moral objectivism views morality as derivable from reason in contrast to moral relativism that does not).

Philosophers have proposed similar "sense experience" of moral principles as we have with objects, but have been quite cognizant that such "moral sense" is not the same kind of sense as heat or sight; there's also already a word for such a proposed sense, "our conscience"; this "conscience" would be the closest philosophical idea of morality being objective (we can sense moral principles just as we can sense objects; i.e. we can be objective about both and "sense the truth" in some sense and in a similar way; the difference being we cannot use an apparatus to settle a debate about whether one moral principle is weightier than another as we can use an apparatus to settle a debate about whether this rock is weightier than this log, and it is this lack of apparatus to settle debates that leads such philosophers to be clear moral principles are not objects); this lack of an apparatus to measure an object is the main difficulty these philosophers try to contend with, and so again, even if there is a proposed "moral sense" such moral principles to be sensed are not objects (if Rand or her "objective" followers read any philosophy, they would have realize simply saying "I'm the objective one" doesn't suddenly conjure the truth out of thousands of years of philosophical debate between different subjects). So, simply following our conscience in a naive way (our altruism if we feel it) would be the theory most inline with "objectivism" based on what it means to conclude about something objectively (through our senses).

I was leery about going along with "objectivist," but I thought Randianism was obscure and disreputable enough that there would be little chance of confusion. — SophistiCat

Yes, my remark was vis-a-vis the OP. I don't have a problem with OP's defining their own terms ... but I don't have a problem criticizing those term selections either.

If you have never lived in the US then Randianism does seem completely disreputable and irrelevant. However, for those in the US, the word "objectivist" has clear Randian connotations, and insisting on the idea that "still, morals can be objective; objectivism as such can still make sense" I would interpret to be closet Randianism (a basic empathy with the Randian objective, but without committing to defending her arguments directly, as that hasn't worked out well).

I think Pfhorrest is apt to treat moral propositions much like a physicalist would treat propositions about the physical world, and he believes that we can use something like a scientific method for discovering moral truths. In any case "objective morality" is a term of art, though I wouldn't have a use for it. — SophistiCat

Yes, I understand the basic idea of the program, but clearly morals aren't discoverable by a physicalist process as such, moral principles are clearly not objects like a chair or a fork. Universal morals can still only exist subjectively, just with the qualifier of being true for all subjects (such as a categorical imperative binding all moral agents), and clearly cannot exist as an object with measurable properties; we can never settle a moral principle debate by simply weighing or timing or measuring the distance or angle of some apparatus with respect to some physical object.

Normally, I don't care so much about such labels, I'd be willing to roll with it as you have been doing and being content to just note traditions that have used other words for the same idea, but in this case the label more or less contains the basic error in reasoning which is a misunderstanding of the scientific process, and so I think it is worth dwelling upon. The word "objectivist" simply sets up all sorts of bait and switch fallacy as it's associated with the scientific method (that clearly "works") but also employed colloquially as a sort of "virtue" of removing one's biases; however, neither does the scientific method nor attempting to remove biases conclude with any moral principles. In the case of science as such the scientism fallacy is well trodden ground, but the more colloquial interpretation of "being objective" is a more subtle fallacy in the category of the virtue moral distinction (more subtle as pertaining to inner qualities, so at least on the same side, or the perhaps somewhere in the middle if we view our faculties as objects, of the subjective-objective divide, and clearly closely related to moral principles as such as we require virtues to implement any moral project effectively); the usual examples being discipline and courage being a virtue we can understand the import of but doesn't resolve any moral debate as to what goals one should pursue with discipline and courage, and so dedicating oneself to such virtues as somehow fundamental is simply a ruse to avoid reviewing one's actual moral values and activities; such as the Nazi's for whom discipline and courage was everything -- and, to make no mistake, I would closely associate with Randianism: it's all about feeling better than other people, in the case of Rand having the virtue of "being objective" (a more "modern" virtue than the ancients listed, and therefore quite sophisticated), which for her meant despising altruism and a basic misunderstanding of the idea of collective action, makes you better than other people.

I think the fact is that COVID-19 will surely be a focus of research even after the pandemic, hence there will be a lot of scrutiny about it. Hence I think this question can be answered. Simply too many labs are focusing on COVID-19 now. Yet unfortunately the answer won't make everybody happy, so it can remain quite vague as many things do at the present and you have to know your biology. — ssu

The problem is that the question is simply not resolvable in a lab. All three scenarios do not form a refutable hypothesis (a recipe that if followed, can confirm the hypothesis to any good faith actor).

For instance, it's been reported yesterday that the particular strain of coronavirus that COVID19 came from has found in the host bats. This does not rule out a lab accident, nor does it rule out a bioweapon. Obviously, labs collecting bat viruses could accidentally release one even without ever knowing they even had it. Likewise, bioweapons creators may seek to find viruses in nature that are the closest to being a strategic threat (either to create a weapon or investigate such potential weapons to mount a defense); indeed, this is "plan A" in the bioweapon creation tool box.

So, unless extremely obvious gene-editing techniques are used, none of the scenarios are really resolvable in a lab.

In terms of "what's mostly likely" given the available evidence, the problem is likelihood requires a null hypothesis to form. Getting a royal flush does not indicate in itself cheating as the null hypothesis is that royal flushes happen, as do "lucky streaks" etc. Following an individual player we need some time for "lucky hands" to happen in enough frequency to indicate cheating. However, if we're looking at a whole population of gamblers there is going to be people on entirely natural lucky streaks on the tail end.

The problem with calculating a null hypothesis for the pandemic is that a pandemic can happen at any time starting essentially anywhere, and has, so far, happened only once in our modern economy (which is very different from the 1918 or black plague economy; so these reference events inform us a type of phenomena can happen, but don't really provide a statistical natural background context of some sort). The statistical problems approaching this kind of unique event that can happen anywhere on the planet over a long period of time are essentially non-resolvable; any event of this kind is going to have all sorts of "peculiarities" associated with it, and there's little way to calculate what we should expect in terms of the "natural peculiarities" of a big unique event that can happen anywhere.

Relativism is most commonly associated with the view that what is moral is defined by the moral standards of one's culture. In that sense it still has an objective component - it just makes morality more granular and more entangled with human subjectivity than a thoroughgoing objectivist like Kant or Mill might like. — SophistiCat

If it's along the lines of Rorty or Berlin, or even Chomsky for that matter, they usually call this pluralism to differentiate with relativism, which is usually referenced as the "relative the individual and what the individual thinks or feels".

Pluralism contextualizes things to cultures and groups, but does not deny the requirement of some absolute moral standards (many cultures can be "good" in very different ways with some moral onus to respect the culture one is in, but this does not mean all cultures are good).

The problem with pluralism, or "group relativism", as a moral foundation in itself, is that it does not resolve any particular ethical issue. Since cultures aren't static and "what is good" even within one culture is always in motion, any particular ethical issue we can always claim to be simply ahead of our times and the culture will catch up and vindicate us. So, even within pluralism we can always extend the logic to collapse to individual relativism on any particular issue.

Pluralists authors generally don't deny this problem and that one still needs individual commitment to some absolutist ethical standards to function (from which different cultures can simply become "bad"; which is a feature we generally want as we do want to say Naziism was simply bad and Nazi's don't make a credible defense in saying their culture was pro-genocide).

Pluralists such as Berlin, Rorty, Chomsky want to avoid unnecessary conflict through intercultural respect and understanding, insofar as their pluralism goes, but they do not view pluralism as a moral foundation in itself; they would all reject "my culture tells me this is ok, therefore it is ok".

Berlin (in my view) is the most clear minded about this. Rorty and Chomsky seem much more reluctant to articulate that pluralism does not resolve one's own ethical problems, as they seem to want to avoid getting into any "Kantian style" categorical imperative debates (though for radically different reasons; Rorty rejects the idea of "truth correspondence" theories full stop, which makes universal moral claims a dubious enterprise; whereas Chomsky seems to want to have "correspondence truth" but only scientific and that therefore his "universal values" that make pluralism work are somehow coming from social evolution, "wide agreement" or a "narrow part of the spectrum" or similar phrasing, at least in his debate with Foucault that's what I understood).

Of note, Rorty goes to some lengths to argue against identity politics as a form of "multi-culturalism" and seems to view Chomsky as too radically pluralist.

Another notable author in the pluralism debate is McIntyre, who seems to agree with pluralism in principle ... but because it doesn't work (results in unresolvable differences) we must go back to being good Catholics.

I'm not sure we have a disagreement on these points, or it's simply adding some points to your points.

I would also like to emphasize what other's have pointed out, that we have "universalism" and "absolutism" to refer to ideas of the "true-true" about ethical principles, and that using the word "objectivism" is simply associating oneself with Randianism and the argument "objectively we should still use the word objectivst even if we don't agree with Rand" isn't really convincing as we already have other words and "objective" isn't a good word about moral truths as "being objective" connotes looking at a situation and trying to see the physical facts for what what they are (i.e. what are the physical objects as independent from my own subjective interpretation as is possible to achieve). No philosopher posits that moral truths, if they exist, are the same kind of thing as physical objects of which it makes sense to be "objective" about (that we can simply go and measure a moral truth as 5kg, 50cm tall and 40cm wide); indeed, the whole point of the word "objective" is in the context that we have different values, goals, and experience but can still agree on some physical facts about the real world (if we both make a good faith attempt at "being objective" and collaborate on at least this issue to start as common ground); so, as it is normally used it's simply a self contradiction to be "objective" about said values and goals (which remain, in essentially any philosophy, subjective things that we cannot observe in the same way as a chair, regardless of what justifications we have for said values and goals).

You're using a proposition here, the truth value of which you do not know, assume it as true and then conclude that that is any type of evidence. — Benkei

I just don't see where you get that from. It seems really clear in the paragraph you cite.

If there is an HIV gene in coronavirus that is evidence — boethius

I'm saying here is that "if there is an HIV gene in coronavirus that is evidence"; in other words, a fact of the case.

(and, please note, I say "assuming this is true" in my analysis) — boethius

I was analyzing the Nobel Laureates argument, of which my first step is to see if it's sound or not, and I conclude it's unsound (i.e. if the premise is true, the conclusion does not follow; it's pretty normal to assume the premises are true in prefacing an analysis of soundness; if the argument is sound, then validity becomes the next step to check; since I conclude it's not sound, I simply don't care about the premises).

However, simply because the argument is not sound does not render the purported facts that the argument is based on untrue and furthermore not-evidence.

This is all I'm explaining in saying:

that would need to be established if one wanted to argue that the virus was genetically engineered with HIV (if other evidence came to light, such as testimony of a researcher claiming they were involved in mixing HIV and coronavirus, it would of course be necessary to establish whether HIV genes really are in coronavirus in the first place, because it's important evidence to such an argument). — boethius

If it's true, then it's relevant evidence. This seems obvious to me for the reason I explain.

I'm making an "if" based statement: If it is true, it would have some relevance and be counted as evidence, as it's plausibly connected to the case.

This is in contrast to things that are true but don't have any plausible connection to the case (i.e. "the moon orbits the earth" I think we would agree is true, but also agree is not evidence in the coronavirus origins case), and also in contrast to things that are simply untrue (i.e. "Trump went on national television and admitted to personally creating coronavirus", I think we would agree is false and therefore not evidence because it is simply not a fact).

Again, you seem to just want to gatekeep what counts as evidence and so what arguments are allowed to be made in the first place. I am simply doing no such gatekeeping. If facts are consistent with a theory, I'm willing to admit that those facts are consistent with the proposed theory, why pretend otherwise. If the theory is plausibly connected to the origins of coronavirus I am willing to label such facts "evidence". Doesn't make the theory true, but if I'm not able to rule it out then the facts it's based on seem to me relevant evidence in the case (i.e. something we would want to keep a note of in the event further evidence starts to confirm the theory in question).

If you have no issue with any of my analysis, that your only issue is with labeling things evidence until "the case is closed" and we know the truth and can thus separate the relevant facts from the irrelevant (i.e. make a box of the "evidence that proved the case"), then I'd have no problem keeping to the more rigorous terminology of "potential evidence"; that everything that is a fact and plausibly connected to the case, has merely only the "potential" to become "evidence" in the event the case can be closed and we can go through the "evidence locker" and throw out all the details that turned out to be irrelevant (i.e. throw out the "evidence" from the "evidence locker" that we no longer need and therefore is "not evidence"). But if that's our disagreement, it seems your issue is with your own profession and not with me; it seems simply the case that detectives and lawyers claim to be "collecting evidence" and do not scrupulously stick to the more rigorous "collecting potential evidence" to put in the "potential evidence locker" to then "throw out potential evidence that turns out not to be actual evidence"; and so, evidence is used both in the context of "potential evidence to make a given case provided further evidence comes to light that proves it" (which is inclusive of everything that might be relevant) as well as in the context of "the case was proven based on this body of evidence" (which is exclusive of the things that turned out to be irrelevant). I completely agree that a profession which prides itself on rigorous thinking simply makes a fool of itself in using the word evidence to have different extension referents in different contexts and in the same case (before and after it is closed), and it is this sloppy non-rigorous diction that gives rise to the idea that "there's evidence that supports an argument" being true can be seen to imply, to the general public, that "the argument is the most likely because there is evidence" (i.e. the legal community has setup the opportunity for bait-and-switch fallacy on the ambiguity of the meaning of evidence; a crime? I think that is a case here we can settle).