You need to be educated, my friend. I'm not talking about changes in conditions, technological advancements, more and better data, I'm talking about some actual teleological (verifiable?) improvement / advancement in the human condition. Can you site that? Give me a horror of the middle ages and I'll show you the equal today.

I'm not talking about changes in conditions, technological advancements, more and better data, I'm talking about some actual teleological (verifiable?) improvement / advancement in the human condition. — Monitor

You mean like Sweden's recidivism rate for prisoners? You mean like the measurable success of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy? You mean like, Attachment Theory tracing many pathologies back to early childhood, thereby figuring out how to prevent these problems through the intelligent cultivation of healthy attachment relations?

It's your idea in your terminology so, of course, it would (and should) seem quite understandable to you. Abstractions can be brilliant while we spin them our own heads. Once we spill them out on 'paper', the brilliance sometimes vanishes.

Give me a horror of the middle ages and I'll show you the equal today. — Monitor

This is a tragic and fallacious standard that assumes violence and cruelty merely arise from some fictional, metaphysical nature in man, when in reality, any horror we could cite would also have a sociological history that brought it into being. These things are not like asteroids hitting the earth (although even that has a causal history). What you have here articulated is basically Nihilism. It is in no way impressive to arrive at a false positive through the projection of a false negative.

I'm curious. Help me out here guy. — Outlander

With pleasure.
Everyone, including communists, agrees that people who make great contributions to society should be rewarded. But disagreements begin when two questions are asked: Why and how?

I will summarize the problem as to why:
Should they be rewarded because society owes them morally or as an incentive for their work?

As to how:
Should they be rewarded with material goods or is fame and honor enough?
If they are material goods, to what extent? What can these people demand without producing greater damage than the benefit they have contributed?

I don't know if the questions I ask are clearifying. I think that asking the right questions helps a lot. Do mine help?

NOTE: Your criticism of socialism suggests that capitalism is a sort of meritocracy. This is an untenable thesis. So what existing political system do you think is a meritocracy?

This is a tragic and fallacious standard that assumes violence and cruelty merely arise from some fictional, metaphysical nature in man, when in reality, any horror we could cite would also have a sociological history that brought it into being. These things are not like asteroids hitting the earth (although even that has a causal history). What you have here articulated is basically Nihilism. It is in no way impressive to arrive at a false positive through the projection of a false negative. — JerseyFlight

This is exactly the kind of gibberish you have been complaining about others posting

What you say doesn't help at all. It is absolutely unspecific.

That seems irrelevant, it would still be human nature. — Isaac

It is not irrelevant, because in one case one type of law will apply and in another case different laws will apply. Only if there are laws in history. — David Mo

By what force do those laws apply? The only actors in human history are humans and their environment. We either respond to that environment in a predictable way or we respond to that environment in a random way.

If we respond to that environment in a random way then no suggestions about how to effect human well-being should even be considered, we might as well toss a coin, manipulate the environment in random ways because our response to it is random and unpredictable. If this is the case then we might well institute what Marx suggests, his predictions might well be right, but if they were it would be by chance alone.

If, on the other hand, we respond to the environment in predictable ways then we can both predict the course of history, and we can make useful suggestions for how changes to our environment will have positive/negative impacts on us. Only in this second case is prediction and policy-making of any use.

In this second case, however, we have acknowledged that there is such a thing as human nature - the tendency to respond in some given way to some given environmental stimuli.

None of this is contradicted by the fact that one of those environmental stimuli we respond to is the actions of others, nor that one of those responses might be to learn/habituate a new, different, response. These are still themselves stimuli and responses, our malleability is still a facet of human nature (it could have been otherwise) and it has limits - themselves a facet of human nature.

If we are completely malleable without parameters, then there is no point in carrying out (or advocating) any policy over and above stoicism. We might as well simply train ourselves to be happy with the way things are, why bother trying to change them?

I think you're arguing against a point I'm not even making. It's very simple - any prediction about the response of human social groups to some environmental condition (including the activities of that social group, and including learning to respond differently) either presumes there is a 'nature' of such groups - a tendency to act in certain ways in response to certain stimuli - or it is left with no mechanism by which its current state is predictably transformed into the future state.

Well, that's OK. I was just suggesting that abstractions aren't always as understandable as we might like to think. If it doesn't help, it doesn't help. Anyway, I wasn't trying "to fix you".

If we respond to that environment in a random way then no suggestions about how to effect human well-being should even be considered, we might as well toss a coin, manipulate the environment in random ways because our response to it is random and unpredictable. — Isaac

If, on the other hand, we respond to the environment in predictable ways then we can both predict the course of history, and we can make useful suggestions for how changes to our environment will have positive/negative impacts on us. — Isaac

In this second case, however, we have acknowledged that there is such a thing as human nature — Isaac

I'm not clear about what you say in the first scenario. Anyway, Marx would point to the second assumption with the nuances I already made.

I'm not sure if he believed that there is such a thing as human nature. Engels did. But what he believed--Engels did--is that the laws of biology are not sufficient to explain human society and history. I think so too. That means that although history is made by men (hence their strength), they make it within the conditions and laws imposed by social structures. There is a famous text of the Theses on Feuerbach that says so and now I remember. There I could have reservations that some Marxists would accept and others would not. So I don't know if Marx would accept them.

Comparison: animal bodies are composed of atoms. Atoms are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, but I do not believe that the laws of evolution are those of quantum mechanics.

I hope the comparison is useful to you. But that's why appealing to human nature to justify capitalism doesn't make much sense. They are two different levels of reality.

On the combination between necessity and chance, according to Marx, I have already posted another comment recently.

I would say that it is a game between necessity and chance. — David Mo

Thank you. I was just saying that in case you wanted to discuss a specific point.

the laws of biology are not sufficient to explain human society and history. — David Mo

No one here is claiming that they are. The claim being contested is that there's no such thing as human nature, no statistical tendency to respond to stimuli in some given way (even if that is to alter one's subsequent response and even if part if those stimuli are the previous responses of other humans).

If you accept such a position you have to concede that the nature of this response is an empirical fact about humans, a fact which, if Marx were wrong about his assumptions of it, would render his theory wrong.

Marx needs to know how humans tend to behave to make the predictions he makes.

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

If you accept such a position you have to concede that the nature of this response is an empirical fact about humans, a fact which, if Marx were wrong about his assumptions of it, would render his theory wrong. — Isaac

Of course. Marx's theory has been falsified in several of his main predictions -with Popper's permission.

Marx needs to know how humans tend to behave to make the predictions he makes. — Isaac

This is very vague. Marx needed to know how economic structures determine the behavior of social groups. Other aspects of human behavior are indifferent to his theory because they are meaningless.

Marx needed to know how economic structures determine the behavior of social groups. Other aspects of human behavior are indifferent to his theory because they are meaningless. — David Mo

Yes, I didn't mean to imply that Marx needed to know everything there is to know about human behaviour. It strikes me as odd that you phrase it that way around. That economic structures determine the behaviour of social groups. Economic structures themselves are passive, they merely exist, they don't themselves determine anything. It's the necessities and responses of human social groups to them which determines their behaviour. It's like saying the gold seam in a mountain determines the mine.

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The thread does not refer to Marxists, but specifically to Marx.

True, the term Marxist, like almost all political terms, is quite ambiguous. But when someone claims to be a Christian, it's quite rare for him to be inspired by the Koran, isn't it? And communists who defend capitalism is a contradiction in terms. These are pretty obvious things. But conservative politicians want to put all communists in the same boat and attribute to them all the barbarities of some. This is very typical of political propaganda. This should be avoided in a serious discussion.

Not the same barbarities, just the same bad ideas. Besides, capitalists shouldn’t defend communists lest they lose ther capitalism membership, right?

Why? I don't care if you are conservative or liberal. After all, I'm not going out for a drink with you.

Fair enough. I’ll assume you are.

This is exactly the kind of gibberish you have been complaining about others posting — Monitor

Hard to know for sure from memory recall, but I don't think I have ever used the term "gibberish" on this forum, not that I'm opposed to it, I just don't think I've expressed myself this way. More to the point, what was it specifically in my reply that led you to classify it as "gibberish," aside from the obvious and emotional fact that you disagree with it?

This is a remarkable admission and confirms my hunch that you’re here not to learn or to discuss but to propagandize and exchange fallacies with your comrades. — whollyrolling

What in God's name, how on earth did you arrive at this from David Mo's confession of substance? I'm dumbfounded. One assumes too much, that those who contribute to this forum, are suited to the very task to which they aspire. This is clearly not the case. It is sadly obvious that some participants exempt themselves from intelligent discourse, thereby making it necessary to ignore them.

Another point I would want to make is that anthropological history is not necessarily relevant because the environmental factors are completely different now. One might for instance point to the more equalitarian societal structures of hunter-gatherers, but across the globe societies developed hierarchical and stratified societies independant of eachother as population grew larger after the agricultural revolution. I don't think that was some arbitrary fluke of history. It rather seems like it was a necessity to keep larger societies together. — ChatteringMonkey

My point was that values are multifaceted across history and are more often than not derived from alternative modes of production and the social relations that are organized around them (a point that Marx made as well). As such, contemporaries who claim that human nature is reducible to greed or competition is akin to a fish claiming that everything in under water. It's myopic.

Personally, I detest building or theorizing about a socio-economic system or a government based on some theory of human nature that's reducible to a specific state of mind or biologically-based interaction.

Personally, I detest building or theorizing about a socio-economic system or a government based on some theory of human nature that's reducible to a specific state of mind or biologically-based interaction. — Maw

Not just detest, but this is positively dangerous. It literally creates a negative society. However, this is pretty much the structure of the American system, and most certainly the atmosphere of its politics. Thinkers and Humanists are frighteningly outnumbered. When I meet theorists like yourself I am always interested to know, what you think needs to happen in society, in order to move it in an intelligent direction?

some theory of human nature — Maw

Erm.. I mean I'm the first one to encourage skepticism of mainstream history but.. pretty sure at least most of it happened lol. Kinda graduates past the "theory" stage really. Besides, wasn't your boy Marx talking about something along the lines of "the people want what they want (feels natural, doesn't feel totalitarian/government enforced) and will fight (damage people and property) for it" or some bit?

Thinkers and Humanists are frighteningly outnumbered. — JerseyFlight

Story of humanity. Not as bad today as it was before. You follow the law and don't attack people or property you won't get arrested/get a record and have your life ruined. Besides, do we really want all these geniuses running around trying to one-up each other? At least when average folk do it usually only one or a few people get hurt or worse. They do it, we'll probably end up with some doomsday devices that end up making nukes look like cherry bombs. Gotta look at the bright side of things.

Erm.. I mean I'm the first one to encourage skepticism of mainstream history but.. pretty sure at least most of it happened lol. Kinda graduates past the "theory" stage really. Besides, wasn't your boy Marx talking about something along the lines of "the people want what they want (feels natural, doesn't feel totalitarian/government enforced) and will fight (damage people and property) for it" or some bit? — Outlander

I don't understand what you are saying here.

Personally, I detest building or theorizing about a socio-economic system or a government based on some theory of human nature that's reducible to a specific state of mind or biologically-based interaction. — Maw

Allright, and I don't really care for building or theorizing about socio-economic systems based on any ideologically inspired dogma, which usually would include capitalist apologists and Marxists alike.

Not really a theory, mate. According to Marx as well it would seem...

The problem with what you say here is that the proletariat are not in the minority. Democracy just is the idea of majority rule, and the proletariat are in the majority (or at least they were in Marx's time and I would say, without checking stats, probably still are); so, in principle at least, there would seem to be no conflict between Marxism and democracy.

Hard to know for sure from memory recall, but I don't think I have ever used the term "gibberish" on this forum, not that I'm opposed to it, I just don't think I've expressed myself this way. More to the point, what was it specifically in my reply that led you to classify it as "gibberish," aside from the obvious and emotional fact that you disagree with it? — JerseyFlight

Gibberish was a poor choice of words for your response, but it would appear that you are not opposed to using that term for responses you disapprove of. I was reacting emotionally because you completely missed and misunderstood the point and implication of the Meliorism remark and that is exactly what you accuse other posters of doing to you, and you do it in an almost pedantic way that is irritating.

You aren't going to leave this forum for greener pastures, you are having too much fun castigating the sophists.

The Meliorism reference was off topic anyway and is better suited for another day.

the proletariat are in the majority (or at least they were in Marx's time and I would say, without checking stats, probably still are) — Janus

It seems hard to imagine the proletariat could possibly ever be a minority, as that would mean that a property-owning majority was somehow getting by on the labor of a minority. Hierarchy always seems to be a pyramid: it’s smaller at the top.

I guess maybe with technological advances it could be possible? E.g. about 5% of people today are engaged in the agricultural work that used to be 100% of the economy, so maybe somehow it could come to be that 95% of the people own 100% of the means of production and live off the labor of that remaining 5%?