Well, Mary was meant to be... I guess ironic, but the other two were serious. — T Clark

What is the irony in mentioning Mary?

In a way, I'm not sure one can say Jesus was the founder of Christianity, let alone his mother.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph certainly had something to do with Christianity. He was the central character in the story, but... he died early--way before "Christianity" came into existence. Risen from the dead? Sitteth at the right hand of God? So they say.

If we are looking for a founder, Paul comes much closer. The real "founders" were people long removed from Jerusalem in time and space. The founders saw that the testimony they had received from a previous time required an institution in which to house it. That institution was the "church".

If this is in some way accurate, then I think it is also the likely route by which the church came into existence--not by divine fiat, but by necessity, later on. The gap between Jesus and the church is the location of a great deal of Christianity's complexities or contradictions. What Jesus had to say was, as far as we can tell, pretty straight-forward. Paul, less so. The later the writer, the less straight forward and the more peripheral the issues were that got mixed in.

This is a touchy subject because it has reference to sexist ideology. — L'éléphant

Touchy and tricky. Tricky because we tend to make generalizations about the differences and similarities of men and women without having a whole lot of proof. I'm not sure, for instance, whether men and women grieve differently or not. Aside from surveys, I'm not sure how one would find out. Experienced therapists might have some idea.

Then there is the question of whether it matters if they do grieve differently, if both find relief in the process.

Some people say that women are better conversationalists than men. I think that's true, but... so what? I think gay men are better conversationalists than straight men, but again, so what?

Women are clearly socialized one way; men are clearly socialized another way. Does one have to be better than the other? Is one better than the other?

No women have founded a religion — Agent Smith

Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science, the Christian Science Monitor, and wrote Science and Health with Keys to the Scripture.

Mother Ann Lee founded the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, AKA the Shakers.

The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism — Apollodorus

Russell wrote that in 1920, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution.

I've been Reading Richard Overy's The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain between the Wars. At that time, between WWI and WWII, there was a lot of doubt in various circles about the future of capitalism. A lot of people, following Marx and others, thought that Capitalism was bad, and on its last legs. If it was doomed, it still wasn't clear when, exactly, it would collapse. Many of these people thought that socialism was the natural and humane successor to capitalism. It was difficult for intellectuals (including economists) to decide what, exactly was going on. Clearly, what was happening was not good -- especially after 1929.

Some feared that the conclusion of capitalism would not be socialism, but barbarism. Especially in the 1930s, that must have seems increasingly likely.

Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind ...

A lot of British progressives were at least pro-socialist and some were pro-Bolshevik, or pro-communist. This was still early in the future USSR's revolutionary history. On the other hand, the state of capitalism which was in front of their eyes was not good. Rising unemployment, underemployment, and poverty were ruining many lives. it didn't seem like the ruling class (where the wealth was) were competent to deal with the problems at hand. Indeed, many economic advisors were not sure what should/could be done.

Faulkner's aphorism that "The past is never dead. It's not even past" seems truer as I get older. No, I don't think our situation is like the 1920s or 1930s. But in the face of global warming and rampant viral infections, one has to wonder whether the existing establishment is up to the task of governing effectively. It's clearer in 2022 than it was in 1932 what we should be doing -- but we don't seem to be able to do it (cut CO2 emissions significantly now--something we should have done 30 years ago).

This church is not diverse. But then, it's a liturgical Lutheran church, and most Lutherans (never mind Hare Krishnas) do not like liturgical worship--chanting the psalms, singing the Eurcharist liturgy, etc. It's all in the Lutheran Book of Worship--more honored by Lutherans in the breach than in the observance.

Officially, we desire diversity. Just about every church does--officially. But not really, and that's OK. The benefit of diversity for diversity's sake is slight. Neighborhoods that operate like concentration camps (the ghettos) are bad too. But just moving people out of the ghetto to dilute the demographics of both the ghetto and the suburb probably doesn't accomplish much. It is thought (by some reformers) that poor children perform in school better IF they and their families live amongst people who value and perform education, have regular jobs, mow their lawn, and so forth.

I've read some of the research, and it sounds plausible--which isn't the same thing as likely. Whether it works or not clearly would depend on a cluster of disparate factors. It all gets very complicated very fast, at best. At worst, the project blows up.

like Vivaldi's Four Seasons and such. Not Stravinsky. — baker

Stravinsky reportedly said, "Vivaldi didn't write 500 concertos; he wrote the same concerto 500 times."

The quip is established enough that a 1986 book—Bach, Beethoven, and the Boys by David W. Barber—riffed on it: “People who find [Vivaldi’s] music too repetitious are inclined to say that he wrote the same concerto 450 times. This is hardly fair: he wrote two concertos, 225 times each.”

Or

"Even someone as informed as pianist/musicologist Charles Rosen attributed the quote to him [Stravinsky] when asked which composer he found most overrated:

“I'm tired of [Vivaldi]. Stravinsky once said that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto 500 times. I disagree. Instead, I think he began 500 concertos and never achieved anything in them. So he kept trying over and over again without ever quite succeeding.”
—Charles Rosen to The New York Times, 1987

The most they can do is "enjoy" some piece in their dark corner. They can be consumers, and nothing more. A nameless, faceless mass. — baker

It would be clinically interesting to know more about the source of such opinions as this that you expose to the right of day.

Classical music now mostly strikes me as pretty things that are ultimately vain and serve no wholesome purpose. — baker

If all the classical music heaped up over the centuries serves "no wholesome purpose", what in God's name does? That many people find classical boring, I can understand. Some of it bores people who love classical music.

One is not supposed to speak ill of the dead. I haven't heard any rules against speaking for them.

The body brain and physical world can reappear again after a new big bang. How much we don't like this, it will still happen. — Raymond

That's what you think.

Or the way we treat many animals and plants. Still lots to improve with feminism, racism, classism and things we can't even see are wrong. — Manuel

Last week I was at a church discussion group for which the the topic was racial discrimination. Someone asked the question, "Why do people practice discrimination in housing--discouraging blacks from becoming their neighbors?"

People like to group themselves by similarity of race, class, culture, politics, sexual preference... The church at which the discussion took place exemplifies this grouping--Northern European, "middle class", well educated, Lutheran. Likely we evolved this tendency to 'stick to our own kind'. Is that a bug or is it a feature? I think the latter.

Urban dwellers tend to prefer the variety of the city--racial, class, politics, foodways, etc--but they also tend to maintain boundaries of race, class, culture, and so on. Hence, different kinds of neighborhoods. Some people prefer suburban environments where demographics are homogeneous.

I've always preferred the city (because I grew up in a very small town), but I think the suburban are wrongly criticized for being monotonous, boring, all-the-same, racist enclaves, and so on. 25% of the US population lives in suburbs. 40% of blacks live in suburbs. They like where they live. Are 80,000,000 Americans wrong? I don't think so. (There was a musical, "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong). 31% of Americans live in large cities. They aren't wrong either. Different strokes for different folks.

Concentrations of similar people, be they blacks, whites, asians, gays, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists, singles, and so forth provide the necessary demographic density to build up particular cultures. Similar people who are too widely scattered have difficulty doing that.

Manuel, don't take this too personally. Your post simply provided the opportunity to fulminate. Blessed are they who provide the opportunity to preach,

his societies quite appalling views — Manuel

Yet he was also a racist. — Manuel

But, if we are going to have the standards we have today, apply to the important figures of the past, we won't read anything. — Manuel

You are quite right about wrongly applying contemporary values to the past. Our contemporary values aren't so settled that they can be called universal. We probably should not say "his society's quite appalling views" unless the people of the time thought the views were appalling. Hume died in 1776. According to Google Ngram, the noun "race" appeared in print before 1700, and had little in common with our use of the term. "Race" could apply to the ancestors of Angus, a Scottish family, for example. The adjectives "racist", "racism", and "racial" scarcely appear in print until the middle of the 20th century. Our categories were not the categories of Hume's time.

The founders of the Imperial College of London, Thomas Henry Huxley (Darwin's Bulldog) and Alfred Beit, a German Jew who richly endowed the Imperial College, are being scrutinized for rejection because they fail the test of purity--the same test that most people prior to the 21st Century (if then) would fail--the test of having the proper progressive anti-racist views of the present moment. Read all about here: Quillette.

In 2222, the participants of The Philosophy Forum may look back to our time and say, "The people of 2022 had appalling views about artificial intelligence and mechanized beings." (In their time, "humanist", "humane", and "humanism" -- never mind David Hume -- had come to mean something much different, much more negative and socially destructive, than those words mean to us.) Are the superiority pricks of 2222 better than the superiority pricks of 2022? No.

Who made the "defaced" painting? — Raymond

"Either way, the piece, “Untitled,” by John Andrew Perello, the graffiti artist known as JonOne, is now a magnet for selfies. And on social media, South Koreans are debating what the vandalism illustrates about art, authorship and authenticity."

The piece was valued at $400,000. Don't now who determined its value.

I think the after you die bacteria, enzymes, creepy crawlies, and maybe larger animals break the body down into its most digestible forms and when that is all done, one's substance is taken up into other organisms.

For the individual there is nothing, then there is life, then there is nothing. Everything that composed one's life -- muscle, senses, memories, ideas, dreams, fears, hopes... disappears forever.

My view rules out the existence of an after life; it doesn't rule out the existence of God. Perhaps God thinks that one life is sufficient, is gift enough. I haven't checked with God on that point. I don't find the idea of an eternal life all that attractive.

The "art market" is not eternal. A lot of stuff has been bought at high prices, and may or may not hold value. "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

It may well be the case that some art work will remain very expensive, and that some presently expensive art will lose a lot of its cash value.

Whatever happens, the cash value of art is mostly a concern of the buyers of art and their heirs. You want to spend $100,000,000 on one art work? Well, if you have the cash, go right ahead. After the revolution we will confiscate all your stuff anyway. Take good care of it in the meantime. (This applies only to rich people. 99% of us do not come close to that category.)

Plato wrote about Spartan society mainly, which the Greeks looked in very high regard — Shawn

Sparta had a higher percentage of slaves per master than Athens. Does that speak well for Plato? (This is just getting back to the issue of master/slave, stratification, etc.)

In the ancient world there was considerably more social stratification, and the hoi polloi were held in low regard. — Wayfarer

Wayfarer is correct. The classical cultures were stratified, but did not have many layers in the strata. There was the top, a small middle, a big base. Being in the base didn't necessarily mean immiseration. Being a slave, depending on one's role, didn't mean immiseration either. Some slaves were "white collar" workers, so to speak (Nobody wore collars back then). They were also managers, scholars, teachers, etc. Keep in mind, though, that a scholar slave was once a free scholar. What would you prefer being? Most slaves just had to work. Sounds like. total drag to me. Still, Rome was more heterogeneous than Athens.

Ancient societies, in general, were not 'free and open', Shawn. Whenever people start waxing enthusiastic about Rome, I wish I could go back in time with them to see what it was actually like.

Why do you think Aristotle made humanity too dependent on magnanimous men from-which one would derive some privileged status over your brothers and sisters, as seen in the form of master-slave relations or slavery to state it explicitly (according to Russell)? — Shawn

Look first to the society they lived in. Greece was not egalitarian. Privileged men played leading roles at the top of the heap with not too many in the middle, and a lot at the broad base. Not only did they practice slavery, but anyone unfortunate to be bankrupted or captured in battle could become a slave.

Were Plato and Aristotle abolitionists? Who was their Lincoln? Slave was then and would remain for centuries, the status of many, many people--between 5 and 10 million.

Also, there was a LOT of water under the bridge between Plato & Aristotle and the Medieval period, like the Roman Empire, Jesus, Paul, and Holy Mother Church. (BTW, Dark Ages is not considered a proper term any more--not out of political correctness, but because the medieval period just wasn't a "dark age". As scholars study it more, they find that there was quite a bit of good stuff going on.)

I had a Gary Oldman moment, like here, in The Professional, starting at 2.40. — baker

Sorry, I don't get it.

I only need to remember my music teacher and my literature teacher from elementary school! And then some teachers from college, and the general attitude among the academics and the intelligentsia. In their view, people like me are not able to "genuinely" like the music. I mean, there are essays and other texts written on how people from lesser socio-economic classes (ie. "peasants") can have only a shallow and sentimental understanding of art. One of my college professors convinced me to never go anywhere near a theatre again or to read a book by a notable author. — baker

Your paragraph perfectly captures the view of 'the elite'. I remember, with dismay, a professor at university (19th c. American lit) saying that literature was the business of an elite coterie, a clique. This statement seemed then (1967) to be discordant with the popular '60s mood.

Your concert hall experience tells me you have much better ears than I did, once upon a time. And you were diligent in your preparation to hear formal music -- something I never was.

"The peasants", like goats, need the hay put down where they can get at it, not locked up in art barns. My guess is that if you took small art shows to the local mall, staged concerts of formal music in neighborhood venues, sent acting companies on the road to small towns, etc. "the people" would be responsive audiences. This wouldn't happen over night. Someone raised on rap and nothing but won't be ready for the full court press of 'high' art. Give it time.

but we we're always at the cheapest seats high up many times on the last row sweating. — ssu

Seats so far from the stage that it's the next best thing to not being there!

Part of the problem is the rectangular design of a lot of concert barns (halls). The wall opposite the stage will be distant. The side balconies close to the stage have partial views. 1/3 of the hall is cheap sats for a reason--people with enough cash won't sit there.

Concert halls don't have to be rectangular barns. Rounded designs can provide better sight lines and reduce distance from the performers. Smaller might be better.

I enjoy first-class orchestra concerts once in a while (too expensive to do often). However, the pleasure I have obtained from small concerts in more intimate settings like small churches with good acoustics, or even places that don't have great acoustics, has been just as good if not better. Semi-professional groups can deliver splendid performances. University orchestras can deliver great results, sometimes in free (!) concerts.

I wonder if your system would be compulsory or not, and what you’d do to those who refuse. — NOS4A2

The Revolution has to occur before one can think about creating an economy based on voluntary cooperation. Without a prior revolution of thinking among the people, cooperation will end up being forced. You don't want that / I don't want that.

I come from a religious upbringing, and to me "a voluntary cooperative economy" has the same rhetorical flavor as the Kingdom of God. It would be the final and best arrangement for humankind, Despite a religious upbringing, I do not expect God to intervene on socialism's behalf and assist in the establishment of socialism -- or to even lift so much as a hair on our behalf. Humans have to do this on our own, period.

We are capable of conducting voluntary cooperation in a small group for a limited period of time (maybe 3 dozen people for a week or two). We have not evolved the ability to do this in a population of several hundred million. Lock 36 people into a room and they will quickly conclude (with Sartre) that hell is other people.

Our hunter-gatherer forebears were apparently able to sustain voluntary cooperation for millennia. They had a couple of things going for them that we do not: a) they had lots of space to spread out in; b) they weren't compacted enough to get on each other's nerves. c) They presumably had pretty clearly defined roles -- one hunted (roles with that) or one gathered (roles within that). c) Because they were mobile, they didn't accumulate a lot of stuff or to have arguments about who owned what. d) Life presented enough outside threats (lions, tigers, and bears...) to help maintain solidarity. e) On the other hand, life was (apparently) good enough that they didn't have to work all that hard to be healthy (their bones indicate good health).

We predictably get on each other's nerves; our roles are fuzzy or conflicting; we are burdened with stuff; clear and present existential threats are much less common for us than vague, impending forms of possible doom, under which solidarity cracks; we work very hard (probably to no good end much of the time) and are often kind of sickly. We suspect that we are going to get preternaturally screwed.

@Schopenhauer1 Most of my work years were spent in non-enterprise operations: non-profit agencies, universities, and the like. Only occasionally did I work in business and that was through temp agencies. Most of the time I didn't like the jobs I had. If they lasted more than a 3 or 4 years, they became routinized and boring. I liked starting things better than maintaining them.

But whether a workplace was business or non-profit made little difference. Employees were generally viewed as interchangeable means rather than ends. Hierarchy worked exactly the same in both kinds of employment. Control was the name of the game. A lot of work was terminally boring and tedious, and should have been performed by machines. (As time goes on, more of it IS being done by machines.)

Work seemed like a theft of my time. Much of the day (more than 8 hours, more like 12) was spent getting ready for work, getting to work, working, returning from work, and unwinding from work. That left too little time to just BE.

The job that I liked the most combined the joy of being with the satisfaction of collaboration at work and recognition. It involved outreach work in the gay community during the early years of AIDS. The job was fairly difficult, loosely supervised (of necessity, it involved outside work away from the agency office), and was very fulfilling. it was a fulfilling place for most others, as well. We didn't feel exploited.

Exploitation of workers (by corporation, state, or non-profit) requires everything that makes work unpleasant: hierarchy, control, tedium, devaluation. Management theory recognizes the fact that if managers don't keep a tight grip on the work place, the workers will take control (bit by bit, not a revolution). Hierarchy and control will be lost. Crackdowns will be required to regain control; people will be fired (not just at the bottom of the heap); and production (of widgets, statistics, paper flows... something) will be lost.

The Great Question is this: Can one have a socialist workplace without hierarchy, control, tedium, and devaluation of workers? IF you can't, then there much less reason to hope for the revolution.

What makes you think that this isn't a problem solved more by antinatalism than it does by communism? — schopenhauer1

Antinatalism solves all problems by eventually eliminating the species that thinks about problems. I'm in favor of being. Were I in favor of non-being I could become a militant anti-natalist. I don't equate anti-natalist with some sort of death wish. Apparently you do not either, since you are an active forum participant when you could be, with just a little effort, in a box 6 feet under.

(It’s a damned shame Americans prefer German socialism to Henry George’s ideas, which are these days relatively unknown). — NOS4A2

I'm not familiar with Henry George; I'll check him out. Are you familiar with Daniel DeLeon, an American socialist; started the Socialist Labor Party, which in some sort of embalmed state still exists. DeLeon believed that democratic nations offered democratic avenues to socialism -- the revolution could be accomplished through organization, politics, militant unionism, and the vote.

I learned about DeLeon through the New Union Party (defunct after 25 years or so). Another American socialist Eugene Debs, who was actually a popular socialist--just not among the Wall Street set.

American Capitalists were united in detesting, abhorring, and hating socialist ideas and through various means, many foul, did everything they could to discredit and suppress socialist organizing (and this separate from Communist Party-USA suppression which was even more aggressive). American Capitalists have also been united in wishing that their workers were not, or never would be unionized, and they have made continuous efforts to discourage, disrupt, or if need be, destroy unions.

So, there are reasons why so few workers are unionized; so very few people have read any socialist theory (like Debs, Deleon, et al). There are reasons why people have difficult even imagining an economy not organized around capitalism.

What I’d worry about, though, is what you’d do to those who don’t want to take part in it, or seek to make their living from your property. — NOS4A2

One would hope that such an idea would be as disreputable as statism is to you. If "the revolution" was successful--and not just a rearrangement of the deck chairs--people's thinking would be different.

I do not look to the USSR as a model to emulate, rather as a model to avoid. Ditto for China, Cuba, Albania, etc.

In studies of animals, the researchers (and their followers) usually forget the role of the specific relationship between the particular animal and the particular human that are being observed. — baker

Good point, IF there is a relationship between the observer and the observed. Even in formal lab situations (with dogs, at least) it is hard to imagine that experimenters would have zero relationship whatsoever with the subjects.

Have you heard of the movie "Stray", a documentary about stray dogs in Istanbul. "The trio are the focus of new documentary “Stray” which depicts daily life in Istanbul through the eyes of three dogs that roam its streets, searching for food, wandering along the Bosphorus and stumbling upon a women's rights march" among other things. They interact with people IF there appears to be something in it for them. Otherwise, they are just part of the traffic, and they don't seem prone to aggressive behaviors.

can you have a hardworking owner/executive class though? Is it just "hard work" that justifies ownership? That is what this implies. — schopenhauer1

Every society has hardworking people in it, whether the society and its economy are primitive, pre-industrial, post-industrial, agrarian, nomadic capitalistic, urban, rural, socialistic--what ever the organization and level of development. Working hard--stretching one's self--is something that some people want to do--and do do. Back in the day, some people made more and better stone tools than anyone else. They happened to be very good at it. Capitalism didn't invent hard work and striving.

In some circumstances hard work in the form of fighting has justifies ownership. "This land is our land, it's not your land, stay the fuck off this land, else we'll put a rock/spear/arrow/bullet through you!"

Outside of force, which is hard to argue with, I am not sure how we justify the relationship that we call "ownership", "possession". Clearly this is not something that 99.9% of the G20 countries' people worried about. It's taken for granted -- like the existence of "states". We could say it comes from God, but let's not. Let's move on.

"Capitalism" isn't like gravity or Newton's laws of motion. It was invented by people, and people wrote law to shape and manage the operation of capitalistic activity. The people who did this (over generations) started with the idea of ownership as a fundamental right and a justification for doing other things. Ownership was taken to be "natural". Ownership is its own justification. I can own land, buildings, machines, gold, jewels, ideas, and so on. I can even (in some past systems) own people. They were property just like cattle. I can hire you, Schop, to make widgets, and it will be me, Schop, and not you, who owns the widgets you make.

So get back to work, Schop: you are 20 widgets behind, and it's costing me money. What do you think this is, a fucking country club or something? I don't care that you are hungry, tired, bored, sore, lonely. You agreed to make widgets, and by god, I want them made!

The act of managing resources for the common wealth would require a monopoly on the resources, a cabal of managers to govern it, and an army of workers to till for it. I’d — NOS4A2

The USSR was a monopolistic state capitalist organization. So, we know something about that kind of organization. Workers didn't have any more power there than they had in the anti-labor USA.

Managers there will be; last I heard, "manager" was not an obscenity.

A production council, an elected body, will set production objectives. X number of wind turbines, X number of storage batteries, X miles of transmission lines and so on. A socialist factory making large storage batteries, owned by the workers, will have to assign skilled workers to the tasks of procurement -- cobalt, lithium, other metals, plastics, chemicals, and so forth. They would liaise with workers' organizations who specialize in procurement.

Just as in a capitalist economy, there would be material flows through the country. Unmilled wheat from North Dakota to New York; bagels from New York to Chicago. Lox from Alaska to Chicago. Cream cheese from Wisconsin to Chicago. All for the purpose of offering you a bagel with lox or cream cheese.

How would a workers' food service in Chicago know how much lox to order? Demand. Supply. Food service workers in Waco, Texas wouldn't bother ordering lox. Nobody in Waco has ever heard of lox. Bratwurst from Sheboygan, certainly. And bathroom fixtures from Sheboygan too -- from the worker owned former Kohler porcelain factory.

I don't see a monopoly in this -- or capitalism.

Yes, if my unmanageable hair gets into my eyes and causes me to crash my car, then bad hair = bad health.

But really, a system that doesn’t consider managing capital is unimaginable — NOS4A2

Absolutely. A socialist system would have to manage it's capital resources too -- mines, factories, land, ports, and so on. The difference is that socialists manage resources for the common wealth, and capitalists manage resources for the creation of their own wealth.

“Capitalism” has always been a collectivist bugaboo — NOS4A2

to the same extent that "Socialism" has always been a capitalist bugaboo.

Why should I really abide by that defintion? Am I not at liberty to subscribe to any other classification of how people relate to wealth in society, and how their lot in life is determined by that? — god must be atheist

Liebchen, you can subscribe to whatever system of classification you want. There are market research systems of classification that divide the population up into as many 40 classes, depending on where they live, what they buy, what their aspirations are, who their neighbors tend to be, and so on. Could you use those? Sure! It's just unwieldy to deal with a system of 40 different classes. Some sociologists have subdivided the 3 main groups into 9 classes -- lower working class, middle working class, upper working class, lower middle class, on up to upper upper (the top).

One of the problems of "working class" is that it takes maybe... 290,000,000 people (just in the US) and puts them all in the same class. As "employees" of "capitalists" (maybe... 30,000,000 people in the US) all these people have many, many different characteristics above and beyond being exploited. An atheist gay exploited worker living downtown probably looks at the world differently than a fundamentalist married exploited worker with 5 children living in the suburbs. At least, I most sincerely hope the gay guy looks at the world differently.

So, lumping a few billion souls into "worker" obviously misses a lot. So, liebchen, why do we do it, anyway?

Because "working" is such a fundamental part of life. The terms under which we do it makes a tremendous amount of difference in the way we live our lives. A small farmer might be considered a small businessman. Or he might be considered a slave to the inflexible needs of his 35 cows, the schedule of crop planting, cultivation, and harvest, and the market. A low level functionary in any organization (millions of people) has a different experience than the few million night guards who have a little more executive autonomy.

Per @Schopenhauer1, life sucks. It will always suck to some extent no matter what kind of econo-socio-politico system we have, because the means of existence have to be extracted from the earth by hard work, whether you own it or not.

The hope of socialists, communists... whatever, is to eliminate the portion of hard work that goes to producing a profit for people who don't do a whole lot of work at all.

:100: Bravo!

The government and NGOs, as well as survey companies keep track of all sorts of statistics about stuff that can be counted. The government is the starting source for a lot of the stats one reads, about everything from vegetable consumption to wealth distribution: The Bureau of Labor Statistics; the US Census Bureau; The Federal Reserve (quasi-governmental organization that manages the banking system); the Department of the Treasury; the Department of Labor; and the Agriculture Department all look at population and income.

The government publishes the information it gathers. The Federal Reserve, for instance, is charged with maintaining employment at a high level and maintaining inflation at a low level (about 2%). It does this with, among other things, the Prime Interest Rate -- the rate it charges banks to borrow money. In order to do this effectively, it has to know what is happening within the economy on a fairly detailed level. Hence, it's statistical output.)

All the statistics that are turned out do not have the same status as The Word of God, but for all practical purposes, it's the next best thing. The graph below is based on the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, 2017. "Equitable Growth" is an NGO and is not the source of the table's data.

Thought it was a dying breed. — Raymond

It pretty much is.

You keep going after the VERY large CEOs and Board of Director types and NOT the small business owner that started out let's say by himself and grew from there — schopenhauer1

Parsing out the share of GDP derived from arms with revenues of more than 1 billion dollars, and those with fractions of that is possible but I don't want to spend a lot of time doing it now. However, there is this:

"The business sector overall contributes 72 percent of GDP in the OECD, and corporations with more than $1 billion in revenue account for an increasingly large share of that."

Newly founded companies tend to grow fast, attract fresh investments, and (sometimes) deliver new products and services that didn't exist before. Old companies keep on keeping on, whether that's Macy's, Ford, Mitsubishi, Royal Dutch Shell, CBS, Whirlpool, or what have you. I talk about "large corporations" because everyone is familiar with them. You have heard of 3M -- Scotch tape or Post-It notes, headquartered in St. Paul, MN. #90 in the Fortune 500 list. You probably haven't heard of HBFuller Company in St. Paul which makes specialized adhesives and coatings. They are not in the Fortune 500 list--they are 786. There are many small companies all over the country, worth at least a few million, some started by go-getter entrepreneurs; some are new, some are old. Too many, too varied.

It doesn't matter. Since you want a commie's opinion, here it is: Company-starting whizzes are simply engaged in the act of "original accumulation" -- making their first big pile of money. Their relationship to their workers may be even more exploitative than the old companies' relationships to their workers. Or not -- like I said, it varies. But new companies are still expropriating the product of the workers who are not receiving the full value of what they produce.

So, maybe you have a soft spot in your heart for some small businesses, and it makes you sad thinking about them being taken over by the workers. Well... tough. The entrepreneurs aren't going to starve -- they will just be workers like everybody else, and entitled to the full share of what they produce -- but not more (like when they owned the company).

Good! That's what I'm talking about. Now, QM and multiple universes are way beyond my ken. Other people here will share your joy in this.

Material well-being or ownership of means of production? — schopenhauer1

Material well being is the end, ownership of the means of production is the means.

I agree that the term "middle class" as tossed about in media and in political speeches is meaningless. Yes, it's a cudgel. It's also the case that a lot of 'professional' middle class people, like doctors, lawyers, professors, etc. are essentially "entrepreneurs" working in medical, legal, and academic businesses.

But... I still think that there is a class of [whatever one wants to call them] who are not wage or salary slaves, and are not in positions where their status can be changed by a supervisor. (A tenured prof, for one, an entrepreneur who is head of his or her company).

It's also the case that many very "middle class" jobs, like doctor, have been "degraded" into salary positions which are not all that secure. A private practice is one thing, but when the clinic and insurance company tell you to see one patient every 6.3 minutes, you are definitely a worker.

In other words, everyone is comfortable enough.. Would that be essentially the end goal, or does it involve taking down the power differentials altogether whereby the owner class must be removed. — schopenhauer1

The end goal is a decent life.

Yes, the owner class has to go. Power differentials are a current obsession, and real enough. My reason for taking down the owner class is that they are, essentially, parasites. They have the lion's share of the wealth without doing anything to earn it, In fact, it is inconceivable that they could do anything to earn it -- the amount of wealth they own is to great to find justification.

Comfortable enough, yes. Everybody have a boat at the marina? No. Everybody have two or three undocumented workers serving as household help? No. Everybody have a McMansion? No, Everybody drive a $60,000 to $80,000 car? No. Everybody fly to Bali for a friends wedding? No.

Raising the quality of life for the working class still has to be sustainable. So housing in which families are secure (won't be evicted)? Yes. Have access to a healthy diet of quality food? Yes. Have access to quality public transit? Yes. Have security in their employment (won't be laid off for arbitrary reasons or to enhance profit)? Yes. Have access to quality education? Yes. Have access to quality medical care? Yes. Work no more than necessary to maintain the collective quality of life (as opposed to profitability)? Yes.