A short description of 'market based economies' from a Marxist perspective.

Against market/competition/PROFIT driven society (capitalism):

My evaluation of Capitalist, market driven economy:

·         The competitive nature of capitalist society hinders technological progress, as the technology is not made to the best possible degree due to the competition between market leaders for profit, rather than collaboration for the improvement of society. E.g: no product is sold for it’s worth, rather for the maximum profit it can demand without protest. Due to this, Pharmaceutical corporations, rather than sharing their research with other companies, to faster achieve progress in development, will keep their knowledge in order to be the only supplier of a drug or treatment in the future so that they can maximise profits for themselves. Which surely is amoral, yet, in a market/competition based economy, it is the logical decision to restrict resources in order to increase their value, rather than try to attain abundance; which holds no promise of profit (e.g. If a gold mine produces more gold, they do not have more money, just the value of gold is decreased, so by restricting your supply of gold to others gold retains its value and maximum profit can be achieved) .

·         In this sense, corruption and amorality is an inherent part of the economy, as a moral and humanitarian company would be destroyed by those companies that make more profit.

·         This inherent corruption is in turn then applied to society; as due to the suppliers restricting supply to increase their products value, the consumer must compete with one another in order to attain resources for themselves. This is apparent in the ‘Alienation’ that arises between the Bourgeoisie (wealthy) and the proletariat (poor) and the unbalanced distribution of wealth in the population, as we are born into a society whereby hoarding as much one’s self as you can is seen as the only way to progress within society (e.g. the Bourgeoisie).

·         This leads to international scale amorality, with powers such as America etc. feeling the need to invade and dominate other nations for their resources, as competition for profit from resources dictates that nations, corporations and the populace must only share resources for unfair ‘maximum profit’ orientated costs.

·         This even spreads to humanitarian aid, as the investment in poorer countries (who are poor due to the inability of more PROFITABLE countries to fairly share resources) is only done in order to create a perpetual and ever growing debt to the more powerful country.

From this it is apparent that money IS debt and profit IS corruption (corruption being the exploitation of others for personal gain).

Thus, profit kills fair trade.

Hegelitis.

The unreality of seperateness: basically, every singular entity that we can see holds a 'spirit' of the whole (spirit being the object in and of itself) and so, is not ever wholly real, with different degrees of reality given to objects that particiate more or less in 'reality'.

So, if you were able to view an object in every perceivable way all at once, then you would see the object in and of itself as the 'real' part of the 'whole'.

The analysis of 'logic' by Hegel is somewhat unclear. Either, Mr A, as an uncle, shows that we can never see him as his real entity which is part of the whole; or that due to the many different views and perceptions of Mr A he is not a part of the whole as he is just a combination of perceptions that is an illusion.

The 'whole' is called the absolute, which encompasses everything that exists. This absolute, in knowing itself, knows reality in it's pure form.

Whether this renders metaphysics as unreal, due to the fact that it is purely generated by thought without perception of other things, e.g. a god. If so, is this not a loophole, as the idea that what we see is not reality and that there is a reality that we cannot see is metaphysical?

Thought provoking stuff...

David Hume, but it's not certain...

David Hume

David Hume (1711-1776)’s theories on certainty can be summarised by the phrase; ‘can’t derive an ought from an is’. This phrase outlines Hume’s belief that nothing is certain and that, although experience is usually our only source of information, due to our ‘synthetic’ way of thinking, humans often allow our past experience to lead us into error by assumption. In this way Hume is very sceptical and would even disagree that the Sun will definitely rise tomorrow and that every event has a differing degree of certainty based on human testimony and sensory experience.

The synthetic method is how Hume believes we, as humans, think most of the time: combining our past experiences and simpler ideas to form more complex ones. A good example of this would be the concept of angels, where we have taken our experience of human beings and combined them with that of birds, thus creating the idea of such a creature without any sensory experience of one. The fact that humans think like this fuels Hume’s argument for the ridiculousness of belief in miracles and religion. It is important to note however, that Hume is not suggesting that miracle a certain to not have occurred, instead that through a natural ability to assess the likelihood of an occurrence. From this Hume suggests that the likelihood that the person who would spread word of a miracle is far more likely to be a deceiver or be deceived than the extremely unlikely occurrence of a miracle or the physical apparition of a god etc. Hume suggests that the synthetic method of thought is far better for scientific progress due to the potential for creativity through it’s usage, he warns however that one must be wary as it can lead to error due to assumption, hence his emphasis on the uncertainty of anything. He also believes that this uncertainty means that with scientific thought, one cannot assume causation, with the best example being that of billiard balls. Hume would suggest that no matter how many time a person has experimented with billiard balls; seeing a white ball hit a red ball and seemingly forcing it to move, it is not so that the white ball has caused the red ball to move, merely that the balls have happened to move at those angles every time it is repeated, as one can’t be certain that will happen again in the same way. This is a habit of association, where a mind associates the two events the two events together regularly; to the point where one might believe that the movement of the white ball must cause the movement of the red ball, however, Hume argues against this.

He compares the synthetic process with the deductive process, which he claims can have no use in scientific thought, an example of this process is the conclusion that all bicycles must have two wheels, this is because anything with more or less wheels than this goes by another name e.g: tricycle, unicycle etc.

Hume, due to his comprehension of the synthetic thought process, did not place any faith in metaphysics, as he saw the theories to have no grounding in likelihood, but a fabricated theory built to fit what we don’t know, Hume argues that this is preventing scientific progress, with those who accept unfounded testimonies require no proof as to what actually occurs when an event happens, and thus no developments can be made regarding improvement or prevention of events. Hume validates this theory by assessing the false prophet Alexander and the Paphlagonians, a civilization that was ‘ignorant and stupid’ in comparison to the rest of the world, and the belief that they placed in the testimony of humans even though they were known to be untrue by the more informed world outside. He then berates religion by saying that belief in such a thing is belief in conformity, following the human testimony of the masses rather than evidence or sensory data and that those; who are weak enough to think that such testimonies are even worth a second thought, have no opportunity for receiving any ‘better information’. A point that is even raised by Western Christians in modern times (when discussing terrorist beliefs and motives): Even though they themselves place belief in equally unlikely and unfounded human testimonies