Thursday, October 4, 2012
Give What You Can, Get What You Need?
Towards the end of Wednesday's class, we discussed the idea of "from each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs." We agreed that this basically means you give what you can, you get what you need. This sounds like a good idea but also like an unrealistic one. Dr. J offered the example of chores in a household to illustrate this theory in effect and although most of us can probably agree that many households try to utilize this way, outside of the house I think some people would change their minds. This got me thinking about the public realm vs. the private realm. The idea is not based on incentives which causes me to believe that it wouldn't work in the public realm. Within the private realm, like a household, people are connected by their relationships and dependent on each other to some extent. Although you may be willing to help out your family and friends, that doesn't mean the helping attitude would transfer out of the private realm. Because this does not carry out into the whole public realm, many people would probably be more prone to operating under the system of taking what they need and what's best for them. Perhaps this is a pessimistic view but due to the way our society functions, it doesn't seem like much would get accomplished without competition and incentives. So, does it seem practical that the idea of giving what you can and getting what you need would work? If so, what would the motivational factors behind the success of the system be? Would this system, if effective be more fair in the long run or would it create a disparity between people who are able to offer more from those who can offer less and those who need more from those who need less? Finally, how is it decided what somebody needs?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with your ideas, but I believe that they are only true in a capitalist society. Because we are all born in a capitalist society, a society where we are taught to be competitive, so, we tend to help people less. When you are in your home, you do the chores to make the collective home happy. So, in a collective society, we should also do 'chores' to better that society. I would say that, in a communist society, the whole nation would be included in the private realm. Why? Well why is the home a private realm? Because their happiness determines your happiness. If your parents aren't happy because the house is dirty, you will clean your house because you might get punished. If you do clean, then you are making your parents happy, so then you won't get punished. In a society, if people are unhappy that trash is everywhere, you'll clean it. Why? because the trash is making them unhappy and if you don't clean up then they might not work. If they don't work, then the whole system might break down which would mean that you don't get your--for the lack of a better term-- rations at the end of the month.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Rahat in that because we live in a capitalistic society, it is difficult for us to grasp the idea of communism. Like Dr. Johnson pointed out in class, it would be very difficult for the people in feudal systems long ago to imagine a functioning capitalistic society. Because we live in America and have not had a chance to immerse ourselves in a functional and uncorrupt communistic society, it is almost impossible for us to understand how it could be successful.
ReplyDeleteBut the idea in Marx's theory of communism is that competition would be eliminated. The duties we have as citizens would be to benefit each other because that would be how the society got along day to day. There would be no "chores" essentially, but more so duties to one's society for the benefit of the society. You would help your neighbor with the abilities you possess because your neighbor is doing the same for you. Essentially the entire society is doing the same for you.
This is indeed hard for us to wrap our heads around and there are many flaws and kinks we could point out in it. But the same goes for capitalism and so far we've gotten by for over 200 years with it. We've had to change some rules and add certain regulations to modify it, just like we would have to do if we suddenly found ourselves in a communistic society.