From: utzoo!decvax!yale-com!brunix!gh Newsgroups: net.politics Title: Re: The Roots of Socialism are rotted Article-I.D.: brunix.1674 Posted: Wed Feb 23 10:23:14 1983 Received: Fri Feb 25 03:08:36 1983 References: houti.214 The discussion of socialism is very much like the discussion of the existence of God a few weeks ago -- everybody has their own definition, different from everybody else's, and then attacks or defends their own private vision of socialism. For example, the socialism I defended earlier has little in common with Tom Craver's Ayn Rand-inspired nightmare. At the bottom of this discussion, I think, is the question of *selfishness*. Capitalist economies, especially America's, are predicated on the assumptions that (1) People are selfish. (2) You can structure an economy such that if everyone acts selfishly, the result is still the best for all. Point (1) is undoubtedly true in America, but only because the system has been in place long enough that people are brought up that way. I have grave doubts about point (2). On the other hand, Socialism (as I see it), assumes people aren't selfish, and if you allow for that fact you can make an even better economy. Most of the flames against Socialism, like Tom Craver's and Mark Terribile's, take people's selfishness as innate and unchangeable, from which it follows that Socialism has to be imposed by force and against the will of The People. Optimists like myself believe that we can slowly but surely change human nature if we try hard enough. Not much more than a hundred years ago, a lot of Americans believed it was okay to possess (to use Tom's favorite word) other people as slaves. Not even the Moral Majority believe that any more. Maybe by the year 2100, people will look back in amazement at the 20th century and its attitudes to wealth and possession, just as we look now at the slave-owners of the 19th century! Graeme Hirst, Brown University Computer Science !decvax!brunix!gh gh.brown@udel-relay