Subbing for Dr. Plato

Substitution for Gary Plato's Contemporary American Society, 1:30-2:55 in B-089

Attendance

Take 1st quiz collaboratively

(Ask for a volunteer who has not yet taken it to log in, and take it on their profile)

 - Let them work for the grade on the quiz as a whole group. 

 

 

Then for the remaining time, please cover some sociological content:

 

Functionalism - I like them to understand that all things serve a purpose from this perspective - poverty, stratification, etc. However, there are challenges to this theory, and at times it gives almost a "lazy" excuse not to try to change things, to improve them.

 

Latent = unplanned side effect

Manifest = planned  

Function  positive +/neutral 0 outcome and 

Dysfunction negative-outcome 

Examples?

evaluate choices they may make in their professions - for Crim Justive - giving a ticket, For health care giving a medication, such as a pain killer? - what is the +/0/- outcomes planned and unplanned - what did you do it for? what did you want to have happen?  Are there any possibly problems or unintended good or bad consequences? 

 

Conflict theory - Power and Resources - people using their power and resources to maintain or grow their power and resources. 

Examples?  How do police and health care providers do this?

 

Symbollic Interactionism, Culture and Meaning mutually generate the other. What does a badge, uniform, etc. mean?

 

Then Role Strain (1 roles pulling in multiple directions - a single parent with 3 kids with different games, recitals, etc.), and Role Conflict (2+ competing roles - parent and worker - boss says stay late, kids want you home, what about school now, what does this class take you from? Work, family, friends, fun, sleep  :)  etc. 

How do you prioritize?  What pressures contribute to the decision? Which are internal - possibly more psych related, and which are more social - external pressures?)

 

You are welcome to introduce other theories (dramaturgical, etc.)  as time permits, but these three above are essential.

Health & Medicine

3:00 - Attendance, collect Volunteer Hour Timesheets

HEALTH & MEDICINE...

Health is a state of physical, mental, and social well-being, medicine is the social institution that focuses on it.

Change over time – schooling for women, masturbation causes blindness, smoking, etc...

 

Effects of technology – markets mean better nutrition, better sanitation, but also pollution and toxins are produced. Like with education, health is not distributed equally, bigger gap between rich and poor in capitalist society

Health: A Global Survey

hunter/gatherers: ½ die by 20, few make it to 40

as agrigulture leads to industrialization, inequality increases, so health outcomes get much better for the wealthy but not much for the poor. Markets, sanitation. 1850. medical advances.

  200 COUNTRIES IN 200 YEARS

(you can also play w/ Hans Rosling's data here)

EPIDEMIOLOGY is the study of how health is distributed. How do diseases and health trends spread?

Gender – women have better health, discuss masculinity vs. Femininity? Aren't men supposed to be strong and tough? But also risk-takers, and take on more stress

Age – young people are much healthier now, but there are some diseases prominent

Class – 75% of relatively well-off poeple are in good health. But a majority of the poor are not. Poor are almost 5x as likely to have "poor" health.

Race- whites are healthier than blacks, correlated with income

Medical Establishment

hospitals themselves, pharmaceutical companies, insurance, medical schools...

these all have a "scientific" orientation

vs. Holistic healing (SUPPLEMENTS WEBPAGE)

Cost – insurance debate - what is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010?

According to the U.S.Census Bureau, the proportion of our population that lacks health insurance is at an all time high of about 51 million.  That's approximately 1 out of every 6 Americans who lacks any sort of coverage.
The reason for this all time high is that the cost of health insurance has been spiraling out of control for decades, going up ten times faster than wages. The graph below illustrates this trend for the decade prior to the Great Recession.  Since then, it's only gotten worse
 
Meanwhile, industry profits ticked up 250% in the same period. This is why the U.S. Congress finally passed a health care reform law in 2010, after more than a decade of discussing different possibilities.
Those who have criticized our health care system argued that for-profit insurance companies have been "gaming the system" to increase profits by pricing out the poor and the sick, which is bad for society.
Why do they say this is bad for society?  When poor, struggling workers get sick or injured, they're not going to just crawl under a rock and die - they usually have a job to do and a family to support, so they're going to head for the Emergency Room. This kind of care is far more expensive, and since the poor obviously can't afford it, the hospital has to stick the taxpayers with the bill.  So we all end up paying more tax dollars for emergency health care, and this system keeps about 1 in 6 Americans from getting access to basic preventative medicine, which means more minor issues will progress to major problems requiring even more of that expensive emergency-room care!  A stitch in time saves nine, as they say.
That doesn't seem very efficient.  So why would our system do such a thing?  Have our health insurance companies failed us?
The health insurance industry is not easy to understand. The point of insurance in general is to distribute risk throughout a population, so that individuals are not economically ruined by unpredictable disasters. You get car insurance or home insurance just in case a rare bad thing happens, and the small amount you pay per month goes to help the small fraction of people who actually have that bad thing happen to them.  This is a social good, because individuals who are ruined become unproductive, and a drain on everyone else. 
Health insurance in particular also serves a second socially useful function: helping people bear the predictable costs of health maintenance and prevention (check-ups and medicine to cure minor illnesses before  they lead to major socio-economic disruptions).  And this is a key feature: unlike car or house insurance, which you hope to never have to use, you almost certainly WILL use your health insurance somehow or another.
So, both of these are socially useful functions – they keep people productive, and that keeps society running smoothly.  But in an industry of private health insurance, companies must make a profit. Profit-making is their purpose. In order to do that, they use society's demand for the above functions to raise the price at which they can sell their supply of services. But their fundamental purpose is not to distribute risk, nor to help people maintain their health – it is to make profits. 
This is true of all profit-making private businesses and corporations under a capitalist economic system; for example, the fundamental purpose of McDonald's is not to feed you hamburgers - it is to make money for their shareholders.  Selling you hamburgers is simply a means to that end.  If they can make higher profits by selling you sub-optimal hamburgers (and I can think of many places that have better burgers!), then they will do that - that is the ironclad logic of capitalism: companies must rationally seek to maximize their profits.

So, back to health insurance businesses.  If they are not distributing risk optimally, and they are not helping people maintain their health in the best way, but they are still making profits for their shareholders, then they are still fulfilling their raison d'être.  For decades, the “free market” has been rewarding them for sub-optimal service (i.e. record profits) so it doesn't make sense to say they "failed," exactly.  What proponents of the PPACA say does make sense is to change the rules of the game, to give these private health insurance companies motivation to actually provide socially useful services.  That is what the health reform law is meant to do.  (Whether it will work or not remains to be seen, of course.)


OK so what DOES the law actually do? Well it's a bit complicated, but basically something like this...
obamacare 2.jpg 

video w/ more detail: here.

THEORY – p.400

CRAZY ASS 200 COUNTRIES/YEARS VIDEO...









What does it mean to "ration health care"?

What is health insurance? (find old CAN blog entry)
According to the U.S.Census Bureau, the proportion of our population that lacks health insurance is at an all time high.  We're talking about 50.7 million of our fellow Americans who have no coverage whatsoever.  The cost of health insurance has been spiraling out of control for decades, going up ten times faster than wages since 2000. Meanwhile (dare I say “Therefore”?) industry profits (that's profits, not gross revenue or anything) have been skyrocketing up 250% in the same period.  Last year saw profits at an all time high after increasing an additional 56% in 2009 alone!  This is why the U.S. Congress had to pass the health reform law last year.  For-profit insurance companies have been gaming the system to increase profits by pricing out the poor and the sick, which needless to say is bad for society.

Why would they do such a thing?  The health insurance industry is not easy to understand.  The point of insurance in general is to distribute risk through a population, so that individuals are not ruined by unpredictable disasters.  Health insurance in particular also serves the function of helping people bear the predictable costs of maintenance and prevention (check-ups and medicine to cure minor illnesses before they lead to major social disruptions).  Both of these are socially useful functions – they keep people productive and society running smoothly.  But in an industry of private health insurance, companies must make a profit.   Profit-making is their purpose.  In order to do that, they use society's demand for the above functions to raise the price at which they can sell their supply of services.  But their fundamental purpose is not to distribute risk, nor to help people maintain their health – it is to make profits.  If theyare not distributing risk optimally, and they are not helping people maintain their health in the best way, but they are still making profits, then they are still fulfilling their raison d'etre.  For decades, the “free market” has been rewarding them for sub-optimal service, so it doesn't make sense to say they're "failing," exactly.  What does make sense is to change the rules of the game, to give them motivation to actually provide socially useful services, and that is what the health reform law is meant to do.

Here in Wisconsin, BadgerCare was started by Republican Governor Tommy Thompson in 1999 to provide health care to the working poor.  It has since become very popular.  In 2008 it became BadgerCare+ and expanded to cover more children.  Combined with BadgerCare+ Core, the programs cover 770,000 of us, helping Wisconsin have one of the highest rates in the country for health insurance coverage(90%).  So, we're more socially optimal than most other states. But the current administration wants to kick these people off the rolls and have them get insurance through their employers instead. (Um, how is adding this huge cost onto a business going to help them expand and create jobs?)

Governor Walker appointed this old white guy with a history of trashing Medicare to head up the Department of Health Services.  He says states should stop covering the poor, because it's expensive.  What he doesn't seem to realize is that when poor, struggling workers get sick or injured, they're not going to crawl under a rock and die.  They have a job to do and a family to support, so if they can't see a normal doctor they're going to head for the emergency room.  This kind of care is far more expensive, and since the poor don't have that kind of money, guess who the hospital will stick for the bill?  If you answered “the state,” you are correct.  So we'll end up paying more money for emergency health care, and we'll be keeping almost 1 in 5 Wisconsinites from getting access to basic preventative medicine, which means more minor issues will progress to major problems requiring more of that expensive emergency-room care!

Wisconsin can't afford that, socially or financially.  Tell your representatives you want them to leave BadgerCare alone.




NEW LECTURE, SAME GRAPH

According to the U.S.Census Bureau, the proportion of our population that lacks health insurance is at an all time high of about 51 million.  That's approximately 1 out of every 6 Americans who lacks any sort of coverage.
The reason for this all time high is that the cost of health insurance has been spiraling out of control for decades, going up ten times faster than wages. The graph below illustrates this trend for the decade prior to the Great Recession.  Since then, it's only gotten worse (INSERT GRAPH HERE)
Meanwhile, industry profits ticked up 250% in the same period. This is why the U.S. Congress finally passed a health care reform law in 2010, after more than a decade of discussing different possibilities.
Those who have criticized our health care system argued that for-profit insurance companies have been "gaming the system" to increase profits by pricing out the poor and the sick, which is bad for society.
Why do they say this is bad for society?  When poor, struggling workers get sick or injured, they're not going to just crawl under a rock and die - they usually have a job to do and a family to support, so they're going to head for the Emergency Room. This kind of care is far more expensive, and since the poor obviously can't afford it, the hospital has to stick the taxpayers with the bill.  So we all end up paying more tax dollars for emergency health care, and this system keeps about 1 in 6 Americans from getting access to basic preventative medicine, which means more minor issues will progress to major problems requiring even more of that expensive emergency-room care!  A stitch in time saves nine, as they say.
That doesn't seem very efficient.  So why would our system do such a thing?  Have our health insurance companies failed us?
The health insurance industry is not easy to understand. The point of insurance in general is to distribute risk throughout a population, so that individuals are not economically ruined by unpredictable disasters. You get car insurance or home insurance just in case a rare bad thing happens, and the small amount you pay per month goes to help the small fraction of people who actually have that bad thing happen to them.  This is a social good, because individuals who are ruined become unproductive, and a drain on everyone else. 
Health insurance in particular also serves a second socially useful function: helping people bear the predictable costs of health maintenance and prevention (check-ups and medicine to cure minor illnesses before  they lead to major socio-economic disruptions).  And this is a key feature: unlike car or house insurance, which you hope to never have to use, you almost certainly WILL use your health insurance somehow or another.
So, both of these are socially useful functions – they keep people productive, and that keeps society running smoothly.  But in an industry of private health insurance, companies must make a profit. Profit-making is their purpose. In order to do that, they use society's demand for the above functions to raise the price at which they can sell their supply of services. But their fundamental purpose is not to distribute risk, nor to help people maintain their health – it is to make profits. 
This is true of all profit-making private businesses and corporations under a capitalist economic system; for example, the fundamental purpose of McDonald's is not to feed you hamburgers - it is to make money for their shareholders.  Selling you hamburgers is simply a means to that end.  If they can make higher profits by selling you sub-optimal hamburgers (and I can think of many places that have better burgers!), then they will do that - that is the ironclad logic of capitalism: companies must rationally seek to maximize their profits.

So, back to health insurance businesses.  If they are not distributing risk optimally, and they are not helping people maintain their health in the best way, but they are still making profits for their shareholders, then they are still fulfilling their raison d'être.  For decades, the “free market” has been rewarding them for sub-optimal  service (i.e. record profits) so it doesn't make sense to say they "failed," exactly.  What proponents of the PPACA say does make sense is to change the rules of the game, to give these private health insurance companies motivation to actually provide socially useful services.  That is what the health reform law is meant to do.  (Whether it will work or not remains to be seen, of course.)


OK so what DOES the law actually do? Well it's a bit complicated, but basically something like this... Click here for the comic (ELI5)

Economics pt. 2: Socialism

Here is JasonMacker, a redditor, explaining socialism...

In the most very basic sense, socialism is the idea that people who have to work for a living should be the same people who decide how they ought to live. In more technical terms, socialism is the idea that the working class ought to own the means of production, but I'll explain that in detail later.

Right now, we do not have socialism because the people who have to work for a living do not get to decide for themselves how they ought to live. Instead, they are forced to live in a certain way by other people, who do not have to work for a living. These people are known as the bourgeoisie[1] (boo r-zhwah-zee). In contrast, those who do have to work for a living are known as the proletariat[2] (proh-li-tair-ee-uh t). This is another word for workers, or the working class. Keep in mind that these are the most general and broad categories, and that it's possible to divide and subdivide each one into certain categories as well.

And what I mean by "have to work for a living" is that if that person does not work, they will run out of wealth and be unable to afford things such as food, water, and shelter, and end up dying as a result. And for those who do not have to work for a living, they can "retire" and simply live off of how much wealth they already have. And with this, keep in mind that the proletariat (workers) and the bourgeoisie (non-workers) are not static classes. People can shift back and forth between them based on how much wealth they have. But for the most part, people who begin in one of these classes are likely to stay in the same class.

Now, I said that a technical way to describe socialism is "the working class (proletariat) ought to own the means of production". In this case, "means of production[3] " refers to the following: the materials, tools and other instruments used by workers to make products. This includes: machines, tools materials, plant and equipment, land, raw materials, money, power generation, and so on: anything necessary for labor to produce. Notice how this is a very large group of different things. This is why the general term of "means of production" is needed to group them all together. Also, notice that whoever owns those things, the means of production, has much more power in society than those who do not have those things. By power, I mean the ability to influence the world and everything contained within it, e.g. humans, other animals, plants, the environment, the atmosphere, and so on. For example, a slave has very little power compared to a King. Another example would be how President Obama has more power than an ordinary citizen of the United States.

And this is what Karl Marx understood to be the most important feature of society to understand and analyze. The most important questions to him (and other proponents of what is known as conflict theory[4] were "Who has power? Where does power come from? How do people gain or lose power?" Asking this question requires a particular study of history. This look at history, where we look at who has power, is known as historical materialism[5] . The reason why it is called materialism[6] is because materialism means the idea that the only thing that exists is matter or energy, i.e. materials, and they interact with each other to produce everything that exists in our world. This is in contrast to a non-materialist view, such as the idea that natural processes are guided divinely by some supernatural beings, such as gods, angels, demons, spirits, etc.

A simple example is one of a slave, Abel, and a King, Bart. In a non-materialist understanding, a person would say that Abel is a slave because God created him that way, and that it is Abel's destiny to be a slave. Abel must accept God's will and accept that he is to be a slave. In the same way, a non-materialist would say that King Bart is a king because God created him that way, and that it is King Bart's destiny to be a King. This view of kings is also calleddivine right[7] , the idea that God has placed these rulers on Earth, to keep society functioning. Without them, society would collapse in disorder and chaos. You might think this view is silly, but this view has been incredibly popular both throughout history and contemporary times.

Non-materialists also tend to speak of not just slaves and kings, but everyone in society, who has a clear purpose. Men are the breadwinners, and women are the child-bearers. Whites are masters, and non-whites are the servants. And that these purposes are guided divinely and that to change them would cause the collapse of society into disorder and chaos. For a non-materialist, the moment someone is conceived, their entire life is already planned for them and all they have to do is fulfill that role ascribed to them in society. This is also known as social stratification[8] .

In contrast to all of this, a materialist would understand these things very differently. For a materialist, there is no divine being that dictates that Abel ought to be a slave or that Bart ought to be a King. But the question still remains, why is Abel a slave and why is Bart a King? To answer this question, a materialist would ask, what are thematerial conditions of each person? In other words, what is their life actually like? What conditions do they live in? How much power does each have? Can this power change hands? If so, how?

And the way we answer these questions is by studying history from a historical materialist perspective and learning about how Kings came to power (and just as important is what they would say is how they came to power). We can look at examples from history[9] and see that Kings are not born as Kings, but created by parts of society. And that they usually come to power by the use of force and threatening to kill those who disagree with them (as well as threatening those who object to his rule with eternal hellfire).

So how do these Kings maintain their power? There's really no nice way to say it, but they maintain their power bylying. They lie and tell people that they were ordained by God, that anyone who questions them is committing treason, which has a death penalty. Anyone who questions God or His representative on Earth (the King) ought to be put to death. They have to lie to people, constantly, to reinforce their lies and make sure that it completely permeates society, so that the King's subjects, to include the slaves, believe this lie to be true. And they believe it because the King does everything he can to prevent people from questioning this lie or saying other things. And so long as the slaves, and everyone else in society, accepts their arrangement, i.e. their material conditions, then the King can maintain his power. These lies that the King perpetuates to stay in power are what Friedrich Engels calledfalse consciousness[10] . These are the lies, AKA myths, that those in power must perpetuate in order to maintain their power. Would a Christian King who resorts to the idea of divine right, be able to continue to maintain his position of power if all of his subjects were atheists? No, he would not, because atheists would reject the claims of divine guidance of the King.

At this point if you're asking "what does this have to do with socialism?", I have to plead with you to be patient. Reality is very complex, and there simply is no simple way to describe it. It takes a lot of effort and understanding to be able to first explain it. As Marx stated in the preface of the French edition of Das Kapital, "There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits".

So, you may say, "but the society that we live in today does not have kings, so how is this relevant to today?" And the answer to this is twofold. First, we do in fact have Kings today. You can check them out here. It is important to note that most of the ones today have much less power than their predecessors had. However, there are still quite a few Kings today that do have lots of power. Second, a phenomenon we have today, as a result of capitalism (keep in mind that prior to capitalism the system was feudalism), is that power is no longer concentrated in the hands of a single person to the extent that it used to be. Instead, power is distributed between groups of people. These groups are small relative to the global population of people. For example in the United States today, the only people that have some power over President Obama are those who voted for him. However, this power is not reciprocal, because President Obama does not only have power over the people who voted for him. He also has power over those who did not vote for him, which is a majority of the world. Now obviously, one part of this group is those who voted for Romney instead. But the other, bigger group, is everyone who is not a United States citizen. Does Obama have some power over their lives? Yes. But do they have some power over Obama? Very little, and basically nothing compared to what a United States citizen has. Do you think it is fair that a group of people can get together and vote to do something to you, and you're not allowed to have any input on it? Of course not. That is an injustice. It's not fair or right. At least, from a materialist perspective. From a non-materialist perspective, a person might say it's entirely fair, because "that's just the way God made things, and we can't change God's will."

It is precisely this injustice that socialists want to destroy. Socialists want to take power away from those who own the means of production undemocratically, and instead change it to a more democratic distribution of power. In other words, Obama should not be allowed to have power over those who are not given a chance to contest his power, especially when Obama has power over their lives. An example of someone like this is a person who lives in Saudi Arabia, which is a monarchy, ruled by a King (the official title of the nation is "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia"). Right now, Obama is friendly with Saudi Arabia, and helps King Abdullah, the King of Saudi Arabia, maintain power. But people in Saudi Arabia, who are not American citizens, cannot vote for Obama. They can't vote in American elections at all. They don't have enough control over the means of production to be able to tell Obama or King Abdullah that if they don't stop what they are doing, the workers in Saudi Arabia will remove them from power. This idea that workers should be able to remove from power those that they don't like, is democracy. Democracy is, in the most basic sense, majority rule.

But does the King of Saudi Arabia have enough control over the means of production to be able to tell the workers to shut up and accept their current material conditions? Yes. He has a lot of wealth, he has a lot of control over the lives of workers. If the workers say or do something he doesn't like, then he will punish them using violence and torture to keep them in line. Socialists want to end this system of undemocratic rule, AKA minority rule, and instead create a system where it is workers that own the means of production themselves. The idea here is that the way workers currently are living is undesirable, and that if the workers were in fact in power, then they would be able to change their material conditions to become desirable.

And you can see that non-materialists have responded to his by perpetuating false consciousness as much as possible. They have to lie and tell people that their current material conditions are in fact desirable, that they (the workers) already have enough control over their life, and that if any more was given to them, society would collapse into chaos. These myths, systems of control, even though they are not factual or accurate, must be perpetuated and protected from criticism or critique. This is where the idea of blasphemy comes from. If you even think that the current system is not the best possible, then you are committing blasphemy and you must be silenced or put to death. And not just this, but anyone who criticizes the system must be condemned in the strongest terms possible. They (the workers who understand what I've said so far and want to change the system to a more socialist system)have to be ridiculed, ostracized, rejected, attacked, insulted, degraded, and prevented from clearly presenting their views or voice. Instead, their ideas must be distorted and prevented from actually being presented honestly and fairly. And the reason for this is because those in power today know, on some level, that their ideas of social stratification are bullshit. They know that it's entirely possible for a woman to be a bread-winner, or that a non-white can be a master. And they also know that women and non-whites can be convinced of this. So they have to keep these people in particular under severe sanctions, and prevent them from realizing how much potential and volatility they have.

Up until the French revolution, it could very well have been argued by people that without a King, society would collapse or devolve into chaos. After all, in the 18th century, we had no examples of a society that wasn't ruled by a King. But then the Americans suddenly revolted against the British King, and the French executed their King(something that the Americans did not do). The Americans and the French became the first societies to reject divine right and instead refer to something known as "consent of the governed". This is a democratic idea.

However, the American "founding fathers" did not actually create a democracy, because of a key issue: not all workers were included! When the Americans created their new, non-monarchy form of government (also known as a republic), they failed to make sure that every worker was given the opportunity to able to own the means of production. Only a small fraction of Americans could actually vote. Women, non-whites, and those who did not own any land (to include slaves), were not allowed to participate in this government, even though some or all of them are workers. Why did they not allow women and non-whites to participate in government? The reason for this is because they took a non-materialist view, and said that women are non-whites are simply unfit to have any power. If we let women or non-whites vote, society will devolve into chaos.

The important thing to understand from a socialist perspective is that democracy only makes sense if every worker is included in it. The question to ask here is, how are workers excluded? One way that workers are excluded from participating in democracy is through the idea of nations.

Now, Engels argued that it's simply not enough for one nation's workers to own the means of production, because the bourgeoisie do not limit themselves to just one nation. The bourgeoisie have become a global class, and they work globally to maintain their power. If workers in one nation own the means of production, then the bourgeoisie of all the other nations will do everything they can to take away this power from the workers in that particular nation and restore the ownership of the means of production to the bourgeoisie rather than the workers. Why? This is because their false consciousness depends on it. If the Americans or the French can actually show that it is possible to run society without a King, then the workers in societies that are run by Kings will get the idea that they too can do away with their King and improve their material conditions. Now, the Americans were lucky in that they were on a distant continent in the new world, and once they drove away the British they didn't have anyone standing in their way and they asserted their power freely. But in France, just about every monarchy around France did everything they could to restore the monarchy in France. You can see this by looking at the belligerents section of this article. From the moment that the French executed their King and decided to run their society in a more democratic fashion, all the Kings around France panicked and did everything they could to prevent this idea of democracy from spreading. Democracy, the idea that the majority of the population should decide their material conditions, threatened the power of those who had already owned the means of production. Also, an important thing to note is that all of these Kings would intermarry with each other. Just about all of the Kings of Europe were related in some way by the time of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. This is known as a type of nepotism, a form of political corruption.

Now, to change perspective a little bit. This example of looking at a particular nation and examining its history is known as a case study. Case studies in history are important because they're viewed as a form of social experiment that allows us to see what worked and what doesn't work. And the French revolution had a lot of things that didn't work. The reason why it's important to look at what works and what doesn't work is that it allows us to keep what works and throw out what works.

Karl Marx wrote about France, in a paper titled The Civil War in France. He reviewed some of the things that happened in France and he actually changed some of his ideas as a result. This is known as changing the theory to fit the facts. This is a materialist perspective. The contrast to this is changing the facts to fit the theory. This is the non-materialist perspective. This idea that we ought to change our theories based on our facts, i.e. our material conditions, is known as scientific socialism. This is an idea of Engels.

Every single nation on Earth is a case study that needs to be examined and critically assessed to see what new facts it presents us that we must use to change our theory. This includes both current nations and previous nations.

So let's get back to what Engels was saying about how the bourgeoisie not limiting themselves to one nation. If the bourgeoisie do not limit themselves to one nation, then why should we, the proletariat aka the workers? We look at what happened whenever workers try to seize the means of production in one nation. All the other nations around it do everything they can to prevent the workers in that one nation from seizing the means of production! Well, Engels said that just one nation's workers is not enough. If the workers of every nation seized their means of production, then the bourgeoisie would not be able to use all the other nations of the world as a base to attack the workers. This idea that workers have to work on an international scale to defeat the bourgeoisie is known as proletarian internationalism. This sentiment is echoed by Marx, and is the reason why "Workers of the world, unite!" is said. And by saying this, a socialist must ask, "How do we unite? What is preventing us currently from uniting?"

And these questions are important, because right now the workers of the world are not united. Instead, they are divided up into subclasses, such as race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, etc. These subclasses are kept divided because it is in the interest of the bourgeoisie to prevent the proletariat from presenting a unified front. Instead, the bourgeoisie want the proletariat to fight amongst themselves rather than against the bourgeoisie. This is the idea of social stratification again. However, it also introduces the new idea of alienation. Alienation is a particular type of distress that happens to people. It happens when a person's social role is in conflict with their desires. For example, a man who wants to be a nurse may feel alienation, because nursing is seen as a feminine profession by society. Alienation effects everyone and anyone who feels the pressures of society to do things that they don't want to do. A woman who wants to be an engineer will be told that it's her role in society to instead be a housewife. A girl who wants to play with monster trucks will be scolded and instead be told that they should play with dolls and tea parties. The important thing to understand is that everyone faces alienation. However, not all people face the same alienation, because not all people are limited in the same way. Some people are more limited than others. For example, a gay couple faces alienation because they are unable to fulfill their desire of marriage (due to legal or social concerns), while a straight couple does not face alienation from fulfilling their desire of marriage. Of course, it's entirely possible that a straight couple may face alienation for other reasons, such as the fact that they may be of different races. The key points to remember here are that (1) everyone faces some sort of alienation, and (2) some people face more alienation than others, specifically, those in power face less alienation. This includes the bourgeoisie. They face alienation as well, because the false consciousness that they themselves perpetuate will also come back and alienate them as well, in the form of cognitive dissonance. It's important to understand that the bourgeoisie are not machines that do things in a robotic fashion. They are ultimately human as well, and they can suffer from the same things that all other humans can suffer from. The problem is not any one particular bourgeois (adj. form of bourgeoisie) person or group of people, but rather the abstract system itself that maintains the status quo that keeps the bourgeoisie in power. Recognizing the humanity of the bourgeoisie allows us to realize that they too, are victims of false consciousness. They need to be freed of false consciousness just as the proletariat does.

Now, this is all simply an explanation of everything as it is (a very simple one, I might add. There is a ton of information that goes along with all of this). As Marx explains in his Theses on Feuerbach, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." And that's what socialism is about. It's about figuring out how to change our current system where the bourgeoisie perpetuate false consciousness and prevent the workers from owning the means of production.

This is not an easy question, and it has a significant amount of weight behind it. A lot of people's lives are on the line here. Marx himself wrote largely on the issue of capitalism itself, the system where the bourgeoisie own the means of production. But how do we set up and organize a system where the proletariat own the means of production? Marx didn't go into much detail on this. Instead, we have to look at those who came after Marx and examine their ideas. These people include those such as Lenin, Luxemburg, Gramsci, Bakunin, Stalin, Trotsky, Kropotkin, Mao, to name a few (and by naming these particular people I am not in any way claiming that these are the most important thinkers or that those I haven't mentioned should not be examined). There are lots and lots of people who had ideas on how to organize this new system. The important thing to understand is the principle of scientific socialism; the idea that we ought to conform our theory to fit the facts. These various thinkers have come up with different theories, and not all of them agree. However, it is important to examine them and understand what it is that they are claiming, just as it is important to understand what non-materialists claim. Nobody is perfect, and nobody should be immune to criticism. No theory or ideology should be left without critical examination. If you keep that in mind, then you have the basic tool necessary to deconstruct both sources of false consciousness, and false consciousness itself.

I hope I have explained this as clear as possible. If you have any questions please ask. Remember, what I just explained barely scratches the surface. There is much more to it. My goal is for you to be able to get farther into this than I personally have, so that you can help me at my level. Because at the end of the day, this isn't just a bunch of theories about life. This is life. This is our life, and we have to change it to improve our material conditions.

Population and Ecology

Hillary Clinton's State Dept. flees from discussion of overpopulation by Steve Irwin's daughter.

"the bureaucrats working on an endangered species initiative are too lily-livered to acknowledge the truth: human overpopulation is pushing other species off the planet. Adding insult to injury, they flipped over to the standard progressive do-gooder mantra that the problem is we are consuming too much... I don’t disagree that we have a consumption problem, but why is it some people have no trouble telling you your house is too big, you drive too much, or to stop eating hamburgers, but they can’t bring themselves to recommend you limit the size of your family?"