Marxist_Trash
Member
- Oct 10, 2017
- 89
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Agrarian Justice
We were talking about this in social philosophy class a week ago, and I wanted to see what your guys' opinions were on the subject. I will say I believe this pamphlet was likely something that influenced Karl Marx in his writings, because it talks about how all men have a natural inheritance that was taken away by civilization. And that it must be recompensed not just to the poor, but to the wealthy, because both the poor AND wealthy are suffering the damaging effect civilization had in regards to the segregation of land and natural bounty that once belonged to all.
Though I tend to disagree with the wealthy needing more money part of it, this was truly a revolutionary idea in his time that 1, civilization could detract from quality of life: "Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways:to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched,than would have been the lot of either in a natural state."
And 2, that people had a natural entitlement to a system that was better or at least equal to the natural, hunter gathering state of man, in what I think is the most impactful quote from this pamphlet: "In taking the matter upon this ground, the first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period."
Essentially this forms the beginnings of the idea of basic income...as not just something that should be charitably given, but something that ALL people deserve due to the damage civilization inflicted upon the natural state, while at the same time preserving the good parts that civilization provides.
Structurally, he spends the first part talking about the moral reasons why this compensation of natural inheritance should be the case, the second part working out the numbers, and the third discussing how this could be practically achieved.
What say you about the concept of natural inheritance?
We were talking about this in social philosophy class a week ago, and I wanted to see what your guys' opinions were on the subject. I will say I believe this pamphlet was likely something that influenced Karl Marx in his writings, because it talks about how all men have a natural inheritance that was taken away by civilization. And that it must be recompensed not just to the poor, but to the wealthy, because both the poor AND wealthy are suffering the damaging effect civilization had in regards to the segregation of land and natural bounty that once belonged to all.
Though I tend to disagree with the wealthy needing more money part of it, this was truly a revolutionary idea in his time that 1, civilization could detract from quality of life: "Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways:to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched,than would have been the lot of either in a natural state."
And 2, that people had a natural entitlement to a system that was better or at least equal to the natural, hunter gathering state of man, in what I think is the most impactful quote from this pamphlet: "In taking the matter upon this ground, the first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period."
Essentially this forms the beginnings of the idea of basic income...as not just something that should be charitably given, but something that ALL people deserve due to the damage civilization inflicted upon the natural state, while at the same time preserving the good parts that civilization provides.
Structurally, he spends the first part talking about the moral reasons why this compensation of natural inheritance should be the case, the second part working out the numbers, and the third discussing how this could be practically achieved.
What say you about the concept of natural inheritance?