Posted on 01/16/2012 8:17:00 AM PST by libh8er
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Actually, that would be a good “religous” statement from the pulpit. It would also be a good “social” statement. It’s a terrible “political” statement.
So much of what socialism and our modern US government does can be argued to have been done by well meaning people, but it is only good when people choose to do it of their own free will. When the government requires it via the power of the gun and taxes, it turns a good thing into an evil thing.
What’s Marxist about placing value on human capital? To the extent human capital is inefficiently utilized, the ability of a society to produce “things” will be diminished.
I am no fan of MLK, but I would not read too much into this quote. Consider at the time he spoke he was trying to get his agenda into the national focus. He was trying to make sure that it was time for civil rights to be considered on the national stage when it had been ignored for so long.
Some of his rhetoric is understandable in that it reflected frustration with the status quo of the racial injustices which existed at the time.
I’d like to know more about this quote - and where and when he supposedly said it. It doesn’t sound like it came from that era and is more likely revised by the Marxists that promote him today.
There have been not one but two MLK Parades here in Houston for many years because there are two different feuding MLK organizations.
I was thinking the same thing, computers?
Anti-materialism isn’t a Marxist trait, it’s a Christian trait. Hebrews 13:5 and 1 John 2:16 comes to mind.
That's also the problem with some rightists when the subject is, say, marijuana.
Bingo. Anti-materialism is an admirable personality trait. However, running a government based on feel good utopianism is only going to result in people’s rights being impeded upon.
Yeah, that quote is fine on its face, though it does give suspicion against the context. Yes, exalting materialism over humanity is reprehensible, but it’s the anti-captialist strawman argument imputing a “products over people” accusation where it does not apply.
I’m skimming the MLK “Vietnam” speech, and while the gist is objectionable I can’t find a succinct quote therein encapsulating the point.
In a free society the long run benefits for the economy as a whole of more and better machines are greater number of goods, better quality of goods, lower prices of goods, with a change in the pattern of employment rather than less employment.
The benefits of the profit motive are the providing of powerful incentives for the steady expansion and improvement of production, and, at the same time, operates to keep the relative size of all the various industries and occupations in proper balance.
Private property and private property rights provide greater incentives to capital accumulation, rising productivity of labor, and rising real wages.
All of the are beneficial to people by raising the standard of living of the average worker and increasing general economic progress. Thus it is a contradiction to say that they are more important than people.
I take it you are a libertarian.
All their arguments boil down to “I want to smoke dope.”
I wonder if we will ever see it ‘acceptable’, and anyone courageous enough if it is, to bring the discussion and consideration of REVERSE racism realities to the forefront, and if so, what would that ‘forefront’ consist of. Oh well, maybe after the next revolution.....
That's also the problem with some rightists when the subject is, say, marijuana.
I take it you are a libertarian.
All their arguments boil down to “I want to smoke dope.”
If that's true, then I'm definitely not a libertarian - I don't want to smoke dope, and I don't want government to tell people how to use their money or what to put in their bodies.
I have difficulty with the moral zealotry that goes rabid for a plant with innocuous side effects while corporations support the pumping of alcohol, nicotine, and elective pharmaceuticals into the national bloodstream; the resulting holocaust somehow acceptable losses in our media consciousness.
However. I shall not bitch to the Captain that the smoking lamp is not lit, while the national Ship is presently SINKING.
Man the pumps! (And pass the fatty!)
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