: Funny, why did Robert Nozick bring up Wilt Chamberlain in order to 'prove' that modes of production are not social relations? Why did Ayn Rand claim that 'running' a coal mine was akin to writing a symphony? Libertarians are addicted to using artists and athletes as examples in their sweeping pronouncements that labor exists only in discrete, isolated instances!A rather tenuous attempt to show the 'machinations of the ruling class' as expressed through the unlikely, and deeply unpopular with government, nozick and rand!
: Let me get this straight. Those who are 'less well off' (gentle term!) would be better served if their education was thrown entirely to the vagaries of the 'free market'? 'Parental choice' if left to the dictates of the 'free market' would be the same as 'consumer choice' of health care: very, very limited. Under existing social relations, the only party that can 'vote with their feet' are the owners of property---and to claim the same of the unpropertied is a travesty. The choice of the poor when confronted by prices their labor cannot match: take it or leave it!
This serves a different post. Thoughts on the criticism of state education?
: Concerning the so-called libertarian criticism of the state, who are they trying to fool? Libertarians, requiring the protection of their private property, are the staunchest defenders of the state in the ideological universe! Where there is private property, the badge and the billy club are not far behind.
The belief that a state is holding the whole shaky thing together is dubious. The idea that private property is some unatural concept foisted onto an unsuspecting mass is unrealistic - if it were so inimical to people then it would not exist, a 'property owning class' (a loose distinction at best from those who only own a little bit) cannot exist without the sanction of the vast majority. The state you criticise for supporting private property (which evidently they do only when its convenient, observe various laws and taxes which contradict the notion) does so with the overwhelming support of the many, not the few.
: The 'state' is the hobgoblin of libertarian ideology. Libertarian ideology posits that the state is something outside social relations, an intrusive force, an elite answerable to no one other than itself. But the state is nothing more than the superstructure of already existing social relations.
Its' 'super' because if we disagree with our neighbours we dont get invited round anymore. If we disagree with thr state we go to jail - unless you labor under the misapprehension that your one vote in millions actually means something.
: Presently the state is the apparatus of the capitalist minority. In communist society, a new one will become---for a period---the apparatus of the proletarian majority.
Yes weve seen those temporary ones. Must mean temporary in some cosmic sense. I know - it wasnt real communism etc etc. Ever wonder why its *never* real communism? Sufficient people (not elite, among the precious and assumed holy proletariat) just dont want it.
