Reddit reviews Common: On Revolution in the 21st Century
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We found 1 Reddit comments about Common: On Revolution in the 21st Century. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I'm more of an adept of the ontology from material dialetics. And that implies very different things from your non-anthropocenic view of the environment. I googled dialetics and environment and found this text that presents different viewpoints and the basics of that philosophy. It's an interest read if you're interested in philosophy, the evolution of ideas and can help understand why understanding ontology can be important and can shape how we think and what we propose as action.
The ontological meaning of nature and humanity are defined and differentiated from one another as:
Different from OP post, humans are not a virus on top of nature. It's a part of nature while at the same time its separated from it. That's the difference between formal logic (like math, where A = A) and dialetical logic (where A becomes non-A, like chemistry? idk). Many dialetical thinkers argue that it is more conducive to understanding nature and man's relationship with nature than formal logic. It allows for the conctruction of a concept of totality that is more capable of representing the gravity of climate change than positivism/empirism/other philosophy behind classical science that aims to isolate parts to understand the whole.
That difference between human and animal is due to the physiological difference in their nervous systems. It gives humans the capability to go outside their natural, biological, genetic imperative. It allows complex though, that allows them to project their will into nature, to design their imagination into concrete material objects. No other animal can, thus men is, in that sense, removed from nature.
Complex though allows for the creation of complex forms of communication, language, that allows for more complicated social organization of labor. The ontology of labor, under material dialetic, is the creation of the means of subsistance or the means of production through the transformation of nature. Therefore, humans depend on nature as a means to solve their contradictions with nature in order to survive and reproduce themselves. And this means humans is a part of nature, integrated to it at an ontological/existencial level. That is the contradiction of being part of and apart from nature.
The implications of the meaning of labor also implies that labor and técne/technique/technology are inseparable from the meaning of being human. They always existed since the start of humanity. Thus it is not human action, or labor, or technology themselves that are causing the destruction of nature. But the WAY we structured labor and USE technology in modern times. Through out 10 million years human labor and human techique became more efficient without bringing humanity through climatic catasthrophe, what changed? The expansion of capitalism, the way we produce, distribute and consume the goods we need to solve the contradiction between human and nature.
With that in mind, the text concludes:
Laval and Dardot wrote a book called Common. In it they propose an alternative to the private ownership of the economy, something similiar to the commonwealth. While past experiences can be useful (like indigenous ones) and we need to learn and inspire ourselves with as many useful alternatives we can, we need to understand we cannot go back. These systems, which are technologies, were create in a certain time period to solve specific problems in specif contexts. We don't live there anymore, so they lost their meaning. But they can be re-contextualized for our situation.
To understand why private ownership of means of prodution is an issue, we need to look at the ontology of capitalism. It starts at the social division of labor in intelectual labor and manual labor. In different times, people had more of both in their production system, like with artesians. With industrialization the separation went further, creating a manager figure, separating intelectual labor from capital, the owner of the means of production. Now we have a system where people who produces are separated from the ones who use it and are the main benefactors from said production labor. People who owns production is separated from the use and the consequences of the use or production, therefore they have no qualms about destroying the environment to keep their profit margins from declining.
The proletariat in the capitalist system is the person who does labor in the ontological sense, the transformation of nature. The rest of workers only participate in the process of valorization of capital. A maid does not chop trees to make a table, but by cleaning their bosses' table the boss don't have to and can spend that time working in other more profitable jobs, accumulating more capital. Most urban jobs are just that, not labor that transform the natural world for use or sustenance by humans. That's why the proletariat is more central to the politics of socialism, because they are at the center of capitalism, if they stop transforming nature, the economy stops, material wealth stops being created. That's a power exclusive to labor that is recognized in its ontology. It's why labor can supplant capitalism and why the economy and society can keep functioning after labor control their own means of production.
A collective ownership would be a way to end this alienating process and facilitates the approximation between production, use and consequences, creting a motive to moderate the first two. Only by making production, distribution and use democratic can we choose to have a sustainable way to exist. With labor controlling the means, automation would not be taking away their jobs, it would be making their lifes and jobs easier. They could have greener industry, less labor intensive and productive enough to end hunger and poverty.
The issue we have is not with technology, but the private ownership and alienation of technology. They are societal issues, human issues, therefore, they can be solved by humans. Thus, climate catastrophe can be partially avoided because its man-made through capitalism and capitalism is not a metaphysical abstract entity but an objective system of human relations. While it's easier to imagine the environmental destruction of the world due to climate change than to imagine that capitalism can change into a system of production that can revert the environmental damage we created, that is a view promoted by the powers invested in capitalism. It's a pure ideological stand with no basis in the essence of reality, aka ontology. (in the historical material dialetic sense)