GOOD ANSWER BENTON

[virgoancatalyst]

Thomas Benton's 10 questions:

7. What is your political viewpoint?

I believe in the collective control of essential productive means and resources, but as a pragmatist, I believe actual, not theoretical, interests do check and test the field of social change.

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Comments

[supresmooth]

What does that even mean?

Because when I read it, it says to me that he thinks every individual should have equal say/control in the centralized production of energy, water, food, medicine, oil, etc. "essential" things and that he likes the Supreme Court just the way it is.

Which says to me that he wants to keep the Supreme Courtjudicial branch, but replace the legislative and executive branches of government with a Communistic entity.

[moondarq]

Not necessarily. One can still have a representative government with a people-controlled energy/food etc thingie.

And example of this on a small scale is SMUD, a municipally owned utility with an elected board of representatives.

Food co-ops would be another example, though I'm fuzzy on the details of that structure.

[supresmooth]

I don't know that having representatives constitutes collective control, though. That's more like consolidated committee control control, which if the committees themselves were also consolidated, would be scary.

[moondarq]

A Communist entity would also require some level of "consolidated committee control" though. So if we're excluding representative or democratic government from being defined as "every individual having control in the centralized production of etc" we also have to exclude a communistic entity.

Which leaves us with something rather idealistic... a form of post-Communism. Marx talks about that at some point, but it seems a little far-fetched to me.

I think you can get away with a completely collective government if you have maybe, like, five people. And even then, those people have to be cool.

Of course, this discussion is now effectively tangented.

Hehe.