Not surprising, considering socialism is fundamentally incompatible with human nature.
Oh happy day…

And with enough “reeducation,” human habits can be changed, right?
I know that as a libertarian socialist, you reject coercion, but you should realize how dangerous the notion of “Tabula Rasa,” i.e.
“the blank slate” has been over the past century. Well-meaning socialists believed that if they sent enough people to reeducation camps, they could make people selfless. But that experiment failed: the vast majority of people care about themselves, their families and their friends alot more than they care about distant strangers.
Whether you call this human nature or human habit is irrelevent. People are generally selfish, and even forced reeducation camps cannot change this fact. Socialism is incompatible with selfishness, which is why it has repeatedly failed every time it has been attempted.

here micha–the following is one of the essays i submitted as part of my application to receive a grant to go to israel for a year next year. perhaps it’ll give you a little insight into what i’m talking about here…
This essay relates, in part, to the preceding one regarding Days of War, Nights of Love, in that, along with my copy of the book, I received a pamphlet written by the same authors, which states on the cover (noted here for the purpose of introducing this essay) “The most important question for the revolutionary is how to escape disciples—and enable equals.”
Being, admittedly, anarchistic in my approach to social organizing, I am somewhat averse to participation in, and the employment of, hierarchical power structures, because I believe in order to function, they necessitate both top-down coercion by and bottom-up submission to an authority other than God.
I find it important that our future Jewish leaders each ask themselves the following question: If the ultimate goal of Jewish communal leadership is to awaken others to a love of Hashem and yiddishkeit, and to pursue a path of tikkun olam (the buzz-phrase so-often invoked in this day and age), how does one truly accomplish this when they enforce hierarchical roles and power structures that further fractionalize what might otherwise be deemed the “oneness of Hashem” and Hashem’s creation, and which, in effect, further shatter the fabled fragments of sephirot within our midst?
I find that, by creating and focusing on such distinctions (like the one between rabbi and congregant, for example), we are disabling our community members, rather than enabling them, and forcing them into a position of dependence on ‘leaders’ and intermediaries, as opposed to one of independence and direct-connection with the infinite. Once these lines are drawn, they establish a regressive transference of power that ascribes authority to men who are, sadly, easily corruptible, and which leads to a shirking-off of responsibility on the part of the congregants beyond their timely payment of synagogue dues and commitment to raising Jewish children. “I need not wrestle with God,” as the name Israel implies. “I pay a rabbi to do it for me.” This itself is a faulty assumption, however, whereas our leaders, once swollen with power, tend to become more caught up in their institutions and roles—with politics and privilege—than they or we ought to be with Hashem and our relationship to ‘him’. Thus the goal switches from attaining our ends (oneness with Hashem, the world, and each other), to maintaining the means of that pursuit—if only to preserve whatever gains we reap from them. The Tower of Babel, for example, was not built to reach heaven, as so much as it was to advance the place of its creators. As parshas Noach reads, “Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven; and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands.” (Emphasis added.) Clearly, had they truly desired God’s presence, they would have realized that they did not have had to build a tower at all. Thus they quite literally took the Lord’s name in vain, using it to advance their own names, which is likely the reason for the tower’s destruction.
The Hindu mystic Meher Baba once wrote, “Love and coercion can never go together. Love has to spring spontaneously from within. It is in no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force and it cannot be forced upon anybody, yet it can be awakened in one through love itself.”
To me, the idea of being a great Jewish leader means becoming the best Jew I myself can be, and shining with such a radiance of love and adoration for Hashem and all ‘his’ works, that, as Baba continues, “it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches.” By mastering my Jewish practice and becoming a true beacon of love and hope—a light unto the nations, or perhaps simply a Harriet Tubman of a Jewish intellectual underground railroad—I will, be it the will of Hashem, be able to awaken others to their own potential and guide them to a place from where they can confidently lead themselves and thus reach others, as I have reached them. As the old proverb goes, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”
Of course, this may all be utterly idealistic nonsense. Whether or not any of what I’ve just stated is actually the case is completely subjective. I’m reminded of a scene from Monty Python’s classic film The Life of Brian. His home surrounded by hundreds of Judeans under the impression that he is the messiah, Brian addresses the crowd:
BRIAN: Look. You’ve got it all wrong. You don’t need to follow me. You don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves. You’re all individuals!
FOLLOWERS: Yes, we’re all individuals!
BRIAN: You’re all different!
FOLLOWERS: Yes, we are all different!
DENNIS: I’m not.
ARTHUR: Shhhh.
FOLLOWERS: Shh. Shhhh. Shhh.
BRIAN: You’ve all got to work it out for yourselves!
FOLLOWERS: Yes! We’ve got to work it out for ourselves!
BRIAN: Exactly!
FOLLOWERS: Tell us more!
BRIAN: No! That’s the point! Don’t let anyone tell you what to do!
With that in mind, it is entirely possible that the ideal model of ‘leadership’ I’ve detailed here is nonsense and stands not a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding in “the real world.” But whereas I am a man of deep conviction, in that I am willing to put my own self on the line for that which I believe in, I would rather commit myself to pursuing this path, than walking any other, no matter how probable my success elsewhere may be. I have thus said it before, and will surely say it again (without the intent of being overly-dramatic), I would rather die for a cause, than die just because.

“I believe selfishness is a virtue.” — in the church of satan perhaps. not for a nice jewish boy, however.
“But for now, capitalism is the way to go.” — capitalism will be the cause for the extermination of the planet and its inhabitants within 50 years if we don’t slow down and chill the fuck out. capitalism has us on a one track course straight to hell (in the proverbial sense of course). it’s disappointing that you not only don’t see it, but that you’ve been so blinded by elitist capitalist theory that you’ll likely argue i’m incorrect.

richer?
“The gap between rich and poor more than doubled from 1979 to 2000, an analysis of government data shows.
“The gulf is such that the richest 1 percent of Americans in 2000 had more money to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent.”
not to mention 1/3rd of the planet is starving.
and a cleaner environment?
uh, did you hear about the pentagon’s suppressed report about climate change—which they deem a result of human activity?
what’s bush doing? meh, making it worse.
how about the ever-increasing asthma rate?
threatening record levels of water consumption anyone?
11 more sites were declared superfund hazardous waste sites this past week…yummy! there are already over 1500 sites in the u.s. alone!
micha, deregulation is what’s giving these companies the ability to run amok polluting our environment, and the e.p.a. exists solely to prevent us, the public, from suing these companies independently. most of these companies pay paltry fines and go on polluting, as they receive government subsidies.
ex-communist countries have some of the worst environments in the world because their governments fell apart and could no longer afford to manage waste facilities. that’s why chernobyl melted down, for example.

Mo, the fact that the rich got richer at a faster rate then the poor got richer does not dispute the fact that we all got richer. Nor do I think inequality is a bad thing.
that the value of the dollar dropped and that we therefore all have more dollars doesn’t make us all richer.
the environment is cleaner now than it was thirty years ago. Air, water, nearly every environmental measure has improved.
i bet you 30 years ago we didn’t have 1500 toxic waste sites. 30 years ago, we didn’t have a global warming epidemic. 30 years ago we didn’t have an asthma epidemic. 30 years ago the cancer rates weren’t so high. don’t believe the hype micha–you’re buying a line from people who want to kill off environmental regulations so that they can pollute w/o recourse.
Deregulation? In what area? Which environmental regulations have been deregulated?
here’s a softening of regulations on emissions
When property is held in common, there is little incentive for people not to pollute it. Haven’t you ever lived in a dorm?
just cuz you and your friends are slobs doesn’t mean everyone else is.