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From: lkk@mit-eddie.UUCP (Larry Kolodney)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Enforced socialism?!?!?!? - (nf)
Message-ID: <1765@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 6-May-84 22:21:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.1765
Posted: Sun May  6 22:21:04 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 8-May-84 00:07:35 EDT
References: <519@mprvaxa.UUCP> <10100044@ea.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 49

>>>From: mwm@ea.UUCP
>>>Scott, you're being unfair to corporate monopolies. Corporations haven't:
>>>
>>>	1) Passed laws forcing you to buy from them, and only them.
>>>	2) Made it illegal to build your own.
>>>	3) Made it illegal to do by hand what their tools make easier.
>>>
>>>Organizing to increase your market value isn't a bad thing. Passing laws that
>>>*require* others to pay what you consider your market value to be is a bad
>>>thing.
>>>
>>>	<mike
>>>-----
>>>
>>Right, and nobody forces poor people to sleep in subway stations.
>>
>>Larry Kolodney


>Since unions and poor people haven't had much to do with each other lately,
>could you explain your non sequitor?
>
>	<mike

The point here, which is a paraphrase of MARX, is that there is a form
of coercion in society which is extralegal.  This is called economic coercion.
Because humans have certain needs which must be fulfilled in order to live
(food, shelter, etc.) they often have no choice about what to do in certain
situations, even though there is NO LAW requiring them to do it.

For instance, if I live in a town which is dominated by one very large 
corporation, and I am poor and unskilled, I have very little choice but to
work for that company, ON ITS TERMS.  No law requires me to, except the
law of biology which requires me to eat.

Now before you say "Why don't you just move away?"  Tell me where I am
going move where my situation will be better?  I am a naive person, not
sophisticated like all of you yuppies.  I also have a family to supoort,
and roots in the community.  We tend to forget these days the value of
community, a quality which is dying out in our cities filled with lonely 
atomistic people with no roots and no support networks.

and so on and so forth
-- 
Larry Kolodney
(The Devil's Advocate)

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