A Partial Return Of The Blog

I had to shutdown the blog for health concerns. I spent part of that time trying to get in the best shape for surgery, and now I am spending time recovering from surgery with which there were complications.

Last year, I spent quite a bit of time talking about the threat of the other pandemic: authoritarianism. That time was spent on this blog as well as in my comments on other blogs. The threat of authoritarianism around the world is real and growing. In the U.S., it is politically most pronounced in today's Republican Party, especially in its leaders like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. It is also exhibited in groups like Moms For Liberty and results in many of the state laws passed regarding voting and gender transitioning. Religiously, it is most pronounced in those fellow religiously conservative Christians who are Christian Nationalists. Those working for such a nation are being driven by authoritarian sentiments more than by biblical concerns as seen in the sources they use to prove their claims.

In discussing authoritarianism, we can further define it by its alternative: democracy. For with authoritarianism comes hierarchy while with democracy comes equality. The hierarchy that comes with authoritarianism can manifest itself in terms of the power of a single leader, the power of a small group of elites, or the power of an ethnicity and/or an economic class. With the last classification comes the notion of a shadow nation. A shadow nation is where a given nation is seen as belonging more to one ethnicity and/or economic class than it belongs to the rest of its citizens. Evidence of a shadow nation can be seen in the laws passed by a nation's government. Do they favor a specific economic class more than the other economic classes? If so, and they do so here in America (click here and there), then we could classify a nation as a classocracy. If the laws passed by a nation give a privileged position to a given ethnicity in a multi-ethnic nation so that there is a diminishing of the equal rights of other ethnic groups, there is an ethnocracy. Totalitarian regimes can also be ethnocracies and/or classocracies. There are at least two ethnic groups vying to establish an ethnocracy in America or parts of it: whites and every form of Christian Nationalism. And what makes every form of Christian Nationalism a Biblical problem is that it puts all of us Christians in the inevitable position of 'lording it over others.' And it puts all of us Christians in the inevitable position having privilege and supremacy over the group to which we are to preach the Gospel. Is it unreasonable to suppose that many to whom we preach the Gospel will have already stopped listening because they first noticed the inferior position in society they have to us?

Starting this year, I will try to focus on the Martin Luther King Jr. quote below even with a partial return of the blog. It is partial because I will be posting at the most one article per week except for the first week. On the first week I will also post one article showing comments that were blocked on conservative blogs that same week. I will provide other posts like the one on blocked comments on a regular basis when I am able to.The King quote is below (click here for the source):

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. 

If we were to apply King's statement, we find that it speaks to us as individuals, to our institutions, to our businesses, financial institutions, and corporations, and to the nation as a whole. As consumers, we are so easily sold on the latest technological gadgets. We are also hyper aware of what our expenses, including taxes, are compared to our income. We are even more conscious of what others get, especially from the government, in comparison to what we receive. But we are not a monolith.

Some know all of the above from the perspective of deprivation. Others know it from a treading water status. While others know all of the above as the results of having done well  and some of them have succeeded by exploiting others. It is natural and right for those from the first two categories to speak out because they are doing so for survival. 

But what about those who done well? What about those including both individuals and businesses of all kinds who are wealthy? Do they have the right to complain when their taxes pay to assist those who are from the first two categories? Do they have the right to complain about paying taxes that would benefit the education of the children whose parents are from those first two categories? Do they have a right to complain when some fellow citizens work to change our economic structure so that there are fewer people who are either living in deprivation or are just treading water?

And for those who have done well, do they really think that their own charitable giving is enough? If they do, then they should read the next two quotes.

The first quote is from King. It is a continuation of the quote given above. King said (click here for the source):

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

Now below is a quote from Vlad Lenin. Generally, I don't like Lenin. He acted as a prototype to Stalin and the structure of his government, as Rosa Luxemburg noted, was based on a bourgeoisie dictatorship model rather than a socialist one. But the following quote from Lenin coincides significantly with was just quoted from King (click here for the quote):

Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and isolation...But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze,   in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.

Another way of saying what Lenin said is that, for many of the wealthy, charity can become an indulgence that removes the guilt that comes from either directly exploiting others or a system in which people are economically exploited. Again, charity is a bandaid used to cover the wounds of a the disease of economic exploitation. And so for the wealthy who would believe that giving charity is all that is morally required, they must realize that they need to go farther. They need to remove the structures and policies by which their abundance of wealth is due to taking advantage of others. 

And isn't that what King is saying too? It isn't enough to give charity and to help individuals or even groups. We need to change the structure of our economy so that there are fewer and fewer victims and beggars on the road on which we all travel in life. 

We should note that our current form of Capitalism, is not the form of Capitalism that was employed in America and around the world after WW II. That form was called the Bretton-Woods System. The Bretton-Woods System was a form of economics that, while employing a significant measure of Capitalism, gave national governments more control over their economies. And in a democracy, that translates giving the people, who elected those leaders, more control of their own economy.

Our current form of Capitalism, which was introduced to some nations through manufactured crises, is called Neoliberalism. Neoliberalism eliminated many of the powers that were reserved for the government. As a result, private investors, sometimes even those who are from other nations, gained more power in determining a given nation's economy. And many of those private investors religiously followed the maximize profit ethic, which is a cannibalizing ethic that devours all of its peers. And as a result, disparities in wealth and income, both between the economic classes and the races, have continued to increase for the past few decades. Can we now see how the economic road on which we all travel needs to be changed so that there are fewer people in need? 

BTW, we also need to see that Neoliberalism has both a domestic side and a foreign side. That distinction was made in the 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. While Clinton favored trade agreements that would give more control of our economy to foreign investors, Trump favored tax and regulation cuts that gave American corporations and financial institutions more control over our economy. Only Trump successfully obscured the fact that he was still promoting a Neoliberal capitalism.

Not all in our society have preferred to be part of a thing-oriented society rather than a person-oriented society. And not all who have preferred to be part of a thing-oriented society do so to the same degree.  Certainly the Democratic Party is a mixed bag in terms of caring more about people than it does about profits and property rights. Some third parties and individuals try to promote a person-oriented society to varying degrees.

In contrast to those who are working to advance a person-oriented society, there is Wall Street. Clearly, Wall Street favors profit motives and property rights over people as do many from corporate America. And here we should note that the "wokism" promoted by many in corporate America does not imply that a corporation is promoting a person-oriented society over a thing-oriented society. That is because many in corporate America can favor certain woke causes that do not interfere with the economic policies they lobby for that make profits and property rights more important than people's need to be able to earn livable wages, the needs that people have for government assistance, and/or regulations that protect people and the need to protect the environment.

The Republican Party under Trump has cared and continues to care much more about profits and property rights than it does about people. That was shown by the policies of Trump that decreased the financial and social responsibilities of corporations and financial institutions in order to increase their immediate profits. And their increase in profits also contributed to a spike in the deficit.

Today's Republican Party under Trump has become the political home for Cain when he rhetorically asked God, 'am I my brother's keeper'?Of course, one could retort that at least that such a question is Biblical, but it is Biblical in the same way of how Pharaoh treated the Hebrews who were being led by Moses. Despite that, today's Evangelical support for the Republican Party under Trump is continuing a conservative Church tradition over the past few centuries of siding with wealth and power. Such was done in France, Russia, and Spain before their respective revolutions. 

We should note that the Church paid dearly both during and after those revolutions. And the reputation of the Gospel has been harmed because of the oppression and abuses that were logical consequences of Christendom. Both Critical Theory and Post Modernism have accurately pointed out the failures that came with Christendom and other sources. That oppression from and brutal treatment by those who claim to have an exclusive knowledge of the truth is part of the history that Critical Theory and Post Modernism is directing our attention too. Sadly, neither Critical Theory nor Post Modernism have provided viable solutions to what Christendom wrought. And worse, those who want to bring back Christendom, with the promise that they can do domination right, are speaking louder and louder and are stirring up a growing audience because the Christians in that audience are in fear from anticipating the coming of a real persecution as secularism becomes more pervasive.

The New Testament tells us that 'the love of money is a root for all sorts of evil' (click I Timothy 6:10 for the source). That is true not just for the individual Christian, it is true for everyone. And it is true not just for individual people, it is true for businesses, corporations, financial institutions, society, and the nation. It's not that profits and property rights are not important, they are necessary for economic survival. It is that when gadgets, profit motives, and property rights are more important than people to our institutions, businesses, society, and nation, we are all forced to merge onto a highway leading to self-destruction.

At the same time, it is not enough to point out the failures of others. James 3 tells us that 'we all stumble in many ways.' Paul tells us in Romans 3:9 that both the person who denies the existence of God and the religious person are equal in sin and are thus in the same boat. And so to the best of our ability we need to point out those failures in the same way that we want others to point out our own failures. We need to point out those failures as fellow sinners. We need to point out those failures not as those who are morally superior to sinners or as a way of tearing others down, but as a way of offering an alternative way to live. We need to point out those failures not as authoritarians who are virtue-signaling by seeking to punish others. Instead, we need to point out those failures as peers in sin who want people to change for their own benefit so that they can be better than ourselves. I have not mastered that way of pointing out the faults of others. In fact I am still trying to begin to learn how to do that. At the same time, some things must be immediately pointed out.

So, hopefully, the importance of not just distinguishing a person-oriented society from a thing-oriented society will be the focus of this blog during this year, but the importance of promoting the former society over the latter one will also be emphasized.

What Kind Of Populism Will We Choose?

Much has been made of populism for over the past several months. We've seen populism on both the conservative and liberal sides. We should note here that the Left in America does not have enough people to claim to be a populist movement.

And so the question that is implied, by the existence of the conservative and liberal flavors of populism, is which one should we choose? Here we should note that not all populism is really populism. Quite often, the Republican and Democratic Parties want to co-op the respective forms of conservative and liberal populism. However, when this occurs, populism dies for the people of a populist group become followers of the elites who have co-opted them. Many who followed Sanders during the Democratic Party primaries learned this unfortunate lesson after Hillary obtained enough delegates. As for the Tea Party, though it has some independence, it works either under the leadership of the Republican Party's elites or under rogue elites like President Trump.

What we should note about populism is that it isn't just a movement, it is a practice or method. The method or practice is that of the people making their voices heard by their representatives so that they have more say in governmental decisions.

In one sense, populism, like elite-centered rule, is a neutral state of affairs that becomes good or bad depending on the quality of decisions made. Of course the difference is that populism is democratic while elite-centered rule is not. But the value of populism depends on the quality of the decisions made by its participants. And the advantage of populism is that more voices are being heard and thus more concerns are, hopefully, being addressed in the decisions being made.

There are two traits that make populism more constructive than destructive. The first of these traits is that the people in a given populist movement are more 'person-oriented' rather than 'thing-oriented.' These terms come from Martin Luther King Jr. And what it is meant here is that people are counted as being more important than things. The things King had in mind were gadgets, profits, and property rights. But our problem with getting people to be more person-oriented than thing-oriented is that our Capitalist economic system is constantly teaching us that happiness is achieved through materialism, through the growing acquisition of things. And the reality that comes with people being more thing-oriented than person-oriented is that their focus will be UNNECESSARILY on increasing their acquisition of things for themselves and for those in their groups. This means competition starts to push sharing and cooperation out of the picture. We should note that we are talking about 'unnecessarily' increasing the obtaining of goods because there is nothing wrong with those who live in poverty to want and get the basics of life.

The second necessary trait for any populist movement that wants to contribute to society rather than take away from it is that it must open rather than insular. What is meant by a group being insular is that the group obtains all of its information about the world from its own members only. There is no learning from those outside the gruop. And because there is no learning from others, there is no need to listen to them. And why should those in an insular group listen to those outside when a group is insular because those outside the group have been demonized?

Without these two traits of being person oriented and not being insular, populism will merely maintain the status quo. That status quo is a king-of-the-hill competition between members of a society in order to see who gets to rule over all others. 

Some 2016 Resolutions For Revolutionaries

It seems that chances for real change in this nation are dying quickly.  Nothing confirms that statement like our current list of presidential candidates. But indicators of how the possibility of change is rapidly diminishing can also be seen in how the last hope for change has utterly failed to bring real change. For by prosecuting more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined or  by pushing through the TPP or letting the letting the health insurance industry determine the contents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)  along with failing to criminally prosecute those responsible for the financial collapse, the last candidate promising the most change has only delivered the same old, same old.

Chances for change can be seen as dying also because we have no real organized opposition to the system. Occupy Wall Street served that purpose, but its energy began to fade when the encampments were dismantled and there has been no organized movement that has taken its place. In addition, it seems that no matter how bad things are,  not enough people seem to care enough to pay attention to what is going on let alone demand that our leaders change their ways. So below are 3 resolutions designed for those who want some kind of a nonviolent, democratic revolution to take place.

The first resolution we must make is to work not just for structural changes such as the replacing of Capitalism with a more just economic and social system, we must work to bring about a moral revolution. Such a revolution requires that we work as evangelists and convert individuals. And what we need to convert the majority of individuals to is to embrace an ethic that places a higher priority on people, especially those who are from groups other than our own, than on things. This putting a higher priority on people than things is one of the things that Martin Luther King Jr. talked about. And when talking about things, King wasn't too vague. The things King referenced when talking about people being more important were profits, gadgets, and property rights. It isn't that we shouldn't have profits, gadgets, or laws to protect the property we own. It is that when the things we want or own are more important than people, then we become thing-oriented. And our society continues to be thing-oriented, as King noted, conditions such as poverty, racism, and war will continue to persist.

This blog did publish a  blogpost stating that we should work to become a person-oriented society rather than a thing-oriented society because of what happens in the latter (click here). What this blogpost will add to what was stated in that blogpost are two things. First, regardless of what political-economic structure a society adopts, a society that is thing-oriented instead of person-oriented will eventually self-destruct. That is what we are seeing in our society today. Second, the need to change is made more urgent by how thing-oriented our current society has become. For it seems that more people are on the take now, especially those who either write or enforce our laws, than ever before. Even as voters, we often show ourselves to be on the take by voting for those candidates who promise more benefits to people like us regardless of how well off we already are. We prefer those candidates to candidates who promise to focus their attention on those worse off than ourselves.

The second necessary resolution also deals more with individuals us as individuals rather than with groups though it can apply to groups as well. That second resolution is to promise to avoid acting as the Pharisee from Jesus' parable of the two men praying(click here). In that parable Jesus tells us about two men who prayed to God. The tax-collector, one of the most hated men in society prayed as a broken man who could only beg for mercy. In contrast to that, the Pharisee thanked God that he was not a sinner like the publican. The Pharisee was not just confident that he was good enough for God to accept him, he believed that he was superior to the tax collector.

What is important in this parable for revolutionaries is to see the importance of avoiding having an attitude that allows a person to believe that they are above others. For even if we are right on  more points than our opponents, we cannot afford to believe that we are superior to them or that there is nothing we can learn from them. When we display this attitude toward our opponents, we find that we are merely imitating them for this is the attitude they have toward others.

Those who believe that they are superior don't need to listen to others. And such an attitude contradicts what democracy is about. For democracy not only encourages us to press our own demands, it challenges us to listen to others as they share their concernss with us. And nothing can make us more deaf to the concerns and ideas of others than to believe that we are superior to those talking to us. This attitude handicap cripples our hearing. Thus, we should gladly let those who believe in elite rule rather than democracy have a monopoly over feeling superior to others.

The third resolution we need to make and followup on is a corporate approach to the second resolution. That just as we should not believe that we as individuals are not better than all others, we should extend that belief to all of the groups to which we belong. The belief that one's group is superior to others is nothing more than a way of promoting tribalism. With tribalism, allegiance to one's group trumps commitment to principles so that what is right and wrong depends on who does what to whom. But such a belief will only allow us to justify our group's rule over others. And in so doing, we merely maintain the current status quo despite changing the names of the elites who are in charge. We will, under tribalism, also practice an authoritarianism that leads us to listen only to those who belong to the "right" groups. This is contrary to a working democracy where all are listened to. 

The status quo currently employs an elite rule that uses tribalism to maintain its privileged position in society. For such tribalism prevents us from questioning how our society is treating those who are marginalized, those who live in the districts using Hunger Games vernacular, it keeps us from listening to those from our own society who would challenge the status quo.

In other words, if we revolutionaries really want to work for a revolution, we will believe and act differently from those who maintain the current status quo. Without that difference, our current fight is no longer against the status quo. Rather, it becomes just another exhibition of jealous rage over who is in control. And we revolutionaries should note how leaders of revolutions, even those who claim to follow our ideologies, often become like the rulers they replaced. And that is because they were thing-oriented leaders who were more concerned with their own power and prosperity than they were concerned with principles that  could serve the masses.

Should Revolutions Include The Writing Off Of Moral Debts

In an interview with Euronews, Noam Chomsky stated that the Greek debt should be forgiven (click here). The failure to do so, as Brussels is doing, hurts Greece. We should note here that for practical purposes, Brussels serves as the financial capital of the European Union. 

We should understand that one of the reasons why some believe that the Greek debt should be forgiven has to do with the tradeoffs between Greece paying off such a large debt and having the debt forgiven. Only the latter, according to some, allows Greece to have hope for the future. Other than that, the debt is too stifling for Greece to both pay it off and to grow economically. 

Using Greece's need as a model, those of us who clamor for revolution need to ask ourselves this question: Should we call on the public to punish those we blame for the world's ills or should we recognize that, owing such a high moral debt to the world, we need to encourage such people to feel free in having a change of heart by being willing to forgive them for their past sins and abuse of power? That instead of looking to give those we blame what we think they deserve, we should dream that they should have a change in heart and join us. Why shouldn't we let many sinful bygones be bygones if those who sin against us are willing to change? And if we remove the threat of punishment for past sins, we might make it easier for at least some elites to go through a change in heart.

Every group has scapegoats for what is wrong with the world. Those on the Right conflate liberals and leftists into one group and blame society's ills on their relative morality, lack of personal responsibility, and atheism.  Liberals tend to blame those on the Right for their imposition of personal religious values on society as well as the Right's support of business. And those of us on the Left blame the Rich. In each case, to win, the scapegoat must be overcome and conquered. But in addition, there is the implication that evil will stop when one's own group is in charge. History does not share that assessment. Sometimes we need our opponents to provide a check on us and our designs.

Rather than working with the current divisions of the Left, Liberals, and Conservatives, perhaps we should start with the division Martin Luther King Jr did. In his speech against the Vietnam War, King specified one of the real divisions between people when he said:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

That division is between those who are thing-oriented and those who are person-oriented. Also note what King regards as being thing-oriented from that which is person-oriented. Finally, the orientations King identifies shows one of the major divisions between people.  

The emphasis on the individual and one's property rights is championed by those on the Right. And we need to help those on the Right to see that progress cannot be first measured by profit, buildings, and possessions. 

Liberals need to see that mere modifications of the current system that so favors property rights can never produce a society that becomes person-oriented. 

At the same time, we need to add a further distinction for both the Left and the Right. That distinction is between those who are ideological-oriented and those who are person-oriented. For a danger that is faced by both those on the Left and the Right is the ability to scapegoat and even dehumanize those who do not follow one's own ideology. The part of Leftist ideology that blames the Rich and sees them as being incapable of changing implies that we should treat the Rich as being less than human. And the part of the ideology of the Right that regards all who are nonconservatives as being moral lepers does the same.

When we believe that others have nothing to contribute or cannot change, we begin to give ourselves permission to regard and even treat them as being less than ourselves. This is why we cannot afford not to try to win our opponents over. And in winning them over, we should not necessarily try to win them over to our particular ideology--for me that would be a Leftist ideology. Rather, we should try to win them over to being person-oriented rather than thing-oriented or ideological-oriented. That though things and ideologies are important, we need to regard people, whether they side with us or not, as being most important.  And we cannot regard people as being most important if we feel compelled to conquer them. 

Yes, there might be a time where we should seek democratic controls over the behavior of those who insist on putting things or ideologies before people. But we must first and continually try to win over such people.

We know that the moral debt some have incurred from how they treat others is too high for them to admit their sins. And the more we insist that such people pay that debt, the more defensive they become. At this point, we must remember how we have all treated others unjustly. We should also think about how we would want to be reached out to if our moral debt for how we have treated others was exorbitant. It is with this in mind that we need to personally engage our opponents and invite them to change. We need to help them see that for all of us to survive, we must put people first.

Is Socialism More Conducive To Being Person-Oriented Than Capitalism?

In last Tuesday's blogpost (click here), we discussed how materialism minimizes the differences between Socialism and Capitalism. We used Martin Luther King Jr.'s terminology of 'thing-oriented' for materialism. That terminology can be seen in his quote below which comes from his speech against the Vietnam War:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Here, being thing-oriented meant that we place a higher priority on gadgets, profits, and property rights than we do on the welfare of people.  Thus noting that regardless of the political-economic structure one employs, the ethics of the general public plays a major role in determining the state of society. We also note how being more thing-oriented pushes society into demonstrating more of the following characteristics and behaviors:

• Status and success are most measured in the accumulation of goods
• People view others as objects to be used to get more things or obstacles to be eliminated or avoided in order to steer clear of losing things. In the end, things become more important than people
• People are more aggressive in public
• People become more litigious
• Society becomes more punitive
• People will tend to have a deep compassion on others but only on those who "deserve" it.

Of course, what comes next assumes that a person-oriented society is preferred to a thing-oriented one. Does Socialism or Capitalism lead us to be person-oriented than thing-oriented?

Answering this question is problematic. After all, neither Socialism nor Capitalism are monoliths.  So in order to answer the question, we would have to identify which forms of Socialism and Capitalism we are comparing.

To find an answer to the question, what will be done here is to ask which primary characteristic of the two system would cause us to be more person-oriented. Here, the primary characteristics to be compared are collectivism and individualism. Socialism emphasizes collectivism while Capitalism emphasizes individualism.

How Socialism stresses collectivism can vary from one socialist system to another. In socialist systems that rely on elite-centered rule, collectivism applies solely to the sharing of materialistic things. In socialist systems that expand the use of democratic structures, then collectivism also includes the sharing of power. Now the trouble in the history of socialist systems is this, where collectivism did not include the sharing of power, classism took over and then at least those who were in the upper classes became thing-oriented. This was true of the U.S.S.R. after their Civil War where those who had prominent places in the Party were able to enjoy luxuries and privileges which those below would never see.

In Capitalism, the individual with his/her accomplishments, status, and possession becomes the most noteworthy characteristic of society. In Capitalism, it is what we do for ourselves that defines us. But the trouble here is what we fail to do for ourselves also defines us. And since what we can do for ourselves depends on how much we share with each other, what we do or fail to do for ourselves is not always the best measurement of who we really are as people. See, even with its stress on individualism, there is a certain amount of collectivism in Capitalism. An important example of this collectivism can be seen in the building and maintenance of infrastructures.

We should also note that when some emphasize individualism, such as in individual liberty, they do so by limiting whom they see as individual liberty's main predatory: big government. And this is done assuming that power is only found in government and that one individual cannot limit the freedom of other individuals. 

However, it is with this view of government being the primary threat to the individual and his/her liberties that provides an indicator as to whether Socialism or Capitalism will be more likely to provide a society that is more person-oriented. That the more the individual and his/her liberties are stressed, the more defensive the individual is of what they have. And the more defensive the individual is, the less collectivism will exist--that is collectivism in terms of sharing possessions or power. And the more defensive the individual is, the more value that the individual will place on what he/she has over outsiders. And that applies to both the individual's power and possessions.

This is not to say that we should do away with all individualism. After all, Martin Luther King Jr. noted that the failure of Communism was seen in its failure to recognize how life is individual. But what seems to be the case, at least speculatively, is that too much individualism causes society to become more thing-oriented. And thus, Capitalism should tend to push societies to be more thing-oriented than person oriented. On the other hand, a Socialism that allows for the expansion of democracy rather than relying on elite-centered rule might have a better chance at encouraging society to be more person-oriented.

Of course, some Capitalists would want to disagree with this thinking and they would have good reason too. We've been very speculative here. At least, however, when we look at the above characteristics that thing-oriented societies produce, we should at least agree that a person-oriented society is preferable to a thing-oriented society.