|
|||||||||||||
The Philosopher Between the Capitalist and the Communist Chapter 1 : In the Beginning By Punkerslut
In the beginning, there was only truth. It had one admirer and defender, the philosopher. A simple start, and necessarily, a simple end. After truth, there came civilization. Humanity could not live together unless there was some sort of wisdom outside of ourselves that brought us into families, villages, towns, and peoples. This is why the philosopher must've come first, and only then civilization could spring up. And just as humanity learned to live in deeply organized societies, the rift between the rich and poor became the dominant theme of society. "An eye for an eye, unless you're rich, then just pay the court fees!" [*1] It may have been Babylon and its ruler, King Hammurabi, that gave this code of law, but it was the world that wholly accepted it -- every single last niche where a government could be found.
A historian today would describe the struggle between Communism and Capitalism as "relatively recent." But the truth is much more complicated than that. To understand the story completely, you must ask the only person who is wholly and fully devoted to the truth; you must ask the philosopher.
*1. "The Code of Hammurabi," by Hammurabi, Translated by L. W. King, composed about 1780 B.C.E., Paragraph 196 and 198, http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/ham/ham06.htm. *2. "Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans," by Plutarch, ~ 1000 BCE to 1,100 BCE, Chapter: "Comparison of Poplicola with Solon," http:/ "The remission of debts was peculiar to Solon; it was his great means for confirming the citizens' liberty; for a mere law to give all men equal rights is but useless, if the poor must sacrifice those rights to their debts, and, in the very seats and sanctuaries of equality, the courts of justice, the offices of state, and the public discussions, be more than anywhere at the beck and bidding of the rich." *3. "Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans," by Plutarch, ~ 1000 BCE to 1,100 BCE, Chapter: "Comparison of Numa with Lycurgus," http: "...nor did he [Numa] endeavor to do away with inequality in this respect, but permitted riches to be amassed to any extent, and paid no attention to the gradual and continual augmentation and influx of poverty; which it was his business at the outset, whilst there was as yet no great disparity in the estates of men, and whilst people still lived much in one manner, to obviate, as Lycurgus did, and take measures of precaution against the mischiefs of avarice, mischiefs not of small importance, but the real seed and first beginning of all the great and extensive evils of after times. The re-division of estates, Lycurgus is not, it seems to me, to be blamed for making, nor Numa for omitting; this equality was the basis and foundation of the one commonwealth; but at Rome, where the lands had been lately divided, there was nothing to urge any re-division or any disturbance of the first arrangement, which was probably still in existence."
|
