At 12:53 15/06/99 +0200, Martin William Smith wrote:

>First, a socialist institution need not, and can not, own *all* the
>means of production.

But a socialist system can - and must.

>> Furthermore, "equality of individual wealth" most certainly does not
>> exist in the military.  It never has, and never will in its current
>> form.
>
>Of course it does.  It doesn't and never will for you, because you
>only measure wealth in terms of money, and you only measure equality
>by insisting on equality of discretionary funds.

*I* don't measure wealth by money - but I'd be interested to hear how the
term "equality of individual wealth" can apply to the armed forces.

>You're saying the military doesn't produce anything.  Then teachers
>don't produce anything either.  Doctors don't produce anything.

Teachers educate.  Doctors heal.  Philosophers - well, we're all doing
that, aren't we?  Airline pilots fly planes.  Army people invade and kill.
One of these (well, possibly two - do we really need philosophers ;-) )
isn't particularly useful in a civilised society.

>Of course it's difficult in your view.  Your view is based on a
>definition that disallows it.  It can't get any more difficult than
>that.

Whatever.  To me, a subsystem is something that runs inside a system, but
is dependant on that system for its survival.  Subsystems are not seperate
systems.  A subsystem is run by the operating system - it's not capable of
running all by itself (to bring a work-related example to this discussion).

>Subservient?  Existing-inside-of now means subservient? This discovery
>will give great relief to people with cancer of the pancreas.  There
>you go blaming the victim again.

Subserviant in the sense that the organisation is not able to stand on its
own feet because of external factors which apply to it.  Are you being
deliberately obtuse, or just needlessly inflammatory?

Alister

--

"Let us not fool ourselves, half a century after the adoption
of this Declaration (of Human Rights) and supposedly under its
protection, millions of people have died in the world without
reaching the age of 50 and without even knowing that there was
a universal document that should have protected them."
         Roberto Robaina, Cuba's Foreign Minister