Ledtråd: Misslyckad konstnär

Idag är det Söndag och dags för ”Gissa vem?”. Förra veckans ”gissa vem?” var ingen mindre än nobelpristagaren i Fysik, Albert Einstein.

Som vanligt, först en liten ledtråd och sedan en presentation av orginaltext.

Ledtråd: En politisk ledare. Föddes under senare 1800-tal och grundade ett politiskt parti. Mannen i fråga avlade aldrig någon studentexamen och drömde om att bli konstnär.

”THERE are some truths which are so obvious that for this very reason they are not seen or at least not recognized by ordinary people…

Every animal mates only with a member of the same species. The titmouse seeks the titmouse, the finch the finch, the stork the stork, the field mouse the field mouse, the dormouse the dormouse, the wolf the she-wolf, etc. Only unusual circumstances can change this…

Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable.

since the inferior always predominates numerically over the best, if both had the same possibility of preserving life and propagating, the inferior would multiply so much more rapidly that in the end the best would inevitably be driven into the background, unless a correction of this state of affairs were undertaken. Nature does just this by subjecting the weaker part to such severe living conditions that by them alone the number is limited, and by not permitting the remainder to increase promiscuously, but making a new and ruthless choice according to strength and health…”

Ledtråd: En nobelpristagare i fysik..

Gissa vem?

Är en ny kategori som startar idag här på bloggen. I den kommer utdrag ur texter författade av olika personer att publiceras. Det kommer att bli en salig blandning av personer med olika ideologiska, religiösa och politiska idéer.

Uppgiften består av att gissa vem som skrivit texten genom att man får några rader som ledtråd och genom att läsa den korta orginaltexten.

Texten nedan är ett utdrag av en längre version som publicerades 1949 av en världskänd vetenskapsman. Han föddes i Tyskland och fick under sitt liv nobelpriset i fysik. Trots att den har några år på nacken är reflektionerna ytterst aktuella idag. Läs och begrunda och glöm inte att gissa!

 

”Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. ..

The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free…

Production is carried on for profit, not for use… The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job…

Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil…

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child…

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism…

Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition..”