Thursday, October 20, 2016

Capitalism and Objectivification

Wow!  Even by the amazing low standards of Sociology, this is bad.  

Socialism and communism literally objectify the individual, who exists only as a means of advancing the interests of the state.  There is no individual, and no valid reason for people to have rights, separate from their membership in and contributions to the state.  Capitalism, according to Marx, objectifies LABOR, but in a voluntary exchange the only way to get labor is to pay the person.  The labor, and in fact the bodies, of citizens are entirely owned by the state under collectivism.

So, as usual, the goofballs of the left have it backwards:  Capitalism celebrates the individual, and collectivism destroys the individual.


The love of money results in objectification
Xijing Wang & Eva Krumhuber
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract: Objectification, which refers to the treatment of others as objectlike things, has long been observed in capitalism. While the negative impact of money on interpersonal harmony has been well documented, the social cognitive processes that underlie them are relatively unknown. Across four studies, we explored whether the love of money leads to objectification, while controlling for social power and status. In Study 1, the love and importance attached to money positively predicted the tendency to construe social relationships based on instrumentality. In Study 2, the likelihood to favour a target of instrumental use was increased by momentarily activating an affective state of being rich. Temporarily heightening the motivation for money further resulted in deprivation of mental capacities of irrelevant others, including humans (Study 3) and animals (Study 4). This lack of perceived mental states partially mediated the effects of money on subsequent immoral behaviour (Study 4). The findings are the first to reveal the role of objectification as a potential social cognitive mechanism for explaining why money often harms interpersonal harmony.

1 comment:

Tom said...

From the abstract: "the negative impact of money on interpersonal harmony has been well documented,..." As opposed to threats of imprisonment or fines, which are just swell for interpersonal harmony.