May 31, 2020
Is this the end of an era? I do think 2020 is an new era. The fire in Australia, COVID-19, and the protest in the USA and around the world. I would not use the word riot because people had arguments saying this is an appropriate behavior to fight against the government and this system. I do, however, not support any kind of violent behavior regardless the social contract, which I also don’t think is broken.
The emergency of COVID-19 is not ended yet, and states like NewYork, where the governor had signed the executive to extend the state of emergency to at least June 5, and New Jersey are still in the state of emergency. Today, Washington D.C. became the 26th city that have curfew due to the chaos that brought by the protesters for the death of George Floyd’s death while LA County declared a state of emergency.
People had arguments about the social contract, and it’s like a Christmas party for me. It’s been so long since the last time for people who don’t really give a shit about politics philosophy and social contracts to talk about these theories, and not surprisingly, both sides tried to use social theory to back up their arguments. So the question is, whether the US government broke the social contract, and is it reasonable for people to use violence if the government broke the social contract.
To talk about this, we have to clearly the definition of social contract and the consequences when it’s broken.
But what inspired me today is not the social contracts but an instagram post my one of my college acquaintances was shouting about communists revolution and compensation for black at the same time. Apart from the fact that it’s basically a joke to those who lived or experienced a communism revolution and read thousands of pages of Karl Marx, her post made me wondering, it that possible to achieve them at the same time. And my opinion is no. First and most importantly, there should not be private property in a communism society. Or if she wants to talk about socialism revolution, fine. But people shall not own large amount of private property in socialism society either. Secondly, Communism and socialism means that what you do shall and will for the good of whole nation, and apparently printing a great amount of cash would hurt the economy. Additionally, if she uses the communists logic to think about this, the status and class before the revolution should be abolished, and people shall not have identity differences. If the compensation is for black only, then that’s against the communists’ ideology.
