Jim Farmelant
On Thu, 12 Nov 1998 13:15:04 -0500 (EST) G*rd*n <gcf at panix.com> writes:
>Randy Stone wrote:
>> >The the general law of capitalist accumulation is amassing of
>wealth at
>> >one pole and poverty at another pole. Wal-Mart is developing
>according
>> >to this general law. Concentration and centralization of capital
>> >results in the gobbling up of merchants in small towns. Death by
>> >drowning can be set at the door of the law of gravity, but that
>will not
>> >negate its operation.
>
>Doug Henwood:
>> This is all true, but what do you do with it? Just watch Wal-Mart
>take over
>> the landscape and wait for the revolution? The damn thing goes to
>the heart
>> of what America is all about - chewed up landscapes, shrouds of
>concrete,
>> cars, sweatshop labor, phony Made In USA labels, low wages, and
>boosterism.
>
>In the passage of the _Manifesto_ I quoted, Marx clearly
>sees capitalism as revolutionary: it destroys the old order
>of power and replaces it with new and yet newer arrangements
>until "man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his
>real condition of life and his relations with his kind."
>If Marx is correct here, then the Wal-Mart juggernaut should
>be producing revolutionary opportunities. One would think,
>for instance, that low wages and deracination would interest
>workers and consumers in unions, cooperatives, and the like:
>anti-bourgeois modes of organization.
>
>If not, why not? That's what I think needs to be looked at.
>Maybe Marx was wrong -- maybe capitalism, instead of
>compelling man to face his real condition of life, always
>succeeds at mass hypnosis. That's not what I hear walking
>through the Wal-Mart parking lot, though.
>
>In any case, I would think conserving small towns and the
>petit-bourgeoisie, only a generation or two ago so harshly
>deprecated by leftists and the avant-garde, would probably
>be best left to conservatives, who would at least have their
>hearts in what will almost certainly turn out to be a lost
>cause.
>
>
>Gordon
>
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