Japan's economy in freefall

Louis Proyect lnp3 at panix.com
Fri Sep 18 11:25:23 PDT 1998


Bill Lear:
>I'll let Doug fend for himself here, but I should point out that just
>the other day Lou criticized Robin Hahnel because his argument for
>ParEcon "appeals to the intellect". Here he is saying that persuading
>people by "the force of our argument" is what is important.

No, my attack on Hahnel was not that his arguments appealed to the intellect, but rather that they were a form of neo-Utopian Socialism. When I say that I will argue for socialism, I do not mean that I will argue for a blueprint that is intellectually and logically consistent, but rather that capitalism is destroying the planet, etc. I argue against it the way that abolitionists argued against slavery. Let me clarify the difference by showing you how Marx dealt with the Hahnel/Albert of his day, namely, Ferdinand Lasalle. Lasalle had cooked up a blueprint for socialism that was based on workers co-ops, not unlike Mondragon. Here was Marx's response in "Critique of the Gotha Program":

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges."

This single sentence is something that Hahnel/Albert simply don't understand. While their blueprint-writing is harmless, it simply misses the point.


>Are you trying to be purely abusive here? McNeill-Lehrer was, and in
>the form of Lehrer alone, remains an insult to intelligent people ---
>it is a shallow, pseudo-serious load of self-satisfied pap.

Abusive? How dare you accuse me of this. I was being rude and sarcastic, not abusive.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)



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