Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1999 17:53:00 -0600 From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: Soros on truth References: <v04011716b2e3a3db54fc@[166.84.250.86]> <36BE29EA.8120F8E8 at mindspring.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Henry C.K. Liu wrote: "In Chinese culture, a rich man is automatically disqualified as a wise intellectual. Preoccupation with counting money is considereed an insurmountable obstacle to the task of finding truth."
Henry, Is not this one of those aspects of Chinese culture which justified Mao in calling China "semi-feudal." That is, it seems that this contempt for "counting money" as an aspect of *Chinese* (as opposed to Chinese socialist or socialist) culture should be linked to a similar contempt (in the west) by Plato, Pope, etc. -- i.e., those thinkers who either first formulated the principles of tributary culture or (during the rise of capitalism) defended that disappearing culture against the rising capitalist ethos.
The great thing about money, from its first appearance in early class societies, was that it generated the context in which self-consciously abstract thought could flourish.
Carrol