Desire & Scarcity (was Re: Desire under the Elms)

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Jan 29 11:12:48 PST 2000


Max Sawicky wrote:


>Or put it this way. The socialization of the means of
>production/elimination of classes seems to connote an
>absence of scarcity that does not obtain in *any* real
>economy, where rationing of one sort or another is
>inescapable. Nice to imagine but hard to believe.

Bingo. Which is why I think it's important to talk about the need/desire continuum. Our hardline Utopians seem to think that the abolition of capitalism, by means unspecified, and its replacement with an institutionally unspecified planning regime, will solve the scarcity problem, since people will have what they need. I don't think that's possible, nor do I think it's particularly desirable. Leave that to the neoprimitivist deep ecologists. But Carrol tells us we don't need to have a theory of psychology; blame it all on neurotransmitters, or don't blame it on anything at all. The revolution will resolve the Neurotransmitter Problem.

Doug



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