Zizek's Lenin

[Brad De Long]

>>
>>Life expectancy does seem to have doubled. And fertility suggests 
>>vastly improved nutritional status since, say, 1900...
>
>But there was this time in the ur-past, when work was unalienated, 
>love was rampant, and everyone was happy all the time, even if you 
>were lucky to hit 35.
>
>Doug

Yes...

But what I was curious about was not the negative critique of 
capitalism but the positive critique: what is to replace it? What is 
the superior social calculating mechanism for planning production and 
distributing consumption? How to rearrange work so as to greatly 
shrink the realm of necessity and greatly enlarge the realm of 
freedom?

And don't tell me that the way to transcend desire is to abolish it, 
and be happier with fewer goods and less power over nature: Sparta, 
even a peaceful Sparta, is not utopia. And don't tell me that 
everyone can be happy if only they work for society instead of for 
the capitalist...

Brad DeLong