> True. But where is your evidence that PR systems do 'wonders' for the
> workers? if you are gonna answer with western europe, (which is the only
> even vaguely imaginable answer) i beg to differ. first of all, let's be
> clear: european workers 'benefit' first and foremost from living in
> capitalist countries whose wealth is a function of exploitation;
Hardly. Exploitation is a historical category, not a moral one; European working people have managed to resist the neoliberal beast a bit more effectively than others, winning back some of the surplus-value they've created via higher taxes on the wealthy, universal health insurance, strong unions, etc. European workers never see the surplus extracted from the Third World by the Euromultis; that ends up in the coffers of Eurobankers and the IMF. My own feeling is that by turning exploitation into a kind of primal, original sin, we end up with a dead-end moralism: when everyone is guilty, then noone is guilty. From that, it's all too easy to slam working people (and, ultimately, ourselves) for being stupid morons who don't know their/our own interests, instead of asking why this system prevents them/us from being aware of their interests. Instead of hating what this system has turned people into, we've got to love what they might yet become.
-- Dennis