> >Though I
>>think the drift of Carrol's post was that things are more or less
>>getting worse, and have been since the first woman knelt to grind
>>corn.
>
>Now who's making false claims? That's not what I got out of Carrol's post.
>Rather, his point was that most changes are bad as a way of arguing against
>the notion of progress being inherent.
So it's "most changes are bad" rather than "things are more or less getting worse." Excuse me if I don't see a major distinction here.
Here's what Carrol said:
>One of the hardest perceptions not only for left liberals but for all too many
>marxists to achieve is the recognition of the utter falsity of the
>19th-century
>bourgeois Idea of Progress -- the assumption, rooted in the early 'amazing'
>successes of capitalism and supported by puerile versions of Darwinism -- that
>Progress is certain and that all change is for the better. Most changes are
>destructive. And it will only be our great-great grandchildren (if capitalism
>doesn't destroy humanity first) who will have any real grasp of which
>technological changes were in reality progress and which were merely
>part of the
>destructive development of capitalism.
>
>The Idea of Progress was killed intellectually in the Communist
>Manifesto ("mutual
>ruin of the contending parties") -- and for the naive even it should have died
>with the Guns of August.
"Most changes are destructive." As James pointed out, this is reactionary miserablism. It has none of the complexity of Marx's own analysis of capitalism; Marx was only being partly ironic when he wrote about the civilizing mission of capital. And it's extremely weird to use the Manifesto as a proof text for this case, a text that contains some pretty ecstatic language about the bourgeoisie as a revolutionary force.
Doug