CB: Doug, isn't scarcity neo-classical, not Marxist ?
>>> dhenwood at panix.com 09/25/00 11:31AM >>>
PLENARY TALK, RETHINKING MARXISM CONFERENCE University of Massachusetts-Amherst, September 23, 2000 by Doug Henwood
The portion of the New Economy discourse that's relevant to Marxism, and specifically to this panel, is that it's appropriated a lot of rhetoric about revolution, about the overturning of hierarchies, and about the democratization of ownership and the workplace that used to be staples of radical politics. At the same time, though, New Economy rhetoric also rejects a lot of the old Marxian catechism: we're now post-material; scarcity is waning as a social force; in an age of endlessly and almost costlessly reproducible goods like software and movies, ownership too is waning as a social force; physical capital doesn't matter anymore, because knowledge, as everyone from George Gilder to Manuel Castells could tell you, is what matters, not things; and place doesn't matter much anymore, as long as you have a cell phone and a net connection. Obviously I am extremely skeptical about almost all these claims, or I wouldn't have a book to write.
I