Scarcity

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Apr 10 09:26:13 PDT 2001


Forstater, Mathew wrote:


>but name anyone who has ever supported the position that we go back to
>'becoming' 'pre-capitalist' not using any technology, medicine,
>knowledge, etc.
>discovered in the interim? not even the most romantic golden agers take this
>position. but we can learn lots about both capitalism and post-capitalism by
>studying noncapitalist modes, as well as gain insights into things like
>sustainable ecological practices, institutional forms of
>cooperation, etc. much
>more than both many marxist and bourgeois scholars recognize.

But how completely can you separate "technology, medicine, knowledge, etc." from the modes of social organization - large-scale enterprise, to name just one - that make it possible? And how can you lift the bits you like from non- or precapitalist societies? Isn't it fetishizing both technology and social organization to treat them as so easily separable, even in thought?

Doug



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