Scarcity

[Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema]

When people tell me they want to return to the simple life of some idealized
historical period I ask if they want to use the predecessors of toilet paper or
sanitary napkins. In the rural US 150 years ago they used corncobs, as described
in George Yenowine's nostalgic poem about the outhouse, and how when one "went
out back" in the winter it wasn't so nice -- "for needs must scrape the
gooseflesh with a frost-encrusted cob...."

And Edward Shorter discusses the other matter among many other distressing
details in that great book A HISTORY OF WOMEN'S BODIES.

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema

Doug Henwood wrote:


> 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