Scarcity

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>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

One studies the past so as to defamiliarize the present, not to "lift 
the bits you like" from the past.  Why is it important to do so? 
Because commodity fetishism naturalizes capitalism, by leading us to 
project what is specific to capitalism (e.g., Scarcity & Unlimited 
Wants) upon modes of production different from it.

Yoshie