>not only that, brett, i asked yesterday, tho i suspect mail didn't arrive
>b/c mailserver down, but what on earth leads you to conclude that the
>historical evidence points to inequality as inextricably intertwined with
>advancements in technology?
Well, maybe it's the fact that one characteristic of all technologically advanced societies is that they exhibit inequalities in wealth, income and power.
>i mean, the conventional marxist
>explanation--and a feminist one as well--is that technological advances
>produce surplus and that is why inequality emerges--as the attempt to
>control the surplus for a minority. i mean, here a little feminist theory
>might be useful, you know?
I'm not arguing with the conventional explanation. Unboubtedly the surplus is taken by a small minority. The question is, can we achieve a society where the surplus is divided up evenly. Perhaps the revolution will always fail, even if it succeeds (like in the former Soviet Union).
>there is nothing about technological advancement that suggests that it is
>determinative of inequality. what you're really saying is that we have to
>live under the conditions of subsistence living--with no surplus. that's
>more than a little insane, not to mention unsupported by historical
>evidence--tho admittedly i'm not an expert on that topic.
Of course there is nothing about TECHNOLOGY itself that precludes an egalitarian society. But maybe there has to be some sort of perverse incentive, like the profit incentive, to make people WANT to innovate and do research in labs and produce widgets. Mabye if we eliminate these perverse incentives, people won't want to work. Mabye they'll be willing to give up these things. Maybe not. I don't really know. But when primitive societies came into contact with modern societies, the primitives didn't just abandon their way of life. Quite the opposite, they fought to protect it. It is true that the "civilized" folk they encountered were racist and cruel, but they did get to see a lot of technological gizmos, and they didn't exactly show any willingness to open up their own factories to make their own.
And lastly, who's to say the primitives didn't experience a surplus? As Gordon mentioned in a recent post, the indigenous people living in the Pacific Northwest could catch all the fish they could care to eat. Just because a society isn't high tech, that doesn't mean people are eeking out a living. And just because a society is high tech, that doesn't mean that people's basic needs will be met. People still starve, and are still homeless, even in the land of Milk and Honey.
Brett