On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, kelley wrote:
> the analysis is tied to historical materialism. do marxists
> make judgments on the way other societies organize their
> production/consumption? or, do they argue that these are necessarily tied
> to historical social structural organization of various societies? their is
> a goal here, right? and it has to do with freedom in our economic life. why
> do you accept freedom from the arbitrary authority and domination of
> capital as okay-fine and don't acknowledge it as, likewise, a product of
> myopic ethnocentrism?
Actually, I'd argue that the notion of freedom is also a historically embedded concept, and to assume that freedom is a Universal Good is just silly. For me to state "Capitalism sucks" is not the same as saying "You don't believe capitalism sucks, reeducation camp for you, comrade", is it? The ethnocentrism is not inherent in the values or beliefs I have; the ethnocentrism emerges when I blindly apply the values and beliefs I have learned in a specific sociohistorical location to people in substantially different cultural contexts. There's a difference here, for me at least, between holding values and insisting they must reflect values that should be held by any Right Thinking Citizen. But then moral philosophy has always kinda left me cold.
Miles