Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> >
> I ask because I just had yet another run-in, at the CUNY
> globalization conference, with people who heard my claims about the
> contradictory nature of capitalism to be nothing but an apology.
> Silvia Federici, my panel-mate, was going on about how it's been
> nothing but pauperization since the day Capital was born, how it's
> been unmitigated hell for women, social indicators keep going down...
> I said, well, it's not all like that - women can find wage labor
> liberating (even admidst exploitation) when it's compared to
> prostitution or rural patriarchy, that life expectancies have risen
> across much of the globe, that more people can read than ever. She
> would have none of it, and about half the audience was with her. The
> ISO, Gott sei dank, was there in force and on my side.
>
I have a puzzle. I honestly do not understand why either you or Federici thought that you were saying anything about capitalism in this exchange.
What difference would it make to anyone if it were true that "it's been nothing but pauperization since the day Capital was born"? It was very rough living in the beseiged city of Athens during the plague, but how does that make either better or worse the conditions of my acquaintance (he suffers from schizophrenia) who can't get to the grocery store without finding someone to give him a ride? And should he feel better (or worse) because they use to exhibit the "insane" as entertainment for Sunday visitors at Bedlam? And should the woman being raped somewhere at this instant console herself with the thought that 300 years ago more (or fewer) women were being raped? Or should the women being raped then have felt better or worse because capitalism was going to change things (for better or for worse) for their descendants?
Then as to the "contradictory nature of capitalism"? At least in marxist terms that condition has nothing whatever to do with whether capitalism has produced good and bad things. That is _not_ a contradiction. Marx discusses the silliness of such an understanding of contradiction in _Poverty of Philosophy_. You simply haven't said anything when you point out that capitalism has good sides and bad sides. There is no contradiction involved in that observation.
So what is the argument all about?
Carrol