"post-leftism"

billbartlett at dodo.com.au billbartlett at dodo.com.au
Mon Aug 19 18:33:22 PDT 2002


At 2:25 PM -0400 18/8/02, JCWisc at aol.com wrote:


>In a message dated 08/18/2002 1:02:42 PM Central Daylight Time, chuck at tao.ca
>writes:
>
>> > >Yes, it would also entail moving back to the land, or, at least dispersal
>> > >to smaller towns. Big cities are unsustainable, even in a capitalist
>> > >society.
>> >
>> > Another budding Pol Pot. Charming.
>>
>> Who said anything about forcing anybody back to the land?
>
>OK, but if the population needs to be "dispersed" to get us all out of our
>"unsustainable" cities, who's going to do the dispersing? Milton the
>Anarchist?

Whether people are dispersed by violent force or economic force is irrelevant. Obviously few people are going to freely choose to abandon comfortable lives made possible by modern industrial infrastructure, for a primitive life of subsistence agriculture. They would have to be forced to do it one way or another. Chuck's denials are cowardly and dishonest.

You can drive them out of the cities at the point of a gun, or you can starve them out. Either way, many millions will die and the rest will become serfs in a new feudal economy. The economic basis of society determines what sort of social system is possible. The most advanced social system possible in an agricultural society, without modern technology, is feudalism.

To advocate destroying the material basis for modern society, which is also the indispensable material basis for a future socialist society, is insane. To advance such rhetoric in the name of socialism is an intolerable libel against socialists of all stripes.

Chuck's rants against modern industrial means of production are intrinsically reactionary and anti-social. Such deranged rhetoric should probably be criminalised, their authors thrown in a jail, along with other potential war criminals. The man is dangerous. Like I say, a potential Pol Pot.

Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas



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