>This is an area where we can go in all kinds of interesting directions. One could argue-- even invoking Marx-- that the period of capitalism and industrialization is a _necessary_ phase on the path to socialism. For example, if someone said that the rise of industrialism and the rise of capitalism are co-dependent upon one another, I could see some good reasons for accepting that argument-- especially if the argument continued to say that the rise of both of these create the necessary conditions for a more egalitarian, socialist society.
That's what I would argue. At the very least capitalism rapidly speeds up the development of more efficient technology for the production of essential goods and services. Socialism can't co-exist with a means of production that is incapable of providing economic security to everyone in society. The question now is whether capitalism will also nurture the necessary public will to reform the social system.
>Here's what bugged me about Chuck's argument. If we placed the blame for certain technologies on capitalism, rather than industrialism, then we have to ask whether better technologies would have arisen under a different kind of industrialism. Could anyone actually make a good case that, under an anarcho-syndicalist industrialism, they'd have avoided coal and gas power entirely, and gone straight to solar and wind power? Probably not; after all, we started using gas and coal power long before we started to understand the impacts of such technologies.
No. Although I have to say that there is some justice to the argument that certain uses of certain technologies are related to the economic system. Clearly a form of social organisation in which the socially necessary means of production is operated for and in the interests of a tiny minority of the population, is inevitably going to result in them being used in different ways than if they were operated as true public services. The incentive (profit) is different, that's going to distort the way things are used.
But avoid the use of coal and other hydro-carbons entirely? This seems somewhat over-zealous to me. I certainly think that these energy forms are mis-used, that capitalism tends towards serious inefficiencies by not factoring in the social and environmental costs of certain practices. Only a deranged zealot would conclude that this necessitates abandoning this resource entirely though.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas