> At 8:43 PM -0500 9/19/03, joand315 wrote:
>
>>> Workers' cooperatives don't take away incentives to save ones' own
>>> lives and families from a civil war or to emigrate to richer nations,
>>> though.
>> Civil wars are more likely when much of the population is out of work.
> We are thinking of a hypothetical but realistic transition from a
> capitalist society to a post-capitalist one (whether you call it
> socialist or anarchist or cooperativist or whatever). Most likely, any
> such transition will involve much economic upheavals: capital flight,
> emigration of skilled labor, economic embargoes and/or military
> interventions by other capitalist powers (that are more powerful than
> the nation in the throes of transition, unless the transition in
> question happens in the USA), indigenous power elite of the ancient
> regime employing saboteurs, soldiers of fortune, etc. to overthrow those
> who overthrew them, etc., all tending to a civil war. How do LBO-talk
> technophiles handle desertion (from the military or factories or
> whatever that the new socialist government needs) in this context?
In this context, Yoshie, don't you think desertions, mass emigration, will benefit those who are left? It's likely that a newly formulated society won't be able to handle the entire population that it has at the moment of disruption. Those who wish to leave will leave, at any rate.
Those who are left behind will rebuild society as best they can. One cannot, of course, control the outcome. The likelihood of the new society being post-capitalist seems slim in these circumstances. -joan