Marx, Brenner, Technology (Was Re: [lbo-talk] preferences)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 10:59 PM -0500 9/20/03, joand315 wrote:
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>At 6:32 PM -0500 9/20/03, joand315 wrote:
>>
>>>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>>
>>>>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?
>
>>Desertion from the military of a new socialist government fighting 
>>against soldiers of the ancient regime in a civil war -- if the 
>>desertion is on a large scale -- causes defeat.  Defeat of the new 
>>socialist government leads to the return of the old ruling class 
>>and power elite, ready to round up and execute the defeated 
>>revolutionaries.
>>
>>At 6:32 PM -0500 9/20/03, joand315 wrote:
>>
>>>a newly formulated society won't be able to handle the entire 
>>>population that it has at the moment of disruption.
>
>>Especially if it loses much of skilled labor and unable to train 
>>workers in new skills quickly. . . .
>
>Well, then aren't we talking at cross purposes.  A radical upheaval 
>can never work.
>-joan

And yet there would be no transition to socialism or any 
post-capitalist society without radical upheavals.  And as a matter 
of fact, the continuation of capitalism in itself creates radical 
upheavals constantly.
-- 
Yoshie

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