andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> I'd like
> generalized prosperity and liberty,
[I'm not interested in the debate over whether socialism will involve markets -- I'm interested in the process by means of which we can arrive at the point where people can argue over the question in terms of immediate conditions. Hence I should have a new subject line for this post but can't think one up off hand.]
Fine with liberty. I think (however the material referent shifts) that unity around what that means can be maintained over time and through rather major social upheavals. But "general prosperity" is simply too tied to immediate conditions (by immediate I mean December 2004 in the u.s. among people who own computers and have internet access). So this debate intersects three others that are going on concurrently. The discussion between Jon and Manjur over what "chair" means, the discussion on religion, and the discussion on SUVs.
Any concept of "general prosperity" we come up with now is simply not going to have much grip on the future, and hence it simply can't be appealed to as a principle in any argument over the future.
Does generalized prosperity include having so many different products under the single label (and can cover design) of Del Monte Fresh Cut [xxx] Green Beans (Blue Lake) that a significant quanta of living human activity is spent separating the beans with garlic added, the beans without salt, the cut from the whole, etc etc etc.? I think there were several other choices too, and when I got home I ended up with the wrong ones. I focus on this because you mention tooth paste at some point, as though there were real choices to be made among many different varieties of tooth paste. That much variety mounts up to an outrageous misuse of living human activity at every stage of the production and circulation and distribution process.
Probably some will disagree on the last point, but even that will point up the difficulty of a debate grounded in such a concept as "generalized prosperity."
Carrol