marc,
this sounds like a great event and i look forward to attending.
and yet...isn't there a smidgen of wishful thinking in the conference's title? like we used to say in finishing school: "as if!"
i'm still kinda new to this list and expect this is a question addressed here probably as perenially as it does on the left but...what do we wish life after capitalism to look like? discuss...
me first? oh, hell...i don't have specific statecraft-y parameters that would determine how socio-political relaties should be structured following market capitalism. you know, kind of like marx....
but i would say that my inclinations are far more anarcho-syndacalist than centrally planned, although i believe there's the possibility for both, almost as a check and balance against one another. the cult-stud types make a great show of their, uh, inclusiveness by overemphasizing the, uh, "agency" market capitalism confers upon communities -- great, cable or satellite? nike or heroin? i'm a free agent!
bfd -- no one here needs to be lectured about the dubious advantages and implications of such dubious "agency". however, free associations of similarly interested groups -- consumers and producers -- could intersect in ways that determine a socially just distribution of goods and services. and i don't much dig on the state withering away while toxic waste sites need to be cleaned, public education is still a right, etc.
like i say, just the broad parameters -- i'm not trying to impart my perfect vision of a just society so much as to generate a dialogue that i don't believe the left has done enough of since the Fall of the Wall. if marxist-leninism is dead -- is it? i say it is, don't see anyone i trust chomping at the bit to bring it back, but maybe you feel differently -- what takes it's place? "capitalism with a human face"? as a starting point not the worst idea, from my perspective, but i'm proposing something more radical -- radical democracy, which how i envision anarcho-syndacalism, but i'm damned if i know how that evades market capitalist structures.
interested to know your thoughts on this, as we experience life DURING capitalism. jk
===== ________________________________james keepnews
Art is algebra plus fire.
-- Borges
_____music+writing+webart+multimedia performance
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