----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 4:23 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: wotsit madder
>
>
> Eubulides wrote:
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Louis Kontos" <Louis.Kontos at liu.edu>
> >
> > what a rosy view. microsoft windows (clicking icons versus typing
> > commands)
> > is based on the Apple operating system -- no? microsoft explorer is
based
> > on
> > navigator -- no? this is a corrupt company as they all are in various
> > ways -- no?
> >
> > ====================
> >
> > Has Msoft been found legally guilty of any of these claims? The issue of
> > exploiting and appropriating knowledge spillovers in the economy, if not
> > forbidden explicitly by law, is simply part and parcel of capitalist
> > competition with it's attendant systemic coercion, no?
> >
>
>
> Much, not all, in this thread seems driven by a necessity to find
> capitalists (the enemy) to be morally guilty (of something or other),
> and to ground socialism in a moral judgment of capitalism. There are two
> problems with that. The first is shown in Louis's post: he wants to see
> Corporation X as immoral in comparison to Corporation Y. That leads
> towards a politics which takes Capitalism as a social system off the
> hook and places the blame on bad capitalists rather than on the social
> system. (Any social system creates the character types it needs to
> survive. If it doesn't, it doesn't survive.)
>
> But perhaps worse is that the moralistic habit of mind slops over, as it
> were, to moral condemnation of the general populace for being what they
> are. Several posters on this list regularly attack u.s. workers for
> their complicity with u.s. imperialism (or even for their poor taste in
> food or clothing), but a left politics, it seems to me, has to be
> grounded in a recognition of the perfect rationality of the person who,
> hassled by any of the thousand trivial and major things that hassle one,
> simply says "Whatever, Bush probably kows what he is doing." It makes
> perfect sense not to worry about what the truth is in any situation over
> which one has no power.
>
> Proving over and over again to one's own satisfaction that capitalism
> and capitalists are bad seems to me to verge on a mild pathology.
>
> Carrol
>
>
> > Last for the day,
> >
> > Ian
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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