[lbo-talk] Cuba's painful blah blah

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Aug 29 13:51:06 PDT 2005


jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net wrote:
>
>
> Do you think a sensible society would also rid the world of private auto ownership?

Probably. But I don't engage in detailed recipes. Privacy is always achievable (except in fictional dystopias). Freedom from enforced privacy can only result from collective endeavor. Leisure is the greatest good (in and of itself and because it is a precondition for most other goods. Collective labor (e.g., the assembly line which Joanna condemned) is an evil only when its conditions, including preeminently pace, is imposed from outside. Charlie Chaplin's bolt tightening in _Modern Times_ is not intrinsically evil but made evil by the capitalist's hand on the lever that determines the pace or stopping points. Hence the climactic scene of the automatic corn-on-the-cob feeder. Note that that device (were it successful) would exclude lunchhour conversation, making assembly-line work as isolating an experience as that of the housewife trapped in solitary glory with her brandnew washing machine.

Carrol



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