>(Put perhaps too simply, whether people make gas guzzling
>SUVs or Toyota hybrids, they're generating surplus value for
>the capitalist class.)
>--What we need to change are the social relations of production,
>not just the widgets that get produced!
You're right about putting it too simply. And you're right that surplus value is paramount *from the perspective of capital.* However from the point of view of people (the working class, the multitude, whomever) the issue of surplus value is literally superfluous. It only intrudes because the perpetual quest for more surplus value prizes SUVs above hybrids or, more to point, favours cars above public transport and urban design that accomodates pedestrians and bicycles.
If the choice were between paradise through capitalism and a gritty, grimy, grindingly impoverished social democracy, only masochists and misanthropists would pursue the latter. And, by golly, that's exactly the way corporate public relations frames the alternatives. The appeal of social change is not that you or I get brand spanking new social relations of production ("Oh goody, just what I always wanted! My very own social relation of production."). The appeal is that the good life is to be found down that other, non-capitalist path. But not just at the end of the path -- at every step along the way, too. We make the road by walking.
The Sandwichman