[lbo-talk] voluntary simplicity as secularized calvinism (or, how to achieve a state of grace by buying locally)

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Mar 28 10:14:01 PST 2005


Tom Walker wrote:
>
> 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.

I agree with this -- BUT it is as oversimplified as is the post by Miles you are responding to. That's o.k., however, because one could argue that _all_ debate on the left revolves around filling out this simplification within given circumstances. I quote my last post:


>
> New people to politics very soon come up with some variation of the
> (anti-?)slogan, "Let's do something," and if that demand is not,
> somehow, satisfied, they drop out before they can achieve any sense of
> the potential power of collective action.

At this particular "step of the way" providing "the good life" consists on giving people satisfaction from an action trivial in itself. :-)

And that post was part of an argument within the left: in fact, it constituted, among other things, a polemic against all those leftists who pooh-poohed the M19 demos or the MWM. Even if they were right, they were trivially right and fundamentally and destructively wrong.

Carrol



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