>2. As long as the wage system in the major capitalist democracies
>is functioning as well as it does, the proles will resist rational
>arguments to abolish it i.e. they'd rather watch TV or, if they're
>"hip", play with their i-pods.
I'm too old to be "hip," but I still love my iPod.
>3. However, it will start dawning on more and more proles that the
>system is causing them and their offspring real harm as Global Warming
>and other forms of ecocide become linked in their consciousness to the
>inherent need of Capital to expand or die. In other words, as it
>becomes more of a "them or us" situation, workers will become more
>receptive to seeing that the realities of TINA are no longer rational.
Not necessarily. E.g.:
>I think it must be conceded that it is possible to create a society
>in which the response to market failure is not a swing to socialism,
>but an exacerbation of individual efforts to stay ahead by making
>and spending yet more money.
> Does the public health service have long waiting lists and
>inadequate facilities? Buy private insurance. Has public transport
>broken down? Buy a car for each member of the family. Is air
>pollution intolerable? Buy an air filtering unit and stay indoors.
>Is what comes out of the tap foul to the taste and chock-full of
>carcinogens? Buy bottled water. And so on. We know it can all hapen
>because it has: I have been doing little more than describing
>Southern California.
>- Brian Barry, from an essay in book Thatcherism, edited by Robert
>Skidelsky (Chatto), quoted by Christopher Huhne in Manchester
>Guardian Weekly, 1/8/89