[lbo-talk] The over-leveraged consumer

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Oct 15 10:37:16 PDT 2005


joanna wrote:
>
> Willy Greenfields wrote:
>
>
> Not sure what you mean by "structural." Greed is a human possibility,
> seriously pumped up by constant brainwashing/advertising urging us to
> consume even more -- is this what you mean?

I'm not sure what you mean by greed here? I would use the word only to describe desire for increasing wealth _beyond_ one's material consumption. The hoarding of gold etc. in pre-capitalist societies, the accumulation of capital without end under capitalism. We need another word for the mere desire for more consumption. The latter could occur under any and all social conditions from he earliest homo species to the present, but the former could occur only in social orders with a monetary element.

Wage earners by definition, then, are not greedy.

This does not satisfy me, but a vocabulary which applies equally to the owners of the means of production and to the non-owners is unacceptable.

Carrol


>
> joanna
>
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