Carl Remick wrote:
> >No. I just think there would be more *interesting* social conflicts
> >without capitalism.
Doug:
> I loved the remark of someone on a Freud-Marx panel at the Rethinking
> Marxism 2000 conference: it's not like all our problems would go away
> with socialism, but we look to socialism for a better set of problems.
My understanding of this is that without capitalism, our conflicts would be akin to those those that are central to the liberal vision of capitalism, i.e., what liberals see as prevailing right now. In the liberal vision, the basic conflict is between individual special interests and the "common good" or public interest, along with those concerning the definition of the public interest and its implementation. What liberals miss is the basic underlying _class_ conflicts (and similar) that prevent the public interest from ever being defined, except as the collective interests of the ruling class. Getting rid of the class contradiction would mean that people could actually deal more democratically and "liberally" with issues of inter-ethnic, gender, international, religious, etc., conflicts. -- Jim Devine / "There can be no real individual freedom in the presence of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles