>Carrol Cox: wrote:
>
>>Growth is a core part of the evil of capitalism.
>>
>>Socialism must find a way either of stopping growth (probably necessary
>>for human survival) or of slowing growth to the point at which change
>>becomes imperceptible.
>>
>-------------------------------------
>And all of these years I have thought that socialism was for an expansion of
>the productive forces, for a society of material abundance - that it
>indicted capitalism as a decaying mode of production which had exhausted its
>capacity for growth and improvements to the standard of living, which is why
>people would necessarily replace it with socialism.
>
>That has not come to pass, more than a century after Marx. But better not
>share your particular understanding of socialism with your friends,
>neighbours and colleagues if you want to win converts. They want more
>growth, more jobs, more income with more time off, more change - not less -
>and I can't see how anyone could argue they're not justified in wanting
>these. Unless you accept the notion that economic growth will inevitably
>outstrip our capacity to cope with it, which I think has to be demonstrated.
>It's your perogative to do so, but you'd be wrong to identify the idea with
>the socialist movement.
I'm going to sound like I'm channeling James Heartfield here, but Carrol's post is an example of the exhaustion and fundamental conservatism that has taken over much of the left (oooh, bad generalization there!). I thought we were supposed to be about criticizing the quality of things and social relations under capitalism - not criticizing growth and change in themselves.
Doug