[lbo-talk] from growth to quality of life

Gar Lipow the.typo.boy at gmail.com
Fri Feb 10 22:36:48 PST 2006


On 2/10/06, Jim Devine <jdevine03 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
Jim Quoting Nathan Newman
> > Obviously, the form of the planning to get that growth could be and should be improved, but the idea that socialism gets us completely out of problems of democratic demands for growth seems unconvincing. I suppose "growth" can be redefined as all its purely negative aspects, but that seems not particularly useful.<
>
Jim Devine
> As I said before, people need to be clear about what they mean by "growth."

Sure, but I think even the worst capitalist growth always contained somethign important - possibility of freedom. I'm going take off from this with something of a rant; one obviously not directed at you, since if you and may be on the same page, and at any rate are in the same chapter.

Before capitalism, freedom existed either for no-one, or for a very tiny percent of the population even as a possibility. The scarcity of material goods did not just limit what people could consume. It limited the social roles available. If some hunter-gatherer or forager societies lacked a ruling class as some claim - the limitations imposed by what nature would give combined with the limitations imposed by the culture that evolved to deal with those limitation meant that you had a very narrow range of ways to be a human being. In societies with a ruling class, those who were out of it had an even narrower range available, those who were in it had a little wider possibility. Only with the evolution of capitalism did we get the abundance that opened the possibility of freedom for everyone. That potential occured in a social system that suppressed its' actualization; but it was always the hope of socialists that a new social system could enable the potential for freedom that new means of production made physically possible. Human beings would for the first time have the chance to choose from a much wider variety of social roles than had ever been available, perhaps even to create their social role for themselves rather that stepping into pre-defined slots. Social roles might even become something to play with, without need to always take them seriously.

I seem to remember that couple of dead white guys who many on this list seem to respect had a thing or two to say on this subject. But apparently they were living in a fools paradise, and so does everyone who hopes their dream may be realized. Because capitalism is as wasteful and foolish with natural resources as it is with human lives, apparently it is now declared that anyone who wishes to maintain and expand that material basis in a less wasteful way is doomed to be equally foolish and wasteful. To expand the realm of freedom no longer requires a material basis; plain living and high thinking are to be our watchword. All hail to dialectical anti-materialism, the new direction for Marxism!

(And Doug feared he was channeling Heartfield!)



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