Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
"The intense mediocrity of American culture is 100 attributable to the societal stranglehold exercised by Corporate
America. "
(and)
I don't think you're speaking dialectically; I think you're speaking sophistically. China's economic achievements to date mean zip unless
they are sustainable, which they won't be if China keeps churning out
poisonous products and polluting the globe. This There's no positive aspect to those factors at all: "
This is rather dour, Carl, if not canned. Edward P. Jones' "The Known World", written in 2003 and awarded a Pulitzer prize the next year, is one of the most original and powerful works of fiction in the last 50 years. It's no post-modern scream of alienation, either, but a passionate, literate creation by, as is usually the case, someone whose race or other characteristic puts him outside of the mainstream.
And your Olympian view of the futility of China's economic miracle, logically applied, would condemn the whole history of capitalist development, which is itself a non-dialectical position.
BobW
<http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070901faessay86503/elizabeth-c-economy/the-great-leap-backward.html>
>From: andie nachgeborenen
>>
>I was talking about achievements less like those
>involved in spending money one doesn't have than
>products of human spirit and activity like
>Brunelleschi's Duomo, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel
>frescoes, Dante's Divine Comedy, Galileo's Two World
>Systems.
>
>I do suspect that Carl thinks we would be better off
>without hoighty toighty stuff like that too ...
Hey, I can be hoity-toity with the best of 'em -- witness my repeatedly stated enthusiasm on the list for Mike Judge's "Idiocracy," which sees American culture and society as complete dreck. I don't know whether you've glanced out the window lately, but there's nothing like Brunelleschi's Duomo, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes or Dante's Divine Comedy being produced today. The intense mediocrity of American culture is 100 attributable to the societal stranglehold exercised by Corporate America. Oddly, Corporate America is replete with bourgeois liberals and financial/legal brainiacs of all kinds -- quintessential overachievers -- yet it remains the greatest engine for cranking out mediocre cultural products the world has ever seen. But as I always say, capitalism doesn't simply tolerate mediocrity, it *insists* on it. Only by turning everything into a commodity -- employees, products, services -- by relentlessly purging every occupation of skill and every product of quality, can today's corporate geniuses continue to earn their zillion-dollar bonuses for meritocratic excellence.
>[AN:] But I'd also say that I think the the economic
>accomplishments of capitalism, including in
>contemporary China, are considerable although
>multi-sided. Terrible pollution and inequality, yes,
>very bad. Great increase in living standards for
>billions, very good. High fives all around indeed.
>Carl lacks a sense of what one might call dialectics,
>that the same phenomenon may have complicated positive
>and negative aspects.
I don't think you're speaking dialectically; I think you're speaking sophistically. China's economic achievements to date mean zip unless they are sustainable, which they won't be if China keeps churning out poisonous products and polluting the globe. There's no positive aspect to those factors at all:
Carl
_________________________________________________________________ Booking a flight? Know when to buy with airfare predictions on MSN Travel. http://travel.msn.com/Articles/aboutfarecast.aspx&ocid=T001MSN25A07001
___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk