[lbo-talk] The sources of suffering (Grow up!)

Robert Wrubel bobwrubel at yahoo.com
Sat Aug 25 12:52:50 PDT 2007


JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:

"Perhaps you're defining a classless society as one with no conflict? But then you've begged the question. That's a cardboard utopia, we'll still be flesh and blood."

No I wasn't defining a classless society as that. I was wondering if other people here were, and if they weren't what the nature of that conflict would be. Maybe the answer to my question is in two writers mentioned earlier: Larry Hirshhorn and Timpanaro.

BobW

bobwrubel at yahoo.com writes:


> I know all these things. I was questioning if they are the material
>of great art, as we know it in the western tradition I dont love art before
>everything else, and am not putting it ahead of social justice. And I
>am not calling into question the value of a classless society. I was merely
>responding to some what I felt to be bland statements about artists doing
>art just for the personal satisfaction of it. The compulsion to create
>seems to come from darker sources, and I was wondering whether people on
>this list thought those sources would wither away in a classless society.

To answer your question as everyone else has, no. It's possible that in the capitalist era, the great art of the era comes ultimately from the conflicts inherent in it, but that does not mean than a future era (like past ones) would not have great art coming from the conflicts of that era, which as Carrol points out we can't know but many point out we can take a good guess at. There is no chance that all human conflict (pain, valor, frailty) comes from the supremacy of one class over another, if that's what you're worried about; take the biological division of labor between the sexes, for example, and all that flows from that. Perhaps you're defining a classless society as one with no conflict? But then you've begged the question. That's a cardboard utopia, we'll still be flesh and blood.

Jenny Brown

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