andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> Don't get yer panties in a bunch. I didn't mean to
> dispute that he thinks that Protestantism is the
> appropriate religious ideology for capitalism, or
> market society, the topic of the section, and that
> market society is a higher, better, superior social
> form than prior forms,
Two observations on this:
a. Marx saw capitalism as opening the possibility of socialism; whether he _also_ thought that in and of itself it was higher, better, superior social form than prior forms is debatable.
b. But if he did think that, he was wrong. (It is not even wholly obvious that capitalism was a precondition for socialism, but that is another debate.) In any case the progressive features of capitalism have long been exhausted, socialism being now further away, more doubtful of achievement, than it was 50 years ago. [Note that by "progressive" I mean that which points towards a qualitatively superior future possibility, independently of the present goodness or badness of the event in the present.) For two centuries now we have been in the midst of a worldwide massacre, a massacre which shows signs of rapidly expanding, far from diminishing.
I don't think this fact should be dwelt on, since so dwelling does nothing to change it and might foreclose identifying what elements of hope there may be in the present. Tt should be recognized, the wild fairytales Dennis R spins being only the most extravagant of the many errors which stem from ignoring the exhaustion of capitalism's promise. But dwelling on it can be worse -- leading to a thrashing about looking for an immediate response or repudiating available modes of struggle in light of their apparent (probable) inadequacy. (Millenarian religions, right or left, are probably instances of such futile response, resembling anarchist fantasies.)
Carrol