I don't think the statement capitalism is barbaric is radical. What does or doesn't qualify as radical is extremely subjective. The statement may seem radical to some and decidedly not radical to others. I don't concern myself with such judgments either way. It has nothing to do with moralism as you claim. If barbarism is defined as: "An act, trait, or custom characterized by ignorance or crudity. Marked by crudeness or lack of restraint." then capitalism is definitely barbaric.
Why the laundry list of goods below? Were there no shoe laces, water pipes, or hospitals before capitalism? Many of the things you list exist in spite of, rather than because of, capitalism.
John Thornton
James Heartfield wrote:
> Thornton, hoping that rhetorical posturing will substitute for argument:
>
> "Occasionally barbaric? It [capitalism] is barbaric at it's core and it's
> barbarism manifests itself hourly, not occasionally."
>
> That is just silly. Words have meanings. Barbaric would mean getting worse,
> say, rather than getting better. If life expectancy were falling, say, you
> could say, barbaric. But across most of the globe, life expectancy is
> continuing to climb. Fastest in the developing world. Infant mortality is
> falling, across most of the globe, across all social classes. Literacy is
> improving. The cost of basic foodstuffs is falling. Mobility is increasing.
> In the US, Europe, China, Russia, north Africa, East Asia, the standard of
> living has been improving for the last ten years.
>
> What does it mean to say that it is barbaric at its core. That is just
> rhetoric. Is the internet barbaric, or shoe laces, or pencils, or
> electricity, or any other of those capitalistic products? Are hospitals or
> antibiotics or ethernet cables or cotton t-shirts or central heating or
> piped water barbaric.
>
> If everything is barbarism, does that mean that the daily slaughter in Iraq
> is as barbaric as my waiting two minutes too long for a coffee in London? If
> everything is barbarism, are the conditions in US jails as bad as the
> conditions in US hotels? If everything is barbarism, is the reality TV show
> Big Brother as barbaric as the clandestine surveilliance of British muslims
> by the secret services? If everything is barbaric, is the availability of
> junk food in Europe as barbaric as food shortages in Zimbabwe?
>
> You think that it is radical to say that capitalism is unremitting
> barbarism. But it isn't. It is moralism, posing as critique. It is the
> religious attitude that sees an absolute divide between the corrupt, worldly
> realm, and the divine heavenly realm; the unhappy conscience that will not
> deign to corrupt itself in this world, but saves its honour for the next.
> Marxism is precisely the opposite, the critique that finds the conditions of
> the transcendence of the epoch in that epoch, not outside it.
>
>