On Mar 3, 2007, at 4:37 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
> Yoshie raises a good question when she says:
>
> "What if capitalism creates objective conditions -- socialized forces
> of production -- of its transcendence but, by doing so, destroys
> subjective conditions -- thinking human beings capable of collective
> action -- for it?"
>
> Certainly it has preoccupied me. I wrote a book about it: 'The
> "Death of the
> Subject" Explained'.
> (excerpt:
> http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/
> heartfield-james.htm)
> To my mind the failure of subjective agency is the more destructive
> factor
> in today's conditions. But there is nothing given for all time
> about that.
Then there's the point made by Slavoj Zizek - that the productiity of capitalism depends on capitalist discipline, meaning that it's not so easy to carry over the technological achievements of this social system into a socialist one.
Doug