[lbo-talk] barbarism (was Marxism and Religion)

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Mon Mar 5 08:47:07 PST 2007


John Thornton asks

"Had the English Civil War or the American Revolution resulted in a socialist social/economic arrangement then you must imagine we would not have pencils, electricity, antibiotics, or shoe laces?"

To which I reply that it is an academic question, since neither the English Civil War nor the American revolution did (or indeed could have) resulted in a socialist economic arrangement. The pencils, electricy supply, antibiotics and shoe laces that do exist, exist because it was profitable to make and supply them.

John says that capitalism is not his idea of civilisation, to which I reply where, then does your idea of civilisation come from, the sky? Mutual recognition, civility, acculturation, learning, mass literacy, these things do not arise in a modern, which is to say a capitalist society?



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