[lbo-talk] barbaric (was Marxism and religion)

[Tayssir John Gabbour]

On 3/5/07, Dmytri Kleiner <dk at telekommunisten.net> wrote:
> Doug Henwood wrote:
> > 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.
>
> I have trouble with this theory.
> [...]
> The theory that a future socialism can only follow the supposed
> productive bonanza of Capitalism is refuted by facts such as:

Interesting points and thanks for the source. But how does your
evidence contradict Zizek's (attributed) point? Some forms of tech can
be used to commodify/deskill workers; others can help peel away layers
of management for self-organizing teams.
<http://www.nooranch.com/synaesmedia/wiki/wiki.cgi?DavidNoble/ForcesOfProduction>

That said though, I suspect that modern tech is engineered flexibly
and generally enough that a lot of it will remain useful, even despite
radically different applications. Build the new society in the shell
of the old, and all that...

As for capitalism as a stepping stone to an advanced, egalitarian
industrial society... I thought the logic was that industrialization
is painful enough to require significant coercion. Competition and
conflict were required to get over the initial humps. And that war and
state capitalism have been the main drivers of modern tech progress.
Is this view mistaken?

Tayssir

--
Alan Kay on the technological road less travelled:
* "Doing with images makes symbols"

  <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-533537336174204822>
* "The computer revolution hasn't happened yet"

  <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2950949730059754521>