I am most definitely not tut-tutting the consumerism of the left or right. I am objecting to the capitalist imperative to consume. I don't think that such decisions are choices in any meaningful way so how could I possibly lament anyone's decision to consume? You prefer to imagine those who disagree with your idea of an endlessly rising tide eventually lifting all boats to some imagined level of prosperity as tut tutting the choice to consume because that is an easily won argument.
> Finally:
>
> "I suspect under socialist planning the term living standards
> would have a different meaning than it currently does under capitalism,
> a concept James seems to have a hard time grasping. He simply projects
> todays capitalist driven consumption ideology into the future imagining
> it as some sort of natural human desire. Something it most assuredly is
> not."
>
> But of course the person who first showed that living standards are socially
> relative was Marx, in his celebrated passages in the Grundrisse, which I
> have from time to time, reproduced here.
>
You can know them, reproduce them and even claim to believe them but your words suggest you have not internalized this belief.
> And of course, none of us can know what attitude people will have towards
> consumption in the future, and I for one follow Marx's advice to avoid
> writing recipes for the socialist cook books of the future.
>
> My thoughts are concentrated on the capitalist present, where, as Doug has
> shown (rather more than I believe) that the US working class's living
> standards have been savagely curtailed. In those circumstances, I prefer not
> to join those who make it their business to bemoan the excessive consumerism
> of the working class.
Avoiding recipes is not stumbling in the dark hopefully moving forward.
Every idea put forth is not a direct prescription for the future.
I have not claimed to know what peoples choices will be, only what they
might be and what I hope they will be. If you prefer not to imagine what
future goal you want to work towards in a slavish adherence of "avoiding
recipes for the socialist cookbooks of the future" that is your choice
but imagining all who work towards a rather wide ranging spectrum of
desired outcomes are attempting to write such a cookbook is pure
nonsense. You have some idea concerning the future yourself. You imagine
it as being just like the present only more high-tech you just aren't
honest with even yourself apparently about this recipe you have written
and are attempting to follow.
You have an annoying tenancy to interject easily dismissed ideas into
other people writings and then proceed to demolish them which is a shame
because you are an engaging and talented writer and such tactics really
should be beneath you.
John Thornton