On Dec 30, 2008, at 12:15 PM, Julio Huato wrote:
> Ted Winslow wrote:
>
>> The "essential characteristic" of capitalism, he [Keynes]
>> claimed, was "the dependence upon an intense appeal
>> to the money- making and money-loving instincts of
>> individuals as the main motive force of the economic
>> machine."
>
> This is how the antagonistic, conflict-ridden nature of capitalism
> looks to a very sharp bourgeois mind. It's not surprising that Keynes
> could only see the carrot side of the "system of incentives" inherent
> to capitalism.
>
> Marx, on the other hand, placed at the center the stick side: the main
> reason why workers sell their labor force to the capitalists not
> because they are taken by greed, but because they merely strive to
> survive (and the norms of their survival are not merely biological,
> but social).
>
But the workers' need to "strive for survival" and the existence of
"social norms" for the means of survival are virtually identical in
all systems of class society.
Keynes's point is that monetized avarice as "as the main motive force
of the economic machine" is specific to capitalism.
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos