SA: By the way, this is just wrong on its own terms. No matter how unpredictable the future may be, there are lots of things we have some certainty about, if only because of simple logic and the laws of physics, biology, etc.
Cbc] So? I'm really not sure why you ar bothering to read my posts. You want to talk about socialism and predict revolutionary conditions. I don't. I want to talk about how to organize mass movements in the present. I just don't find it interesting to talk about what socialism is and whether it's a good or a bad thing.
SA] If a socialist movement achieves power, maybe society will become "less atomized," but it will still be true that you can't make friends in a sensory deprivation tank. Maybe the workings of society will become "more transparent," but you still won't be able to know the population of a country just by living in it. Maybe there will be some attenuation in the division of labor, but it will still be true that an individual can't build a power plant all by himself. Et cetera.
Cbc] Again, So? I still don't understand what your point is in arguing with me. I'm not arguing for socialism or trying to convert anyone to it. I simply don't have a dog in this race.
SA] In that sense, exercises like Cottrell/Cockshott's are useful, because by reasoning through the features a non-market economy *might* have, they can identify certain features that any non-market economy *must* have.
Cbc] Sounds boring.
SA] For example, it becomes clear in reading their book that any non-market economy with a division of labor must maintain a centralized list of all products and the input-output matrices of each of those products.
Cbc] Mabel is peacefully laboring away in Kansas making whatevers. James is peacefully laboring away in Reims making whatevers. Jim's boss installs a new machine and suddenly Mabel's life in Kansas changes foreever. What Jim does thousands of miles away transforms Mabel's life. Everyy one on the planet is so linked in millions of ways with everyone else, that everyone is subject to forces that no one really understands and can control.
This must stop. When we stop it. When we destroy those millions of interconnections that enslave us all, be ur wages high or low, we may find ourselves in a pickle. So be it. We, or our children or grandchildren will have to work it out the best that they can.
Now - I really don't care whether this convinces you or not. I am not in the business of converting people to socialism or marxism. I do want to persuade a few dozen people in Bloomington/Normal that demos are important and that they can't wait for Obama to do it, and if things heat up, some of those people, will start feeling uncomfortable, they will feel that whatever they accomplish in B/N somehow is not stable because there are all those links with the ret of the world. I watched a younng woman sit on the floor in a friend's living room and talk herself into socialism. I didn't say a word.
Now this may make as little sense to you as your post makes to me. I guess we just have to find other thngs to talk about. I have no desire to persuade you to be a socialist or a marxist. Nor am I going to argue about the details of socialism or even argue about whether one should argue about those details.
And I really don't understand why you read or respond to my posts.
Carrol
SA] Logically, it is just impossible for such an economy to lack those things. (Unless the "unknowable conditions" of the socialist future include such things as the spontaneous emergence of universal human powers of telepathy. I sometimes get the feeling that Carrol really has faith that such things will magically evolve to save the socialist future.)
There's actually a lot their book can tell you about any non-market future, assuming such a future were to come to pass.
SA