On Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:08:04 -0700 Voyou <voyou1 at gmail.com> writes:
> On Wed, 2009-04-01 at 14:54 -0400, SA wrote:
> > The problem with this line is that you're already drawing up
> recipes for
> > future cookshops the minute you say: "Under socialism, there is no
>
> > market"; or "Under socialism, there is no value production"; or
> "Under
> > socialism, there is no wage labor"; or any other sentence starting
>
>
> I do think there's something interesting, as a spur to abstract
> reflection, about attempting to imagine workable future economies in
> the
> way that Cockshott and Cottrell do; however, these are likely to
> reveal
> more about the the limitations of our current imagination, than the
> actual contours of future society.
I think the value of attempts by people like Cockshott & Cottrell to think about what a post-capitalist economy would look like, lies in helping us to broaden our imaginations concerning what might be possible in the future. As predictors or prophecies of what a future society would look like, they are no doubt woefully inadequate. Their value rather lies in helping to get over the TINA (there is no alternative syndrome) which effects even very left-wing people.
> I think this is the most
> powerful
> element of Marx's critique of utopian socialism - not that the
> utopias
> are too fanciful, but that they're not nearly fanciful enough, and
> end
> up just being idealized versions of capitalism.
At the same time, Marx & Engels did perceive some value in efforts by utopian socialists at building cooperatives and other alternative institutions insomuch as these experiments might help to convince workers that alternatives to capitalism were possible. They did not think that an actual post-capitalist society would necessarily look anything like these experiments though. And of course they rejected the idea held by most of the utopian socialists that social change could come peacefully through rational persuasion rather than through class struggle.
>
> The level of detail in these kinds of speculations is itself a
> problem,
> because it makes them appear as blueprints which could actually be
> realized, and makes it harder to use them as "road signs" for a
> practice
> that is necessarily going to be experimental and flexible. I take
> it
> that this level of detail is part of what Marx objects to in the
> "recipes for the cookshops of the future"; not just the idea that
> we
> might eat something or other in the future, but the laying out of
> specifics (I first encountered the phrase as "recipes for the
> delicatessens of the future," which I think is a less accurate
> translation, but which amuses me because of the specificity of
> "delicatessens"; as if the socialist future would retain the same
> categorization of retail establishments).
>
> This is particularly a problem with Parecon. Because Albert intends
> to
> produce a theory that is watertight in the face of his liberal
> critics,
> he has a great tendency to fill in any gaps or questions in the
> theory,
> which makes it hard to imagine, even if a parecon ever did come
> about,
> how it might change and develop (this is the other element of
> Marx's
> critique of utopianism, that the posited utopian future becomes a
> stick
> with which to beat actual attempts at social change).
>
>
> --
> "The slightly richer ... eat in semi-darkness, preferring
> candles to electricity. These candles make me laugh. All the
>
> electricity belongs to the bourgeoisie, yet they eat by
> candle-end. They have an unconscious fear of their own
> electricity. They are embarrassed, like the sorcerer who has
> called up spirits he is unable to control."
> -- Vladimir
> Mayakovsky
> http://blog.voyou.org/
> voyou at voyou.org
>
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