> Doug and Alan take issue with my lauding of Gompers.
>
> If his trade union demands are too downmarket and grasping,
glad you ignored the direct reference to Gompers' explicit up-/mid-market ideas... his tendency to despise industrial workers... good to know where your downmarket stops...
> will the Irish Revolutionary James Connolly and original socialist feminist
> Sylvia Pankhurst's claims do instead?
>
> 'Our demands most moderate are,' sang James Connolly, 'we only want the
> earth'
yeah, yeah, yeah, so now you're just like capital, congratulations
'We do not call for limitation of births, for penurious thrift, and
> self-denial', Sylvia Pankhurst wrote. 'We call for a great production that
> will supply all, and more than all the people can consume,'
again, good for you, everyone should want (and get) a McMansion - so they can live alone, alienated from everyone else living in their McMansions, an SUV - so they can drive 30-to-60 minutes or more to the Walmart (on one side of the road) and the megamall (on the other), and all the other crap that goes with the ever-more alienated character of modern life so that they can be happy like you
quality be damned, esp. in social relations, the pursuit of quantity full speed ahead!
now, I'm fully aware that Connolly's engaging in hyperbole for political effect (or, better put, he means something other than you imply by "the earth"... and that Pankhurst isn't speaking of conspicuous consumption as we know it and you seem to be embracing it... are you?
if you read my post, I never said anything about self-denial, penurious thrift or the limitation of births... perhaps not explicitly enough, I was suggesting that self-realization might be more satisfying if it wasn't dependent on self-alienating crap, that there might be no need for penurious thrift if all our stuff was of high quality and diverse forms, and that empowered women (with healthy social and sexual relationships with men and their community/govt) have always limited - or, better, controlled, births... but on their own terms