[lbo-talk] The liquidation of society

[Alan Rudy]

wow, are you really making the idealist argument that the worlds of
economics, values and morality are analytically and materially distinct...
or is that the Durkheimian argument that norms and values are the foundation
of healthy economics, politics, cultural integration, etc?  Sociologist that
I know you to be, are you in the slightest bit cognizant of the Marxist,
Weberian, feminist and even interactionist critiques of Durkheim's normative
functionalism?

Your claim, elsewhere, that it is LBOsters who are ethnocentric w/r/t our
understanding of fascism is utterly belied by your ethnocentrically
transhistorical moralism relative to the criminality of cut-throat
competition in a world of plenty.

Maybe, just maybe, the nature of elite value systems - as you put it - are
inextricable from the political economic institutions of society and this, I
thought, was one of the things that the materialist and historical sciences
of sociology and anthropology had clearly shown (alongside some other
disciplines, including heterodox and Marxist economics).  But, I guess, to
make this point moralism might have to give way to social scientific... I'll
let you fill in the rest.

On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 9:33 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:


> [WS:]  Nice piece indeed.  What I particularly like about it is the
> argument
> that it is not about economics (which is pseudo-science anyway) but about
> value systems and morality.  We collectively produce enough to provide
> decent standards of living to practically everyone on the planet - but that
> runs against the elite value system, which is built on inequality and
> autocratic control.  It is one thing to engage in a cut-throat competition
> when there is not enough for everybody - it may be brutal  and inhumane but
> it is about survival after all.  But engaging in a cut-throat competition
> amidst of plenty is simply criminal - it is a crime against humanity just
> like sending people off to death camps to achieve a mad vision of racial
> superiority.  These two may differ in methods they employ but not in the
> underlying value systems.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 5:54 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> >
> > Nice article on Nake Capitalism....
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/02/matt-stoller-the-liquidation-of-society-versus-the-global-labor-revival.html
> >
> > Joanna
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319