[lbo-talk] The liquidation of society

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Fri Feb 25 09:16:11 PST 2011


You did not mention interactionism, which I fund more fruitful than the other isms that you do mention. For a starter, how does your "materialist" isms explain the behavior of elites who have accumulated enough to live not one but several very comfortable lives without lifting a finger, and yet they engage in intense competition with other elites to accumulate even more? For interactionists, explaining this is a piece of cake.

Wojtek

On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 10:30 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:


> 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
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>



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