[lbo-talk] Capitalism RE: catastrophe

Mike Beggs mikejbeggs at gmail.com
Wed Mar 16 17:33:58 PDT 2011


On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 4:24 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Freedom includes being able to make decisions independently of decisions
> being made elsewhere on the globe. This is a generalization from Postone --
> so if you disagree you have to know Postone well enough to refute his
> argumentns. In capitalism as described by Postone, all economic activity on
> the globe is interlinked by internal relations. Hence no act _can_ be free.

This seems like a very liberal conception of freedom - Berlin's negative liberty.

The freedom of, say, a family to have a day at the beach depends on the labour of a bunch of other people - the bus driver, the lifeguards, and for that matter the people who built the bus, refined the petrol, created the sunscreen. As appealing as I find the idea that socialism would transcend the commodity form, I don't think it means transcending the division of labour. So I'm not sure about this argument that alienation is the real enemy and people who just think of socialism in terms of redistribution are missing the point. Or are the bus driver and the lifeguards just doing it as a hobby before they are off to fish in the afternoon and criticise after dinner?

Mike



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