>
> On Mon, 3 Oct 2011, SA wrote:
>
>> Organizing the *provision* of food, tents, blankets, information,
>> etc., to a few thousand people is a problem of a completely different
>> order from manufacturing food, tents, blankets, cameras, computers,
>> etc., -- and all their inputs, raw materials, and long-distance
>> transport -- for several million people.
>
> With that last phrase -- for several million people -- you've defined
> prefigurement as impossible. Which is a position you can take:
> prefigurement is bunk. Is that what you want to say? That it's
> stupid for small groups to say they are, in any way, the society they
> want to achieve?
>
> If it's anything, prefigurement is the embodiment of a vision, not the
> display of working scale model.
No, I disagree. Go ahead, change it back to thousands, or even hundreds. You can't manufacture computers in any feasible, usable, practical way by twinkling and consensus. Mine the rare earth metals; build the industrial drills to do the mining; synthesize the chemicals for the plastic; create machine tools to form the molds; build precision components like hard drives and LCD monitors, etc. And coordinate all of that in such a way that you can reliably churn out new, quality-controlled units every day. Any vision that claims to be a prefigurement of such a thing is an illusory vision. It's like saying if I dig a hole with a spade in my backyard, it's a prefigurement of my one day digging the Hoover Dam with the same spade.
SA