[lbo-talk] Switching Sides

Carl G. Estabrook galliher at illinois.edu
Sat Apr 28 18:59:40 PDT 2012


Difficulties in recognizing the moral objections to capitalism arise only for those misled by Kant's ethics.

For Marx, the classical scholar, ethics were Aristotelian.

'Il maestro di color che sanno' was primarily interested in giving an account of physical change, but he would have recognized the best attempt to date to account for social change.

--CGE

On Apr 28, 2012, at 12:26 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:


> The fundamental 'objection' to capitalism is NOT a moral objection.
> There
> are no grounds on which one can base a moral judgment. The
> proposition that
> exploitation is morally wrong merely sets up an infinite regress.
> Why is
> exploitation wrong? And so forth. One can never find that
> Archimedean point!
> Moral condemnation of capitalism is just another version of "Stop
> the World!
> I want to get off." You can't.
>
> Moralists who claim to be Marxist should read the 4th chapter of
> Ollman's
> _Alienation_.
>
> Carrol
> Overposting for the first time in many weeks.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org
> ]
> On Behalf Of ken hanly
> Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 10:55 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Switching Sides
>
> I doubt that there is any normal condition of capitalism except that
> workers are exploited.. At present many workers in developing
> countries are
> able to increase consumption at least, and in some countries state
> policies
> even encourage this while in developed capitalist countries the
> situation is
> the reverse with wages, pensions, the social safety net etc. being
> cut. as
> austerity policies are imposed ostensibly to reduce deficits. In the
> period
> of expansion after the second world war you refer to no doubt it was
> only
> the developed countries in which there was a growth of the welfare
> state and
> worker power but this was in part at least due to the exploitation and
> austerity in the third world which provided cheap raw materials and
> other
> products.
>
> Cheers, ken
>
>
> Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html
> Blog: http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 8:44:11 AM
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Switching Sides
>
> I still believe that change is on the whole evil -- unless absolutely
> necessary. It is necessary for human survival to destroy
> capitalism. And
> this is relevant to the debate over austerity. Austerity is the NORMAL
> condition of capitalism, violated for a short time after WW2. Normal
> processes of change ("Progress") after 1970 returned capitalism to its
> normal state. How did that quote from Benjamin go, re stopping the
> train
> we're on?
>
> Once when Marx had returned to England from a vacation in Germany
> where his
> aristocratic friends had wined & dined him, someone pointed out to
> him that
> that would not be possible under socialism. His reply: I'll be dead
> by then.
> It seems to me that Marx was a conservative in the sense defined
> above.
>
> Carrol
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org
> ]
> On Behalf Of Michael Pollak
> Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 4:58 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Switching Sides
>
>
> On Apr 23, 2012, at 8:04 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>>
>> Well, the esteemed moderator of this also moved from the right to the
> left.
>
> Actually, since he was a precocious high school Marxist, Doug
> performed
> the extremely rare "left-right-left B4 UR 20" maneuver.
>
> Apropos Ismail's original question, I think Michael Lind probably also
> belongs in list of right to left conversions. Although, like most of
> them, still kind of a weird hybrid afterwards.
>
> Michael
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