- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Unanswered questions

Posted by: Samuel Day Fassbinder ( Citizens for Mustard Greens, USA ) on April 14, 1999 at 16:50:48:

In Reply to: unattainability posted by Gee on April 14, 1999 at 12:42:39:

: : SDF: Others supply you with the things you need to live

: To demand the things I need to live at the point of a gun is to make that person my slave. To offer something in return is to associate as equals. That is the freedom to which I refer.

SDF: Unless you are completely self-sufficient, no-one will necessarily demand that something that you offer in return, and even if others DID demand what you offered, no-one will necessarily guarantee you subsistence in return for what you offered. Why should others promise you subsistence in return for your labor, if they can keep you begging, and retain you as their servant? Your employers could offer you a wage, after all, especially if they could manipulate you for your dependency upon that wage...

: SDF: Go back and read Bloch: RD was referring to your utopian vision as "abstract" meaning in Bloch's terms UNATTAINABLE. RD, your thoughts? Perhaps you've read Bloch more carefully than I...

: We may have a mild agreement here. I think it would take several generations at least for sufficient people to cease looking upon others as they look upon a beast of burden - to supply their needs at their command.

SDF: Why would people change their views of each other after several generations. Agricultural society has existed for ten thousand years, and people are still "beasts of burden," so why should this change? Of course, the capitalist world offers dignity, wages, etc. to "beasts of burden" -- this doesn't make them any less "beasts of burden"...

This above opinion would however explain why you think of yourself as a utopian, yet you've offered no suggestion so far as to what should be done to end racism, sexism, or slum-poverty. One still has to wonder why you'd need to be a utopian -- wouldn't there be only one resident of your utopia, you?

: A quicker, and more dramatic option, would be for the producers of the world (which is a lot!) to simply stop and say "no".

SDF: This is precisely what the IWW has advocated. Are you planning to join them?




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