Re: [A-List] Costs and Benefits of Economic Alternatives

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 7/24/07, Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> However, this does raise interesting questions. I for one, do not take
> cost-benefit analysis as an academic question, but more importantly one
> that may go to the heart of what kind of new society we want.
>
> Most of the "left", for fear of being labelled part of the bashers of the
> Bolivarians great advances for all of us, do not spend a lot of time
> thinking about the Orinoco Basin. Yet, the point of "socialising the means
> of a dead planet" seems to be the order of the day should this continue.
>
> Climate Change will decimate the poor, the indigenous and people of colour
> around the world first. Witness not only Katrina, but also the communities
> of the Arctic washing out to sea and the destruction of traditional
> societies inherent in them.

Yes, such development as people enjoyed under state socialism often
came at a great cost to the natural and social environment, and such
political education for participatory democracy as people enjoy in
Venezuela has been, and will continue to be, paid for by oil revenues
in Venezuela.  Surely we must reckon with costs as well as benefits.

On 7/24/07, Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> > In other words, to struggle for socialism is to struggle to have
> > certain benefits at certain costs, not to struggle to have all
> > benefits one might want at no cost.  People have to understand the
> > trade-off, and for them to understand it, we have to have honest
> > discussion and detailed examination of political economy under all its
> > historical and present varieties.
>
> This is a highly academic approach to politics.

It's people, of whom academics are but a few, in the real world who
bear costs and enjoy benefits.  Should thinking be left to
professional scholars?

> She compared
> Marxism and other disciplines on case studies involving financial crises
> in order to answer the question of whether the US is declining or not.

The task of socialists in the USA is different from the task of people
in the rest of the richest capitalist countries, and they are both
different from that of people in outside the global North.
--
Yoshie