Re: ecology

[m-14970@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Hugh Rodwell)]

Bodhisatva reminded us that it's not the workers that make the destructive
decisions.

But he goes on to oversimplify:

>        Marx focused on a worker that labored but was not rewarded.  We have
>to focus on a worker that wants to work, but capitalism does not deign to let
>him produce what he is capable of.

Marx focused on both of these aspects. The alienation emphasized in the
second point was one of the main principles driving his critique of
capitalism

B continues:

>We must believe that the worker wants to
>produce wealth that he can enjoy in a clean environment.  Until we empower
>him maximally to produce for his fellow workers (the market), he will not be
>able to act in the most rational way.


Passing over the naivety of the statement that '*we* empower *him*', I
don't know why he had to bring in the market here, without even quotes.
This confuses things no end. It brings us right back to the unhistorical
confusion of the market socialism discussion. For me the most sensible use
of the word market is to denote a place where commodities are exchanged.
Under a system of workers' states, as the world approaches socialist
economic hegemony, products will less and less take the form of commodities
(for which the only the operations of the law of value allow exchange to
take place).

Why not just say 'real social demand' ie the real (and democratically
prioritized) needs of freely associated producers?

Otherwise we bring purely capitalist or commodity-producing categories into
a discussion of a non-capitalist setup, and tie ourselves into conceptual
knots.

Capitalism is a transitory mode of production. For most of humanity's
history it didn't exist. For most of humanity's future it won't exist. It
is therefore quite counterproductive to use capitalist concepts as if they
were timeless economic principles.

Marx certainly doesn't, and in fact continually warns against doing so.

Cheers,

Hugh




     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---