Re: Doug Henwood/Mark Jones exchange (from LBO-Talk)

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky wrote:

>
> It is not a matter of ethics. It is a matter of concreteness. Let us
> put it in some kind of "metahistoric" verbiage: Capitalism has
> unleashed greed and the worst traits of human existence in order to
> fulfill the task of overcoming the crassness and pettiness of pre-
> capitalist modes of production.  Once this task is finished (and it
> has been finished), there is no reason to keep our society on these
> rails any more. So that, yes, our struggle is also -and basically- a
> struggle against greed as a foundation of society, not in the sense
> the Medievalist Romantics fought it, but in the sense that greed has
> given us all it could. It is time to move on to greener pastures.
>
> And the (probably overly abstract) way Henry puts it, the affirmative
> statement that "greed is self destructive" (in fact, there is no
> human feeling and action that is not self destructive!) should be
> read this way: a social system based upon a negative human drive
> cannot last forever. Why does such an elementary idea generate
> reactions is a mystery to me.
>
> Or it is not.

Thank you Nestor, for pointing out that my use of the term "creed" in my
past two posts was framed in an objective societal context rather than
as a subjective individual emotion.  Those who read my posts carefully
will see that I never said that Marx said or wrote that greed was the
reason behind capitalism. I said that capitalists said that greed was
the positive driving force behind capitalism. And I pointed out that
even by that standard, greed was not a positive force.  I was merely
using the capitalist's own definition against itself.  Nowhere in my
posts suggested
that capitalism was the result of the deranged mind of individual
captains of finance, any more than Fascism is the result of the
ego-mania of its Feurer.  I often quote the Bible against Christianity.
It does not make me a supporter of religion or Christianity.

One habitual attacker of mine on this list accuses me on never having
read Marx.  I would only say that its not enough to read literally, but
to understand in a living context.  Marxism is not a branch of
Scholasticism or exegesis.  For that person to conclude from my posts
that I make "anti-Marxist" statements is clear evidence of a deranged
mind.

Henry C.K. Liu