[Marxism] How Capitalism Destroys the Young

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

Aha! methodology. You wrote:

"That capitalism has the "technical capacity" to solve the problems that it
is *not solving* doesn't mean that the problem isn't capitalism."

I agree that is potentially a valid argument, it's just that I think it's
too general, and you would need a few extra steps to make it plausible. I'm
saying that in the context the line "How Capitalism Destroys the Young" is a
bit facile because it is not made clear how capitalism e.g. causes an HIV
epidemic for example. You take the UNICEF statement as proof "How Capitalism
Destroys the Young"  whereas I think it doesn't prove that, at best it's a
fairly tautological syllogism of the following type:

premiss 1: a society exists which ruins children's lives
premiss 2: that society is capitalist
conclusion: capitalist society ruins children's lives

You just draw this conclusion, but a neoliberal could just as easily argue
the exact opposite line: private enterprise could solve all these problems -
which, at least in theory, could be true, regardless of whether you agree
with it or not (you and I obviously don't). In that case, the argument runs:

premiss 1: a society exists which ruins children's lives
premiss 2: that society is insufficiently capitalist
conclusion: an insufficiently capitalist society ruins children's lives

As far as methodology goes, I argue that you cannot blame all
socio-economic, cultural or physical problems on capitalism. Some are
inherited from a pre-capitalist past. Some are simply a product of
population growth, and so on. It's not just that capitalism isn't the root
of all evil, but also that there are forms of society worse than capitalism.
What you can say, I think, is that capitalist social relations strongly
influence the form in which these problems manifest themselves, and how (if
at all) people attempt to solve them. As a corollary, if you abolished
capitalism, then you wouldn't thereby solve all the socio-economic, cultural
or physical problems; in the best case, you would just create a better
framework in which they could be solved. That is presumably what we should
aspire to.

But, no worries, it was only a small point.

Jurriaan


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