Re: Re: Re: Reparations and capitalist progress.

[Rob Schaap <carob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some idle speculations, if I may ...

I reckon we'd have to say science is capitalist science if it's done within
capitalist relations.  Even publicly-funded science has been taking on a
more applied flavour over the last decade here.  And the applications are
chosen with market appeal in mind.  This science has produced both my filter
cigarettes and my bronchitis tablets.  Which sounds to me like the creation
of needs - one 'bad' and one 'good' from a health point of view, but the
former 'good' and the latter 'bad' on the yumminess index.  I was not born
needing or wanting to smoke.  And I would not have needed the bronchitis
tablets but for the addiction to cigarettes.  And you can tell I'm probably
'first -world', as if I were not, I'd just have the cigarettes.  All
definitely capitalism in train, I'd've thought.

And all quite indecisive, too.  Would a socialist system have tried to
addict me to cigarettes?  Would it try to wean me off them if I were
addicted?  Not in its 'actually existing' mode within a decisively
capitalist global context, obviously.  And, I'd've thought, not if I didn't
want to give up.  It should, however, not try to addict me to new drugs, as
addiction is a mode of unfreedom.  But addictive compounds also afford
expanded human experience.  And the exploration of such constitutes a mode
of freedom.  So socialism does not have black'n'white answers to such
questions, either.  I don't have a clue what science would look like under
socialism.  It'd have different priorities (my cigarettes being somewhat
below food for a Somalian or AIDS drugs for a Namibian on the list of
allocative priorities), and it might make for a social context in which the
felt need for self-medication of nicotine or narcotics (or pornography, or
ersatz human relationships on mailing lists, for that matter) etc are not as
intense.  Hard to say, though.

So I reckon, yeah, science today is capitalist science.  I'm just not sure
how different its manifestation (especially as technology) would be under
socialism (although I dare say technological diffusion would have rather
different characteristics).  So I don't know whether the statement that
science today is capitalist science is exactly dripping with meaning - other
than by way of the reminder it affords us that our scientific endeavours and
technological directions are matters for social choice (ie we currently
choose to abrogate a conscious democratic choice) - can't see much future in
technological determinism, after all.

Cheers,
Rob.
----------
> From: Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L:16365] Re: Re: Reparations and capitalist progress.
> Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 17:24:45 -0800
>
>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>> Well, human progress is occurring. It is occurring while we have a
>> capitalist economic system.
>
>You can see it happening in Cuba also.  How much "progress" occurs
>because of science?  Do we attribute science to capitalism or can we
>consider the scientific process to be "non-capitalist?"  Or is that just
>silly?
>
>
>> And no one today thinks the...
>> non-capitalist economic systems we saw during the twentieth century
>> were faster roads for human progress.
>>
>> If you want to say that progress is due to non-capitalist elements
>> within our current system because by definition capitalism can't be
>> progressive, I have to admit that such a position is logically
>> air-tight, if silly...
>>
>> Brad Delong
>
>--
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>Chico, CA 95929
>
>Tel. 530-898-5321
>E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>