Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNationalEmissions of] (fwd)

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> cbcox@xxxxxxxxx 06/29/00 01:18PM >>>


Doug Henwood wrote:

> M A Jones wrote:
>
> >But capitalism will collapse anyway.
>
> Right. Where have I heard that one before?

Actually the prediction was made by many old guys millenia ago
before capitalism was ever heard of. You know, the old stuff about
the rise and fall of this or that. ONe doesn't have to be even remotely
a marxist to know this. Now *dating* it -- that's something else.

And of course it is also another quesion whether the collapse will
be followed by socialism or barbarianism. But who can seriously
object to the abstract proposition that "Capitalism will collapse."
It seems a rather trivial tautology.

_________

CB: Yea, I mean isn't the alternative idea that capitalism is eternal  ? Like God .

It is a dialectical truth that capitalism will end.  I don't know about a tautology. A tautology is a formal logical truth , A is A, the law of non-contradiction.  The truth that capitalism will collapse is based on contradiction, not non-contradiction.  And I'm not sure it is trivial either. Rather important , actually, especially since the ruling ideas of our age are that capitalism is an eternal, natural human condition.