Voltaire & Rousseau (was Re: A slight advantage of poverty)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Brad wrote:

> Third, I am struck by the extent to which the debate here has
> recapitulated an eighteenth-century debate--admirably exposited by
> Albert Hirschman in his book _the Passions and the
> Interests_--between Voltaire (and others) and Edmund Burke (and
> others). Voltaire maintained--as I do--the "doux commerce" thesis:
> that capitalism tends to produce habits of thought that lead people
> to pursue pleasure through consumption and pusue wealth through
> production and exchange, and that this is *vastly* preferable as a
> basis for social organization to other habits of thought that lead
> people to pursue honor or salvation through killing people, or in
> dying to protect their hierarchical superiors.
>
> Burke would have joined Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky in his horror at
> the fact that Sargento Cabral Square, which used to advertise *dulce
> et decorum pro patria mori*, now advertises supermarkets. I think
> Edmund Burke makes the case much more strongly and certainly more
> eloquently than Gorojovsky, so I want to let him speak for a little
> while

To leftists, the more relevant debate is that between Voltaire &
Rousseau than that between Voltaire & Burke, especially given the
fact that this thread began with Nestor's remark upon the Latin
American wars for republican independence.  The difficulty of
striking a nice balance between Voltaire & Rousseau is a real
question.  One prefers Voltaire's balanced view on arts to Rousseau's
love of Sparta, but it is also true that the republican ideal of the
independent state of free citizens cannot be defended without
militant & often military exertion (of citizen-soldiers, not of
mercenaries & standing armies, as humanists such as More &
Machiavelli already noted before the Enlightenment) in the world of
imperialism.  Passive consumerism of the masses & the comprador
bourgeoisie just won't do (except for imperialists).

Yoshie