X beats Y, was Re: Wade vs Wolf]

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Doug wrote:

>It's awful, but I guess it beats slavery or feudalism. But it's also
>a deeply contradictory system, producing wealth and possibility
>alongside poverty and oppression.

This is silly. (And of course the most vicious slavery was capitalist
slavery.) Misery is individual, and a well-treated slave in (say)
ancient syra, was better off than a new york citizen being raped with a
toilet plunger. Or as Sissy Jupe said, I can't tell, unless I know who's
got the money.

There is simply no way (unless there exists a god who can see the fall
of a sparrow) to say that "social system A" was better or worse than
Social System B, and it's rather weird to try to quantify personal
misery.

And to say in the abstract that Capitalism is better than Feudalism is
_not_ marxist. All Marx said was that capitalism _made socialism
possible_, and I'm sure the slaves on a southern rice plantation would
have been delighted to know that just possibly their deaths were
creating unalienated life in the 25th century.

Carrol