Re: [Pen-l] The fundamental crisis response. was Ecological credit crunch

[Sandwichman <lumpoflabor@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 11:14 AM, Eugene Coyle <eugenecoyle@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> the Sandwichman has been showing, cutting working hours is the most
> important crisis response.

See also my upcoming operetta entitled, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of
Oedipus Rex." It explains everything.

> Economists won't touch the growth subject.  Why won't PEN-L?

Hubris. Blindness. I will suggest that the left invented growth as we
know it. The right only hijacked it and perverted it. It behooves
progressive economists first to own the growth paradigm, second to
criticize its vulgarization and degradation by "our side" and third to
question how it was we let the right seize the initiative. Obviously,
point three is somehow related to point two.

"What does labor want?" Samuel Gompers asked, "We want more
schoolhouses and less jails, more books and less arsenals, more
learning and less vice, more constant work and less crime, more
leisure and less greed, more justice and less revenge." That got
abbreviated to "more, more, more." Not exactly a faithful translation.

Robert F. Kennedy virtually paraphrased Gompers in his 1968 speech
criticizing slavish pursuit of economic growth, as measured by the
gross national product.

"Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community
excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material
things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by
that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances
to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our
doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the
destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in
chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead,
and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts
Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which
glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our
children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It
does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our
marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of
our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage;
neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our
devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that
which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America
except why we are proud that we are Americans."

It is the nature of divination to be misinterpreted. Ira Steward saw
higher wages as the path to the surpassing of wage-labor. What once
was a provisional step on an emancipatory journey became the ultimate
destination. The means became the end. One could, of course, say the
same thing about "proletarian revolution".

Presumably, people initially want the utopia hidden behind the veil.
Eventually, though, the veil becomes a fetish. Mass consumption and
revolution are the pornography of this fetish. There's a certain
safety and comfort in politico-economic masturbation. Although a
gesture of impotence, masturbation doesn't carry with it the intimate
spectacle of consumated impotence. It is not that the Pen-L (pun
intended) cannot get an erection. Only that it is afraid it might not
get one in the clutch, so to speak. (Just another way of looking at
"the growth subject".)

-- 
Sandwichman
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