[Pen-l] I want to know

[c b <cb31450@xxxxxxxxx>]

From: raghu

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 2:56 PM, c b <cb31450@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>  Ruling classes maintain rule by being more class conscious than the
> classes they rule.  "Conscious" means aware , knowing, talking in
> meetings, and being self-conscious as a ruling class.  Ruling classes
> must be continuously classes-for-themselves.
>
> [...]
>
> Capitalism has not persisted for the last 92 years or so based on the
> masses retaining a form of common sense and culture unattended,
> uncultivated and unguarded by highly conscious organic intellectuals
> of the ruling class.


Is this an Intelligent Design theory of the economy? (:-)

Seriously though, the alternative theory would be that capitalism and
all its power relations are an emergent property arising spontaneously
from the interaction of autonomous agents. In other words, capitalism
is a stable attractor. There may be a few conscious actors here and
there, but there is no overall master-plan.

^^^^^^
CB: Yea, that's sort of an "Invisible Hand" theory: all the autonomous
agents pursuing their self-interests results in a self-regulating
system, "the Market".

On the other "hand", things like Palmer Raids,  McCarthyism and Cold
War propaganda, i.e. enforcement of anti -anti-capitalist political
ideology, common sense and "culture" are some of the direct evidence
of "intelligent design" impacting mass consciousness. The bourgeois
system didn't just allow a free competition of ideas in the political
"market place". There was an "invisible hand" involved in retaining
the political status quo.
^^^^^^^^^^

The truth I suspect is somewhere in between the above two theories.
-raghu.
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