Re: Affluent Society and the Law of the Jungle

[Hyman Blumenstock <hystock@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bruce McFarling wrote:
>
> On Wed, 29 Oct 1997 00:44:14 -0500, Hyman Blumenstock
> <hystock@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Is the query then valid, that if it is possible to fulfill
> > practical human wants, why are so many people, now an ever
> > increasing condition, forced to live without that fulfillment?
>
>         Galbraith asked that question in "The Affluent Society".
> The JEI article that I referred to earlier this week mentions
> it in passing as well.
>
> >Perhaps the elitist theories of Veblen, Keynes and LaRouche
> >have some logical basis, if one considers the history of
> >man out of the aboriginal jungle.  Therein lay scarcity,
> >wherein the most powerful of the group would grab all he
> >could at the expense of the least powerful.
>
>         The biggest problem here is that it doesn't
> seem to fit with the evidence on pre-Agrarian societies,
> nor with information we have been able to collect on
> non-Agrarian societies.[Note *]  What would prevent the
> others from running away and hunting and gathering somewhere
> else?  Obviously, if there was nowhere to run away *to*,
> that option is foreclosed.  This naive progrssivism in which
> things, since they were bad in the Agrarian age, must have
> been even worse prior to the Agrarian age, may well be logical,
> but it seems to be untrue.  Agriculture is hard work compared
> to the hunting and gathering that preceded it, and people
> took it up because they had to, not because they wanted to.
> And with that came all the benefits of civilisation -- for
> most people, the privilage of working longer hours for the
> benefit of someone else, and being drafted to fight as the
> infantry in wars of aggression or defense.

In the modern context, agriculture is now big business handled by
machinery. The salient feature of the Post-Agrarian era is that now
there is a surplus of labor that do not have to produce their own food,
but can be supplied freely while they pursue other pursuits beyond
agriculture.  Is that not the reason for the Industrial Revolution.  Is
not our vast labor supply now, evident because not only are we
oversupplied with Food, but now oversupplied also with the GDP.  Is it
not time to graduate from elementary school that thinks only that Supply
can never fulfill Demand, and realize that the end of the Agrarian era,
century ago, occurred when Supply finally caught up with Demand?  Leave
all that pre-Agrarian and Agrarian concern for the historians while we
really enjoy the Post-Agrarian era of Abundance by assuring that not one
person is short changed.

Either extend the inner moneyless relationships now existing within the
four walls of any business entity into the outer world to displace into
history "capitalism" the modern version of the Agrarian or Pre-Agrarian
jungle, or see that enough Money exists in the outside world so that not
one person is short changed when it comes to supplying himself with
whatever turns him on.  Create new types of work in Restoring the
Environment, Space Programs, Pursuit of Knowledge, Anything, as it will
cost us nothing so long as everyone is assured his Food as readily as he
is assured his Air supply.

Hyman
>
> [Note *] Obviously, pre-Agrarian societies is a historical
> term, referring to societies that preceded Agrarian societies.
> Modern hunter-gatherer societies are only pre-Agrarian if they
> are *going to have* preceded Agrarian societies, and I
> don't have the working crystal ball required to know that.
> Virtually,
>
> Bruce McFarling, Ourimbah, NSW
> ecbm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx