On Mon, 17 Feb 1997, Doug Henwood wrote:
> This is an important point. In a time when so many of the dwindling band of
> radical political economists are in hot pursuit of respectability - math,
> suits and/or stockings, and everything - it's easy to lose the sense that
> capitalism is a really weird social system. Not only the fetishism of
> commodities, but the ghostly power of money, the colonization of mental and
> erotic life by what Keynes called the Benthamite contraption... I could go
> on. In finance, the capitalist subfield I spend all too much time
> following, human ingenuity and material resources are devoted to crafting
> inverse floaters, swaptions, reset notes, and butterfly spreads. Capitalism
> does give new meaning to the word odd, though by now it shouldn't be
> unexpected.
>
> Doug
Doug:
Well said. The sense, the feeling, that there is something "odd" or
downright insane about capitalism is not only a healthy antidote to being
sucked into the system but also an essential ingredient in being able to
visualize alternatives. It should be founded on both experience and theory
but the feeling of "we've got to be able to do better than this! This is a
screwy way to organize a society" is a necessary complement to the usual
critique of alienation, exploitation and brutality.
Harry
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Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173 USA
Phone Numbers: (hm) (512) 478-8427
(off) (512) 475-8535 Fax:(512) 471-3510
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cleaver homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index.html
Chiapas95 homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
Accion Zapatista homepage:
http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
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