On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 9:39 AM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 9:35 AM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 11:17 AM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> >>> ...For instance, I've read Debord's essay on the Society of The >>> Spectacle (1967) >>> >>> and I know it's the Bible for a lot of new situationist artists (and >>> angrily >>> critiques celebrity and other tokens of commodification) but I find >>> Debord >>> ridiculously dated and even paranoid in his fixation on capitalism as >>> the great >>> evil. The alternatives are misty stone-age economics, as far as I can >>> figure >>> out. Yes, Debord's very gloomy account of human debasement at the hands >>> of >>> capitalism may be true but when was it ever otherwise, with any economic >>> scheme? >>> >>> >> I think that ancient Sparta did not even use coins as a way of >> suppressing commerce and preventing it from dominating their society. >> > > Now that I think of it, they believed that the austerity of their military > way of life helped to keep materialism in check. > > By the way, the Spartans weren't the only ones aware of the danger of > allowing commerce to dominate society: > > - The state should take the entire management of commerce, industry and > agriculture into its own hands, with a view to succoring the working > classes and preventing them from being ground into the dust by the rich. > > Wang An-Shih (Chinese political reformer;1021-1086) > Aristotle said: - ...The encroach-ments of the rich are more destructive to the State than those of the people.
