My point was that the free-reigning economics of the marketplace or the dictatorial economics of the state produce the same human misery without reasonable and pragmatic built-in change or accommodations. Even today the Chinese seem to be dictatorial in spite of their so-called free-market experimentation. They allow people a free length of rope for a while and then yank it in arbitrarily. It's the arbitrary crackdowns that scare the hell out of the populace and keep it under the boot heel, unfree. This will ultimately ruin the Chinese brand of communist society because people need to feel free even if they willingly submit to power. But arbitrary and brutal unexplained repression is the tried and true methodology of totalitarian states. However, so-called open markets, free-commerce and trade, etc., is what the U.S.A. accidentally had for a few years after the Revolution --- until the smart leaders could see it tilting toward anarchistic self-interest. It is to George Washington's great credit that he worked for the establishment of a strong Federal Government, at least to offset the natural tendency for a free economy to become a despotic rule of selfish greed and concentrated wealth, such as Debord rails against. Supposedly, that's the secret of the American contradictory government, balancing self-interest against the common good (or, as the post-revolutionary leaders saw it, virtue). Is Dubord really correct or is he only reading one side of the page? Most people are well aware of the ironic nature of late capitalist commerce and commmodification. That's why consumers are really very fickle. They can drop a commodity icon on a whim, and do. People in our culture are still in charge of their society. wc >
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)
