At 10:15 AM 2/5/2003 -0500, Ray Evans Harrell wrote:
What do you mean, Ray? Sounds like prejudice to me. Most immigrants to North America were struggling to make a life in the enormous area that awaited them.Harry said: > Selma, > > When was the labor of individuals not bought and sold. > > It seems to me this was always the case in Europe.So to blame capitalism > merely shifts focus from the real problem. It wasn't true when there was > plenty of free land available in North America. Free land? Since when is rape and pillage free?
To blame them all for "rape and pillage" is like blaming the whole present black population for the 52% of US murders that are committed by blacks.
> But that didn't last longIt isn't the "social machines" that are wrong (whatever they are). When all the land is taken up (not necessarily used, or occupied) there is no alternative wage for the poor to enjoy. So, willy nilly, they must take what the employer is pleased to give them.
> and soon there was no alternative but to work for what one could get -
> which as Ricardo shrewdly noted moved downward toward subsistence.
This is strange to me. On the one hand your next statements sound like an old fashioned idealist then you talk about freedom and then you write as if the problem is that our social machines are wrong so we can't be fixed. Machines are a poor model for the human psyche and what you like takes away from the Artists of the country. If it takes away from one group over another it doesn't work.
When there is free land available, enough people will use it to create an urban labor shortage - and wages will rise. This has happened in history. However, as soon as land is all held, there is no alternative and we are soon providing welfare so the destitute can make their gutters more comfortable.
Ray
>
> This is the case now. It is hidden now by all kinds of welfare
> distributions. The social and political sciences spend their energies on
> how much welfare will not be too much, but no-one seems to be investigating
> why welfare is necessary.
>
> But, it's not capitalism that is the issue. This is just the latest
> manifestation of the same old problem that has kept the peoples of all
> countries in penury for centuries.
>
> Harry
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Selma wrote:
>
> >Ray,
> >
> >I have been convinced, for many decades now, that Marx and some that
> >followed him were correct when they argued that, in a capitalistic system,
> >where the labor of individuals is bought and sold, those individuals thereby
> >become commodities that are bought and sold. In such a society the general
> >consciousness becomes one of people being commodities and therefore, the
> >kind of connection you are talking about and the spirituality I have been
> >talking about are not possible.
> >
> >I am thinking, in particular, of Erich Fromm's arguments in *To Have or To
> >Be*.
> >
> >Selma
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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