Eubulides wrote: > > A couple of years ago I saw Greenspan > on CSPAN mention the words "long term equilibrium path..." I broke out in > laughter before he finished. As if he could know what the > political-economy-ecology will be like in 2007. >
As long as capitalist social relations and political power endure, the controlling economic theory will be a ratioalization of that rule. Not much to be done about that. But Ian's laughter should be aimed at most discussions on this list or on lbo-talk about how socialist society should be/will be/might be organized. Without exception so far as I can remember, those discussions invariably proceed on the (implicit and never really acknowledged) assumption that between now and then (the beginning of socialism) nothing will have happened. For example -- I simply cannot conceive of any socialist regime coming to power (or any anarchist-workers regime) _except_ after titanic convulsions which more or less destroyed the even temper of life in America as we know it. Yet all discussions of socialism compare it to how we are living NOW, ignoring the fact that any socialist regime that in its first years produced a 'standard of living' much worse than present (2003) conditions would still, almost certainly, be providing a standard of living much better than what would have intervened between now and then. If one wants to talk about the _very_ distant future, socialism, one _must_ cast that discussion in the context of the _intervening_ years between now and then. Now is simply irrelevant to the problems of a socialist state, because now will be long buried at that point. Greenspan is quite rational in comparison to those who discuss socialism as though it were to be directly substituted for the world as it is now. Carrol > Ian
