On 4/28/2013 11:38 AM, Julio Huato wrote: > Tell me how this is a distorted rephrasing of your statement: "We > need no explanation of how and why our society values particular > things and, therefore, how and why our society allocates its resources > in particular ways. Answers to these questions (hows and whys) will > not help us to lead better lives, to build a better society. So, > trying to answer these questions is a total waste of our society's > resources." =================
We do know how and why society produces and allocates resources. The reasons and justifications for the current production/allocation are, it seems to me, shown to be utterly inadequate on ecological and political terms; moral values just lead to more political conflict. I think we're all agreed that too much time is wasted on this planet by people indulging in political conflict in the name of morality. Didn't Marx agitate for the *free* association of producers rather than the *moral* association of producers?[1] I think if we are to have a radical critique of the social relations of production we are better off expounding on unfreedom than trying to get people to agree on so-called morals. In a sense, I'm just arguing, in a non-confrontational sense of course :-), for some parsimony in the deployment of concepts and the repurposing of the ones we habitually use to talk about social problems. > Another answer, through rhetorical questions: Are you implying that > the particular ways in which our society is allocating its resources > is just fine? If not, how do you think we could figure out better > ways to allocate such resources (what I call "the productive force of > labor," which -- in my view -- is the resource of last analysis) if we > don't critically examine these ways in the first place? ================ Not at all; I'm convinced they're pretty fucked up, in fact. And moral discourse will not help deal with the issues. Global warming, as one list member recently summarized elsewhere, puts us all in uncharted territory. I'm as skeptical about using Kant or Bentham as I am about Aristotle and Heidegger in determining what strategies we can bring to bear on adapting to and actively changing the political ecologies of the 21st century. I'm just as convinced that corporate managers and lots of economists are going to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into issues where their so-called expertise is going to be greeted with agitated incredulity if the very modes of thought that are partly constitutive of social reproduction are clung to ever more tightly as we stumble ever deeper into maladaptive behaviors vis a vis the planet. E [1]above is part of the reason why I've been spending what little time I have rereading G.A. Cohen and E. Screpanti alongside Bernard Harcourt's "The Illusion of Free Markets". All of those, of course, taking their place behind "Sh*t My Dad Says." :-) _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
