At 02:50 PM 6/2/99 -0700, Jim C. wrote: >As ugly and ruthless as capitalism is, as horrible as its consequences on >the many innocents, as horrible as the means employed by the capitalists to >rule, so as horrible the means may be necessary to stop it. But the Jew of >the Warsaw Ghetto who uses violence to attempt to stop genocide and defend >his/her People can never be on the same moral plane as the nazi who uses >violence to put the Jew into the gas chambers; only in the abstract >"morality" of the detached from the actual struggles and their consequences. Jim, I agree with that point and made that clear in my response to Brad DeLong in the related thread. We need to evaluate things in their proper historical context - something that neoliberal and neoclassical narratives purposefully resist. But that also means looking at the capitalist development in a proper historical perspective. That will tell us that, undoubtedly sundry social-historical reasons, capitalism brought relative prosperity, unioversal suffrage and freedom from traditional oppression - just ask Eastern European (and I presume Chinese) women about the dubious benefits of "state-socialist" sanctioned patriarchy - not to mention freedom from backbreaking physical labor etc. And these are good things, regardless of one's political orientation. Of course that does not mean that all benefited equally from those good things, au contraire - the unequal access to the most fundamental resources amidst plenty is probably the strongest indictment of the capitalist system, especially the US-style. Nor does it mean that capitalism will keep bringing these goods forever. In fact, I have a good reason to belive that under the current historical conditions capitalism is slowly turning into business fascism, and systematically dismantling the civil libertarian superstructure it created in the past. But that is much different form the position taken by some developing countries (including China) that portrays civil rights as a mere capitalist graft to undermine their national sovereignty. Again, it is one thing of the US using civil and human rights as a trojan horse of its fundamentally imperialist policies (that is why I opposed the Yugoslavia adventure from the start) - and I must add that racist imperialism is as American as baseball, star-spangled banner and apple pie - and quite another thing of using social institutions created by capitalism to built a better and more humane society. Let us not throw the baby with bath water as Brad DeLong does. wojtek
