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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:21
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you know what i was thinking, chegitz. i think you got me and most right-wingers all wrong. if presented with the situation in the third world or even industrializing America, I think most conservatives would be surprisingly socialist in demanding for unions, price controls, and basic consumer goods.
Eggs, milk, and bread are the three foodstuffs most necessary for a healthy survival. Fortunately America is so affluent that we have those goods at a premium and they are quite cheap and everyone in america has enough to stave off starvation and malnutrition. In 19th cent. America, however, this just wasn't true. transplant your average modern conservative back then and he'll be demanding everyone have those basic foodstuffs for survival.
so i think conservatives can empathize with socialism up to an extent but at the point of today's America, with our affluence, socialistic ideas do no further good.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Albert Speer
you know what i was thinking, chegitz. i think you got me and most right-wingers all wrong. if presented with the situation in the third world or even industrializing America, I think most conservatives would be surprisingly socialist in demanding for unions, price controls, and basic consumer goods.
Eggs, milk, and bread are the three foodstuffs most necessary for a healthy survival. Fortunately America is so affluent that we have those goods at a premium and they are quite cheap and everyone in america has enough to stave off starvation and malnutrition. In 19th cent. America, however, this just wasn't true. transplant your average modern conservative back then and he'll be demanding everyone have those basic foodstuffs for survival.
so i think conservatives can empathize with socialism up to an extent but at the point of today's America, with our affluence, socialistic ideas do no further good. |
You know what youve got to read? Saul Bellow's More Die of Heartbreak. In addition to the usual professorial romance, and a hilarious/disturbing parody of Chicago politics and the Twana Brawney case (not in Chicago, I know) he included an explanation of the philosophy of Kojeve, a modern Hegelian who claimed that post WW2 welfare state capitalism was actually the fulfillment of the dream of Marx, and thus the End of History.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:21
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Now of course there's the question if affluence is possible without an earlier sweatshop- based, laissez-faire capitalist system. Would the small gains that the people receive (small because the production of goods in an industrializing nation is relatively small and food production is cut back considerably to provide labour for factories) preclude rapid industrialization and rapid growth that would allow for greater affluence within a generation or two?
That is a legitimate concern but it's silly to think that unionized workers with minimum wages in and industrializing nation would drive up production costs so high that the economy would undergo stagflation and never reach a more affluent, service-driven stage (the 3rd world is different though because of their ability to produce just as well as America. if they demanded wages comparable to America, firms would likely return to the US, ****ing up the 3rd world even more). True, such concessions to the masses would slow economic growth but not drastically enough to prevent eventual affluence methinks.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:21
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LoTM:
quote:
a modern Hegelian who claimed that post WW2 welfare state capitalism was actually the fulfillment of the dream of Marx, and thus the End of History. |
according to Heidegger expounding Hegel's theories, Nazism/Fascism was the End of History. i'm more inclined to agree with Heidegger than this fellow you speak of.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Albert Speer
LoTM:
according to Heidegger expounding Hegel's theories, Nazism/Fascism was the End of History. i'm more inclined to agree with Heidegger than this fellow you speak of. |
Kojeve's quasi-Marxism saves him from that dead end.
quote:
Simultaneously, the progression of man’s productive capacities, his ability to take nature and transform it in order to satisfy his own needs and desires, will result in prosperity and freedom from such want. For Kojève, the economic culmination of human productive capacities finds its apotheosis not in communism, but in capitalism. Like Marx, Kojève believed that capitalism had unleashed productive forces, generating heretofore unimagined wealth. Moreover, like Marx he believed that the expansion of capitalism was an homogenising force, producing a globalising cultural standard that laid waste to local attachments, traditions and boundaries, replacing them with bourgeoisie values. Kojève departs from Marxism (and its variants such as Leninism) by rejecting the notion that capitalism contained inherent contradictions that would inevitably bring about its demise and supercession by communism. Marx thought that the immiseration of workers under 19th century capitalism would worsen as the pressure of market competition would lead to ever-more brutal extraction of surplus from workers’ labour, in attempt to offset the falling rate of profit. This would result in the pauperisation of the proletariat, and capitalism’s inability to avoid such crisis would necessitate the overthrow of its relations by a proletariat raised up to class consciousness under the conditions of its immiseration. Kojève, in contrast, believed that 20th century capitalism had found a way out of these contradictions, finding ways to yoke the market system to a redistributive arrangement that managed to spread the wealth it produced. Far from becoming increasingly impoverished, the working class was coming to enjoy unprecedented prosperity. This is why Kojève, as early as 1948, was proclaiming the United States as the economic model for the ‘post-historical’ world, the most efficient and successful in conquering nature in order to provide for human material needs. Hence he asserted, long before the final collapse of the Soviet empire, that the Cold War would end in the triumph of the capitalist West, achieved through economic rather than military means. |
oh, and bellow brings it back on topic. He reflects on the nature of physical perfection in post-historical America, talking about the absolute perfection we demand say, of an apple at the supermarket. He then turns this around to talk about sex, naturally.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:21
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quote:
This is why Kojève, as early as 1948, was proclaiming the United States as the economic model for the ‘post-historical’ world, the most efficient and successful in conquering nature in order to provide for human material needs |
the United States of 1948 as the ideal example of a welfare state? I don't think so.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:21
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quote:
He reflects on the nature of physical perfection in post-historical America, talking about the absolute perfection we demand say, of an apple at the supermarket. |
it's almost like he saying capitalism and a demand for perfection is a welfare state when it sounds more like he's taking heidegger and calling it a welfare state. that's just from that one paragraph summary though.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:21
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chegitz:
quote:
Kojeve's model only works because it conveniently ignores the immiseration of the 3rd world proletariat. |
and yet the 3rd world's move from subsistance agriculture to commerical agriculture and sweatshop industry has no doubt increased that standard of living in the 3rd world... from a humanitarian standpoint, socialism has a case to claim that those improvements are not enough. from an economic standpoint, however, too many concessions to the 3rd world plebians (**** the term proletariate. for centuries they were called plebians!) can and will slow their economic growth and cause them to reach affluence later.
in addition, japan and south korea are superb examples of the improvements that capitalism can provide given time.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:21
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quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Kojeve's model only works because it conveniently ignores the immiseration of the 3rd world proletariat. Also, in the post-Soviet world, the capitalists have no incentive to treat their workers humanely or fairly, and we have seen all the gains of the previous period come under attack and begin to falter. In addition, with globalization in full force, wages in the 1st world are racing to meet 3rd world wages.
Kojeve take a specific historical situation and universalizes it. This is very un-Hegelian, which seeks to understand things in context and motion, not by looking at snapshots in time. |
Kojeve himself worked for the French govt, and played a role in developed the EEC and GATT. He was heavily engaged in PRAXIS.
I dont beleive Kojeve accepted Marxist-Leninist economics, but followed neo-classical economics that showed globalization leading to rising wages as barriers to trade are overcome. Id rather not take this into a discussion of wage statistics, but that seems to be where its heading. Koheve I think would have seen even 1948 US wage levels as "the end of history" - youve got what you need, including the eggs, bread and bananas. Certainly nothing has happened between 1992 and 2004 to reduce US or European wages to US 1948 levels. That leaves issues of induced wants, and the importance of relative wage levels within a society. Despite the emphasis on US capitalism in the write up, my impression is that Kojeve preferred Europes slightly more left welfare state approach (of course in the period he was writing US and Euro didnt look so different) IIUC the instigation to keep these post-historic issues within bounds would be the continued functioning of class politics at the margins. Not revolution mind you, but tweaking.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:21
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Chegitz:
i know you play Victoria... now you load up the game as Spain in 1836. Spain has lost most of its colonies and is basically just Iberian Spain. the overwhelming majority of your population are farmers with some labourers collecting raw resources. As a result, your tax income is low, your people are getting only a percentage of their basic needs, you can't afford to subsidize either consumers or producers, you can't really do much in terms of education, etc. you're in a catch 22 situation basically.
now the only option is to go into debt (read foreign capital investment). Start building some factories with these loans and start educating craftsmen and clerks. as long as you are very restrictive on social reforms (read laissez-faire gov't), you will see your trade deficit disappear and your people will have more goods availible produced in your own country.
now try the game again but have the first thing you do be to give a high minimum wage, high pensions, etc. you won't get nowhere.
now you'll say that's because communism can't compete in a capitalist global economy yadda yadda... having one strong capitalist producer will force capitalism upon the rest of the world... so what does it take? complete global communism? can communism function by itself and of itself?
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:21
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until three years ago i thought Vienna sausages were a delicacy... such a fancy name and they're so little and i had them once when i was younger. then i see them selling 3 cans for 79 cents at a phar-mor
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:21
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just curious... do yall got phar-mor's in other parts of the country?
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16-10-2004 01:31
Me too! (though I figured it out a little sooner).
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