Re: lumps in the gravy -- uneveness and interimperialist war

I will leave it to others to evaluate the accuracy of this statement by Pat
Gunning (in particular the question of just how "voluntary" are the choices
of workers and whether they have "proved" for all time "the incentive
problem", and the superiority of the "invisible hand" of consumerism over
some form of self-conscious planning):

>"The critics of Marx, most notably the Austrian Eugen Bohm Bawerk, and
>the later critics of socialism, including F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von
>Mises, showed two things. First they showed that people under pure
>capitalism voluntarily divide themselves into economic specializations
>according to entrepreneurs' perceptions of their contribution to
>consumers' satisfaction. Second, they showed the unworkability of
>socialism due (1) to the incentive problem and (2) the incomprehensible
>knowledge need by a central planner to even get close to the standard of
>living that was achievable in a capitalist economy."


Rather I would just like to address one point:

In response to my comment:

>> I  truly wish it was coming down to the end game as Andy suggests, with a
>> united global revolutionary egalitarian (I still like Marx' use of the
word
>> communist) movement preparing to battle a global capitalist class.  I
just
>> think that such a scenario vastly oversimplifies the contradictions
within
>> contradictions that still riddle the capitalist world.


Pat Gunning writes:

>One hopes that this is not a wish for war.


Pat, and others: The wars are here. There are 40 wars going on with the
needless deaths of hundreds of thousands every year. And there are the
chronic, "low intensity" wars, such as the mass murder of thousands of
Colombians, Kurds, etc. every year. Then there are the tens of millions who
die prematurely from malnutrition, disease, created diseases from pollution
and other causes, unnecessary injuries, and poor medical care. All a product
of the class system that some people seem to think no longer exists. Nobody
wishes for the violent deaths of innocent people. But if the war does not
appear to be one one's own front porch, it is too easy to think that a happy
peace prevails and to wish that the status quo would be maintained, even
though the deaths of innocents continues to proceed with no end in sight.
Was the U.S. Civil War a good event or a bad event? It killed hundreds of
thousands. It saved many more lives. It is just too easy to dismiss the
misery and deaths of others if fighting to end that misery might upset the
peace of a few others.



Alan Spector