RE: The New Panglossianism and Baby's bathwater (fwd)

elson wrote:

>But of course, most aren't listening because they've been fed a load of
>crap
>that capitalists have "risks" and deserve what they earn!  Poppycock!
>Those who do most of the hard work get paid the least in part because of
>the
>functioning of the market: competition among less-skilled workers, not to
>mention political forces,  drives down their wages.   It's plain stupid
>and
>immoral to let the capitalist market (the relations among commodities)
>dictate our lives.

elson, to call capitalists immoral is to largely ignore the 
functioning of capitalist markets and realities of capitalism in general.
i do not think that capitalists have problem with morality. on the
contrary, they use morality to justify their immoral actions. don't they
play the following jazz? let's help the poor! let's help the third word!,
let's promote peace! let's protect the freedom of speech! let's protect
our individual rights!let's preserve the humanity from dictatorships! and
so forth and so on. unfortunately, capitalists are quite sucessfull at
manipulating these slogans when it comes to protect their interests. if
capitalists were _that_ immoral, we could have already dismantled the
system. what is going on today is happening at a much deeper ideological
level. accordingly, the reason why capitalism still survives is because it
establishes its class hegemony by moralizing how just and fair capitalism
is to the well-being of humanity. that is why capitalism operates without
being self-consciously noticed (remember Marx's commodity fethism). 
of course, there are a lot of principle agents responsible for
the self-perpetuation of capital, functioning as a _hegemonic block_: 1.
property owners (capitalists) 2. states (core capitalist states and their
comprador states in the periphery) 3. international/technocratic
organizations like the UN, World Bank, IMF 4. academic intelligensia
(largely liberal in its ideological orientation, US) 5.media (press and
internet 6. United States of America.


thanks!!

Mine Doyran
phd, politics
SUNY/Albany