From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Mon Oct 16 2006 - 08:02:52 EDT
While I wouldn't deny the merits of Robert Owen's (or other progressive utopist) ideas, what always puzzles me is why one would base a utopia on what writers in the distant past have said about it, rather than on the most advanced human relations and technologies created by capitalist development. It seems rather conservative. Simply put, if a socialist society is to grow out of capitalism, this must imply that advanced capitalism generates many of the elements for such a society. By implication, capitalist civilisation cannot be "all bad", it contains also a lot of human progress, and it is precisely that progress that is necessary for transcending a social order which makes human development conditional on commerce. That progress ought to be utilised to the full, not denied. What makes a lot of Marxist "anti-capitalist" discussion so unintelligible, I consider, is (1) the lack of an explicit social ethics (a set of values that can guide behaviour), and (2) the assumption that all market economy is "bad". As regards (1), a social ethics is precisely the link between a sober, scientific appraisal of objective reality (which does not necessarily imply any particular course of action) and (more or less utopist) social alternatives and impulses. Utopias are not per se progressive, they can be reactionary, and evaluating them inescapably refers to ethical norms. Vincent Geoghegan writes: "The distinction between utopian and scientific socialism has, on balance, been an unfortunate one for the Marxist tradition. (...) The historical experience of Marxist-Leninist vanguards has shown a strong tendency towards authoritarian utopianism - the formulation by party elites of one and only one vision of the future. This has involved disregarding the aspirations of most ordinary people" (Utopianism and Marxism, London: Methuen, 1987, p. 134-135). As regards (2), not all market economy is bad, though much of it also is, but the real point is, that market relations themselves imply no specific moral norms of their own, other than what is required to settle transactions. Markets of any complexity could obviously hardly exist without laws regulating contractual and property relations, but even where they are regulated by legally enforced norms, a range of possible behavioural norms exist. To the extent that one is "free to choose" in a market economy, this also implies the freedom to choose what *moral norms* to follow. In turn, this means that what happens socially or politically in a market economy cannot simply be blamed on the corruptive or corrosive potentials of markets or market coercion only - it has to be explained also in terms of the actually lived moralities of social classes, leaders and populations. Jurriaan
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