Re: [OPE] capitalism as an unnatural system

> "One should not conflate ideas and ideologies"
> An ideology is a set of ideas, so the two are related, but not identical.

Hi Paula:

Oh, OK: I thought you were using the term ideology in the more specific
Marxian sense of the term. http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/i/d.htm#ideology

> "the representatives of the slave system the and feudal order also claimed
> that their modes of production were natural and eternal."
> The feudal system was supposedly created by God, not nature, and was to
> exist only temporarily, until Judgment Day.
 
 
The Church - and feudal states - held that what was God-given was ALSO natural.
Thus, the roles which individual classes and groups were expected to play were considered
to be ordained by God AND natural. This is why what was viewed as eternal
was also viewed as natural. This view was also reflected in various philosophies
of the period.
 

> "it should be clear from the HISTORY of the conception of free competition
> that it ALWAYS concerned a claim about what capitalism *SHOULD BE*."
> 'Ought' is connected to 'Is', and superstructure is connected to base. It's
> undialectical to separate one from the other.
 
 
'connected' is not the 'same as': THAT is undialectical. Ideals put forward
about what should be are different from claims about what are.

> "there was NEVER a historical period where there was free competition under
> capitalism."
> We've gone through this before. The error here is to abstract free
> competition from the contradictory historical reality in which it
> necessarily co-exists with regulation and monopoly, and then to look for
> that abstraction in the real historical world. Since free competition does
> not exist in a pure and one-sided form, you conclude that it does not exist
> at all.
 
 
Yes, we've gone through this before: the error is to confuse competition in general
with FREE competition and its SPECIFIC HISTORICAL MEANING. You mistakenly
conclude that since competition was (and is) a historical reality, so was
FREE competition.
 
In solidarity, Jerry
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Received on Tue May 17 19:10:25 2011