At 8:04 PM 26/10/99, Milutin wrote:


>"The problem with the capitalist or the neoclassical economist (or Harvard
>political scientist) isn't that they use a conceptual toolbox suited to
>their needs. We all do that. It is that the capitalists' needs-to maximize
>their profits and power regardless of the impact on others--are vile and
>immoral.

This is nonsense. The capitalist doesn't actually need to maximise profits,
some capitalists are very caring human beings. Some capitalists in fact are
among the sweetest people who ever starved a baby to death or put a sick
widow out into the street.

They don't *need* to act in the way they do. We live in a world that has
developed the technologies that could potentially eradicate want.

It is totally unnecessary for people to be homeless and hungry, insecure
and oppressed. There is no material need whatsoever for us to fight like
wild animals for the means to survive.

Scarcity in today's world is artificial and unnatural. It is the system of
capitalism, not the capitalists, who need to perpetuate this awful and
artificial scarcity. Capitalism cannot exist under conditions of abundance,
it is a system of competition, it must have winners and losers.

Capitalism is a system adapted for dealing with shortages, unfortunately
now that shortages are no longer actually necessary - hunger and want in
human society must be artificially maintained. To prevent the extinction of
the capitalist economic system, the only habitat in which it can survive
must be preserved.

Which is why we call those who support its retention "conservatives".
Perhaps "preservationists" would be more accurate?

But capitalists themselves are human beings. Twisted and perverted by the
system they serve it must be admitted, but people nonetheless. As such they
have no more material *need* to continue lives dedicated to the service of
an anachronistic economic system than do their victims.

This is illustrated starkly by information technologies. The
socially-necessary cost of distribution of information has plummetted to
vitually zero. It is possible to distribute all information to everyone on
the planet for almost nothing.

Yet how can such abundance of information be compatible with commodity
economics. Market forces dictates that an over-supply of any commodity will
force its price to below the cost of production. This of course leads to
withdrawal of capital from the arena. Then inevitably to the complete
cessation of production of that commodity.

Clearly a free market in information is impractical unless a shortage can
be artificially maintained. Or a monopoly, which is the same thing. So this
is what is being enforced, an artificial shortage - people are being denied
access to a virtually free and unlimited commodity in order to keep it as a
commodity. In order to allow it to be available at all in an economic
system which might otherwise, by the simple mechanics of market forces, cut
off supply totally, a shortage must be artificially maintained.

It is the same in all areas of production of the necessities of life. It is
entirely possible to satisfy the needs of everyone on the planet, the
technologies exist.

But satisfying the needs of the human race is not only not the imperative
of capitalism, it is quite incompatible. An equillibrium of supply and
demand  provokes automatic economic responses, prices start to fall, profit
margins are eliminated and production shuts down.

Until scarcity is restored, capitalism cannot operate at all, the more
scarcity the better.

But this is not the fault of the actual capitalists, they are merely
competitors in the economic jungle. Human beings doing what human beings
have always done, attempt to gain a measure of security against hunger and
want. To gain control of their lives.

Don't blame them alone, we are all to blame collectively. Capitalists are a
tiny minority, they cannot end capitalism alone, anymore than they can,
alone, hope to preserve it when the rest of us decide to put it out of its
misery. Progress is a task we are all responsible for. If we fail to take
the steps necessary then we can hardly blame them for trying to make the
best of a bad situation.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell tas.