Date: Wed, 15 May 96 09:33:06 GMT
Subject: Re: "Progress"



> 
> Lisa:  Based on what?  I reject both the idealization of 'foragers in
> Eden' and the notion of 'brutish, nasty and short'. 
>

The more advanced a society is, the less it is dominated by nature.
Life was just more precarious. The lower the productivity of labour,
the less able the society to cope with climatactic / ecological change.
Surely this is just self evidently true ? 

> What makes
> you think that people in state societies are both more cruel and more
> compassionate than foragers?  I don't get it.
> 

What I meant was, we have the means to be both more cruel and more
compassionate. 

No foragers ever tried to exterminate 6 million people, or built
weapons with the capacity to destroy the earth many time over.
But nor did they arrange something like Live Aid, or build 
international anti war movements.

[ By cruel and compassionate, I mean act in such a way as to satisfy
people's needs, or not. I'm not talking about individual feelings, which
we have no way of determining, and in that sense are concepts which
are completely dependent on time + place.]


A note about capitalism + morality :

In ALL previous societies, there have been periods of absolute shortage ie
where there simply has not been enough food for the population. In that
sense, there is literally no "compassionate" course of action, since
it is simply a matter of choosing who will starve.

Under capitalism, there is no absolute shortage. We have enough food
to go around, it's just that it isn't profitable to give it to the
starving people. For the first time in history, there is a truly
compassionate course of action available, and yet the relations of
production prevent us from taking it. Particularly cruel and immoral.

Adam.


Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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