Doug, I don't think anyone here would argue that when faced with a choice between less misery and more misery, people would chose less misery. By the way, I am using the word misery in its daily form without any theoretical connotation and mention this so that I don't find myself in a long debate on what misery means.
My only reminder to you is this: Don't forget that this is not just a temporal/historical but also a spatial/geographical system. Even at times of capitalist booms, although the boom lifts some boats in certain locations, other boats sink in certain other locations. I would say whether you appreciate or hate the fact that capitalism often produces "greats booms" depends on your location. And it should have been clear by now that I hate these booms whereas you sometimes appear as appreciating them. I guess there is some kind of "struggle" going on here but I forgot what that "struggle" was. Sabri +++++++++++++++++ Sabri Oncu wrote: >Let me ask you a direct question: Is it your point that >capitalism is not as bad a system as some of us here think it is? It's awful, but I guess it beats slavery or feudalism. But it's also a deeply contradictory system, producing wealth and possibility alongside poverty and oppression. A friend of mine who spent a few years as a reporter in Vietnam interviewed Nike workers who told her that they prefer their sweatshop jobs to what they would have been doing otherwise - things like chasing rats in rice paddies (not much fun to be a woman on the farm). Anticapitalists - and I'm one - often overlook that sort of thing. And capitalism often produces great booms, though PEN-Lers seem to prefer talking about busts. Which kind of begs the question of just how capitalist China is, and what lessons it might hold for other poor countries. Doug
