At 10:58 AM 12/22/98 -0800, Tom Walker wrote: >What you get then is not some inexorable totalitarian argument leading from >the market to the gas chamber, but a soppy mush of sycophantic string music >that acts as recorded background for the arbitrary and seemingly >uncontestable exercise of power. > No, I am not suggesting that there is a road leading from the market to the gas chamber. After all, paraphrasing one Maggie Thatcher, there is no such a thing like markets, only moneygrubbers and their sycophantic apologists. Market is an abstraction, a shadow on the Platonic cave wall if you will, whereas gas chambers were quite real, I've seen them (whereas I cannot say the same about the markets), so claiming that the former leads to the latter would be an inexcusably idealistic argument -- unaccaptable to any self-respecting Marxist. Instead, I view all this market-schmarket schmoozing as a cultural text, a myth devised to legitimate the unequal power relations and US imperialist domination by wrapping them in the shroud of "voluntarism" and "free choice" - and then, following the logic of hedonistic-utilitarian ethics: if people freely choose something it is good form them. People can choose things in the markets, ergo, markets are good. Moreover, United States is also good, because it is market society (I have not seen any markets here, excpet a few fleamarkets in the Baltimore area, but that is another story). I used the Auschwitz exampe as a "reduction ad absurdum" technique - to demonstrate the absurdity of the "free choice voluntarism" claim by showing that such a claim can be made in virtuallly any circumstances, even Auschwitz. It was not my intention to cheapen the gravity of Nazi crimes, as you and Jim Devine seem to suggest. That, of course, does not mean that no analogy between the modus operandi of the nazi regime and that of the market cannot be made. Best regards, and again, I'm signinig off for a few days. Have a nice winter solstice and the new year, everyone. Wojtek
