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  • From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] To kill a discourse, ignore language, misquote and slander
  • Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 10:29:47 -0700

Rob wrote:
John Shinnerer, you killed this thread I was trying so hard to
start

Please don't take it so hard, Rob--we do get caught up a bit in "semantic pedantics" here (as Robyn put it in another thread). You raised the issue of language yourself; it became the focus. And go easy on the "slander" accusations: I didn't see anything in John's posts I'd call slander. I confess I, too, found your first post confusing and wanted clarification, just as Paul's post and others did. I started to post a reply but wound up trying to define all the terms because we all use them so differently, so I trashed it. You did try to define the terms yourself, but I still got lost:

I use the term "democracy" to refer to a social system in which the
participants as a whole determine how the system operates.
I use the term "capitalism" to refer to an economic system in which the
owners of capital determine how the system operates.

You refer to both social (I would say "legal") and economic systems, then at the end of each sentence you say "the system," and I don't know if you are saying that social and economic systems are the same system--which wouldn't be correct; or just referring to each system separately, in which case I don't see a contradiction. There is overlap among social, legal, and economic systems, but "capitalism" (quotes since we mean a lot of different things by that) has functioned in many different kinds of legal/social systems, and seems compatible with many.

The earliest examples of capitalism I can think of are ancient markets, which were under some sort of monarchy/oligarchy. Adam Smith was writing during a time of a weak monarchy guided by a not-very-representative parliament; China has plenty of capitalism under a heavily socialist state; then we've got northern European social democracies, and of course, US-style corporate capitalism, but the US also has plenty of small-scale, local capitalists that I don't think are at all in conflict with democracy. I guess you are referring to corporate-managed capitalism, which I agree is incompatible with democracy, and I gather your point is that if had a true democracy, corporate-managed capitalism would be impossible--trusts and monopolies would be regulated as undemocratic, and legislators couldn't be bought. But this is the real world: politicians can always be bought, in any system. Neither "perfect" democracy nor "perfect" capitalism can exist, but imperfect varieties of each are not contradictory. I see no incompatibility between small-scale capitalists responding to local markets and a healthy democracy that can regulate businesses if they infringe on human or civil rights.

There is a natural tendency, in every real-world economic system, for wealth to accumulate in fewer and fewer hands. Historically, there have been two ways to correct this: When gov't is strong, it taxes and regulates to redistribute wealth. When gov't is weak or corrupt (like the US now), eventually the poor revolt and kill the rich, and often, an even more repressive regime follows (France, Russia, countless other examples). I prefer the first option; I'm sorry it's so unlikely right now.

Toby
_____________________________________________
For a look at my book on ecological gardening,
Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, visit
http://www.chelseagreen.com/Garden/GaiasGarden.htm


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