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PoliticalEconomyTalk 9 - 24 Sep 2015 - Main.LizzieOShea
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When we talked today about political economy, I started thinking - I must confess, as I am prone to do - what would Marx make of this?
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So I think you're being at once too functionalist and too idealistic, Shay. We have the productive capacity to feed everyone in the world (a gift, shall we say, of the industrial revolution, though it is a more recent capacity) and yet we fail to do that. We also now have the infrastructure in place to allow people to read and learn and think in a way that simply wasn't possible fifty years ago. And yet people can't read and write. These problems are as much a function of politics as technology. The the current capacity of technology is limited by politics. How do we transform that into a society that has food, clothing, shleter but also knowledge? Wresting control of technology from the current power brokers is a necessary step. It's not just a matter of the revolution reaching people. That sounds nice but I think you've simplified it in your own mind. How does that work? Where would it start? Would it not look like taking control of technology? Would it not look like more time to learn, less working, more health care, less profiteering from pharma? etc etc
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So I think you're being at once too functionalist and too idealistic, Shay. We have the productive capacity to feed everyone in the world (a gift, shall we say, of the industrial revolution, though it is a more recent capacity) and yet we fail to do that. We also now have the infrastructure in place to allow people to read and learn and think in a way that simply wasn't possible fifty years ago. And yet people can't read and write. These problems are as much a function of politics as technology. The the current capacity of technology is limited by politics. How do we transform that into a society that has food, clothing, shelter but also knowledge? Wresting control of technology from the current power brokers is a necessary step. It's not just a matter of the revolution reaching people. That sounds nice but I think you've simplified it in your own mind.* How does that work? Where would it start? Would it not look like taking control of technology? Would it not look like more time to learn, less working, more health care, less profiteering from pharma? etc etc
 For what it is worth - and in the interests of intellectual honesty - I do identify as a Marxist. Not dogmatically; perhaps a little instinctively, in that I can't find anyone with a more convincing set of analytical tools for understanding the world, even if we can argue endlessly about their application. So if that just makes me a thinker and a politician so be it. What I would say is that Marxist thinking, in my view, certainly is not simply concerned with materialism. It's about bread and roses.

[If anyone has a better method for formatting this, please be my guest.]

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*sorry this sounded patronising - I don't know what goes on in your mind, but I think you've simplified it nonetheless.
 


Revision 9r9 - 24 Sep 2015 - 15:18:54 - LizzieOShea
Revision 8r8 - 24 Sep 2015 - 15:09:44 - ShayBanerjee
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