- Capitalism and Alternatives -

The question is about one's dream

Posted by: Samuel Day Fassbinder ( Citizens for Mustard Greens, USA ) on December 13, 1999 at 13:31:27:

In Reply to: No, Lark! Say it ain't so! posted by Nikhil Jaikumar on December 11, 1999 at 21:26:55:

One is reminded by David McNally's quote of Marx here:

We are not among those communists who are out to destroy personal liberty, who wish to turn the world into one huge barrack or into a gigantic workhouse. There certainly are some communists who, with an easy conscience, refuse to countenance personal liberty and would like to shuffle it out of the world because they consider that it is a hindrance to complete harmony. But we have no desire to exchange freedom for equality. We are convinced that in no social order will freedom be assured as in a society based upon communal ownership.

One would like to emphasize, here, the dependency of "freedom" and "rights" upon the economic order, as the Critique of the Gotha Program says: "Right can never rise above the economic structure of a society and its contingent cultural development". You are free, but your freedom is freedom under capitalism. If you want a better freedom, then you want something better than capitalism.

BTW, I never got Lark's opinion on this link.


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