john courtneidge wrote:
>
> Dear Friends, all,
>
> I snip then comment
> ----------
> >From: Bob Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >Subject: Cure for the cancer of capitalism (Korten)
> >Date: Mon, Oct 4, 1999, 11:27 pm
> >
>
> >
> > Over the nearly 600 years since the onset of the Commercial Revolution,
> > we have as a species learned a great deal about the making of money and
> > we have created powerful institutions and technologies dedicated to its
> > accumulation.
> >
> > But in our quest for money, we forgot how to live.
>
> **************
>
> David Korten's contributions are excellent, and we can help his analysis
> forward.
>
> It is not clear that each generation opts to go on a "quest for money."
>
> Rather, each finds itself born into an economic system bequeathed by its
> parents (and one which they, largely also, had 'laid upon them.')
>
> I see capitalism as a systems fault.
>
> The fault is, firstly, philosophical:
>
> � the belief that anything (Marx' 'means of production - land, money,
> knowledge found in productive facilities) *can* be owned.
>
> [ This is, palpably, is non-sense.]
>
> Secondly, that those owned resources can be:
>
> � used for personal benefit (sic)
>
> [ Rather than for the commonweal (and within a care-full stewardship of
> the planet.) ]
>
> These thoughts, historically, have developed into the challenge to usury, a
> debate which has been effectively stifled in very recent times.
>
> � Thus many (most) books don't (yet?) include 'The U-Word' in their
> indeces.
>
> So, I invite folk to check books (even dictionaries and encyclopeadias) for
> the u-word, and even notice the amount of weasling that goes on, in many
> that do have it, around the true meaning of this word.
Agreed!
In today's increasingly de-materialized world, where significations
(symbols) tend to be promulgated in ever less "substantial" material
substrates, it sems to me *even more crucial than ever before* to
seize the linguistic high ground! Who controls the terms of
discourse (what questions gt asked; how "things" get phrased, etc.)
has a great advantage in the age of logorrhea!
Just like we must reclaim such phrases as "right to life"
(Right to life, d-mned sure! Right to life for *the living* --
and, if you've got any energy left over after that, you ch
tackle the problem of raising the dead!) -- just like we
need to reclaim that phrase from those who would make
women the hostages of their pre-20th century medical
science mediated bodily processes, we need to tackle
the discourse of human praxis, which, often enough these
days, goes unde rthe rubric of "economics".
Yes, let's talk about usury. What rate of interest,
under what conditions of the borrower's life-constraints,
would *not* be usurious? Since money is dead stuff,
perhaps the accrual of interest to it is a superstitious
displacement of alienated [unreflected, or else malignly
manipulative...] thought. "Usury" Let's hear it
for: us[ur]ers -- and not just frail human bodies that
all too quickly suffer and die, but for those
super-persons, the all-too-real legal fictions:
*Corporations* -- such as the banks that charge 18% +
interest on credit cards!
\brad mccormick
--
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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