| This question <29|29> overall <33|35> Hans: <27|41>. |
| Question 682: Carefully explain to what extent the relations of production are determinate, necessary, and independent of people's wills. |
| [34] Hans: Do we need more altruism? Neolib says in [29] that the battle against capitalism is really a battle within ourselves, that we must become more altruistic and break our subservience to capitalist priorities. |
| This stands a little bit in contradiction with his other assertion that capitalism has been handed down to us from earlier generations -- because if this is the case, it cannot be caused by the attitudes of those living under capitalism. |
| In the preface to Capital, Marx confirms that the individuals cannot be made responsible for the relations of production they live in: |
| My standpoint, which views the development of the economic formation of society as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he remains socially, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them. (P. 92:1 in the Vintage edition and p. ix of the Annotations) |
| Even if we are not responsible for the mess we are in, our generation has the historic responsibility to get us out of it. Changing the social structure one is born into is extremely difficult, but this is, alas, what we have to do (in my opinion), if we want to preserve our planet in a livable state for future generations. In my view, this can only happen if a substantial minority, many more individuals than are doing it now, devote their lives to this task. They must organize a massive grassroots-based political counterforce to capitalism, and reach out, with much love and patience, to those who do not yet know that organized resistance to the capitalist system has become a necessity. |
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