Anastasios Kozaitis wrote:
>
> At 05:33 PM 3/22/02 -0600, you wrote:
> >
> >
> >But capitalism may become increasingly brutal and destructive, but it
> >always arises from its own ashes, as fresh and brutal and destructive
> >(and as capable of producing good art) as ever. It won't ever die a
> >natural death I fear. And it will continue to produce new aesthetic
> >forms. The charge of degeneracy shows a lack of imagination in the
> >critic.
> >
> >Carrol
>
> I don't believe Capitalism is natural. It is a mechanism that is fully
> steered by very large organizations whose sole purpose is to prevent its
> ideology from disappearing. If this were not the case, I would think we may
> have seen some 'organic' alternatives by now...

I agree that it is not "natural," except in a tautological sense that it
is not supernatural. Capitalism is an aberration, and using Gould's
metaphor, if one could play the tape of history over again there is no
reason to think it would repeat or that capitalism would appear when it
did or even at all. I must not have been clear.

My point was that in non-capitalist societies the organic metaphor of
growth and decay _might_ apply, but it did _not_ apply to capitalism --
that is, that we cannot depend on it merely wasting away in old age: it
has "unnatural" powers of rising again from catastrophes. If you don't
hit it, it won't fall.

Your description of what maintains capitalism, however, seems to me to
lean too much towards what I would call "voluntarism." Humans are free
to make their own history, but they do not make it under conditions of
their own choosing nor just as they please. Capitalism arose behind the
backs of those who (unknowingly) were creating it. (See Ellen Meiksins
Wood, _Origin of Capitalismd_, 1999.) And one of its main effects is the
separation of result from action -- the creation of a world in which
almost all consequences are unintentional. Thus no "very large
organization" or congeries of "very large organizations" can exercise
control over it. It is not a conspiracy though it may generate (as Adam
Smith recognized) endless small conspiracies.

One possible overall interpretation of the _Cantos_ is that they present
a more or less conspiratorial view of human history. One may admire the
poem, even think it contains important "truths" in many sense, without
accepting such a view of history, just as one can find greatness in
Paradise Regained without accepting either the theology or the radical
individualism that inform it.

Carrol