The war of all against all -- and the knowledge of a better world

[Hannah Bell]

There is an old saying that if you don’t know where you want to go, then any road will take you there. I think that recent years, years of neoliberalism, imperialist outrages and the virtual destruction of almost every effort to create an alternative, have disproved this saying. Our experience tells us that if you don’t know where you want to go, then no road will take you there. Our greatest failing is that we have lost sight of an alternative...

Let us think about a real alternative to barbarism, a grand conception but yet a very simple one. I have in mind a simple idea expressed by Karl Marx in 1844...the unity of human beings based upon recognition of their differences. That is a conception which begins from the recognition that people are different--- that they have differing needs and differing capabilities--- and that they are interdependent...

Whether we act upon the basis of this understanding of our interdependence or not, we cannot deny that we produce for each other, that as beings within society, there is a chain of human activity that links us... this chain of human activity exists whether we consciously produce on this basis or not --- whether we understand our unity or not. In fact, as we know only too well, outside of little oases (some societies, some families, in this society we do not consciously produce for the needs of others, and we do not understand our productive activity as our contribution to this chain of human activity. Instead of valuing our relationship as human beings, we produce commodities, we value commodities; instead of understanding this chain of human activity as our bond and our power, we understand only that we need these commodities...This, as is well-known, is what Marx called the ‘fetishism of commodities’ in the first chapter of Capital...

People say that about every thing that it has a certain value. This coat, this sweater, this cup of coffee: each thing worth some quantity of money, or some number of other things — But what really determines the value of a coat? The coat's price comes from its history, the history of all the people involved in making it and selling it and all the particular relationships they had. And if we buy the coat, we, too, form relationships with all those people, and yet we hide those relationships from our own awareness by pretending we live in a world where coats have no history but just fall down from heaven with prices marked inside. "I like this coat," we say, "It's not expensive," as if that were a fact about the coat and not the end of a story about all the people who made it and sold it...Our situation is one of social ignorance, and that very ignorance is what permits us to be divided, turned against each other and exploited by the owners of commodities, the owners of the chain of human activity...

http://www.marxsite.com/Liebowitz.htm

[gleaner]

1. This is a beautiful post ,,,,

It describes the essence of community. The qualities and differences we have that define us and bind us to each other. We are all interdependent. More and more as time goes by and technology shrinks the distances between us in the global community. We need to care for each other. To value each other and help each other to live a tolerable and rewarding life. You can't use material things to measure a human life. My mother died in 2004. I live in her house now and her things are all around me. Bits and pieces of things that were part of what she liked to do and which reflect her values. When I look at them I don't see abstract things, I see parts of her. The little planter that looks like a burro where she loved to start her Philodendrons and let them grow until they hung in long strands from the high shelf where she kept them. I couldn't tell you where it came from or what she paid for it or who made it. I know someone did and I know that they probably will never realize the gift of memory for me or the gift of pursuing one of the things she loved for her that they gave us.

I have always wondered why different meant inferior to some people when it isn't and why underneath the differences are so many things we share as human beings. A desire to live and be safe and well. A desire to raise and protect our children and families. A desire to have a life that we choose for ourselves with hope and dreams and an ability to glory in the world we live in, and all it has to offer us if we only look around. Those are the things that are valuable. Those are the things that comprise community. We need each other. We all have times when we are weak. Then we need someone to help prop us up. We also have times when we are strong, then we can help others through their bad times regardless of who or where they are. Somehow we have lost sight of this and in doing so we have left ourselves alone in a bitter wind. FDR said a very true thing. He said that everyone deserves two basic freedoms. One is the freedom from want and the other is freedom from fear.

We may not be able to move mountains by ourselves but each of us has the power of one, and with that power we can reach out to others and by doing so exercise the power of many and be embraced by the warmth of community and respect for our own humanity and the humanity of others.

[blindpig]

2. 20 yd linen = 1 coat

Such an innocent equation, understand it and the door to understanding is opened.

k&r

[Hannah Bell]

3. kick

[Hannah Bell]

4. k

[Hannah Bell]

5. kick

[varelse]

6. I'm lucky to have found this

thanks for bumping the thread :)