Thank you for pointing this out. I admit that I agree with the whole Abundance thing in the abstract, but the whole thing gives me a weird vibe - once again, we gotta acquiesce to Rich people's feelings and "give them incentives" to invest in our communities, and not inconvenience them one bit, or else.
We've been doing this, "we just gotta capitalist harder" bullshit for 45 years, and it's made things worse. And just to get ahead of the inevitable, "B-b-but, the Soviets!" comments that I'm gonna get: It's the same strawman/slippery slope/false dichotomy nonsense whenever we even propose considering just the slightest left-leaning, pro-humanistic idea.
I'm revisiting the Abundance book, and it's clear the authors despise the Soviet Union. They describe the launch of Sputnik, an unmitigated advancement in human technology, as a disaster on par with WWII and COVID.
Agree that capitalism and private property can’t/won’t ever produce a free & equitable society. But the Jetsons have a problem. The same problem as the Flintstones. Both represent the male breadwinner/female homemaker as the pinnacle of human evolution. By inscribing “the nuclear family” into the distant future as well as the distant past these 2 shows make the point that regardless of the level of technology the fundamental familial unit of society is unchanging & unchangeable. Marx’s own imagination was limited on this point. Engels (origins of the family private property & the state) had a more expansive vision.
None of the above is intended to “disprove” Marx. Rather to point out how, even for such a brilliant social critic, the exploitation of women in the home was conceived as “natural” even while class relations…slavery/feudalism/capitalism/socialism…were always subject to change over time.
True, but remember the show was made in the '60s and that human beings always apply present day thinking to future events, because that's the only context we have.
Actually some people are visionaries and work at imagining better futures. Mass culture, on the other hand, reinscribes current (and past) inequities, exploitations & hierarchies to normalize & naturalize profound injustices.
It’s always impressive to me how thoroughly neoliberal pundits ignore the levers of power in our society. Anyone paying attention in the US can see that we functionally do not live a democracy. That corporate and billionaire control of our politics and media is absolute.
I like how you point out that their vision of an abundant future for all is 100% reliant on the hypothetical future change of heart of our billionaire ruling class — which is laughable given the current, brutally exploitative system we live under, which none of them object to (and even more so the third world). To think like that as pundits making careers out of politics, is so ignorant of American history and our capitalist reality that I feel it must be an intentional grift.
In "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," Keynes made a similar argument, that advances in technology would end scarcity, and wealth accumulation would become a 'somewhat disgusting morbidity,' handed over to 'the specialists in mental disease.'
His one caveat was how history actually unfolded: abundance for some, scarcity for the many. "Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable."
Keynes was right about technological growth, but didn’t predict how markets concentrate power unless there’s a mechanism that guarantees worker participation in corporate gains. The Jetsons future already exists for the 1%.
It’s ironic that liberal capitalists defend democratic self-governance in politics, but think it should stop at the office door. Jared Polis being the most recent offender
You write “Marx analyzed the evolution of human society”
Yes, but he did not have a theory of cultural evolution to work with. With this he simply wrote a history and provided his own speculation, or what I call a WAG.
Subsequent Marxists made predictions with Marx’s ideas and then tested them in the field by running national economies based on them. The objective was to produced a better outcome than the control (Western capitalism). The test failed. Marxism/socialism does not work.
That said, the present capitalism is not very good for ordinary folk. Marxist-influenced folks refer to it as late-stage capitalism. They are wrong. Late-stage capitalism happened in in the 1920’s when Soviet economist ND Kondratiev forecasted a capitalist economic collapse in the near future (which happened). Unfortunately, he also predicted that the capitalist economies would recover. This was in violation of Marxist doctrine, which prediction that collapse of late-stage capitalism would lead to socialism. It did not happen, and he was sent to the gulag for this view, where he died. But he was right.
This history demonstrated that the Marxist model failed. The reason for today’s less-than-satisfactory economy is not late-stage capitalism. Rather, it is the cultural variant of capitalism prevalent today.
So... socialism. That won't happen definitionally under capitalism. I'm just repeating your point, really, but they're advocating capitalism by advocating socialism. It's like they sat down and brainstormed: "We need a society where everyone shares in what's produced and everyone has their voice heard so we can make capitalism better." That's literally not capitalism. Doing socialism but calling it capitalism is still socialism, but you're setting it up for the rich to tear it apart. Bizarre
My sense is that Trumpism, infested with alt-right Heritage-ism, is determined to push the managerial and professional elite (liberals mostly) into a posture of precarity — analogous to that of the middle and working class — to remind us who’s boss. I think this could be their biggest miscalculation and will be their downfall. That’s because we elites will therefore come to understand full well how vulnerable we are unless we take ‘the things’ into our own hands. This will push liberal-devoted elites from navel-gazing wokeness to transformative awakenings.
Thank you for pointing this out. I admit that I agree with the whole Abundance thing in the abstract, but the whole thing gives me a weird vibe - once again, we gotta acquiesce to Rich people's feelings and "give them incentives" to invest in our communities, and not inconvenience them one bit, or else.
We've been doing this, "we just gotta capitalist harder" bullshit for 45 years, and it's made things worse. And just to get ahead of the inevitable, "B-b-but, the Soviets!" comments that I'm gonna get: It's the same strawman/slippery slope/false dichotomy nonsense whenever we even propose considering just the slightest left-leaning, pro-humanistic idea.
I'm revisiting the Abundance book, and it's clear the authors despise the Soviet Union. They describe the launch of Sputnik, an unmitigated advancement in human technology, as a disaster on par with WWII and COVID.
What’s ironic is that Ezra Klein uses China’s high speed rail as something we should aspire to, yet seems to miss how it all works.
Agree that capitalism and private property can’t/won’t ever produce a free & equitable society. But the Jetsons have a problem. The same problem as the Flintstones. Both represent the male breadwinner/female homemaker as the pinnacle of human evolution. By inscribing “the nuclear family” into the distant future as well as the distant past these 2 shows make the point that regardless of the level of technology the fundamental familial unit of society is unchanging & unchangeable. Marx’s own imagination was limited on this point. Engels (origins of the family private property & the state) had a more expansive vision.
None of the above is intended to “disprove” Marx. Rather to point out how, even for such a brilliant social critic, the exploitation of women in the home was conceived as “natural” even while class relations…slavery/feudalism/capitalism/socialism…were always subject to change over time.
True, but remember the show was made in the '60s and that human beings always apply present day thinking to future events, because that's the only context we have.
Actually some people are visionaries and work at imagining better futures. Mass culture, on the other hand, reinscribes current (and past) inequities, exploitations & hierarchies to normalize & naturalize profound injustices.
It’s always impressive to me how thoroughly neoliberal pundits ignore the levers of power in our society. Anyone paying attention in the US can see that we functionally do not live a democracy. That corporate and billionaire control of our politics and media is absolute.
I like how you point out that their vision of an abundant future for all is 100% reliant on the hypothetical future change of heart of our billionaire ruling class — which is laughable given the current, brutally exploitative system we live under, which none of them object to (and even more so the third world). To think like that as pundits making careers out of politics, is so ignorant of American history and our capitalist reality that I feel it must be an intentional grift.
In "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," Keynes made a similar argument, that advances in technology would end scarcity, and wealth accumulation would become a 'somewhat disgusting morbidity,' handed over to 'the specialists in mental disease.'
His one caveat was how history actually unfolded: abundance for some, scarcity for the many. "Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable."
Keynes was right about technological growth, but didn’t predict how markets concentrate power unless there’s a mechanism that guarantees worker participation in corporate gains. The Jetsons future already exists for the 1%.
It’s ironic that liberal capitalists defend democratic self-governance in politics, but think it should stop at the office door. Jared Polis being the most recent offender
You write “Marx analyzed the evolution of human society”
Yes, but he did not have a theory of cultural evolution to work with. With this he simply wrote a history and provided his own speculation, or what I call a WAG.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/wags-swags-and-the-beginning-of-theory
Subsequent Marxists made predictions with Marx’s ideas and then tested them in the field by running national economies based on them. The objective was to produced a better outcome than the control (Western capitalism). The test failed. Marxism/socialism does not work.
That said, the present capitalism is not very good for ordinary folk. Marxist-influenced folks refer to it as late-stage capitalism. They are wrong. Late-stage capitalism happened in in the 1920’s when Soviet economist ND Kondratiev forecasted a capitalist economic collapse in the near future (which happened). Unfortunately, he also predicted that the capitalist economies would recover. This was in violation of Marxist doctrine, which prediction that collapse of late-stage capitalism would lead to socialism. It did not happen, and he was sent to the gulag for this view, where he died. But he was right.
This history demonstrated that the Marxist model failed. The reason for today’s less-than-satisfactory economy is not late-stage capitalism. Rather, it is the cultural variant of capitalism prevalent today.
Peer-reviewed paper describing this concept:
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9x36913k
Substack version
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-economic-culture-evolves
Reply if you are interested in more on this.
"where profits are shared"
So... socialism. That won't happen definitionally under capitalism. I'm just repeating your point, really, but they're advocating capitalism by advocating socialism. It's like they sat down and brainstormed: "We need a society where everyone shares in what's produced and everyone has their voice heard so we can make capitalism better." That's literally not capitalism. Doing socialism but calling it capitalism is still socialism, but you're setting it up for the rich to tear it apart. Bizarre
My sense is that Trumpism, infested with alt-right Heritage-ism, is determined to push the managerial and professional elite (liberals mostly) into a posture of precarity — analogous to that of the middle and working class — to remind us who’s boss. I think this could be their biggest miscalculation and will be their downfall. That’s because we elites will therefore come to understand full well how vulnerable we are unless we take ‘the things’ into our own hands. This will push liberal-devoted elites from navel-gazing wokeness to transformative awakenings.
Right on, Joe. Thank you!