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NEITHER

                                             November 7, 2011

Freeman Dyson, in the November 10, 2011
issue of the New York Review of Books,         ref
"The Case for Far-Out Possibilities":

  "The dominant utopian thinking in the great
  debate over economic power was Karl Marx.  Marx
  saw the world of the nineteenth century as black
  and white.  Black was capitalism, the existing
  society of rich factory owners and downtrodden
  workers, with power concentrated in the hands of
  the owners.  White was communism, the future
  society of workers seizing power for themselves
  and owning the means of production.  ...
  Marx was a prophet of hope ...
  Looking back on Marx's visions today, we can see
  that much of what he wrote about capitalism was
  true and almost everything he wrote about
  communism was false.  So long as he was
  examining the evidence that he saw around him,
  he was on firm ground.  As soon as he moved from
  evidence to dogma, his imagination led him
  wildly astray."


I read a Kenneth McLeod article,             (Isn't that
where he was talking about the                MacCleod?)
thinking behind the science fiction
novels he was writing ("The Cassini
Division", "The Stone Canal", etc).

He was asking the question, what if
capitalism was fatally flawed as he
believed during his Marxist days
(profit margins relentlessly driven
towards zero), and what if also the      Wikiquotes has the quote like so:
alternatives such as communism were
also fatally flawed (prone towards       "What if capitalism is
breakdown into authoritarian regimes,    unsustainable, and socialism
I would guess).  His answer was:         is impossible? We're fucked,
"We're fucked, that's what."             that's what." – "The Falling
                                         Rate of Profit, Red Hordes and
                                         Green Slime: What the Fall
   The point being that there            Revolution Books Are About" -
   doesn't *have* to be an               Nova Express, Volume 6,
   answer we're happy with.              Spring/Summer 2001, pp 19-21.
   Nothing about the structure
   of the universe requires                          ref
   that human beings get a
   stable, functional society.


        There was an odd, fringe vision of the
        future that came up occasionally in the
        70s: the USA and the USSR (then nominally
        at each others throats in "The Cold War")
        might someday merge into one joint
        government.

           Jerry Pournelle called this
           "The CoDominium" in his SF
           stories.

           In the Whole Earth Review, they
           called this "Amer-Russ".


                 In the late-80s, after the
                 collapse/surrender/awakening
                 of the Soviet block, these
                 visions immediately seemed
                 quaintly deluded-- the Soviet
                 system just wasn't as strong
                 as it pretended.


                 It remains to be seen
                 whether this vision was
                 wrong twice over.



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