The Curious Problem Of Having More Than You Need

Como ilustraba este gráfico que posteó Ramiro hace unos meses, los malabarismos que están dispuestos a hacer los progresistas para rescatar al socialismo del fracaso son realmente llamativos. Una de sus últimas versiones es la de la "sobreabundancia" y aquello de que "menos es mejor que más". Como a esta altura del partido es sencillamente imposible negar el éxito de la economía de mercado y la libertad en la generación de riqueza, ahora se trata de negar que la riqueza esté relacionada con la calidad de vida:

Denouncing the vulgar banality of consumer capitalism is a time-honored ritual. At the end of the 19th century, Thorstein Veblen offered his withering assessment of "conspicuous consumption." Since then, various denunciations have come from John Kenneth Galbraith, Herbert Marcuse, Jean Baudrillard and, more recently, Naomi Klein ("No Logo") and Thomas Frank ("One Market Under God"). The gist never changes: Material plenty is a mask for spiritual poverty; the proliferation of marketplace choices, a subtle form of tyranny.

Benjamin Barber's variation on the theme, in Consumed, is to decry consumerism's "infantilization" of the culture. Sounding like the grumpiest of social conservatives, Mr. Barber, a proud progressive, blasts the youth-obsessed self-indulgence of an "infantilist ethos" that values "EASY over HARD, SIMPLE over COMPLEX, and FAST over SLOW." He even contrasts today's childishness with the good old days of the Protestant ethic, according to which "work was truly a calling, and investment a mark of prudent altruism and democratic nation-building rather than mere selfishness." What an exceedingly strange sentiment for a man of the left: nostalgia for the bourgeoisie!