R. D. Smith
Introduction
Over the past few weeks I’ve had the privilege of engaging with a number of people both in formal discussions and on Heathwood’s comment boards regarding a range of issues. These issues span from the structural problems of capitalism and the idea of the basic income law through to an alternative philosophy of social change, the questionable meaning of ‘social progress’, and potential social-economic alternatives. The following article, which I’ve broken down into a few different sections, carries forward these discussions in light of arguments made in: Gunn & Wilding, ‘Occupy as Mutual Recognition’, ‘Revolutionary or Less-Than-Revolutionary Recognition’; Gunn, Wilding & Smith, ‘Alternative horizons – understanding Occupy’s politics’; Michael Ott, ‘Something’s Missing: A Study of the Dialectic of Utopia in the theories of Theodor W. Adorno and Ernst Bloch’; as well as R.C. Smith, ‘A series of essays on an alternative philosophy of social change’, ‘In defense of Occupy’s politics’, ‘Russell Brand, the question of revolution and why we need more than an abstract, grand narrative of social change‘.
I. One of the most fundamental philosophical problems of the 21st Century
II. Economic Democracy and Participatory Economics: Complimentary systems in the transitory, historical process of societal change?
IIII. The basic income law
III. Economic Democracy and Participatory
IIII. Economics: A question of implementation
V. ‘Social progress’ is not limited to the horizon of capitalism
