Jorge Aquino's List: Religion & Ethics article

• What is at issue here, however, is the question: how far is commodity exchange together with its structural consequences able to influence the total outer and inner life of society?

  • Thesis question ... 
• even when commodities have this impact on the internal structure of a society, this does not suffice to make them constitutive of that society. To achieve that it would be necessary - as we emphasised above - for the commodity structure to penetrate society in all its aspects and to remould it in its own image.

  • Marx: primitive societies commodified by bartering, but usually only on the edges of their comunities. When commodification was directed more intra-communally, divisions emerge as different indivs/groups gain stronger positions within the order constructed by their relations as producers. This competitiveness "strikes back into the interior of the community, decomposing it."
    
    Lucacs goes on to observe that for this decomposition to be total, the commodity structure would have "to penetrate society in all its aspects and to remould it in its own image." 

• British children have the most miserable upbringing in the developed world. American children come next, second from the bottom.

• I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.
• our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe.
• the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability
• core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.
• America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity

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