The questions presented to a wage slave at such an hour mostly overhelm me, but two things jump first to mind: When Al Gouldner was adressing the “Asiatic mode of despotism”, he digressed into asides about the Greeks, who got settled in their affairs when – and I paraphrase – they grew some olives, made some wine, and raised a few cattle. Granted, they had slaves, but they were also oblivious to Von Nuemann and Morgenstern, who (among others) would pose axiomatically that more is always better. That ain’t so obvious, though learning the lesson may be too lately done. Alternatively: To become a capitalist society, a culture must pass through those stages of historical materialism volunterism denies(but which can no more be denied than Darwinism in its most mature expressions.) If the latter, what Western intervention effects is no more predictable than genetic manipulation without experiment. The manipulators my have some idea what to expect, but those “distortions” are, as yet, unpredictable in consequence….

This is the contest: Not everyone wants or desires to turn all things into exchange relations and commodities. Other people make their living only by making all things into exchange relations and commodities.