pan:
you simply misunderstood the posts i put up.
there were two points, really. one was specific to the forum, the other a series of examples of structural problems. the irony, i guess, is that as i was talking about examples of structural problems, i more or less anticipated how you would react--i put it in the posts for gods sake...
anyway, you decided for some reason to isolate the last paragraph of no. 82. that paragraph follows from the previous paragraphs in the post and does not mean what you take it to mean.
here it is in context:
Quote:
the right's "plan" is to surrender: privatize everything, kids. that way, when the shit hits the fan politically as a result of a defunctionalized educational system that chooses social control over social opportunity, particularly when it comes to the poor, who in conservativeland are self-evidently expendable, there will be no political consequences to be bourne. that way, the populations whose futures are maimed can choke in silence. and that, apprently, is the american way, that is the way it should be.
the democrats default into defending the status quo. the argument that the status quo is preferable to crackpot notions like school vouchers is certainly persuasive in itself (to me anyway)--but the effect of this pseudo-debate is to marginalize critiques of the system itself--there is no space for such critiques.
but the problems that are being performed by the public education system in the states are structural. they speak to the inability of the dominant ideology to provide an adequate framework for thinking about the nature, meaning and responses to conditions that are unfolding beneath your feet, within your city, in real time, all around you.
it simply seems to me that the dominant ideology in the states is about avoiding all this. and we are talking here about ONE SECTOR. there are lots of sectors. there are lots of deep problems. this globalizing capitalism thing isnt working out as the neoliberals halluncinated that it would. and this is not a process that is only fucking around the southern hemisphere: it is generating and/or excerbating many real problems in the states as well.
and there is no debate. there is no discussion. there are no adjustments. there are no options. there IS avoidance. and this primarily because the spectrum of political positions that the americans confuse with a viable range of alternatives simply doesnt allow for this kind of issue to be addressed coherently.
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i put the crux of the section in bold. the last paragraph refers to it.
the premise concerned both political parties in the states.
the set-up was the claim that both parties assume capitalism to be in itself rational---and the outline is as smooth pointed out above.
in no. 80, i included this:
Quote:
now judging from the way in which you present yourself, pan, it would appear to follow that for someone to dwell on this kind of problem, and to do it here, would be tantamount to introducing some vibe of "hate and negativity"---in this case, these empty terms that you like to throw around function simply to exclude issues from debate. and if the claim underpinning this exclusion centers on concern for the future, then i think you create a problem for yourself: i dont see how the future is served by avoiding difficult problems.
and i dont see anything in your preferred exlcusionary categories of "hate and negativity" but a desire to avoid complex problems in the name of maintaining some facile optimism.
"no no, let's not talk about that, man, it's bumming me out."
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QED.
i'm all for working out solutions, pan: but it makes no sense to me to think about that if the issues as framed are too limited, or if entire areas of problems are excluded up front from debate.
i'm all for solutions--i just think it is better if the solutions are coherent----call me cranky that way.
i'm all for solutions--i just dont exclude the possibility that for solutions to structural problems to unfold, it might require a far more radical political change than folk like you are anticipating.
i dont exclude radical change. i dont exclude a political project that would tend toward revolution. in many ways, i think that radical political transformation is desirable--BUT i do not default into this position. i couldn't if i wanted to: i have spent far too many years tracking the history of the devolution of the left and of the old style of revolutionary politics.
i think that you can argue that structural problems are created by the unfolding of capitalist rationality and that the source of the problems is the rationality itself. from that, what i said about the basic position i operate from follows----i lean toward--am at least open to--that position. the problem is that the position itself is empty. if there is to be a revolutionary project, it has to be rebuilt from the basic conceptual level on up. this is at the core of my academic work: it runs through almost everything that i do in that context.
at the same time, however, i am in this world and there are problems. i live here and part of me would prefer that these problems be manageable within this framework: but i also am open to the possibility that they are not.
last thing: none of these problems are inevitable, none of them spring from Nature or from History (if you understand that as some abstract force that orders the world)--WE MAKE THEM. WE MAKE THEM WHEN WE REPEAT THEM. WHEN WE REPEAT THEM, WE ARE THEM.