Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Defending ourselves against our government

roachboy · 06-20-2007, 06:45 AM

going back to the op for a minute....

the funny thing about dk's list of 18th century superheroes is that they fashioned something of an actual politics fitted to conditions in the 1760s-1770s...but even in that context, they were hardly alone--they benefitted from a pretty dense political context (read bernrd bailyn's book on the ideological origins of the american revolution sometime) that defined stuff like tyranny in ways that jefferson (for example) simply recycled--in other words, they operated within a real-time political context, which they faced as a real-time political context, within which the political issues that oriented them were defined, as were the political objectives they pursued. that context is what enabled paine's writing to have an impact, for example (the irony is that paine's later writing would probably be rejected by these libertarian heros as "socialist"---but whatever: here we are in a world of selective reading selective quotation and arbitrary assemblage, so it hardly matters)

referencing these 18th century figures is one thing: referencing them as if their 18th century politics of tax revolt tipping into something like a revolution were a plausible basis for a 21st century political movement is something else again--absurd is what it is. a revolutionary project needs to refer to some pre-established politics in order to frame itself tactically--but this is neither a political program or a strategy----it is an explanation for word choices. if you cant even distinguish these dimensions, then the idea that you are elaborating anything like a revolutionary politics seems silly.

and it is not enough to bypass the problem and cut to elaborating fantasies of heroic guerilla fighters shooting out tank periscopes. this is functionally responding to questions about what the politics of a revolutionary movement are by suggesting that the person posing that question join you in playing army.

the question is not how you would deal with a tank, but what politics would prompt you to put yourself in that position. on this, there is no coherent answer. pointing this out seems to me the point of the thread. but it has not been addressed.

here's what i have been able to figure out from all the vagueness above (except for 17, which is interesting as a fantasy war scenario and should be a computer game): conservative libertarians (cls from here out) do not like taxes: the american revolution was a tax revolt therefore the cls are simply looking to rerun the american revolution. to make this work, the federal government has to be positioned rhetorically as an 18th century england-based tyranny---so the state is distant, alien--it is non-representative in that the cls do not like taxes but there are taxes therefore no representation (in other words, no=one called you up to ask what you thought)--

but that doesnt work as an argument so well--so instead you get the gun issue, which functions in cl-world as a way of defining "us vs. them"---the evil alien federal government under king george 3 wants to take away our guns and in so doing blah blah blah. so the fact that there are taxes, or the fact that there is a modern state at all is understood as important features of a general Oppression.

the twist here is that if the modern state is a problem then so is capitalism, which REQUIRES continual state intervention in the management of what it produces as a system with great efficiency and regularity--crisis--and which would fall apart quickly and abruptly without that intervention, taking half the cl worldview down with it because it would demonstrate--as if a demonstration were needed, given the actual history of capitalism--that there is no ideal-typical capitalism of little self-regulating markets and heroic Entrepreneurs operating in conditions of perfect competition wholly outside the reach of the state...this is the other element of cl-politics--it simply repeats this goofball assumption that capitalism is a natural phenomenon made up of markets through which god expresses herself on this mortal coil via relations ot equilibrium blah blah blah and the Evil State stands opposed to this working of nature--so a "revolution" could be imagined that would destroy the state and allow for Nature to Take Its Course in the form of some independent capitalism. presumably, once that Natural Capitalism is in place, one's ayn rand fantasies of being an Exceptional Individual can express themselves, whereas now the Man keeps you down. but if you do not buy this assumption concerning some "organic" capitalism as over against the "artificial" state, then there's nothing left to cl politics at all. the retreads of locke simply repeat this central position: the heroic individual tends his abstract plot of land and enters into contract with other heroic individuals for the performance of certain services and there we have the ideal relation of heroic individuals to the state in the heroically individual state of nature. used in an anachronistic manner, locke becomes a gloss on the illusory image of capitalism as the cl-set understands it.

so there is nothing revolutionary in cl-politics from this viewpoint. they just want to move from capitalism in the form it has taken since the civil war back into some collage they assembled that they confuse with the state of nature, with a pre-heavy industry type of capitalism.

the same logic works behind the doctrine of original intent.
the same logic works behind all that follows in terms of objections to contemporary legal practices (the jury system)...

strangely---if you actually look at tocqueville's democracy in america (say), from the first page of the foreword you see the main feature of the social formation he was trying to outline: equality of condition. it is everywhere in the book--and much of his analysis is geared around locating tendencies that would reverse this equality of condition an which he judged dangerous for democracy in america--the sort of thing that would destroy it. capitalism was a form of social being that results in an uneven distribution of wealth and so for tocqueville is was ANTITHETICAL to democracy as a socio-political form. most of the cl-types would probably say that equality of condition is "socialism"....

so follows the emphasis on guns, taken in isolation: guns as signifiers of an entire politics, guns as an index of the distance that separates the evil state from the 18th century patriots who claim to be real amuricans to the exclusion of all others...maybe it makes some sense to emphasize having a gun as the equivalent of having a politics for these folk because it is the only coherent element of that politics.

it plays well in the press. it gets marginal political groups some traction. it is apparently functional in that it seems to reinforce the conflation of nostalgia and revolution that lay at the center of cl-politics in their more "radical" expressions. but it is incoherent as a signifier and has nothing to do with an actual politics. there is no vision. there is no strategy. there is not even any coherent critique of the existing order because the assumptions behind it prevent it from being so (see the stuff about capitalism above). there is nothing but nostalgia. heavily armed people playing army while dreaming about an eternal repetition of 1775.

06-20-2007, 06:45 AM	#59 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	going back to the op for a minute.... the funny thing about dk's list of 18th century superheroes is that they fashioned something of an actual politics fitted to conditions in the 1760s-1770s...but even in that context, they were hardly alone--they benefitted from a pretty dense political context (read bernrd bailyn's book on the ideological origins of the american revolution sometime) that defined stuff like tyranny in ways that jefferson (for example) simply recycled--in other words, they operated within a real-time political context, which they faced as a real-time political context, within which the political issues that oriented them were defined, as were the political objectives they pursued. that context is what enabled paine's writing to have an impact, for example (the irony is that paine's later writing would probably be rejected by these libertarian heros as "socialist"---but whatever: here we are in a world of selective reading selective quotation and arbitrary assemblage, so it hardly matters) referencing these 18th century figures is one thing: referencing them as if their 18th century politics of tax revolt tipping into something like a revolution were a plausible basis for a 21st century political movement is something else again--absurd is what it is. a revolutionary project needs to refer to some pre-established politics in order to frame itself tactically--but this is neither a political program or a strategy----it is an explanation for word choices. if you cant even distinguish these dimensions, then the idea that you are elaborating anything like a revolutionary politics seems silly. and it is not enough to bypass the problem and cut to elaborating fantasies of heroic guerilla fighters shooting out tank periscopes. this is functionally responding to questions about what the politics of a revolutionary movement are by suggesting that the person posing that question join you in playing army. the question is not how you would deal with a tank, but what politics would prompt you to put yourself in that position. on this, there is no coherent answer. pointing this out seems to me the point of the thread. but it has not been addressed. here's what i have been able to figure out from all the vagueness above (except for 17, which is interesting as a fantasy war scenario and should be a computer game): conservative libertarians (cls from here out) do not like taxes: the american revolution was a tax revolt therefore the cls are simply looking to rerun the american revolution. to make this work, the federal government has to be positioned rhetorically as an 18th century england-based tyranny---so the state is distant, alien--it is non-representative in that the cls do not like taxes but there are taxes therefore no representation (in other words, no=one called you up to ask what you thought)-- but that doesnt work as an argument so well--so instead you get the gun issue, which functions in cl-world as a way of defining "us vs. them"---the evil alien federal government under king george 3 wants to take away our guns and in so doing blah blah blah. so the fact that there are taxes, or the fact that there is a modern state at all is understood as important features of a general Oppression. the twist here is that if the modern state is a problem then so is capitalism, which REQUIRES continual state intervention in the management of what it produces as a system with great efficiency and regularity--crisis--and which would fall apart quickly and abruptly without that intervention, taking half the cl worldview down with it because it would demonstrate--as if a demonstration were needed, given the actual history of capitalism--that there is no ideal-typical capitalism of little self-regulating markets and heroic Entrepreneurs operating in conditions of perfect competition wholly outside the reach of the state...this is the other element of cl-politics--it simply repeats this goofball assumption that capitalism is a natural phenomenon made up of markets through which god expresses herself on this mortal coil via relations ot equilibrium blah blah blah and the Evil State stands opposed to this working of nature--so a "revolution" could be imagined that would destroy the state and allow for Nature to Take Its Course in the form of some independent capitalism. presumably, once that Natural Capitalism is in place, one's ayn rand fantasies of being an Exceptional Individual can express themselves, whereas now the Man keeps you down. but if you do not buy this assumption concerning some "organic" capitalism as over against the "artificial" state, then there's nothing left to cl politics at all. the retreads of locke simply repeat this central position: the heroic individual tends his abstract plot of land and enters into contract with other heroic individuals for the performance of certain services and there we have the ideal relation of heroic individuals to the state in the heroically individual state of nature. used in an anachronistic manner, locke becomes a gloss on the illusory image of capitalism as the cl-set understands it. so there is nothing revolutionary in cl-politics from this viewpoint. they just want to move from capitalism in the form it has taken since the civil war back into some collage they assembled that they confuse with the state of nature, with a pre-heavy industry type of capitalism. the same logic works behind the doctrine of original intent. the same logic works behind all that follows in terms of objections to contemporary legal practices (the jury system)... strangely---if you actually look at tocqueville's democracy in america (say), from the first page of the foreword you see the main feature of the social formation he was trying to outline: equality of condition. it is everywhere in the book--and much of his analysis is geared around locating tendencies that would reverse this equality of condition an which he judged dangerous for democracy in america--the sort of thing that would destroy it. capitalism was a form of social being that results in an uneven distribution of wealth and so for tocqueville is was ANTITHETICAL to democracy as a socio-political form. most of the cl-types would probably say that equality of condition is "socialism".... so follows the emphasis on guns, taken in isolation: guns as signifiers of an entire politics, guns as an index of the distance that separates the evil state from the 18th century patriots who claim to be real amuricans to the exclusion of all others...maybe it makes some sense to emphasize having a gun as the equivalent of having a politics for these folk because it is the only coherent element of that politics. it plays well in the press. it gets marginal political groups some traction. it is apparently functional in that it seems to reinforce the conflation of nostalgia and revolution that lay at the center of cl-politics in their more "radical" expressions. but it is incoherent as a signifier and has nothing to do with an actual politics. there is no vision. there is no strategy. there is not even any coherent critique of the existing order because the assumptions behind it prevent it from being so (see the stuff about capitalism above). there is nothing but nostalgia. heavily armed people playing army while dreaming about an eternal repetition of 1775. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 06-20-2007 at 06:58 AM..