Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - 16 members, or so (So Far...) voted "no" to Issue #4 on the "6 Issues" Thread

roachboy · 12-02-2007, 01:57 PM

loquitor:
i took the steps as an inferential chain.
so if the steps are wrong, the inference collapses.

it seems to me that you are simply fooled by nouns/names, that you think if you drag a name from one context to another that you designate the same thing in the same way in each context.

the redistribution of wealth in the direction of the poor in the modern context is a political function, one of the ways in which the state legitimates itself. you can see infrastructure development and maintenance in the same way.

the pre-revolutionary french state did not act in anything like these ways to legitimate itself--it operated with a fundamentally different ideology of the state.

the modern state is primarily a bureacuracy that allocates resources.
all functions--including military functions--involve wealth redistribution and can be understood as linked to creating conditions of equality within a capitalist context that tends the other way.

(the military, for example, is as much a mechanism for social mobility as it is anything else--it then can be seen as a mechanism that IN ADDITION TO ITS OTHER FUNCTIONS enables folk who are socially or educationally from difficult situations to access different, maybe better situations by providing training and other forms of cultural capital--this is obvious is you remember that militaries persist beyond wartime periods--it is a side-effect of having a standing army etc.)

so to say that taxation allows "the government to work" is a very limited viewpoint--simply because it treats government as separate from the social context it administers, as if it floats in space, referring to itself, generating itself, legitimating itself.

it ain't like that, except insofar as it is framed as a neoliberal phantasm.

btw: the underlying issue is that i find the entire trajectory in this thread that tries to define taxation as something other than the redistribution of wealth (which goes in a variety of directions) to be ridiculous, and decided to go after your post because at least you had the courtesy to say something interesting to back it up.

12-02-2007, 01:57 PM	#50 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	loquitor: i took the steps as an inferential chain. so if the steps are wrong, the inference collapses. it seems to me that you are simply fooled by nouns/names, that you think if you drag a name from one context to another that you designate the same thing in the same way in each context. the redistribution of wealth in the direction of the poor in the modern context is a political function, one of the ways in which the state legitimates itself. you can see infrastructure development and maintenance in the same way. the pre-revolutionary french state did not act in anything like these ways to legitimate itself--it operated with a fundamentally different ideology of the state. the modern state is primarily a bureacuracy that allocates resources. all functions--including military functions--involve wealth redistribution and can be understood as linked to creating conditions of equality within a capitalist context that tends the other way. (the military, for example, is as much a mechanism for social mobility as it is anything else--it then can be seen as a mechanism that IN ADDITION TO ITS OTHER FUNCTIONS enables folk who are socially or educationally from difficult situations to access different, maybe better situations by providing training and other forms of cultural capital--this is obvious is you remember that militaries persist beyond wartime periods--it is a side-effect of having a standing army etc.) so to say that taxation allows "the government to work" is a very limited viewpoint--simply because it treats government as separate from the social context it administers, as if it floats in space, referring to itself, generating itself, legitimating itself. it ain't like that, except insofar as it is framed as a neoliberal phantasm. btw: the underlying issue is that i find the entire trajectory in this thread that tries to define taxation as something other than the redistribution of wealth (which goes in a variety of directions) to be ridiculous, and decided to go after your post because at least you had the courtesy to say something interesting to back it up. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite