>>If our constitution protects our precious liberties, why do we
>>criminalize more behavior and jail more people than just about any other
>>country on earth?
>
>because we have the most highly developed form of capitalism on the planet?
> relatedly, because we have the most individualistic ethos on the planet?
>because prisons are cheaper than schools for warehousing the surplus army
>of reserve labor?
>and, how about because the US is a capitalist juggernaut at full bore in
>the nearly complete absence of civil society and a vital public sphere?
Wooo! SAY it, Sister!
>the relentless critique crowd
>never seems to have anything else to offer, accept some vague claim that
>it'll be all better once we get rid of capitalism.
Yes! Yes! And doesn't it get right up your nostril?
>these arguments against the constitution are based on an incredibly crude
>and under-theorized notion of the state as some sort of monolithic,
>univocal entity. it's rather undialectiacal and typical of what marx
>called 'crude socialism' to think that we shouldn't concern ourselves with
>the practical politics of such things because they're ick! the stuff of
>bourgeois liberalism. [see marx's letter to arnold ruge 1843]
When I joined this list, I was hoping to find a group of 'sewer socialists', concerned, like the immigrant ashkenazi socialists represented by Alinsky, with the bricks-and-mortar problems of building _real_ socialism, building a better life for everyone. But all there seems to be, here, are what Kelley calls 'the relentless critique crowd'. What a waste!
Perfection-or-nothing positions may warm the cockles (and mussels) of our self-satisfaction, but they do little good in the real world. And if we're not trying to do good in the real world, what the hell kind of socialists are we, anyway?