>>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.
>
>You're the one blaming "capitalism" for our political torpor, not me. You
>could easily criticize me for being timid, bourgeois even, for paying so
>much attention to legal structures.
er, are you saying that if we had a socialist economy, we'd still be in trouble?
>Margaret wrote:
>
>>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?
>
>Would you please tell me how a critique of the U.S. Constitution and the
>machinery it has spawned is a "perfection-or-nothing" position, a departure
>from the "real world," a term that's not very clear in this context, but
>has some suggestion of the status quo?
My 'perfection-or-nothing' remark was in support of Kelley's perception about the 'relentless critique crowd' that seems to dominate the left.
I see plenty talk about 'What Marx Said In The Year Dot' and 'Whether Bozhemojskij's Reply To Neznaemin Was Dialectical', and, of course, the Topic du Jour -- NATO's actions in the Balkans and the US & UK actions in NATO. Through it all, there's a subtext that can be summarised as 'If Only We Had Socialism....'.
But I don't see any of the bread-and-butter, nuts-and-bolts of 'This Is How We Get Socialism'.
So it's hard for me not to interpret what goes on here as the leftie version of Joe Hill's 'Pie in the sky'. If Only We Had Socialism, Life Would Be Perfect, and someday socialism will magically appear, but meanwhile there's nothing we can do, so let's talk some more about Bozhemojskij and Marx.
>If you're trying to figure out why
>the U.S. has the most depoliticized political discourse in the known world,
>isn't the institutional struture of the place worth examining? Isn't it
>worth pointing out that the damn near impregnable rule of money was
>actually a design feature?
As Henry observes, the Constitution doesn't specify any socioeconomic system. Which means that what we're seeing is not a function of the Constitutional structure, but rather of the power of money --of Capitalism, as Kelley points out-- to _subvert_ the Constitution.
So what do we gain from examining the document? That's like coming on a car upside down in a ditch because some pillock shot out the tires, and trying to determine what happened by examining the engine. What's the point?
I suggest, with Kelley and Maria, and perhaps Henry and others, that the US political discourse is so scabby *not* because of glitches in the Constitution, but because of the siren song of Capitalism: 'go back to sleeeeeep, you're better offffffff, ignore those crazy socialisssssts, that never worrrrrrrks, this is the One True Reliiiiiiigion,....'. Capitalism's message is relentless, and ours is not only unheard, it's *undefined*. That has nothing to do with the Constitution, and everything to do with our own sloth and, perhaps, politico-intellectual bankruptcy.
And my question is: what are we going to do about it, and 'if not now, when?'