Bears & Crashes

snit kwalker2 at gte.net
Wed Apr 5 10:27:11 PDT 2000


chaz baby writes:


>CB: Note Carrol

carrol = /^From:.*cbcox at ilstu.edu\.all/h:j


>is arguing that revolutions and other upsurges of the working class are
associated with economic upturns, not crashes. This is the theory that the working classes move more radically out of periods of rising expectations.

i know that chaz darlin'. it's hardly a unique theory. i've written about it hear before. many times. my point is that mr. remick named himself a "witting" corporate tool enjoying portraying everyone else as an "unwitting" corporate tool and, apparently, somehow deserving of their fate, i suppose. whathefuckevA.

it's the same thing that happened this summer when we got talking about the war and everyone was lamenting the lack of activism on people's parts. the suggestion was to bring back the draft and then we'd see some action. really? ACE. through all the poor people on the front lines to die until enough people can get together to end a war. right-o.

i was just kinda hoping that someday someone would take the intro of that book seriously and think about it about. but alas, from _hidden injuries of class_:

as for -hidden injuries- perhaps this is what chris burford means when he says he spys a dialectical analysis. S&C show how the endless pursuit of badges of ability in the face of relentless indignities is 'useful' to capitalist society: "we do not mean that men and women are ignorant of the fact that class conditions limit their freedom--it is palpable from the interviews that they do know this. rather, the use of badges of ability or of sacrifices is to divert men from challenging the limits on their freedom by convincing them that they must *first* become legitimate, must achieve dignity on class society's terms, in order to have the right to challenge the terms themselves." [152-3]

"most of the ppl in this book are not..at that point of despair where revolt is kindled. on the contrary, they get by from day to day with a sense of balance, with a certain distance from the problems of class and class consciousness....[but] people never lose consciousness OF society. what humans do is create new patterns ...which deaden or distance the impact of [society] .... throughout this book we have treated personal consciousness as something other than a storage locker or receptacle for information; consciousness, we think, is an active human power. ...we hope to show how this defense is more complicated than simply 'shutting out' a bad society, more than an escape through willfully ignoring what is happening outside the self. we want to show how this defense works--and how 'successful' it is--by looking at a peculiar kind of alienation"



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