Christopher B. Hajib-Niles wrote:
> True. But where is your evidence that PR systems do 'wonders' for the
> workers? if you are gonna answer with western europe, (which is the only
> even vaguely imaginable answer) i beg to differ. first of all, let's be
> clear: european workers 'benefit' first and foremost from living in
> capitalist countries whose wealth is a function of exploitation;
>>Dennis R Redmond [dredmond at oregon.uoregon.edu] Wrote:
Hardly. Exploitation is a historical category, not a moral one; **********
Can of worms dude. If it's an amoral category generated by discourse that is interminable, then what are the categories by which it stands "condemned"? Unfreedom? Injustice? What?
European working people have managed to resist the neoliberal beast a bit more
effectively than others, winning back some of the surplus-value they've
created via higher taxes on the wealthy, universal health insurance,
strong unions, etc. European workers never see the surplus extracted from
the Third World by the Euromultis; that ends up in the coffers of
Eurobankers and the IMF.
***************
They do benefit, indirectly, from the spillovers. That's the whole point of the tax schemes they have in place.
>>My own feeling is that by turning exploitation
into a kind of primal, original sin, we end up with a dead-end moralism:
when everyone is guilty, then noone is guilty.
***************
Again, if it's not a moral category, then why is it "bad"? Call me Gordon Gekko but inquiring minds want to know.....
>>From that, it's all too easy to slam working people (and, ultimately,
ourselves) for being stupid morons who don't know their/our own interests,
instead of asking why
this system prevents them/us from being aware of their interests.
********* Nay, the problem's bigger; what are the grounds for slamming the capitalist class from acting in their interest? Is interest a moral category or an historical one, or both or neither?
>>Instead of hating what this system has turned people into, we've got to
love what
they might yet become.
-- Dennis
************
Ah, determination via the rupturing of the current path dependencies the working class are hemmed in by. Is love in this context an aesthetic/political category itself historically chosen/determined.......by whom, the cultural anti-commissars?
Ian