Election Crisis and Electoral Reform

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at oregon.uoregon.edu
Tue Nov 21 16:18:50 PST 2000


On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Christopher B. Hajib-Niles wrote:


> My own feeling is that by turning exploitation
> > into a kind of primal, original sin,
>
> can you show me where i did this?

By saying you don't think electoral politics matters at all and that PR systems don't really matter. That's essentially a moral position, you know, the idea that if you free your mind, the institutions will follow. Which is fine as far as it goes, but the reality is, institutions need to be freed, too: schools need better funding, military budgets need trimming, etc. Minds need freeing, and so do governments. No subjective emancipation without the objective.


> authoritarian depradations, but yes we as workers are all tragically, if
> not willingly, complicit in the status quo, and no, no worker needs to
> walk around feeling guilty about this, but yes, workers need to take
> responsibility for their unwilling comlicity

How is some clerk at an Exxon station supposed to take responsibility for Exxon's depradations of the environment? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm quite serious: how *do* we get ordinary folks to see the links between their daily lives and the machinery of global capitalism? If we assume that the answer isn't simple, that we need education, politicking, multiculturalism, and a thousand other varieties of solidarity, then those PR systems, trade unions and other institutions really are worth fighting for, aren't they?

-- Dennis



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