On Sat, 14 Oct 2000 12:15:58 -0400 Gordon Fitch <gcf at panix.com> wrote:
> I see no further nonpathological _need_ for power and domination in human
relationships.
Ahem. Emphasis on the nonpathological, eh? Enjoyment is nonpathological, desire is *always* pathological. From the critique of pure reason to the critique of pure desire...
> By the way, by _subjugation_ I don't mean the accomodation of the individual
to the community, which may occur between equals.
All things being unequal, however...
> I mean the permanent subjection of one person to another's will, as
institutionalized in the State.
Ah, that's a different story. Certainly I agree with this, that subjection of one to the will of the State is certainly not a permanent fixture of human relations...
>> I don't see that as something one could predict in advance.
> That doesn't make for a very good argument though...
> It makes a very good argument.
Justification of project X because the results of X are unknown and unknowable isn't much of an argument... maybe I'm missing your point - but there needs to be more substance to the argument than that: existing conditions Y are intolerable, so we can be assured, at least, that X will be better, even if we don't know what X will look like.
> Part of the strategy (one-way street, KM) is to pretend it isn't happening,
hence the mummery.
Right, which is what I mean by the process being depoliticized...
> Instead, as a result of the latest phase of anger against the elites, we'll
see more elaborate mummeries, new institutions and organizations and politicans
bombasticating about accountability, all to be swept away when the furor dies
down.
I watch a lot of TV - and one of the things I've noticed is exactly how desperate commercials are getting: The Bay: "Shopping is Good" --> and countless toy commercials where 'the mom' buys everything (one such commercial has a mom recounting the toys she's purchased: "4,000 action figures..." and so on. This is really bottom of the barrel stuff. In the past few years advertising has been aimed at making the potential customer feel bad - now it's more like "buy as much as you can, and more - simply for the sake of buying it!" Like the ads for WallStreet, I'm tempted to speculate that this is the first tailspin of a downward spiral.
> Nozick, though, is against anarchy. He shows, I think, that a class system
(presumably, capitalism) can't continue to exist without some form of
government -- it will produce one if one is not explicitly provided. As I
recall, he doesn't consider the possibility of a communist anarchy -- it's off
his board. I don't know of a Nozick-like author for that. (In a way that's
good; we have enough bibles.)
I found him helpful for revealing "a view from the point of private property" which actually ended up being so horrible that he himself recanted his views later on. His work, we considered like this, almost provides a critique of itself.
> I don't think it does, however. And if it does, then the human race is
doomed, because as our technological abilities grow, the aggressive violence
implicit and sometimes explicit in the State will become more and more
pervasive and deadly.
There is a new book out by Thomas Homer-Dixon, I can't recall the title at the moment, but it sounds really interesting. For the most part he argues that technological advance has shifted beyond the capacities of social organization - he points out that capitalism is doomed because of this. His earlier work talks a lot about scarcity and conflict. - and he's written about the conflict in the Middle East from the viewpoint of who controls the water... really interesting stuff.
> Simple reason would seem to indicate that the choice is not between socialism
and barbarism, but between anarchy and communism on the one hand and
annihilation on the other.
If I might dare, if you owned a company the size of Microsoft or GM or something, what would you do? I mean, knowing that the current state of affairs would lead to annihilation.
ken