> I have done my share of book worming in the texts of Hegel. I will be damned,
> however, if I can make any real world, political sense out of what it means
> to transcend, but not eliminate, mediated social organizations and
> institutions such as those found in representative democracy.
It means you push them in a progressive direction -- things like, you know, AFT, which was never hot to trot about organizing grads, for example. That changed when grads began organizing themselves, got involved with AFT and changed the center of political gravity. Someone has to mediate the mediations.
- -- Dennis >>
I just don't get why you would call the entirely unobjectionable political practices you describe the transcendence of institutions of representative democracy. If anything, these practices describe organizinng that makes those institutions, like the AFT, more responsive to their base (and potential base). Being an advocate of the view that democracy necessarily entials representation hardly means that you accept the institutional status quo. So why call attempts to improve it transcendence? I don't see how the term comes remotely close to capturing what is taking place; it just confuses the entire issue.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --