farewell to academe (cont.)

Michael Yates mikey+ at pitt.edu
Wed Mar 7 18:30:57 PST 2001


I think too that capitalism itself creates the isolated individual, the self-interested consumer busy shopping to make herself or himself happy. So any attempt to build a new communal ideology must, it seems to me, be firmly anti-capitalist.

Michael Yates

Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> [bounced bec of an address oddity]
>
> From: "Dorkin, Eric" <EDorkin at jenner.com>
> To: "'lbo-talk at lists.panix.com'" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> Subject: RE: farewell to academe
> Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 13:45:22 -0600
>
> The country is more conservative because of the successful liberal critique
> of tradition and inherited legitimacy. By debunking much of the heretofore
> shared ideology and culture as decidely sexsit, racist, etc., we have left
> the world full of independent and isolated thinkers, each as his or her own
> context, with a different history. As such, there is no unit larger than
> the individual that deserves or requires allegiance. Even the family has
> received a thorough debunking as a patriarchal institution designed to
> foster achievement by boys over girls, etc. To what then are people to
> turn, if not to that which makes everything possible -- money? oney no
> longer services the greater good, it services only the self. Even the great
> mammonites of the early-20th century understood that there was more to their
> existence than themsleves.
>
> What we want now is a return to ideology and community -- ones more
> consistent with our broader and more inclusive conseptions of justice.
> Yet, there is an argument we have failed to make to a wide audience: "why
> our ideology and not the ones we debunk?" We have met the enemy and it is
> us.



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