Joanna Sheldon wrote:
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> You're implying that all values are distorted, are you? Never mind. Take
> loyalty, which, under capitalism, is more likely to be expressed (as dd
> joked the other day) in the form of brand loyalty than loyalty to other people.
>
I can't speak for Ian, but I am not implying but affirming that the phrase "distorted values" is incoherent, meaningless. That phrase implies some sort of Platonic form existing outside of space and time, which is "truly imitated" by some and "badly imitated" by others. But values simply do not exist, and never have. What exist are social relations within which acceptable modes of behavior endlessly created and recreated. What in the world, in the abstract, could "Loyalty to other people" mean? To begin with loyalty was strictly a feudal relationship. Would you want that "value" _not_ to be distorted? One of the barriers to decency in this world is that "loyalty" as an abstraction, carrying its older meanigns, has NOT been utterly destroyed. It is loyalty that was the political force which gave the U.S. government room for its genocidal policies in Vietnam. "My country, right or wrong." To the extent that loyalty can appear a "value" we are still far from democracy. Aside from providing entertainment for retired assistant professors of literature, I would presume that a major purpose of this list is to contribute to the distortion of loyalty into comradeship.
Carrol