----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Pollak" <mpollak at panix.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Saturday, July 20, 2002 8:55 PM Subject: Molly Ivins, excerpt from latest column
>
> [Titled "Take Your 'We' and Shove It"] [last two paragaphs]
> Worse, Congress itself is so deeply corrupted by campaign
> contributions (legalized bribery) it has constantly acted against the
> public interest, in favor of the corporate interests.
>
> *Robert Bryce, _Pipedreams_, due out in October
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Ooooh, there's that interest- theoretic binary again...............
"It is this fact of 'speaking in the name of society', to borrow Easton's phrase, that renders a term like the 'public interest', or similar metaphors, inescapable in politics. Hence their prescriptive or normative role is not a purely ornamental one designed to make it easier to digest elite domination, that is to say that their role is not exhausted by simply branding them manipulative devices in hegemonic power struggles. No doubt they are such devices, but they are also the means whereby a horizon of possibilities opens up - a horizon which cannot be controlled by any hegemonic strategy since it conditions strategic orientation in the first place. It is here we discover a difference between hegemony and democracy Whereas hegemony is always a reshuffling of dominations, democracy stands as a critical principle, or rather an ontology of potentials pointing towards a politics of non-hierarchy and inclusion. From a democratic perspective this is exactly what the common good and the public interest ought to signify: the mutual acceptance of differences in the political community." [page 184, "the Circular Structure of Power", Torben Dyrberg]