He (assuming I understand him correctly) believes that with progressive information distributed reliably and evenhandly to an economically empowered people will come a "better" and more progressive society.
I disagree, not because I think he is wrong about the mechanics about how a transformation could work, but I do not believe you could get sufficient agreement among the Left as to what the ideology is the correct ideology, from which everything else follows, e.g., the forms of government, economic distribution, and world affairs.
The recent blow up on this list filled with invective reaffirms for me the one firm truth of the world: ideology matters, and it matters a lot. And, while many of us here agree on descriptive conclusions about the ills and errors of the world (though not all, as a descriptive apparatus often -- if not always -- includes ideological constructs), we disagree on the normative solutions to those same ills. Moreover, not only does each of us think she or he has the right answer, each of us has a great deal of trouble seeing one error-filled ideological artifice replaced by another another error-filled artifice, even if the new is "better" than the old. False consciousness is still false, as it were.
Perhaps, I am wrong, but I have to say that the Left has never failed to disappoint me. This does not mean that we all can't rally together in Seattle or elsewhere and announce and protest how the world is run and corrupted by the elites (for simplicity's sake). But, when you get those same people in a room and say "now what?" -- look out. Not only is there disagreement, but it is, quite often, personal.
Perhaps this is a form of frustration, where people hoping they have found a truly receptive ear, find only a deaf ideolgue of a different sort. I do not know. All I can say is that I am not surprised, though I am disappointed at the nasty and "unprogressive" discourse I hear/see from progressives, especially on this list.
Ventingly yours
eric dorkin
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