[lbo-talk] The river's banks

[Luke Weiger]

Justin wrote:
> For the Lukes and Brads of this world, the wind the backs of the roadworkers is insvisible 
> and cannot be felt; the bankas that hem in the roaring river are simply the way things are. 
> Luke's vaunted utilitarianism does not extend to assessing the costs of accepting as a baseline > the existing conditions, only to critiquing departures from those conditions or assessing various > ways of maintaining them (unilateral war versus slow strangulation). The possibility that people > might become actors in their own lives, that the roadworkers might become a roaring river, is > dismissed as absurd, naive, or unrealistric, except when it threatens to happen, when it evokes > a horror that calls for violent repression.

I'm not sure this is the sort of post that's meant to elicit a response, but I'll do so anyway.  I must confess that I do look to the way things are and have been to guide me as to what we can realistically aspire to.  That's why I'm not an authoritarian socialist (has never worked, although it can bring about rapid industrialization) or a libertarian (again, has never worked).  I agree with Wojtek, who I believe once wrote about how proud he was of Western European social democracy, the best political order the world has ever seen.  That's what we should aspire to, and then we can look torwards shaping something even better.  And I think our international prospects aren't nearly as bleak as many take them to be: if it's possible to rally the public around the cause of humanitarian militaristic intervention (and admittedly it's not clear that anyone ever has), which requires vast sacrifices, surely we can inspire the sort of solidarity necessary to alleviate (to take just one example) the AIDs crisis in Africa.

-- Luke     
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