> ******************
>
> Social ownership of the productive apparatus of the
> USA under democratic control would be a boon to the
> standard of living of 90% of the population. This
> proposition can be made in both the best and worst of
> times dominated by Capital.
=======================
Ownership is always already Social. In the US, one of the problems is the entrenched/habituated vocabularies of public-private and market-state as antagonistic binaries. Witness the recent wording in various journalist[ic] accounts of various officials of state "privately" conceding X [fill in factoid of your choice]. Or "behind the scenes" --what scenes? accounts of realpolitik decisionmaking regarding the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism etc. As if anything a state official could do besides take a dump is *private*. This is not a big lie problem, it is an historical narrative problem.
How many US citizens want to talk about the reconfiguration of fiduciary obligations with respect to property and contract law that would be necessary -but not sufficient- for fostering the development of a post-capitalist economy consistent with what some leftists consider democratic norms? Not many; so how do we talk about labor law etc. that does not put people to sleep or inculcate an unintended norm of condescension? Obviously lefties in other countries have been marginally more successful than those of us in the US, so what are the recipes for effective communication?
> The question goes back to the one Zizek raised about
> the willful embrace of ignorance by the vast majority.
> What makes people stop going about the normality of
> selling their time and skills to produce commodities
> for profit and to begin to gather in the streets to
> demand this or that?
========================
A tacit belief, however muddled, that benificence and altruism, are paths beyond survival and ego etc. And that capitalism fetters the everyday expression of these capabilities.............
>
> We just saw one example with the war. When *sharp*
> changes like this happen, the level of existential
> angst increases. Existential angst begins to rise
> above the drone of the legitimation machine's
> amplified voices and the ears become more receptive to
> the possibilty, indeed, the need for change.
>
> My two-cents,
> Mike B)
>
> =====
> "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
>
> Benjamin Franklin
========================
I'm not sure the issue is angst so much as it is an anger that knows that violence and exploitation unnecessarily snuff eros while at the same time yearning for eros to "put" anger to a more creative and efficacious "use value."
Only guessing blindly in an epoch of sorrow,
Ian