[lbo-talk] Re: Self-sufficient fraud?? (was Re: Krugman)

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Wed Jun 11 08:02:43 PDT 2003


Chuck Grimes:
>It seems to me a consummate irony that as the vast bulk of people in
>the US, do have their most dire material needs met in some haphazard
>way or another, that a freedom from want is also an unexpected
>vulnerability to fall pray to any or all other, completely immaterial
>ideologically configured needs and wants. And, that both the
>capitalist consumer status quo as well as all ideological systems that
>compete with and against it can on longer depend on the people to
>follow their self-identified material interest, but must instead
>depend on some combination of illusion, persuasion, coercion and raw
>fabrication of those interests.

I still think it's better to be lied to than beaten about the head--progress in the type of force used.

Who ever followed their 'self-identified material interest' to a revolutionary end? Radical self-interest develops in reference to others, socially. I would think if we followed self-identified material interest (immediate, narrow, direct) we would shut up and do what we're told, to avoid short-term pain.


>And hence we return to the ever
>illusive self-sufficiency of fraudulant or manufactured illusions of
>interest.

We needn't (though I suppose we sometimes do) depend on illusion to get at self-interest. I think you're defining self-interest too narrowly, and from that you're getting close to saying there isn't any self-interest any more. (If there is one then why would we--radicals, say--need to rely on illusion?) If by 'material' we mean food-shelter-clothing there are a whole lot of unaccountable movements of self-interest, such as feminism. And the last period which could be called revolutionary in the U.S. (and I'd argue a cultural revolution did occur) coincided with a peak in wages, with people's 'most dire material needs' being met as they haven't been before or since. I won't argue one caused the other, but one certainly didn't block the other.

Jenny Brown back after a busy spell



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