>because the grip of material conditions is not bad enough and
>therefore not sufficient to motivate people to change. In other words
>people are radicalized by being socialized into a particular
>ideological view of themselves and the world, in effect friendly
>persuasion.
My point was that isolated short term self-interest tends to be conservative for the very practical reason that there's not much you can do as one isolated individual except attempt to save your hide, usually through compliance. We engage in all kinds of individual strategies, of course, but they are relatively ineffective and risky (theft, desertion, drink...)
>Remember too, the War on Poverty programs were
>very carefully tailored to avoid outright attacks on the corporate
>system itself and instead focused primarily on public institutions
>like schools and public accommodations like transportation and housing,
>etc. Even the early employment discrimination legislation was
>primarily focused on public sector jobs in publicly funded
>institutions. The old line lefties (and some of the more radical
>newbies) were adamant about these dodges of economic issues and tried
>to convince many involved in these movement they were being co-opted
>and duped. In retrospect, I think they were right.
Sure, the war on poverty was a response, not to poverty, but to the movement--so it was diverting *something*, that is, there must've been something, a movement or stirrings of one, to co-opt, and that in a fairly fat part of our recent history. I think you could argue we're more stuck to the ideological tarbaby these days without arguing that we're more compliant because we're less hungry. (I don't think we're less hungry, just less organized.)
>On the other hand, economics isn't the only form that self-interest can
take.
>...The anti-war movements were another example of self-interest that
>wasn't of an economic type. Getting out of the draft might have been
>easier for the economically privileged, but the draft itself was a
>relentless equal opportunity employer.
Being not dead seems fairly economic, as motivations go. You might argue otherwise on avoiding becoming a killer.
>And I think this subversion is
>sufficiently compelling to thwart almost all but the most severe and
>egregious oppressions---and even these are transformed in the eyes of
>most onlookers into something other than what they in fact are.
>...its
>function is to mediate the psycho-social focusing power of material
>conditions and subvert their awareness giving properties.
Yeah, and our 'function'--conceding for the moment that these are functions not expressions of human will--is to fight that. But what's new here? Work hard and pray, you'll get pie in the sky when you die. Is the vicious idiocy and glittering nihilism of Fox TV more overwhelming than the threat of hell and the promise of heaven?
Jenny Brown