> At 10:17 AM 9/21/03 -0500, Carrol Cox wrote:
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>>>P.S. The point is not whether my particular predictions are correct or not; the point is that you shouldn't talk about socialism without incorporating that discussion into a discussion of how we get from here to there. The world does change. Whatever happens in the next 20 years, 2025 won't be like 2003, and if socialism triumphs in 2026, it will do so in the c onditions of 2025, not 2003.
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> i agree. but, i think what you say here is exactly why people think politicizing consumer choices now matters. it matters how we get from here to there. "people who drive SUVs are selfish assholes who glorify power and individualism and use societal resources recklessly. good leftists would never drive SUVs! leftists who do can't possibly have the best interests of > everyone at heart if they can't even make personal choices now that judiciously use scare natural resources. Huzzah!"
I agree with your agreement :) The point here is that to the extent possible, while we are fighting racism, gender oppression and class oppression, we need to minimize our reproduction of these oppressions. As a corrective to what you are satirizing - the politicizaiton of consumer choice, and personal lifestyle -- we need excercise something in very short supply among leftist - humility. (And of course this is a do as I say, not as I do thing :)) I think it is very common among lefitst to look for a chance to play gotcha - to look for a chance to patronize or criticize or in general play dominance games with other leftists. Admittedly this is not based on any scientific survey - just years of experience on the left, that the proprotion of verbal bullies looking for a chance to make you squirm or feel uncomfortable or guilty is much higher in leftist gathering than in apolitical gatherings. (In all fairness, politics rather than leftism may be the determining factor here. I've run into this the few times I've attended centrist and right wing roups as well.)
But we need to need to biased more towards social than individual action on such things, and also in a small l libertarian direction. For example SUVs are kind of scapegoat for the fact that U.S. overuse of automobiles in general is socially harmful. But the fact is for most of us driving a car is not really an individual choice. Yeah, there are cities like NY where living without an automobile is practical. And most (but not all) urban areas have neighborhoods where it is practical to live car free provided you happen to live, work and shop within very tight boundaries. But I would guess that 85% (at least) of the U.S. population live in areas where living without a car is either impossible or extremely difficult in terms of employability and and ability to have easy access to the essentials of life. This has happened due to capitalist controlled social choice - including subsidies for suburbs and low density construction at the expense of denser urban cores, deliberate d estruction of rapid transit* , subsidy of the automobile at a much greater rate than other forms of transit, and so forth.
Similarly in diet stuff, this is where libertarianism comes in. As a socialist I can't be a small l libertarian on the grounds that x affects only the other person and not me. I know social reality is more complex that that; almost all personal choices affect everybody. Eating too much (my personal vice), drinking or smoking too much or overusing other drugs, engaging in unsafe sex with multiple partners - all have likely social consequences. But the effect on the individual engaging in these behaviors is much greater than on society. And tbe effects of trying to coercively control such behavior are much worse than those of recognizing that some things really are none of our business. This does not mean there is nothing we can do. A small l-libertarian society would make sure condoms are widely availale (Like with vending machines in every restroom), inexpensive healthy food is widely available (as opposed to our society where the unhealthiest food tends to most readily ava ilable), treatment is widely and cheaply available for people who wish to fight addictions , information is widely available (the only thing capitalist society does on such issues , and it is buried in the midst of advertising and other misinformation.) And a recognition that : A) we don't know what is best - a lot of what we think is healthy may be proved unhealthy in the future and vice versa B) that unhealthy or risky behavorior are no neccesarily pathological. Unhealty behavior may arise from addicttion or other pathologies, but it may also be a simple matter of people finding the pleasure worth the risk or the harm.
None of this is simple, as you pointed out. Unlike the right-wing libertarianism, there are no simple rules , no bright dividing line. You have to look at the facts in the case. I think the key is that burden of proof lies on the would-be puritan, not the person who wishes to be left alone or leave others alone.
And there is the additional complexity you mentioned. As leftists and simply as decent human beings we do have to avoid oppressing others on the basis of gender, race, impairment, class , sexual orientation and so forth. And there really are strong individual components to this; It takes a heck of a lot work to make relations between men and women egalitarian - equal sharing of housework, equal listening and valuing of opinions, - even avoiding something as simple and devestating as expecting women in the workplace to make the coffee or cleanup the shared kitchen. (Yep, for those of you in academia, this still happens in most workplaces. Of course there is class component too (or for those of you who don't recognize a coordinator class - a caste component) . That is this is seen as a job for the lowest paid employees the secretaries and clerks who are there to do the shit work, because the higher level clerks, and professional employees have too many important demands on th eir time to waste it cleaning up their own messes.
I think though that at minimum we need to avoid such oppression in our own leftist institutions - again complicated by the fact you cannot have a truly socialist institution in a capitalist society. Even a revolutionary party (not the toy ones we have in the U.S., but a real revolutionary party such as existed in other times and places) in a capitalist society is a capitalist instittuion - constrained in a real way by the capitalist market.
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> :)
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> it is what is motivating Ehrenreich's argument that, while she refuses to generalize as to who should or shouldn't hire a housekeeper, our goal should be to "make housework visible again." she's concerned about how we get from here to a socialist feminist future and, to her, it matters what we do, if we think of ourselves as identified with a socialist feminist struggle.
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> now, in the past, you've suggested that, in the absence of political practice, these discussions revert to a meaningless waste of political debate over lifestyle choices. i agree with you, to some extent, which is the point of my rant. OTOH, i'm not so sure--not if you take a socialist feminist or marxist feminist view of the matter. why? for the very reasons yoshie once mentioned when i complained about gender dynamics on this list: gender oppression isn't about some system "out there" that oppresses us, it's about our relationships with one another. and naming those practices that are problematic can make life witho ne another pretty messy and painful.
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> similarly, this is what motivates ehrenreich: one feminist achievement was to integrate the micro/macro, the personal/political, by recognizing that housework was a relationship between a man, a woman, (their children), and a dustbunny. and those relationships were made and remade in a wider socio-historical context of interlocking systems of gender oppression, racial oppression, heterosexism, class exploitation, status-privilege, etc. social structures and processes don't exist "out there" doing their dirty work behind our backs. they exist in the relations between us, too.
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> racism doesn't exist out there as a separate structural system of oppression, it operates in and through our daily practices, relationships, struggles. Social structures made and re-made (reproduced) and changed (transformed) by _us_. When I advance a claim about healthy dietary practice, am I reproducing racism. Possibly. What about if I advance a claim about a healthy body fat percentage? That claims does, in fact, have implications since people have genetically determined differences in the weight of their bone and connective tissue mass. Blacks have a heavier bone and connective tissue mass than 'whites' and 'whites' heavier than Asians. If I measure blacks and asians against a white standard, I reproduce structural racism where standards or norms associated with whiteness become the measure against which all others are judged.
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> my reason for griping about the topic was precisely because i don't know how we get from here to there if we don't make ourselves more cognizant of
> the ways in which we reproduce class/gender/racial/heterosexist status
> privilege. elsewhere, i've called this "conscious social reproduction":
> the demand that leftists make these issues more visible--politicizing them.
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> but, taking a devil's advocate position, i've wondered about the problems
> that might accompany this process.
> http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0108/1033.html
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> i don't think there are any easy answers, but i do think the discussions
> have to be had, no matter how painful and messy they might be.
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> kelley