[lbo-talk] Re: Political Cartography

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Nov 20 20:12:08 PST 2004


andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> > And I think I disagree with you that "pessimism of
> > the mind" is all that
> > easy to arrive at. As illustrated on this list,
> > pessimism of the
> > intellect seems mostly to boil down to a vulgar
> > empricism, expressing
> > itself in ranting and raving against people as
> > stupid, immoral,
> > hopeless, etc. A grounded pessimism has to be based
> > on the assumption
> > that people are rational.
>
> You think that is my problem? I think not.

No. Not you. Sorry about the imprecision.


> It is quite rational not to be a radical. It will only get you in
> only get you in trouble.

You don't accept that narrow conception of "rationality" any more than I do. I think Webster's Duchess had it down: "I am the Duchess of Malfi still." Any full sense of "rationality" has to include that.


> Witness moi, for starters. I can say this in
> fancy language talking about collective action
> problems and n-person prisoner's dilemmas, but what I
> am asking for is some rational reason to think that
> that we are going someplace good.

Well, for one thing, reformists make really lousy reformers. No revolutionaries around, no even minimal reforms. A metaphor for _my_ pessimism of the intellect is the belief that capitalism is a treadmill to doom.

Carrol
>
> jks
>
[clip]
> Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl, . . .



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