> Is there a reason why we can't entertain both ideal solutions as well
> as "practical" ones? Otherwise, what standards do we have to measure
> the "practical" solution against?
No, as long as we keep in mind that "ideal" solutions don't bake any bread that anyone can eat. In situations in which people don't have much hope of accomplishing anything in the near term (e.g., leftists in capitalist societies), they tend to indulge themselves in elaborating beautiful pictures of ideal solutions.
> Not quite correct. The mass base is there, in the sense that the
> majority of people overwhelmingly support the anti-capitalist notion
> that the economy should serve the people and that major economic
> decisions should be subject to democratic control. To the extent that
> people don't support the sort of radical change that would give effect
> to that ideal, it is a combination of people either not being
> convinced by any particular programme to bring it about, or being
> deluded that political democracy *is* economic democracy. Or both.
Yes, that's what we have to do: come up with better ways of puncturing the myth of the "democratic market economy" -- all the happy consumers voting with their dollars to get exactly what their hearts desire, and all the moms and pops owning their shares of the great democratic corporations. The Bush people are set to extend this myth even further by forcing everyone, rich and poor, to save for medical care and old age pensions, under the pretense that this is "returning your hard-earned money from the clutches of the evil government to your own pockets," and I'm afraid people are falling for it.
> The political system of the US has no parallels in other advanced
> capitalist countries, you have to look to the backward banana
> republics to find something similar. It seems a bit odd to me, that's
> all.
It wouldn't if you studied a little U.S. history. It's just not the same as European history, which is where most Leftists, even U.S. Leftists, seem to get most of their political ideas.
> As I say, the economic basis of the US is obviously far removed from
> feudalism, but I can't help wondering if there isn't something vaguely
> feudal about the political system?
Not in the slightest. I'm sure that libraries in Australia have plenty of good U.S. histories you could look all this up in.
Of course, any society deriving from the European tradition might be said to have some feudalism in its background, but the whole colonial set-up in North America was clearly based on capitalism (including slave-based capitalism, of course). It was a business proposition from the get-go, with a superstructural overlay of Christianity, of course. The myth taught to American school kids, of course, is that "the pioneers" were pious, humble folk, persecuted for their honest beliefs in nasty old Europe, who fled to the New World to find the freedom to worship God in their own way. But actually, most of them came to make money, as was the case for the whole European colonial movement, of course.
> But it seems Americans don't have any binding national identity. Just
> pretend stuff, every time i see this curious American phenomenon of
> exaggerated flag waving partriotism, the words "methinks they protest
> too much" come to mind. The American identity looks like a big fraud,
> at heart this isn't a real nation at all. Just a bunch of colonies
> ruled over by an emperor. A feudal empire at that?
Well, I think this "exaggerated flag waving patriotism" thing is to a large extent a product of biased foreign news coverage, designed to make Americans look ridiculous. (I hate to sound like a commentator on the Fox channel -- could we blame this Murdoch monstrosity on the Australians? :-) ) To someone who lives here, and has lived here all his life, it's not as prominent as it looks to outsiders, I think. You can take pictures of a few people waving flags and make that look like the whole population to people in places like Australia, where all they can see are the pictures, but the reality on the ground is a bit different. There was a fair amount of flag waving right after 9/11, which is quite understandable, given the tremendous emotional shock. There was also a rise in flag waving (but not so great) at the onset of the Iraq war. But at this point, the only people waving flags are the rabid Bush supporters.
Perhaps Americans tend to be more demonstrative about their national identity that some others; I'm not sure why. But I don't quite understand what you mean by "a real nation." The U.S. looks like as real a nation as any other to me. It certainly has a real military force, which is basically what a nation is based on.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________________________ It isn’t that we believe in God, or don’t believe in God, or have suspended judgment about God, or consider that the God of theism is an inadequate symbol of our ultimate concern; it is just that we wish we didn’t have to have a view about God. It isn’t that we know that “God” is a cognitively meaningless expression, or that it has its role in a language-game other than fact-stating, or whatever. We just regret the fact that the word is used so much.
— Richard Rorty