Mike B on dominance and submission:
> I agree that consent is given to those who hold real
> and imaginary power over those who submit to it. I
> think that sort of dominant/submission dynamic
> is inculcated through various authorities we
encounter
> in the class societies in which we are born and are
> brought up within. It's a social psychology
> of authoritarian personality which is introduced
into
> our character by the dominants we interact with from
> birth.
Curtiss:
I agree that more aspects of life are affected or deformed by class difference and power than many think. But if you are claiming that someone who practices S/M therefore is an authoritarian personality, I'd have to disagree, and I think the empirical evidence to the contrary is abundant. The desire for sexual domination or submission does not necessarily lead to the desire for complete social order that--at least as I understand it--is characteristic of the authoritarian personality, i.e., the strong desire for societal norms to be enforced, intolerance of social difference, rage at ambiguity.
I am not trying to claim that consensual S/M equals political and social enlightenment; there are likely plenty of reactionaries who practice it, too, and like as not, some who do exhibit the classic traits of the authoritarian personality. But given that there are those who do not, you'll have to drop or qualify what you mean when you refer to the authoritarian personality here. ****************************************************** Mike B)
What is essential to understand about the authoritarian personality, to my mind anyway, is how the question of freedom is understood. For instance, in capitalist class dominated society, the generally understood, authoritarian conception of freedom occurs negatively, that is, at the expense of someone else's freedom. Thus, I become freer and more powerful because I dominate another making them un-free in a relative sense. Say, I get the power to hire and fire and you have to submit to that power. Thus, power, freedom and authority goe together within the authoritarian societal structures and importantly, within the minds of people living within those social relations.
Another conception of freedom is the one I link to socialism to wit: the condition of the freedom of each is the condition for the freedom of all. To be sure, authority can and would, IMO, exist in this arrangement, but it would be both consensual and would increase, not decrease the freedom of others. For instance, the authority of a Spanish/English speaker to teach a monoligual English speaker her language would be given freely to the teacher by the pupil. This would not be the creation (real or imagined) of a dominant "power over", political relationship. It would be a free association.
The way I see it, sado-masochism mimics the narrow, individualistic conception of freedom which is prevalent in the class dominated society of today--the one in which, "my freedom is your unfreedom", even if it is consensual.
Curtiss continued: A reasonable restriction--although not one I would hold--of your thesis would be this: that consensual S/M is authoritarian urges or traits restricted to sexual behavior. What then? *******************************************************
Consensual S/M exists, just as consensual wage-slavery exists between employers and employees attempting to, for instance, negotiate, "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work". I'm interested in the abolition of the wages-system of slavery. I believe the sexual manifestations of d/s would eventually disappear of themselves along with the State as the conditions for their perceived necessity "withered away". *******************************************************
Curtiss:
You say below that "knowing about how this dynamic operates in our daily lives may help to spur a rebellion against submitting to being ruled." But since engaging in consensual S/M is not mutually exclusive of an acknowledgement of and opposition to class-based domination, it simply amounts to something that is a by-product of class domination and yet does NOT reproduce it. *******************************************************
As I've said, I think that S/M and other dominance and submission rituals, like religious genuflecting are engendered in class society and act as impediments to social revolution. I don't think that these mystifications will be completely removed at the time when critical mass has been reached and the social revolution proceeds in earnest. I asked before:
> But why do workers accept that arrangement when it
is
> their labor which creates the social wealth?
Curtiss wrote:
Not all workers do accept this, and the conditions of organizing differ around the globe. I don't know the stats, but my impression is that unions are holding steady in the Eurozone, while they're been declining for a while in the US.
It's also not clear to me whether you need an understanding of social wealth, surplus labor, etc., to organize effectively or to be part of a labor movement. I'm not even sure if it's a necessary condition for an overhaul of the relations of production that would end class oppression. *************************** Mike B)
I think that one of the reasons why the movement is so weak and virtually reformist only these days is that organizers don't make this point clear to workers. If workers knew and felt in their guts that they created all the wealth a lot of contemporary susceptibilty to mystification would collapse. Personally, my reading of the 19th Century communists, including Marx make me think that this used to be the general position, organizing stance of socialist organizers. It seems to me to have been discarded and forgotten in the 20th Century, perhaps even repressed.
I said before:
> Perhaps they feel that dominance and submission are
> natural and that Lordship and Bondage have always
been around and that maybe if they submit to the power
of the bosses as they have submitted to the power of
> other social and political authorities in their
lives, they will someday be able to work their way up
in the hire-archy to become a boss/dominant
themselves.
**********
Curtiss:
I don't dispute this in general, but I have to ask you
this:
--what contributes more to the ideology of unchanging
human nature and domination today: on the one hand
media basis, a torrent of propaganda from think tanks
organized by the right, right demagogues--or, on the
other hand, consensual S/M?
****************************************************** The former. The S/M scene is a sideshow in the general spectacle of dominance and submission.
I also said:
> I think that knowing about how this dynamic operates
> in our daily lives may help to spur a rebellion
> against submitting to being ruled and contribute to
a
> consciousness desire for self-rule, grassroots
> democracy and an end to class dominated society.
Curtiss: I share that hope. But I think that labeling someone's intimate behavior as somehow an adverse consequence of
class oppression is not helpful.
**************** Mike B)
Well, I think I've sufficiently addressed this impression by now. I'm not interested in mere labels.
There is a social psychological content to what I'm trying to convey. ************************************************* Curtiss: I see from your sig that you like Adorno, and so do I. I'm also sure that he personally would agree with you on this. Yet he did write that only those thoughts are true that do not know themselves, and that those who can situate utopia in bodily pleasure have a stable notion of truth--these are both in _Minima Moralia_, IIRC (and they're probably inexact because I don't have the book at hand). I take the first to mean that what is true does not exhaust itself in an identity, i.e., cannot be reduced to a self-same dogma, and I take the second to mean an awareness that whatever the right state of life might be it does not deny bodily fulfillment to be a necessary condition for grasping the truth, and therefore the injustice of current conditions. If you admit that, then you have to admit that people who are fulfilled practicing consensual S/M and who grasp the injustice of current conditions have something to contribute to the project of self-rule precisely because of what they have learned in their sex lifes. ******************************* Mike B)
I think I've covered this in my analysis of the differing notions of freedom and how the "birthmarks" of the old society will be present on the new one for a time. ********************************* Curtiss:
Finally, if the distortions of capitalism are so pervasive that they reach into the bedroom, you have to acknowledge that they also touch on every mode of human interactions-- email lists on left politics and culture, for example. I can't rule out the possiblity that there is an adverserial tone to what I'm writing because preening for dominance is what I know and I can't get rid of it. But in so far as we ultimately look forward to the same ends, we can and should also try to assist each other. If noting how we might be different when we get there--if we get there--is divisive, let's drop it.
****************************************************
I don't see your arguments as attempts to dominate me, to cause me to become un-free in order to make you feel more pleasure, more freedom, if you will. I see them as contributing to the conditions for greater freedom for each and all.
Best, Mike B)
===== "Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed."
Theodor Adorno, NEGATIVE DIALECTICS http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal
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