>To begin with, I equate ideology, at least much of it, with the common
>sense which is forced on members of any society by the social relations
>in which they are embedded. And I believe the act of abstract free choice
>lies at the heart of daily experience in capitalist society.
>Tully first put forth the concept of "freedom of choice" in a post under
>the subject heading "Re:... the Green Nazi platform" (Sat, 26 Mar 2005
>12:52)
Carroll,
Well, I get more out of Bergson's critique of free will and determinism than from your excerpt on Milton. Be that as it may, I wouldn't get too fired up over "the working class always has the choice..." -- mainly because it has no more terminological precision than does your "bourgeois ideology". Who or what constitutes this "working class"? It looks to me like Tully was simply responding to a prompt from amadeus amadeus that framed things in terms of "capitalists" v. "the working class," not that she was herself attempting to present a particular notion of working class as a theoretical category. In other words, she was just trying to speak the fractured patois here. What she probably meant is simply that many people don't consciously exercise what little choice they do have as individuals. Whether that's a product of "false consciousness" or neurosis or bourgeois ideology doesn't make it any less a fact.
Simple bourgeois ideology would require that people behave better than they do, "workers" included. A not inconsiderable number of working class folks, in fact, behave like concentration camp "kapos", enforcing a gutter version of "the" bourgeois work ethic on those seen to be less obedient than themselves. Within any given set of constraints there is nevertheless a range of actions that could be taken and a possibility of ranking those ethically.
And structurally, Tully's quite right to observe a symbiotic relationship between capital and labour (or the working class, as she put it). If anyone would have the power to terminate that relationship -- I once read in some old 19th century tome -- it would be the working class (or labour or the proletariat or...). So, correct me if I'm wrong here, but... Tully's offense would appear to be that she inadvertantly uttered an analysis more marxist than the marxists. Heaven forfend! How Bourgeois of her! No wonder your teeth are on edge. // The Sandwichman