> On 7/15/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Jul 14, 2007, at 11:10 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>
>>> The multinational empire is appealing, and social liberals of all
>>> nations find it irresistible -- hence its hegemony. If it weren't
>>> appealing, it wouldn't be so powerful, would it?
>>>
>>> Marx's diagnosis was correct, but Marx's prescription ("face with
>>> sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his
>>> kind") was based on wishful thinking.
>>
>> What's wrong with wishful thinking?
>
> Because this one won't come true
What one exactly? There probably was a time when no one in the U.S. could imagine an end to anti-miscegenation laws. Your selective fatalism is curious. Islamism is very unlikely ever to defeat imperialism - why is that not a hopeless case?
> and it's contrary to Marx's own
> better insight, too. You do not escape commodity fetishism in the
> world of capitalism, so you never face with sober senses your real
> conditions of life, and your real relations with your kind. Taking
> this insight seriously means that people, including those who are
> here, will fight their struggle in and through commodity fetishism,
> ideology, not after having directly confronted and comprehended real
> conditions of life and real relations with one another.
No kidding. No one can comprehend anything directly - it's always going to be filtered through social and personal experience.
>> are you lamenting this state of affairs, like some freshly hatched
>> neocon who's just been "mugged by reality," or are you
>> embracing it?
>
> "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please;
> they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under
> circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."
> Then, the task is first to take stock of the existing circumstances,
> transmitted from the past, under which we are making history.
Again, no kidding.
>> Does the fight against U.S. imperialism so dominate
>> all other concerns for you that you'll cheerlead - from
>> the prosperous safety of Columbus, Ohio - for forces
>> that would like to cover you from head to toe because
>> the exposure of your mere forearm would be an
>> intolerable provocation?
>
> It's an obligation of all who live in the United States to stop
> sanctions on Iran, to prevent what we have allowed Washington to do to
> the Iraqi people from being done to the Iranian people. We are
> failing to perform this obligation, as usual.
Who's this "we," exactly? The "left" whose tininess you never tire of pointing out? Sometimes you write as if objective social conditions make any radical action impossible; other times, as if we just think the right thoughts hard enough we can change everything.
>> Does the fight against U.S. imperialism so dominate
>> all other concerns for you that you'll cheerlead - from
>> the prosperous safety of Columbus, Ohio - for forces
>> that would like to cover you from head to toe because
>> the exposure of your mere forearm would be an
>> intolerable provocation?
>
> It's up to the Iranian people to change their government if they wish,
> though I'd advise them, based on history...
No kidding, for the third time. But that's not relevant to your cheerleading for Islamism because of its alleged virtue as an anti- imperialist force, or your weird and indecipherable position on the subject line, universal asceticism and social leveling.
Ok, enough of this for a while.
Doug