>
> On Nov 6, 2008, at 8:43 AM, Michael Smith wrote:
> > [Marx] doesn't
> > seem to have believed in the kind of Whig idea of linear
> > progress
>
> Well yes, but a Coxian sacrifice of any sort of optimism means the
> death of any kind of transformative politics.
Whether this is an accurate characterization of CC's views I will leave for him to say. It seems to me that the two things are in no way related.
Unless of course you mean "optimism" in the original Panglossian sense -- that this is the best of all possible worlds? I doubt that you do (but correct me if I'm wrong). I suspect maybe you mean something more like "hope" -- i.e. a rationally-founded conviction that the world can be changed for the better?
I personally maintain that kind of hope, though I don't believe the good outcome is the only possible one. That *would* be a kind of optimism in the original sense -- a belief that the world is somehow so constructed that the good guys have *got* to win, sooner or later.
Me, I think they've got a shot. But nothing is certain, nothing foreordained.