A few things on this. First of all, the censors and regulators are precisely the one's who DON'T misunderstand here... its the progressives that misunderstand when they think that they've created ex nihilo a revolutionary movement and imposed a "new consciousness" on the ignorant masses. The censors recognise the undesirable desires of large masses of the public - otherwise they wouldn't be motivated to censor these desires. They're like the agency of repression, the superego, in Freudian theory. Freud's very clear about this: in order for something to be repressed it must first be acknowledged, only then can it be distorted - its perfectly logical when you think about it...
Secondly, I'm not talking about moralism or even subjectivity. I'm saying that what the left should do - although even saying this seems rather pointless because the left always almost automatically do this, otherwise they wouldn't be the left - what the left should do is to pick up on the desires and aspirations which people feel but which society doesn't allow them to express in the public sphere. As I pointed out, often these desires are actually inculcated by society and then rejected - as in the case of the Thatcher example. But don't think that they're in any way "subconscious". People are very aware of these desires and aspirations. If anything is repressing them its society. People today know very well that they aspire to being middle-class but society, for functional reasons, will, in the near future have to deny these people this aspiration - this even though, for functional reasons, it had to inculcate this desire in the first place. If this all seems rather topsy-turvy its because it is. These contradictions are what produce social change.
>
> In short, I seek to change their subjective experience by pointing to the
> elements of their subjective experience that they have been taught to
> ignore, to change the kinds of individualistic and reactionary moralism
> (whether righteous or depressive) that the enter the class with into
> something very different. I have a feeling that this is what Carrol was
> talking about in his critique of starting with moralism and again when he
> spoke of education within movement.
>
I'd say you're absolutely right to do this but I'm not talking about students. Students are members of the elite, as are you. And an elite which doesn't appeal to the masses is already dead. I suppose I'm a classic Marxist in this sense, but also, paradoxically, something of a democrat. I really do believe that its the opinions and material circumstances of the masses which drive history. Elites and intellectuals are only in a position to articulate what the masses already are. They are organisers and the like. But I don't think that they should see themselves as apart from society, they're clearly not. When they articulate certain things they're just as much "within", I suppose we could say "ideology", as everybody else. They just have to choose whether they want to be on the conservative side which tries to get society to function in accordance with accepted norms and thus to give up their aspirations and desires - to put it in Freudian: the superego side - or if they're on the progressive side which pushes society to change in order to realise these aspirations and desires.
What I want to make absolutely clear though is this: repression, the subconscious, that which is latent, all these concepts have to be recognised for what they are: namely, products of intellectual reflection. They aren't "real" - as I said: people know exactly what they want. Its reflective intellectuals and elites who repress or liberate these desires, just as its intellectuals and elites which theorise and create social policy. Repression is on our side, not on the side of the masses.