> You still don't understand. Of course my views of
> the DP are not dispassionate. They are in fact quite
> passionate. Why shouldn't they be? You seem to hold
> the odd idea (as does Doug) that the only grounds for
> passion are moral. A Christian hangover I guess. I
> hate the DP and want to destroy it. It is a major
> source of immense human misery - but it is a mere
> superstition to think that those feelings require a
> moralistic basis.
Morality and moralism are not the same thing. And morality doesn't necessarily rests on religious (e.g. Christian) premises.
The rejection of any social order by masses of people is fundamentally a moral act. Even the tiniest incremental social change entails a shift in our moral standards or a sense that the existing social conditions betray our sense of collective self, debase us as *moral* (i.e. as human and not just natural) beings.
To use an example, the struggle for better pay and better working conditions, the defense of the standard of living of workers, or the struggle to improve upon it is fundamentally a moral act. Marx was exactly right when he wrote in Capital that, in contrast with regular commodities, in the determination of the value of labor power a *moral* and historical element is included. The exact quote and context are googable.
In a given society and times, working people have a certain expectation (average) about the amount of means of consumption socially necessary for their reproduction. For a given historical period, people have a definite sense of what is a *morally* acceptable standard of living for them. Over time, that standard shifts as a result of the evolution of economic conditions and of their own struggle. Regardless, the standard exists, it exhibits a certain binding social objectivity. Capital disappoints that standard at its own peril.
The struggle for universal health care in the U.S., with its blemishes, weaknesses and backs-and-forths, is the result of a shift in what working people in this country regard as *morally* acceptable.
For the most part, the energy that fuels this struggle is moral outrage, not an intellectual understanding of how society functions. For the most part, we struggle because we find it morally unacceptable the gap between the existing social conditions and what we expect from our social arrangements, what we demand for ourselves, our families, co-workers, and neighbors. In other words, we feel that the existing conditions debase us and humiliate us. They cross the line. Hence, the moral outrage and the disposition to fight. What used to be morally acceptable or accepted is not so any longer. What used to be rational becomes irrational for masses of people at once. This is just another way of saying that masses of people acquire a higher sense of collective self.
Carrol objects to saying or implying that Bush "failed" in his invasion of Iraq or that the Democrats or the Obama presidency are "failing" to fix the banking mess or the health care system. He doesn't understand why we don't get it. It cannot be "failure" because, as Mexicans put it, you cannot demand pears from an elm. What we call "failure" is either deliberate or falls anyway within the bounds predetermined by the political DNA of the Democrats or Bush or Obama, as Carrol has already figured out on the basis of his personal study and experience. What Carrol fails to note is that, in most cases, when people use this manner of expression, they are not talking about the disappointment of Bush's or the Democrats' or Obama's own designs or moral norms, but about the disappointment of their (people's) own collective expectations and needs.
But why feign "disappointment"? Say, why didn't people pay enough attention to what Obama actually said during the campaign? Or why didn't they take into consideration the structural constraints in which these figures move? Suppose they didn't pay attention to that or refused to see those structural constraints, well then maybe their main focus was fixed on the extraordinary energy and collective excitement that Obama's campaign elicited in masses of working people, something that may (or may not) anticipate interesting political developments beyond Obama's political calibrations. Hope, when it is collective, is not to be dismissed. What is not noticed is that this way of arguing actually attributes to Obama a role larger than he actually plays in this social drama. To paraphrase a line from the animated movie The Incredibles, which my son has made me watched n times: "This is is not about Obama! This is about us!" It is about our interests and needs, and how the societies in which we work and live fall far short of them.
(Or perhaps what Carrol really objects to is not morality itself as the basis for the workers' struggle, but the superficial, idealistic, philistine understanding of social morality that prevails in our society. But that, IMO, is hard to associate to what Doug and others on this list represent by morality.)