>
> It's undialectical because moral distinctions both express differences
> between social groups *and* partially constitute those groups. This
> central doubleness goes all the way down to the ground in the study of
> ideology. Social being determines consciousness. But consciousness is
> also part of social being. (Ditto with "reality:" social relations
> reflect productive relations. But social relations are part of the
> productive relations.)
Moral distinctions cannot even partially constitute social groups. If a person has a moral "feeling", it does not create a group, any more than a person with a selfish feeling can thereby create capitalism in a hunting and gathering society. As Durkheim said all those years ago, social facts cannot be reduced to the aggregate of individual feelings and actions. I agree that social interactions constitute and sustain social groups, but there is an important conceptual distinction to be drawn between individual thought and social interaction.
[snippage happens]
> And once you've determined a collective identity you share, so that
> serious argument is possible, you then have to evoke it. Because unless
> people feel their defining convictions, and have them articulated and
> present in their minds at the same time as the point at issue, they
> can't feel the contradiction you're trying to get them to face. And if
> they don't feel it, it won't trouble them.
I guess I have a different vision of political struggle. Individual persuasion is not how social change typically happens. Rather, committed and ingenious activists find ways to change social conditions without the consent of the majority; then the majority are forced to change their opinions to adapt to the new social conditions. I recognize that this is fundamentally anti-democratic, but this is an accurate description of how social change has occured in the U. S. from the American Revolution to gay civil rights today. None of the important social changes in U. S. history would have happened if they were contingent upon persuading the majority.
> An individual morality is as much an oxymoron as an individual language.
Hey, we do agree!
Miles