[lbo-talk] Is Obama Running Interference to ProtectBankers' Pay?

Mike Beggs mikejbeggs at gmail.com
Sun Mar 22 20:43:21 PDT 2009


On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


>
> On Mar 23, 2009, at 12:07 AM, Miles Jackson wrote:
>
> From this perspective, speculations about the morals of people supporting
>> or resisting social change are irrelevant. We know that moral systems will
>> shift when historical transformations occur, so the important thing is
>> political action to transform society. The moral beliefs that justify and
>> reinforce the new social conditions will follow.
>>
>
> So why bother with trying to change things according to a set of
> principles? Why should anyone bother to transform anything without some
> moral/ethical sense that what exists is bad, or wrong, or sucks in some
> sense?

It seems to me that people are arguing at cross-purposes here... the Doss-Henwood position is that of course we make value-judgements all the time. But the Cox-Eubulides-Jackson argument is not so much about value judgements regarding states of affairs, but against 'moralising' in the sense of reducing these states of affairs to bad/evil/immoral _individuals_.

Mike Beggs



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