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

[wrobert at uci.edu]

> wrobert at uci.edu wrote:
>
>>     This statement ignores that systems of domination are always fraught
>> with contradictions.  As Marx noted, and Althusser always insisted,
>> the class war begins on the terrain of ideology.
>>
>
> No, I'm sorry, Miles wrote that "morality is a product of power
> relations" and that "the moral system is always the product of the
> historical moment, not the cause." Either it is or it isn't - which is
> it? If morality is not solely determined by power relations, then the
> argument Miles was making is no longer valid. There is nothing more
> maddening than this marxist habit of justifying an assertion with some
> grand generalization, only to retreat at the slightest challenge behind
> meaningless qualifications about "contradictions," "relativity," "in the
> final instance."
>

     I'll deal with the humanist nonsense later, but you are ignoring the
point that I made, which is that 'power relations' are not what you
make them out to be, which evidently is somehow a unified structure
that operates as a homogeneous totality.  Instead, these relations
(power) always exist in structures of struggle.  Secondly, they are
held together through complex ideological structures (which operate
disciplinarily and institutionally).  Third, within these structures
there always needs to be legitimating structures to patch over the
profound contradictions that operate in structures of domination (or
the fact that not everyone benefits equally from the system).  These
legitimating structures themselves are invariably linked up to a
language of common sense that operates through floating
signification.  (That is terms like 'free labor' operate through
containing multiple meanings within them.) robert wood