I don't think that's the problem with Miles' position. Miles' position actually has two problems.
1. It is unable to provide any reason for prefering one form of social organization to another.
2. It seems to have leapt from the observation that the ruling ideas of an era are those of the ruling class to the assumption that the ONLY ideas of an era are those of the ruling class. Society seems to be totally ideologically monolithic. So because for instance since the ruling strata using Christian ideas in one way, it is impossible for other parts of the society to interpret Christian ideas in a different that undermines the position of the ruling strata (cf. civil rights movement).
--- On Mon, 3/30/09, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
>
> My understanding of Miles' position is that people's
> subjective states of mind do matter. However, what changes
> those subjective states is best understood not as minds
> changing other minds but as social conditions changing
> minds. He's not denying the role of, say, learning to have
> different attitudes and beliefs. He is saying, however, that
> the learning takes place *because of* social conditions. He
> wrote this last year, I've quoted it below.