> But it's a cop out always to point to grand
> forces without at all examining human agency or institutional
> specificity. Rates of profit matter, but so do historical figures like
> Ronald Reagan. And surely there are things that a left can learn from
> history, and can do better if we think things through. Obviously there
> are forces larger than us, but we're not passive lumps either.
(As an aside, surely you don't think "Ronald Reagan" was reducible to the biological organism named Ronald Reagan?)
Okay, now I think I see the point of disagreement, though maybe it's better to say that you and Carrol are talking about two completely different things. Though I think Carrol could do better describing his take on this stuff, I think he's questioning the exact distinction you are insisting on here: that there are individuals who are opposed to, autonomous from, and largely against historical forces. Yours sounds like a classic liberal take on the individual-societal interface (this is a simplified way of putting it, since it pretends that the "individual" is transhistorical rather than the Enlightenment invention it is). Carrol, it seems to me, is after something else.