> Then why does he say that he's part of it, at a personal level, and
why did
> you suggest that that move was utterly non-problematic? More than
that,
> this is probably the least important argument Shag made in that
> post...
> ______________________________
hey! I thought it was the best part! Here's another best part which shows you that Michaels thinks that his audience is people who don't like socialism:
"It's pretty obvious, then, that when it comes to globalization, there's a big difference between dealing with indigenous people who want to protect their culture and socialists who want to nationalize your industry."
The reader, for Michaels, is obviously not the indigenous person. Hence, we must speak of "their" culture -- "their" references an other, certainly not the speaker and certainly not the audience.
Socialists, on the other hand, want to nationalize the reader's ("your") industry.
It's curious. The your isn't even necessary. He could have written "who want to nationalize private industry" or just "nationalize industry". (p 159)
OK. OK. I think the definitive answer as to who Michaels is talking to is exemplified in this passage:
"If we think that globalization should be resisted, we ought to spend less time worrying about the disappearance of languages and more time worrying about the disappearance of any credible alternative to unfettered capitalism."
ahhh. More wesel words for that special audience that isn't sure if it doesn't like capitalism, and is really confused about whether it should like socialism or not.
We must have a credible alternative -- not socialism or communism outright mind. No,we must have something called a "credible alternative." And that "credible alternative" is opposed to *unfettered* capitalism. See? The problem is, capitalism just needs fetters. right now, it's unfettered. It's need to get fettered back to, oh about 1960 or so. You can also see the same position outlined in this talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyruiScXqcU
where he says, my transcription: "If you are actually a liberal and are actually interested in inequality, Obama might refocus our attention from the problem of race to the problem of money.. there's no way we'll get a world in which some people don't have more and some people dont' have less, but we've had a much more equal society than we have now for manymany years...."
So, I rest my case: Michaels = welfare liberal. Sure, maybe we could use more of Welfare Liberals, but I don't much see them as an advance over Obama. and I surely doesn't see Michaels manichean world view as an advance at all. I'm especially startled to see it implicitly endorsed by Doug.
Seriously, Doug, given Michaels' denunciation of a cultural analysis of class, I suspect you might want to reword your introductory comments to this list. Everything Michaels is about in this book is in opposition to what you've written on that page.
as for Doug:
Doug, you seem to lose the thread easily. Voyou made the initial charge -- that Michaels is concerned with inequality, not exploitation. I amplified her assertion and fleshed it out with examples. I said that, as an opponent of inequality but not necess of exploitation, Michaels was just a reformist welfare liberal. Which is another reason why he's keen to constantly call out NEO-liberals, not liberals. After all, as he points out twice, Edwards' stump speech was "a real sign of progress" in the 2002 election campaign.
you replied that you could not understand how someone who uses the word exploitation as opposed to discrimination could be a Liberal. you gave us some quotes of Michaels using the word exploitation and inequality.
I replied with his own self-description where he uses the term rich and sees himself as rich. If you understand the concept of exploitation and actually take it seriously, you don't worry so much about rich and superrich. You also don't see class inequality as a personal problem, you see it as a systemic issue -- just as you said. But Michaels' isn't portraying it that way. He's saying that he, as part of the top 1% of INCOME earners, is part of the problem. Who, among those who understand what exploitation means, would worry about the top 1% of INCOME earners as part of the problem of class exploitation?
That was my point, buttressed by some other examples of Michaels sloppy usage.
I hope you can get back to the Doug I once admired, Doug.
shag