Carrol Cox on Thursday, December 02, 2010 7:20 PM wrote:
> The point is to defend the schools, not to score empty moral points
> against
> Bill Gates. I forget Tamas's exact words, but one of his essential points
> is
> that moral judgments are for losers. When Socil Democracy lost its hope,
> it
> turned to Kant and Morality.
Mark:
Morality is part of the superstructure just as politics. It is an effective weapon to wield enfluence together with politics as a aim. Pure moral criticism without any political aim is for theologists to talk about. Bill Gates and his capitalist colleagues are enshrined in people's hearts as saviors of the world, let alone of a country. Their hypocritical features must be exposed so as to not harm more innocent.
> It is politically destructive to focus on Bill Gates as a person, his
> motives, etc. That is the way losers cover up their hopelessness.
No, that is not the case. Gates and now his pal Warren Buffett have long been model-businessmen whom people aspire to follow. There are hundreds of millions of people in the world revere them, not only for their successful accumulations but also for their piety and philanthropies. These model capitalists attract, perhaps, million times more than the Kennedies, Duponts and Rockefellers of believers of the capitalist fetishism. To destroy their false epic selling-points and images will help wake up people's reverie. Bill Gates jumps out to make indiscreet remarks and being a looter of workers' surplus products but feigns their savior. He wants to take advantage of his "excellent" image to improve the already severely damaged publicity for his class and so do his pal and others. Gates should not be considered merely as an individual when making public comments. Bourgeois leadership works for themselves but at the same time and, more importantly and emphatically, for the long-term and fundamental interests of their whole class. Never over-estimate the competitive individualism in semblance that covers up the political collectivism of capitalist system. Unsparing criticism of the leadership implies not only of a few but of the bourgeoisie as whole.
> Assume that Bill Gates means what he says -- and believes it. That is the
> only premise that ever makes sense in building a resistance movement.
All the opinions, whether lying statements or truly intended talks, of the capitalist leadership must be taken to be real, namely serious. The lies must be pointed out and the intentions must be analyzed in order to rebut them. Mass resistance movement cannot be self-propelled. It needs pilots and navigation schools. The civil society is its enormous ideological school of class struggle. Regardless of the nature of their opinions, lies or half-lies, unsparing criticisms are indispensable for the disenchantment of the masses from fearing the despotic power of capital by the working class and from the capital fetishism by the petit bourgeoisie and the middle class.
> We do need to analyze, without caterwauling or moralism just why the
> nation's leadership, including Bates and Obama, are heading this way.
> Emotion doesn't help us do that.
This paragraph is the only one I would like to agree on. And I'd like to add, however, there are different levels of understanding the objective reality as reflected unto people's brains. Some need light-dosaged and some need high-dosaged effective remedy for rectifications. If one disapproves the low and allows only the high level to appear here, then the talks become one-sided and, worse, sometimes subjectivistic. One should understand the high level understandings most likely come about from the low level first and later from the gradual evolutionary gaining process of knowledge. One must be patient in allowing different levels to contend and broad-minded and unprejudiced enough to encourage the gaining process to thrive.
Moreover, as I implied above, readers' comments on online media, think tanks (if allowed), higher education institutions or other opinion outlets have been an important battle ground for class struggle for a longtime. Those who have all levels of understanding the history, current trends and future developments of the late-stage capitalism are obligated to let the readership know their viewpoints without hesitation or reservation. Mutual interactions among the already-know and to-know as well as the not-yet-know are useful to cultivate their fighting and living strength. Online struggle is one of the important early commitments to the movement.
The Cat Food Commission, in particular, Alan Simpson, seems to be more privy to caterwauling or moralism in transferring wealth to the upmost 2% from the 98%.
> Carrol
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk