Yeah, I'd like to hear a little more from Dennis why "we" must have political answers before the questions have even been asked. And the idea that politics is about deciding how to limit and control people is even more bizarre. Eric Beck
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I think this is not correct. Think about it. What does liberation mean in concrete terms? It basically means changing law. Every revolution I can think of, after taking power, set about to overhaul the laws that govern the society.
Also, `capitalism' is a legal construction of the economic system, that is the rules under which trade in goods and services, and the rules of how labor are performed. These are laws that rule on process, with possible criminal penalties for individual misconduct.
The criminal system amounts to prohibitions on conduct. Then liberation from some of those prohibitions has to be made by revisions in the civil and criminal codes.
We all have an arm long lists in our heads of needed changes to society. Many of these ideas have to be reducible to laws and regulations, or prohibitions against certain laws and regulations.
For example, the title of the thread is demotic cuisine---which I originally mis-read as demonic. I had to look up demotic. It means `common'. In this context, I took it to mean ordinary not elite, by implication, devolving immediately into junk, bad for, fat, stupid slob food, etc, etc. Dennis Perrin's, link to Why You Are Fat was hilarious.
If people enjoy a giant mixed meat cheese pie with chocolate sauce dipped in batter and deep fried, sure go ahead. I am not interested in regulating what people eat. I am interested in regulating the quality of food produced. I want to set minimum standards of quality. Examples: meat and diary are not infected with e.coli, fresh produce isn't covered in pesticides, processed foods should have ingredients listed---in something bigger than 3pt. There must be some mathematical formula to optimize labeling point size and package surface areas.
I am also interested in regulating what food is served in public institutions like schools, prisons, hospitals, military bases etc. For example, just as I oppose corporate retail vendors in public schools, I have the same opposition to them in other public cafeterias. The legal justification is pretty simple. Many people in public institutions do not have a choice of eating anywhere else for that meal as in schools, or perhaps all their meals as in hospitals and prisons. Therefore serve the most nutritious meals that compose a `balanced' diet. In this day and age that usually means cooked from fresh ingredients with a minimum of processed food. Nice thing about these `reforms', is they employ a hell of a lot of people. Food and food services were among the early causalities of the neoliberal wars on humanity.
Just overhauling the FDA, we could probably get rid of some huge percentage of drug related crimes. And, what about cutting deep into the big pharma profits and fixing schemes? The other important agency in need of non-elective re-constructive surgery is the USDA.
Back in the old tear down the prisons thread, I was thinking of how to actually accomplish that goal. Start at the top, DoJ. It basically requires `revolutionary' legal commissions set up across the states in the federal regions to systematically overhaul state laws and bring them into uniform conformity under some new federal regime of what is considered criminal conduct and what is not, what are considered appropriate penalties and what are not, and so forth. You could get rid of many, many injustices. Technically this is a legislative duty. Not sure how to resolve that conflict. Legislators have a tendency to make all sorts of things crimes. Tocqueville's tyranny of the majority has a lot of application that needs to be struggled with and against. Everybody has their favorite crimes.
Just read this, as I was finishing:
``There were courts before capitalism and I dare say there will be afterward. I'll let someone else say what I'm trying to get across. What I mean is what Angela Davis talks about, i.e. a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance.
This is damned well something we should be thinking about.'' (DC)
Agreed, obviously. There is a pretty good wiki on Solon that's worth the time to read and think about for anybody interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon#Solon.27s_reforms