[lbo-talk] anti-pro contradictions

[Alan Rudy]

I think what SOB and Mike have written is very good when it comes to the
libertarian side of Americanism... which, I'll admit seems to be the
ideological foundation of the economic TPers (Scotts or Charmin?).  At the
same time, in terms of the issue of Reaganism raised in the other (presently
ongoing - there have been quite a few, no?) thread, what Reaganism did so
brilliantly is - to be all traditionally and dichotomously gendered -
married a libertarian economic husband to a populist communitarian wife.
The masculine husband role, here, stakes out a position where freedom means
the opportunity to crush opponents through efficient, competitive markets.
The feminine wife role embraces a position where freedom means the space to
embrace neighbors through affective, face-to-face relationships.  Both tend
to embrace the ways "the state" produces "government bureaucracies" of the
social control variety, the former seeing that as the state's proper limit
and the latter seeing it making true community possible.  The dad argues
that its a dog eat dog world out there while the mom indicates that anything
can be worked out over milk and cookies.
Both sides of Reaganism embrace the idea of a democratic state,
representative government.  What they both had is when that democratic
government, those state representatives, go and produce laws which generate
regulatory bureaucracies that constrain property rights in the name of civil
rights or enable civil rights that support people who don't like or can't
eat milk and cookies (much less the way things get worked out over them).
Its not just that the left seems - without the always problematic Soviet
Union - to have no clear economic alternative except European-style (read
un-American) social democracy, its also that the left seems - given
post-modern uncertainty about singular or even primary identities - to have
no clear alternative vision of community.  There is the agrarian and often
crunchy left, with its adoration of localism... but most of this, at best,
reaches to bioregionalism, a wildly problematic eco-socio- spatial category
if ever there was one.
This, it seems to me, means that when there's a clear incident or enemy -
Iraq 2003, Katrina '05 or Seattle '99 (capital appears to be too amorphous
these days) - then the left can act but not based on much more than
agreement across apparently irreconcilable differences... there is no center
to hold.
I'm tired, too much grading, here's hoping this is coherent as makes a
contribution.
A

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 8:51 PM, Mike Beggs <mikejbeggs at gmail.com> wrote:


> On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 6:26 AM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>
> wrote:
>
> > no. i wanted a pithy way to describe everything your wrote. if you
> > read "anti-government / pro-state Tea Partiers" [or whomever] would
> > you understand my intended meaning in an essay that makes it clear I'm
> > coming from a Marxist perspective?
> >
> > if you read that phrasing, as a Leftist reading a Left academic
> > journal, would you say, "but but but... that's not it." ?
>
> I can see the distinction you're getting at, but I reckon 'state' and
> 'government' have different meanings in state theory, at least within
> the marxist tradition I'm familiar with - Miliband, Poulantzas etc.
> 'State' would be the the whole set of public administration
> institutions - from the legislature to to courts, police, schools,
> welfare offices, etc, etc. 'Government' would be 'the government of
> the day': the dominant party (or coaltion) in the legislature and the
> executive (cabinet). If you wanted to get more abstract you could
> broaden your definition of 'state' to refer to a functional position
> or complex of positions within the social whole, rather than
> actually-existing institutions as they are. But generally, the
> 'government' is more of an agency, while the 'state' is more of a
> field or institutional structure, though the government is also a
> structure and various branches of the state act as agents, in more or
> less co-ordinated ways.
>
> Mike Beggs
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319