> On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 12:04 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> > but it would be nice for a moment of you contemplated what life in the
> USA is like.
>
> This is very strange requirement, one you make of AN every time this
> comes up. Why does he need to contemplate life in the US when the
> discussion is about Germany? It's very odd. It's like the US is the
> norm/ideal and nations are to be measured by their degree of deviation
> from it. I'm tempted to think it's a form of leftist US
> exceptionalism, but that doesn't seem like you.
>
>
> This makes absolutely no sense. First of all, Doug's request to AN is
immediately pertinent to AN's insistence that HE lives in hell and that
anyone on the list who thinks European Social Democracy is more attractive
then what we have here in the US is an idiot... if he thinks such folks are
idiots it might make sense - good materialist that he surely is - to perhaps
think about what life here is like. Second, not a single person I have read
here - AN's claims to the contrary notwithstanding (Murray Bookchin used to
love that turn of phrase) - has argued once that the neoliberalization of
the German welfare state is making things worse there. Third, "the US is
the norm.ideal and nations are measured by their degree of deviation"? The
whole point of romantic views of social democratic welfare states in the EU
by Americans is that folks with that perspective think the THEY are the
norm/ideal against which OUR lousy programs are measured - you've turned the
whole thing on its head.
Last, a parallel or two. Starting most notably in the early 90s there were a bunch of European academics who embraced a form of ecological modernization they deemed The Triple Helix. These folks argued that forms of social ecological efficiency far greater than heretofore imagained could be generated by new relationships between university scientists (which were to include natural, physical and social scientists), government representatives & bureaucrats and industrial representatives (to include corporate and union folks). Another somwhat similar development showed up in EU-wide efforts to develop rural development schemes associated with what they called multifunctional landscapes - where it was assumed that rural regions provided ecological, cultural, and economic services - as well as natural resources and food - that needed to be coordinated in a manner such that none were subordinated (wholly) to the others.
Both of these programs are wildly problematic, ignored issues of power in their planning and have been almost utterly coopted by neoliberal forces... at the same time, I was utterly and completely envious because what we have here in the US when it comes to the promotion and development of technical efficiency or rural development is completely bought by corporate interests in the former and by the Farm Bureau, or natural resource extracting corporations, in the latter. Even the IDEA that you could develop a multipolar strategy for technical development, the IDEA that rural areas provide public ecological and cultural services (and how I hate that word), is a million miles beyond the consciousness of the EPA, the USDA, and State Departments of Environmental Quality and/or Agriculture.
I don't have be an idiot or to see Europe only through rose colored glasses to see possibilities in the wildly problematic programs I just reviewed that fundamentally do not exist here... I'd guess this is what's got Doug irked as well.