WE DO NOT BASE OUR ACTIONS ON VALUES.
I take this point as fundamental in the understanding of politics. I am not going to argue for it here; if you want to see the argument, see Chapter 4 of Ollman's _Alienation_, where he both rejects "values" as the basis of action AND argues (convincingly) that Marx did not think in terms of values either. And Id make no pretence of persuadinganyone on this list who believes otherwise; I state it not to persuade but to maintain clarity in the discussion.
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Miles Jackson Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:17:06 -
Joanna wrote: What I'm hearing you say is that all our emotions are simply reactions to a socially constructed reality.
CC: "Socially constructed" (the words) is of relatively recent coinage, but certainly the understanding of reality reflected in it is much older than the phrase. Off hand, I would say it goes back at least as far as Lucretius. And it might be argued that it is implicit in the 23d & 24th books of the Iliad. However that may be, I don't understand Joann'as term "emotions" here. I'm serious. There are serious debates about what emotions are, and the meaning of the term can't be taken for granted. I tend to think William James was correct: Emotions are a bodily state. I don't thinks this affects the present discussion but thought it worth mentioning in passing.
Joanna] Prostitution is held in low esteem, therefore our aversion to it, is simply something that we have learned to feel.
CC: Huh? Prostitution is held in low esteem therefore it is held inlow esteem? (The passive voice is also a bit worrisome here.) If Joanna is seriously arguing that the fundamental structure of the universe condemns prostitution (which is what saying it is "unnatural" amounts to) . . . .??? Someone might write a 3 volume work someday given a preliminary account of the various social sources of the endless variation of reaponses to prostitution and prostittes (as well as the endless debates, never settled, over what is and what isn't "prostitution." Until that day, prostitutes are merely people. I have no aversion to people.
At the same time we say that the alienation of work, which is essential to capitalism, is not something learned but something genuinely felt by workers who have needs that this kind of work does not meet.
MJ] I think this the point where we diverge. For me, capitalism doesn't estrange workers from some geniune, natural tendencies that precede all social relations.
CC: This of course is Marx's opinion. Practice, not static relations, form thought. And two points are crucial here. First, capitalism (or rather the "ideal average" of capitalism) TENDS TOWARD a Totality: But no actual capitalism (say contemporary u.s. capitalism) is a totality. It is simply not possible. And secondly, U.S. capitalism and U.S. society are anot identical, and it is the task of historians (whether they call themselves economists or political scientists or what haveyou) to attempt as fully as possible to trace the actual 'timber' of contemporary capitalism and of contemporary society and the endless interconnections, overlaps, frictions, etc. generated. Someone a few months ago wanted to know how we can escape the totality we are trapped in. The answer is simple: we are not trapped in any totality. And perhaps it is pertinent here to note that each of us every hour of our lives or at least waking lives are changing the world around us. Most of those changing acts (revolutionizing practice) have merely trivial effect, but they are the source from which revolutions sproute. (And there is no room in the preceding observations to drag in "values.")
Miles] Rather, it transforms social life. --And after capitalism, work will be mediated by social relations, just as it is now; it will be no further from nor any closer to "nature".
CC: This is perfect.
Joanna]That seems to be a contradiction to me. But, leaving aside the prostitution issue, which always gets me in hot water on this list, what I hear you saying is that all values are relative to the social relations that produce them.
CC: "Relative to" does not help. All so-called values are more or less adequate attempts to make sense of the social practice in which individuals always already find themselves enmeshed. It doesn't add anything and only creates confusion to talk about "values" here.
If this is the case, why do people feel pain in certain situations that are socially normative? Why do people revolt? What do they appeal to that isn't relative in their revolt?
MJ] No culture is monolithic with a logically coherent set of moral and political values. If people focus on some values, they zig; if they focus on other values, they zag (e.g., abortion). I recognize that appeals to universals can be an effective rhetorical and political strategy;
CC: As Tamas points out, though capitalism is not evil, nevertheless it is moral indignation that in the first instance leads most people to socialism. He doesn't develop this (and is correct in not doing so). But those who want seriously to build on their initial repugnance to this or that feature of capitalism will simply function far better if they get over this moralistic stage & settle down to studying social practice and latching on to those forms of social practice which at a given time and place seem most promising for the growth of anti-capitalist masses in action. One of the major flaws in over-emphasis on "leadership" is the over-emphaisis it leads to on precisely accurate theory. Most of your masses, most of your core activists, most of your centeral leadership in any social movement up to and including revolution will vary widely in the way in which they explain to themselves (or others) their involvement in the struggle. In a discussion such as the present, which is occurring in the bleachers, not on the playing field, such metaphysical questions as why do people revolt is obfuscatory. There are as many answers to that question as there are people.
Miles] MLK's was a master at that. However, that's a pragmatic argument about how to engage and inspire people under certain social conditions;
CC] As I mentioned recently in another post, C.L.R. James ahd predicted a period of social change on the basis of growth in NAACVP membershipk in the late '40s; Rosa Parks had attended a political summer school, and the whole Montgomery NAACP was highly sophisticated politically. The strike Rosa Parks triggered was doing very nicely, thank you, before MLK ever became involved, and no doubt would have continued to grow without him. He had, however, a wonderful (and quite vital skill) of making people feel more deeply the necessity of what without him they were already resolved to do. That, also incidentally, if Iunderstand Lih, was the function Lenin kept urging on the RSDLP; the workers were doing very well, thank you, in araising a revolutionary struggle. The job of the RSDLP was to enhance that struggle pretty much in the way King enhanced the Civil-Rights struggle, and might have enhanced the anti-war struggle had he not been shot down. And that is what Fred Hampton was doing for many of us in the Middle West until he was murdered. After 4 decades memfory of that still plunges me into grief and rage.
Miles] it does not demonstrate that all revolts must be based on some universal, moral standards that float above social relations.
I'd go as far as to say that the imperative to ground our political work in some universal, natural tendencies is itself a product of social relations. We've learned that natural = good (everybody in our society relies on this rhetoric, from gay marriage opponents to breakfast cereal companies), so we use the claim that "X is natural" to support the claim "X is good". This is a logical fallacy (see G.E. Moore); more importantly, it leads us into pointless debates about which specific aspects of social life are more "natural" than others. Although I haven't been following my own advice in the last few posts, I think it's more helpful to discuss the characteristics of the "good society" without making any effort to link those social relations to some assumptions about human nature. Miles
CC] I haven't tead the other posts Miles refers to, and I might have some differences here, but this seems adequate to the present. But let me say once more: Nature does not exist. Natural processes, such as building a ICBM or scratching one's rear or a star going nova constitute the universe, but there is no "Nature" to refer to as a standard. Pope in fact was probably correct: Whatever is, isright." Until we change it.
Carrol
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