[lbo-talk] the "principles of solidarity"

Alan Rudy alan.rudy at gmail.com
Mon Sep 26 14:11:49 PDT 2011


On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 2:42 PM, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:


>
> On Mon, 26 Sep 2011, Wojtek S wrote:
>
>> [WS:] But this sounds awfully naive. How on Earth are we going to
>> have a deliberative democracy in a social environment other than
>> department faculty?
>>
>
> Well they already have it at the level of a street occupation, which is a
> lot larger and more diverse than an academic department.
> And in Madrid, which is in many ways their model, it existed on a much
> larger scale.
>
> It would be difficult to imagine it working at the university level - let
>> alone society at large.
>>
>
> I think they've imagined it pretty clearly, not at the level of society,
> but at the level of a society-wide social movement. I don't think
> imagination is the problem. I think you mean it may not be practical. That
> the underlying presupposition -- that general assemblies, if properly run,
> will eventually decide important things in a way that feels legitimate and
> binding and imperative on its participants -- may be wrong, esp. when they
> get too large or diverse.
>
> Michael
>
>
Michael, Michael, Michael, and Robert, Robert, Robert, as he's made clear over and over again, Woj is an unrepentant and forlorn Progressive... Weberian to the core... social movements hold no attraction or potential and they get snickered and sneered at repeatedly - without deliberation or attempting to pursue possible empirical referents - in his world... witness his ongoing distate for but unwillingness to give up completely on Obamanism. The mere fact that he can imagine deliberative democracy in academic settings, and nowhere else - much less efficaciously anywhere else, is indicative the the depth of his disconnect on these issues. A



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