[lbo-talk] Origin of "privatization"

[andie_nachgeborenen]

No, I didn't say the wealthy were duping the masses, although they certainly do their best to make sure the masses don't have accurate information or the time and means to find and process it. Whether the views of elites and their supporters in subordinate groups are similar is an empirical question and an important one. I don't think there has been enough work on it. It hypothesize based on what I've read and what I know that the differences are a matter of degree rather than kind. Part of this is because the most effective ideology is promoted by believers, and cynicism is a hard pose to maintain. The term "useful tools," actually a softening of Lenin's expression "useful idiots," is misleading. There is clearly a misalignment of interest. Your neighbor, unlike Romney, say, has no interest in ensuring that he cannot be insured, or insured for per-existing conditions. But Romney can make repeal of the ACA, itself a gift to insurers, a top priority as a campaigning point because people like your neighbor will support it anyway, on the grounds that a program based on Romney's own state healthcare program is "socialism." 

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 11, 2012, at 10:35 AM, // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:


> On Sep 11, 2012, at 10:43 AM, andie_nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> The later are useful tools of the former, yes? In this case, apparently, the term was introduced to explain what radical counterrevolutionary conservatives with wealth and power were doing at everyone else's expenses, including those of their deluded supporters in the latter group..
>> 
> 
> That’s the standard liberal argument, isn’t it? That the wealthy are duping the masses? But is the claim being made (by Wojtek, in quoting Robin) that the latter (vanilla conservatives like my neighbour = VC) hold their views for the same reasons as the former (the radical counterrevolutionaries = RC)? That you say “deluded” makes me think you don’t take that position (that these two groups, VCs and RCs, are identical [in thought]).
> 
>    —ravi
> 
> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>> On Sep 11, 2012, at 8:48 AM, // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Sep 11, 2012, at 7:39 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> [WS:] Interesting.  Corey Robin's idea of conservatives as radical
>>>> counter-revolutionaries fighting for the restoration of wealth and
>>>> power inequalities explains that concordance quite well. <snip>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> When you guys write “conservatives” do you mean those with power and influence (Huckabee, O’Reilly, Rove, etc) or my neighbour who rants about Obama’s socialist agenda and the general gay-ness of the modern world?
>>> 
>>>  —ravi
>>> 
> 
> 
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