On 2013-05-24, at 7:26 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> I think that this is the case of viewpoints that you are debating in this
> thread. Your opponents' knowledge is derived from "systemic principles" and
> thus independent of facts. If facts support the conclusions derived from
> these systemic principles they are seen as corroborating evidence, if they
> don't - they are dismissed as irrelevant. In a nutshell, this is how
> idealism operates.
It's interesting how left-wing idealism expresses itself these days. When the industrial working class was militantly on the rise, left-wing idealists typically exaggerated the capacity of the masses and underestimated the power of the ruling class in keeping with the idea that history was unfolding as predicted and the system was crumbling. Today, given the historic decline of the workers' and socialist movement, pessimism is the underlying mood on the left, despite the temporary excitement and hope occasioned by events like Occupy and the Arab Spring. So a tendency in some quarters to deny the system's vulnerabilities and to turn its domestic and foreign policy setbacks into victories is to be expected. Carrol's oracular pronouncements that the Iraq war and the financial crisis were both unalloyed successes for US capitalism, despite evidence to the contrary, belongs in that framework.