Re: meiksins-wood article

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: meiksins-wood article
Greetings Comrades,
Debordagoria's comment caught my attention,
Debordagoria,
Gee, how sectarian and out of touch with reality do
you have to be to start a sentence like that?
Doyle
Besides being too brief to be asserting anything concrete, the conjoining of
sectarian and "out of touch with reality" are classic in the content about
sectarianism.  I want to criticize this comment on the grounds of being
anti-disabled.
Hidden within the charge of sectarianism is of course some degree of looking
askance at obsessive behavior.  Obsessive behavior is a disability.  If our
movement is going to liberate humanity it must confront those aspects of the
social structure which organize class based upon how disability puts one at a
disadvantage in class structure and out of competition with people who perform
without a disability.
Curiously we can understand better mobility issues, than we can consciousness
issues.  If someone uses a wheelchair we don't expect them to not be a part of
the movement because most of us walk, nor do we expect the movement to use
wheelchairs to show equality.  What tends to happen though is through traumatic
stress management, obsessive consciousness structures emerge in human beings. 
 Some
people are more vulnerable to narrowing focus and attention to very restricted
domains than are others.  But having said that, where people do obsess, they can
contribute effectively to the movement and the persons who do would be uncounted
legions since the charge of being obsessive is mainly contentless anyway,
because the term is not something we can measure except in very vague ways what
is obsessive.  So excluding obsessives does not seem on the face of it a
socialist attitude.
On a larger perspective that is of a group, Debordagoria implies that a group
with a dogmatic agenda is the problem, though in this case Mark Jones is not
this group or any other group representative.  Again Debordagoria uses the
conjoining of "out of touch with reality" with sectarian.  It is not clear at
all that out of touch with reality means anything in this case.  That is that a
mind that can't touch reality is obsessive which is probably more appropriate to
label symptoms of schizophrenia.  More likely obsession narrows the touch of
reality significantly in comparison to the average person, but the average
person has as much trouble seeing a stranger's reality as does the obsessive. 
 In
other words everyone to some degree is unable to see reality.  That sort of all
seeing of reality is idealism of the human condition.  Rather reality is
external on the whole to the mind and the mind is part of reality.
Of course we can all understand that dogmatic groups are a problem.  But what is
the problem?  I would propose that it is an issue of managing group emotions. 
 Not
the content of the rational speech.  In other words though some issue is
dogmatically asserted, "down with capitalism", it is not the content, but the
behavior that doesn't work that we have problems with.  And in that is the great
difficulty that sectarianism has with navigating through differences amongst
people about what to do.  Or said more clearly, that a dogmatic group has
problems with merging itself with the larger system.
What gives a group a cohesion is how the group feels within itself in being part
of that group.  The intensity of that cohesion is the central issue of obsessive
structures.  And it is not clear within that how mood disorders contribute to
that also.   Mood being what we associate with depression for example.  For a
dogmatic group a threat may be that a doctrine is being shifted, or threatened
with change.  That arouses intense anger and fear.  The content is usually
variable, and shifting, but the intense feelings stay the same as the
determinant that structures a dogmatic attitude.  So that the issue is the way
intensity of feelings force upon a group rigidity.  In current conditions since
feelings are poorly understood, it is still not clear what to do about
dogmatism.  However, I would propose that dogmatism is a kind of proximity issue
of human groups.  In that dogmatism reflects how human beings understand a
group's cohesion through the emotional reaction group members have to the
currents and flow of being part of any human group.
Debordagoria's comment is perfectly ignorant of any understanding of that sort
of problem.  Mark Jones deserves membership in a group whether or not he is
obsessive or not.  To exclude someone because they are obsessive is outrageous
anti-disability.  To charge sectarianism without making clear how that point is
not anti-disability is a serious political failing only useful in most contexts
in the sense of attacking Marxist by associating Marxists with disability. 
 There
is no way to deal with dogmatism as a problem by making obtuse remarks about
sectarianism that does not recognize that a disabled person has a right
politically to participate just like anyone else.  That therefore the attack
against sectarianism is mostly a contentless charge with the underlying meaning
of associating disability to Marxism.  Like the similar charge against reds of
being homosexual such thinking rests upon the existing social structure of
oppression with no sense whatsoever that a great socialist movement would
liberate everyone.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor