Re: Plumbing, consciousness & soc.dem. Jul 22, 94 10:24:10 pm

[Herbert Gintis <gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gary says,

>But it seems to me that Herb is missing
>a rather obvious point, which is that social democracy is in crisis
>to a large extent because it has been under sustained vigorous attack
>by the right - backed up by all the resources which the owners of
>capital can marshal - for close to two decades.

	I do not agree with this. The mass of voters have become
disenchanted with government inefficiency and excessive bureaucracy,
as well as a corporatist system that can't respond flexibly to the
new realities of the international economy. Of course the right
doesn't like SD--it never did! But now people are listening to
critics. We are no longer in the age of manufacturing, but the age
of information and services. SD is not well equipped to deal with this.
Moreover, SD never made any headway in societies with a great deal of
ethnic, racial, religious, regional, and other diversities (such as the
US, UK, most of Africa, etc.).

	One point about your defense of SD, Gary. I have a basic
principle, which is this. When I lose, I blame it on me, not the
other guy. I firmly believe in blaming the loser for losing. If SD
loses because it's enemies defeated it, it lost! Losing is losing.
The point is to have good ideas AND WIN.

>...I don't feel competent
>to enter a debate on the way propaganda works; often even its best
>practitioners understand it only on an intuitive level (Reagan,
>Thatcher).

	What you call propaganda I think has more than an element of
truth. Reagan and Thatcher (whom I do not agree with, of course) had
REALLY IMPORTANT critiques of the left. To call it ideology is to wrap
yourself in a shroud of perfection, IMHO.

>I would assert that we are intellec-
>tuals, and that, as such, one of our jobs IS to raise consciousness:
>i.e. to talk frankly about controversial issues, to raise subtle and
>difficult questions about the nature of social reality, and TO TAKE
>IDEOLOGICAL STANDS AND DEFEND THEM.

	I actually don't agree with this. If you mean how we talk to
each other on the pk list, it's a waste of time. With students, I
prefer to teach them how to evaluate arguments critically, and I am
proud when my students don't know what my own politics are (i.e., which
answers I prefer to questions that cannot be resolved on scientific
and empirical grounds alone). I don't think we should preach to students
our personal political and cultural values, although we should present
them for scrutiny along side other views.

>Gramsci's paper "Ordine Nuovo" contained the motto: "To tell the
>truth - that is revolutionary".  To define our business so narrowly
>as Herb seems to do amounts to abandoning all possibility of playing
>anything but a tinkering role in improving society, when what appears
>to be required is a radical overhaul.

	What 'truth' are you suggesting we be silent about?

>Some of us (Herb?) may think
>that incremental adjustments here and there are enough, or perhaps
>that only such adjustments are practically possible.  Fair enough.
>But shouldn't we define our role broadly enough that our discourse
>has room for the suggestion that a more dramatic transformation is
>required?And shouldn't we put these views before the public, as a way
>of enriching the quality of public discourse?
>
	Yes, as long as it doesn't take the place of finding answers
to real problems (fixing the pipes). If the answers involve massive
institutional change (a new system), so be it! But just wishful
thinking, moaning and groaning about the existing system, and super-
intellectual critiquing (e.g., deconstructing everything in sight),
is for the birds, IMHO.

Herb gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx