luka said:
i'm in sympathy with oliver because he's taking a pragmatic view as opposed to an idealouge's view.
This is capitalist ideology in itself; it can present itself as realistic only because it has foreclosed the question of what reality is. In other words, it has stopped politics and made everything into a question of administration.
global communism doesn't exist. it's as real as the second coming of christ and the building of jerusalem here on earth. an ideal world may look like global communism, it may look like willy wonka's chocolate factory. it's academic, it won't happen.
Who's talking about an ideal? It seems to me that Oliver is talking about an ideal, albeit one that doesn't, never has and never will exist in reality, only ideologically. The diabolical genius of the neocon agenda is to that it is both idealistic (they claim to be standing for values such as Justice and Freedom) but also 'realistic' and 'pragmatic' (it's OK to kill children to pursue these 'ideals').
Politics has to START from the concrete situation which we're in, but it doesn't have to END there. To say that this situation is all we can hope for, all we can expect, is not politics at all, it is the anti-political quietism of the past thirty years dressed up as 'realism'.
in comparison to actually existing or historical political systems parlimentary democracy has its merits.
Tell that to those raped and killed in former Yugoslavia. Tell it to those being fleeced by the likes of Roman Abramovic in the former Soviet Union. Democracy is better for the exploiter class, better for those who want and are able to 'travel', to go to the theatre and buy goods produced by western companies, but it isn't better for the mass of humanity who couldn't care less about which bureaucrat is ruling them provided they get food and shelter, both of which were guaranteed under state socialism.
i don't think oliver;s point about freedoms can be easily dismissed. you can write and say what you want.
Meanwhile in the real world...
Get a proper job Luke, then you'll see how much freedom you have to say what you like in this country. Sure, you can say what you like here, provided your views aren't expressed so loudly other people can hear them and aren't antagonistic. In other words, provided you go along with the consensus. You're not put in a gulag here, you just lose your job or are put in a psych ward.
it beats afghanistan under the taliban. it beats russia under stalin. it beats feudal europe it even beats today's china. i don't see why, if we're talking about 'ACTUAL examples of really existing democracy' we can't talk about communism as it existed in the USSR or in China under Mao. why we can't talk about gulags and cultural revolutions as opposed to your vision of communism in its pure state.
Because the very arguments Oliver is using to defend the evils of US FP are EXACTLY THE SAME as those which state socialists used to defend those regimes. i.e. the evil of the state socialist apologists was that they made an appeal to pragmatism - sure, this isn't real communism, but it's on the way to real communism, and we have to be realistic, don't we?
if you had to choose a system to live under you'd probably go for parliamentry democracy every time. you're unlikely to simply 'disappear' becasue you insulted the prime minister's wife. it's not much, but it's something.
You're not claiming to be unaware of the amount of people that the British and American govts have made 'disappear' are you?
if it's legitimate to tell people to 'read foucault mate' it's also legitimate to say
read conrad mate, read dostoyevsky. the books are more entertaining anyway, they've got storys and the prose is better.
It's even more legitimate to say read both and then be in a position to make the comparison, as I have and am.
I say, read Dostoyevsky again, especially Ivan Karamazov's dream of the Grand Inquisitor - it explains perfectly the 'pragmatic' utilitarian logic of the oppressor, from Stalin to Bush.
i agree that oliver brushes sins committed in the name of democracy under the carpet.
democracy may well be nothing but a hazy ideal, like justice or freedom or equality. they are banners and people who march under those banners have acheived things which seem to me to be worth acheiving. they continue to fight for things which seem to me to be worth fighting for.
Such as? How is campaigning to give lawyers power over you positive?
racism and discrimination didn't disappear with the abolition of slavery. sexism and discrimination didn't disappear when women were given the vote. continuing inequality doesn't negate those acheivements.
What achievements and how do they relate to dictatorship of the elite?
oliver is saying, iraq is fucked despite the fall of sadaam and the introduction of democratic elections. that doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate the fall of saddaam and the democratic elections. small victories are worth celebrating, and in the absence of willy wonkas chocolate factory and the birth of the ideal world, they are the only things worth celebrating.
What are we celebrating? People did have a vote under Hussein - at least they were under no illusions that their ratification of an 'inevitable' process had no impact upon it whatsoever.
'The inflexible law is to do with a tendency towards subordination to the necrotic structure of bourgeois representationalism.'
this is the worst sentence ever written.
k, but your ARGUMENT against its claim would be?