tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post2762829160985701648..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Running on the DifferenceDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-38586961313010498362014-02-06T21:54:44.850-08:002014-02-06T21:54:44.850-08:00Uh, no. Also, yuck.Uh, no. Also, yuck.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-11246537426819166162014-02-06T19:21:51.721-08:002014-02-06T19:21:51.721-08:00White progressives (WP's - and I include you, ...White progressives (WP's - and I include you, Dale) who have supported and enabled the Mexican <i>Volkwanderung</i> into the U.S. have <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=volkwanderung&rlz=1C1TSNP_enUS504US504&oq=volkwanderung&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l4.4870j0j4&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=mexicans+drive+out+blacks" rel="nofollow">a lot of explaining to do to the black community</a> you claim you care so much about.<br /><br />If I didn't know better, I would suspect that WP's have in effect hired Mexicans as proxy racists; you want them to become a human wall to keep poor blacks away from affluent your white enclaves, while maintaining not very plausible deniability about your real intentions.Mark Plushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03859046131830902921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-63151632123675527762014-01-07T19:04:15.461-08:002014-01-07T19:04:15.461-08:00The 'overly' largely comes from reading Ep...The 'overly' largely comes from reading Epicurus recently ~ it's a fun rhetorical device and hard to argue against, especially when hedonists use it!Ian Alan Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02154905986438150043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-9803319497509145552014-01-07T18:58:15.698-08:002014-01-07T18:58:15.698-08:00I say "actually" too much.I say "actually" too much.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-55389074873779650712014-01-07T18:57:05.764-08:002014-01-07T18:57:05.764-08:00if we overly attenuate ourselves to "fundamen...<i>if we overly attenuate ourselves to "fundamental practical political realities", we've already foreclosed upon sometimes unknowable potentialities, those that appear as impractical.</i><br /><br />That "overly" is doing a lot of work for you, tricky man! Setting that aside, though, I actually think this familiar point is wildly overstated, actually. I say this as someone who long took it for granted. I now think deciding what is good and then taking a measure of the distance between where we are and where we should be by proposing the track between the two is actually a discipline that enriches rather than impoverishing the imagination.<br /><br /><i>I would rather think about what would have to pass for those stakeholders to be transformed, to learn and become people capable of being involved in democratic movements for justice, rather than already assume the existing stakeholder divides constitute the entire range of the political field</i><br /><br />I would propose that finding ways of investing coalitions in existing organizational formations defined in large part by their relation to party platforms/members/representatives is actually a way to induce the stakeholder transformation you rightly cherish as well as the transformation of the organizational terrain itself.<br /><br /><i>I don't see our positions as being incredibly different</i><br /><br />I think this is right.<br /><br /><i>artists just have a hard time letting go of the 'possible'</i><br /><br />And a good thing too -- most agitprop is shitty art.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-78193547877141780942014-01-07T18:35:27.825-08:002014-01-07T18:35:27.825-08:00I'm not a revolutionary, not for a lack of des...I'm not a revolutionary, not for a lack of desire for one, but as you've outlined, for the lack of any prospect of one.<br /><br />The problem, as I see it, is that if we overly attenuate ourselves to "fundamental practical political realities", we've already foreclosed upon sometimes unknowable potentialities, those that appear as impractical. The 'practical' is an incredibly ideological category after all, and what we allow ourselves (or refuse to allow ourselves) to imagine does a great deal to delimit the practical itself.<br /><br />For example, when you say:<br /><br /><i>"I think the "bad options" exist in part because of existing stakeholders who differ from us in their situations and aspirations. Are we wishing these people away, killing them off?"</i><br /><br />....my response is that I would rather think about what would have to pass for those stakeholders to be transformed, to learn and become people capable of being involved in democratic movements for justice, rather than already assume the existing stakeholder divides constitute the entire range of the political field. (this goes along with the ways in which those 'we' would consider 'we' have the capacity to transform as well)<br /><br />I don't see our positions as being incredibly different ~ I think a plurality of relationships with the state are necessary (both formal, antagonistic, and otherwise), and see reform alongside agitation. I suppose it's largely a question of emphasis.<br /><br />Perhaps artists just have a hard time letting go of the 'possible' in the actual.<br /><br />Best,<br /> ~iIan Alan Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02154905986438150043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-80726759234003440662014-01-07T17:51:47.914-08:002014-01-07T17:51:47.914-08:00There are legislative campaigns for public financi...There are legislative campaigns for public financing of elections and instant runoff voting that might open third parties to function as more than spoilers in our dysfunctional duopoly, especially at the state level -- but even those politics (which I endorse for many of the same reasons you probably do) require here and now a lot of organizing at the level of partisan politics and legislation. <br /><br />"Wouldn't there be more to be gained from democratic movements that engaged with the state at large, made demands of it, attempting to radically reshape the terms and standards of various claims/discourses/debates themselves?" Engaged with the state "at large" apart from campaigns, legislators, constituted legislative processes... Honestly, what is that? Make demands how? Radically reshape how? <br /><br />If we are disdaining legislation and party politicians are we talking about revolution here? You and me with what majority behind us? General strikes? For what? Workers councils, universal basic income? I find these outcomes very appealing as well. Honestly, I see more legible pathways to these outcomes through legislative reform preceded by a whole lot of ground level education and organizing.<br /><br /><i>Remaining on the 'left of the possible' leaves one in an unfortunately liberal position, in which we choose between a small set of already existing bad options in the present</i><br /><br />I think the "bad options" exist in part because of existing stakeholders who differ from us in their situations and aspirations. Are we wishing these people away, killing them off? I am hoping steeply progressive taxation paying for widely expanded welfare can yield a stakeholder diversity more susceptible to coalition building for the kind of equity-in-diversity that makes me a democratic socialist. <br /><br />Look, these stakeholders at various distances to our right still exist even if one decides in one's radicalism that one doesn't want to try to build coalitions with liberals (who are also to our right) to accomplish progressive outcomes that they see as ends in themselves but which we see as footholds we would use to push on to still more equitable, sustainable, diverse outcomes to come.<br /><br />Democracy is the idea that people should have a say in the public decisions that affect them. I do not want to smash the state, but to democratize it. I am very happy to agree that there is more to having a say in public than voting, holding office, or appealing to legislators. But I know that states remain indispensable to having such a say, and any political position that denies, disdains or functions as a distraction from this indispensability is doing more harm than good, even in terms of the good to which it is likely explicitly devoted.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-42056396991180294672014-01-07T17:51:37.513-08:002014-01-07T17:51:37.513-08:00Good to hear from you Ian, I am very excited by th...Good to hear from you Ian, I am very excited by the public work you are doing in the world. There is of course education, agitation, organization, expression in the service of sustainable equity-in-diversity beyond voting, office-holding, and legislation. <br /><br />I strongly agree with you that there is more to politics than governance. And yet government is indispensable to any politics. I think you probably agree with that in principle, too, although I am not sure if your emphasis allows the principle in practice. When I say "I'm not sure," I really mean that. I'll take your word on it. What matters is that the first two sentences of this paragraph delineate perfectly compatible premises.<br /><br />When I said that one must push Democrats from the left, part of what I hoped to communicate by that was that I agree the left is bigger by far than the Democratic Party. Hell, my own teaching and writing as a democratic socialist is not reducible to partisan politics. <br /><br />But, as I say in the post, the Democratic party is an indispensable available instrument for the left, and any left politics that disdains that instrument (in ways that inevitably empower the reactionary instrument that is the GOP whether you like that or not) has failed to grasp basic realities of the practical-institutional political terrain as it exists.<br /><br />You mention "movements that refuse the homogenizing logics of party power, and particularly 2-party power in the U.S." This seems to me to entail a denial of fundamental practical political realities to no good purpose at all.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-29659319138756369732014-01-07T16:35:52.640-08:002014-01-07T16:35:52.640-08:00While the state will surely have to be instrumenta...While the state will surely have to be instrumental in the struggle for the procurement of healthcare for all, regulations against climate change, regulations on various markets, etc., etc., I still find it unconvincing that simply fighting within the democratic party for substantial reforms is a worthwhile pursuit.<br /><br />The movements that I find inspiring are movements that refuse the homogenizing logics of party power, and particularly 2-party power in the U.S.. Wouldn't there be more to be gained from democratic movements that engaged with the state at large, made demands of it, attempting to radically reshape the terms and standards of various claims/discourses/debates themselves?<br /><br />Remaining on the 'left of the possible' leaves one in an unfortunately liberal position, in which we choose between a small set of already existing bad options in the present (although I will agree that some of these options are 'less bad' than others, and that these differences are not insignificant).<br /><br />I still find it more appealing to lay claim to the always-present possibility of other worlds already seeded in the present one, the possibility of novelty, of the 'new' (the virtual in the actual, if you will, a kind of Rancierian dissensus, or even an Arendtian natality).<br /><br />It seems the radical-left movements in much of South America have done exceedingly well making use of this kind of relationship.<br /><br />Note, this isn't a call for the abolition for the state, nor a reduction of all of the complex party dynamics within the state, but rather an insistence that democracy itself necessarily precedes and exceeds the state (to use a phrase you're fond of).Ian Alan Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02154905986438150043noreply@blogger.com