Donald wrote:I'd like to suggest that you adjust the way that you communicate your ideas because they do not make any clear sense to me (and apparently, others). I read your response over twice and stared at my screen in bedeviled disbelief.
If you want to consider myself a pleb, that is fine, but this also obliges you to make your ideas more accessible. Otherwise your posts start becoming a vague form of harassment.
Donald, give it a break. We all know you're not stupid, and I'm not trying to look down upon you (nor am I obliged to analogize). If you stared in disbelief, it's because you can't believe I took the position I did.
Let me remind you of what you said before in respect to pragmatism over homosexuality:
Me: ...the real shift can come from pragmatism towards idealism, not from the cultural capitalist tool called queer liberation.
You: The agent of revolution is the proletariat, not homosexuals.
As someone from a working class background (ESPECIALLY as someone who HAS gotten in trouble disputing social-mechanical intolerance), I take tremendous offense from this. You basically said I'm obliged to endure frustration and revolt, gambling legal dignity just so democracy can be refreshed in a society that refuses to think for itself...
...and you repeated this above:
Marcuse's solution to this problem of liberal tolerance, which he believed was harmful to civil societies in liberal democracies, was to promote the idea that certain views from the Right (not necessarily the Right itself) must be gradually subjected to a kind of social-mechanical intolerance, one which would secure the recuperation of formerly revolutionary items (such as black liberation, women's liberation, queer liberation, etc.), compromise the hegemony of bourgeois prejudices and pave the way for future left-radicals to diversify or focus new social movements. These changes, for Marcuse, would enrich the old liberal idea of democracy with the perfection provided by more radically egalitarian impulses that seek to constantly influence society.
You also said libertarianism would be the key to this:
This does not necessarily mean a strategy of divide and conquer using the repressive devices of the state (although I'm sure many liberals are fine with that anyway), but if the public and cultural spaces became infected with this libertarian relativity and nouvelle bigotry, this potentially facilitates a crisis of democracy.
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Potemkin wrote:Actually, no. No, it isn't.
Are you familiar with Rawls' original position argument? When I say risk assumption, I'm talking about characteristics defined before birth.
The quote from Marcuse actually reinforces Donald's point rather than refuting it.
Yes, I agree. That's why I said the Marcuse reference "fits".
Just out of interest, what do you think is the meaning of that passage from Marcuse?
...to inhibit social mobility and secure social status...
That's what Donald's arguing. He's saying a new generation has to be frustrated in order to catalyze a new social revolution where the very dignity of the frustrated becomes jeopardized.
Don't play me for dumb. I see what you're doing. It's typical Foucault provocation, and it's exactly why Habermas started to believe postmodernists shouldn't be taken seriously. Merely giving postmodernists attention is what leads to social decay.