[p2p-research] john pilger on the greeks

[j.martin.pedersen]

On 29/05/10 03:36, Ryan Lanham wrote:
> On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 9:11 PM, j.martin.pedersen <
> m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:
>> The real in the struggle lies in solidarity and mutual recognition
>> between groups of the oppressed and between a network of the oppressed
>> and those in the middle, who can and are able to take a side. That would
>> be us. You and me and everyone else on this list. We can show
>> solidarity.
>>
> 
> It's good to believe in something and to use yourself toward some purpose.
> I doubt there is one purpose or one set of allied good purposes.  The
> trouble with goodness is that it must be collaborative to make any moral
> sense.  No one can have the right ideas individually because the right ideas
> are necessarily dialogical, situational and path dependent.  Otherwise, we'd
> know them and all move toward them.  In other words, Fanon, Marx, Jesus,
> Buddha or the Cato Institute or anyone else can't help you.  The answers are
> out there in the practice of living, not in the reflections of people who
> lived in another time.


Which is precisely why it is important to get together and adresss the
designed and structurally sustained non-justice and non-equality. There
is not one good, hopefully, but that does not - at all - mean that there
ism't a lot of bads, evils and worse that are strucutrally in place and
controlled by the few. The lack of one vision for "the good" is a bad
excuse for not addressing the bad. It does not follow.


> You are right to object to fetishes about objects.  But those are not
> "technology."  They are instruments.  Technology is the capacity to solve
> issues...not an instrument or device in itself.  When people are armed with
> skills and capacities and collaborate in civil societies, then the prospect
> exists of real progress toward something we all mostly recognize as superior
> within a sphere.  That's what, say, the Danes have achieved.  They have
> found how to collaborate together to form a worldview that works for Danes.
> Does it work for people from Texas?  Probably not.  The Danes themselves
> must set their rules for who can collaborate with them...who they will work
> with.  At a global level, certain problems demand collaboration across a
> broad spectrum of entities.  This is indeed very difficult to
> achieve...maybe impossible.  But it cannot be forced and it cannot be
> demanded or sloganed.  It simply has to evolve into crises and then
> respond.  Otherwise, someone must seize power.

I don't understand this techno-nationalism and especially the
determinism that seems to run through it....?! At any rate, "the Danes"
haven't found out anything at all that works for them. The Danish elite
has found a way to continually assert itself.

For what concerns global solidarity: there is only one way and that is
to try and keep the idea alive by collaborating with your neighbours and
always resist the oppressive forces that exist. Saying it is very
difficult is a truism, but moving onto "maybe impossible" is a
self-fulfilling prophecy.

> The Economist magazine has an excellent article in the last issue or two
> about Chavez destroying Venezuela.  It comes from a point of view.  Indeed,
> Matt Ridley was once an editor for the Economist...and a good one in my
> view.  But the article is worth reading whether you agree with them or not.
> I sometimes don't agree with them.  In this case, I think they are spot on.

For someone who has no ideals and no particular direction or sense of
"the good", as you say, I can't help noticing that you keep bringing up
references from the very core of the liberal, capitalist elite's canon.
You express a very clear set of ideals all the time by expressing views
that are in accord with the oppressing elites (which is where this
thread commenced when Michel wrote a suggestive outline of how liberals
think and act to dominate the world, to which you agreed).

It is difficult to think of anything as opinionated and elitist as The
Econofascist.

However, I am "happy" to agree to disagree. This doesn't seem to lead
anywhere.

m