At 07:27 PM 6/12/97 -0700, Bill Lear wrote: >Wojtek then poses the "question for the Left", viz, how do we, like >some Platonic sage, appropriate or manufacture such "popular >mythologies ... with a potential for mass appeal". The answer to the >Left, if there can be "an answer", surely lies not in leftish >mythologies (normally referred to as lies), but in honest and open >debate in which myths are exposed insofar as is possible and >discussion takes place within the bounds of shared concern and reason, >rather than the comforting shade of myth. I reply: That is an awfully difficult task to acomplish. Any Limabughtomised idiot with the access to a broadcasting system can spit out myths and lies with the speed of a machine gun, but to refute those lies takes meticulous effort and a certain degree of sophistication, not to mention the audience's attention span. It is like trying to save the Titanic by pouring water overboard with buckets... an honest effort, but doomed to fail due to the overwhelming nature of the calamity. While I share Bill's principle of honest and open debate, I also recognise the limits of the rational discourse. Whether phrased as "bounded rationality" causing a deviance from the profit maximising behaviour, or as "false consciousness" causing the masses to accept an exploitative social order -- we are facing the same kind of problem: the discrepancy between rational behaviour and motives as depicted by experts, and actual behaviour and motives of real-life human actors. Demeaning the latter as less than perfect rationality which, in the recorded history of Western thought can be tracked back to Socrates (people do evil only when they do not know what good really is) may, the words of the Old Man, "explain the world differently" but does little to actually change it. It seems that capitalists have no problems with using popular mythologies, from "backward" patriarchy, to racism, and to "modern" individualism and the cult of technology to maintain a social hierarchy with themselves on the top of it -- the exhortation of economists of both, the rat-choice and the Marxist variety, notwithstanding. In fact, the tremendous popularity of the the free market mythology is the result of its myhtical appeal to the idea of freedom rather its rationality and explanatory power. By scientific standards, the explanatory power of the rat-choice approach is virtually nil. A while ago at some labour-related conference in Boston, someone expressed a view that labour, and the Left in genereal need a new set of stories or myths with a mass appeal. That proposition stirred a heated debate, with the more positivistically oriented types objecting to any hint that "our" ideology might be somehow connected with "myths," which have an aura of irrationality and falsehood. I have no such reservations. Myths are not necessarily falsehoods, except perhaps in a narrowly positivistic sense. Oftentimes, they are utopias, but if they have a sufficent appeal, they can motivate people to turn the unreal into the actual. Moreover, myths are actually more democratic than rationalistic formulations, because they allow a great latitude of "interpretation from below" (cf. the ubiquity of religious experience which has little to do with religious doctrine) -- while the latter are quite rigid standards that only the experts, i.e. some form of authority, can understand and interpret. Marianne's and Jim's comments on the automobile interpreted as a "personal space" is a case in point. By the same logic, I interpret the automobile as the device that alinenates me from both other people and the environment, whereas I see the train (the European variety that has compartments with 2 rows of seats facing each other) as a space that allows interacting and socialising with others. I guess both interpretations have little to do with the the visions of transportation planners who are primarily concerned with the most efficient way of moving n number of people from a to b. So, far from being falsehoods, myths can be a power ful tool in "changing the world" even though they might not be doing a great job in explaining it by scientific standards. As far as the comparison between automobile and the nuclear energy is concerned, it is not enough to say that the "gummint" built the infrastrcture for one but not for the other. I simply do not buy the elasticity argument or kindred line of thinking that tries to deduce the instituionalised commodity distribution from the alleged properties of the commodity itself (isn't it the essence of commodity fetishim?). That is, elasticity obtains not from the "nature" of the product itself, but from the institutional arrangements of product distribution. And the latter are always socially constructed. In other words, there might be no real substitutes for a private auto in a suburban environment, but such an environment was built on the assumption of private auto being the main mode of transportation. By contrast, in a high density residential arrangement (such as European or Japanese cities), there is no real substitution for rail-based transit. In the same vein, had the government imposed stiff environmental standards protecting the air from being polluted by smoke and the rivers being destroyed by dams, there would be no substituion for nuclear energy at the time promoted as a "clean" energy source. The point I'm getting at is that most if not all commodities can be distributed in many alternative ways, and those choices of venue will determine not only the demand/supply structure for different goods, but also the "private" or "public" nature of the goods themselves (thus public subsidies). The choice of venue is a political one, and as such it must be appealing to the population at large. It is, therefore, the "right" combination of the politcal clout of the promoters and the popular appeal of a given choice that determines the political and economic success of that choice. In case of automobile, the political clout of the auto industry coincided with the ontological properties of their preferred choice (the auto itself), and that combination made that choice a hierophany (embodiment) of highly regarded social values (individual freedom, progress). In case of the nuclear power industry, however, the clout was there, but the ontological properties failed to collaborate. Except a few freaks a la Dr. Strangelove, people fear invisible forces penetrating their food and their bodies (cf. the vicissitudes of water fluorisation in the US). Consequently, the industry's propaganda selling nukes as "clean" energy failed on deaf ears, and the whole institutional infrastructure turining nukes into "more economical" and thus "rational or natural" choice of energy simply was not built by the "gummint." regards, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
