Re: Re: As the fetish implodes

[Rob Schaap]

Title: Re: [PEN-L:20107] Re: As the fetish implodes

I just don't get this stuff, Doyle. To say obsessive-compulsive disorders are bad is not to say that people stricken with it are bad. If I call brand-marketing a cancer in society, I'm hardly criticising people with cancer, am I? And the possibility that people's disorders have social origins is also okay, no? And we've no problem with cognitive variety in society, Doyle, we just don't like needless suffering. If people don't want compulsive-obsessive disorders - and they generally don't - then maybe it's a good idea to find out what creates such disorders in the hope of curing what ails 'em! And if we can't fix it then no-one here would blame the sufferer for their plight. So I persist in failing to see what's wrong with Tom et al's mode of expression - where the context ('pathological cultural phenomena') of the word selection ('a neurotic obsessive-compulsive disorder on a mass scale') provides plenty of clues as to what is meant, for mine. Being careful with words is the way to go - making ourselves scared of our words is not. And the US left tends to err on the side of a censorious judgemental political correctness that takes both the inventiveness and the ideas out of the very debates that need 'em most, I reckon. Yours still bemused, Rob. ---------- >From: Doyle Saylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: [PEN-L:20107] Re: As the fetish implodes >Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 19:06:50 -0700 > Greetings Economists, ÝÝÝTimework (aka Tom Walker) writes, Walker, I would suggest that phenomena like Nike and Microsoft ALSO elude economic analysis (in terms of "intellectual property" or monopoly) and cry out for a critical reading as pathological cultural phenomena -- a neurotic obsessive-compulsive disorder on a mass scale... Doyle First of all, obsessive-compulsive disorder is not something the general public has. ÝSo if one constructs something like a Nike product which is supposed to be taking advantage of obsessive-compulsive disorder the product would fail in a mass market. ÝSecondly this is anti-disabled since what you are criticizing is obsessive-compulsive disorder as a problem created by a product. Let me be clear about this part, do disabled people have a right to be part of this society? ÝThen why does their particular cognitive structure represent a criticism of capitalism? ÝMost people won't be obsessive-compulsive. ÝWhere that arises in someone if they weren't simply that way all their life, it probably is due to stress reactions due to very great abuse. ÝPicking out disabled people as the problem in this case then is focusing upon the disabled person as the problem to be fixed. ÝGet rid of Nike products, fix obsessive-compulsive disorder. ÝIn many cases it is not clear if that is what we want to do even if decent health means one avenue for workers to organize around. ÝPerhaps having some variation in cognition is what we want to have. ÝIn any case measuring such cognitive ways of being, that is listing symptoms and then applying them to people is very very nebulous about who is obsessive-compulsive and who is not. ÝThe term is simply a medical label, not applicable to people in a way of understanding working class forces in the way it is written above. ÝWhereas, the way Tom Walker writes about what Nike does would give us no insight whatsoever about how to change the system to prevent creating obsessive-compulsive disorder. The working class has a very large fraction of disabled members, but the term is holistic when used that way. ÝThe term simply gives us a sense that workers have reality about them, as opposed to an abstract generalization of the whole of human beings that work. ÝJust as it is important for us to understand women as a component of the working class so it is necessary to understand that disabled people create structure to the working class. ÝIn the above quote, a disability is the problem to be fixed. ÝThe writer fails to understand that in many cases there no reason to single out a kind of behavior as the problem which capitalists forces are responsible for. ÝIn other words if we overthrew capitalism we wouldn't solve obsessive-compulsive disorder. Having some degree of clarity about not blaming disabled people is part of making the term working class work as a political organizing tool. ÝWe will organize obsessive-compulsive people, and amputees, and blind people, and schizophrenics, and lepers, and old people, etc. thanks, Doyle Saylor