>>> Wojtek Sokolowski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 08/16/99 05:34PM >>> At 04:21 PM 8/16/99 -0400, Chareles wrote: > >Charles: Why is it do you think that the way you tell it "consciousness" is not corresponding to "structure" ? Are you saying this "perfect soical control" is exercised through "structure" and not "consciousness" ? Let me get this straight. Are you saying that mass consciousness has progressed, but the structure has gone backward ? If so, since activists can't directly change "structure" (or can they), do we just sit on our hands and wait for the structure to change itself , like a big clock winding on, mechanically, automatically, inevitably ? Is the revolution an entirely objective process, with no role for the subjective factors ? --snip >Charles: I'm joking about the past. But do you really think the "structure" never goes backwards and it is all an inevitable, straightline forward march and progress ? Or are there periods of reaction, zig zags ? It think it's a zig zag. I also think that the structural conditions for mobilization for a collective action deteriorated quite considerably as compared, say, to the civil rights era. Main reasons: residential pattern and comparmentalization of society through id politics. (((((((((((( Charles: OK. However, the residential pattern was very unequal and segregated by class and race in 1949. I am not sure that that "structure" has worsened in the last 50 years, and it has not improved as much as "advertised" by the "home of the free" cheerleaders. Also, compartimentalization of society through id politics sounds like "consciousness" to me. I thought your were discussing "structure". How is id politics "structural" and not "consciousness" ? ((((((((((((((((((( Wojtek: I also think that general consciousness improved a little bit comparing to 50 years ago in the sense that open bigotry is not acceptable as it used to be. This is far from a "revolutionary" consciousness - more along the "kinder and gentler nation" lines. ((((((((( Charles: This is a real one of those "yes and no" type things. You are correct that overt , open bigotry was made inappropriate , impolite and somewhat illicit by the Civil Rights movment ,i.e. reform movement. But the Reaganite counter-reform movement did not confront this directly, but rather got around it by being racist in actions but saying explictly that it is not. And in fact, the Reaganite counter reform went so far as to say the main problem of raciism today is the problem of Blacks being racist against Whites in "reverse discrimination" . This is the line of both the KKK and the U.S. Supreme Courts ( white and black robe wearers agree on this). Anti-affirmative action is a main aspect of this. Thus, Reaganite counterreform has reversed the Civil Right reform effectively. The structure has been reversed to the equivalent of what it was 50 years ago. The racist consciousness that accompanies this new racist structrure is different in form , but not in content from the! racist conscisousness of 50 years ago. In this regard , structure and consciousness coincide. The signal characteristic of Reaganite racism is white supremacy that denies it is white supremacy, unlike Jim Crow which proudly and openly declared for white supremacy. Reaganite racism like all Reaganism is Big Brotherism and doublespeak: Racism is equality, Star Wars is peace, What's old is new again (old funky Americanism from 1920 personified in Ronnie Reagan is new again), etc. > > >Charles: These things are more in the public discourse today than you are allowing. Read these lists. After being so definitely refuted in the past, their return and existence today is in a way more outrageous than in 1949. Nothing got "definitely refuted." (((((((((((( Charles: Oh yes it did. (((((((((((((((((( These ideas were not kosher for some time, mainly because of their hitler connection - but the idea of differential moral worth of different groups of people have never been refuted - it is the backbone of academic hierarchies and meritorcacies, more american than baseball and apple pie. (((((((((((( Charles: Biological racism got definitely and overwhelmingly refuted in public in the American academy. This was part of the Civil Rights movement reform. That is not the same as all hierarchies being refuted. Why would anti-racism refute meritocracy , in principle ? Phony meritocracy there is plenty of , I know. Meritocracy is not entirely reputiated by the left. (((((( WojteK I am suprised that the intellectual commodity manufacring - so eager to please the yuppies yearning for the "being unique and special" status has not used the racits bigotry more openly as they did in the past (cf. S.J. Gould _Mismeasure of man_) - i view it as a sign of modern progress and civility. Charles: Reaganism uses non-open , closed, secret racism while denying openly that it is racist and even saying Blacks and other people of color are the main racists. This is why open racism is not used as much. But the racism is creeping into the open, as with _The Bell Curve_. > > >((((((((((((((( >Charles: I don't know, there was a study posted on LBO-list saying 45% of academic social scientists and other academics thought biological race had something to do with the differences between Blacks and Whites. In a way, that that could be so high today is more outrageous than in 1949. > see above > >Charles: You must not being living in the same America that I am. In the Reaganite counter-reform publically stigmatizing social and ethnic groups while denying one is doiing it is all the rave. But they do not stigmatize in the same way as they used to - they stigmatize sub-groups, not entire groups. There is a big difference between saying (1) "blacks/latinos/polacks/_____ are lazy, anti-social blah blah blah" and (2) "blacks/latinos/polacks/_____ on welfare are lazy, anti social, blah, blah, blah." The first one clearly implies innate inferiority (the backbone of "old" racism) - since the whole biologically defined group is affected by the purported description. The second one does not, because it implies that not all members of the group in question are lazy and anti-social, only some of them. I see it as a certain progress from those blatantly expressed 50+ years ago (again, cf. Gould _Mismeasure of Man_). ((((((((((((( Charles: I don't think most of today's racist consciousnesses are this fine in their logic of stigmatization, especially since the whole scheme is riddled with irrationality. The "biology" of it is a mishmash in most people's heads , because they have a minimum understanding of biology anyway ( and getting less and less: see recent decision in Kansas to make evolution not a necessary teaching in high school biology; talk about devolving consicousness). So, they still just vaguely get the sense that Black people are "essentially " ( biologically, morally, innately, culturally, whatever) inferior to White people. After all the irrational thought chains, that is what America keeps generating as the bottomline, from 1600 to 2000. As a matter of fact, it is part of the mode of production, the division of labor of all of capitaism as a world and historical system. Charles > >And as you say, anyway, deeds (structure) are becoming less equal. The words (consciousness) seems a sort of Orwellian coverup of reality. > > >Charles Brown > > >
