> >Tavis has ferreted out my secret ambition -- to rule France . . . > > Now we know why Max struts around with his palm primly inserted under his > jacket lapel! As I was telling Josephine, you should be grateful my army is rolling east rather than north. If reforms which take place within the general constitutional parameters of existing bourgeois society -- in other words, good things that might actually happen -- are defined as parliamentary cretinism, sign me up! It is then quite right that I diverge from Louis P and set forth on the road of parliamentary cretinism. If anybody is interested, I would be happy to critique that overloaded 'honey-wagon,' as we say en France, he uploaded by Alan Woods. I would describe and reject parliamentary cretinism as legislative diddling on the margins, absent any efforts to mobilize the working class, not unlike the Clinto-crats. Alternatively, there is the dreamland of ultimatist fantasy, which exercises its own modes of self-justification (where's a post-modernist when you need one). > There are varieties of pessimism. One variety registers despair no matter > what happens, another embraces the "possible" as the best that can be > expected under the circumstances. "Progress" appears as an innocuous cloak > for the latter variety of pessimism. But what if we say for the sake of So now I'm an irrepressibly optimistic pessimist, whereas I would argue that I'm a pessimistic optimist. Lost here is just what might really be possible . . . There is still that Langer quote: it's not a moral choice. > argument that the idea of progress originated in the context of an 18th > century enlightenment polemic against the Christian belief in providence? We would say you have gone off the deep end into metaphysical irrelevancy, albeit familiar territory. > (Or, to say the same thing from a materialist standpoint, that it arose as a > reflection of the economic and political advance of the bourgeousie > vis-a-vis the aristocracy). That doesn't sound too bad. > Do we, then, have the slightest clue as to what progress means outside of > that polemical context? Does it simply become a laudatory term for Yes we do. It means the social-democratic laundry list. Maybe even including the shorter work week, though I'm still skeptical myself. You know the litany as well as I. > justifying whatever happens in history from the perspective of the victor? > Or does the word mean precisely what _we_ variously intend it to mean -- the > cunning of reason, the consummation of the class struggle or a consolation > for realpolitik? > > Progress? Try door number three. Cheers, MBS =================================================== Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. ===================================================
