Max writes: > To some extent I think you are right, but now we are verging onto > what I regard as very problematic and politically dangerous > territory -- the elitist critique of the philistinism of the masses. > Comments -- which you have not made here -- to the effect that working > people are brainwashed by television and deluded into wanting things > that aren't good for them. I have seen such views advanced by those > on the left -- not by yourself, mind you -- and I think they are > patently offensive, inaccurate, and defeatist. If the wants of > ordinary people are determined by Capital, then why pursue an > alternative politics? And who are you to tell me I should be > watching Martin Chuzzlewit instead of NYPD Blue? While I have some sympathy for Max's general point that the left has had very little to say about how to reduce the level of crime IN THE SHORT RUN or about how to restore the broken sense of community that individual crimes create (in which punishment for punishment sake may in fact play a role absent the Marquis de Sade), I want to take issue with the above. The problem with the elitist critique of the philistinism of the masses is that it generally serves to obscure any critique of the peculiar philistinisms of the elite. And comments about the brainwashing of working people by TV ignors the brainwashing of the intelligentsia by the more elite organs of opinion formation. Nevertheless, what people "want" is not an expression of some inner democratic essense in the traditional liberal view or an admirable source of diversity in the pomo liberal view. Wants are determined by social norms and are expressions of institutionalized standards of consumption. Since the radical project is about changing basic institutions, it is also inevitably about changing what people "want". What people want both for themselves and for their society must be subjected to a radical critique in every currently existing culture. Cultural relativism is not really a very radical position in relation to other cultures. When applied to one's own culture, it is a profoundly conservative idea and, yes, politically dangerous. By the way, I am reminded of a story about Steve Resnick (from Boston) teaching a course in radical political economy in New York City. At the end of term, he was approached by a student who asked, "This is all very interesting, but who is this guy Max you keep going on about?" Terry McDonough
