Graeme, yer kickin' realpc's a$$! The fact is...that the facts are on OUR side. I used to think otherwise. But the Right is just all propaganda, all hot air. They do not have the facts on their side. All you have to do is go over to Sweden, etc, and see that those people AINT POOR, in any way. And yet the right is constantly calling them socialist....

I don't remember that they compared the height of rich Americans to poor Americans.

"They most certainly did find a height difference by social status" Only in societies that were under-nourished and then became more prosperous. The fact that Americans have not been getting taller for the past 50 years could have any number of explanations. You have to consider all the various genetic types, whether they have reached their maximum height, etc. There have been many cases of groups getting taller because they were poor and under-nourished and then improved their status. That is one observation, which cannot necessarily be extended to the observations of the article. "better health care (including nutrition, prenatal care etc" These have to be separated. If health care includes nutrition, then the claim that health care is a factor is meaningless. You obviously have no research experience. I think Americans are in terrible health, in general. But it is not because of hunger and poverty, in most cases. It's because of technology and prosperity, and the drug companies (I agree with you about them).

"the poorly distributed wealth in the country is having an effect" You cannot draw that conclusion from the article. They did not find a height difference by social status. When you look at raw data,, one conclusion may seem the most obvious, but you have to look for other possible explanations. This article did not go into enough detail to draw definite conclusions regarding poverty in the US affecting growth in childhood. The researcher himself has not concluded anything definite. Your bias is to assume that more socialism results in better government, better physical and economic, etc., and the reverse for capitalism. This is far too simple and cannot be supported by objective data. Furthermore, the tall Europeans are capitalists, with social welfare (like the US, but with a different degree of gov spending), so the article should not be used for trashing capitalism. And health care in the US could definitely be harmful to children, since millions are on dangerous prescription drugs. Less health care might correlate with greater height, for all we know.

The collected data on height but had only hypotheses as to why Americans are not the tallest. Poverty and hunger are not likely to be the cause, because that kind of extreme poverty is not prevalent here, and we have social programs. If poverty were making Americans shorter, they would have found that the rich are taller than the poor, and they didn't. At least that was not mentioned, and it would be too important to leave out of the article. I doubt better health care makes the difference. Most health care in the US is damaging.

You sure didn't read that article very carefully. They did not conclude that Americans are shorter because of poverty and hunger. They said it might be because Americans eat a lot more junk food than Europeans. They did NOT find that wealthy Americans are taller than poor Americans: "He has looked at whites alone, at blacks alone, at people with advanced degrees and those in the highest income bracket. Somewhere in the United States, he thinks, there must be a group that's both so privileged and so socially insulated that it's growing taller. He has yet to find one." And you ignored everything in the article that contradicts your ideology: “There were twenty-five thousand of us Hungarian refugees, and not one of them I knew didn't make it,” Komlos told me. “Not one of us didn't aspire to and reach the middle class. This was the generation of George Soros. This was the generation of the guy who founded Intel. I had cousins and second cousins—everybody became lawyers, accountants, professors.” “But, if you look at the Turks in Germany or the Algerians in France, there aren't that many who can advance up the social ladder.” He shrugged. “America is still a land of opportunity.”

We get millions of immigrants from Central and South America now, and I see more of them every day. I hope it isn't too politically incorrect to observe that they are very short, 5 feet or less. That could make it seem like Americans keep getting shorter. You have to be careful how you interpret data.

"the less overtly capitalist a country is, the better off its citizens are." Like North Korea, for example? And I said SHORT immigrants, not immigrants in general.

Yes, your point is that societies with mixed economies (socialist/capitalist) can do very well. And societies like the US, which leans a bit towards libertarianism, attracts many more short immigrants than Europe.

"You think Europeans don't have cell phones and all the other tech stuff?" They are Western-style democracies with mixed socialist/capitalist economies, like us but a little more socialist. They are not going to revolt any time soon either. Not surprisingly, you miss the point. Their young men aer getting taller and ours are getting shorter (google for the NY Yorker article on that longitudinal study). They live longer. Their babies die less. THey get more for less. They work less than us, but get more--when you look at the median. And they have more psychological security because they have a strong social safety net (healthcare, longterm unemployment benefits, welfare not just for single moms, etc). And yet THEY have quasi-socialist policies, while we lean more to darwinist, monopoly capitalism. In some of those countries, major parties are even called "socialist." And yet THEY are on the uptrend. We are headed down. The numbers don't lie. So if more capitalism is better than less capitalism, why do quality of life studies consistently show that West Euro countries are better than America, and getting more so? I really hope you grasp my point....

"You think Europeans don't have cell phones and all the other tech stuff?" They are Western-style democracies with mixed socialist/capitalist economies, like us but a little more socialist. They are not going to revolt any time soon either. "College? Almost all the other western nations have lower cost college." Yeah but it's a lot harder to get in.

From realpc: "There will never be another American revolution as long as we have prosperity. The left will have to find a way to destroy the economy." That comment rang a bell; here's Aldous Huxley's take on it, “Without economic security the love of servitude cannot possibly come into existence.” I think you're on to something there, pc. We enjoy prosperity? Who's this "we" of which you speak? The international bourgeoise is waging a vicious class war against the international proletariat. In America, the ranks of the poor are growing while the middle class is shrinking, which makes an eventual day of reckoning inevitable. After the real estate bubble bursts?

realpc, you live in a fantasy world created for you by CorpGovMedia. You think Europeans don't have cell phones and all the other tech stuff? Nokia, the world's #1 cellphone maker sells most of their phones there. Medical care? THe American healthcare system is consistently rated below many other countries' systems. In Europe, Canada and OZ, everyone gets healthcare. Paid for by taxes. College? Almost all the other western nations have lower cost college. You seem to think that technology and science come solely from America. I got news for you. The social democracies publish science science papers at a 2 to 1 ratio better than America, per population. And here is the kicker--> they work LESS for their lifestyle than we do: 1900 hours/yr for ours. 1500-1650 for them. If you do not grasp immediately the significance of what I just wrote, then I wanna play some poker or other statistics-oriented game with YOU. Bring your wallet!

"it is far from true that the mass of population have nothing to lose but their chains" and no "stake in preserving the existing social order." The majority of Americans are very well off, relative to any civilization that ever existed. Medical treatments that are so expensive (and mostly unnecessary) did not even exist before. College is expensive, but until recently only a small minority even tried to go. Most Americans never go hungry and obesity, not malnutrion, is the greatest health problem. The international situation is a disaster, but on the domestic level Americans have a heck of a lot to lose. Don't try to take away their cable TV or cell phones, or their computers. There will never be another American revolution as long as we have prosperity. The left will have to find a way to destroy the economy.

Well there's an age old distinction on the Left between "long term revolutionary aims and certain more immediate effects [the Left] can hope to achieve" within the currently existing society (quotes from Chomsky, "Some Tasks for Responsible People," August 1969, which is reproduced in C.P. Otero, Chomsky On Democracy and Education (RoutledgeFalmer, 2003]). There are a number of things that we want that don't necessarily require a revolutionary social transformation. Corporation state capitalism won't collapse if we can get US troops out of Iraq or if we can win some reductions in the "defense" budget combined with new investments in education, health, and welfare. We fight for such "more immediate" changes because (a) it's right to do so...such changes will reduce human suffering and (b)it enhances our legitimacy and political profile to win "small" things on the path to "bigger" (revolutionary-long term) aims. It's not either or and never has been on the left. It's interesting to note that in the essay I just cited Chomsky says the left has no long run "chance of success" unless it "develops..a vision of a future social order that is persuasive to a large majority of the population." That vision, he says, should acknowledge that "in an advanced industrial society...it is far from true that the mass of population have nothing to lose but their chains" and no "stake in preserving the existing social order." In other words, we better figure out and communicate how we would build and organize our democratic/cooperative/ participatory idea of a historical-material society.

I hear you, Brad. It's the old "reformism" vs. "revolution" argument. Why try to reform an inherently rotten system, when the best you can hope for (or so it seems), is to breathe a little life into and extend that which you'd much rather see die a natural death? On the other hand, if you don't really have a solid framework of political institutions in place, no matter how weak, then you're not really ready to gain from, or to channel the energies unleashed in a positive direction from, even the total collapse of the system. I guess I'm just frustrated at watching the dying embers of the Enlightenment winking out, one after another. I fear Spengler was right, and we're entering a new age of the Caesars. I'll be damned if I'm going to love Big Brother.

We are tending to drift back to the age old radical questions. I actually tend to agree with most who feel we need to both, critique the current system and advance an alternative. We just need to be smart about the whole thing. On the one hand, in the us our right to even critique the government has been eroded so much lately, that I feel we need to just attempt to hold these basic "rights" in place. Examples of this are the attack on anyone questioning our illigeal attack of a soverign as "unpatriotic" and the attack on the rights to assemble (Read: FTAA miami, REP conventions, "free speech zones" etc..) I feel your frustration at the slowness of change and would posit two opposing theories for this; a) sedative nature of current culture and the above attack on anyone questioning the status quo, b) conversely, the fact that we are able to protest, speak out in such spheres as this creates complacency and false sense of freedom. I know I am contradicting myself, I am just setting up a heuristic tool to facilitate a disscusion to bring us to a common point. Does anyone think things are not bad enough to invoke the true radical change necessary? Or, do we all think we need to use incremental change to force a somewhat exceptable system to be tweeked?

No one wants to see the left succeed more than I, Grahame, but I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps I'm not in the wrong place? You close your comment above referring to "the change that is desperately needed right now," and on that I'm sure we all agree. But just when and how do you imagine such a change is going to take place? When you finally come up with the perfect analysis? By osmosis? In reply to your reply to me; sure, I'm extremely wary of nationalism and detest prejudice and the thought of appealing to man's basest instincts too. But a successful political program, like a successful religion, must provide manna to the common man as well as the theologians. It's not enough to be "against," you have to be "for" something. And what is this "something" you might be "for" that will engage the sympathies and allegience of regular Americans without including appeals to a compelling vision of some great, overarching, national purpose, to their religious sensibilities, and to their desire for security (in all possible senses)? The left is either hard at work on their plan to achieve their goal of seizing political power in this country -- by the ballot, not the bullet -- or it is truly irrelevant. I'm afraid doing so will require descending from Cloud Theory Land and getting both your hands, and your beautiful mind, dirty. It means you will have to compromise, to some extent, your leftist values. For, as Mr. Dooley once opined, "Politics ain't beanbag."

I agree with EP that cry. should choose between left ideals and this inherently reactionary "hardwired" biological-instinctual stuff (ala "realpc"). But Eric, I don't see why Marxists inherently can't handle coordinator class issues. There's a lot in Marx about labor process, the role of science, and social division of labor that seems to create space for such a class.....Maybe it has to do with the relative autonomy of the cc, with Marxists seeing it as ultimately the agent and tool of capital and parecon saying something different? MtBrad we don't need elaborate alternative visions? I tend to disagree with you and Marx (for whom the classless future was written in the hidden iron "laws of history") and perhaps Chomsky (who has trended to critiicize blueprints/future visions as inherently Lenninist ...but who also says interesting things in opposite direction). The notion that people have nothing to lose but their chains under modern class society is a myth; they've got plenty to lose and no easy way back from the current state corporation capitalism to a simple and direct relation to worldy goods we do need some concrete idea of what alternative new modern order we'd put in place of the old. I don't think following Lkf's advice of consistent moral-intellectual paradigms ("frames") and realizing that just putting the facts out isn't enough is same as using the master's tools and mimicking the right. The right got its tools from the left to no small extent...doing things we used to do better than us. Gr., I don't think Marx had a plan for the future. There are some concrete ideas, as I recall, in Critique of the Gotha Program and his "Civil War in France" (where he gets into some aspects of the radical democratic Paris Commune) and also some interesting visionary lines hidden in his critique of capitalism, but basically he decided that he'd discovered the "scientific" "laws of history" (I don't think such laws exist) and that the course of history yield his classless future without any "utopian" planning. The Manifesto has a glorious and confident vision of the future and some ideas on how to get there (basically biting critiques of insufficiently radical and rigourous "bourgeois" and "utopian" pseudo-socialists), but that's different than a plan for it. He saw left planning or visioning as a bourgeois and utopian endeavor. ... AK, I distinguish between yakov and realpc. The former is an unreconstructed Cold War primitive. realpc is more irritating because he's more sophisticated. Realpc I have in fact analyzed Kerry and even Dean as basically conservative. On Kerry, see (for one of many examples), http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug04/Street0820.htm. On Dean, see http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=43&ItemID=4893Dean. I don't think anyone should be calling anyone an "asshole" on the blogs; I should not have quoted Allen as if I agreed with such terminology. realpc the e-mail address you use for this blog is "yurallnuts@yahoo.com"... I'm guessing this is for the benefit of leftist web sites. That sends a message of disrespect, consistent with questions reg. sincereity of your interest in dialogue as opposed to harassment/demoralization/exhaustion/abuse of your declared leftist-totalitarian enemies.

"And RealPC, nobody here thinks that Marxism has ever been tried." Then why did they bother dreaming up parecon? If Marxism was never tried, why not try it?

"Realpc's particular brand of conservative/Rightist politics." I have said repeatedly that I believe in balancing cooperation and competition, that freedom depends on some degree of free enterprise but a compassionate society must take care of people who cannot work. If that means I am conservative and rightist, then so are Kerry, Dean and all the other Democrats you probably supported.

one of whom has actually been given the label "asshole" Does that prove anything, except that Robert Allen has a vulgar way of expressing himself? It's only people who desperately need to be right but are afraid they might be wrong who use that kind of language. If I were insecure and vulgar I could label Paul Street and Robert Allen assholes.

I'm sorry, but I don't think you could be more wrong, MTbrad. Face it, the left's propensity for navel-gazing and its tendancy to wallow in "paralysis by analysis" has gotten it exactly nowhere in this country. Progressives never tire of asking themselves why the proles don't just recognize and vote their own selfish economic interests, i.e., for Progressives, because if they did then we'd all be living on the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Golly, that's inspiring. The left needs both a compelling myth of national greatness to inspire and satisfy people's desire to participate in something greater than themselves, and a narrative to support it that dovetails with people's prejudices and most base instincts, but that simultaneously draws them toward the light. You can call it crass PR if you like, I call it "vision."

Following up on Graeme's last comment, I thought of the blog system almost immediately upon reading Lakoff's provocative if problematic book. I'd say this blog has been visited by 5 or 6 rightists who are utterly impervious to left thesis-evidence-conclusion. Most such people blow up and become so abusive they get banned, but two (one of whom has actually been given the label "asshole" in the Chomsky blog comments) manage to maintain a regular presence by barely staying inside the boundaries of acceptable conduct. Beneath their disingenuous pretense of wanting dialogue with the left, they are not interested in being persuaded of anything. Why do they (whoever they are) come here? I think its mainly to harass and out of ideological spite, though other motives may come into play (one of them revealed some professional frustrations in the field of linguistics ...something that might be relevant). Their goals are diversion, demoralization and exhaustion.... We get caught up in the potentially dangerous "samsara" and drama of responding to them because its a semi public semi-forum and we don't want their nonsense to stay up unchallenged for others to read as if we had no answer (but this is partly falling into their trap, for it can exhaust) but I for one never operate on the assumption that I am talking TO THEM in any meaningful way. If we were Buddhists we wouldn't care what they say and would just ignore them. That might actually be the way to go, in all honesty. The point of a decent response (assuming that responding is healthy and necessary) to these folks is simply (sorry) to demoralize them (insofar as that's possible)and (more important) to use them to educate others. Enemies happen. This system's two trolls are useful foils; if they weren't they'd probably be banned as this is not in fact --- sorry to sound like Fidel and Che --- a free speech forum. It's all on the left's dime and there's just no requirement for us to give a platform to the right. Christ knows they've got enough platforms as it is.

If we can't appeal to the right with leftist ideas we can at least start to break through by offering the whole of the populace a glimpse of the contradictions inherant in the current system. Which is what Marx (and others) did, contrary to what many people want you to believe, he did not have a grand scheme for social design. What he did do is spend his whole life researching the contridictions in capitalism/class systems and exposing them to all. This is, IMO, a much better road than coming up with "pie in the sky" designs on how society should be "run" (read: paracon). Now granted some people do get drawn to the "pie" and therefore it does serve some sort of purpose, but it should not replace genuine social critisism as the key to social change. And Lakoffian notions of using the rightwing tools to beat the rightwing are just nonsense, "You cannot beat the master at his own game." And RealPC, nobody here thinks that Marxism has ever been tried. So you can quit trying to equate Chinesse and Russian State Capitalism to Marxism!

"r4d20" your initial note was so weird (I see other things have gone up since I first started formulating a response). Your political identity gets muddled because you say you are not "a right winger" but then go into this whole voice of "us" and "me," as if you were..."a right winger." As in this bit of hyperbole: "Keep ignoring us and see how successfull you are in your Crusade." Political identity issues aside, that's over the top. I have no "crusade." I have a modest yes left-oriented post about "facts and frames" in which I related an interesting (at least I thought) radio experience. To return to earth for a second, do I really need to try to reason with the right? Well, I put in my time. I have considerable experience, including years teaching night classes in the rich Caucasian suburbs with white male Republican technicians (most pretty damn smart) in History (modern US) and "social science" ("Politics of the Media") classes, trying to do exactly that. We got along fine, actually, me and these Republicans of DuPage County, and I think I was open-minded, agreeable and totally fair with them as an instructor (I don't personalize political standpoints...given a different family and social background, after all, I could be a right winger). I thought a lot of them were nice folks. But it goes nowhere with them, especially now (see below*)--- in my experience at least --- so yes I pretty much write them off without guilt or apology. Their "frames" (Lakoff's term, for better or worse) are pretty much fixed...not 100 percent but fairly close. These guys had me talking to them for what two hours on one overworked night after their jobs but they absorbed Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and FOX TV and corporate media 10-20 hours a week, not to mention their right Evangelical suburban mega-church ministers on Sundays and even on some weeknight evenings. The chances of turning one of them "progressive" with reasoned left argument are, I don't know... 1 in 50. Maybe its better than that and things change, but...it's not my job to argue with them. At least not anymore. Life is short and it seems to me (and here I guess this is agreement with George Lakoff)scarce time would best be spent with those in the large middle who have often contradictory and shifting (less fixed) values and some more radical potential --- partial openness to the left perspective (and I'm not all that sectarian or rigid in defining that perspective, which is why I never get much into the Marxism v. anarchism debate). Because I pretty much write off the right (and I do so without apology...just as they write me and the left off with even less remorse), I am a "self-righteous crusader" who "think[s] that [my] subjective truth should be obvious to everyone?" Nonsense, I say! I simply ration and apply my scarce debating/reasoning energies in the interest of efficiency and (my own) sustainability. I'll go where the odds are 10 or 50 or better. * I thought the paranoid US right was still sort of funny when Clinton was president and they actually thought Marxism-Liberalism-Moral Relativism was running the White House. Ever since Smiling George and his posse seized power and 9/11 and the War Media helped push them across the proto-fascist line, they've become a lot less comic and agreeable. A bunch of them have become full-blown Amerikkkaners. If they were actually a real majority in this country, I'd probably become an expatriate or go underground or something melodramatic like that. They're not a majority, however, and I will leave it to others to invest time and energy in trying to have a reasoned debate with them. I've got other people with whom to share experiences and ideas.

I don't think r4d20 is implying everyone has only "subjective truth" while only the middle of the road has the'objective truth". From what I read he is commenting on certain people who state their beliefs and expect everyone with a mind to agree. It seems beneath them to elaborate, justify these beliefs and get positively outraged when the skeptics dare to ask questions. Regardless of political leaning, if one is unable to, or appears to be unable to elaborate and argue their views intelligently to skeptics who are willing to listen, I think it is appropiate to compare him/her with religious fundamentalists in posession of only "subjective truth".

Graeme, I totally agree that the level of intelligence here, on the whole, DWARFS that of the right leaning sites I used to frequent - it's not even close. Probably Paul wasn't reffering to me, but I think it is wrong (both factually and strategically) to assume that all of them were hopeless lost to the rabid right. If anything, their comments came right out of a Republican-framed talking points memo. They were not born thinking that poverty if the fault of the poor - they were taught/brainwashed to think that by a very good, very savvy, right wing spin industry. If the left is going to make headway they have to compete they have to rebutt the idea that poverty is the fault of the poor - not dismiss it as obviously stupid and simply recite stats. For instance, while some people consider it an ovious moral imperative to help the poor, others do not. A "frame" I have found usefull in talking with Conservatives about welfare is "welfare is cheaper than a police state, and thats what we'd need to maintain order if we got rid of welfare and the poor faced real hunger". It may sound heartless to a progressive, but it actually seems to make an impression on more conservatively minded people. Describe to them a world without welfare - a world where rich people have to maintain private security at great expense - and they begin to see it isn't just the "handout" that the Anne Coulters label it as.

"I see little point of trying to talk to most of them on radio or any other way." I think this says it all. I'm not a right-winger, but I am a skeptic and whenever ANYONE, right or left, starts telling me I should support their Cause I ask "why?". Usually I find that the more passionate they are, the more that one little word seems to drive them crazy. If it's not worth your time to convice me, it's not worth my time to support you. Millions of other Americans feel like me, and are insulted by self-righteous crusaders who think that their subjective truths should be obvious to everyone. Keep ignoring us and see how successfull you are in your Crusade.

I think this is a big part of authoritarian, war-machine culture the elite have evolved for America. Lefties see beyond all this. We have glimpsed the genetic puppetmaster that pulls our strings, and we want out of the game. Once you see behind the curtain and see how the elite have manipulated this hardwired, warrior behavior, you want nothing to do with war or the red-of-tooth-and-claw darwinism of neoliberal economics. But exploiting that warrior hardwiring via the evolution of a warrior-centered American culture is a big reason why the Right is dominant. The left has failed to grasp the need to exploit HATE and the bloodlust pep rally. We become part of the turn-the-other-cheek crowd like "good liberals." That would be a good place for our culture to be eventually. I think the Left needs to exploit the male capacity for hate as it pertains to tribal-national feelings. That's why whenever possible I use the language of HATE directed toward the elite. I sometimes propose that we have a special legal system to zealously prosecute and hang a certain percentage of CEOs and lobbyists, politicians. Males need an "Other", an enemy. The American Left does not provide one, and we need one, especially considering the cultural hole the elite have put us in. Bush is not a good Other-he will be gone in 3 years, and he is just a person. We need an enduring Other--a NONperson. And we need to embrace hate.

Why does realpc come here? Why do all the other rightwingers come on leftwing sites to argue? Maybe this is some version of going out to do battle with our version of the mastodon/auroch/prey/rival tribes? It seems to me that one thing that the big money rightwing media has done so well is to "wind up" so many word-and-idea warriors and send them out to do battle. I think that is one of the reasons that the media is so well behaved with respect to toeing the neoliberal line. The grassroots puppets like PC keep them in line. The rightwing propaganda machine has worked up many 20-40 year old males into a righteous political lather. It is almost like they are on the warpath. I see human males as in large part filling certain bio-social roles in societies. They are evolved mentally and physically to serve certain roles. Big muscles for wrestling prey to the ground, etc. Also they are evolved neuro-behaviorally to fight prey or human enemies. Part of going to war or going on a big hunt is the psychological workup--the pep rally with bloodlust. You see it in the locker room in our times. But 50000 years ago, it was for real, not for games. This is all strictly hardwired stuff. Males--especially 20-35 years old--are hardwired to be worked into a bloodlust frenzy. HATE is a HUGE part of this biosocial phenomenon. And it is as old as human beings themselves.

I am interested in truth, but you are obviously interested in that good feeling you get from being around people who agree with you. And why does it have to be either parecon or Fox news? Does the world look that simple from your perspective?

Albert has answers for every criticism. It's easy when you don't need evidence and there are no failures to explain. It's the same secular faith that predicted computers with human-like intelligence, cures for cancer, an understanding of how the brain works, cures for and understanding of mental illness, an explanation of the origin of life, etc. And, of course, a fair and classless society.

1500, not 15.

"So you admit then that you haven't actually read anything about parecon?" I read quite a lot about parecon. I know what Albert thinks about determination of value, about job complexes, social status, money, etc. I saw big problems with each of his ideas, and posted many of my objections on this blog. I did not yet write about job complexes, however, so I will now (under 15 chars, of course). He says some jobs increase an individual's power and competence, while other jobs just make people dumber (assembly line work, for ex.) His answer is that everyone rotates between empowering work and mind-numbing work. I only have room for one objection right now -- Ok, stop people from spending the whole day on something they are good at and they love, and force them to spend equal time on work that (according to Albert) will prevent them from becoming too good at the thing they love and have a talent for. Put the breaks on any striving for excellence. After all, excellence leads to inequality. Even if this had any chance whatsoever of having the desired effect (and I'm sure it wouldn't), who in their right mind would go along with it?

realpc, your real problem is reading comprehension and/or lack of analytical thinking skills. You seem to be incapable of reading a paragraph dealing with any Topic X, and then writing a response dealing with TOPIC X. Instead of writing a response to topic X, you write to some other topic. First, I have never read Marx directly or anything extensive about parecon. But I have a pretty good idea about what Marx was talking about and I think parecon is pretty much about having an economic system that lets people reap in accordance with their participation in the work force or in the community. And I can see that neither china nor the soviet empire was run along very much along marxist lines, in particular. Marx was talking about government designed for the benefit of the people. Neither Soviet Russia nor China were or are for the people. Instead they were designed for the elite. The same as America. As far as I can tell, the only countries that come closest to marxism or parecon are Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, Netherlands, France, Germany etc. I just take a look at their standards of living, and how much the citizens have to work to achieve that standard, and how much power the citizen has over his or her own life. It's really pretty simple.

Why Parecon Won't Work (squeezed into 1500 chars): The same mistake has been repeated throughout the 20th c. Great advances and discoveries in science and technology let to great confidence in human intelligence, and in our ability to understand and control nature. It has been taken for granted by many that problems in the social and medical sciences would be solved as easily as technical problems like flying to the moon or splitting atoms (not that it was all that easy). It has turned out, however, that social and medical problems are somehow different. For one thing, the systems that social and medical sciences deal with are far more complex than the artificial systems of technology. Many here at ZNet acknowledge that Marxism did not provide the hoped-for answers, so we have parecon. But Albert's system is just another example of secular faith. He conjures up a system that solves all the stubborn problems of human society, and radicals fall once again for an unworkable social engineering scheme.

"Now the exercise of power everywhere is governed by the law of intensification, or, as the Greeks would say, 'greed for more than one's share.' There is within it no principle of measure; measure is brought to it only from without, by counterforces that restrict it. So that history is the interaction of power, on one hand--its establishment, maintenance, and increase--and those counterforces on the other." ~ Joseph Campbell One of the signal characteristics of man is how weak the grip of instinct actually is in determining his behavior, as opposed to the role it plays in the lives of other animals. If men have a will to power and to covet, they also have a corresponding and equal will to love and to satisfy their deep social needs. And, as Carl Jung reminds us, "Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." On a very basic level, I think that's what it means to be "left." It means taking up the side of love opposing the power principle and thus seeking to constrain it, lest it run amok (which it sure as hell seems to be doing right now). A man grasping for power by filling a machine role in a hierarchy is not serving his humanity; humanity comes from the heart. Peter

The drive for status and power often results in tyranny and oppression. More to the point, it results in lower quality of life for most Americans. Why? Monopoly capitalism; laws that do not protect us or do not offer higher quality lifestyles (witness the other western nations: many more holidays, their universal healthcare, etc). This is real stuff, not just theory. But the drive for love and acceptance can have terrible results also. All of our drives evolved for good reasons. Obviously! But lots of things that served purposes in the distant past are no longer needed or desired. Just because the drives can easily go wrong in our overly complex system does not mean the drives are bad. Complexity is not the problem. THe problem is that we let the fox guard the henhouse. Successful machines may be complex or simple. THeir success depends mainly on whether they control forces as needed. Our govt does not. And we are stuck with these drives, whether you like them or not. What is your point? Here you are putting words in my mouth. The instinct to improve one's status is as healthy and natural as the instinct to help your neighbor. This is not the point. We don't account for & counteract these drives in the elite, in our politicians. If you design an engine without addressing cooling needs, you fail. Our government has failed because our govt was built to control the common man, but it needs to control the elite.

"instinctual drives for social status and social power in the human animal, and indeed in ALL social animals. That almost DEFINES social animals." That is correct. The drive for status and power often results in tyranny and oppression. But the drive for love and acceptance can have terrible results also. All of our drives evolved for good reasons. Just because the drives can easily go wrong in our overly complex system does not mean the drives are bad. And we are stuck with these drives, whether you like them or not. Love and friendship are social instincts that we generally see as positive. But they are a major cause of unfair prefential treatment. And romantic love, when frustrated, is probably a leading cause of murder. Should we therefore try to abolish romantic love? The instinct to improve one's status is as healthy and natural as the instinct to help your neighbor. It is inescapable -- radical leftists get social status and acceptance within their crowd by despising the status symbols of capitalist society. Anyone who claims not to give a darn about status is kidding him/herself.

http://www.zmag.org/books/pareconv/parefinal.htm What chapter are you referring to? I totally disagree that there are not hardwired, instinctual drives for social status and social power in the human animal, and indeed in ALL social animals. That almost DEFINES social animals. I can hardly conceive that any educated leftist could take your denial-stance at all. I think that stance is almost at the level of the religious fundamentalist, but from the left, not the right (the FauxLeft, really). Your stance, I fear, is derived from the "politically correct" racial-spoils, identity-centered politics of the FauxLeft, a reactionary doctrine that denies what should be obvious to everyone in order to disassociate itself from the racial crimes of America's past. Hey, the ELITE did that. Not me, not us, not the common man--not even the common white man. THat was set in place, that racist, caste-culture was created and set up in colonial America BY THE RICH from 1650 to 1750, before most white men could vote! That reactionary doctrine has given a huge opportunity to the Right. Identity-politics, denying what is in front of our faces, that there is SOME DEGREE of biological determinism, that denies reality. And when political philosophies deny reality, then they can be easily attacked by the Big Money of the Right. Limbaugh, anyone? The FauxLeft seized upon Race, and forgot Class. An oversight, an accident, a misstep? I doubt it....

It seems to me that whatever system we use needs to acknowledge that humans instinctively seek out power and social status, and that these natural drives lead to exploitation of those down low by those up high. This is insctinctual, hardwired stuff. Just as you might design a machine, such as a car, by accounting for and controlling all the forces that are in play. That is what is wrong with all forms of government that I am familiar with--they do not account for and control the forces exerted by those up high. Just as machinery is engineered to control these forces, so too must more advanced forms of govt actively identify, name, and seek to control forces exerted by those up high. Acknowledge that those who seek and attain power are those among us who are perhaps MOST corrupt in many ways. Acknowledge that power corrupts. And find governmental structures that deal with it. But first we have to acknowledge that fact. CLEARLY, Madisonian democracies like America do JUST THE OPPOSITE of this. Madison, Hamilton, et al., SPECIFICALLY designed America not to control the elite, but to control the common people. Madison et al., said just that, and in no uncertain terms. That is the first thing that is wrong in America. And communist china and russia had much the same problem.

It's true that Marxism cannot be classless, but neither can parecon. The only advantage of parecon is that it has never failed (yet).

Another poor effort, "yakov." Yes it was LBJ's "War on Poverty" (which never really got off the ground, thanks in large part to the obscenely more well-funded War on Vietnam) that deindustrialized and otherwise marginalized the segregated black urban communities of America. What a profoundly moronic thing to actually (pretend to?) believe. No, I haven't researched that...just like I haven't researched how the Wicked Witch of the West created a Lake Michigan tsunami that wiped out Chicago's South Side. Ok, I go to Criminal Courts and see inner city people on the mass transmission belt from jobless, hyper-segregated, cop-saturated ghettoes (where the drug trade often is the best way to try to appropximate the American Dream) to prison and then ...I understand...that "there's bad people out there." Huh. Another great point. The bad people are all the arrested and accused, right? Well, there's a lot of bad behavior, and much of it is found in much more significantly empowered places like City Hall, the police HQ, the White House, the state capitol, and the downtown Chicago HQ of the lovely Boeing corporation and numerous other corporate offices. As usual, "yakov," you can't read what's actually written. I never said "the majority of people say 'let them eat cake.'" Indeed, I said that the hard right position is about a quarter of the adult citizenry (and that's probably too high). You don't actually think WLS's distinctly white male Republican call-in audience is some sort of referendum on the full spectrum of American opinion...do you? Your dogged efforts to de-rail and demoralize left dialogue are recurrently undone by your reckless disregard for what leftist writers actually say. Your grade for today is a D.

Hey Paul, ever research how LBJ's War On Poverty helped destroy the black middle class and create the urban blight we complain about today? Also, you live in Chicago, go spend some time at the criminal courts building. You'll learn there are a lot of bad people out there, plain and simple, and no amount of outside the community government action is going to change their behavior. Finally, if the majority of people say "let them eat cake," as you complain from your recent WLS experience, then the people have spoken. As a "committed" marxist/communitarian/or whatever you're calling yourself this week, you have to go along with it to be intellecutally honest with your own belief system. Otherwise, you are simply wishing to be tyrannical to impose your "correct" views on everyone else. . . which is what your breed of lefty wants more than anything else.

"realpc" misses the point as usual, as is clear from just a cursory glance; he falls in category of those I see little point in engaging. To Eric Patton (and I wish more people would or could use their real names) I would say that "Marxists" themselves have never quite been a monololithic category...there's a big difference between, say, a Rosa Luxembourg and, say, a Lenin (who embraced Taylor's authoritarian "scientific management" scheme for the eradication of all workers control) and for what its worth I've long identified with more libertarian and decentralist and radical democratic tendencies. To make an obsolete academic reference, there's a big difference between an E.P. Thompson or a David Montrgomery and a Luis Althussar or a Nicos Poulantzas ("Marxists" all, I think). Maybe I'm trying to straddle categories that can't ultimately be reconciled (wouldn't be the first time) --- (a) left anarchism and (even left democratic) (b) Marxism --- but for me its a very thin line that shades over quite a bit, especially when you take into account some of the more liberatory insights of Marx (young Marx especially) himself. "They Live" is a helluva movie -- something of a left cult flick --- and as cryofan knows I worked off it to do a (1999?) piece for Z Magazine: "They Speak"

Referring to Bryan's cited article on how Bushco has manufactured consent from the white blue collar male for the GOP's economic plan that hurts blue collar workers, here is a quote from that article that provides the reasons why the blue collar white males go along with it: They do it first by redefining "good" as a matter not of giving or of sharing but of judging. ...disapproving of homosexuals and of economic failures ....Second Bush proposes the idea of giving through private, religious channels, and thus offers moral cover for the idea of giving less. Well, that is interesting, but misses a few elephants standing in the corner of the room--race, gender and work culture. THe Democratic party, as far as the white blue collar male is concerned, fights for the blacks and hispanics and illegal aliens and women and white collar professionals--NOT for the white blue collar male. THe Democrats stand for giving jobs and education and welfare to minorities before whites. THIS is a much larger factor than the other stuff. Also, there is the fact that the Dems are associated with the entertainment industry, which has effectively made the redneck (i.e., the white blue collar male) one of the only acceptable villains in America. ALso, the GOP is now associated with being "The White Person's Party". And so not surprisingly, whites are voting GOP more than Dems.

Bush's Empathy Shortage AlterNet By Arlie Hochschild, The American Prospect and Tomdispatch Posted on June 24, 2005, Printed on June 24, 2005 Let's consider our political moment through a story. Suppose a chauffeur drives a sleek limousine through the streets of New York, a millionaire in the backseat. Through the window, the millionaire spots a homeless woman and her two children huddling in the cold, sharing a loaf of bread. He orders the chauffeur to stop the car. The chauffeur opens the passenger door for the millionaire, who walks over to the mother and snatches the loaf. He slips back into the car and they drive on, leaving behind an even poorer family and a baffled crowd of sidewalk witnesses. For his part, the chauffeur feels real qualms about what his master has done, because unlike his employer, he has recently known hard times himself. But he drives on nonetheless. Let's call this the Chauffeur's Dilemma. Absurd as it seems, we are actually witnessing this scene right now. At first blush, we might imagine that this story exaggerates our situation, but let us take a moment to count the loaves of bread that have recently changed hands and those that soon will. Then, let's ask why so many people are letting this happen..... For the rest of the article please vist this link : http://www.alternet.org/story/22294

Quotes from the movie THEY LIVE seem appropriate: "We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness that resembles sleep The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices ...their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent, to ourselves, to others, we are focused only on our own gain. They are safe as long as they are not discovered That is their primary method of survival. Keep us asleep, keep us selfish, keep us sedated...they are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery." "They use their tongues to deceive, The venom of snakes is under their lips, Their mouths are full of bitterness and curses, And in their paths nothing but ruin and misery, The fear of God is not before their eyes, They have taken the hearts and minds of our leaders, They have recruited the rich and the powerful, And they have blinded us to the truth, Our human spirit is corrupted, Why do we worship greed? Because, outside the limit of our sight, feeding off of us, Perched on top us from birth to death, Are our owners, our owners, They have us, They control us, They are our masters, WAKE UP! They are all about you, all around you." ... video excerpts available here: http://www.theylivenow.co.uk/

We are immersed are in a culture that takes the elite point of view for everything, oen centered around power and war. The poor, the less greedy, the less militant, etc., this sort of person/perspective is discredited in our culture. THe fault for most problems is by default assigned to those who suffer from these problems. But this is nothing new. Going back to England 500 years ago, and progressing into the 20th century, it was always elite-centered. Although back then it was the whip that enforced dominance of the elite. But also even back then there was rudimentary propaganda to justify the elite-centered policies. This authoritarian, elite-centered culture has been evolving for hundreds of years. They no longer use the whip. Maybe because they have evolved the culture so well and because the mass media surrounds us, and it is a direct conduit from them to us. Also maybe cause we did fight back. You can see the authoritarian strain and the early pretext-justification propaganda in the drawings and cartoons etc from earlier times. Look at the beginnings of our authoritarian, elite-centered culture here in the old artwork/editorial cartoons/ in these links: http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/imageapp.php?Collection2=US http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/search.html http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/redscare/HTMLCODE/CHRON/C1_12.HTM http://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ngillus.htm

I think I know why you are so frustrated, enraged and confused. How can people be so utterly stupid and mean? Why can't they see the truths that are so obvious to you and your friends? This is the problem: You look at the issues from an either-or perspective. Either we are militarisitic and authoritarian or we are peaceful and democratic. Either poor people are lazy and dependent or they are unfortunate innocent victims. When the average American disagrees with you or other leftists on some issue, it's because they feel you have gone to an extreme. For example they might think you care more about protecting criminals' rights than about protecting citizens from crime. So they will react by taking the opposite view, possibly going too far in the other direction. And when you disagree with right-wing ideas you are focusing on extreme versions of the ideas. For example, the idea that society should leave poor children to sink or swim, and force them to be self-reliant. Almost no one actually believes that, no matter what their political affliliation. In other words, you are frustrated and maddened by a charicature of right-wing and centrist thinking. Similarly, non-leftists are appalled by what is probably an exaggerated charicature of leftist thought. The vast majority of Americans are not far right or far left. They consider each issue separately and decide for themselves what seems fair, without worrying what political category their opinion happens to fall into.