-----Original Message-----
From: Paul H.Dillon [mailto:illonph@pacbell.net]
Sent: Friday, September 08, 2000 9:37 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: RE: Re(2): ilyenkov-ideal: synopsis >>> "consciousness",
freedom
Paul said,
"in other words guess it simply means that talking about freedom is talking
about nothing, its talk about emptiness, although i'm not sure if that means
its empty talk, it just seems that it doesn't have any content, freedom that
is.."
I think we like to talk about it in this way, but it seems it still has a
material, objective quality in the end. Now in the U.S. for example with its
Capitalist Manifesto there are of course scraps of the "ideal" we can
struggle for, but their purpose is too support a particular ecomomic system.
Now in contemporay discussion the whole notion of respect for minority
opinion is important, but it also seems important to remember that initially
its purpose was too create a system where the minority - capitalists - would
prevail. It is not simply that we have prevailed or changed the meaning of
minority - its existence is still alive and well.
Take the MP3 thing for example - yes there are/ were certain freedom -
access to music - but they will be linited because of their conflict with
capital. Or protests or civil unrest for example - where they become
dangerous and the rights need to be limited is when they conflict with
capital. Opportunities too like with the boyscouts - a change may occur in
their practice not no much out of ideals of equality or that a gay man or
child should not be discriminated against - but again a tension with
capital. It is no longer profitable for a company to support an organization
that discriminates. Or even coutries like Japan that are limiting its
peoples freedom by not allowing American corporations to come in and take
over. Freedom here is globalization - which in my mind best read as American
imperialization. So freedom can not conflict with capital on one hand and it
is equal to it on the other. The French PM said something to the extent that
democracy is being floated around as some kind of religion - and of course
it is. It is this sense that globalization is this natural process that
even has agency. I think of some of Phil Graham's work looking at the
discourse of the IMF etc in which processes like globalization are given an
agent status with us being the passive effect of the inevitable process. It
is legitimized through the language of freedom and democracy.
So, I think we need to be careful in our talk of freedom - it is not talk of
emptiness or nothing - but definately has some content although not the
inevitable kind. When one goes to an American Legion and they say we need to
honor those who fought for our freedom - we need to uncover the content of
this freedom. This freedom more often than not has some sort of
exploitation behind it or violent defense of the free flow of capital. Or
history books with a very strong theme of freedom - it makes us proad to be
in the land of the free - but what is the material base of this freedom.
This often becomes invisable because using the discourse of freedom it
becomes connected with content, values and beliefs we hold dear.
So, in contrast to this empty signifier or abstractness of freedom I think
it needs to be materialized, made concrete. What kind of and whose freedoms
are being argued for. It seems to me freedom, democracy are used too much in
the abstract sense without explicating its content. Lastly, I think there
is the added danger when we say it is solely abstract - which as with
Ilyenkov's treatment of the ideal the topic is given a sense as solely the
content of idealists.
ps: checked out the other Marx - they call themselves Marxists BTW. Had
some old flicks good for a saturday morning chuckle.
Nate
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