On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 20:32, David B. Shemano <[email protected]> wrote:
> Living in West LA, I have the intellectually fascinating experience of living > in a community of individuals who would not for a Republican if their lives > depended on it, but are very "conservative" and traditional in their personal > lives. They are successful, entrepeneurial, etc. -- people who are the > natural base of the Republican party in much of the country. Such people > are usually incapable of rationally explaining why they would not vote for a > Republican, usually mumbling something about abortion or the religious right > if pressed. I find such things inherently interesting. > I see the point you are making. I lived in Austin, TX last year, which is a reflexive bastion of Dems.--lots of support for Obama last year as well as for energy issues, local food, etc. I also noticed that, unlike North Texas--say, Dallas and Fort Worth--there are a lot more people who own their own businesses. Many more, as you put it, successful entrepreneurs than in the Dallas area, at least in terms of brick and mortar businesses not obtuse finance companies whose employees generally have more interest in faceless operators in New York and Tokyo than anyone who might serve them food on a regular basis. Moreover, more of the people in these areas seem to work for someone else--whether a large corporation (which owns most of the restaurant and shopping options, whether for food, clothes, etc.) or for some franchise of a large chain. So in this sense, it would seem that the people in Dallas and Fort Worth would be a more likely base for a more leftish politics (i.e. not necessarily the Dems since they aren't really all that left, but if nothing else...) Yet they are predominantly self identified as Republican and it takes some time to get them to think about their actual position economically (which, I'd note, is a fairly marxist way to think--so good for you!) I was speaking to a relative a few weeks ago, who was decrying the taxation increases for the purpose of getting health care for everyone. He said he didn't want to have to pay more taxes to give everyone else health care: he worked to hard for the bank (which recently laid him off). He doesn't have health care himself and his salary before he lost his job was $50K/year. In other words, in none of the current plans would he have been taxed more and would have far more to gain by having another option for health care. If he had predominantly stated his opposition to this plan in some civic minded terms--vis a vis the long term health of the state, etc.--then perhaps his vigorous opposition would make sense. But he objected to it on mostly personal terms, the terms on which, materially, he would actually have more to gain from its passage. Go figure. In terms of Austin, on the other hand, and maybe even the area that you live in, the more community minded entrepreneurs are quite indebted to the local culture which prompts people to "buy local" or "go local!" http://blog.golocalaustin.com/ So in a real sense, they understand their role as entrepreneurs in a sort of Marxist sense rather than the limited understanding offered by the republican party. Though it may not always be articulated and there is likely a lot of variance, they seem to see their ability to be an individual entrepreneur as the result of the larger social field--if only in the sense that they are reliant on consumers who adhere to the ideology of supporting the local community. This goes further than simply supporting the local--there is also a serious opposition to the external corporations. A ballot initiative last fall was about some tax subsidies provided to a large, upscale mall which housed mostly national- and multinational corporations (Borders books, Tiffany jewlers, etc.) In this sense, I think the trend towards democratic politics has more to do with a cultural realization that there is a local interdependence that is upset with an over reliance on what are basically external funders that can pull their support at any time. This isn't to say that certain corporations don't do quite well there (Whole Foods and the local chain of HEB Central Market stores, for instance) but that there is less resistance among the majority of the population to thinking of their businesses as part of the community, as reliant on the community, rather than seeing the community as yet another resource to dominate (and, in the end, exploit and kill, as Wal Mart and Starbucks seem to see the networks of other businesses in areas they set up shop) and keep dominated. The latter is the strategy of the oligopoly multinational corporation and it sets itself up so that it needs no direct emotional connection with the community it comes in contact with: it just needs to be the only place that community can have their needs met, whether those needs are for fulfilling the needs of consumption directly or for employment. By dominating the community, there is not a need to think of it as something that would be best if it thrived and had a variety of outlets and competitors, local culture, and sustainability: it is just a space where essential needs must be met by someone and if you are the only game in town, the community must rely on you whether they like it or not. I think these are all interconnected and am not proffering a causal connection in any one direction: it's mutually constituting. But it is also, therefore, not completely inexplicable how a set of seemingly contradictory ideological positions can be paired with seemingly objective material positions. When you get into the inertia of culture--which is what you seem to end on--then there is surely something to that as well. The disarticulation of politics (and political ideologies) from material positions was one of the key dilemma of cultural studies, one which, I'd note, has been almost totally abandoned because it is such a morass. On the other hand, there are people like Larry Bartells who say that the "what's the matter with kansas" thesis we're dancing around here is incomplete and mostly wrong: that the exceptions we're both pointing out here are actually proving the rule. I can see that point as well, though displaced somewhat. For instance, many people in north texas may be opposed to the idea of community or social redistribution through the government, but are perfectly comfortable with it when it is channeled through the increasingly massive religious institutions (still, charmingly referred to as "churches" there.) These spaces, as several journalists and scholars have pointed out, are not just spaces where community is affirmed (though it is a community of believers, doing works of faith rather than "work" per se) but also where the gaps are filled in the social safety net--gaps that are created by the resistance to taxes and government, etc. (I'll bracket for the moment that these areas, especially the south, are more likely to get more federal tax dollars in the form of spending than they commit, i.e. they generally get more than they give from the federal government.) It is a space where the old-fashioned resistance to the craven world of capitalism is seen as simply a reaction to the whims of frivolous nature--or, in more divinely inspired rhetoric, as being part of God's plan. Here I'm less trying to claim an actual investigation (though I've got plenty of anecdotes, they are hardly the work of close study) than to point to another dimension of this question of ideology and its relation to material circumstances. In this case, the ideology of christianity is important, as is the religious cultural politics that these institutions inspire; but these institutions also appear to offer some material sustenance in precisely the ways that the neo-liberal order they support does not--community, in some cases so much so that there will be aid to someone in the community with bills or other kinds of in-kind help. David Harvey talks about the connection between neo-liberalism and neo-conservitism at the world historical level, but it is surely possible that there is a suturing of the two at the communal and interpersonal level as well. Insistence that faith based charities substitute government programs is just the most visible mid-level manifestation. This would make me wonder less about the material circumstances alone of your California compatriots and more about how this was related to other cultural spheres--do they go to church? Are they involved at all in any other civic organizations? Or does it simply appear as a reflexive ideology, which no amount of reflection on their part could possibly explain--i.e. they just believe that because that's what they grew up believing? It's this last one that is the most difficult to discern because no one really wants to admit that--least of all liberals--even if it, again, is mostly true. In other words, the speculations you're attempting in the world of pure thought are overly Hegelian in themselves. This is why it may seem that, for instance, Charles' nuanced explanations of why Chavez or Cuba or any other such thing appears in a certain light is quite difficult to think about solely in ideological terms. It is also a historical, political, and material dimension which must be explained in each case. Unfortunately for the real world, this is difficult to do in 30 second sound bites on cable news. "good" and "evil" are much quicker to grasp and they make for better TV. s _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
