Greetings Economists, Do you read Marcuse? Angela Davis was one of his students. Maybe she has some opinions for an interview for MRzine. On Jul 29, 2006, at 5:12 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
according to Marcuse, we have to abolish surplus repression but leave the necessary repression in place. How do we decide which is which in practice?
Doyle; I think I disagree with this idea of necessary repression. People start out in their birth families shaped by human interaction. It is a place of knowledge production for the child. There are many sorts of caveats about what a child is doing. Let me take an example from socialism of the past. In the Soviet Union the individual need was a problem for the collective process. In other words does the society as a whole love you, or just your mommy? Is the feelings you have just for your family or for everyone? Does necessary repression mean an individual response to society? My favorite social example thought experiment that applies here. You walk down the street in the big city. All are strangers. Your feelings are cypher to them and theirs to you. In fact it is probable you would get a lot of trouble for small potatoes interaction. Troll enough people and you might find an intimate partner. That is individualism. Changing the image as a Christian might with a dream about heaven, you trot along the cloudy lanes, as the people pass by the Christian love is in all of them. Well that's mythos, but the point is a lot of people like the image. In other words, suppose the individual aspect of social connection we practice now were communized? Does one connect to 10 lovers. Hardly changes the thought experiment. Tens time the trolling maybe, ten times the socially necessary work. So the social problem is the intimacy to millions at once. Can a socialist society realize that sort of emotional abundance? Well I think networked communications implies we are thinking about how millions connect at once. Certainly in that why not all love all? What exactly is the problem socialism would have with that sort of society? Let's not be too simplistic here. This is an Information Technology sort of question about hardware infrastructure, pipeline information exchange and so on. Just to put this back down from fairy tales of heaven. thanks, Doyle
