Logic of identity

[matthew piscioneri]

Hi Bob,

thanks for the reply. Last Thursday's effort were fuelled by too much booze 
& full moon, so apologies for some of the extraneous guff.

[Bob wrote]

>Matt,
>the persona in the ballad  is a typical example of stunted consciousness.
>the "river"  is eros, not purification and spiritual restoration.  he's
>lamenting the loss of adolescent sexuality and the burden of family.
>Emfatically, no joe hill; and tom joad is springsteen's omaj to mature 
>prole
>consciousness.

I haven't heard Tom Joad (unless he's a character in a ballad i have 
heard....could you point me in the right direction here?)I guess popular 
culture critique is OK on a FS List, so to continue for a moment with the 
Boss, I sort of disagree with your reading of the River. The river is 
neither purification or spiritual restoration. It is about eros and the 
emancipation of sweet 16 love/few material cares. It is also about the 
***stunting*** of consciousness. Springsteen's tale reasonates because you 
feel it is real enough (still a bit too rosy eg. throughout the song there 
is always solidarity with Mary "who just acts as if she don't care").

So I don't think there is either immature or mature prole consciousness on 
offer in the river(both the union card & getting hitched seem to go hand in 
hand as burdens). It's a sad ode about the emancipatory joy of youth and 
young love that SHOULD draw our critical attention to a sort of 
pre-philosophical a-prole/class potential for emancipation in things other 
than the LTOV...Marcuse again perhaps? If anything it is Springsteen's 
catcher in the rye. Why does it work for me? Because of its hopelessness. 
Our hero doesn't end up finding marx or marcuse. Goes back to the river, but 
we all know he and mary end up as white trailer trash etc. What happens 
next. Philosophically speaking?
-------------
So the critical issue appears to be "stunted, debased, false consciousness" 
be it owned by workers or lackeys. Agreed, and we are back to Kant:

>But apropos this habit of yerz, tendentious reading to the prejudice of
>worker consciousness, in any case the bell-curve determines the vastestness
>of the distribution will be pavlovian to institutionalized authority
>(...company, gov't, church, union, media),  so there's no trick to finding
>stunted, debased, false consciousness among workers equal with the
>parasitical rich/poor and lackey classes.
-------------
Sorry. Suspicious of marginal effects. Too much bog Irish in me. It's about 
Mrs McGallagher down the road and how she is coping with nine kids.

>It's the marginal effect that's
>futural, no?
--------------
Bob, when you write:

>  but you know all this from marcuse.  just baiting us?

You are overestimating me (thanks it makes me feel clueier than I know I 
am). You are obviously more widely read for a start, which makes me suspect 
you are moonlighting from god knows where...red herrings of amateur 
philosopher noted.

I've read a lot of Habermas and a bit of H. & A. Bits of Marx. Very little 
Marcuse. Second I don't play at this stuff (baiting, trolling etc).
-----------------
And isn't this the problem with the LTOV?

>very amusing.  but the casus has nothing to do with the ltov (labor theory
>of value) and rather more as you indicate with petit bourgeois amour propre
>(having disqualified xian charity for yourself), so i really think you
>should leave socialism out of it.

It looks like you want to reify socialism to the realm of philosophical 
discourse in order to preserve it's purity. Maybe I can understand why. Then 
the true believers can sleep easily at night without having to (a) get their 
hands dirty with the boringness of fellows who if ONLY they read and 
understood marx wouldn't need to go back to the river (b) cleanse their 
hands of the blood of victims with the philosophically pure wondersoap of 
the LTOV. At the risk of hyperbole, I don't think you can leave socialism 
out of making a cup of tea. That's why I try. Too pervasive. It hurts my 
head too much.
-----------------
Sure, but it ***isn't*** the bicycle thief's world or the tree of wooden 
clogs coming into play here. If it was then the act of stealing isn't 
treacherous. It's about a greedy person (with more than enough money to blow 
on speed & grog, for eg.) stealing from - in the first place me and my 
family - and in the second place from the community of "less well offs" 
which I try to do a bit for as I can etc.

>Still for me personally, i'd say the
>bicycle thief's world is more livable than the pawnbroker's.
>
>...philosophically speaking.

Why doesn't this surprise me :-)? Isn't this what happens when you put credo 
before *actual* thinking which takes as its starting place existing world 
conditions? Thief good, shopkeeper bad. Boss bad, union delegate good. Aww 
c'mon. Looks like you have turned Marx's materialism on its head in order to 
preserve the idealism of the LTOV.

Best regards,

MattP



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