[FRA:] Marcuse question

[James Rovira]

Fred -- I haven't said anything like this about the war.  This is a very
dumb conversation.  Once you start saying Democratic Party candidates aren't
"really Democrats" I don't think we have much to talk about anymore.  It is
the parties that are the real constants in US politics, not any specific
candidates, and both parties have contributed a great deal to the current
mess we're in. Bush will be out of office in two years.  We'll see what
happens then.  I think the midterm election this year will be pretty
revealing and the Republicans are in real danger of losing one of the houses
of Congress, if the Democrats are so dumb as to shoot themselves in the
foot.  Right now, I don't feel a great deal of affinity for either party.

Ralph -- I identified the site as "neotraditionalist."  I don't know quite
what you mean by "reactionary."  If you mean fascist, that's wrong: the
point of view advocated on the site is for strong local communities, not a
strong central government embodied in a central, male leader that serves as
a national fetish (that is how fascism really worked in the 20th century).
Russian communes at the time of the revolution supporting a relatively weak
central government is closer to this ideal than anything else we've seen in
the 20th cent.  But, that didn't last long.

Enlightenment values have produced this society of individual consumers that
demand wars to keep prices low.

Enlightenment values followed to their natural trajectory end in fascism,
Ralph. I think that's part of Adorno's argument in _Jargon of Authenticity_
-- in it, Adorno was critiquing Heideggerian existentialism as a centerless
form of individualism that, by leaving a vacuum in the center, made Germany
susceptible to fascism.  Marx's _The German Ideology_, furthermore, is
pretty critical of Max Stirner (Sancho) -- whatever Marx thought about
individualism, I don't think he thought much of "autonomous" individualism.
There's simply no such thing.

Jim R.