Eva hit the wrong key and sent to me privately what she meant to send
to FW, viz.,
eva> From: Eva Durant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
eva> Subject: Re: FW: ...what's wrong with the ideologies we have so far?
eva> Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 12:02:26 +0100 (BST)
eva> so give us - or me - a summary.
eva> Of the ideologies, I know what was wrong with
eva> the socialism so far attempted or labelled so.
eva> I am not aware of any one "reduced" capitalist ideology,
eva> but the conscious attempts to avoid it's
eva> inbuilt contradictions did not work either.
eva> I thought we needed ideologies; they are the hypotheses
eva> we conclude from past experience, to work towards to.
eva> That's what politics were supposed to be about
eva> in a democracy; each ideology having advocates, and
eva> the electorate chosing the one that sound most
eva> sensible.
eva>
eva> I rather have a conscious plan, than letting the
eva> blind forces of nature/economics take their course.
eva>
eva>
eva> Eva
and quoting my previous post:
> Eva remarked:
>
> > Should we not first analyse what's wrong with the ideologies we have
> > so far?
>
> John Ralston Saul's book, _The Unconscious Civilization_, was on the
> Toronto Globe & Mail bestseller list for somthing like a year and a
> half, yet I don't recall that anyone has mentioned or quoted him on
> this list.
>
> Chapter 5 begins:
>
> On the day that you or I achieve a stable condition of
> equillibrium, those arounds us who have been less fortunate will
> draw one of two conclusions. Either that we are dead or that we
> have slipped into a state of clinically diagnosable delusion. And
> to live in delusion is to live in the comfort of ideology.
>
>
> I don't see much difference between the inevitability of the communist
> utopia and the inevitability of the capitalist global utopia, nor
> between Mussolini's relationship with the corporatist interests and
> that of congress and parliament to those same interests. I've said
> occasionally (and nobody laughs or seems to get it) that the cold war
> is over and the bad guys won. Not that the Commies were the good guys
> and the 'Muricans the bad, but that the two ideologies in putative
> conflict were each dominated by a common mechanistic, corporatist and
> inhumane view of society. Economic determinism was once held up as
> the immoral and damning tenet of the Reds but, so soon as the
> capitalist bloc was freed of the balance of the Soviet one, economic
> determinism emerged from the shadows as the alleged ideological core
> of democracy. George Bush said, in is innaugural address,
>
> We know how to secure a more just and properous life for man on
> earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections.
>
> and Saul quotes
>
> The liberal government in Canada declared in its 1995 foreign
> policy statement -- as if it were an obvious truth -- that "human
> rights tend to be best protected by those societies that are open to
> trade, financial flows, population movements, information and ideas
> about freedom and human dignity."
>
> The egregious inaccuracy of these assertions aside, look at the order
> of priorties: free markets, trade and financial flows come first.
>
> Saul's book (originally the 1995 CBC Massey Lectures) "analyzes what's
> wrong with the ideologies we have so far". He doesn't like what he
> sees and neither do I.
>
> - Mike
> ---
>
> The Unconscious Civilization
> John Ralston Saul
> House of Anansi Press, 1995
> ISBN 0-88784-576-2
> Paper, C$13.95
> ---
>
