Re: <nettime> Obama and the dawn of ...

["Alex Foti" <alex.foti@gmail.com>]

is it a rorty vs bhaskar kind of epistemological division, or i don't
know what i'm talking about? in general, pushing as much to the left
as possible actually existing democracy (which comes in both the
flawed and/or outdated liberal and social varieties, but also in the
arguably less flawed bolivarian kind) seems more promising than
pushing for a Real democracy beyond actual experience (one of the
reasons why dismissing actually existing socialism as noncommunist has
always negatively affected the chances of left communism before, but
especially after 1989). Sticking closer to what i know, it boils down
to whether one believes the famous anarchist dictum: if elections
could actually change things, they would have forbidden them long ago.
Altho a nice line, it is historically wrong, because the universal
suffrage was imposed on capitalism with immense social struggles, the
last of which was the civil rights movement. If we describe democracy
as the actual process (with its advances and setbacks) by which
popular participation, labor conflict, social action democratize
capitalism and the state, i think our ideological differences are
significantly narrowed. ciao, lx

On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 8:19 AM, Wade Tillett
<wade@thefrictioninstitute.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 2008-11-15 at 16:37 +0100, CJ Hopkins wrote:
>> This is my first contribution to the list, to which I've subscribed for
>> some time, so, first, thank you all, and hello from Berlin.
>
> Thanks for the post, CJ.
>
>> assumptions, divides us into two broad groups, namely, those who
>> perceive (real) Democracy at work, and those who perceive a Simulation
>> of Democracy at work. This division is admittedly rather simplistic, and
>
> By making this division, it seems you are implying a Real Democracy
> beyond the (real) Democracy as Simulation. Can reality and simulation be
> separated?
 <...>


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