This is a thought-piece about whether democracy is worth anything at all in this era.  I start with reflection upon a short paragraph from Ellen Meiksins Wood’s Democracy Against Capitalism, which suggests that elites both before and after capitalism have had a social basis for their assertions of privilege.  The current assertion of privilege is substantiated by “money,” “property,” and “capitalism,” all of which are said to limit the sphere of democratic decisionmaking.  But since “money,” “property,” and “capitalism” are the business of society, one must then question whether or not there is really anything left for democracy to decide, and whether people will actually get enough power to make democracy decide anything of substance.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

If the state of public opinion were to reflect the research on abrupt climate change, billions of people would be in a state of panic.  The problem is not merely that the proposed measures to deal with the problem will be inadequate, nor that Copenhagen will wind up with no agreement or be a farce, although both of those predictions will come true; it’s that the intelligentsia, that class of individuals who should be asking the right questions and coming up with the right answers, is not yet talking about what needs to be done.  

What we will need is an agreement to limit fossil fuel production, and a new concept of economy to replace the neoliberal one, which is structurally incapable of making such a solution real.  This essay is intended to  promote debate about such a change.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

Book review: Fisher, Andy.  Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life.  Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002.

This is a book review, really some ruminations, upon Andy Fisher’s Radical Ecopsychology.  Here I wish to explore the subtext of capitalism’s spell in Fisher’s book.  Our separation from the world-ecosystem in equilibrium and our joining with the machines of industrial development under the spell of capitalism is what is at stake; Fisher speculates upon the possibility of “making sense of suffering in a technological world” so we can “hear our own inner voice” (183) in a naturalistic sense.  In short, Fisher wishes to break the spell.  Fisher intends ecopsychology as a therapeutic support to an ecology movement which must win something for our “human nature” if any of us are to survive.

(Crossposted at Orange)

In my last diary, I asked the Progressive Caucus to explain, precisely, what constituted a “robust public option.”  Is a “robust public option” the one currently in HR 3200, or is it the one originally demanded by Jane Hamsher among others?

But I don’t think anyone in the campaign to defend a “robust public option” understood what was at stake, for none of them took the time to define the term for me.  If the “robust public option” is the public option now in HR 3200, then it can be anything one wishes; co-ops, triggers, whatever.

(Crossposted to Orange)

This diary notes a shift in definitions: A “robust public option” used to mean a public option available to all, on the first day of mandates.

What does it mean now?

(crossposted at Orange)  

This will be a short review of John Dryzek’s forgotten classic Rational Ecology in the context of the challenge of abrupt climate change.  Dryzek asks us to place ecological concerns first, and to look at these concerns in terms of the systems we use to make decisions.  If we were all to follow Dryzek’s logic, we might develop the will to take decisive action to address the problem, which we currently don’t have.  I will start by asking about climate change, summarize the book, and conclude by suggesting applications to the problem.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

All right.  Anastasia P requested that I repost an earlier diary detailing my hopes and suspicions about “health care reform.”  I don’t do reposts; however, I am interested in an investigation of the central theme of that earlier diary, which was to look at health care in the context of a (these days) booming industry: “getting those who can’t pay to pay.”  In this stage of capitalism, it would seem, the big growth industry is in “squeezing blood from turnips,” in which it is imagined that the poor and indebted will pay their creditors whatever is owed them if only the laws requiring them to do so are tough enough, and if the collection agencies are firm and resolute enough in their intentions.

Health insurance reform enters into it.  More below.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

This diary is inspired by Slinkerwink’s diary of earlier today.  Slinkerwink was trying to elaborate on why “The Public Option Is Non-Negotiable.”  Now, I love Slinkerwink’s diaries because they are ringing calls to action.  But upon encountering some rather mushy comments in the comments section, I felt obliged to respond with a diary of my own, with an attempt to explain how power operates in the health insurance industry.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

This is to elaborate on a previous diary on Gramsci: as I argued there, we need a new historic bloc.  I’m updating the argument to discuss the Congressional contest for a “robust public option”; the old historic bloc appears to have partially collapsed, with the deflation of Republican popularity, yet no new historic bloc has arisen.  The attempt to create a “robust public option” may have encountered so much resistance, I argue, because it is trying to work with the old historic bloc.  We, therefore, need a new one.

(crossposted at Big Orange)