Hi again Squeers,

The above is in reply to your last post addressing me.

Dear Squeers,

I think oligarchy fits my purposes better than hegemony. Oligarchy means rule by the few in a polity. That is exactly what I meant.

Hegemony means more than that. According to Raymond Williams it can also mean class dominance or dominance of a nation over another nation. According to Williams the meaning of hegemony is especially important in societies where electoral politics and public opinion are significant factors.

Hegemony also covers less ground than oligarchy. By mentioning oligarchies I want to include those controlling groups in the fascist and Marxist one-party states. That also doesn’t seem to be what either Williams or Gramsci meant by hegemony.

Dear Poirot,

I hope I have ‘overcome the situation.’ I got angry at your posts which were critical of me. Although I have not consciously meant to be provocative maybe subconsciously I have. At least that is how you saw me, and I may have given you cause to see me that way. I’ll try to look at myself more closely.

With JWs I sometimes ask them about their background. Most of them seem to come from another fundie background. However, I have also talked to those who had been Church of England or Jewish. From the JWs they apparently got a previously lacking certainty.

Dear csteele,

I agree that people can get out of Anzac day more than triumphalism and glorification. I am unaware of any evidence of guilt or feelings of collective responsibility for the actions of the troops. I am uneasy about the notion of collective responsibility. I along with many others demonstrated against going to war in Iraq. In spite of our protests the nation went to war in Iraq. Why should I feel responsible for an action of which I did not approve, demonstrated my disapproval and which was carried on without my consent?

David f.,

I suppose I was on your case, but really just to highlight that fact that we are "only human"- and we tend to employ certain devices during our interactions - and we all react pretty much the same way.

Just on the ANZAC question. I was reading a piece by Peter Cochrane on the myth that grew around Simpson and his Donkey. He was a local hero in Galipoli. A fellow called The Reverend Clarence Irving Benson wrote a book titled "The Man with the Donkey" on Simpson's exploits and included many letters to display his apparently conservative leanings. In fact the letters took up nearly a third of the book - except that Benson had censored them so severely that it almost amounted to blatant falsification of character.

Cochrane wrote: "The uncut letters reveal a Simpson who was fiery and compassionate about political and industrial affairs, who was pained by the injustice of the class system he had left behind in England and who wanted things to change. Benson cut out Simpson's hostility to class privilege, his references to The House of Lords as being full of "a lot of empty-headed fools"....he cut out most of his brawling and bravado....the letters that spoke of slackness and unemployment must have chilled Benson to the bone."

Yet, Simpson and his Donkey became part of a conservative myth, a tale of King and Country, replete with Christian associations.
No doubt Simpson was a hero in his own localised way. What Benson did was to help the legend grow by censoring the real man and reforming him into something else.

Many of the ideas taken on board concerning the nobility of war are "helped along" by censorship and idealisation, when the reality is often vastly different.

davidf,
despite your preference, modern western capitalism is by definition not oligarchichal--the term is just not that rubbery. Unless you mean corporate oligarchy--which is unrepresentative and the soul of capitalism. I do agree that late capitalism functions like an oligarchy via blind subscription rather than tyranny.

Hegemony is not nearly so crude as 'dominance' per se, whether national or international. It is ideological--thus US culture is internationally hegemonic, at least with the masses. Nor is hegemony divisible in some crude sense of a monolithic class, like aristocracy; but hegemony cuts through all professions and so-called classes, ideologically enforcing a set of dominant established norms that are more or less self-enforcing until and unless the weight of popular opinion shifts. Williams uses Gramsci's idea of hegemony, though he also develops it; rather than seeing hegemony as solid-state, Williams saw it as subject to broad-scale cultural manipulation. And so it is, as I allude above, but not sufficient for meaningful reforms to be enacted--thus even gay marriage has had years of agonising and is still far from accepted.
Of course Gramsci was just another evil Marxist for whom evil didn't pay off and he died in a similarly destitute state as Marx for his pains--serves them right no doubt.
Hegemony is conservative and doesn't like change. Examples of this in our own culture are legion.

So-called Marxist states are nothing of the kind. Stalinism for instance was not remotely modelled on anything Marx preferred. Neither was it an oligarchy.

In Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky wrote:

"Those who want to face their responsibilities with a genuine commitment to democracy and freedom - even to decent survival - should recognise that barriers that stand in the way. In violent states these are not concealed. In more democratic societies barriers are more subtle. While methods differ sharply from more brutal to more free societies, the goals are in many ways similar: to ensure that the "great beast" as Alexander Hamilton called the people, does not stray from its proper confines.
Controlling the general population has always been a dominant concern of power and privilege....Abroad, it is Washington's responsibility to ensure that government is in the hands of "the good, though but a few". At home, it is necessary to safeguard a system of elite decision making and public ratification - "polyarchy", in the terminology of political science - not democracy.

Dear Squeers,

I am not going to argue Marxist theory with you. However, your remark that the Stalinist state wasn't Marxist sounds like the apologists for Christianity who claim the Crusades and the Inquisition weren't really Christian. The Manifesto specified that transportation and communication be in control of the state. I have read enough of Marx to know that the Soviet incorporated quite a bit of what Marx prescribed.

Discuss Marxism with Marxists or those who want to discuss it. I really don't want to discuss it with you. I get more enjoyment in discussing the Bible with JWs or watching fish fry. One has to watch to make sure it is neither overdone or underdone.

We got started on Marxism because you wanted to substitute a term Marxists use for my use of the word, oligarchy. Unfortunately I responded. One can deny the record of Marxism by maintaining the Marxist states weren't really Marxist and the Marxist states were so-called Marxist states. I am not interested in that exercise.

Dear Poirot,

I am aware of Simpson. From what I know of him he was a Communist, an atheist, acutely aware of his class status, very brave and very loyal to his comrades. It is a pity that he died a heroic death rather than living a long and happy life.

I heard Chomsky speak a few years ago in Town Hall in Sydney. During the question period he was asked about the influences on him. He mentioned his social milieu and a number of thinkers. He got another question from the audience noting that he didn't mention Marx and was asked whether marx was also an influence.

"Oh, sure."

The ruling class whether it is capitalist, Marxist or whatever will do their best to make historical narrative support what they want it to support.

The 'we are good - they are bad' gestalt has appeared in many places.

We respond in many of the same ways to similar stimuli. These are truisms we can do little about. Think I'll do a Sudoku.