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FAIR_GAME

                                             November 8, 2011

  Once again: are you allowed
  to evaluate ideas based on            INTO_THE_BRAINPAN
  what they actually do, or
  are you forced to take them
  on their own idealized terms?


  For example, Marxist "intellectuals"
  have some striking, well-known problems
  (a willingness to ignore realities
  for political reasons).

     But is that a fair grounds to
     dismiss Marx? All of Marx?  He
     wrote quite a bit of stuff, and             You might, for example,
     while he may have regarded it as            reject historical
     one single doctrine, there's no             inevitabilities and yet
     reason we have to.                          buy the critique of
                                                 capitalism and yet reject
                                                 the utopian communist
                                                 schemes...
  Similarly, free-market doctrine
  has some nice ethical arguments
  in favor of it's insistance on
  relying entirely on voluntary
  agreements of free individuals...

  But having watched this doctrine
  get selectively applied and
  generally abused I don't think very         As Chomsky puts it,
  much of the people propounding it           "Socialism for the
  with ideological blinders.                  rich, free markets
                                              for the poor."
  The question then is, is the way
  the idea of "free markets" plays in
  the wild a reason to reject the
  idea itself?


  The disease in both of these cases
  arises out of the desire of the
  people who claim adherence to the          We wouldn't think very
  doctrine to *do* something with it,        much of them if they
  to engage with the world.                  *refused* to do this,
                                             would we?  Damn
     So, if we use the way                   impractical idealists.
     the doctrine plays out
     in the world to
     complain about the
     doctrine... can it's
     advocates complain?





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