emotion and the big picture

Dear WSNers: Josef's "machinegun" post apparently had some effect. I liked 
it.
Is it really different or more confrontational than talking about capitalism
"murdering" babies? One can't simply ignore the emotive, although as a
philosopher I have a deep distrust of the role of emotion in argument. One 
point
that should become clear in the exchange of emotive statements is that 
there is
enough pain to go around. The world system puts a large portion of the 
world's
people in horrific circumstances. In fact, there have been rather few 
systems
that didn't offer horror to someone. Political philosophy is tough. A 
metapoint
I have trying to make concerns the incredible difficulty of designing a
political philosophy even with the best of intentions and assuming perfect
rationality. Throw in a bit of bad attitude and irrationality and the 
difficulty
of the task is multiplied.

Which brings me to the question, What are we trying to do on this list? 
(The big
picture) The core idea is that of the world system(s). The topic started 
out to
be a discussion of a world party and what it should look like if one were to
make the effort to create it. Two main views seemed to emerge: I.A Marxist
(sometimes Stalinist, but not always) view that suggests that (a) autonomous
markets are too dangerous and that they need to be eliminated or at least
tightly controlled and (b) that dictatorship and violence are viable means 
to
the end of accomplishing (a); and II. a left-Liberal view (left of
Clinton/Gore/Bradley/Jackson--maybe best described as social democrat)that
argues that there are ways to modify the free market through legislation 
that
will undermine the negative effects of the market. (We see these already to 
some
extent in environmental legislation. We have also seen the beginnings of
democratically created international accords that have pushed the effort 
beyond
national boundaries.) It als
o eschews both violence and dictatorship. [My own version draws on the work 
of
Rawls and Habermas in basing the theory of justice on the ideas of the ideal
speech situation and the original position. But that is another argument.] 
One
might also argue for a middle position (Elson?)somewhere between, so if we 
end
up needing the category, fine.

With this picture in mind, let's translate the emotion into amounts of pain,
since if they are cognitive statements, that's what they must mean, and get 
down
to business. After all, the thrust of my argument is that the Marxist route
costs too much pain, and doesn't really work in the end anyway. Rigorous
estimates are difficult to come by, and they are highly contested, but that 
is
the task we are left with.

When asked to show how I thought Marxism led fairly easily to Stalinism, I 
came
forth with a scenario. Some of you have attacked it, and I will respond 
shortly,
but I have yet to see a comparable statement from the Marxist side that 
lays out
a plausible sequence of events from the elimination of markets and 
dictatorship
at the beginning or middle of the process to a economically viable and just
system guided by democratic principles at the end of it. Again, doesn't any
political prgram owe it to its followers to lay out what the likely costs 
are
going to be?

Upshot: I took up your challenge. Now take up mine.

By the way, please don't hit us with a tome. Let's keep the arguments short 
and
clear so that responding is straighforward. I realize this requires rougher
statements, but hey, this is e-mail, not the Journal of Philosophy.

Randy Groves