Sunday, November 06, 2011

owst iv

The system of power maintains general repressions, which are imposed likewise on all members of society. As long as it is administered by a social class, then class-specific privations and denials are linked to the general ones. The traditions that legitimate authority also must compensate the mass of the population for these specific renunciations that go beyond the general privations. That is why the oppressed masses are the first to be incapable of integration by legitimations that have become fragile. It is they who first critically turn the utopian content of tradition against the established civilization [...] (J.Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, p.280) || Someone who distinguished himself in the ideological legitimation of the colossal expropriation and ruthless repression that struck its victims was Locke. This 'most particular supporter of the lash for vagrants and paupers' (Marx) was in fact, at the same time, the 'father' of 'free-thinking', the protagonist of the great ideological battle that deconsecrated absolute monarchy and stripped it of its Christian and Biblical cover. (D. Losurdo, Liberalism, Verso, p.319) || It is to be expected that these underprivileged classes will envy the favoured ones their privileges and will do all they can to free themselves from their own surplus of privation. (Freud, The Future of an Illusion: link)