Why I focus my concern on love.

Frankly, I have no idea of the reason I have became interested in love. Perhaps, as some friends said, it's because I don't really know the love. They said to me that one who don't know the real love often has some fatastic perspectives on it. In some cases, I agree to them. I should inevitably admit that I didn't experience it. But am I interested in it only due to not experiencing it? Not exactly.

What makes me focus my study on the concept of love is, in some aspects, derived from a kind of disappointment of the egocentrical human being. Nevertheless, I just want to believe in human's feeling, in which they volutarily take care of each other without any re-pays and in some cases even with their own sacrifices. Unquestionably, you know, our commuity will keep its members happy forever with it.

Unfortunately, the result I have studied so far, is not affluent. But I will never renounce this study plan. I know, there are so many obstacles and there are few probabilities in establising the political theory and arguably and not allegedly ethical one. However, I will never stop. Go! Go! Jinwoo! ^^

The Crisis of the Representative Democracy

Prologue

Post-modernists, you know, have been interested in a theory that a public sphere independent of the private sphere is essential for a healthy polity: a well-known name of the theory is REPUBLICANISM. The reason they have been interested in the republicanism is not only because it does not require representation but because it too is critical of modern representative democracy. As matter of course, there are so many varieties of the post-modernist perspectives. Some post-modernists, therefore, disagree to the republican alternative. Other affirmative post-modernists, however, argue for the revival of a public sphere distinct from the private sphere.

Before we discuss the logic of post-modernist republicanism, I feel, we have to refer to the nature of public-sphere theory, or the republicanism. We begin with a description of public-sphere theory as formulated by Habermas, because this version of the theory is most freequently of interest to post-modernists. Next, I will present post-modern reactions to the public-sphere theory in another article.


The Crisis of the Representative Democracy

Historically, a public sphere of interactive discourse, separate from the private sphere, assumes not representation, but only an interested, well-educated, articulate citizenry that looks beyond personal self-interest and private issues and emphasizes the common good. The existence of a healthy public sphere in a democracy means decisions are the result of rational critical debate, intersubjective communication, perferably of a face-to-face character that takes place in an open forum, for example in a cafe, a salon or a social club, where it can be publicly reviewed. The public sphere assumes that political authority will be judged on the basis of rational criticism.

The most important key point here is as below. It is not essential that every citizen participate or that he or she even be represented in the public sphere, but it is essential that all those interested in topics of public concern be able to take part in a general conversation, and that the broadest range of opinion on a topic be publicly aired. According to Habermas, this kind of activity seeks a judicious, wise, thoughtful agreement about society's needs and the best policy for a nation. The concept of the public sphere assumes that public dialogue and public deliberation, freely engaged among private individuals, can achieve an approximation of truth through an exchange of ideas. The result is reconciliation of differing views--if not consensus, at least general agreement.

But today, according to Arendt and Agger as well as Habermas, the public sphere as an independent arena of discussion, distinct from the state, is seriously threatened. The distinction between public and private is said to be disintegrating. If the public and private are fused, then the public sphere ceases to function, and an impartial assessment of the state sphere is no longer possible. Those institutions that made rational discussion possible in the past and guaranteed the integrity of the public sphere (freedom of speech, assembly, and communication) today undermine it. The failure of representation as it has developed in modern democracies is held responsible, in good measure, for the decline of the public sphere.

Habermas argues that modern representation has been antithetical to the survival of a healthy public sphere for several reasons. Most imprtantly, Habermas argues, representation becomes the "translations of interests". No meaningful exchange occurs in the process of legistlation. No one changes his or her mind any more. It's a kind of crisis of democracy, resulting from the disintegration of sound public sphere. According to Bauman, no one is responsible for the universal interest.

To be contined...

by Jinwoo

Coming on Next: Representation and Post-modern Republicanism

Unemployed People, the real revolutionary class!

The only powerful and feasible revolutionary class that is supposed to defeat this unfair and philistine system of the capitalism has been thought to be laborers. The revolutionary class, freed from the constraints of the capitalism, however, should be raised among unemployed people or people who can dispense with bourgeois and do not have to be employed by any bourgeois.

The revolutionary people have to have a kind of disinterest in capitalist society. The proletariats, however, have some strong interest in capitalist society, even if they have been, remain and will be suffered from this system. They, unfortunately, cannot exist without any bourgeois.

The new revolutionary generation, that have ability to defeat this absurd system and open a new world, will be emerged among jobless people or people who can dispense job. Then, what is the emerging class, not hired by any bourgeois and having afford to do? Knowledge-based class? Actually, I have no sense of this specific feagures. But just whiat I can say is that proletariats who have been regarded as the only and major revolutionary class is not promising nor powerful at any senses.

by Jinwoo

The Reason Why Socialism That Marxism expected Is Impossible

Before workers who, according to Marxism, is a worrior to defeat the supposedly unfair system of capitalism and is expected to build a socialism, stand against the capitalism, they can not help at first confronting bourgeois by whom they are hired.

They, however, don't want to defeat their owners because they will lose everything without the capitalists.

Marx's famous aphorism that proletariats will lose nothing but chains by communist revolution is not true because they have something to lose, such as their own life, their family, and above all their jobs by virtue of which they live and raise their family.

In other words, they have a labor power which is the resource for their living and raising family as Marx already ever described it.

Proletariats have something to lose which is named labor power. The key point is that it is useless without a place in which labor power is executed or sold.

It is true not that proletariats have nothing, but that proletariats possess a work place which is a condition of the existence of labor and laborer. Workers, therefore, can not extremely confront their owners because capitalists is a condition of the existence of workers and they conceivably believe that without capitalists workers cannot exist any more.

Not until the capitalists, the only thing that laborers possess and the precondition of existence of propertiless people are defeated, laborers lose everythng. In capitalist society, employers and employees have something in common. That's why Marxist expectation that socialism will be built by proletariats is not realized in this real world.

by Jinwoo

No Passingers know stoppers' stopping

When I went out of my room and passed by sweepings, I kept the door open for him who hid himself from running into me. My door, iron-made, has no affectation.

He always comes into my room during my absence and waits for me everyday, but he disapeared before I come back. Futhermore, he leaves no trace when he leaves the room. How can I meet and accost him?

Well, you know, his name is ... the very... Mr. Absence!
Can I meet my Absence? Can't I run into him forever?

A month ago, contingently, I realized, my Absence visited me after my attending office, enjoyed the laziness which is--and has to be--mine, and disapeared just before I came back.

Then, I kept the door open and light turned on for a sign that I was waiting for him, who has been enjoying my laziness rather than me. He, nevertheless, has by no means replied.

No passingers know stoppers' stopping because they feel--of course, they misconstrue--that even stoppers are moving. A month after from now, I will be laid off. He, who visits me after my leaving the room and my attending office, may not come into my room any more.

No passingers know stoppers' stopping.

by Jinwoo

THE CONSERVATIVE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

Since mid - 20 C, so many philosophers and authors, such as L. Althusser, R. Barthes, and postmodernists, have raised a question against teleological--or modernistst, in terms of postmodernism--violence of homogeneity, and suggested that we should be freed from the dominance and oppression of it.

Contradiction, the Hegelian concept has been thought of as obliged to be flowed into a historically prearranged single solution. And it is realization of the single prearranged solution that has been regarded as the End of History, the well-known Hegelian concept.

This concept of the End of History and the Homogeneity presupposes a hierarchy of the solutions, which otherwise would occupy the equal position to be adopted in order to solve various social problems. It leads to a hierarchy of virtures and values in the world of justice, and a radicalism and a fundamentalism in the world of politics.

In orde to resist the radicalism or fundamentalism or fanaticism, and protect all various plural virtues and values in the realm of politics, I suggest that we should consider conservatism as an alternative ground to judge the problem of our society and transform it.

Additionally, Communism deserves to be considered in order to recover human species as a commune-being because brutal capitalism has destroyed the human community by following the private-interest only.

As a historical being and a social being, each of our whole community members including workers in capitalist society, women in masculine one, and other minorities in one dominated by powers has a right to be dealt with as our friend or family.

Capitalism, brutally pursuing its private interest only, has separated our HUMAN COMMUNITARIAN FAMILY into a being of struggle and arranged our HUMAN FRIENDLY-EQUAL FAMILY as a hierachical, discriminate one.

I believe we have dual fronts, one of which is to resist the radicalism or fundamentalism or fanaticism reserve plural values; the other of which is to protect our community against capitalism and logic of private-interest and reserve humanity; and both of which are to establish the equality of human beings and values.

This is the reason why I suggest a CONSERVATIVE COMMUNISM!


by Jinwoo