[claudiawerner]

My point on ideology wasn't to say that ideology is extremist, rather it was to say that we are all ideological. Ideology in popular speech seems to mean something extremist, because we figure outselves to be free of ideology: rational, economical etc. - but these are ideologies in themselves. You and I are both steeped in ideology and that's not a bad thing. The bad thing is thinking we are free of it, or the world works as if it's free of it, or that societies don't perpetuate themselves through Establishment ideology.

I also didn't want to imply you're poorly read, or that you should be well read on something as arcane as 20th century leftist theory, I only wanted to bring your attention to the idea that the left doesn't shy away from grossness in any future society.

The question is never of eliminating politics in the most general sense, it's to eliminate current politics in a constantly revolutionary fashion. Communism is a political movement, for instance, and the very existence of the party shows that they don't want to get rid of politics - they only want to move away from bourgeois democracy which supports (and is supported by) capital. Not even the anarchists deny the role of politics. But the idea that politics is merely a disagreement about resource allocation is ideological (and this time I do mean it in a bad sense).

[village-idiot]

Most of that’s pretty reasonable, but you’re talking about something completely unrelated to the point I was making.