NP A little Privacy Rant

[Mike Weaver]

>The forms technology and corporate interests that Pynchon seems to fear
>specifically are those that are sponsored by or co-opted by government --
>which would be consistent with a libertarian reading.  Pynchon is probably
>not a libertarian [...]
wrote Eric

As a political description "libertarian" doesn't describe anything very 
much. It's a qualification.
Eric's differentiation of government and business is a typical rightwing 
libertarian stance.
A view whch holds that, in the capitalist system,  they are always entwined 
in a way which threatens individual and non-corporate interests is  left 
wing libertarianism.

         The crux of many a political struggle is made visible by the 
contest between opposing forces over the use of a word or phrase.  For all 
the scorn the right invested in the phrase "political correctness" they 
were actually trying to assert their own formulation of what was 
politically correct.

         My favourite personal example: 1983/4, doing a bookstall in 
Cambridge (UK) and some young, entirely stereotypical, Oxbridge type sees 
our sign (Grapevine Radical Bookshop) and wanders in. Spends a few minutes 
looking at all the titles on display before marching out, declaring as he 
does "I don't see anything _radical_ here" This was the Reagan/Thatcher 
era,  when the rightwing intellectuals were trying to appropriate the 
adjective for their own sole use.

One of the most attractive aspects of TP's politics, for me, has always 
been the blend of stone-freak absurdist perspectives with a very 
sophisticated understanding of the economic powers (and mass psychology) of 
capitalism, and the lines of Control through which they flow.