There does seem to be a real difficulty in combining accounts of subjective experience with...structural and economic political analysis. It seems that the first has a tendency to end up in narcissistic, anti-universalist, lifestylist, identity politics and the other is frequently experienced as a universalising politics in which other people tell them how it is, and yet I'm sure there has to be another way.
They're tendencies but they're contingent, not necessary: it can be otherwise.
I suppose one way of putting it is that the enduring relations within a society are only achieved through what people do, whatever their intentions may be. No-one marries to perpetuate the institution but it is an unintended effect of that wonderful moment at the registry office. Likewise the maternity ward. Or making that widget or cleaning the ass of that 83-year-old bloke in the care home.
The enduring relations precede each individual, we are born into them, & from the get-go we help perpetuate them - that's true, isn't it, mom? That's why workers were called variable capital by Chuck: they're organised by the managers of capital in the first instance. Unions come along later - if you're lucky.
Sometimes we have true insight into what's happening in our lives, sometimes we're mistaken. Ideology is not just distorted, mistaken thoughts, beliefs, ideas, arguments, feelings, emotions & moods, in varying degrees of systematicity, but the things we do, our activities. Outrage, resistance will always be ephemeral without organisation & a developing understanding. A Socratic approach is much more effective than being preachy, peeps have to learn for themselves, at their own pace. It's one reason why the Sojourner Truth Organization refused to push their printed material when they did political work; they simply put their meagre resources at the disposal of others (Michael Staudenmaier's excellent book).
http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Revolution-Sojourner-Organization-1969-1986/dp/1849350973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390866027&sr=8-1&keywords=sojourner truth organization
Our activities can change those enduring relations, but usually we just modify them, rather than transforming them. Reform, not revolution. Enduring relations are by nature robust, obdurate, resistant to change. As such they appear 'out there', 'structures', well 'ard. They're thing-like, what some ISNers would call reified. That's why it seems like there's a dualism, our lil lives down here & those big structures up there, hammering us.
Any emancipatory politics worth its salt needs, as you made plain, to offer to peeps a way to learn for themselves how to do things better - & that applies just as much to those who have a more abstract understanding of what a better life may look like. It's like re-building a boat whilst out at sea, there's no luxury of a dry-dock, & we may all drown at any moment.
Just some thoughts on the crucial topic raised by you (& the apron).
