The Blog That Isn't A Blog

Meditations On The Issue of Rape And Its Statistical Analysis

2009-03-08T15:59:00.000-07:00

In a class I was taking, a discussion on rape turned to an area that made me uncomfortable: The oft-cited claim that 1 in 4 women will be raped in their lifetime. The statistic is commonly thrown around, but it's a very contentious point and statisticians and sociologists are still discussing it.

For example: According to a BBC News article, "one in 20" women ages 16-59 were raped (1). Now, the fact that the data didn't include earlier pre-teens may throw it off, but there's no compelling argument that says that the the gap between 5% and 25% would be filled by such a statistical change. It is true that this data is specifically for England and Wales, but it would be very strange for America to be so drastically different from comparable European countries. In fact, the only crime where America is simply off the charts from all other industrial nations is in gun crime. Seeing this number, I become very skeptical when I see statistics that claim that the incidence in America is an order of magnitude higher.

Further, the data that suggests that rape is that prevalent is often woefully antiquated. As Fahrenthold suggests in the Washington Post, "The number of rapes per capita in the United States has plunged by more than 85 percent since the 1970s, and reported rape fell last year even while other violent offenses increased, according to federal crime data." (2). Critics of this data argue that non-reporting plagues the numbers. That's true, but there's two problems with the assertion. First: Non-reporting cuts the data both ways. If a large portion of women don't report the crime to police or other authorities, it becomes very difficult to get a real handle on the amount of rape and sexual abuse in the population. Second: There is NO reason to expect that there has been an INCREASE in women non-reporting, and certainly not by enough to compensate for the 85% plunge in per capita rapes. If since the 1970s the population of women who were raped but didn't report it didn't increase, that'd mean that the total amount as WELL as the reported amount went down by 85%. And we have every reason to believe that, in fact, reporting of rape has INCREASED, as Special Victims Units become better trained, feminism makes impacts on the broader society, and shows like Special Victims Unit show the social issues behind rape.

And the victimization of men data is bizarre. For example, in the total population, "3% of American men experience rape". Yet 1 in every 10 victims were men in 2003! (3) This indicates changes in the data that are very large: 3% to 10% of men being victims. This makes some sense if total rape has declined and if feminism has made a real impact in the prevalance of rape. More importantly, the sharp change indicates just how difficult it is to talk about sexual abuse for the entirety of the US population with any degree of statistical certainty.

According to RAINN, "1 out of every 6 American women have been the victims of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime (14.8% completed rape; 2.8% attempted rape)" [my emphasis]. Now, this is a horrible statistic. But one solution (far from the only or primary solution) would be for men, women and police to acquire techniques to turn more completed rapes into attempted rapes and more attempted rapes into no rapes. More importantly, that's the difference between 16.6% of the population and 25% of the population. (3)

Yet another source suggests, "Colorado's rape survey invited banner headlines-and got them. '1 in 7 women raped,' said the Denver Rocky Mountain News, and that was a restrained interpretation compared with the official press release, which claimed the survey 'revealed that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 17 men have been raped.' But the results are much more ambiguous than that, and the headlines are dangerously misleading." (4).

Note that, even before looking at the results, we see that one source referring to the same survey got 1 in 7 women while another source got 1 in 4!

According to "Women, Men and Gender" by Mary Roth Walsh, many of the statistics of "rape" include discrimination against lesbians! Note that that citation is from people who do not believe that rape statistics are overblown. (5) I concur with Walsh that to dismiss the incidence of rape as mere feminist exaggeration is foolishness of the highest order, but I feel that it is vital to bear in mind the real variation in the data. These are not easy questions to answer, so numerous studies arrive at different figures. Choosing the highest figure of a broad range smacks of arbitrary propaganda.

Then we have to start looking at definitions of rape. These are hard questions. It seems obvious that a man who sleeps with a woman who is flatly unconscious thanks to alcohol is probably committing rape. But what if the woman insisted beforehand that he do so? If we don't accept prior consent as nullifying apparent lack of consent, then BDSM and rape fantasy games are flatly out the window. Plenty of lesbians who share these fetishes will just love that assertion. At what threshold does intoxication from alcohol or other drugs make any sex rape? .1 BAC? .2 BAC? Being a little tipsy? Being stone drunk? Many people, men and women alike, even married couples, use alcohol to get past socially-programmed, sexist, Puritanical impositions and inhibitions. To say that all of that must be rape begs some harsh questions.

If someone gets convinced to sleep with someone else thanks to a "hard sell" or pressure but was under no implied or real threat of force, how do we evaluate that? Clearly rape is not simply every sexual act that one regrets. I'd say a large portion of the population has regretted some dalliance they've had, some boyfriend they've dated, some clingy girlfriend, but none of those acts constitute rape. Yet, quite clearly, someone who takes someone who is alone and scared, as the man in the article "Confessions of a Date Rapist" did, and makes them afraid to say no by the strength of their sell and the force of their words is doing something questionable, even if not out-and-out rape. If the victim fears that there was a clear threat of force and the men had every opportunity to be aware of that and rectify it, I believe there is a strong case to be made that that IS rape and that the man is culpable! Not everyone agrees with my position, however; some think that you have to offer real indication otherwise. Wendy McElroy has gone so far as to define rape as exclusively being sex due to force or the direct threat of force! I think her definition is a poor one. How highly do we rank the verbal "coercion" or strong convincing? Some people argue that rapists who use violent means or the threat of violence are preferable to those who ply their victims with GHB. Yet many argue the opposite, that the chemical and memory-altering effects of GHB make the process of recovery and confronting the traumatic event harder. Whom should we believe? What should we value more: The recovery afterwards, or avoiding physical harm during the actual event?

Suffice it to say that these are not trivial questions, and exactly how we ask them alters the data. Many studies that arrive at the higher figures in the range (1 in 4 women to 1 in 6 women as opposed to 1 in 8 women, 1 in 16 women or 1 in 32 women) aggregate domestic abuse, questionably broad categories of sex under the influence of drugs (no matter how minor the threshold), etc. This isn't necessarily bad science. Unlike men's rights reprobates, I'm not going to argue that this makes the data empty feminist propaganda. But it means we have to be careful exactly what we cite for and not merely make empty assertions.

Then we have to take into account race. Minority women are far less likely than the average member of the population to report a rape, due to a variety of factors (fear of a racist criminal justice system, in-group loyalty, the idea that one does not air one's "dirty laundry", etc.)

Only Neanderthals and extremists in the men's right movement think that rape is not a serious social phenomenon, but like most social phenomena it is difficult to actually say if it is 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/6, or 1/32 of women who experience rape. Different studies, geographical areas, definitions, etc. report different things. And, unfortunately, the fact that women and men do not report many of their attacks makes it very difficult to get a handle on the data. What is clear is that the aura of fear needs to be dispelled, that we need to see only a minority of victims not reporting their attackers, and that the legal system needs a massive overhaul in order to accommodate this goal, from entry-point police officers being trained in sensitivity to end-point judicial practices. But using statistics that are questionable without noting the variation only makes us less credible in doing so. The fact that many of my fellow feminists routinely cite the highest number in a range of data for an issue that even they admit by their very nature is almost impossible to study with certainty does nothing to shore up good will.

Further, to say that high incidences of rape demonstrate an assault upon women by men is to ignore one simple, vital fact: Repeat offending. A large amount of victims, male and female, share attackers or victimizers. If we buy the "Confessions of a Date Rapist" piece, then it becomes clear that a particular category of men is the type overwhelmingly committing date rape. Now, it is true that gang rape would be a factor in the opposite direction (since one man would victimize many women), but gang rape is a very small section of the data. Further, most gang rapists are also repeat offenders, returning the balance sheet back. At the end of the day, while a large portion of the female population will be raped or abused (the majority by acquaintances within their extended social network), this does not mean an equally large portion of men are rapists. Taking that into account, it becomes far less tenable to say that a war is being waged by men against women. If a small group of bastards are assaulting a large group of women, while a large portion of men are decent and would never dream of raping someone, then the situation is more complex.

Of course, to those who think that rape says NOTHING about the broader gender oppression, one merely need to look at the overwhelming amount of male prison rape. Remove women from the picture and men use sexualized violence against each other. So there clearly are a broad variety of gender factors, and people who declare that rape is purely criminological in nature with no influence from patriarchy or sexism are missing a big part of the picture. For example: Frat houses routinely make rape possible by cultivating deeply patriarchal, masculine attitudes and encouraging a "Within the club" mentality. In my opinion, a standard "test" for fraternity membership should be to see what someone would do if they saw a rape occuring. If they would not call the police, tell a frat brother, rush into the room to stop it, or do some other proactive measure, they should be kicked out of the frat. THIS would prove that men are ready to deal with rape.

An exercise we did in this class was to list things men and women do to avoid rape. The supposed point was that men do almost nothing and women do quite a lot. I was unable to point out that one thing men concerned about rape do is avoid going to gay bars and avoid going to prison; obviously nowhere near the amount of stress that the common rape-prevention rituals among women have, but these are things. But I also pointed out that the long list of things women do to protect themselves from rape (have their apartment on the second story, take self-defense classes, strengthen their locks and deadbolts, be prepared to use their keys as improvised weapons, watch their drinks at parties, have chaperones or travel in groups) is virtually the same list men are instructed to do to protect themselves from other crime. This underlines one key fact: Crime rates in general and rape rates in particular in our country have been declining, yet the media racializes and amplifies the data. Throughout the 1990s, crime went down yet media presentations of it went up more than six fold according to some media scholars! (See Bowling for Columbine). Many feminists properly point out that high rape rates are a real concern, but they also usually point out the vital fact: Most rape occurs from acquaintances. Virtually all of the things that we listed that women do to protect themselves are things that will not stop acquaintance rape.

Rape is a serious issue, but it has also been artificially inflated and racialized by a media determined to use fear to foment apathy and mistrust in order to insure ruling class dominance. The fact that for many white women the image of a rapist is a black mugger or burglar rather than their next door neighbor or the friendly neighborhood priest is the factor I am talking about. And the problem with simply saying, unadorned, that "1 out of 4 women are raped", is that while it MAY raise consciousness about gender issues, it sabotages our brothers and sisters of color by making many people conjure up racial spectres of black men raping women left and right. These unconscious racial fears were expressed in the mythology about rape in the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina.

I work with victims of rape constantly. I view rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse as monstrous actions that may be worse than murder, in that both a living person and their families and social networks have been destroyed and harmed. And the closest I have come in my life to assaulting another human being has been when I have been aware of sexual abuse. I am intimately, tragically aware of the veil of silence that protects victimizers and destroys victims. This tragic background doesn't need the inflated use of otherwise good statistics to amass social interest and outrage.

Footnotes:

1. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2146077.stm

2. "Statistics Show Drop In U.S. Rape Cases". http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/18/AR2006061800610.html

3. "Who Are the Victims?"

http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims .

4. http://socialissues.wiseto.com/Articles/EJ3010081205/

5. http://books.google.com/books?id=dCDbL3WyjFMC&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=rape+statistics+one+in+four+is+an+exaggeration&source=bl&ots=i9qbd7ccDI&sig=cipUsRlLmc9GSCmXbS8-sRG8VJk&hl=en&ei=nq6tSb2jOonKtQO_iYzSBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA244,M1

Reply to Jonathan Krohn

2009-03-04T01:20:00.000-08:00

In response to a request from my roommates, I watched Jonathan Krohn's speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vz1TVpwme0&feature=related . As a impromptu reply, I posted this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LeFn9N6k1U&yt . Now, the people filming were determined to applaud, and the battery on the camera ran out, so my reply was not as long or as audible as I hoped. Further, some replies have since come up. This blog post is intended to grapple with these issues.

My first thought when viewing the comments to the video so far is, "Talk about 'talking points'". So far, every conservative hack that has bothered to reply to the video has said SOMETHING about Jonathan Krohn's age, defending it by saying that the message and the messenger are separate things, etc. It's as if they are defensive about Jonathan's age, as if this idea has been thrown at them many a time, as if they were secretly aware of the absurdity of the situation...

The fact is, I made quite clear that I was saying almost nothing about Jonathan's age. True, I have some concerns that someone who is a pre-teen can really have the independent mind needed to make judgments separate from those around him. That doesn't mean, as I made clear, that we shouldn't listen to him. But when I was 13, I said things due to my peer groups, my parents, and other subtle influences that now I would reject. For example: When I was 13, I hypothesized that race in this country was primarily the effect of past discrimination and racism combined with occasional discrimination and color-blind factors such as the way the industrial economy worked. Now, I would reject that position, given the wealth of evidence that indicates that race is an independent social factor above and beyond class, gender and politics.

No, my argument, as I repeated twice, was that it says something about the people who listen to Krohn that they are buying a book and listening to a speech from a 13 year old. In my opinion, it indicates that many of their policy opinions are woefully simplistic, or that they need good propaganda from an innocent to sell their political beliefs.

Further, I made clear that I applaud Jonathan Krohn for having political opinions at his age. And for writing a book. And for being articulate, and polite, and wearing a suit, and all that. Those are all good things. Nothing I say to the young man should be taken as discouraging him; indeed, I went through the same process. But the way I grew as a political thinker was in part to be challenged, to have people ask for my sources and demand footnotes and quotations and citations, to make logical arguments. In any respect, the only comment I was making for the first part of the video was that there was a sense of absurdity (a delightful, Daily Show-worthy sense) to seeing grown men and women applaud a child for speaking platitudes.

More importantly, none of the commentators wanted to grapple with my serious argument: That these were, indeed, just platitudes, that the arguments he provided sounded nice but had no basis in reality and thus functioned as empty, willful propaganda.

It is tremendously easy for someone to come along after a political group has been in charge for the last 8 years and become immensely unpopular declaring that, "Oh, no, all of you got it wrong, we actually believe in these key principles." The problem with Krohn's viewpoint is that it's just semantics: He is simply redefining what the word "conservative" means, rather than providing any actual argument about real policy. As with all semantics, we can conclude one of two things.

A) Krohn means to refer to real-life "conservatives": Republicans, some Independents, and people generally defined as the right wing. Given that he is speaking for CPAC, I am guessing that this is how his comments are meant to be taken. If this is the case, Krohn's statements are simply, verifiably, and directly false. The people he is talking about overwhelmingly do not hold these principles, as can clearly be determined. Perhaps some peripheral "true believers" do in fact hold these opinions, but the majority of both the rank and file seem to not hold such opinions and vote for candidates who do not hold such opinions. The case becomes more difficult when we include voter data that indicates that a majority of people voting for Bush and Reagan actually opposed their policies, but insofar as Krohn is offering propaganda that helps exacerbate such misconceptions and continues to keep elections about platitudes, Krohn is amplifying this problem.

B) Krohn seeks to redefine the group of "conservatives" to include people who share his four principles. If this is the case, nothing has changed. Krohn has created a new, trivial definition within which almost no one fits, and which ironically includes a great variety of liberals and leftists). Certainly, this definition does not describe the intellectual movement which most people accept as "conservative" or right-wing. We must now find a new definition for people who are politically right, vote Republican, and tend to be pro-war, pro-gun, pro-military and pro-religion.

It is possible that Krohn is talking about traditional conservativism rather than religious neo-conservativism. But if that's the case, he is again using semantics to paper over real ideological differences, differences that are tearing a party apart.

So, let us examine the circle of people whom Krohn seems to be talking about and whom CPAC as a group supports. (CPAC, of course, postures as independent and non-partisan, but their past speakers have included Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, David Horowitz, George W. Bush and Newt Gingrich). Let us compare the actions and real policies of this group to the four principles that Krohn alleges conservatism is defined by.

Respect for the Constitution? The PATRIOT act, wiretapping, and the various means through which the Bush Administration undermined the First and Fourth Amendments alone throws this out the window. Add in the fact that Bush was illegally, in violation of US law and the Geneva Convention, detaining suspected terrorists without trials and without serious charges or arrests being made with limited access to lawyers and with brutal, "cruel and unusual" torture and we have a clear cut case.

For those who don't understand my point about the Presidents since World War II and treaty violations: Article VI of the US Constitution declares that, "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." [my emphasis].

This means that the supreme "Law of the Land" includes any treaties ratified by the US Congress. Judges and legal authorities will be bound by them, above and beyond any state laws (which is irrelevant when federal agents carry out the actions).

As Noam Chomsky declared in Manufacturing Consent, "If the Nuremburg accords were enforced, every post-war American President would have been hung." (1). He further gives examples as to how every President violated various laws in his article, "If the Nuremberg Laws were Applied..." (2). Eisenhower's actions in Guatemala, Kennedy's actions in Cuba, LBJ and Nixon's actions in Indochina... All are serious war crimes.

The United States refuses to make honest steps towards disarmaments and has as official policy the willingness to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear NPT signatories: That is a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Almost every war the US has waged since World War II has been in blatant violation of the UN Charter, which declares that states cannot unilaterally attack other nations except in response to imminent threat (which has a specific and unequivocal meaning: forces either in the country or directly being sent to the country, not nuclear weapons that might at some distant date be used to possibly deter the US from doing something). The US routinely flouts the Geneva Convention, such as with its waterboarding practices that even many in the Justice Department knew were clearly torture.

So we see a pattern of the incumbent President and of almost every President before going back to Truman flouting the Constitution and engaging in routine impeachable high crimes. This disproves that conservatives, as defined in the real world, are pro-Constitution.

His second prong is "respect for life". But this is even more of a joke than the first part of his principles.

How is "respect for life" held by a party which bombs innocent Iraqis and Afghanis? How is "respect for life" held by a party which held the ideology that we "have to fight them there so we don't fight them here", which declares that it's okay to turn other peoples' countries into flypaper for terrorists so you don't have to suffer loss and they do? How is "respect for life" held by a party which undercuts social policy that is designed to protect the poor? Even if one accepts that all of these things have justifications, they don't have to do with "respect for life".

It's clear that Jonathan is trying to reconcile the anti-abortion stance of many conservatives with the incredibly ugly contempt for life conservatives hold in almost every other domain. Sorry, Jonathan, but it just won't work.

Further, "respect for life" is an empty platitude. Any of his supporters can get out of my above allegations by simply redefining what the phrase means, ad nauseum, to suit their goals. Why isn't "respect for life" demonstrated by people who want to insure that pregnant mothers have options that don't involve forcing them to have a child they don't want? Protecting the rights of fetuses or unborn life isn't by itself a bad thing, but the problem is that both sides are coming at the problem with an idea of what "respect for life" constitutes that ends up being mutually exclusive.

His third "principle" is "less government". At this point, we do not even achieve the level of farce.

How can the party which demands ever-higher military budgets be for "less government"? The party that wants to expand the capacity of the state to pry into our personal lives is somehow for "less government"? Are these comments intended to be read seriously?

There are some honest libertarians out there who support less government all around. Only even they mysteriously seem to like folks like Ron Paul, who honestly thinks that black youth in Washington DC should be treated differently by the police than white youth (3).

In fact, "conservatives" are truly radical statists. They want the state to expand their wallets, attack their enemies and protect their interests. They use the mantra of "less government" as a generic bludgeon to beat back anything the state does that does not satisfy those interests and hope that people's attention spans don't last long enough to recognize the hypocrisy and self-contradiction.

Real "conservatives" would actually hold very few of Krohn's positions. Rather, conservativism as a philosophy stems from the idea that social change should happen slowly and organically rather than rapidly because of the fact that societies are complex systems. In this sense, Noam Chomsky, the anarchist, is a conservative! He argues that change should come incrementally from social movements. As I said in the video: The word "conservative" has become much-maligned thanks to the radical statists who have cloaked themselves in its hallowed halls.

Finally, Krohn declares that the fourth and last principle is "personal responsibility".

This would make an ounce of sense if conservatives did not come out of the woodwork with an array of irrelevant and offensive apologies to protect their favored persons from said personal responsibility. If conservatives stopped excusing Ann Coulter's argument that we should nuke people for fun, and stopped excusing every new racist who drops the n-word and blaming the victims for being too "sensitive", and stopped excusing war crimes committed by their government, this would be a fair argument.

In fact, conservatives are all too willing to pass the buck of personal responsibility onto everyone else. (4).

So, for example, when they tell black folks and women to "Get over it" (that is, get over centuries of oppression and disenfranchisement which continues), they are passing the buck onto those people to solve the racial and gender problems in the United States. They could "Get over it" themselves; that is, white, male conservatives could just admit that bad things happened in the past and stop lionizing folks like Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson or George Washington. They could acknowledge that the country is built on the land of a nearly exterminated native population. But instead of taking that "personal responsibility", they demand everyone else change. This is especially egregious given that it is generally them with the power, wealth and influence, so one would think that they could afford to be magnanimous.

The irony of wagging the finger at others to have more personal responsibility is one of those many things Jonathan is apparently too young to recognize.

And what of his claim that the Republican Party is merely "the shell"? If this is the case, shouldn't people stop voting for a Party when the elected officials presented by that party routinely flout the principles Krohn cites? No, that is merely hand-waving, deceptive apologia, and no more.

Or what of his claim that conservatives are unique in that their policy is principle based? Surely Mr. Krohn must be joking. Refusing to allow a grandmother to starve, the principle behind Social Security, is a principle that animates policy, whether or not Mr. Krohn likes that particular principle. (Of course, he should, given his ostensible concern with the "right to life"). Opposing unjust, vicious, colonial wars is not only deeply principle-based but tremendously courageous, unlike Krohn's platitudes, given the real social costs those who speak up against jingoist conformity face.

In short, Mr. Krohn seems to be unconsciously relaying myths his parents, adult figures in his life, and perhaps his friends and peer groups suggest to him. But it doesn't seem that he is capable of making arguments that stand serious muster. Again, this says nothing about him. To have written a book and to be able to address adults at his age is a true feat, and something worth applauding. No, it says something about the innumerable adults who have no such excuse. It says something about the people who have graduated from high school and prestigious universities who aren't able to correct Krohn where he errs and show Krohn how much more complex the world is. It says that they are either hopelessly ignorant ideologues or hopelessly cynical demagogues.

Footnotes:

1. http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s514consent.html

2. http://www.chomsky.info/talks/1990----.htm

3. "Ron Paul Is Not Your Savior". http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17406 . To wit:

But it gets a lot worse: Paul's political literature has stated that it is sensible to be afraid of black men; that "95 percent of African Americans in [Washington D.C.] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal"; that black male children (but not white ones) should be treated and tried as adults for crimes they commit beginning at age 13; and he referred to two black men that were interviewed by Ted Koppel after the Los Angeles 1992 uprising as "animals". Kanye West was right when he said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Guess what? If his own political literature is any indication, Ron Paul loathes black people.

4. Tim Wise discusses this phenomenon frequently. See: //www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/racism-reflex-reflections-conservative-scapegoating

http://www.sodahead.com/blog/44007/blame-shifting-and-buck-passing-conservative-style/

And, of course, so much more can be said in this vein.

Racial Color-Blindness: Just As Bad As Regular Blindness

2008-11-10T00:16:00.000-08:00

There is a common hypothesis, becoming increasingly popular on the eve of Obama's election (an important step forward in the history of race relations and a major change from the last eight years of Republican neo-conservative decimation, but hardly a revolutionary or progressive vanguard-to-be), that likes to call itself "color-blind". The reasoning goes somewhat like this: "The foundation of racism is seeing race, recognizing ethnic and racial groups. So if we want to end racism, we have to be color-blind. We have to stop seeing race or talking about race. And that means we can't do affirmative action or talk about racism, because that's just bringing back the problem. Nope. We're all Americans here. After all, I don't see race, and if you do, you must be a racist." I call it the Colbert hypothesis or position on race, after Stephen Colbert's brilliant reducio ad absurdum parody of this argument.

The fact that such an idiotic position can become remotely commonplace says nothing but that a lot of Americans will accept whatever is spoonfed to them thanks to not having been immersed in the critical thinking and resistance environments that might engender different outcomes.

Let's begin with the quibbles first. Race doesn't come from seeing race any more than sexism comes from seeing gender and sex or classism comes from seeing the poor. It comes from attaching onus, by definition. It is perfectly possible and indeed quite common for people to honor each other's racial, cultural and ethnic backgrounds without being divisive, insulting, racist, offensive or attaching stigma and stereotypes to the discussion.

Also, there is no we. Due to the existence of a racial caste system and a racialized opportunity structure, "we" has always only referred to white folks or black folks, never both at the same time. (Note that, of course, a progressive activist can use "we" to refer to the poor and therefore the white AND the black poor, but this is not what I'm talking about. Such an activist will be the first to point out that, in that parallel class instance, there is no such thing as "we" either, since the rich and the poor have diametrically opposed class interests).

Now, let's get to the core problem with the argument. It is two fold. First: Color-blindness is an impossibility. Socialization, history and the institutional facts on the ground make being honestly color-blind quixotic. But, second: Were it possible, it would be a disability, just like, well, red-green color-blindness.

For the first: Implicit Attitude Tests conducted by, among others, Professor Brian Nosek and his partners Tony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji, have shown that whites tend to associate negative words and concepts with black faces. Even progressive whites often do this. Though I myself scored well on the IAT, actually associating black faces positively, this is clearly not the majority. But Nosek is only demonstrating scientifically what decades of sociology as well as the results of common sense and activism makes clear: People have prejudicial notions deeply socialized, from ethnic slurs to various stereotypes. This makes sense: They're part of history, part of common parlance, part of the way we talk to each other.

There's no problem with this, per se. These attitudes, stereotypes and concepts can be battled with consciousness and awareness. But that's the point: It requires one to be conscious.

The "color-blindness" school thus, far from denying or reducing racism, actually allows it to flourish, by prevent the consciousness that would allow us to question subconscious stereotypes and implicit beliefs. An employer may pretend to be color-blind, but when it comes to evaluating resumés, he simply won't give the applications with the black-sounding names as much attention or time.

And, of course, how many times have any of us, even those who do believe in color-blindness, heard someone say, "I'm not a racist, but.. [some incredibly racist statement]?" Undoubtedly plenty, especially those who engage in any anti-racist activism.

Simply put: It is impossible to be color-blind in a racist society. And anyone with pretenses to the contrary is not only lying to themselves and everyone else by extension, but is also perpetuating racism.

This becomes especially true when the unwillingness to bring up race and racism means being unwilling to hear the experiences of black and ethnic communities with racism and with the positive elements of their own culture. Whatever one thinks of multi-culturalism, the problem with cultural invisibility, simply pretending that cultural differences don't matter, is that it acts as genocidal cleansing by the dominant culture (who have the power to make sure their culture is what's left behind as the "non-cultural" norm) against the subservient culture. So, for example, whites who overwhelmingly declared that Katrina told us nothing about race were engaging in a racist exercise. Not only were they denying what blacks overwhelmingly experienced about what was happening to their community, but they even denied that such a disagreement said anything about race and racism in this country. I was so appalled by this fact precisely because to even hold it means to believe that black opinions about racism don't matter, that they say nothing about race and racial relations whatsoever, an opinion that can only be held by those who implicitly believe that blacks opinions in general do not matter.

And that brings us to the second problem: Color-blindness, even were it possible, would be stupid.

It boggles my mind to think that it could be a virtue to be blind to any part of reality, social or otherwise. Failing to see things, understand things and cope with things never has, never is and never will be the appropriate strategy. Being blind to really existing racism is just as much a disability as being blind to anything.

One can, I suppose, deny racism exists. Doing so is fundamentally idiotic, of course, and has absolutely no theoretical, common sense or social science support to it. Reasonable people can disagree about the salience of race in modern American society, but to literally believe it has no impact whatsoever and never appears to changes events is to subscribe to dogmatic idiocy. But this assessment on my part is moot. Suffice it to say that only if most of those discussing the matter agree that racism didn't exist would it become even conceivable to declare that bringing up race and racism would be problematic. If the issue of the existence of racism is still a contentious point, then to deny the matter exists is as foolish and misguided as believing that, since the issue of the existence of the graviton is currently being debated, we must act as if gravity does not exist.

South Park, for example, made this error some years ago with an episode about Chef being offended by the South Park flag, which shows a black man being lynched by white men. Chef realizes at the end of the episode that the children, who were debating the issue, didn't realize that a black man being lynched by white men was part of a racist past. South Park lionizes the childrens' ignorance here, ironic given their later episodes that mock the concept of following or admiring children for their oft-vaunted childish innocence. Suffice it to say that the children being ignorant about the history of lynching in this country does not prove that racism is over, but rather that American school systems whitewash history for the sake of the dominant majority and those who truly run the society, or that white children can afford to be ignorant about racism thanks to the privilege that makes such ignorance possible and not a severe debit. Eric Cartman's repeated barrages at the Jews alone demonstrate this point.

Imagine some hypothetical color-blind scholar. This color-blind scholar either does not know about race or racism, or does know about it but is perfectly capable of putting aside stereotypes and history and making completely fair analysis without any mention of race or racism. He analyzes American society and finds that, surprise, some people are poor and some people are rich despite merit, that there is extraordinarily low social mobility, and so forth. He thus develops a theory of class relations.

But then he discovers that a number of people are even poorer than their class situation would merit. Similarly, they are treated with predictably worse outcomes at every level of society, from mortgages to education. He must assume that their class has nothing to do with it, and finding no other explanation, must turn to an innate explanation, saying that those people really DO deserve the worse treatment they're getting. And he would do so even if he remembered that racism against this group did exist in the past, because past racism is not sufficient to explain disparate achievement and living standards between black and white groups.

Thus, unsurprisingly, the logical extension of color-blindness in a racist society is racism. Because if we cannot explain disparate achievement by hypotheses about racism, we must either not explain them or explain them by some innate property of the group, a definitionally racist hypothesis.

Is it any wonder that it is overwhelmingly whites, who have quite a bit to lose from racism being rectified (even if they also stand to gain in some ways as well), are the ones who push this idea so hard? Who have sold it into the mainstream and into the psyches of otherwise intelligent people?

Yes, it is possible that when we discuss race and racism, we will implicitly bring up not only racist but sexist, classist and statist concepts and ideas thanks to the deep ingraining of those concepts into our socialization. But to say that this means we should instead give up is not only to do injustice to the entire idea of activism, but also simply to engage in a fallacy of perfection.

Yes, it is possible that by bringing up racism and trying to deal with it we might go too far and inadvertently hurt some groups that do not deserve to be impacted, or that some people may misidentify racism or malice when it is not there. But to deny social justice by the logic that social justice might hurt and be difficult to achieve is, again, repugnant. This is especially true when it is proferred by those who daily do the same thing, who daily are complicit with a system that hurts some groups who have never deserved to be impacted yet have been for centuriesm, and who routinely misidentify malice on the part of blacks.

Tim Wise in his comments system called this idea, "New Age shit", and I am inclined to agree. Color-blindness as an idea is impossible to achieve, intellectually anemic, repugnant, and benefits only racists and those too tepid or lazy to deal with racists and racism. It does have the effect of clamping down on the worst, most overt racists out there, when it is applied evenly, which it rarely is. After all, how many "color blind" whites rushed to defend Don Imus or any number of other public personae who dropped the n-bomb or other slurs? How many "color blind" whites move out of their neighborhood when too many blacks move in? How many "color blind" whites nonetheless go out and buy the Bell Curve, which says that those blacks they're supposed to pretend don't exist actually ARE genetically inferior?

But even when it is evenly applied, color-blindness only deals with the most repugnant but also the most superficial racists. Those whose prejudice is slightly less palpable yet who nonetheless express it in their hiring decisions, corporate policies, lending paradigms, educational proposals, pedagogy, philosophy, racial profiling, and jurisprudence are at the end of the day far more dangerous. And color-blindness buys us, at its best, not having to deal with the obvious KKK and neo-Nazi racists at the cost of making it impossible to deal with the more subtle racists.

This is especially tragic for many reasons. Because there is no need to do so: There are alternatives to both color-blindness, racism and some of the sillier parts of multi-culturalism. Because the people who have this more subtle prejudice are generally our neighbors, our friends, decent people whose prejudice could be cured or mitigated relatively simply. And because these people are the real threat to black advancement, success and equality.

"My Family Didn't Own Slaves": Argument, or Copout?

2008-03-19T16:49:00.003-07:00

I recently was having a complex and sophisticated interaction about race and racism at, of all places, YouTube. One of my interlocutors offered this argument: "none of my ancestors were slave owners (italian family)" . Another on a different site offered this observation: "My great-great grandparents came here from somewhere else, so kindly don't count ME in with the people that may have oppressed YOUR great-great grandparents."

Indeed, this seems to be the white national mantra: "I wasn't alive for slavery." "My family had no involvement in slavery". "My ancestors were dirt poor farmers." It is such an effective standard because of course everyone falls under it. Even direct descendants of slaveowners with access to intergenerational wealth can claim that they weren't around for slavery. Since many of us (myself included) are descended from immigrants more recent than the end of slavery, and the slaveowners formed a tiny elite, it is a perfect apology.

But it is also a microcosm of everything wrong with the white national narrative about race. The amount of things wrong with this argument is so staggering that saying it should require an instant remedial US History and Government class.

The first mistake it makes is to imply that the only bad thing that has happened to the black community as a whole, institutionally, is slavery. As if blacks as a whole never suffered under Jim Crow, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, restrictions on where they could take a drink or go to the bathroom, lynchings and terror. As if black life trajectories and possibilities weren't reduced by racial covenants, inability to access Federal Housing Assistance loans (an amount in the TRILLIONS of dollars, or as Tim Wise put it, "more than the outstanding mortgage debt, all the credit card debt, all the savings account assets, all the money in IRA's and 401k retirement plans, all the annual profits for U.S. manufacturers, and our entire merchandise trade deficit combined."), rampant employment discrimination, inability to acess GI Bill benefits, and so forth. Many of these injustices are in recent memory, such that there are those alive who remember them and were affected by them. Certainly their immediate descendants continue to feel the loss of these opportunities. So the very claim shows a complete contempt or ignorance for the suffering that blacks went through, as if segregation is not an injustice that deserves to be righted.

It also implies that we do not bear responsibility for what our government and communities are doing right now to virtually every black man and woman, a claim that inspires not only amusement but contempt. I hope I do not have to go into the extensive documentation on institutional racism, nor answer claims varying from "What about the Oprahs?" (yes, what about them? as if individual success stories invalidate an extensive backdrop of evidence) nor "What about the white poor?" (yes, social categories are complex, but to be black and poor is to be worse off on average than to be white and poor, even white poor have a benefit from being white and even the black rich have a disadvantage from being black). Instead, it should be sufficient to say that given the extensive racist treatment and barriers blacks endure in education, employment, treatment by police, selection for prosecution, prison sentences, loans, mortgages, housing, firing, and so on, this claim is a call for whites to ignore their responsibility to terminate currently existing injustice.

Third, it obscures the notion of intergenerational wealth and thus intergenerational responsibility. For while only those who owned the slaves directly injured those slaves, everyone from the Founding Fathers to the man on the street to the early capitalists benefitted from the slave's picking of cotton, rice, sorghum, tobacco and other crops. They also bore both the benefit and the cost of the racial hierarchy enhanced (if not actually created) by those in power to turn poor blacks and poor whites against each other rather than against the rich masters. That wealth continues to this day. There are millions of families living on homes provided almost exclusively to whites under the Homestead Act. The Naturalization Act of 1790 and other laws enabled the very presence of our ancestors by naturalizing whites and giving them rights far beyond people of color. The wealth produced by the South was even instrumental in the Revolution, meaning that slaves are owed part of our very existence as a nation! So while those whose ancestors immigrated after slavery may not have been quite poor, they nonetheless benefitted from slavery and from the existence of other laws occurring under the rubric of the racial caste system.

In line with this, it also ignores institutional and social responsibility. After all, when Volkswagen and other German companies were forced to give reparation to some Jews they had victimized, while it is true that they did not pay to Jews writ large and only paid to living people, they nonetheless had changed as an organization, but the organization owed restitution. The American state owes the same to blacks. And even if it does not, in that sense, it would make sense for social policy to be designed to engineer social equality instead of inequality. In this sense, the "my family wasn't responsible for slavery" is the racial equivalent of buckpassing on a national level.

Why Reject Genetic Food?

2008-03-19T16:49:00.001-07:00

So reviewing another group of pro-environmental yet anti-environmental-group centrist-type computer nerds' comments on Cracked.com, I felt the need to comment on genetically modified food. It's been awhile since I've written about this issue. It's an issue that anyone with an opinion on seems to be set in. Per usual, I have a different opinion than a lot of the left and 99% of anyone right of Dennis Kucinich. (On a side note: Applause to Dennis for JUST NOW getting out of the race. Fight the good fight, man.)

Let's get the bombshell out of the way:

I don't have a problem with the idea of genetically modified food.

*gasps*

Yes, despite being anarchist, leftist, pareconist, feminist and polyculturalist, I don't have a problem per se with genetically modifying organisms, or with nuclear power, or with a lot of other things I think the Left is dogmatic on for no especially good reason.

Why?

Well, because I agree to some extent with Bookchin's notion of humankind as intelligent guide for evolution and nature. I note that we have already engaged in massive genetic modification for the entirety of human history: It's called breeding, animal husbandry, crops, etc. Any vegetarian environmentalist type who decries Frankenfood then eats lettuce, or corn, or spinach, or tofu has to feel just a BIT hypocritical when bearing in mind those crops' conscious engineering for superior traits for millenia, right? After all, what the Native Americans originally cailed maize looked NOTHING like what we call corn. It was scraggly grass. The brilliant genetic engineering and scientific work of Central and South American tribes turned it into the juicy yellow beauty we have today. The same can be said for a lot of New World crops.

Using genetic modification in line with safety standards and a fully holistic ecological sensitivity could allow us to potentially clean up our environmental catastrophes, produce more food per hectare and therefore allow more room for crop cycling or reduce the amount we irrigate, etc. Smart application of technology should be part of our toolkit for a sustainable human race.

So what's the problem?

There's a lot of them.

1) Safety and food regulatory issues. The difference between the type of breeding our ancestors did and what currently goes on in Monsanto's lab is obvious: It's qualitatively different. There are attempts to splice spider silk into goats to mass produce said silk for industrial applications. There are ideas to take genes from plants and put them in animals, fungi and put them into plants, and all sorts of swapping from between kingdoms, phyla, and every other taxonomy one can imagine.

A few thousand years of effective product testing is a pretty good way of insuring that what you produce is safe. If a particular breed is obviously toxic or massively destructive, one will be much more likely to pick up on it. But the way that GMOs are being produced now, one is lucky to have two decades between theoretical development and appearing on shelves. This has caused innumerable debacles which forms a large part of the anti-GMO material.

One can argue that patent and regulatory agencies should take care of that. The problem with that reasoning? I wouldn't trust the FDA to regulate my Corn Flakes. That ties into our second problem...

2) Capitalism. These developments are occurring in for-profit labs whose job is to provide wealth for the shareholders, period. Companies like Monsanto are profit-seeking corporations, and that causes a number of problems.

a) Years and years of fomenting by radical business groups have eroded at the effective enforcement of a number of regulatory agencies. They simply don't have the time, energy, funding or people on the ground to do an effective job.
b) It gets worse. In principle, many of the free trade agreements and organizations like GATT, the WTO, NAFTA, etc. make it so that if a panel of corporate lawyers and scientists determine a product to be safe, a government CANNOT ban it from their shores. This has been a major sticking point for Europeans in particular, where the backlash has been especially strong. So even if the FDA DID its job, it's entirely possible that a private unaccountable body would overturn their decision.
c) The way that these foods are being produced violates the "holistic ecology" criterion I mentioned above. Some of them, for example, have powerful toxins growing in the plants that are deadly to bugs. Even when it can be proven they are always and invariably harmless to humans, no matter the mutation, these plants are often quite destructive to the soil and to the bugs themselves who do after all form part of the ecosystem. Some of these plants are quite aggressive indeed, functioning as invasive species and devastating local ecologies. The vast majority of these products occur in a Green Revolution-type environment which uses conventional massive irrigation, massive capital investments particularly of fossil fuels, no crop cycling, etc. etc. So the potential of the technology is subverted for profit. This is no big surprise, of course.
d) The patent problem. Companies like Monsanto patent their "inventions". This prevents innovation, like most patents do, wherein farmers take their neighbors' strand and experiment, making something even better. But it gets worse. Farmers have been tried when Monsanto seeds that were on their neighbors' property took over their fields and they gave up and simply grew the Monsanto seed as part of their crop.
e) In line with the patent problem, companies like Monsanto include things like "terminator seeds". A standard model of agriculture, particularly among peasants the world over, is to grow a lot during harvest then save some for reseeding the next year. The problem is that Monsanto's seeds die. You have to buy new ones from Monsanto. They genetically engineer dependance on the company. That ends up producing monoculture as well as poverty and destruction... but we'll get to monoculture at point #4.

3) The right of people to not accept or buy products they don't want or trust. Whether or not the GMO corn is the best, tastiest, most efficiently grown corn in the world, if I find it disturbing for whatever reason that octopus DNA was part of it, I have a right not to purchase that product. And I have the right to be informed of what I'm purchasing when I buy it. And I have the right to demand that companies be legally obligated to tell me what I'm buying.

The problem is that the aforementioned free trade laws are being used to undermine this right. Europeans are asking for the right to informed consent: If they don't want to eat something, they shouldn't have to, no matter their reasons. But because a GMO label is a major damper on products, companies are resisting even being required to label their foods. If by some arbitrary standard the end product is identical, totalitarian unaccountable organizations have decided that you should have no problem with where your food comes from.

This was part of an extraordinary explosion of racist indignation. African countries have refused to accept aid of GMO corn for their people, expressing safety concerns. Western commentators lambasted them as dictatorships and idiotic for doing so.

So let me get this straight. Their estimation of their own safety is stupid, whereas our own insistence on giving them food they don't want instead of just agreeing not to subsidize our GMO corn and simply send over the regular stuff instead is prudent?

How racist is that?

4) Monocultural agriculture. The problem with any GMO crop, no matter how awesome, is that it's frequently used as the one crop that a farmer grows. Monocultural agriculture is well known to exhaust soils, require massive capital input (fertilizer, oil, machinery, etc.), and so on and so forth.

5) Dubious advantages. As R.C. Lewontin has documented extensively, many of the crops in question actually do worse, and most of the rest have only marginal benefits. While I think there is potential in the technology, it has yet to unambiguously show itself.

6) In line with #5: The propaganda that this is how to solve the starvation crisis in the world. Monsanto and the rest of the rogue's gallery behind "Frankenfood" frequently like to run a guilt trip argument. How dare these environmentalists resist feeding the world! Don't they know that if we could just produce 20 more units of corn per acre, there would be no more starvation in Africa!

It'd be a good argument if it weren't blatantly false. It'd be an argument that didn't curdle the stomach and enrage the heart if it weren't the VERY SAME COMPANIES who are some of the principal roadblocks against feeding the globe.

There is enough food to feed the planet. In fact, as Kofi Annan points out in his Facts, it wouldn't take that much money. We produce so much food that we actually subsidize farmers to destroy some of it. The problem of starvation has always been a problem of access, not of availability.

The problem? Monsanto and food companies in general are those who keep the food away from the poor.

This is the debate that goes into the GMO discussion.

Now, I imagine that some of you have heard some of these points, but very few have heard all of them as a unified case. Why is this the case? Well, sometimes environmentalists make it an issue of dogma and don't present the points back to back to make their argument compelling.

But the much more serious phenomenon? Reasonable commentators on all side are being shunted aside by powerful media institutions to make the debate one-sided and repetitive. We don't want to acknowledge that there's enough food out there, so go Monsanto spokesperson! Castigate leftists for starving Africans! Never mind that this is wholly out of character for them to do so!

Whatever people's opinion on genetically modified food, it behooves humanity to have a reasonable discussion about it, with evidence and without propagandistic distortions. And the same thing that makes genetically modified food insures that that conversation must occur despite effort to stop it: The destructive organs of state capitalism.

A Militant Rejection of Militant Atheism

2008-03-19T16:48:00.001-07:00

Some of you may have heard arguments from a growing militant atheist movement among intellectuals. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and others have launched frontal attacks on religious institutions, belief and faith. Though their critique focuses on "Abrahamanic" religions like Islam, Judaism and Christianity, they rarely spend the rhetorical effort to differentiate Abrahamanic religion from religion per se. They argue that religious and spiritual philosophies are inherently destructive, spreading intolerance, and that scientific and rational thinking must be atheist.

Dawkins in a speech featured here in front of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) reiterates these arguments: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/113 . They don't hold water.

For one, he tries to correlate IQ and religious thinking. But any serious scientist has to know that the IQ test is in no way, shape or form a serious metric of "intelligence". It tests a particular type of intelligence poorly and is heavily class and culturally biased. The same data is used across populations to declare people of different races to be stupid. Dawkins compounds this error by implying that religious thinking is also negatively correlated with socioeconomic status and education. But neither of those vectors are true indications of intelligence otherwise, because we do not live in an intelligence-based meritocracy. We live in a class, race and gender-riveted society where perfectly capable people are artificially denied equal wealth and educational opportunity.

This social understanding is one of the Dawkins/Hitchens school's most severe misunderstandings and utter failings. There was hardly a more antagonistic atheist on the globe than Bakunin, who as an anarchist declared that were there to be a Lord of the world he would try to overthrow that Lord as he would all others. But Bakunin also knew that scientific oligarchy or rule would be just as onerous and disgustinig as rule by a priesthood. I think quite a bit of people's knee-jerk reaction to Dawkins and his ilk is their extreme contempt for people's views and their quite clear implicit belief that those people do not have equal capacity to discharge their rights as human beings.

Why have we seen an upsurge in fanatical religious thinking the globe over? Well, globalization and American foreign policy have intentionally deprived governments of the capacity to control their own societies. There is a "democratic deficit" that is quite alarming. When people's faith in secular political institutions decline, their faith in religious institutions as an alternative civil society grows. This can occur even without religion: The fascist uprisings in Europe were roughly the same phenomenon. One can harshly oppose fanaticism and inflexibility of
all kinds while bearing in mind their structural causes.

One might argue, as a good friend of mine has, "So what? Everyone has their battles. Why not let them focus on the religious fanaticism?" The problem with this is manifold. For one, Hitchens in particular are in support of the very institutions that propel fanatical thinking. Putting aside Hitchens' support for globalization and conventional "capitalism", he also has been in support of the American imperial project in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet a greater hotbed of Abrahamanic fanaticism could hardly be found. "Christians" (read: radical statists subverting authentic Christian belief) use crusading rhetoric and real bombs to devastate Muslims (both ordinary, innocent, decent people and a tiny nasty minority), while "Jewish" Israel slips further and further away from democracy and towards a military-run state.

Second, people like Harris go further and even let their monomaniacal focus on religion obscure obvious truths. Harris has declared that there is a "problem with Islam" that inherently drives terrorist acts. The fact that this argument could fit in George W. Bush's living room does not seem to bother him. This kind of rhetoric that views the beliefs of Arabs and Muslims as somehow inhuman and less than worthy is an integral part of the problem. Of course, the true phenomenon is that butchers on all sides point to justifications as they always do while fighting for their own interests.

Third, religion per se is not the problem. One can look superficially at the Crusades and see that, yes, people of varying religions battled. But then why the siege of Constantinople? Why the horrible atrocities on all sides? Why the enslavement of the Children's Crusade? The answer: Religion was the pretext. The Muslim empires and the rising European empires were destined to battle. The way to mobilize ordinary people was religion.

One could look at the above and say, "All right, religion was still a problem though, it was still the pretext used for recruitment." But religion is by no means the only way of getting the message out. Nationalism, racism, fear, greed, any number of justifications and appeals can be used to spread war and violence. The solution is to eliminate the war and violence, not the religion.

One can go down the line with this logic. Religious fanatics? Get rid of fanaticism, not religion. Religious intolerance? Get rid of intolerance, not religion. Religion leading to closed minds? Get rid of closed minds, not religion. There has been no argument anywhere, precisely because it's absurd, that religion can't be separated from those bad outcomes, that there is no way to have faith and spirituality without accepting negative consequences.

Dawkins also makes a quite abusive analogy, taking advantage of Douglas Adams (a man who I have nothing but admiration for), by pointing out that religious thought has been made socially inured to challenge. I agree that this is unnecessary and problematic. So do almost all religions. The Trickster mythos in almost every religion I'm aware of, from Nasrudin in Islam to Coyote to Ananasi to Buber's irreverant interpretations of Judaism, is a myth that defiles the sacred in order to remind people of what really matters. Being able to discuss openly any aspect of life, religion included, is essential, and anyone who opposes that because they favor their dogma is wrong. But that includes atheist dogma. What many Christians and religious people derive their hostility to people like Dawkins and Hitchens from is not the notion of having the discussion but the notion that the discussion will inherently be from militantly hostile people who have it in their minds that the only right answer to the questions they're asking is their own. No one willingly gets into that conversation. The answer to dogmatic religion is not dogmatic atheism.

Dawkins goes on to extend Adams' analogy far beyond what it was ever intended to say. For Dawkins, anything that we can't subject to rigorous scientific analysis is bunk. Well, say goodbye to ethics then, because there is no litmus test in the world that will tell you why murder is wrong. One must have an ethical edifice that says so or not. Indeed, most human inquiry is largely immune to scientific analysis. Some of it is simply the limits of science: Things like human emotions, say. But others are in PRINCIPLE beyond any empirical or objective argumentation: Aesthetics, morals, etc. Dawkins doesn't dispense with these because he sees that there is more to life than science. But he inconsistently dispenses with religion on that ground. Unfortunately, the reasoning is just as bad in this context.

When faith and science clash, that is when there is an empirical fact that science has observed that faith disagrees with, who should win? By and large, science. But that's neither here nor there.

Dawkins focuses almost entirely on Hitchens' Abrahamanic religions, the monotheisms of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, any number of other religious thoughts simply do not fall under his criticisms. For example, it is not actually the case that we are all atheists except for one God. Most polytheistic religions are perfectly fine with throwing in another God from another culture. But Dawkins nonetheless repeatedly says the term "religion".

This is a problem much deeper than semantics, though. Dawkins has irresponsibly coupled dozens of aspects of religious and spiritual inquiry, including myths, faith, spirituality, organizations and institutions of religion, dogma, laws, etc. Religion is not a monolith: There are dozens of facets, some not so good and some quite good.

Dawkins reminds me of the anti-science postmodern crowd. For these people, science's failures, its creation of the nuclear bomb, make it completely destructive whereas its successes, say the theory of relativity, are irrelevant. The entire project begins with the notion that we should deliberately throw the baby out with the bathwater and hope a new baby springs to life when we run the tap again. The answer to Dawkins is the same answer given by scientists to postmodernists: Get rid of the bad and keep the good, because the bad is not intrinsic to the structure.

Has religion done destructive things? Yes, depending on how you define your terms; so has science. Have religious people been dogmatic, been jerks and warmongers? Yes; same for atheists, science, people with political or economic dogmas, people named Jeff and Bob and Nancy, and indeed pretty much every person alive at some point in their life. But what these thinkers are never able to do is make the argument that would say that there is no context, no proper deployment, for spiritual thought, precisely because the argument would be both offensive and stupid. If spiritual feeling is kept within its sphere of inquiry, it can be the source of brilliant and wonderful passion, philosophy, ethics, and beliefs.

One can look into the stars and see the wonder of the universe, or into the woods and see the wonder of life, and be profoundly moved whether one sees God or not. One can embrace basic human decency, respect, tolerance, compassion and ethics whether one is religious or not. Religion can help with acquiring such moral guidance, but so can other means. The point is that the questions of faith and spirituality are ones that we should answer ourselves, and that there are an array of rational choices, not just one.

I reject militant atheism. I support people embracing their beliefs, whatever they are, and being ready to proudly discuss them. I look forward to a revival across the globe of what China succeeded at: Realizing that many spiritual ways are all in fact on one path, trying to resolve core questions about who we are, what makes us happy and what is out there. Across the millenia, if we commit to a society of discussion, might we find that all of the spiritual thought we had was deeply inadequate? Absolutely, as with science, philosophy and any other worthwhile sphere. Will atheists have a part to play in our journey? Yes. Atheism is the null hypothesis. It answers the spiritual question by saying "Nothing on the table is valid". If we can't explore the null hypothesis, we cannot fully explore the question. Atheists act as skeptics, as people who will help to buoy our wildest notions and anchor our philosophies. In the end, I hope we will collaboratively as a human species find a spiritual truth that resonates as brilliantly and logically as any other essential philosophy we have discovered.

9/11: Shifting Blood

2008-03-19T16:43:00.000-07:00

Reviewing South Park's take on the 9/11 truth movement ("The Mystery of the Urinal Deuce"), a classic bit of satire, I began thinking to myself about the 9/11 truth movement. I was wondering, as I often do, what common ground progressive and radical people could have with these folks. And I began to realize: Neither story of what happened that day, the conventional explanation of a cell connected to the bin Laden-oriented movement or the various 9/11 truth hypotheses about sleeper cells or the US government having advanced warning and allowing the planes to hit or bombs being planted in the basement or missiles being fired at the Pentagon or any permutation, really actually changes anything. Either or both could be true and we as Americans, we as a species, would face some irrespective truths.

It wouldn't change that thousands of innocent people died for no justifiable reason, and millions more were collectively terrified of losing loved ones, saddened by death, and angered by violence. It wouldn't change that Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush, and their respective systems are without question responsible for innumerable atrocities and should be brought to justice.

It wouldn't change that the US government used the atrocities of that day and sullied the memories of those who had died by launching a new cycle of hatred. It wouldn't change that the US government and its elites had a vested motive in seeing their own people die because, whoever the perpetrator, the attacks facilitated military, economic and political objectives of an extraordinary reactionary nature. It wouldn't change that we have a political system that benefits from, indeed in a twisted sense needs and feeds off of, chaos, disorder and violence.

It wouldn't change the fact that, either way, the events of that day in September are extraordinarily poorly understood given their extensive study by just about everyone in the world. And it wouldn't change the fact that this ignorance is due to the imperial system refusing to investigate what happened, blocking the 9/11 Commission and others trying to discover everything about how and why the events transpired. It wouldn't change the motive for this refusal: That a simple myth of Osama masterminding the entire enterprise on dialysis in a cave in Afghanistan is far more useful to imperial prerogatives than the truth, whatever that truth is. (Of course, if the US government were behind the attacks, it would provide an additional motive, but the one I mentioned is more than sufficient). It wouldn't change Chomsky's sobering argument that even months after the invasion Mueller and US intelligence agencies could only be "probably" sure about what precisely happened and about Afghanistan's ties. It wouldn't change the fact that funding for the enterprise supposedly came from Germany and the United Arab Emirates, nor would it change that neither of those countries were bombed (unlike Afghanistan), because that would have been insane.

It wouldn't change the fact that the attacks opened an exceedingly short window wherein the majority of the world expressed compassion for the United States, compassion that in large part stemmed from their own knowledge of what it feels like to have your buildings blown up and your people in terror. It wouldn't change the tragic reality that the Bush Administration squandered that opportunity to advance their and their true constituency's core interests at the cost of insuring that hatred and violence would become even more entrenched. It wouldn't change the alternate reality that could have been, where that sympathy for the globe was parlayed into a sea change wherein America would abandon its imperial domination of the globe and work with others to root out terrorists whereever they may be and bring them to justice, even if those terrorists are white and on cushy book tours or even American Presidents, current and former.

Osama bin Laden could have hijacked every single plane and escaped in a Cobra Commander-esque rocket pod and it still wouldn't change that he, and the mujahadeen, and Saddam, and Islam Karimov, and the Shah, and a long list of others owed their power and existence in no small part to the CIA and American imperial power. It wouldn't change that the bombings of Afghanistan and Iraq were criminal idiocies that turned both countries into cauldrons of chaos, terror and death. It wouldn't change that Saddam Hussein had no connection with Osama bin Laden and no plausible connection with any serious terrorism, yet the invasion of Iraq caused an explosion of new opportunities for radical Islamic terrorism. It wouldn't change that al Qaeda as a whole is stronger now than in 2001, that Osama bin Laden has not been brought to justice, or that the State Department estimates that terrorist actions are becoming more, not less, common in the world. (And it wouldn't change that the State Department's interpretation of terrorism would never include US terror against the globe). It wouldn't change that justifiable rage at what Osama did was no justification or excuse for anything that came after, for retribution and death being visited upon Afghani civilians who had done nothing to Americans and were Osama and the Taliban's victims.

It wouldn't change the fact that all one needs to know about the bankruptcy of the system is in plain view, easy to find. It wouldn't change the fact that one can tell something about the bankruptcy of mainstream culture when it can be seriously argued that it is justified to bomb a country and turn it into a terrorist battleground because that way "we'll" fight them "there" not "here"; in short, using innocent people who have done no wrong to you as human shields so you don't have to be inconvenienced. Or that no one bothers to mention that bombing a country that has weapons of mass destruction is not especially likely to allow one to secure those weapons, but is much more likely to lead to those weapons and materials being looted and sold on the black market. It wouldn't change the fact that conservatives may end up being vindicated in a tragically ironic way when Americans are killed in a chemical weapons attack or by a dirty bomb facilitated by the capture of Iraqi material... thanks to the invasion. It wouldn't change the fact that the average American needs no more reason to resist the system than what their own eyes and ears tell them. They know how bad it is: They suffer from the poverty, the failing health care system, the myths of opulence juxtaposed against the failure of slowing growth rates, the "outsourcing", the mind-numbing work that condemns them to eight hours of servitude daily in a supposed democracy. It wouldn't change that all that is needed to foment change is not stories about US government complicity in yet another crime (as if adding a few thousand more dead really turns the government from saint to sinner compared to their millions) but a movement that can unmask both the injustices of the system and its vulnerability to courageous resistance. And, as South Park's creators Trey and Matt point out, it wouldn't change the fact that, barring hope that the system can be confronted, all the majority of the population accepting their theories would do is further amplify the belief that the system is invincible.

It wouldn't change the fact that the mainstream corporate media is structurally designed to obfuscate essential truths, to safeguard the egos and guilt of the rich that it serves, that power in our society is concentrated in a very small set of hands.

And even if the CIA planned every step of the hijackings, even if the Pentagon was struck by a missile, even if the plane sent to hit the White House was shot down, even if bombs were planted in the WTC buildings, it still wouldn't change that the 9/11 truth movement seems to cling to some disturbing myths. Like the quasi-racist notion that a group of Muslims couldn't pull this off: It had to be white people and their intelligence agencies. Or the apparent belief many of them have that America was at one point a city on a hill and only recently has it been corrupted by bad politicians. Or the lack of insight they have into the core fact that all the conspiracy theories would prove is that a small group of people did something horrible, saying very little about the whole systemic injustice the world faces. It wouldn't change that their singular and often fanatical focus is used by the mainstream media to ridicule those who resist atrocities. It wouldn't change the fact that a large portion of the population does already believe them and that there has nonetheless been no revolutionary upturn in activism, a sign of the real impact of their critique: Hopelessness and cynicism.

And what if the American government were somehow behind the attacks? Would it change the extraordinary incompetence of FEMA in New Orleans (an incompetence especially palpable to those with a better "tan"), or the inability of regulatory agencies to stop massive corporate fraudsters from ripping off even the rich the government protects, or the failure of the strongest military on the planet's surface to battle an underfunded and underarmed insurgency in Iraq? Would it change that the private insurance system the US runs by costs more per person to operate and is therefore by definition deeply inefficient?Would it change that the system as a whole is riddled not only with criminality but actual inability to perform basic tasks?

And what if the American government were not behind the attacks? Would it change their complicity in creating a climate of hate and violence that facilitates attacks like 9/11? Would it change that even Eisenhower knew that the perception of America and Americans as evil had to do with the US government's campaigns of warfare, overthrowing elected regimes, installing dictators, blocking economic growth, and securing control of other peoples' natural resources, and that he and every President after made a decision to continue this pattern even if it would harm Americans? Would it change that many of the organizations that are responsible for these atrocities were created by the CIA to punish the Russians during an invasion that Brzezinski claimed he was responsible for? Would it change that the US government should have been able to prevent the crimes of that day had they not made several crucial mistakes along the way? Would it change that the FAA should have noticed the planes making massive deviations from planned flight paths, that the FAA should have alerted trained scrambler jets, and that if they were not in on the attacks the US government's bureaucracy must then be guilty of truly colossal ineptitude? Would it change that even the CIA admitted sadly that had Clinton not been so determined to crucify the Sudanese he could have accepted data they had compiled that may have allowed arrests and investigations to be made that would have prevented 9/11? Would it change Time's allegation that, due to the government failing to actually adopt Richard Clarke's recommendations, that "many of those in the know-the spooks, the buttoned-down bureaucrats, the law-enforcement professionals in a dozen countries-were almost frantic with worry that a major terrorist attack against American interests was imminent. It wasn't averted because 2001 saw a systematic collapse in the ability of Washington's national-security apparatus to handle the terrorist threat[?]" Would it even change the fact Michael Moore decried post-2001 that people were being allowed to bring lighters on board thanks to pressure from tobacco companies?

I suppose if the American government was behind 9/11, one might be skeptical about moves like PATRIOT and undermining the Geneva Conventions to reduce civil liberties in the hope of catching terrorists; after all, 9/11 truth activists point out, the terrorists are right here on American soil. But a conservative could accept that the US government planned 9/11 and nonetheless argue that there are real threats from abroad and that there needs to be enhanced means to deal with them. More importantly, perfectly mainstream understandings are more than adequate to respond to PATRIOT and moves to justify torture. After all, if the US government had been doing its job, it wouldn't have needed PATRIOT. It could have stopped antagonizing Arabs, or not created the mujahadeen in imperial war games, or accepted the Sudanese data, or listened to the warnings and fears of its intelligence agencies. It could have prevented the attacks years ago by making any number of different moves. Adding more plays to the playbook of a team that can't throw the ball, to use an oft-maligned sports metaphor, seems hardly the correct move. If even after the US stops behaving in ways that the Left has rightly predicted would spread hate and the desire to strike back with terror, if the US' bureaucracy is brought under control and actually does its job with the knowledge and capacities it had, if the US military stops creating enemies by invading countries and killing innocents, we still have a risk of terrorism, then perhaps we can talk about curtailing civil liberties (and not simply be rushed into doing so by fear and unaccountable political systems). And the usage of torture's mainstream success record has been providing "intelligence" that Osama was connected to Saddam Hussein and that Saddam Hussein was imminently capable of destroying the world, hardly a stellar performance. (And, of course, that "intelligence" is not only obviously wrong in hindsight, but was clearly and transparently wrong then, and the CIA knew it). After all, torture has been banned not just because we have come together to say that there are minimal standards of human decency and treatment but because torturing people causes them to tell you what you want to hear, not necessarily the truth. All PATRIOT and easing of human rights restrictions allow is the capacity of the American government to harass peace activists, innocent Muslims and Arabs, and all sorts of other groups it doesn't like.

Oh, and I almost forgot about racial profiling, which 9/11 truth movements would theoretically undermine. Of course, racial profiling is idiotic and unfair because it assumes that because of the actions of a tiny minority of any population, however disproportionate to that population, it is justified to harass the majority. It is idiotic and unfair because no one recommended looking for white skinheads after the Oklahoma City bombing. It is idiotic and unfair because it is not the case, as Bill Mahr seems to think, that al Qaeda is exclusively Arab: As anyone who pays attention knows, it can recruit Asian Indonesians, black Sudanese, and even the occasional John Walker Lindh. It is idiotic because such policies alienate precisely that group of people who need to be most communicated with: Muslim and Arab communities, who could be valuable assets in preventing terror. It is idiotic and unfair because ordinary people's ability to identify "Arabs" or "Muslims" has been severely called into question by their abusing Sikhs, who are generally neither but wear a turban and therefore match the stereotypical concept of those groups. It is idiotic because it makes people look for criteria that have an infinitesimal chance of true positives and a colossal chance of false positives, i.e. people's skin color and appearance, rather than criteria that all terrorists of all colors and ethnicities share. And, as rude as it may be to point out, it's idiotic and unfair because we will never racially profile for those who are truly responsible for massive terrorist acts: Primarily rich old white men.

Neither truth about that day would change corporate malfeasance, or ecological destruction, or the omnicidal risk of nuclear war that has not declined noticeably since the Cold War, or the major nuclear powers' undermining of non-proliferation norms and treaties, or cruise ships dumping their waste in resplendent coral reefs, or the thermostat being slowly and inexorably turned up on the world, or Bill Gates and the Walton family having more wealth than most countries, or the utter failure of market and corporate economies in providing for the majority of the world, or the criminal Israeli persecution of the Palestinians, or the elections Bush stole in 2000 and 2004. It wouldn't change that the American economy is being spent on a seemingly endless imperial war, that several thousand American soldiers died for this unjust cause, and that both the latter charges are mainstream but the million or so innocent Iraqi lives and the million or more refugees are beyond the pale to mention.

No, I'm afraid that the 9/11 truth movement's ultimate goal is even less effective than swapping deck chairs on the Titanic. It is simply reallocating blood from one set of hands, the al Qaeda network, to another, the American empire. The crucial insight is that both hands are already soaked with carnage.

I'm not saying that there's no utility in investigating the truth of what happened, nor at taking the American government to task both for its inability to actually close the books on 9/11 (i.e. figure out what happened and bring all the perpetrators and connected individuals to justice) and for its cynical usage of 9/11 to promote its own goals, damn the consequences. I'm not saying that it's impossible that the US government could have performed such a task. I'm skeptical if only because the political ramifications for being caught would make Watergate look like South Park's Closetgate. I'm also skeptical because motive alone does not prove a crime: After all, in some ways the US government benefitted from the tsunami, yet no one alleges that the US government built an earthquake machine. Questioning the government about the true meaning and implications of 9/11 in all its forms is vital. And I think that many in the 9/11 truth movement are expressing skepticism about the motives of leaders and hope that they can be brought to justice, motives that no one in the Left should lambast.

There's one more thing these critiques don't change. They don't change the courage and humanity of the global resistance to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They don't change the need, the possibility, the responsibility to replace our existing systems of death and violence with systems that promote peace, justice, tolerance, diversity, efficiency and freedom. They don't change the bankrupt nature of the nation-state, or archaic forms of authority, or capitalism, or racism, or sexism. They don't change the fact that it is possible for us to create a new world, one where all the above facts chang, hopefully even the need to be angry at institutional injustice. Because if we do our job right, all of the above will be a sad memory of a time of hate and violence long since transcended.

The Human Rights Council and Israel

2007-10-18T16:12:00.000-07:00

The United Nations Human Rights Council has come under some attack recently. The extent of the hysteria on this topic was recently revealed to me when, on a David Peterson blog post about Iran (http://blogs.zmag.org/node/3226 , the debate heats up on the bottom of the first and the whole of the second page of comments), a commenter accused the HRC and the Left of demonizing Israel (whether it was because of anti-Semitism or other motives was never quite clear). The argument is that the HRC's resolutions against nations overwhelmingly focus on Israel. I will contend this is wholly justified.

(Let's dispense immediately with any Nazi/David Duke/conspiracy theorist garbage about the tail wagging the dog, Israeli interest groups controlling everything, Jew-run media, etc. American white supremacist imperial power controls Israeli “Jewish” power, not the other way around. Period).

It is utterly absurd, by the way, to argue that this focus by the HRC suggests anything about the Left, or the mainstream European culture, or the UN. Indeed, the UNC is the exception that proves the rule. Israel has long been out of compliance with a host of international laws, ranging from the UN Charter to the Geneva Conventions. It flouts nuclear non-proliferation norms (it unfortunately can't be accused of violating the NPT because it didn't sign it). It receives unprecedented aid and support from not only the US but other Western countries. Even countries that used to be in support of an authentic peace have changed their stance in the last two decades (see the Oslo Accords). Its military occupation of the Palestinians is almost entirely dependent on Western, primarily US, arms. For all this, it has gotten slaps on the wrist, largely due to the protection the US affords it thanks to its Security Council membership. (Even Israel's entry into the UN was contingent on it doing things it never did). The one deviation from this overwhelming international silence and/or inaction has been met with a storm of condemnation, including by both Kofi Annan and Ban ki-Moon.

But what are the core arguments against this demonization position?

Firstly: The evidence for this claim is extraordinarily weak. The HRC has also launched condemnations against Sudan, Myanmar, Belarus and Cuba, among others. Yes, condemnations of Israel have been more frequent and possibly with more strident language. But the argument that people who put forward this hypothesis comes down to, “Israel gets specified more often.” That may be true. But the majority of the HRC's resolutions do not mention particular states. They have authored resolutions on issues such as the right to food, the right to access to drugs for HIV/AIDs and other diseases, torture, the use of mercenaries, etc. And while the US is guilty of either directly engaging in or funding such behavior, a number of the nations that people lambasting the HRC say deserve more criticism (such as many African nations) are guilty of these crimes as well. If one notes the nations that would be criticized by these recommendations, the anti-Israel bias becomes a non-issue.

Further, many of the nations and groups that people say deserve the HRC's criticism (Sudan, Russia, China, etc.) already get criticism. They get resolutions and efforts to send peacekeepers (which the US usually blocks or at least fails to assist). They get condemnation from human rights observers, mainstream media outlets, etc. Many are at least in principle willing to negotiate on the outstanding issues. Israel, as I will go into later, is truly unique in terms of its ability to continue to prosecute genocide (not just in the sake of extermination but in the sense that Jews after the Holocaust insisted upon: the organized destruction of people as a people)

Second: The scale of Israel's crimes deserves condemnation. It's not just the 3-to-1 death rate between Palestinians and Israelis, or the crimes of aggression Israel is guilty of against many states in the region (Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, etc.). It also includes the curfews that have wrecked 100,000 families in Gaza; the 8000 citizens deprived of water in Urabdiya and the Palestinians drinking sewage while Israelis have lawns and golf coursesl the 40% of Palestinian children born anemic, blind or deaf; the 80% of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip living below the poverty line; B'Tselem's estimate that 400 Palestinians a month in 1991 were interrogated and tortured; etc. There is extensive documentation for all of these statistics and a long list more. It is truly soul-crushing.

Third: It's not simply the scale of Israeli atrocities. It is that these crimes against humanity have continued for decades without interruption. That this dispossession of the Palestinian people has been codified by laws. That the Israelis are able to unilaterally control Palestinian tax funds if they don't like who's been elected. That the legal apparatus defending the occupation is further enhanced by Security Council members. South Africa received similar international condemnation, with the same responses from apologists: Why not focus on Russia? Or even apartheid in America? Yes, all those are relevant, but to have a member of the supposedly civilized club able to institute racist apartheid while being called a democracy and receiving extensive Western aid is a uniquely destructive crime against humanity.

So I propose a test. Let's not dismantle the HRC until their issues with Israel have been resolved to the satisfaction of Palestinians and of external observers. Let's continue to hold Israel to task until such issues as the treatment of Lebanese detainees in Israel, or the occupation of Palestine, or the statistics above have been changed and reparations made. Then, if the demonization of Israel continues by anybody, we can fairly allege that anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head and consign such organizations to the dustbin of history.

"Interventionism?"

2007-09-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

While reading Howard Zinn's perennial People's History of the United States, I was considering a thought about language as it pertains to politics with a perennial debate: The isolationism vs. interventionism debate (always closely tied with the appeasement debate as it pertains to World War II).

Isolationism is almost always talked about in the context of two wars: World War I and World War II. But it does intellectual injustice to the notion of non-involvement to use those as examples. The American economy was practically dependent exclusively on the shipments of war material to the Allies in World War I. (Not to mention that the US, by then with a pretty substantial sphere of influence in Latin America, was hardly interventionist: That's what the isolationists of the time, including some amazingly moral business leaders forming the Anti-Imperialist League, pointed out. Oh, if only business nowadays could approach those heights...) And in World War II, America backed the fascists then found all sorts of clandestine ways to assist the Allies when the fascists turned sour. After the war, they continued to back the fascists (though by then the Cold War was beginning in its infancy and thus America could hardly be considered isolationist anymore). That doesn't fit any definition of isolationism I can think of.

The same thing applies to appeasement, of course. Did America and the European powers really appease Nazi Germany because of fear or some other motive conservatives impute to them? Or was it simply because the victims of the Nazis weren't important enough to merit challenging the right of imperial states, not to mention someone who was very good at fighting off the Commies? Obviously the question is a difficult one to ascertain (there's probably elements of all of the theories involved, though of course I lean substantially to the latter hypothesis), but insofar as the answer was that the West simply could care less, "appeasement" is the wrong way of thinking.

This, of course, bears on Kelvin's point to some degree, but I think it illustrates a difficulty [Kelvin's initial article can be found here: http://blogs.zmag.org/node/3220#comment-62980]. Is the problem that the words "isolationism" and "appeasement" are inherently tainted? Maybe, but it doesn't seem so: While the exact definition may vary according to power preferences, the terms seem to be coherent enough. "Isolationism" pertains to the theory that America should be uninvolved insofar as possible with global affairs, while "appeasement" pertains to the attempt to "buy off" dictators with treaties and other means. What is the problem is the context: The mistaken belief that America is just too kind, too naive, and needs to buckle down and be prepared to deal harshly with the unwashed of the world who have yet to have reached our pinnacle of achievement and prosperity. Myths about World War I, II, American empire, the efficacy and justness of military force, etc. all are involved. But they don't bear on the language, though I guess Kelvin's point about "consumer tropes" would be fair enough: They bear on the context that the language is deployed in and the connotations of the words themselves and the context. That means that we have to go beyond deconstructing language. We have to present alternative contexts, alternative ways of thinking, which is a completely anti-postmodernist way of thinking. (Kelvin cites pomo, and while I don't think he matches with the priests of that bizarre little segment of academia, there has nonetheless been a bit too much of the bathwater taken).

Now, I tend to think the term "isolationism" in particular is just the wrong way of thinking about the problem. I think all nations' authority, including ours, should be subordinated in relevant areas and jurisdictions to a global system of governance, which is the first step in constructing a post-statist society that can be authentically free and equal. I think America has so much to do in context of this global arrangement to repair more than a century of privations and atrocities. I think that cultural exchanges, immigrations and emigrations, etc. are overwhelmingly positive. And so on. But I have to give some kudos to the Pat Buchanan type, or to the business and elite leaders so long ago, who seem to at least recognize that empire is wrong.

To put it succinctly: If the choice is between playing in our own sandbox and beating up other kids in theirs', the obvious choice, the only moral choice, is to confine oneself to the playground. It's up to Americans to determine if a third alternative is possible.

"I Love My Job"

2006-12-03T22:54:00.000-08:00

Recently I had to sit through a training session on a certain supermarket's secret shopper program. As you all know, during the hiring process for many companies there is a period where the many benefits of the company are hyped, its superiority to competitors is extolled, and an attitude of blind subservience and corporate jingoism is instilled. (This isn't to say managers are bad people or anything of the kind, to be clear.) The particular mouthpiece for the company in question described how she was once a bagger (or "Courtesy Clerk") and has now ascended the rungs of the company. She then said, "I love my job."

Of course, my political mind is always operating, and I was wondering how I could rebut this presumption on her part. I don't know her; might she enjoy her job?

Absolutely. After all, being in a managerial echelon, she had some degree of self-management and control. And even if she had been a menial worker at the bottom of the totem pole, one can always find individuals in a society who, for whatever reason, collaborate with oppression or at least tolerate it enough to lie to themselves that they "love" the roles that they play. But comments she made indicated a lot of what lay even under her attitude.

For one, she mentioned that it's not "worth it" to lose a job over theft. While this is somewhat ambiguous, it seemed to me that this indicated that, like everyone else, she viewed a job as an economic asset, not a treasured personal one. She surely did not speak about her labor the same way she spoke about her children. She went on to further imply this by saying that, were she to lose her job over a commodity, it would be a "$900,000 car" or something very valuable. It's pretty clear that she views her job in economic, not personal, terms.

Just ask yourself for one moment: Imagine any of those people you have heard who say they love their job. Now, first, ask how many of them were janitors, fry cooks or even bottom-of-the-corporate-ladder programmers. Then ask what I think is the most important question: If they won the lottery tomorrow, winning, say, $30 million after taxes (just to give them enough that they really wouldn't need to work ever and could survive on $200,000 a year for 50 years with $20 million left), would they come into work? Any kind of work?

I can think of virtually no person who would do so. A possible exception would be the Professors at my university. People animated by passion in a generally much freer environment who can define their own work conditions, despite working very hard.

The point? Until we replace our economic system, most people won't love, or even like, their job. They will loathe it, no matter how large their insincere smile.

The Best Case is That... We're Cowards?

2006-11-01T17:32:00.000-08:00

Yes, my blog has seen virtually no action for some months; this will hopefully change as of now.

There has been an argument, famously lampooned on the absolutely genius Colbert Report, that in essence says, "Fight the terrorists there, not here", regarding Iraq.

Now, this argument should be laughed out of any serious person's mind and consideration. It is a sign of total desperation, an absolute smokescreen. First of all, the argument takes advantage of the coincidence (and that is what it is) that there have been no mainland terror attacks post-9/11 (aside from the anthrax scare, Reid, etc.) Why can we be certain it is a coincidence? Because terror cells don't attack on a set timetable of any kind. Consider the most famous al Qaeda actions of the 90s: Participating in the war in Bosnia on America's request, the USS Cole and the first WTC attack. Only one occured on American soil during Clinton's entire presidency, and it was a failure in a way 9/11 wasn't. How this history proves that Bush is fighting terrorism is beyond me. Yes, no attacks have been made on the United States; instead, al Qaeda is seemingly with impunity attacking European nations writ large, including Spain and Britain (assuming the British subway bombing was AQ-involved). In fact, terrorist attacks have increased during the Bush presidency across the world. (By the way, that conclusion was reached by a no less august authority than the State Department, which would be just SLIGHTLY friendly to Bush: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/28/AR2006042802181_pf.html ) In fact, during 2005, attacks increased fourfold.

The assumption of the "Fight them there, not here" argument is a few-fold: First of all, that we're actually "fighting them" ; second, that al Qaeda is the only Muslim or Arab terrorist organization that could ever exist and that its membership can never grow or alternately is growing; and, third, that this strategy has somehow increased security for the world or America. But all assumptions are stupid and uncontroversially so.

The first is very clear: While some high-profile al Qaeda members have been captured, Osama bin Laden is famously at large, and in terms of actually undermining any real capacity of al Qaeda to prosecute attacks, the Bush administration has done virtually nothing. To be fair, it is very hard to bomb a loosely-tied affinity network that ranges from Indonesia and the Sudan to the entirety of the Middle East into submission... only that's exactly what the left and liberals have been saying to no rebuttal for six years. The way to deal with non-state criminals is police work. The few states who we are confident have actually been funding or have had funders in their borders, such as Germany, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have obviously not been victims of US bombing, and with the exception of Germany have been attempting to be allies in the US war on terror. Remember: al Qaeda is an American-created phenomenon, and its funding, membership and training come from a shadowy set of institutions that are all US-created or attuned and backed.

The second is even less controversial. New and old organizations aside from al Qaeda are being formed or exist, such as Hezbollah, which has been scarcely harmed whatsoever (in fact helped) by the war in Iraq and the Israeli bombing campaigns. Recruiting by radical Islamist organizations has skyrocketed since the Iraq war, and radical Islamist groups are very clearly saying that the war in Iraq has been a boon to them. Indeed, the best way to think of the conflict is a cycle of reinforcing barbarisms, to borrow another left writer's brilliant phrase. Every al Qaeda attack causes Americans to back even more reactionary candidates, who in turn prove al Qaeda's statements about American policies and people right through violence and strutting and thereby increase the power of al Qaeda and similar groups. It's a cycle of violence where only the crazies win. So while some are indeed fighting the "infidels" in Iraq, and thereby costing American taxpayers money, American soldiers their life and sanity, and military families their sons, daughters, husbands and wives, others are using the new level of recruitment

Remember: There never was a suicide bombing in Iraq before the US invasion. Whatever the terrorist status of Iraq (pretty obviously none, since the groups like Ansar al Islam that the US argued were terrorist links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were actually in US-controlled regions and had no substantial connections to AQ anyways) before the invasion, it is obvious to any reasonable observer that its status has become much more dangerous.

The lynchpin of the argument is that, since terrorist activity has gone up in Iraq, it must have gone down everywhere else. This assumes a constant of terrorism. Actually, the Bush administration has increased terrorism EVERYWHERE, giving them a new arena to fight in in addition to (not at the exclusion of) the old.

And the third is also clear: North Korea has possibly tested a nuclear weapon, Iran is becoming more dangerous, and proliferation and terrorist threats to everyone have increased. There is no single provable improvement in American security since the war in Iraq and several obviously harms.

All of the above was just because I can't resist debating stupid arguments ad nauseum. Luckily, it's a ploy that American voters aren't buying, precisely because it is so transparently laughable. But there is something very disturbing (though funny in a very dark way) about the argument's logic.

What it says is that we are willing to sacrifice at least 30,000 lives (by Dear Leader Bush's admission) and more likely 400,000 to 800,000 lives (see the new John Hopkins/Lancet report), invade a sovereign country and depose its leader in violation of basic tenets of international law, all to turn their innocent people who have never (regardless of the crimes of Saddam Hussein) done anything to Americans, Europeans or indeed much of anybody into flypaper so that they, their loved ones, and our soldiers can die, all so our comfortable lives on our "city on the hill" need not be confronted or disrupted.

What the Republican Party is loudly saying, hoping people don't hear it, is that Americans are craven cowards who, far from saving another people or liberating them, are in fact using them as human shields. Their own argument, said in smarmy and self-righteous tones, proves only their utter inability (or unwillingness) to question their racist, classist privilege. They hope that American voters will not understand this, and further will not notice this position's utter incompatibility with the notion that we are liberators (a claim that itself requires a full blog post to summarily dismiss) fighting out of sheer generosity and not out of lurid oil desires and geopolitical considerations. Now consider just for a second how antagonistic to authority our "liberal media" must be: Which talking head have you seen utter this elementary point of logic derived from the Republican's very own arguments? Has Alan Colmes or Bill Mahr confronted their Republican opponents? Have you seen any of our vigilant Democratic Senators do so?

If Americans vote in Republicans in 2006, they will be proving to the world that they are indeed the type of cowards who would use others as proxies for their own security, or at least the type of fools who can't call their ruling party on such backhanded compliments. Obviously voting Democratic won't prove to the world that America has had a change of heart, nor will it accomplish anything of real value in the long run. But it will be a marginal improvement.

Contradictions On Exposition Round CXI

2006-02-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have heard about Kofi Annan and others' comments on Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Now, given the confirmed pictures not to mention the numerous outside observers and other testimonies that there was torture and violence, the response of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show is quite apt (a paraphrase): "Oh, so you only tortured BEFORE? Those pictures of degradation are old news?" This from the same people talking about Saddam's treatment of the Kurds and telling lurid tales of rape rooms.

The contradictions only get more ironic. You see, the response of McClellan and Rumsfeld has to Kofi Annan has been, "They haven't even been to Guantanamo!" And crime scene investigators are sometimes not and George W. Bush was not at the area of the crimes that they speak confidently about. Moreover, the reason why this is not the case is because the US put roadblocks in the way of such investigations, including not allowing UN or other investigators to speak to prisoners. The reason? "They've been trained to lie." Clearly unlike administration officials or CIA agents. Of course, with actual people (not the Arab or terrorist subhumans), the accused have rights and all relevant witnesses must be asked. Since these prisoners presumably would have allegations, and if they are perjuring themselves that must be proven since they have a presumption of innoence, this response indicates nothing but a contempt for human and Constitutional rights. To use a common conservative mantra: Why be scared if you have nothing to hide? (Whatever responses these neo-cons use, such as the possibility of an unfair trial in the literal sense or in the court of public opinion, are wholly fair to throw back at them in the domains they offer the above excuse.)

And, the final point of irony I will note: While these war criminals may mistrust the testimony of these prisoners when it besmirches "America" (read: the reputation, already stained, of the imperial machine), they have no difficulty using such testimony to provide a justification for an illegal and immoral colonialist war.

Socialism: Dream or Institution?

2006-02-15T17:50:00.000-08:00

I have been questioning the meaning and value of the word "socialist" and "socialism". There are roughly two outlooks that the Left generally holds. The first is held not only by Marxists but also anarchists like Noam Chomsky, while the second is held by other anarchists (a primary example would be Michael Albert).

The first is that socialism is a good dream which has been conjured for evil causes. This view describes socialism through the dreams of all the revolutionaries who have been inspired by it, talking about worker's control of the means of production, the end to capitalism (or, at least in the early days, its reform and humanization), and the sharing of the resources of society to benefit and enrich all. I am sympathetic tot his view because of the extensive history of the term, because of the acceptance of it in the majority of the world, and because I don't feel I should have to back down from a term because capitalists or tyrants have sullied it through propaganda. If the Left backs down from every such word, they will have given the field to the powerful. These men for institutions often point to the soviets or parecon or libertarian municipalism as socialist institutions.

However, the second points out that there is something disingenuous to the way that each generation of the Left attempts to recapture the term while describing concretely quite distinct institutions. Further, most socialist parties that come to any kind of power advocate market or central planned socialism (whether democratic or totalitarian). While it is true that most socialist advocates reject what happened in the USSR, indeed calling the collapse of the USSR a victory for socialism, there is also something disingenuous about dismissing the ideology of it too quickly as not socialist. Those men could spout Marxism and offer paeans to freedom just as well as anyone else, and Lenin had some quite libertarian writings. Whether it was something unique about Russian culture, or the influence of the state, or what have you, something went wrong... or did it? That may not be the most authentic formulation. It may have been that Marxism or Leninism or socialist institutions propelled the USSR by design. Further, when someone says "socialism", whether in Europe or America, what is implied (aside from connotations, whether negative or positive) is what happens in Europe: good to be sure, but not remotely the ideal a serious libertarian socialist or anarchist would commit to. Even completely non-capitalist market socialism is not my goal. Even the word, "socialism", implies a social focus rather than a libertarian or individualist focus.

So I'll open this up to whatever viewers I have. What would you argue is socialism? What comes to mind when you hear it? Should parecon advocates or advocates of other alternative economies call themselves socialists or not?

Communication? That Was My Major!

2006-02-14T19:53:00.000-08:00

Communication seems so natural if unexamined. One uses the best words one can find to express what one is feeling. Of course, virtually everybody knows that this is a simplification at best: misunderstanding, confusion, limits of vocabulary, preconception and all sorts of other barriers are an everyday occurrence. What is not so clear is the remarkable degree to which culture (as well as polity, economy and gender) impact communication, negatively if interlocutors do not pay sufficient attention. Everything from eye contact to hand gestures to conversational pace and perception of interruption varies according to cultural distinctions (Blauner 2004, 144-146). Because of this fact, attention to such variation is vital for any discussion group, especially one occurring within multicultural societies.
The first, and relatively surmountable, difficulty with intercultural communication is the semantic difficulty. Language is fundamentally arbitrary: There is no objective problem with calling a dog “a cat”. What different individuals mean by the same term can be quite distinct. One of the ways that these terms become variegated is across cultural lines. For example: In my experience, what radicals or many black commentators mean by the word “racism” are any forms or practices, especially institutional ones, that have the effect of privileging or benefitting one group or another, whereas most liberals, conservatives or white commentators typically believe it means concrete prejudice (the classic “racist effect v. intent” debate; incidentally, I am not alone in this position: Bob Blauner describes precisely this phenomenon in “Talking Past Each Other” and Tim Wise does as well in “White Like Me”.1) In a discussion about racism in a multicultural classroom, a whole conversation could be sidetracked by whether or not a practice should be called “racism” rather than discussing the content of the practice. This is relatively surmountable if the atmosphere in the discussion is at all informative and if the instructor is sufficiently attentive to the distinction between semantic and substantive argument. Obviously there may be difficulties if literally different languages are being employed, but those are relatively trivial cases and can be surmounted by a facilitator with tact and grace.
Next, distinct cultures provide differences of substance in belief and opinion. For example, even two very closely aligned individuals (i.e. a black or Aboriginal feminist and a white feminist) may end up having drastically different tactical judgments and indeed understandings about the nature of oppression owing to distinct cultural backgrounds (Lake 2001, 7).

This may also manifest itself as silence. For example, Native American interlocutors may be hesitant to describe their unique cultural practices because of fear of being dismissed as primitive or silly (Robinson and James 2003, 81). Unfortunately, silence cannot be enumerated or responded to.

Further, the very way that people discuss will be altered by culture. A Greek participant in a forum may view impassioned argument as a sign of respect or flattery, while a Asian participant might view this as problematic and prefer to change the subject (Bucher 2004, 155). People from different cultures will vary in the way they perceive issues to be resolved or discussed.
And the very perception of the existence and nature of institutions and authorities will alter across cultural, political, etc. lines. Someone from an activist culture or childhood will be more likely to view authority as an adversary or at best something to be tolerated than someone raised in a military environment.

In each of the above cases, various prejudices and preconceptions interfere with the resolution of the barrier. Someone with sufficient prejudice may refuse to alter one's terminology or explain themselves, or respond with a kneejerk to a position that is viewed as offensive without questioning if there is simply a terminological quibble at stake. The fear of prejudice may cause silence, and challenging of substantive differences may be viewed as an attack upon one's person. Misunderstanding of anothers' relationship or understanding of institutions or authority figures and their perception of the proper way to discuss may artificially abort discussion or cause unnecessary conflict.

As I argued in a discussion group [and on this blog], our culture is one wherein serious discussion with attention to logic and relentless questioning of stated positions, in other words with the prerequisite for any authentic comparison of ideas, is abandoned in a majority of cases by a metaphorical rush to the state, to repressive mechanisms that allow one to win. The solution that most multicultural advocates end up proposing as an alternative is a strategy often described as “dialogue versus debate”: Everyone has an opinion; ergo, one should treat each opinion as inviolable, and discussion is largely based on opinions proferred in some kind of relevant order. I view this as people retreating into hermetic containers only sticking their head out to look for crossfire. This is superior to angry and acrid argument, but that is a “lesser of two evils” position. The alternative? Respectful and attentive debate, with no disruptive interruptions, with ideas being proposed, discussed, compared and rebutted, with warrants and evidence insofar as is available and people being asked to provide reasons for conclusions and premises. This strategy has any number of subsets, but it resolves the above difficulties by providing a mechanism that is only as limited as the available logic and evidence. The cause of truth and learning is served by such comparison because even ideas brought up that end up being rejected served a purpose in causing thought and, if the logic was sufficiently rigorous, being eliminated thus eliminating an unsatisfactory idea and thus establishing more worthwhile discussions.

It may be worthwhile to notice the various roles that people play in such a well-regulated discussion. The first is the Debater. The Debater is actually adopting a position, whether she believe its or not, for a prolonged period of time, arguing from that perspective and defending it from rebuttals. The Debater can be affirmative and/or negative: that is, they may argue to defend a particular concrete position or proposal, argue to undermine another such position or proposal, or do both. The Debater is typically the centerpiece of this strategy: whatever the agreed upon topic being discussed in a group is, she provides the meat. Everyone in a group may be a Debater, but this is unlikely. To keep track of the distinct positions and rebuttals offered by seven other speakers is a task likely only on an Internet forum and even then with substantial investment of time. Typically, the people with established or passionate opinions and experience in the area in question will be these voices.

But they are not the only possible role, and indeed the best conversations will include more. Another vital role that should be played, at the very least by the facilitator or group leader, is the Devil's Advocate. This classic position is to argue for a moment from a different perspective or with different reasoning than one would normally agree with or utilize, so as to make sure that an obvious position is heard and that those arguing a different position have taken it into account. There are a few caveats. The devil's advocate should announce that they are function as a devil's advocate. They should do so sparingly, as the risk of the Devil's Advocate is that unimportant, irrelevant or unenlightening positions may be advocated without an appropriate check. And, while this is difficult to detect, some may use the pretense of being a Devil's Advocate as a way to express what they actually believe or perhaps a slightly more extreme variant of what they believe. Unfortunately, this has the risk of devolving into immature discussions or simple controversy or offensive statements for their own sakes (what in Internet parlance would be called “trolling”). When this is occurring, it may be because the forum is not sufficiently open to dissident or alternative viewpoints.

Two more roles individuals play are the Commentator and the Questioner, very closely related. During the course of discussions, topics will come up that some may not have extensive argumentation to provide for but that do beg questions or invite comments. These participation types should be encouraged almost without limit as they are very brief, vary the pace of the discussion, and can be quite insightful and valuable. However, if the questions or comments are excessively rhetorical or confrontational, they should be aborted.

And, of course, no one should be afraid to provide their own personal opinions, experiences, outlooks and philosophies, to whatever degree and in whatever depth they wish to. If they are personal experiences, they should not be denied, though it is fair for someone to question the relevance of the experience (respectfully), and if someone flags that they wish to not have an opinion challenged, it should be only responded to generally or used as a springboard rather than an argument. My model does not exclude opinions being presented and then not challenged or at least not challenged directly. Another thing to note is that value claims can not be demonstrated to be “wrong” per se, and since it is quite likely that people will come to the table with rather distinct value sets and estimations of the worth of various entities, the majority of the time if the remaining debate is upon distinct values the debate should be jogged along, as those debates are not likely to end in resolution.

The facilitator or discussion leader's job in such a system is complex. If the debate and discussion does not represent a sufficient cross-section of viewpoints, she should broaden the debate and discuss new viewpoints, hopefully proposing readings. She must make sure that there are sufficient pauses, prompts and opportunities to allow everyone a sufficient chance to chip in, especially if the grade in a discussion section is linked to participation. Part of this includes enforcing a reasonable limit on discussion time (most of the time this shouldn't be necessary, but if it becomes a problem comment “tickets” can be used, or perhaps a timer or hourglass circulated around the class), including cutting off someone who has spoken for some time or who is rambling. This may mean stopping the thought process of someone who thinks vocally, but unfortunately time is limited; however, if possible, the person should be allowed to continue if it makes sufficient sense. In line with this, the facilitator should be prepared to allow substantial backtracking to make sure people who had a thought can bring it up. When an argument is developing in ways not likely to be productive or conducive, they should be prepared to gently shove the discussion a different direction. If factual difficulties are encountered, the ideal situation would be for the facilitator or the relevant participants to do some research and circulate it through group e-mail. And the pace of argumentation and discussion must be controlled.

We have an obligation to tolerance. But we also have an obligation to truth. The way to resolve these values is to not simply incorporate and tolerate more viewpoints, not to simply look for and applaud what is good, but also to identify and discuss what is bad, to test and compare viewpoints. It is the only way to truly respect and tolerate others, to move past simple multicultural tolerance to polycultural interaction and exchange.

1. Blauner, Bob. “Talking Past Each Other.”

I'm On Top Of The World! (Now Can I Get Off?)

2006-02-14T05:42:00.000-08:00

We all like to think that our position is due only to our own skill, our own ability, and yet we know that cannot possibly true. Regardless of our political opinion, it is simply a point of logic that without a great social system that created roads, educational facilities, and in general the whole economic and social thrust of society, we would be as nothing. Clearly those in other societies had at least as much merit and skill as us, yet throughout history living standards have obviously changed. The reasonable question is not, “Is success socially defined?”, but rather “Is this social definition based in justice?” To be intellectually honest, I should put my own life under examination and see how much justice was involved.

My parents were both white professionals with college degrees. But privilege is not a simple thing. For the first eight years of my life, my mother was a homemaker and my father a small and somewhat lazy businessman, both involved with a spiritual community. Yet my parents could still turn to their parents, who had homes and saved income, if they truly needed help, and I never went to school hungry or couldn't get a toy I really wanted. Moreover, when my father, after probably a decade of barely working, was able to parley his connections and MIT Math diploma to almost immediately get cushy management jobs in programming firms and become upper-middle class, while my mother became a rather successful translator able to work less than forty hours a week and continue taking care of the house and providing for my needs, it implicated me in privilege no matter my preference. Privilege is more than a high salary; it is connections, resources, educations, acculturations, and accesses that can surpass and even replace a high salary. Why wasn't a black candidate who had actual recent work experience hired over my father? Not least because there weren't many out there thanks to educational inequity, but that can't explain everything. Rather, that even those qualified black candidates had not made good with the bosses in the past (owing to not attending elite colleges or not having rich and well-connected parents), so their work experience was almost irrelevant. Even my parents' relatively hardtack beginnings were nothing compared to the reality of the truly poor in this country.

Early on, teachers recognized that I had a certain degree of talent and intelligence that put me into the “gifted” track, the position in the educational hierarchy involving extracurricular activities, spelling bees, honors and AP classes, debate clubs. Though my community was white enough as it was, in retrospect the honor track was even more white than usual. Even Northwestern University recognizes this fact; this is why they have pioneered an approach wherein they look at the context of the student's life, including economic and educational opportunity, in order to evaluate the “objective” indices of GPA, SATs and AP scores. It should be elementary that a student who went to a school without AP or honors courses should have their grades looked at differently. Yet few colleges have the resources or ability to perform such analysis with each application. Inaction sustains the system just as much as action: like the Red Queen's Race, one has to run as fast as one can to stay in the same place.

And what of my friends in high school? Those jocks, geeks, preps and emo kids who all spent their weekends drowning their sorrows with liquor and weed? Did any of them face consequences for illegal activity? Or rather was it, as I remember from a football meeting (long story short: I was in Football PE but not on the team), covered up and “forgiven” on the rare occasions it was even detected? Did anyone go to prison when the cops finally busted parties that had over a hundred people attending, including Sacramento gang members? Yet those excuses and those courtesies, while wholly proper (indeed, drugs should be legalized), are only extended to the whiter and richer among us. When Rush Limbaugh (who even admitted that “[T]oo many whites are getting away with drug use”) was caught abusing Vicodin and Oxycontin, he went to a rehab center, almost a health spa, not federal prison1. This anecdotal piece of evidence generalizes. As the Sentencing Project reports (“Crack Cocaine Sentencing: A Racist Policy?”), “The 100:1 quantity ratio in cocaine sentencing causes low-level crack offenders to receive arbitrarily severe sentences compared to high level powder cocaine offenders. The quantity distinction has also resulted in a massive sentencing disparity by race, with African Americans receiving longer sentences than the mostly white and Hispanic powder cocaine offenders.” And it's not just crime where white offenders consistently get their excuses listened to and their habits made unproblematic by institutional fiat. Gregory Squires' piece, “The Policy of Prejudice”, establishes that, “mystery shoppers' [were matched] in terms of the structure and value of their homes, their incomes and occupations, and other socioeconomic factors. The only difference was the racial composition of the neighborhoods.. when testers from white areas called to inquire about the availability of insurance agents generally attempted to sell them a policy. But when callers from minority areas inquired... [agents] discouraged the callers from pursuing a policy with them.” (147-148).

And what about my male privilege? I can't isolate many concrete incidences when being male helped me, but that is just as much the problem as anything else. As Steven Lukes argues in his three-dimensional model (Power: A Radical View, page 366 in the reader), “...the bias of the system can be mobilized, recreated and reinforced in ways that are neither consciously chosen nor are the intended result of particular individuals' choices.” How many times did I stand idly by when a sexist joke was made? When a female companion of mine was made uncomfortable but pretended to be “fine with it” precisely because of the consequences of not being fine with it? Recently, friends of mine created a “point system” as an incentive for them (quite geeky friends, to be fair) to engage with women. The “point system” did not offer incentives for what men call “playing” (and what with women we call “sluttiness”, owing to differential sex roles, often called “The Madonna and the Whore” in the literature), but it still had not occurred to most of them how disturbing many might find it that women were being reduced to “points”. My debate partner in high school was a Latino girl one year younger than me, and I can't imagine how many times I must have tried to force a submissive relationship, especially in the male, white and rich-dominated world of competitive high school debate (luckily, if nothing else, she was a spirited woman, and would not take that crap). And recently, after having read “You Just Don't Understand” by Deborah Tannen, I had come to realize that the way I had perceived my mother as supposedly interrupting me was created by gender, race, and geographical reality, and in fact she had just wanted to assist or to handle other topics (though admittedly she still did try to change the conversation a lot). To quote, “Women and men feel interrupted by each other because of the differences in what they are trying to accomplish with talk... Nothing is more disappointing in a close relationship than being accused of bad intentions when you know your intentions were good, especially by someone you love... And a left jab meant in the spirit of sparring can become a knockout if your opponent's fists are not raised to fight...” (122). More subtly, Arlie Hochschild in “The Second Shift” describes the phenomenon wherein women (women like my mother or any wife or girlfriend I might potentially meet and become involved with) work just as hard (incidentally typically still making less, as they are not perceived to be the primary breadwinners) during the day and then work an additional eight hours a day spread out among the week, typically meaning late nights, early mornings or weekends. That means that any woman I live with is highly likely to be more stressed and poorer than I am, a major advantage. Yet is it an advantage I really want? Is it worth it to have someone in your house who is too tired to do anything? The institution makes that choice for me, the cost of privilege.

Arguably, all this is nothing compared to American privilege, or imperial privilege, or the substantial advantages that come from living in the most economically and militarily powerful First World nation. Walton's chapter on The World System describes the history of European colonial plunder and economic control, then goes onto point out that, “The new stage is no more favorable to the underdeveloped nations of the periphery than the last two. On the contrary... they may be less obliging in particular ones.” And make no mistake, these systems of class, race, empire and gender are united. Anton Foek offers a poignant example in “Sweatshop Barbie”: “I cannot help thinking of Cindy Jackson... who has had 19 cosmetic-surgery operations to make herself look like Barbie – at a cost of some $165,000. I wonder what Jackson would say if she could see these sick and dying women and know how brutally they have been exploited in order to make dolls for First World children. Pramitwa, Sunanta and Metha have never heard of Cindy Jackson, but my guess is that they are glad not to be in her shoes.” The terms of trade are increasingly being rigged for the already powerful. Going to a relatively elite university like UC Davis virtually insures contacts, expertise, social standing and a perception of skill and ability that guarantees ostensible success. And once I'm in that position of success, I am quite likely to not only see my class grow richer and stronger, but also not be knocked out of that class. Robert Reich describes the well-known statistics that describe enhanced global inequity: The poorest fifth of American families became 8% poorer and the richest fifth became 13% richer, and this inequity generalized across the world, both inbetween and internal to nations. Reich makes clear that this problem is structural: “The conservative tide... certainly has many causes, but the fundamental change in our economy should not be discounted... It is now possible for the fortunate fifth to sell their expertise directly in the global market, and thus maintain and enhance their standard of living, even as that of other Americans declines.” And this has also manifested as a lack of social mobility as well.

Now, I am admittedly not always a recipient or beneficiary of privilege. My parents were once poor, and still are not in the highest echelons of society. Being involved in the activism I have been doing has led to death threats (but not actual assault or death), punitive responses from school officials (though not the same degree as “problem students”, disproportionately poor or black), and have been misquoted and misunderstood by journalists and people who can only hear limited parts of my arguments because of the script of the society.

But even my lefty principles and action implicate me in systems of privilege. I'm not just talking about how movement leadership tends to skew upwards in terms of class and race, as Lipsky in “Protest as Political Resources” indicts. Rather, that if I express opinions, my opinions are not taken to be emblematic of a group as such, a privilege not afforded to blacker individuals; when I do express my opinions, it is likely they will get a far more attentive audience than the same opinions expressed by those less privileged; and expressing my opinions is not likely to actually end up harming me. Consider Dave Chappelle's comment in his stand-up Showtime special, “For What It's Worth”: “I almost protested the war [in Iraq] to begin with, almost. Until I saw what happened to those Dixie chicks. I said, 'Fuck that'. If they'll do that to three white women, they'll tear my black ass to pieces.” Of course, Lipsky's comments are quite relevant, particularly about the skewing upwards of protest organizers.

And do I have to be involved in activism? Is it a matter of survival for me? Not especially. Actually, the things that I propose, like tax equalization across school districts, progressive taxation, full employment, etc. are likely to harm me. If I quit, or “sell out”, does anyone besides a small and insular group care? Indeed, doing so might give me more opportunities, as I join the ranks of David Horowitz and other former lefties who “saw the light” and get book deals and conservative think tank funding. Further, what makes me, and all those other rich and/or white leftists out there, think that success is possible or necessary? Why should I have to convince someone that doing the right thing might have good consequences? Shouldn't they do it anyways? Leftists despaired when the Iraq war was declared despite incredible resistance. This was ignoring that any protest before a war began was historically unprecedented, let alone principled international opposition. But hadn't the Iraqis fought for their rights for decades, and blacks against segregation and slavery for centuries? What made us think that a few years camping on college lawns and shaking some signs would stop a war machine of that magnitude with that degree of social backing? In short: The famous propensity of the Left to conceptually snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is also implicated in classist and racist biases, that the notion that we can fix anything we see is an illusion that only those who have had relatively easy lives can maintain.

I even have the option to use a different language to speak about race (or class or gender or empire or...). As Blauner indicates in “Talking Past Each Other”, whites often speak about race and racism as a problem that occurs when overtly racist people behave in a particular way, that “Whites saw racism largely as a thing of the past. They defined it in terms of segregation and lynching, explicit white supremacist beliefs, or double standards in hiring, promotion, and admissions to college or other institutions”, as contrasted with the black language of racism as a combination of history, governmental and economic policies, and acculturation practices.. Now it is quite true that whites often hold illusions about even those things, but the point is that blacks could understand, indeed had to understand, the complex interplay of forces that create “institutional racism”, whereas a white man or woman could afford to live in ignorance, as it might never affect them.

Had even a bit about my class, or race, or gender been different, my life would have been radically different, and likely for the worse. Had I been in a black neighborhood, chances would be much higher that I would be going to a poor or underfunded school even if my parents were well-off, like one of those schools Kozol describes in “Savage Inequalities”; and even if I went to a rich school, I would likely be tracked into remedial or non-honors classes. My radical activism would be simultaneously necessary to survive and often punished. Were I a woman, many of my successes would be viewed as “bitchy”, and my already often competitive attitude would be magnified; moreover, I would face lower wages and my educational possibilities would be artificially circumscribed by sexist pressures leading to certain majors and certain occupations. Were my parents less rich, they could not have afforded to pay for the high school debate that almost assuredly secured my place at this university, the camps and the flights and the long trips to Los Angeles.

My whole life has been corrupted, tainted and made impure by the presence of inequity and domination, just as surely as the victims of that inequity and domination. My position at this university, and this university, are no less implicated. This is not a reason to feel guilt. If anything, it is a reason to feel rage. But the most important thing: to act.

1. Michael Bradley, “Stoned Rush Limbaugh Makes Hypocritical History By Demanding Harsh Penalties For Other Drug Users”. http://www.bradleyreport.net/commentary/StonedRush.htm

Bureucratic Tunnel Vision

2006-02-14T02:44:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, one of the underlying themes of my leftism is to point out that the supposed dichotomy between efficacy and liberty that is implied by the classic debate about anarchism/socialism and libertarianism is an utterly false dichotomy, that in fact those institutions of domination (capitalism, bureaucracy, the nation-state) are inefficient at accomplishing human ends, among their many other debits. If that is the case, the statement "Anarchy [or parecon or so on] doesn't work" becomes even more problematic: aftter all, such a statement implies a comparative, i.e. not just "It fails" but (if the argument is to be relevant) "It fails worse than what we have".

In line with this, I extend an ironic line of reasoning: the critique of bureaucracy commonly argued by conservatives. And one of the many problems is what I call "tunnel vision", or more precisely an effectiveness-efficiency mismatch: The adoption of normalized standards and practices that end up being counterproductive to the broader goal of the institution. A perfect satirical example is the episode of South Park where the detectives do not arrest a man with severed human hands on his wall because the serial murderer they are looking for does not cut off that side of hand.

Today I experienced another such example, from my midterm:

"Answer the following questions in a clearly written essay of 5-6 pages in length (typed, single sided, double spaced, with normal font and margins). Your essay is due on February 14. Please e-mail the essay directly..."

Notice a problem? I'll let you all read a second.

For those you haven't figured it out:

If I'm e-mailing it to you, what does it matter if it is set to be single-sided or double-sided?

This is a prestigious university with a well-respected lecturer making this mistake.

It's funny. And on another level, completely disturbing.

"Chocolate City?" (Courtesy of Tim Wise and Z Sustainers)

2006-01-29T15:54:00.000-08:00

If you're looking to understand why discussions between blacks and whites about racism are often
so difficult in this country, you need only know this: when the subject is race and racism,
whites and blacks are often not talking about the same thing. To white folks, racism is seen
mostly as individual and interpersonal--as with the uttering of a prejudicial remark or bigoted
slur. For blacks, it is that too, but typically more: namely, it is the pattern and practice of
policies and social institutions, which have the effect of perpetuating deeply embedded
structural inequalities between people on the basis of race. To blacks, and most folks of color,
racism is systemic. To whites, it is purely personal.

These differences in perception make sense, of course. After all, whites have not been the
targets of systemic racism in this country, so it is much easier for us to view the matter in
personal terms. If we have ever been targeted for our race, it has been only on that individual,
albeit regrettable, level.

But for people of color, racism has long been experienced as an institutional phenomenon. It is
the experience of systematized discrimination in housing, employment, schools or the justice
system. It is the knowledge that one's entire group is under suspicion, at risk of being treated
negatively because of stereotypes held by persons with the power to act on the basis of those
beliefs (and the incentive to do so, as a way to retain their own disproportionate share of that
power and authority).

The differences in white and black perceptions of the issue were on full display recently, when
whites accused New Orleans' Mayor Ray Nagin of racism for saying that New Orleans should be and
would be a "chocolate city" again, after blacks dislocated by Katrina had a chance to return. To
one commentator after the other -- most of them white, but a few blacks as well -- the remark
was by definition racist, since it seemed to imply that whites weren't wanted, or at least not
if it meant changing the demographics of the city from mostly African American (which it was
before the storm) to mostly white, which it is now, pending the return of black folks.
To prove how racist the comment was, critics offered an analogy. What would we call it, they
asked, if a white politician announced that their town would or should be a "vanilla" city,
meaning that it was going to retain its white majority? Since we would most certainly call such
a remark racist in the case of the white pol, consistency requires that we call Nagin's remark
racist as well.

Seems logical enough, only it's not. And the reason it's not goes to the very heart of what
racism is and what it isn't--and the way in which the different perceptions between whites and
blacks on the matter continue to thwart rational conversations on the subject.

Before dealing with the white politician/vanilla city analogy, let's quickly examine a few
simple reasons why Nagin's remarks fail the test of racism. First, there is nothing to suggest
that his comment about New Orleans retaining its black majority portended a dislike of whites,
let alone plans to keep them out. In fact, if we simply examine Nagin's own personal history --
which has been obscured by many on the right since Katrina who have tried to charge him with
being a liberal black Democrat -- we would immediately recognize the absurdity of the charge.
Nagin owes his political career not to New Orleans' blacks, but New Orleans' white folks. It was
whites who voted for him, at a rate of nearly ninety percent, while blacks only supported him at
a rate of forty-two percent, preferring instead the city's chief of police (which itself says
something: black folks in a city with a history of police brutality preferring the cop to this
guy).

Nagin has always been, in the eyes of most black New Orleanians, pretty vanilla: he was a
corporate vice-President, a supporter of President Bush, and a lifelong Republican prior to
changing parties right before the Mayoral race.

Secondly, given the ways in which displaced blacks especially have been struggling to return --
getting the run-around with insurance payments, or dealing with landlords seeking to evict them
(or jacking up rents to a point where they can't afford to return) -- one can safely intuit that
all Nagin was doing was trying to reassure folks that they were wanted back and wouldn't be
prevented from re-entering the city.

And finally, Nagin's remarks were less about demography per se, than an attempt to speak to the
cultural heritage of the town, and the desire to retain the African and Afro-Caribbean flavor of
one of the world's most celebrated cities. Fact is, culturally speaking, New Orleans is what New
Orleans is, because of the chocolate to which Nagin referred. True enough, many others have
contributed to the unique gumbo that is New Orleans, but can anyone seriously doubt that the
predominant flavor in that gumbo has been that inspired by the city's black community? If so,
then you've never lived there or spent much time in the city (and no, pissing on the street
during Mardi Gras or drinking a badly-made Hurricane at Pat O'Brian's doesn't count).
If the city loses its black cultural core (which is not out of the question if the black
majority doesn't or is unable to return), then indeed New Orleans itself will cease to exist, as
we know it. That is surely what Nagin was saying, and it is simply impossible to think that
mentioning the black cultural core of the city and demanding that it will and should be retained
is racist: doing so fits no definition of racism anywhere, in any dictionary, on the planet.

As for the analogy with a white leader demanding the retention of a vanilla majority in his
town, the two scenarios are not even remotely similar, precisely because of how racism has
operated, historically, and today, to determine who lives where and who doesn't. For a white
politician to demand that his or her city was going to remain, in effect, white, would be quite
different, and far worse than what Nagin said. After all, when cities, suburbs or towns are
overwhelmingly white, there are reasons (both historic and contemporary) having to do with
discrimination and unequal access for people of color. Restrictive covenants, redlining by
banks, racially-restrictive homesteading rights, and even policies prohibiting people of color
from living in an area altogether -- four things that whites have never experienced anywhere in
this nation (as whites) -- were commonly deployed against black and brown folks throughout our
history. James Loewen's newest book, Sundown Towns, tells the story of hundreds of these efforts
in communities across the nation, and makes clear that vanilla suburbs and towns have become so
deliberately.

On the other hand, chocolate cities have not developed because whites have been barred or even
discouraged from entry (indeed, cities often bend over backwards to encourage whites to move to
the cities in the name of economic revival), but rather, because whites long ago fled in order
to get away from black people. In fact, this white flight was directly subsidized by the
government, which spent billions of dollars on highway construction (which helped whites get
from work in the cities to homes in the 'burbs) and low-cost loans, essentially available only
to whites in those newly developing residential spaces. The blackness of the cities increased as
a direct result of the institutionally racist policies of the government, in concert with
private sector discrimination, which kept folks of color locked in crowded urban spaces, even as
whites could come and go as they pleased.
So for a politician to suggest that a previously brown city should remain majority "chocolate"
is merely to demand that those who had always been willing to stay and make the town their home,
should be able to remain there and not be run off in the name of gentrification, commercial
development or urban renewal. It is to demand the eradication of barriers for those blacks who
otherwise might have a hard time returning, not to call for the erection of barriers to
whites--barriers that have never existed in the first place, and which there would be no power
to impose in any event (quite unlike the barriers that have been set up to block access for the
black and brown).

In short, to call for a vanilla majority is to call for the perpetuation of obstacles to persons
of color, while to call for a chocolate majority in a place such as New Orleans is to call
merely for the continuation of access and the opportunity for black folks to live there. Is that
too much to ask?

Funny how Nagin's comments simply calling for the retention of a chocolate New Orleans bring
down calls of racism upon his head, while the very real and active planning of the city's white
elite -- people like Joe Cannizaro and Jimmy Reiss -- to actually change it to a majority white
town, elicits no attention or condemnation whatsoever from white folks. In other words, talking
about blacks being able to come back and make up the majority is racist, while actually engaging
in ethnic cleansing -- by demolishing black neighborhoods like the lower ninth ward, the Treme,
or New Orleans East as many want to do -- is seen as legitimate economic development policy.

It's also interesting that whites chose the "chocolate city" part of Nagin's speech, delivered
on MLK day, as the portion deserving condemnation as racist, rather than the next part--the part
in which Nagin said that Katrina was God's wrath, brought on by the sinful ways of black folks,
what with their crime rates, out-of-wedlock childbirths and general wickedness.
In other words, if Nagin casts aspersions upon blacks as a group -- truth be told, the textbook
definition of racism -- whites have no problem with that. Hell, most whites agree with those
kinds of anti-black views, according to polling and survey data. But if Nagin suggests that
those same blacks -- including, presumably the "wicked" ones -- be allowed to come back and live
in New Orleans, thereby maintaining a black majority, that becomes the problem for whites, for
reasons that are as self-evident as they are (and will remain) undiscussed.

Until white folks get as upset about racism actually limiting the life choices and chances of
people of color, as we do about black folks hurting our feelings, it's unlikely things will get
much better. In the end, it's hard to take seriously those who fume against this so-called
reverse racism, so petty is the complaint, and so thin the ivory skin of those who issue it.
Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull,
2005) and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge, 2005). He can be
reached at timjwise@msn.com

Taylorism and Ehrenreich

2006-01-25T23:43:00.000-08:00

Note: Taylorism stems from a “scientific management” expert, Frederick Taylor, who most eloquently formulated the modern system of automation and management most exemplified in the fast food restaurant: deskilled workers, simplified tasks, etc. This is an essay discussing Taylor, Adam Smith and Barbara Ehrenreich.

It should be noted, firstly, that there is a myth that Taylorism is about efficiency. This claim seems to be squarely at odds with the fact that Taylorist mechanisms and mechanization are undertaken even when this actually reduces profits, and the note that increasing worker's participation even nominally actually raises productivity. The contradiction is resolved when we remember “efficiency” means efficiency at preserving the interests of the managers, or the masters: Not only profit, but the conditions that stratify power and social mobility to allow them to retain that profit. As Paul Street put it in his article “The Corporation and Frankenstein”, the corporation is the market's Frankenstein's monster: a creature made by it to master itself but that ends up undermining its very logic. Nonetheless, the general rift between Smith, who as a pre-capitalist respected the artisan and the free man, and Taylor, who as a capitalist wished to sacrifice everything for the power and profits of the rich, remains. It is quite clear that the modern era is a Taylorist and not a Smithian one. As Ehrenreich makes clear on p. 210, “...if low-wage workers do not behave in an economically rational way [noting that employers believe they do not], that is, as free agents within a capitalist democracy, it is because they dwell in a place that is neither free nor in way democratic.” This disdain for workers' ability to be productive and for freedom held by the employers is noted quite clearly by the phenomenon Ehrenreich notes in the Evaluation, one that even conservative economists have commented upon: the stagnation or actual decline in real terms of wages concurrent with quite expanisve increases in productivity: clearly the upper class views the working class as replaceable. One could note, given the Evaluation (particularly pp. 216-217), that for the rich and powerful employers to have any opinion about the poor, they must actually know them, and given the sharp stratification of modern society, that isn't likely. This allows employers to view their workers as stupid and incompetent, rather than blaming institutional mechanisms that propel poor results.

The human consequences of the Taylorist view are quite obvious. If those who control the means of labor construct labor in such a manner as to reduce the skills and intelligence utilized when working, the labor process will become increasingly stupefying to the mass of workers. Even if other inequities of power and wealth are resolved, this is the seed for new inequity, as those with more empowering and intellectually maximizing jobs will inherently gain decision-making advantages, connections and privileges. Note that this has nothing to do with the intents of the bosses: Though Ehrenreich describes many insensitive and even cruel bosses, even kind ones will be forced to do what they must by the exigencies of the market or be forced out. Further, such continued deskilling of workers will raise inequity by lowering wages, which (as Dani Rodrik has noted) lowers growth, and reduce worker participation and usage of intellectual ability, which means those in the best position to evaluate the success of certain policies on the ground will be precisely the people least skilled to do so. However, the Smith view is not adequate. Even a market system that enshrines artisans and skills will never allow the full political and economic participation in decision-making of all parties: even capitalists admit that “externalities” are rife in market systems, forcing costs onto those not party to the direct consumer-producer transaction.

Layers of Identity and Polyculturalism

2006-01-25T23:40:00.000-08:00

People identify themselves through many filters: Family, friends, culture, ethnicity, nationality, race, gender, species, etc. Normally, these are not in conflict, nor are they actively in operation at any one time. Yet conflicts between these identities occur frequently. Does one go to war even though doing so harms one's family? Or might one take the longer view and believe that defending one's nation is actually how one benefits one's family over time? To argue that assumes things about what “the nation” is, a belief that one's nation will in fact defend its composite members, a belief that some (Jews in the 1930s, for example) were mistaken in holding.

Belief in nationality is typically, though not always, associated with a belief in some kind of consistent border or homeland. Even the Jews, who have been in diaspora for millenia, view themselves as belonging to a homeland that they believe they can sketch out the borders of. The Kurds demand Kurdistan, the Quebecois an independent nation-state, and so on. Unfortunately, the European combination of the ethno-cultural nation with the political state has created situations where those who were not represented in the initial divisions of power feel underrepresented. Further, to gain resources, other groups typically must suffer a proportional loss of resources or territory. These two phenomena create the foundations of much civil and international war.

It is quite unlikely that such long-standing divisions will cease immediately, even after revolutionary alterations in the economy or polity that admittedly solidifies such divisions. It seems to be human nature to form tribes of some kind. Tribes are combined with borders to create in-out dichotomies, and of a wholly artificial nature. A Californian is, according to the demands of national culture, supposed to be more concerned with the fate of Rhode Islanders who he has no economic or cultural ties with than of Mexicans who he is quite close to and integrated with, and conversely so with the Rhode Islander and Canada. While borders of management do make some sense, nations regularly choose wholly artificial places to put such borders, and even when a logical location such as a river or mountain is chosen, ecological consciousness is regularly forgotten. Pollution does not stop at borders: whether in the air or in the oceans, it ignores human constraints and moves across geographies only. The same can be said for ecosystems that emerge, unified in nature's eyes but divided in men's.

Anarchists such as myself have quite extensive literatures on how to deal with nationalism, statism and other pressures. Roughly speaking, regarding ethno-national identity, anarchists have two solutions.

The first is a political and economic one: federation. Whatever ruling bodies (ruled by the people in direct proportion to the degree to which decisions affect them) emerge should be primarily local at the first level, to allow direct participation; then, if delegation is required, councils formed from layers of delegates to deal with issues of larger and larger scale. If group divisions do remain, such solutions allow them to rule over localities and regions that they view as theirs while still retaining a proportional stake in decisions that still affect them but also affect other groups.

Regarding guaranteed representation: While requiring a degree of guaranteed representation along ethnic lines is an appropriate solution for initial trust-building, the unfortunate consequence is that these ethnic divisions become encoded artificially into ruling structures, acquiring new and distinct meanings even if groups are in the process of fluid shifting. It also artificially undermines the direct rule of people as people.
The second is what Justin Podur calls “polyculuralism”, which is a cultural-behavioral change. The notion here is to recognize precisely this hierarchy of identity that all human beings have and to thus strike a middle ground between assimilation and multiculturalism. Assimilation has the benefit of eliminating certain groups from calculation and thus preventing them from causing trouble. This is fair enough, except, as Podur notes in “Revolutionizing Culture”, “Assimilation gets rid of the problem of a powerful community oppressing a less powerful community by absorbing the less powerful into the more powerful.” Even when it does not do this, keeping equal parts of each culture (and historical examples are few and far between), it eliminates a human component, something that makes people uniquely “them”, and thus would be avoidable. But the alternative, multiculturalism, is typically quite lazy. To assimilation's “melting pot”, it proposes a “salad bowl”, with each component living in harmony but nonetheless separated. This begs the question of a human rights advocate: what of the nasty undersides of each culture, the internal repression? Here we are seeing a identity conflict. Let us take a patriarchal culture. A woman's place in it is a conflict with their ethnic status: one seeks to overwhelm the other. Multiculturalism has the initial appeal that it categorically avoids the issue of cultural imperialism and unwarranted interference or protection of other cultures, but it has the downside of preventing warranted interference. As Podur puts it, ”What is lacking in it is a notion of what happens within these ‘cultures’ and between them. If we have a multicultural society where every ‘culture’ gets to ‘govern itself’, does this mean that ‘culture’ can be used to justify sexism, or homophobia, or capitalism? What rules govern the hundreds of interactions across cultures that will happen every day? How will conflicts between people of different cultures be solved? Multiculturalism doesn’t provide the right tools to understand these problems or to deal with them.” Polyculturalism instead proposes recognizing at least two levels of identity: an area where each culture can safely exist and co-exist as a culture, intermingling and trading insofar as they please; then a shared area, the polity and economy, where cultural conflicts that arise are put aside. In this shared area, every individual has guaranteed rights, and if a certain culture seeks to deprive it, the individual wins.

To introduce such mechanisms would require radical alteration of existing economic and political structures, indeed revolutionary alteration, as it is the imposition of borders, resource conflicts, flags, and power that statism creates, as well as the rush to the bottom that capitalism creates, that helps foist and foment ethnic conflict. But, to quote a culinary advocate of multiculturalism, Alton Brown, “that's another show”.

Brief Post To Get Back Into It!

2006-01-10T19:23:00.000-08:00

Oh, ye frequent readers: I apologize for the lack of posting over the last two months. A new apartment, a difficult quarter and other barriers reduced my posting. Let me simply note a few comments that came to mind from my various classes.

The first came when I was in my Multi-Cultural Societies class. Of course when discussing matters of race, racism, culture, ethnicity, etc., especially with undoubtedly one or two conservatives in the class, the possibility for a highly unproductive dialogue to emerge is quite profound. Yet the way most university classes, including this one, have resolved such difficulties is to resort to a, if I may, namby-pamby approach. You know the one: "Everyone has an opinion. You should all listen to each other and respect people from different backgrounds." Yada yada yada.

Now, far be it from me to undermine the importance of dialogue, particularly polite dialogue, or to rebut that people should be kind and non-judgmental to each other. Nonetheless, I am afraid that this tack does not engender critical dialogue. For one thing, it seems to put a Stop sign on actual substantive debate.

You see, in our society, we have created a dichotomy (false though it may be) between "argument" and "dialogue". In part this is a linguistic confusion: The word "argument", except for some logic folks and debaters, typically connotes a caustic 'discussion' filled with interruption, bile, anger and very little substance, listening or alteration of position. Clearly this must be avoided! But I think that there is also a deeper problem here that the linguistic problem covers up. Our society teaches people to accept particular dogmas (ironically, one of the dogmas is "Don't accept dogmas".) Instead of devoting the requisite time and intellectual energy to really gripping an issue, understanding things, resolving disputes (semantic or otherwise), and coming upon some kind of agreement or understanding, we prefer to sit in our hermetic containers and occasionally stick our head up, fearfully looking for crossfire. Unfortunately, America's political climate, filled with bile and rage and very little logic and thought, further propels this difficulty.

And so every University professor, come the start of a new quarter, will march out a string of platitudes and bromides about "discussion" and "respect" and "courtesy". But one should listen to someone not only for what might be quite right, but also what is quite wrong. And one should be listening carefully, without preconception or anger, not only because not doing so is not conducive to anything, but also because doing so is the prequisite to effective rebuttal.

Tim Wise once pointed out that, particularly in the context of classes like I'm attending, this statement that everyone will be safe and protected is in fact not directed at minorities in the classroom but really the majority, saying, "Don't worry, you won't have to step outside of your comfort zone here." Never mind that blacks, women, politically left and poor people have to step outside of their comfort zone practically every day if they wish to offer their political opinion. This point was eloquently and angrily made by someone in one of my discussion groups, who pointed out that there is a fundamental inequity (though this is not a justification for violating freedom of speech) in the situation where the neo-Nazi and the Black Panther discuss. Even in a liberal university, the neo-Nazi can go back home, secure and quiet in his racism and confident that he was the dissident voice of reason, while the supposedly "emotional" Black Panther will be bothered by a tack that says he should not exist, a script s/he has heard every day and often decidedly in decidedly unsafe environments. Even in the rare cases where the Black Panther is saying something akin to "Kill whitey", the white person will rarely feel actually scared, or be in any real danger, because of the innate power relation (magnified in dispro white college campuses).

Yes, if the choice is between an acrid and vicious debate and silence or people sheepishly offering their "opinions", the mature part of me will pick the latter, but that shouldn't be the choice. Administrators have a responsibility to allow the third, actually good alternative: Where people passionately defend positions, with appropriate logic and points being actually addressed and rebutted.

The second note is more for my own comfort. If you find it excessively fatuous, go ahead and skip to something else.

In a discussion about Aristotle and ethics/political philosophy, I proffered my solution to the classic dilemma of order versus freedom: Free people will obviously disagree on many things; ergo, in cases where a decision must be made, various sytems of redress, appeal, individual rights guaranteed by some kind of constitutional order, etc. must be available to allow compromise. In the normal give-and-take of any social unit, no matter how vital and really free, compromises will need to be made. Just think of any family. Few would dispense of it, yet within it people constantly fight and have disagreements. This isn't a problem regarding freedom if there's enough respect for each individual and no one tramples on each other legitimate rights. To which my Professor responded, in essence, "That is basically Aristotle". Aristotle, who believed Plato's pap about "philosopher kings" who, by dint of superior education, would be in a superior way moral and kind; who viewed the vast mass of people as inferior vulgates who need to be indoctrinated by force and order (what he called taxis and noos); and so on.

Though a broader treatment of my anarchist philosophy is still in the works, let me summarize my ethical opinion. In my view, ethics and freedom are not mortal enemies, as we often imagine, but in fact blood brothers. To be free is to have the possibility to act in an ethical, or rather unethical, manner. The only way someone can prove themselves as an ethical entity and acquire the maturity for freedom is precisely to have that freedom in the first place. I view any restriction upon private freedom as a limitation of someone's ability to be free. Unfortunately, a few restrictions to prevent rights conflicts and allow the fullest and freest expression of liberty are essential, but aside from these cases (i.e. legislation against murder and theft), societies should not restrict private behavior, even unethical behavior.

So what makes me different from Aristotle?

1) I believe the common woman has all the requisite intelligence to run their own affairs.
2) Even if they didn't, there is no justification for repealing the solemn rights of free people.
3) Unlike Aristotle, who implies that family and the state of nature is fundamentally a barbaric and brutish one, I view family as not only an economic entity that provides food/shelter/child-rearing, etc., but also a real, organic emotional support network. Everyone can call their mother or father if they feel bad and are likely to get a quite positive and supportive response. This denigration of familial nurturing is, of course, representative of Aristotle's position as a sexist male in a deeply stratified society. Further, I think that tribal and "primitive" forms have much to recommend them, though I don't view them as the best alternatives.
4) My notion of the compromise between the individual and the community includes:
a) Direct democratic participation
b) Guaranteed individual rights
c) The ability to secede
d) Substantial redress, appeal, etc. processes
e) Federation and multiple levels of loyalty

Something Is Rotten In Denmark. Like Eggs. Rotten Eggs.

2005-11-21T12:14:00.000-08:00

There is a certain rapture to the lucidity of madness. Madness is often a type of liberation from social norms of behavior, a freedom of responsibility, an opening of the floodgates of thought and feeling. When Hamlet feigns madness, he is able to tap into this lucidity and put it to good use. He is able to get away with eliminating Polonius, mocking his father, insulting his mother, and generally being an obnoxious twit. He feels morally sanctioned to do this because he is on a mission: he must regain his throne from the vile, incestuous usurper and reclaim his family’s honor. However, that heady mix of social freedom and self-righteousness soon places Hamlet in a position in which he feels that he is God’s hand on Earth, prepared to be judge, jury and executioner. He soon becomes intoxicated and becomes much like an equivocator, and thus descends down the slippery slope into madness. By the end of the play, Hamlet is mad in a determinedly more sociopathic way; after all, “My thought be bloody or be nothing worth!”
Initially, we see that Hamlet is acting the part of the madman, nothing more. “As I perchance shall hereafter shall think meet/To put an antic disposition on” (Act I, scene v, lines 191-192) indicates that Hamlet is intentionally putting on the show. Even Polonius sees that Hamlet’s comments are suspiciously accurate (“Though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t.” Act II, scene ii, lines 223-224). Playing the madman will allow Hamlet to investigate without hesitation, to terrorize his mother and father, and to cede responsibility if caught. He can also act without Ophelia obstructing his way. But already we see a darker, crueler Hamlet emerge, and already Hamlet is making sacrifices in the way he treats other people for his cause of justice.
The turning point is when Hamlet decides to wait to slay Claudius. Initially, Hamlet is thinking in fairly just terms. Hamlet was planning on showing Claudius the mercy Claudius did not show Old Hamlet: a quick death right after Claudius is absolved of his sins. (Ironically, though Claudius does ask for forgiveness, he recognizes that he is likely damned, as asking for forgiveness for theft while keeping the stolen items is an empty gesture at best). But, Hamlet decides instead to be cruel and zealous in his distribution of punishment. “When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage…” (Act III, Scene iii, line 94) will Hamlet kill Claudius, and ensure Claudius suffers in hell or in purgatory, much like Old Hamlet is.

From this point on, Hamlet’s thoughts are bloody and bloody alone. Even the next scene speaks volumes of Hamlet’s newfound cruelty. Hamlet hears Polonius yelling, and thus says “How now, a rat?” (Act III, Scene iv, line 29). Hamlet knows perfectly well who the voice must be, but he ignores it and stabs Polonius without a second thought. When his mother protests, his only response is “Hah! Look at you! You married your brother!” Hamlet does not even make a pretense of remorse for Polonius’ unfortunate demise. He describes with a twinkle in his eye how one could find Polonius in heaven, or hell, or in the stairs going into the lobby. Polonius’ death causes Ophelia to fall into madness and in turn die, nearly ending that family unit. We do see one sign of hope, however. Hamlet does ask for forgiveness from Laertes for what happened, and makes a reference to his madness. At this point, the game is almost up: Hamlet knows that he must eliminate his uncle soon or he himself would die. Why would Hamlet make an admission of madness at that point in time? Perhaps because what was left of Hamlet’s decency and mercy was allowed one last chance to speak.

The combination of vengeance and freedom causes Hamlet to fall precipitously, much like Lucifer fell because of the same pride. Hamlet forgot the cardinal rule of Jesus’ teachings: mercy. And that is what took a decent young Catholic man from a steadfast and reputable character to a person responsible for many deaths.

Emelia Under A Fragmented Gaze

2005-11-21T12:10:00.000-08:00

Abstract:It is my contention that feminist scholarship has in general looked at characters in plays holistically, averaging the sum of their complex parts and determining if they are gender heroes, cowards or villains. I find this practice arbitrary, and I will instead analyze Emelia's character and actions in terms of possibly competing aspects of her personality, dictated by her emotional state and position vis-a-vis a broader social context. Emelia is conscious of the power of social influence and of common gender dynamics. She is the gender parallel to Shylock, simultaneously offering a profound reason to reject the status quo while reifying it. Emelia and Desdemona are mirror images: Emelia being conscious of oppression but acquiescing to it, Desdemona being unconscious but willing to confront it. Shakespeare's work, despite his own parochialisms, is largely consistent internally and can withstand a progressive interpretation. To find the revolutionary woman, one must find the permutation of Ophelia and Emelia, instead of critiquing one against the other and unconsciously confirming the view of society that such individuals are pathological and at some level deserve what they got.

Some historians attuned to gender conflict have theorized that matriarchal societies passed into patriarchal societies when men realized that sex produced children. At that point, it became valuable to control sex through marriage and incredibly restrictive laws and practices that kept women essentially in solitary confinement. In this sense, relationship and kinship dynamics form the bedrock upon which more complex forms of oppression are built. Othello is a complex entity in this regard. While it was written by a man certainly trapped in his zeitgeist, it is a good enough story that it has a life of its own, and only peripheral looks at Shakespeare will be necessary. The problem is that all of the main women characters (Desdemona, Bianca and Emelia), while being empowered and talented women, tolerate abusive relationships. It is my contention that feminist scholarship has in general looked at characters in plays holistically, averaging the sum of their complex parts and determining if they are gender heroes, cowards or villains. I find this practice arbitrary, and I will instead analyze Emelia's character and actions in terms of possibly competing aspects of her personality, dictated by her emotional state and position vis-a-vis a broader social context.

Emelia is conscious of the power of social influence and of common gender dynamics. When Desdemona asks, “Wouldst thou do such a deed [abuse one's husband] for all the world?”, Emelia responds, “In troth, I think I should... not for any petty exhibition; but, for all the whole world – 'Ud's pity! who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch?” (Act IV, Scene III, lines 66-73). This response is complex. It indicates that she values power over dignity, a deep character flaw. But it also indicates that she associates her success with that of her husband's; that is, that she would be willing to abuse her husband to give him power. A question immediately arises: Is she censoring herself to avoid shocking Desdemona, or does she truly want power only for her husband?

The matter is complicated by the lines coming immediately after these. Emelia blames husbands for the pathologies of their wives; “But I think it is their husbands' faults/If wives do fall. Say that they slack their duties/And pour our treasures into foreign laps” (same act and scene as above, lines 82-84). She blames husbands for infidelity; after all, if men did their jobs in satisfying women, would women seek out other men? She then goes on to issue a familiar-sounding proclamation (same act and scene as above, lines 89-99):

Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them. They see, and smell,
And have their palates both for sweet and sour, as husbands have.
What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is. And doth affection breed it?
I think it doth. Is't frailty that thus errs?
It is too. And have we not affections,
Desires for sports, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well, else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instrust us so.

This paragraph is the gender parallel to Shylock's speech on race and religion in The Merchant of Venice. In both cases, a character considered within the context of the play to be a villain is momentarily raised in status and given a brief humanity. In both cases, while courageously speaking out against the stereotypes and the norms and societal roles that hold them down, they immediately return to proactively filling those roles to the tee: Shylock by being a greedy Jew, Emelia by being a passive wife always seeking to satisfy her husband. Emelia, however, gives up the game in her speech: She points out that, while both men and women commit depravities, women are placed onto a pedestal by society. It is key to note that, like the “model minority” myth for Asians, that the “holy mother” image of women, while appearing to be reverent, is in fact a fairly crass carrot-and-stick manuever. It constructs a behavior model that, however admirable the model may be, implies a group behavior. When members of that group do not fulfill the expectations, they can be branded as aberrants and be severed off from their fellow group members; in this case, if a woman cheats on a man, she is being sincerely devilish since no good woman does that. (The model in question, of course, also assumes docility and puppy-dog-like loyalty to be virtues and independence to be something to be sharply curtailed, but that is of secondary importance; any model will do fine). Emelia points out that women have to stick to this model or else risk showing men something men don't want to see: That the majority of immoral actions committed by women are caused by the system being rigged in favor of men in the first place.

In this sense, Emelia and Desdemona are mirror images. Both have powerful husbands in important positions in the military. Both of their husbands are aware of, at some level, an injustice against them and a precariousness to their position (Iago is snickered at because his wife supposedly slept with Othello; Othello is a foreigner who must walk a very narrow line, and still faces racial slurs from the likes of Brabantio and Iago when he does walk the line). Both are talented, privileged women with obvious intelligence and wit. And both kowtow to their husbands' demands, retreating into a state of passivity precisely as their husbands become more abusive. The flaw in the mirror image is exactly the same as the flaw in the reflection between Iago and Othello. Desdemona comes from a position of innocence; she is not used to abusive relationships. Othello has a similar naivete; he blindly trusts Iago just as Desdemona blindly trusts Emelia and Othello. She seems unaware of the reality of the racial and gender dynamics in the society. Iago, being a manipulator, is inherently aware of the tools he works with, and Emelia is similarly conscious. She knows that the game is rigged against her gender; she is aware of Othello's status as an alien; and, most importantly, she knows that she is in an abusive relationship with a man who cares very little about her. Ironically, this conscious acquiesence to her society keeps Emelia alive longer than Desdemona, but both attitudes are unsustainable. What would be needed would be Desdemona's bright-eyed view combined with the information and pragmatism Emelia possesses.

It is key to note that Shakespeare had to appeal to a very heavily gender-biased audience. For evidence, look no further than The Taming of the Shrew, a comedy about wife-beating. Elizabethan England was severely polarized in almost every sphere of life: the state was a totalitarian monarchy, the economic system was feudal, a man could drink away his wife's life savings, and ethnic Others were horrendously mistreated, not to mention the corrosive effect of the Church on the body politic. Given this context, it is amazing that Shakespeare's work has the implications it does. Whether or not Shakespeare himself was liberal or conservative by the standard of his times is a chimerical question: his work takes on a life of its own, one with progressive implications, I believe. Nonetheless, asking the question would have one implication: If there is not a simultaneously self-empowered and conscious woman in the play (Desdemona being self-empowered, Emelia being conscious), is this because Shakespeare chose not to write such a character for whatever literary or social reason, or simply because he could not imagine such a woman, so antithetical to his social order?

The contrast between Emelia and Desdemona becomes clear in Act II, Scene I. Iago accuses Emelia of idiocy, back-talking and infidelity (Act II, Scene I, lines 100-102, 104-107, and 109-112). He then goes on to joke about every possible combination of women. He finally describes his ideal wife, a woman indistinguishable from the worst kind of slave. During this time, Emelia only says “You have little cause to say so” and similar weak retorts (same act and scene, lines 109 and 116). Desdemona, on the other hand, rebuts Iago's chauvinist diatribe at every turn. Desdemona even comments that Emelia “has no speech” and tells Emelia to ignore her worse halfs' ramblings (lines 103 and 159-161). Desdemona seems unaware that such behavior is a faux pas in her society; Emelia keeps her mouth shut. Only when she is away from Iago does she confide about her understanding of the world that she lives in.

In the end, Emelia is complicit in the chain of events that lead to the death of Desdemona, Othello, herself and Iago. Her desperate desire to please the man who, despite his wanton abuse, she still loves, does her in. But her pragmatic acquiescence to her gender position does keep her very briefly alive; only at the end of the play does she slip, and she is immediately snuffed. It is ironically often the strongest women who let themselves be abused by their lovers, and I view Emelia as a paragon of strength, if not a blazing courage. It is far too easy for radicals to attack the individuals who make less than admirable decisions in the context of oppressive social structures. The relevant question is not, “Why did Emelia not behave in a revolutionary manner, despite her obvious consciousness of her condition?”, but rather, “Why is society designed in such a way that such a woman is kept relatively powerless?” Institutions do not just assign roles: they alter perceptions and make rebellion difficult. It carries deep personal costs to resist the status quo. Within the context of the status quo, people will make all sorts of decisions. Radicals should focus on attacking the context that propels repugnant decisions rather than the individuals who made them. To do otherwise is to unconsciously reify the structure that views such behavior as pathology. To find a revolutionary, one must seek out both Desdemona's intolerance of injustice and Emelia's consciousness of the same injustice. This search will not be done in dusty archives, but in the consciousness of humankind.

Special Election Blues

2005-11-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

An opinion came up among scholars and commentators, as in a letter to the Union on Oct. 21, during the special election. It was bemoaned that millions were being spent and that the Legislature was being run-around.Of course, Arnold was using the special election to play “chicken” with the California Legislature and make the inequity of political access between the poor and rich even more radical.But there is something disturbing about this argument, found among liberal commentators, that shows how tepid their critique is. It is that, well, democracy just isn’t that worth it, certainly not worth millions of dollars (out of the billions in the state budget alone). We even hear that the initiative process needs to be “reformed” because people are too involved in their democracy, and that the fox (state Legislature) should be allowed to watch the henhouse (initiatives that would undermine their interests).This same difficulty shows in the Democratic Party’s inability to describe the elections in Iraq for what they are: a colonial front, itself won by popular resistance. Instead we hear about WMDs endlessly, a worthy topic to be sure, but not the one that the Iraqi people, our victims, care about.

Film: Trivial and Dangerous or Powerful and Reactionary?

2005-11-21T11:51:00.000-08:00

What better defines a romantic evening than a dinner and a movie? One absorbs food to food the body and entertainment to feed the mind and soul. Movies define and are defined by culture: they are vanguards for the dissonant voices that form a society. Sometimes they are propaganda of varying qualities, such as with Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ; other times they embody some spiritual criticism of modern culture, such as in American Beauty; and elsewhere, they are embodiments of militarist values, such as in every vapid action movie from Commando to American Ninja. Critiques of film follow roughly two paradigms. The first is, loosely speaking, a “conservative” paradigm. Film is viewed as a triviality, vapid entertainment that through its very frivolity encourages violence and sex to be desensitized and glamourized. This aspect of the media is considered to be dominated by liberal forces who question sanctified truths and thus launch a headfirst attack at the moral fabric of the nation. However, this critique fundamentally regards films as such simplistic entities that they can be regulated by state intervention or community activism, so basic and trivial that such basic intervention is unproblematic. While there are disagreements internal to this paradigm as to the strength of the media, the underlying assumption seems to be that the structure of film is a simplistic way of communicating narratives, and the only thing that should and can be changed is the content of those narratives. The “liberal” paradigm is markedly different in crucial respects. While the advocates of the paradigm also disagree sharply over the exact degree of impact the films pose, the general consensus is that film is capable of at least rivalling, if not surpassing, the complexity and depth of symbolism and meaning of the novel or philosophy textbook. Here, if glamorizing violence or sex or racist values is a concern, it is not because the media is so frivolous that it encourages these subjects to be portrayed frivolously, but because the art form of film has such untapped reserves of potential. To this paradigm, abstract or non-sensical narratives, documentaries, and cultural criticism are all within the capabilities of the art form. The concern here seems to be instead that the media, by wasting and squandering its potential, instead serves as a reactionary bulwark for society. Both paradigms ignore that film is like any other art form: it is capable of vapid triviality, inciting dangerous and unchecked change, and equally capable of squandering beautiful potential and acting as commissar and thought enforcer.

The conservative notion is expressed in the Hays code and in the outcry of the Legion of Decency. Its tactics are described in James Rorty's August 1, 1934 piece, “It Ain't No-Sin”: blacklists, whitelists, boycotts, arguments that the “government should do its duty”, and an attack on the industry as a cesspool of filth that distributed these trivial substances masquerading as art, almost like heroin packaged in the Mona Lisa. Rorty points out that private distributors kowtowing to the pressure of the Legion placed blame on the distributors' “block booking” and “blind booking” practices, where one was forced to buy all but 90% of the block of movies from a company, yet these exhibitors used these privileges to cancel 'Cradle Song' and other wholesome and artistic films yet didn't use the privileges to cancel 'I'm No Angel' or similar sexually charged films. The criticism of this opinion scarcely focuses on businesses as economic entities and instead characterizes and constructs them as cultural forces that are naturally regressive and seek to peddle filth for profit. The disgust comes from the filth, not the profit. Often, this criticism is bounded together with ethnic hatred, as in the case of the Warner Brothers producing Confessions of a Nazi Spy (see Steven Ross' article in the collection Warner's War), where the Warner Brothers were attacked by anti-Semites, thinly veiled and not-so-thinly veiled. The conservative criticism rarely offers a guideline for films' artistic content; they simply demand that certain social and political questions not be breached and that certain types of narratives and language (such as obscenity, sex and violence) be restricted by community and government intervention.

The liberal commentary is slightly more nuanced. Here, film is discussed as a complex institution, often a reactionary one. In Maltby's “It Happened One Night: The Recreation of the Patriarch”, it is argued that It Happened One Night is a traditional narrative of an independent woman infantilized by a powerful male figure, a narrative attempting to explain the neurosis of the Depression Era's crisis of capitalism as a crisis of patriarchy. The film business is understood as primarily that: a business with the profit and power considerations of market capitalism constraining the possibilities of film. The captains of the film industry are portrayed not as demoniac peddlers of perversion but rather as cowards kowtowing to popular demand simultaneously for filth and purity; as Rorty puts it, “... the industry was too cynical, too hypocritical, and too scared to fight.” What is decried is not the violence or sex per se, but the exclusion of any other content whatsoever; Rorty accuses film of “emptiness” and a “lack of genuine social and artistic content”. Understanding of film as a complete artiface and not a delivery system of perversion, however incomplete and distorted this understanding may be, is also part of this paradigm. Dale's :”What Are Motion Pictures For?” does not simply describe the negative (“They're not supposed to spread perversion”) but instead argues that if film is not progressive and socially conscious, it will not be apolitical and harmless but will in fact be reactionary and socially bereft. In his words, “The motion picture, then, should show you just what problems people are facing today and the different ways that these problems can be solved.” Film is not simply art or storytelling, but in fact carries the potential for activism. Peterson and Thurston also stress this conception in their “Motion Pictures and the Social Attitudes of Children”, cataloguing how multiple films stressing the same message can cause a cumulative impact greater than the sum of its parts and thus implying that film should be careful about the assumptions it makes. The alternative here is not censorship or regulation; rather, the liberal critique is an appeal to filmmakers to broaden their horizons. Such a critic may appreciate It Happened One Night as an excellent comedy and yet, as Maltby does, criticize it strongly for reifying the role of the patriarch and act as the knight in shining armor in more ways than one for an oppressive social institution. Admittedly, there is quite a bit of hypocrisy in this narrative. WaltL industry and an artist, yet the dissonance of the two roles is never called into question. “Exposing Mickey Mouse” does nothing of the sort; rather, it focusses on narrow technical questions. This is possibly because “Europe's Highbrows Hail[ed] Mickey Mouse” and because, according to the 1933 Literary Digest piece, “The picture [Three Little Pigs]... has many... virtues, which helped to make it the film darling of the intelligentsia”. Cartoons are not dismissed as frivolous distractions; rather, champions of modernity such as Soupault, Morienval and Jazarin stress not the author but the work, arguing that animation can breach the wall between reality and unreality and end the “tyranny” of traditional art.

Both conceptions conveniently ignore film's true nature. It is neither a predatory monster spewing an addictive drug to snare the young and impressionable nor an entirely untapped cultural heritage. Possibly the best secondary material in the reader discussing this ambiguity is “Black Face, White Noise”. Though the piece does criticize the racial injustice portrayed by black face, it simultaneously shows how The Jazz Singer helped to end an era of silence associated with patriarchal values and how the movie used black face to empower the Jewish singer, bridging the gap between the poor and the rich, the weak and powerful. All film is thus ambiguous. A good story may contain aspects that, viewed in isolation, beg serious questions. Yet the entire work is rarely dragged down by such aspects; rather, the context makes film more than the sum of its parts. Thus, one can watch Dirty Harry and comment on how it enshrines patriarchy and violence, yet it also criticizes bureaucratic ineptitude and creates an almost revolutionary figure. The perennial weakness of both liberal and conservative critiques is that they isolate particular subnarratives of film and make these the centerpiece, in a way that is never done with a novel. When reading Shakespeare, one can see the parochial influences yet still marvel at the handiwork, the skill at crafting the language, the wit and subtlety mixed in with crass and base humor, and the social commentary. If we wish to treat film like a novel, we need to understand it as such: each a story composed of multiple narratives, none of which can be isolated without doing injustice to the whole piece. Film is not simply a trivial drug, because it can deeply inspire and teach in succinct and memorable ways complex lessons, such as in Cabaret; yet it is also not simply a squandered artistic resource, as it does contain elements of pacification and excessive violence and filth. As Rorty says, “The movie magnates have treated the American people like cattle. They have exploited the prurience of our Puritan mass culture, made films to exploit and incidentally confirm that prurience, and added for a good measure a little of their own... Of honest sin or honest sainthood they have given us practically nothing. Fake sin, fake sex, fake social and moral values: how can a culture achieve a healthy maturity on that diet?” Overwhelmingly, film is too complex to wish away to simpler times with one-size-fits-all government regulation or snide liberal critique. It must instead be taken as it is and used
as a vehicle for discussion, as any other story. Otherwise, it will become the worst of its parts: reactionary, encoding militarist, racist, sexist and other values and thus serving as a cultural smokescreen and bodyguard for oppression; trivial, distracting and corrupting for its own insiduous ends through excessive sex, violence and obscenity, all sound and fury signifying nothing; complex, so much so that it becomes a morass of competing nothingness; and dangerous to the utmost.

Potential or Realization? Differing Analyses of Aesthetic Quality

2005-11-21T11:50:00.000-08:00

When giving platitudes to the creator of a piece, one can approach the comments from roughly two different angles. The first is to honor the piece in a vacuum: aesthetically, for its mastery of the tricks and turns of the trade, as a good story or construction, much like an architect could analyze a building's harsh beauty. The second is to honor the piece's external potential, either as a blueprint for further work within the art or as a vehicle for achieving some other goal, much like an architect could admire a building for the uses to which it will be put. These two distinct possibilities can be seen most profoundly with Walt Disney and The Jazz Singer in the one hand, and Sunrise and Scarface in the other.

Reviewing the analysis of The Jazz Singer and Walt Disney shows that the concern is not exclusively or primarily with the value of the works themselves, but instead commenting on the potentials that the technology and technique of each could be used to break the stultifying tyranny of dominant forms. As Crafton makes clear in “The Uncertainty of Sound”, The Jazz Singer was not acclaimed for rising out of a vacuum (pun intended) and blasting a horn of a new era of sound. The institution of sound was a gradual imposition from sound as a novelty to sound as an expectation that sometimes was not used because of aesthetic choices (watching Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times is disorienting, as Chaplin intended it to because, because sound is used in snippets of appropriate dialogue, but at other times sound disappears to strengthen the impression of the panopticon operating in the factory that suspended all comfortable and natural feeling). Rather, The Jazz Singer bridged the gap between silence and sound: it was a transitory film and not an epochal and novel film, but yet all the more epochal because of it. The Jazz Singer, according to Crafton, uses sound and the lack thereof to symbolize freedom and repression, love (sexual and otherwise) and the squashing of that love, etc. in dichotomous representations. It actually leverages the incomplete application of sound to accomplish its art.

Yet The Jazz Singer is imperfect and incomplete: it “excised... social struggles that united Jews... in trade unions, radical movements...” It even “contains no jazz” in the strict sense, exorcising the essence of the minstrel to opportunistically use its face as a mechanism for Jewish solidarity. The analysis that Crafton makes focusses on the one truly original part of the movie, a relatively minor one in terms of screen time: the racial and sexual implications of the dress-up as black, the “sexual drag”. The subsequent news articles focus on the novelty value of the sound genre, the novelty of Jolson as a singer and of Cantor Rabinowitz, and most importantly on the potential, but not the actuality of the media, expressed most strongly in “Moving Picture Audiences Differ from Musical Comedy” and “'Jazz Singer' Scores a Hit”, both pieces that underscore how Jazz Singer is viewed as a blueprint for a paradigm shift for the movies but not the paradigm shift itself. “Europe's Highbrows Hail Mickey Mouse” describes this same phenomenon with Disney. Jazarin argues that “The animated drawing has fought for its life. It is on the point of triumph... Doesn't it permit the expression of the wildest conceptions...? The animated drawing alone can unite evocative power of design with the impalpable motion of life, with speech and with music. Thus it becomes a complete art...” Morienval says, “The moving and sound drawing has as a matter of fact no limits...” There is little to no discussion of the literary or artistic merits of the Walt Disney pieces as such. Instead, the focus is on their potential, what animation can do in terms of broadening the scope and style of storytelling.

Meanwhile, Sunrise itself is considered to be “Opening A New Day in Movies”. German critics, according to Saunders, viewed Sunrise as a uniquely German-American film, composing something new from more than the sum of its parts, arousing “superlatives for overcoming deeply entrenched beliefs”. Both its critics and its supporters recognized that something new was at work. Sunrise was viewed as an independent masterpiece of raw technique, rather unlike Disney's relatively simplistic animation that ended up reifying the traditional tyranny of story forms and The Jazz Singer's lackluster direction. It had “fantastic cinematographic achievements... capturing ambience with light, lens and rhythm.” The criticisms of it were because of what was believed to be an un-German and even contra-German sentimentality and hope for a good and happy ending, yet it was conceded on all sides to be a hallmark film capable of capturing an aesthetic sensibility without doubt. Scarface was considered so dangerous in constructing a charismatic devil figure who the audience identifies with that it was changed to have artificially-inserted sermons on public responsbility to stop crime. Scarface constructs a reverse Macbeth figure: a character who, while being a monster of viciousness, falls because of his own truly human and positive characteristic, his love for his sister. With masterful lighting and characterization, it was recognized as a tiger that the movie industry had by the tail, something that could glamorize crime and the gangster life.

These two patterns of critical reception occur over and over: the film viewed as a flawed epochmaker, and the film viewed as so perfect that it almost breaks the epoch by destroying any possibility for a film to be anything but a pale imitation. Sunrise became the silent film's last gasp, while Jazz Singer became the sound film's first tentative breath. Who knows when the action film will finally see its perfect realization and finally die?

Flu: The Forgotten Killer

2005-11-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

Influenza, more commonly known as “the flu”, does not inspire feelings of dread in the way more media-friendly diseases such as Ebola or AIDS do. It is in general viewed as a minor annoyance. Yet influenza historically was considered very serious. Historians Alfred Crosby and A.A. Hoehling among others have written extensively on such events as the influenza epidemic between September 1918 and June 19191. That epidemic in particular claimed 675,000 lives and manifested symptoms similar to pneumonia, a death toll more drastic than all the American combat casualties of World War I and II, Korea and Vietnam combined. Striking in two waves and killing combatants and non-combatants alike, the epidemic was no trivial matter. However, modern technology and understanding of epidemiology has greatly reduced the threat of the flu. It may thus seem to be deserving of its triviality status, yet this report will argue that the flu remains a relevant issue for the 21st century.

The primary danger is the pathology of the flu itself. In a December 2nd lecture to a class in UC Davis, Cinda Christensen, a pharmacist at Davis, discussed the main dangers of the flu. It can transmit itself through watery particulates at ranges of up to 3 feet, making it a danger in the winter months when people are in close quarters with each other. It infects the respiratory tract and causes massive cell damage. Because the cilia lose activity, the body is open for bacterial or viral superinfection, or opportunistic infection by microbes that normally would not find purchase in the body. In this sense, flu is worse than AIDS: not only does it strike at the body's defense mechanisms, but it also contains its own potentially deadly symptoms. Repairing the damage completely can take anywhere from two to ten weeks, and among vulnerable populations, the flu can take a course towards asphyxia and pneumonia, as it did in 1918. It is reasonably virulent and rarely kills the host, allowing it to spread rather rapidly. And, like AIDS, it is constantly mutating, making vaccination almost an exercise in futility and multiple lifetime flu infections common.

It is clear that the pathology of the flu poses a serious threat to even well-established public health systems, but what of systems in other countries? According to Christensen's statistics, the US accounts for anywhere from 3.6% to 7.2% of the world's flu casualties. A US Food Aid Service (FAS report) cites that the US has about 276 million people and that the world now has more than 6 billion humans, indicating the US has about 4-5% of the world's population.2 The vast majority of the rest of the influenza deaths are abroad. A UK Health Protection Agency FAQ mentions a 1957 'Asian Flu' and a 1968 'Hong Kong Flu', but also points out that no flu pandemic has struck in major industrialized countries for thirty years.3 The most recent epidemics and pandemics have been in Third World and industrializing countries. The “avian influenza” scare recently has obfuscated the fact that, despite the relative danger of a new strand emerging, the real dangers are not to be found here or in other European countries, as agencies like the CDC and HPA have established protocols to contain such new mutations. The real cost is borne elsewhere. A United Poultry Concerns report estimates that 50 million chickens in Asia have been exterminated to prevent an outbreak of the flu and a shift to the human population.4 This is because this flu has anywhere from a 30% to 70% mortality rate, a simply massive death toll. The report also notes that as these countries move to capital-intensive agriculture, with the now-common symptoms of incredibly confined and cramped spaces for the livestock and general inhumane treatment, diseases such as the avian flu can now spread like wildfire among the animals and mutate to a dangerous strand. A similar mass slaughter of chickens in the Netherlands, supported by the World Health Organization, cost the government $344 million. A World Health Organization study pointed out that worldwide death tolls for flu has been 50 million lives, a number higher than even the Chinese famine that Amartya Sen among others has analyzed5. It also demonstrated that 250 million vaccinations total have been administered, yet the group most in danger, seniors over the age of 65, now constitutes 380 million people. Klaus Stohr, reviewing the WHO report, argued that, “...an influenza pandemic will have its greatest impact on developing countries where there is no vaccine and antiviral protection”. These concerns are key for the US, for a few reasons. First, the neoliberal regimes advanced by the US and other G-8 countries have been key forces in reducing the power of the government to effectively fight epidemics and pandemics. Edward Herman, Greg Palast and Patrick Bond, among others, have documented how neoliberal regimes drive down growth rates, push patents for drugs preventing governments from buying and distributing cheap generic drugs, privatize essential health services, and generally establish the type of poverty and health conditions essential for an outbreak.6 This means that there is a moral obligation for the US to do something, as the head mover and shaker in pushing globalization. Second, massive outbreaks of disease can help spur destabilizing pressures. Lao's Prime Minister Bounnhang Vorachit cited avian influenza as an impact of globalization and discussed it seriously as a security concern for ASEAN7. The fiscal and human impact of a pandemic can cause anger, hatred, fear, and general danger and thus spur dangerous wars. According to Rick Rowden, a Political Science teacher at Golden Gate University, the US bombing of Cambodia and subsequent famine was one of the main impetuses for the formation and popularity of the Khmer Rouge and their subsequent killing spree.8 Clearly, influenza on its own will not cause conflicts to erupt, but governments faced with serious problems including influenza outbreaks could use war as a solution for a variety of reasons. Even more likely is dissatisfaction caused by a perception that certain ethnic minorities or distant powers are responsible for the misery inflicted. In Worlds in Collision, Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley Kenneth Waltz argued that, “Unsurprisingly... weak states and disaffected people... lash out at the United States as the agent or symbol of their suffering.”?9

Dealing with this international problem would not be that difficult. Kofi Annan, in his “Astonishing Facts”, has pointed out that the amount that Europeans spend on ice cream exceeds the annual total needed to provide clean water and sewer systems to the world, that Americans and Europeans spend more on pet food than it'd cost to provide basic nutrition to the world, and that $40 billion a year (4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world, and a drop in the bucket of most Western GDPs) would suffice to provide basic education, health care, food, water and sewage systems for the world.10 Edward Herman in his Sophistry of Imperialism outlined an alternative course for globalization and economic development that involves independence, democracy, reparations (again, relatively cheap ones relative to GDP) and autonomy11. He cites numerous examples of globalization not only lowering growth rates, but also increasing inequality. Dani Rodrik, Professor of Economics at Harvard, points out that this increase in equality also lowers growth in the long term: a 10% increase in the Gini index of inequality lowers growth rates 1.2%12. Abandoning the dogma of commitment to “free markets” would not only raise the general economic standard of Third World countries and thus help raise their immunity to the flu, it would allow governments to not privatize their health systems and provide efficient health care and establish preventative systems to avoid outbreaks. It is thus in the security and economic interests of the United States to adopt Annan's and Herman's proposals. Dealing with influenza specifically, aid and research assistance (including easing of intellectual property restrictions) would help local economies develop their own flu vaccine stores. The US could target an infinitesimal part of its budget to subsidies for vaccine development and other aid programs to attempt to contain such epidemics. Such a simple investment could avoid the massive economic impact of slaughtering infected livestock and losing worker productivity to disease. Not only does the US, thanks to its colonial and neocolonial history and ongoing practice, have an obligation to help Third World economies recover, develop and defend their people from disease and famine, it has a practical interest in doing so. After all, disease is borderless: in the age of jet planes and cruise ships, a disease in Africa can spread to America and Europe.

A third problem concerning flu is the domestic analog to the international issue. Luckily, here the US is not so remiss. A USDA news release of May 12, 2004 outlines a USDA program to help defend against avian influenza.13 These kind of preventative programs can help prevent what happened in February of this year, where the outbreak necessitated massive poultry euthanasia and trade restrictions on infected countries. However, the danger remains real. The same USDA press release predicts that one gram of contaminated manure could infect up to a million birds. It is important for government officials to avoid fearmongering, however. While the flu is dangerous, it is not close to pandemic proportions, and US health care systems are capable of dealing with the stress. Vaccine rationing this year is highly prudent, as Dr. Christensen demonstrated convincingly (cited above). CBS News ran a story on October 18, citing the CDC Director as saying, “It's important for people to understand we've got 20 million doses of flu vaccine coming on the way. It's coming out of the factory in an orderly manner and we're doing everything to get it to the people who need it most in an orderly manner.”14 However, this has required using an experimental vaccine, something not too likely to have dangerous ramifications, but a frightening thought nonetheless. The difficulty with effective policy-making is caused by the fact that the flu mutates constantly, making stockpiling vaccines useless. Instead, the government should double the most pessimistic predictions and order that many flu shots. The excess can be shipped to other countries at a discount. The essential point is to shore up as much demand as possible and encourage companies to avoid abandoning flu vaccine production. This is essential because, as the same CBS story reported, “Some economists expect losses in productivity, not just in terms of sick employees but lost workdays to tend to sick family members, reports The Wall Street Journal. One expert tells the paper twice as many people could get the flu this year because of the lack of vaccine. In a normal year, the flu is the leading cause of Americans calling in sick to work. David Cutler, a professor of economics at Harvard University, estimates that the flu's effects on the economy could approach $20 billion this year. ”

The fourth problem regarding the flu is the media reporting and framing of the issue. In general, the media seem to adopt a crisis-response agenda, shortcircuiting discussion of long-term and perennial issues. Noam Chomsky (in Manufacturing Consent) among others has pointed out that the American media is especially prone to “brevity” and sound-bite style reporting due to the high degree of advertising saturation15. Thus, the media focus on SARS instead of the perennial death toll of the flu. Only when there is a crisis such as a flu vaccine shortage does the issue enter the public mind. This causes chronic public underconcern and thus ineffective policy-making and a public prone to panic. The government should fund awareness programs in schools and communities to bridge the gap and provide reasonable and available information. Simply put, if people spent more time worrying about the flu than SARS, it would be easier to deal with the flu.

The fifth problem concerning flu outbreaks is a simple sanitation and health issue. Flu spreads during the winter months because people are confined, yet simple practices such as getting enough sleep, eating healthy food, washing one's hands, regularly cleaning the home with disinfectant, covering one's mouth when coughing, being willing to keep kids at school and sick adults at home, and other common sense habits can help slow the spread even during winter months.16 For this, public awareness programs can help substantially, as well as improving programs to allow workers more sick days and less fear of repercussion if they don't go to work. Both are relatively easy proposals to institute.

While people in Western countries often consider the flu simply an annoyance, it is serious business. It is a perennial and historic disease, yet modern technology and techniques can legitimately make it into simply an annoyance. Yet the majority of the world's population does not have that luxury. This Congress can and should place health issues as a number one priority. If the US is going to be a world leader, it might as well be a world leader in preventing pandemics and not simply raw military and economic might.

Sources

1. See Crosby, Alfred W., Jr. Epidemic and Peace, 1918, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976; and Hoehling, A.A. The Great Epidemic, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961.
2. Food Aid Service. October 12, 2004. “Who's Coming to Dinner: How Global Population is Growing.” http://www.fas.usda.gov/info/agexporter/2000/September/whos.htm. Accessed December 12, 2004.
3. Health Protection Agency. “Frequently asked questions on flu.” http://www.hpa.org.uk/infections/topics_az/influenza/flufaq.htm Accessed December 12, 2004.

4. United Poultry Concerns. February 13, 2004. “Avian Influenza – Death Toll: 50 Million and Rising.” http://www.upc-online.org/health/21304flu.htm

5.The Lancet Infectious Diseases Vol. 2 September 2002. “Reflection and Reaction: Influenza - WHO Cares.” Reprinted at the World Health Organization website and citing their work. http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/influenzalancet.pdf. For Sen's work, see Dreze and Sen's Hunger and Public Action.

6. The Vientiane Times. December 1, 2004. “Bounnhang advocates peace and stability.” http://www.vientianetimes.org.la/Contents/2004-236/Bounnhang.htm

7. Rick Rowden. San Francisco Chronicle August 1997, reprinted at the Light Party website. “Khmer Rouge first gained popularity as fighters of Lon Nol regime.” http://www.lightparty.com/Misc/Cambodia.html

8. In general, Z Magazine's coverage of this topic has been excellent and cogent. See in particular: Herman, Edward. April 30, 2001, “The Media at the Barricades in Support of 'Free Trade'”. http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/content/2001-04/30herman.htm. Bond, Patrick, accessed December 12, 2004, “Cultivating African Anti-Capitalism”. http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2003/bond0203.html

9. Walth, Kenneth. Worlds in Collision, edited by Boothe and Dunne.

10. Annan, Kofi. “Kofi Annan's astonishing facts”, reprinted in New York Times News Service, September 27, 1998. http://www.countdown.org/end_articles/fam_kofi_annans_astonishing_facts.htm

11. Herman, Edward. “Sophistry of Imperialism”, Z Magazine March 2 2002. http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/march02herman.htm

12. Rodrik, Dani. “Where Did All the Growth Go? External Shocks, Social Conflicts and Growth Collapses.” John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge MA; last revised August 1998. http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/rodrik/conftext.pdf

13.United States Department of Agriculture. “USDA Funding Approved for Avian Influenza Prevention Program.” Washington, May 12, 2004. http://www.usda.gov/Newsroom/0191.04.html

14.CBS News. “Feds: No Need for Flu Shot Panic”, citing an AP release. October 18, 2004. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/05/health/main647481.shtml

15.From a list of quotes from Noam Chomsky: ..." suppose I'm talking about international terrorism, and I say that we ought to stop it in Washington, which is a major center of it. People back off, "What do you mean, Washington's a major center of it?" Then you have to explain. You have to give some background. That's exactly what Jeff Greenfield is talking about. You don't want people who have to give background, because that would allow critical thought. What you want is completely conformist ideas. You want just repetition of the propaganda line, the party line. For that you need "concision". I could do it too. I could say what I think in three sentences, too. But it would just sound as if it was off the wall, because there's no basis laid for it. If you come from the American Enterprise Institute and you say it in three sentences, yes, people hear it every day, so what's the big deal? Yeah, sure, Qaddafi's the biggest monster in the world, and the Russians are conquering the world, and this and that, Noriega's the worst gangster since so-and-so. For that kind of thing you don't need any background. You just rehash the thoughts that everybody's always expressed and that you hear from Dan Rather and everyone else. That's a structural technique that's very valuable. In fact, if people like Ted Koppel were smarter, they would allow more dissidents on, because they would just make fools of themselves. Either you would sell out and repeat what everybody else is saying because it's the only way to sound sane, or else you would say what you think, in which case you'd sound like a madman, even if what you think is absolutely true and easily supportable. The reason is that the whole system so completely excludes it. It'll sound crazy, rightly, from their point of view. And since you have to have concision, as Jeff Greenfield says, you don't have time to explain it. That's a marvelous structural technique of propaganda...." http://users.rcn.com/beecee.interport/chomskyquotes.htm

16.Dr. Vincent Iannelli. “Don't Get Sick with the Flu!” Reproduced in part from a CDC Influenza Vaccine Q&A in 2003-2004. http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/commoninfections/a/avoiding_flu.htm

The Iraqi Conflict (A Pre-War Essay)

2005-11-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

The Iraqi Conflict: Hate Hitler or Heil Hitler?

Since the advent of the era of agriculture and humyn organization, there have been intellectual classes whose job it is to punish deviance, manage and control, to create the society’s established truths, and to prevent those with alternative modes of thought from reaching out to the general populace. These intellectuals are connected with the ruling establishment, and are members of a class of secular priests, who hold sway over security (in their political form) and prosperity (in their economic form). They command corporations, who hold the capital of entire nations captive. They command nuclear weapons and security policy, and are capable of unleashing nigh-infinite devastation upon the entire planet. In the modern day, the imperialism of great powers must be disguised through pious rhetoric and mindless patriotism. Several of these secular priests have recently compared President Bush's proposals for war against Iraq to the war against Hitler. They say that the 1991 Gulf War campaign did not inflict enough damage and carry enough cost to Saddam’s regime, and that the years of sanctions and inspections must culminate in disarmament or severe consequences will be inflicted. The critics think of the history of United States-Iraqi relations as being Iraq bursting out of nowhere and attacking Kuwait, then being driven back by idealistic United Nations (hereafter referred to as UN) defenders and then treated with a firm, unyielding hand as long as the dictatorial Saddam continues to violate international law. Further, many of these intellectuals argue that not attacking Saddam would be similar to the policy of appeasement taken place before World War II and that Saddam must be eliminated much as Hitler was. Ironically, given the state of affairs, the recommendations for war by these intellectuals actually echo Hitler's call for war against Poland and other states that were “unjustly” taking Germany's lebensraum, as opposed to the Rooseveltian model of a necessary intervention against a foe that was dangerous in the moment and not in a theoretical future. Further, the similarities that exist between the two situations are even more indicative, and speak volumes both about American myths about World War II and the involvement in the Iraq situation historically. The United States’ (hereafter referred to as US) calls for war in Iraq are not Rooseveltian idealism in practice, but rather Hitlerian imperialism.

One elementary distinction between the Rooseveltian model and the Hitlerian model is the element of declarations of war. In World War II, Hitler attacked other nations without declaring war upon them, or declaring war for trumped up reasons – Roosevelt, on the other hand, only became involved when Germany declared war upon the United States in an attempt to keep cordial relations with the other great Axis power, the Japanese. Two questions then must be asked in determining whether or not the Iraqi ‘war’ is Hitlerian or Rooseveltian: Did Iraq declare war upon the US, thus eliciting a justified US counter-declaration; and, was a legitimate declaration of war made upon Iraq? In addressing the first question, if evidence demonstrating a declaration of war upon the United States were to exist, it would be a massive surprise to the American people, as it has not received any press coverage. But no one, not even the most ardent champions of war and the people deploying the Rooseveltian analogy, has bothered to offer such evidence, mainly because it does not exist. Iraq did declare war against Kuwait, but all the available evidence indicates that this was because American diplomats green-lighted the endeavor in meetings with Saddam Hussein (the stand echoed on multiple occasions was “We have no opinion on your border dispute with Kuwait”, indicating a veiled carte blanche for Saddam Hussein to invade). This is a non sequitur, however, because Iraq immediately offered a peace settlement after discovering the response of the United States, a fact which immediately demonstrates the Hitlerian analogy (in other words, attacking a nation which retreats at the slightest threat of force). Further, the invasion of Kuwait does not prove the Rooseveltian analogy, in which American intervention occurred only after Pearl Harbor and a declaration of war, as there is a distinction between allied soil being under attack and one’s own soil being invaded. Meanwhile, much like the mustachioed German, the sub-literate American will attack without a Congressional declaration of war, simultaneously spitting on the Constitution and the UN Charter. The Bush administration argues that it does not need a declaration of war, because Congress ipso facto declared war by not doing so after the Gulf War. This is an profoundly expansive interpretation of executive power. It is also a flagrant violation of international law. The Bush administration’s arguments for preemptive warfare justify Osama bin Laden’s arguments for 9/11. The UN Charter asks that all nations refrain from the use of force except in self-defense, but it is clear in the rhetoric of the aggressors that those rules apply only to regimes who do not matter.

Roosevelt’s intervention was prompted by the attacks upon Pearl Harbor, done by a member of the Axis, and Hitler’s troops were attacking Britain, occupying France and striking into Russia. Hitler’s attacks, in comparison, were upon nations that had not attacked Germany or its allies. There has never been any evidence offered that an Iraqi ally attacked US soil, or that Iraqi troops are currently occupying Israel or Kuwait, which makes the conflict preemptive at best and murderous at worst, demonstrating the Hitlerian model. Some commentators attempt to make a dubious link to Osama bin Laden and demonstrate that an ally of Iraq did attack the US, but an intelligent and informed eighth-grader could see the problem with that argumentation. Note that if there is any doubt that Osama is connected to Saddam, the only argument that the conflict is direct retaliation disappears, and the war becomes Hitlerian imperialism under a cloak of moralistic righteousness. Osama and Saddam are ideological opponents; the former is an Islamic fundamentalist, the latter a secular nationalist. Of course, if one adopts the Nazi framework that there are those who support the party line and those who do not and no other groups, then perhaps the two are in the latter category. However, merely being an enemy of the US does not mean that one will ally with those who have opposite intentions. In fact, the CIA report issued to the Congress last October not only declared that there was no tangible connection, but also that an attack would probably increase terrorism, and that Saddam would be committing suicide if he funded any al Qaida cells, as their attacks will eventually plague his nation. William Safire’s article in the New York Times, “Saddam’s Al-Qaida Link” is a rare example of an attempt to link the two, and expresses two rather specious connections. The first is a supposed al Qaida cell operating in Kurdistan. Like the majority of Arabs, these al Qaida members assaulted Kurds who are interested in freedom in Iraq. This level of a connection is ridiculous. The US has given money to the Iraqi Kurds to kill their Turkish cousins, has refused to fund them for any other reason (including insurrection against Saddam), and has sponsored Turkish ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish population. Are Safire’s readers now to assume that the US government is an al Qaida stronghold? Given the links between the US and al Qaida from the past, this would be far more convincing. Further, even if Saddam were financing al Qaida members to kill Kurds, this would illustrate that he is essentially hiring them as mercenaries, not that he agrees with their attacks on the US. The other link he makes is that a Mr. Zarqawi received medical assistance from a Baghdad hospital and then made his way to the Kurdistan al Qaida camp, carrying a poisonous chemical named ricin that is “well known to Iraqi chemists”. More tenuous argumentation cannot be found outside of Nazi archives, which is unsurprising considering Mr. Safire’s assistance in helping Nixon lie and finagle through six years of corruption, although readers are now to assume that Mr. Safire has become a top flight intelligence agent with impeccable credentials and absolute honesty. All the evidence Safire cites, from himself to Mr. Colin Powell to the Kurds (who will given a chance to live if they attack their cousins across the border in Turkey), is completely unbelievable. This is particularly obvious when one considers the numerous falsehoods constructed in Mr. Powell’s speech before the UN. Mr. Powell argued that a group called Ansar al-Islam was the missing link between Saddam and Osama, and that this group was developing chemical weapons. He was lying on both counts. Numerous journalists, including reporters from the BBC, investigated into Ansar al-Islam. It is essentially a group engaged in particularly bloody local politics and has no demonstrated connection to either Saddam or Osama. The supposed “chemical warfare installation” was a number of concrete huts and a kitchen, the journalists upon the scene concluded. The Safire article is typical of the level of integrity and quality of the intellectual classes who attempt to argue the Rooseveltian metaphor. Ironically, the mere attempt to link terrorism done by one group to a country composed virtually entirely of another group is Hitlerian in content. Hitler alleged that there was an international conspiracy of Jewish Communists and bankers. Such irrational guidelines fundamentally direct the notions of the intellectual classes when dealing with US culpability. Thus, mountains of evidence demonstrate that there is no ally of Iraq attacking America or American allies, showing once more that the US is engaging in preemptive imperialist conflict, which will incidentally escalate the cycle of violence.

In the Rooseveltian metaphor, the fascist opponent was an industrial monster of
gigantic proportions that had recuperated from World War I; Hitler, on the other hand, chose targets which had been devastated by the previous conflict in order to consolidate his power base. The main argument offered for the dangers Iraq poses has to deal with alleged weapons of mass destruction (also known as WMDs). This is the perfect target for the commissars, as WMDs can be hidden effectively and inflict great damage. However, the intellectual bankruptcy of the position is at once revealed when one considers that these analysts did not raise their pen in any sort of righteous indignation against Iraq's usage of chemical weapons when they were being used. These crimes were retrospectively discovered when the ideological requirement was to demonize Iraq in order to push the rejectionist Oslo accords. Before moving onto consider the WMD stockpile, it is worthwhile to consider momentarily why there is such a frantic search for proof that Iraq has some sort of weaponry to put him into material breach of UN conventions. The reason is that, as virtually every commentator concedes, the Iraqi military and populace has never recovered from the Gulf War, and thus the only way that a minimally plausible threat can be concocted is to propose that Iraq can do damage despite it’s conventional weakness with unconventional weapons. If it is true that Iraq’s WMD stockpiles are similarly weak or nonexistent, the US action in Iraq would be illegal, vicious and Hitlerian. To answer the question: Does Iraq have WMDs? If it does, the arsenal appears to be strategically insignificant; Scott Ritter, the former UNSCOM chief, said that Iraq “has been disarmed to a level unprecedented in modern history”. Hans Blix, the lead weapons inspector, noted that if Bush actually was concerned about WMDs in Iraq, he would adopt an entirely different stratagem, perhaps the methodology currently being advocated by France and Germany to strengthen the inspections rather than stopping them, an intuitive response if one’s goals are not imperialist. The US has demonstrated just how fiercely it resents weapons of mass destruction by selling them to dictators across the world, not signing the Biological Weapons Convention enforcement protocol due to intense biotech lobbying, and violating the NPT (itself a flawed treaty, as it allows original nuclear weapons states to keep their weapons virtually indefinitely). It is a characteristic of totalitarian states that crimes of others will be bitterly resented while the flaunting of international law and the atrocities of the state will be glossed over with apologetics. Despite years of inspections, weapons of mass destruction facilities have failed to procure proof of any sort of weapons program that would threaten the US, for if it had, the headlines of the New York Times and the covers of Time and Newsweek would be filled with righteous outrage over America’s former client acquiring weapons America gave him the wherewithal to get, the Colin Powell report notwithstanding. This is damning, considering the tremendous success rate for UN inspections. The best job that has been done was the report presented to the United Nations by Mr. Powell, but even this speech was riddled with flaws that a more skeptical observer could pick up. The “overwhelming evidence” amounted to a few tapped phone calls and some satellite photos. As for US credibility for utilizing photos, one should remember that in the Kosovo conflict, the US consistently manipulated footage to put evidence in the best possible light; for instance, in order to prevent criticism of so-called “smart” weaponry devastating civilians, the US accelerated flight tapes in order to make it seem that the pilot was going too fast to stop and adjust her aim. Mr. Powell’s speech presented very few pictures of plants in ordinary conditions, meaning that one would have to take his word at face value that those were not the regular conditions of the plants. The Iraqi response to Powell’s allegations was to reanalyze the scales and the location of the plants, and to then claim that the plants produced short-range missiles. There was no rebuttal by Mr. Powell. The CIA’s evidence and behavior in general has been atrocious, consistently planting evidence and lying to the American public about everything from Soviet missile dangers to international terrorism. If Soviet Russia had demonstrated “irrefutable evidence” that the US was militarizing in space twenty years and ago and used “human (sic) sources” for most of their strongest claims, none in the hallowed halls of the United Nations would have believed them. Given that most of the evidence in Powell’s speech was indicated to be from American intelligence, the credibility of his claims is flawed. He did make a reference to a “fine” file ostensibly created by British intelligence. However, it was in fact a hamhanded public relations piece constructed by Tony Blair’s top PR agent and a number of lower office men. It used information taken from a misquoted twelve-year-old student paper. Of course, no one denies that Iraq is likely not in violation of numerous conventions and norms of international law, but it has offered to comply fully if the sanctions regime were dismantled, meaning that the best argument that Mr. Powell can make is that currently the Iraqis are not trustworthy, not that they are inevitably so. The history of the US torpedoing international agreements that would have begun to restore Saddam to the fold indicates that there is clear fear that Saddam may not be a bad enough “bad guy”. In addition, the effectiveness of inspections also proves that these facilities must not be very prevalent or powerful, as the inspectors cannot find them in a nation the size of California. Imagine a team of inspectors proportionally sized searching the United States. In this nation filled with weapons of mass destruction, it would take a matter of days to find untold quantities of weapons. Also, the amount of omissions in the speech indicates Mr. Powell’s disdain for elementary rationality and facts. Chemical and biological weapons may be dangerous, but they are only effective if they are optimally used, and even the United States with its comparatively infinite resources cannot use such weapons to achieve maximum casualties. Further, the weapons can be effectively countered with advance warning, and the US and several other nations have prepared counter-CBW teams and equipment. And the usage of CBWs assumes a substantial launch system, replete with the necessary infrastructure, i.e. fuel, trucks to ship materials, silos, and so on and so forth. Mr. Powell’s speech barely touched upon the most important part of using any weapons: the delivery mechanisms. In addition, as noted by Ritter, chemical and biological weapons have a limited shelf-life. Every weapon in the alleged Iraqi stockpiles except for the mustard gas would have gone bad by now, even if they hadn’t been destroyed. But, according to Hussein Kamal, Saddam’s son-in-law (who ended up being murdered by the dictator), all the weapons and molds were destroyed, and there were no missiles left in Iraq. Thus, at worst, Iraq is like a baseball player with no arms: they ruefully await being able to pick up the bat so they can protect themselves from the incoming ball, but it’s not happening. Thus, there is no immediate threat from Iraq (as conceded continually by every commentator), and the Hitlerian model is spectacularly demonstrated once more.

The commissars shield their flanks from their lack of evidence by suggesting that Saddam’s nuclear weapons could be used as a deterrent in future conflict, so one must attack now even if there is no reason to suspect that he has weapons now. They suggest that Iraq could attack conventional targets with impunity using their WMD capacity as a barrier to interventionism. This argument is specious for multiple reasons. First, to be an effective deterrent, one must have enough weapons to make an opponent seriously have to calculate the risk of attacking. Even the SCUDS that were deployed against Israel were not sufficient to deter the Israeli assault, and all commentators concede he has less access to WMDs than before the Gulf War and years of murderous sanctions, and less capacity to build up an infrastructure to make them. Most deterrence analysts believe that the weapon total must be enough to reduce a nation to complete and utter poverty, destroying enough of the military and civil infrastructure to prevent a rebuilding. Further, weapon totals and delivery systems must be sufficiently protected and numerous as to prevent the effectiveness of a first strike. Even the Soviet Union was not operating at that level of capacity for much of the Cold War. However, were it proved that Saddam could seriously get access to sufficient weapons to be able to harm the US, the only scenario in which they would be used would be if Saddam were suicidal, and he is clearly quite rational, as demonstrated by his consistent attempts to appease the international community and avert a war which would topple his regime. (Incidentally, some may say that Saddam’s mistreatment of the Kurds demonstrates his sadism and irrationality, but in fact the Kurds are disorderly elements and potential dangers to his regime, making his actions against them rational, though morally repugnant). Suppose, then, that Saddam got access to enough Anthrax to halve the US population. Then suppose he decided to attack Egypt or Saudi Arabia. The US and Israel would immediately threaten a war and prepare their own WMD stockpiles. Saddam would be forced to enter into a conflict in which he would die. The history of the Twentieth century proves that such an event would never take place: though the world would teeter on the edge, both sides would back down. Unless one assumes Saddam is a raving suicidal maniac, the scenario collapses immediately. Analysts offer the example of the Soviet Union to prove that WMD deterrence prevents intervention, but the real reason the US turned to WMDs at all was to beat the Soviet Union’s conventional force superiority within its domains. Thus, attacks upon the Soviet Union were not considered merely due to conventional troops; NATO was not strong enough to attack the USSR directly. However, clandestine support for groups such as Afghani fighters continued, and in fact repelled the Soviet assault. The Soviet Union’s weapons did not protect them from US-funded resistance fighters, and thus the scenario collapses due to the empirical analysis. Finally, this is not the Cold War. The US has developed advanced weapon systems that would allow it to partially or completely debilitate the entire Iraqi strategic arsenal in one blow. These include nuclear bunker busters and space weapons. The National Missile Defense program was in fact a mere pretense to launch offensive space weaponry, as noted by Karl Grossman (an award-winning author on space militarization) and others military analysts. These include microwave and beam weapons that can leave behind “entire cities of microwave grilled people”, “holographic decoys”, and “destructo-swarmbots” (taken from Pentagon sources quoted by Karl Grossman). These space weapons are capable of destroying a nation such as Iraq’s entire strategic status within seconds, which in fact causes proliferation pressures, as countries feel they must defend their stockpiles by having more than can be destroyed. These paranoiac delusions of future dangers from Iraq are shared only by the commissars and the American people they attempt to delude: even Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek expressed feigned astonishment at the fact that Turkey and most of the Arab states do not view Saddam Hussein as a threat to their regimes.

The commissars also argue that Saddam is guilty until proven innocent, and that he must present tangible proof that he has abandoned his weapons program or risk punishment underneath UN resolutions. But Saddam has claimed repeatedly to not have any more weapons of mass destruction, and the inspectors have found no evidence to argue with this, though they are worried by Iraqi recalcitrance. They didn’t have any reason in 1997 and 1998, either, when they were withdrawn by the Clinton administration in order to drum up support for another attack upon the people of Iraq. This was during the last leg of the disarmament process, in which under 20% of the project had yet to be completed. By removing the inspectors, the US was able to paint Saddam as the uncooperative rogue leader, and allow a future final conflict to install a dictator (or democracy, for that matter) friendly to US interests and to gain access to the profits from Iraqi oil. The extent to which the Gulf War and subsequent policy devastated Iraq is little acknowledged in the mainstream press. Conservative estimates indicate that the sanctions regime placed upon Iraq has killed several hundred thousand people. The mere quantity of deaths brings the Nazis back into mind. These sanctions are supported virtually in exclusion by the United States (and its junior partner and client terror dog, Israel). The sanctions prevent items such as baby clothes, cancer medicine and ambulances from being shipped into Iraqi soil. Even more obscure is the Depleted Uranium debacle. These munitions are made from the waste product of refining weapon-grade uranium. They are sixty percent as radiological and every bit as heavy. Their high density makes them capable of piercing heavy armor, and their tendency to ignite into superheated radiological gas clouds make them optimal armor piercing weapons. The residue left from these weapons has been directly linked to eighty-fold increases in cancer and such spectacles as children being born with their internal organs on the outside of their body. In a few generations, forty percent of the population of Iraq may fall from these weapons. Iraq has never recovered from the murderous post-Gulf War assault. Some may argue that only the general population has suffered and that the military is mostly intact. For one, this is not true – the military has also suffered, particularly due to the fact that the sanctions are quite effective at keeping out dual-purpose items, and also because the sanctions prevented capital from flowing in that could have been used to rebuild the military (for example, money from Iraq’s tremendous oil supplies). For another, even if this were true, it would only fuel the arguments for immediate withdrawal of the sanctions. Saddam has repeatedly declared that if he was not cooperating with international authorities, it was because the sanctions regime, legally expired, was not being eliminated, and that he would begin to play ball when Britain and the US did. Reasoned discussion in the United States has politely ignored this fact, as it would cast a shadow upon the military parade and would make US citizens less willing to blindly follow the trumpets of war. Such elite obedience is a hallmark of totalitarian states.

The insincerity of all this argumentation is proven at once with a cursory examination of the North Korea issue. Unlike Iraq, North Korea actually has the will and the capacity to fight. They have weapons of mass destruction, for one. North Korea was able to justify attaining these weapons by pointing to the United State’s violation of the 1994 agreement set up between the two nations (by failing to send the advanced nuclear reactors which do not produce fissile material), a fact missing from most analysis of the North Korean scenario. North Korea also has batteries pointed at South Korea. America’s South Korean allies tell Mr. Bush, rightly, that North Korea is no problem as long as they are treated with courtesy and do not have to deal with US violation of agreements. Thus, American policy has been one of diplomacy and accommodation. The message is clear: The United States only kicks people when they are down. This is actually a key part of deterrence doctrine – the concept of projecting a position of a brutal and less than rational national strategy, in order to make people afraid of messing with the psychopathic superpower. America is doing a phenomenal job of learning from its thick-mustached idol. Unfortunately, this message indicates to those afraid of US intervention in their countries that the answer is to proliferate. People are not stupid or cowardly – when their interests are being attacked, they will find a way to defend themselves, and one way to do that is through acquiring weapons of mass destruction; another is to support terror networks. The ensuing cycle of violence is of tremendous importance to American citizens and principled cosmopolitans everywhere, but not to US planners. This proliferation incentive is particularly inviting when the US itself has done so much to be a proliferating force, through frequent violation of international treaties and through its sale of military equipment. It is also inviting because the US’ space militarization and other first strike capacities can always be trumped by having more weapons. Arsenals of sticks and stones are beginning to give people the confidence to hurl harsh words. All these results indicate that the US, like Hitler, attacks weak states to build up its power base and to terrify the world, again calling the sincerity of the Rooseveltian metaphor into question.

The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the arguments for war is further proven when considering the comparative strength of the US and Iraq. America’s intervention in World War II was costly, requiring the imposition of a command economy (including rationing and the complete conversion of civilian production to military production), the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, and the detonation of two nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the Gulf War unleashed more raw tonnage than was used in the whole of World War II, leaving the Iraqis no chance to fight back.

This would not be so devastating to the proponents of war if the American military was not adequately prepared to deal with an opponent such as Iraq, a country which could not pose a threat to many of the countries in its region. However, clearly this is not the case, and the American hegemonic machine is capable of mass destruction on an untold scale. An entire nation was reduced from an aggressor status to absolutely nothing in a matter of weeks in the original Gulf War. The US’ tremendous quality of equipment comes from its budget, which is seventeen times the amount of its regional adversaries combined, and accounts for a large percentage of military spending in the world, almost double the percentage of the US's economy in the world. The infamous army of Saddam Hussein failed to defeat post-revolutionary Iran after eight years of armed struggle financed by the US, Arabic states and European countries. Further, the country has lived under a state of continual bombardment and sanctions. The way this demoniacal adversary was displayed simultaneously as "cadaver and world-wide menace" may remind several of the portrayal of the Soviet Union throughout this century, and of the portrayal of opponents in the Hitlerian states. The media has consistently, since the days of Walter Lippmann, portrayed American opponents as deadly figures of Satanic proportions who threaten US economic and social life at the roots, then pretend to be amazed when the American military machine crushes the target. The fact is that Saddam is not a threat, evidenced by the fact that he needed American support even after the Gulf War, when Iraqi Kurds joined with Iraqi dissidents (including a few Generals) and formed a rebel army. This army immediately requested US support. Not only did the US turn down the offer, United States General “Stormin’ Norman” Schwartzkopf authorized the usage of Blackhawk helicopters and other military implements to put down the revolt.

Roosevelt’s intentions in World War II were reasonably principled and well meaning, though we must never forget the increasingly overwhelming evidence that Japan would have surrendered without the detonation of the nuclear weapons and that the firestorms in Dresden and Hamburg actually strengthened German resolve and lengthened the war; meanwhile, Hitler’s early conflicts against nations such as Poland were like shooting fish in a barrel: easy and costless, leading to an expansion of Germany’s borders and the beginning of a new thousand-year Reich. The intentions of US planners in Iraq must then carefully be analyzed. As proven elsewhere, any pretense of non-proliferation efforts must be discarded as the purest hypocrisy. The concept of self-defense runs into the problem that clearly the planners mean the right of self-defense to be exclusive to the US and its allies and to be deployed when the US wants it to be. Thus, that argument inevitably leads to the “Why?” once again. Democracy cannot be the issue, because mere history shows how little the US cares about democracy in Iraq and elsewhere. In fact, the government has been rather forthright about this, talking about the need to preserve “stability” in Iraq, perhaps with a repressive junta, perhaps with an ostensible democracy in the Costa Rican mode (which constitutionally outlaws the Communist Party and is deeply tied to US capital). If one wants further proof, one can look at the horrendous civil liberties records of the US itself, Israel, and other client states all over the globe. Studies have repeatedly shown that states that torture their people or commit consistent humyn rights violations get disproportionate amounts of US aid. Perhaps a look at enduring elements of US foreign policy may answer some of the questions. The necessity to keep an iron grip upon Middle East oil reserves and other resources has been recognized since Eisenhower, who talked about the Middle East region as the ‘greatest material prize in history’. President Nixon conceptualized a system of mostly non-Arab “cops on the block” who would control the Arabs and prevent them from organizing to keep the resources that they own in their hands, as well as “Arab facades” (such as Saudi Arabia) who would be weak but brutal states capable of functioning as effectively a business proxy. In other words, the bulk of American foreign power must be aimed at preventing people from protecting themselves from theft. The history of post-9/11 foreign policy is especially revealing given this history. Afghanistan had one of the largest oil pipelines in the Russian region. Oil experts referred to the pipeline as the only sufficient infrastructure to ship Russian oil, and were concerned about the unwillingness of the Taliban to allow the pipeline to flow. The apologetics for Russian state terror against the Chechen rebels are necessary in order to make sure Russia stays cozy with the US and offers preferential rates for oil trading. Iraq has huge untapped oil reserves, the second largest in the world. In every scenario, the need to dominate oil reserves and coerce those who own them is clear. This alone is insufficient, however. In general, the US conceptualizes a “Grand Area” friendly to the interests of US corporations at the cost of the people of the regions. One way to achieve this is to project an image of “calculated irrationality”, what people know as “bullying” in more principled circles. Once the possible motives are looked at, the Hitlerian analogy is once again confirmed spectacularly: any statement of benevolent concerns on the part of those in power is sheer fraud.

Roosevelt was fighting an enemy that refused to sue for peace or surrender until the absolute end (an enemy that might be found in North Korea); Hitler was fighting enemies who were perfectly willing to appease and acquiesce for as long as possible. History will likely never know if Iraq would have abided by the peace settlement it offered because the settlement was rejected and relegated to the deepest recesses of unmentionable facts. Saddam knew he had performed a serious gaffe when the US began to get angry from the invasion of Kuwait – he had made his employers angry, and thus immediately offered to pull out, likely leaving behind a puppet government in the conquered area, much as the US had done in Panama. Virtually every Arab state and the majority of the American populace supported the peace settlement, but the Hitlerian offender, the United States, rejected it. The peace settlement was then thrown into the Orwellian “memory hole”, never to be seen again… at least not in acceptable discourse in the countries of the offenders. Further, the offender of international law in many respects in this case is the United States. The United Nations Charter specifically restricts the resort to force except for self-defense and only until the Security Council has acted. Perhaps Saddam was in violation when he invaded Kuwait, though he was also in violation of international law during the years America supported him. However, a unilateral US strike would place America into the category of North Korea and Iran, doing what it wants when it wants. The evidence is clear: Iraq is a chastised and pummeled state, with a weaker military than even the much smaller Kuwait, which attempts to comply with international law as much as possible while retaining the barest semblance of sovereignty. The United States is the “rogue superpower” that transmutes appeasing gestures by other countries into proud rhetoric about the efficacy of violence and then embarks on another farcical “moralistic crusade to end inhumanity”.

Another distinction between the Hitlerian analogy and the Rooseveltian analogy is the commitment of US state authorities to international terrorism and the flaunting of international order and law. Just as Hitler was openly disdainful of the League of Nations and peace proposals, “principled” leaders of state action such as Madeleine Albright have noted that the US will act unilaterally if it must, multilaterally if it can. In other words, regardless of international opinion and law, the US will do what it wants, categorically. Further, official US doctrine has been to endorse and engage in “low intensity warfare”, “counterinsurgency”, or other actions that correspond precisely to terrorism. These methodologies involve brutal violence culled from Nazi archives (gained in the little known “Operation Paperclip”, discussed at greater length later) deployed against those in the population who begin to take a progressive or populist stance. Mildly social-democratic or labor-oriented parties have been brutally slaughtered everywhere from Nicaragua to Grenada to Vietnam to Indonesia. Perhaps in the abstract the point is not quite clear. Here are some examples of counter-insurgency principles:

Strafing fishing boats and hotels, bombing petrochemical facilities, poisoning crops and livestock (Cuba)

Allowing paramilitary forces in client states to leave womyn hung on the side of the road, breasts cut, faces slashed (South American nations)

Funding entire armies of mercenaries to let a populist country stew in it’s own juices and undergo internal collapse (Nicaragua)

Giving tacit support for the destruction of an entire political party, as well as hundreds of thousands of assorted miscreants (Indonesia)

Bombing dikes to allow water to rush out and kill crops (Korea)

Pressuring nations not to send assistance (such as water buffalo or bananas) to targets of the counter-insurgent’s wrath (Vietnam, Nicaragua)

Supporting juntas and coups with atrocious humyn rights records in order to terrorize the populace back into “stability” (Chile, Nicaragua, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Greece)

Prompting the invasion of a country and then giving money to religious fundamentalists to humiliate a hated enemy (Afghanistan)

Utilizing chemical and biological defoliants and “anti-personnel” weapons (Vietnam, Cambodia)

Littering countries with mines and bomblets that remove limbs, cause grievous injury, and prevent ambulances and commercial vehicles from driving through areas (Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan)

These actions continue to be undertaken by the US and its clients. In Indonesia, Sudan, Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, Grenada, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Panama, Columbia, and elsewhere, the price of US imperialism and terror continues to extract a fresh toll. The United States is one of the only countries in the world to have its head of state officially indicted by the International Court of Justice (Bush, after the invasion of Panama) and to have officially flaunted another Court ruling (regarding Nicaragua). It is also one of the most rejectionistic nations inside the UN Security Council and General Assembly. The US ignores resolutions by the UN that Israel must acknowledge Palestinian self-determination, that all nations must stop terrorist activity (issued at the time of the Nicaraguan atrocities), and that nuclear weapons should not be proliferated. The US violates the Chemical Weapons Convention, international law regarding space militarization, and has refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. To compare: Iraq was going to sign onto the CWC before the US attacked the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons; Iraq has signed the Biological Weapons Convention enforcement protocol; Iraq is not in violation of space militarization treaties. The history has a clarity rare in history: The US, like the Nazis, is officially committed to defying international law and elementary morality in order to preserve its power and prestige.

There are some places where the Rooseveltian analogy may make sense, but these areas are even more indicative than the Hitlerian similarities. Saddam Hussein is indeed a murderous monster. He did use chemical weapons upon his own people, and is a brutal dictator who keeps an iron-fisted control over the population. However, these are exactly the qualities that endeared him to US planners and ensured him ecstatic support and funding to deal with the issue of the Iranian popular revolution and other problems. Hitler was also a murderous monster, engaging in actions of repression and genocide. However, the reason why he was able to exist at all was because of the European state’s extortion and robbery of an exhausted Germany through the Versailles Treaty. Further, German and international business and political forces (as indicated in such films as Cabaret) wholeheartedly supported Hitler as a force to fight the Communists. This support continued after the war in the form of Operation Paperclip, which transferred Nazi specialists in terror all over the globe, the least of which was the control of German scientists for usage in post-war rocket projects. Nazi groups were funded and supported in order to crush partisan resistance fighters in former Nazi territories, and such figures as the Butcher of Lyon were taken to South America to teach fledgling dictators and their minions how to suppress populist resistance. In that sense, the death squads supported wholeheartedly by the US in South America are the ideological descendants of those responsible for Nazi death camps. However, in both scenarios, the darling of international power overstepped his boundaries and began doing things that displeased those in power.

Another revealing similarity is the result of the wars upon peace and stability in the area. Numerous historians, Howard Zinn among them, have noted that Hitler’s initial policy towards Jews was one of deportation and removal. Had World War II been delayed, more Jews would have been removed, and would not have been killed. It was only the pressures of the war that began to make Hitler consider the “Final Solution”. Further, the US failed to do a number of things that may have prevented atrocities, including bombing the tracks to Auschwitz and making concessions to get Jews deported from Hungary. The same thing happened during Clinton’s bombing of Kosovo. Contrary to popular belief, the ethnic cleansing and other effects of “Operation Horseshoe” only came after the bombing began, as evidenced by the chief NATO officer denying that the bombing had anything to do with ethnic cleansing. Those who advocate the resort to force against Saddam’s regime must take similar considerations into account. The CIA noted that an attack against Iraq would spark anger in the Middle East and would likely cause a new wave of terrorism to drive the imperial aggressors out. The chaos caused by the destabilization of Saddam’s regime would make the area a ripe fruit for terrorist recruiters, as well as allow terrorists access to weapons previously controlled by the Iraqi government. Further, bombing weapons of mass destruction facilities often leads to their detonation or aeration, causing further innocent casualties and potential damage to US land troops. In general, chaos and violence in Iraq is worse than even slow proliferation, even if that slow proliferation were happening.

Much like Roosevelt’s defiance of his country’s stated calls for non-involvement, the United States and other warmongering countries are ignoring the requests of their people. The calls to war against the Axis powers were unpopular in America for quite some time. The US had had too many of its men die in World War I, though admittedly not as many as Europe had to suffer. US citizens felt that they should leave well enough alone, and that involvement with international affairs was anti-American and dangerous. After all, hadn’t US involvement in World War I caused this Hitler guy to be able to be popular in the first place? It took unremitting propaganda and attacks upon America to spur the populace to action, and the uncritical acceptance of wartime strategies lead to hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost for no reason or even to extend the war. The war against Saddam is similarly unpopular. Over eighty percent of European respondents to polls issued by Time believe that the US is the greatest threat to world peace. Eighty percent of Italians oppose the war even if WMDs are found, as well as seventy-five percent of Spain, sixty-six percent of Czechoslovakia, seventy-five percent of Poland, fifty-three percent of Portugal, forty percent of Britain (ninety percent of British oppose it if is only done by Britain and the US), and ninety percent of Turkey. The leaders of these countries who decide to do the democratic thing and refrain from involvement in the war are attacked by the commissars for daring to follow the will of the people who elected them. Even in the United States, which is unique in that the populace actually fears Saddam, another Time poll indicated that forty two percent of Americans opposed sending ground troops to Iraq to remove Hussein without the approval of the UN, and nineteen percent opposed such an action regardless. Also, fifty seven percent of Americans believe that the UN should make the final decision, and thirty seven percent believe that the President or Congress should (the poll did not specify who approved of which actor). In other words, the majority of Americans consistently oppose the President’s plan to attack regardless of international opinion. Unremarkably, the intellectual classes did not describe this juxtaposition with words that do it justice, and the article did make the comment that “… the country is… being asked to wage a kind of war it has never fought before, one launched against a country that has yet to attack the U.S.” The fact that that claim could be rebutted by an informed 6th grader or any American who remembers anything about the 60s indicates the subservience of Time and the corporate class to government tyranny and violence.

Intellectual classes have, throughout history, made truly stupendous contributions to injustice and death. The US has come a long way from the days when millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians could be terminated without a second thought. The surprising development of intellectual and moral integrity in the 60’s generation did astounding things to intellectual culture worldwide, forcing the state to go underground in it’s dealings. While it may not seem like much of an accomplishment, activism has already proved costly to the interests of those who prey upon injustice. But the control and domination of the elite classes has gone a long way. When a murderous, imperialist war can be defended as “self defense against an aggressor of Hitlerian proportions”, much is left to be done.

PHMT

2005-11-11T01:41:00.000-08:00

Feminist bloggers have developed an acronym, “Patriarchy Hurts Men Too.”, or PHMT. The context typically goes something like this: “Yes, of course men are harmed by patriarchy and sexism in that they cannot properly relate to their spouses and lovers. PHMT.”1 What is patriarchy? How are gender roles formed, and how is gender distinct from sex (or “biological gender”)? How much of the radical feminist focus on patriarchy's impact on women rather than a more flexible construct that notices the parallel impact upon men is necessary and how much is unnecessary “identity politicking?” This paper will attempt to answer these questions.
Clearly, men and women have different reproductive apparatuses. Some genetic difference, as scientists know from biological analysis, is obviously there. Humans may be “weakly dimorphic” (Judith Lorber, “Night To His Day”), but they are in fact dimorphic. However, as Lorber continues to argue, “For human beings there is no essential femaleness and maleness, femininity or masculinity, womanhood, or manhood, but once gender is ascribed, the social order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered norms and expectations. Individuals may vary on many of the components of gender any may shift genders temporarily or permanently, but they must fit into the limited number of gender statuses their society recognizes.” Thinking of gender as similar to other institutions such as the state helps. Of course humans socially organize fairly much independent of culture. But the modern nation-state is a unique cultural artifact distinct from the tribe or even the monarchy. While intrinsic intelligence may lead someone to become a doctor, the meaning of “doctor” (its wages, social prestige, training requirements, etc.) obviously varies across societies. Even the “man”/”woman” dichotomy is not innate: As Lorber continues to describe, “Some societies have three genders-men, women, and berdaches, or hijras, and xaniths.” Even language is impacted by gender norms: As Tannen describes in “You Just Don't Understand”, the way that men and women as well as ethnic and geographic groups perceive interruptions is not innate but quite fluid. A key fact that will return later is Tannen's position that both men and women can be proceeding quite respectably and kindly according to their norms yet make each other unhappy and come into conflict, through no fault of their own but through the way their behavior is being filtered negatively.

What leads to the consistent and historical perpetuation of these norms if there is little or no gender reality? There are an infinite array of mechanisms, but among the most important include kinship structures and the distribution of gender-related labor (such as childrearing, social support, etc.), expectation of behavior and ostracism for those who do not behave, and often wholesale application of violence. Lorber describes the formation of gender hierarchies, “Most societies rank genders according to prestige and power and construct them to be unequal, so that moving from one to another also means moving up or down the social scale. Among some North American Indian cultures, the hierarchy was male men, male women, female men, female women.” Hochschild describes in her work, “The Second Shift”, an intriguing dialectical interaction between economy and gender. The feminist movement managed to gain successes in terms of equal access to jobs, but because of the nuclear family (associated with capitalist institutions) that artificially made the support and childrearing systems concentrated in the household, women ended up on average working a guaranteed 8 additional hours around the house after 8 hours of work, a “second shift” of labor. Of course men would pick up some degree of the slack, but as Hochschild makes clear, this was usually less formal, upon their leisure and far less of an imposition upon their day. Further, the men would reply that they were still the primary breadwinners and thereby had more stress on the economic end, but that is a normative statement that Hochschild shows to cut both ways: women thereby are made artificially dependent, which makes them afraid of the future as well, but also helpless.

Most importantly for the point of the essay: To which gender does the system lean in terms of material benefit, if any? The above Hochschild arguments establish one unfair inequity. Women are far more likely to get Ph. Ds than men yet less likely to get tenure track positions2. The Ferraro and Johnson article, “How Women Experience Battering”, argues convincingly that, aside from the arrangement of psychological difficulties that is lumped together under “battered wife syndrome”, the feeling of social obligation and the lack of economic resources prevents moving out. Men and women of equal “objective” qualifications are perceived as having markedly different skills and abilities (women's successes are domesticated, underplayed, sexualized, etc. and generally made not “the norm” while male outlooks are believed to be the standard by which we judge behavior.)

To what extent does patriarchy hurt men too? A Violence Against Women's piece describes how increasingly women abuse men, either physically or emotionally, in relationships3. The Messner piece, “The Meaning of Success”, describes how the need for identification and recognition by male peers leads many men to highly destructive athletic situations, wherein they damage their bodies and are ironically deprived of the community that they are seeking by the rampant homophobia and competitiveness. Men disproportionately enter into the patriarchal, personally destructive and imperialist military system. The Tannen piece describes how men become artificially estranged from their wives, girlfriends and female acquaintances even in their conversations. Much like women, men constantly are questioning their virility, attractiveness, and fashion sense. Homosexual men are attacked and discriminated against, often forced into unstable heterosexual marriages that produce unhappy children. Being estranged from brothers, fathers, and friends by homophobic pressures and the association of intimacy with female qualities means men lose contact with a vibrant social network that would sustain them.
Gender institutions are not simply occasional bouts of sexism perpetrated by horny men, but are rules and norms that impact every person. Their childhood is contoured because of the way they are placed into gender categories with expectations placed upon those categories despite whatever personal feelings they may have. Their relationship with their parents and the life of those parents is similarly affected. Their sexualization and their intimate lives are assaulted. And men are victims of it too.

Footnotes:
For an example of the usage of PHMT, see “PHMT”, ap://dox.media2.org/castironbalcony/archives/000959.html

For discussion of Ph. D incidences, see Diversity Web's article on the topic http://www.diversityweb.org/diversity_innovations/faculty_staff_development/recruitment_tenure_promotion/faculty_recruitment.cfm . An AP story available at http://emol.org/emclub/?q=femalecollegestudents is another good article.

“Are Heterosexual Men Also Victims Of Intimate Partner Abuse?” Violence Against Women. A compilation of numerous studies. http://www.vawnet.org/DomesticViolence/Research/VAWnetDocs/AR_MaleVictims.php

A Man Is Not A Piece of Fruit

2005-11-11T01:39:00.000-08:00

Arthur Miller was a bona fide Marxist when he wrote Death of a Salesman, and the Marxist sensibility wafts through the air as one read the play. Miller hoped that the play would be a “timebomb underneath capitalism.” But when Mr. Bigsby, in his introduction to the Penguin version of the play, suggests that the political message is not why the play is world famous, he misses the point. Marxism stems directly from a fusion of humanist thought with economics and simplified Hegelian theory. The core of the Kritik upon capitalism comes from capitalism’s inability to utilize humans as anything but cogs. Thus, the book attacks capitalism with the same sensibility it attacks everything else. In short, the book attacks one half of the American dream and the connected values, but reveres the other half.

One of the play’s main virtues that it expounds is the idea of strong interpersonal relationships. Willy fails in the world of capitalism because his opinion of the worth of people and feelings is too strong. In order to get a transfer from Howard, he does not do what the alienated capitalist sentinel, i.e. describe his qualifications, ability to work hard, value as a worker, age, etc. Instead, he conjures personal memories: “promises were made across this desk”, “I named him Howard”, “a man is not a piece of fruit”. The value he holds as a non-productive member of the society is equal only to his worth as a high-quality widget. Thus, Howard gives Willy the boot. The theme of strong interpersonal relationships is most eloquently presented at the Loman house. Biff and Happy vie for Dad’s attention; Linda adores her husband and endures his quicksilver machinations through thick and thin. Willy has a strong personal magnetism that would have led to success, if only he had understood the farce he had to play in the system. Miller clearly presents the love and caring the household as positive. Here, Willy’s failure is only a lack of understanding about his game. The clear villains that acts as the sin to this virtue is Howard, the unfeeling, parasitic bourgeois, to use the terminology.

The play also attacks success, as defined by the world of mammon, but celebrates hope. Marx advocates a utopian realm where all objects and production would be communal. For a Marxist to dispense of hope would be counterproductive. Here, however, all but one character in the capitalist fantasy. Willy, Happy and Linda all demonstrate the unquenchable human emotion of hope, but they do so in terms of material items. To Linda, freedom is being free of debts. To Happy, the only dream one man can have is to scrabble and push his way to the top of the heap of while kicking others in the neck. Willy is paralyzed by a hope for the future based upon how “liked” he is, upon wild gimmicks and propositions, upon having family members return from the grave. When he realizes his future holds no hope for him, he turns inward, to fantasies of the past, where the sun is shining and Biff can still make it and the car is bright and red and Ben can still come back. Only Biff redefines what he is hoping for. Biff hopes to work with his hands, to taste the sun and the breeze, to play games with his brother. By abandoning the world of mammon and returning to a simpler life, Biff stays true to the real spirit of his father.
The play celebrates exploration of the self, but not at the cost of inaction or exploration of oneself in a material sense. In the end, only Biff says, “I know who I am.” The unreality of the play comes to a head at this point. Biff repeats the mantras of “knowing myself”, “talking the truth in this family”, throughout the entire play. No other character gives a glancing comment. The remarks he has made are too spiritual to fit those dogmatized by the religion of money. Biff says that Willy didn’t know what he was because he let himself be defined by his job, not by his person or his activities; he became the mask. Happy, Linda, Charley, and Willy all talk about debts, about money, about being the biggest man, and Biff becomes a man with an incisive scalpel and no patients. Biff wants to change himself, to humble himself, to work with his hands and his soul. Willy, Linda and Happy see all personal attributes (success, freedom, friendship, happiness) as being defined by some kind of widget.

The play walks a fine line between dichotomies of seemingly identical traits by magnifying the sick tissue of the malignant trait and showing the cancer at an exaggerated size. The American dream does expound personal awareness and interdependence; hard work and charity; strong community and an eye for the future; personal development and potential. But the spirit of the pioneer was somehow trapped in a suit, disarmed and shaved, and turned into a salesman. Biff wants to go back to the frontier, to celebrate the ephemeral aspects of the American life possible only away from Western civilization. Willy, Happy and Linda are all pioneers trapped as city-slickers, celebrating the capitalist corruption of their ideals, blinded by dogma so they cannot see their captivity. Only Biff celebrates the natural form of each of the values, without capitalist subversion.

And I Thought Scrivener Meant Scrooge

2005-11-11T01:37:00.000-08:00

“I would prefer not to.” Such a seemingly powerless phrase; it is wishy-washy, indicating a dislike for something but not such an overwhelming dislike that one would not do the task if it was required. So why is this turn of words so powerfully potent when coming from Bartleby the Scrivener in Melville's short story of the same name?

Entire books have been written on the topic of Melville's likely personal outlook based on his stories and his personal writings. He has been called a racist, a radical leftist and a cultural imperialist. But it seems, as with books like Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival, that the academic consensus has shifted to understanding Melville in less ad hom terms and more in terms of his actual writing. From this broadened history, it becomes fairly clear that Melville harbored an anti-capitalist sentimentality, if not an explicit commitment.

It is key to understand that Bartleby is not an underskilled bum. At the end, the lawyer discovers that, “...Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a change in administration.” Melville may even be criticizing bureaucracy here with the description of the suddenness of change in his life. Bartleby then moved on to work for a prestigious Wall Street law firm, and it is clear that the lawyer views Bartleby as somewhat indispensable in terms of skill; after all, expert copyists and manuscripters are somewhat difficult to find. He is clearly skillful and intelligent, yet something in him has rejected the situations he is put into.

Classic libertarian thought, from Humboldt to Rousseau, is well known for having opposed the state and the church. But, as Chomsky has pointed out repeatedly, the Enlightenment sensibility has a positive commitment, not merely negative adversaries. The positive commitment is to a concept of human creative freedom, of the natural desire of every person to achieve a fuller understanding of their skills through work and thought outside of the framework of coercive power. It is relatively clear, then, that Enlightenment thought should at least have anti-capitalist tendencies if not be stridently anti-capitalist, which is why the early Marx echoes the Enlightenment tradition when he discusses the effect of the commodity character of labor. “Wage slavery” was commonly discussed as being parallel to chattel slavery, as both make people slaves to others who own the productive means; the only difference being that chattel slaves are supported and taken care of but cannot choose their master, while wage slaves are left to their own devices but can choose their master if they can beg and cajole a job. Dinesh D'Souza, a conservative luminary, has pointed out something known by historians: that slaves were so expensive that slaveowners were loath to have them be killed or damaged without need, so they would try to get “some paddy from Boston” to do dangerous and deadly work, a good example of the truly disgusting nature of commodity labor. Slave owners even defended their slavery because they would take care of their workers, whereas the Northern capitalists would horrendously mistreat them.

Bartleby has decided that he will not be made into a productive machine for someone else's desires. It is key to note that he never says “No.” His activity is not revolutionary in the sense that it is actively opposed to institutions and seeks an alternative, but it does have a revolutionary tint of a non-confrontrational type. Some people have interpreted Jesus' comments on “Give your last robe” and “Turn the other cheek” as not being simple pacifism but rather being a type of resistance. Loaners in those days would take away everything but a robe, so the debtor was encouraged by Jesus to give the robe as well, to go an extra mile to show the disgusting nature of the system for what it is. When Bartleby tells his employer, “I would prefer not to do any of the things you're offering me. I'd like to work for you, but if you're my boss, you should tell me what to do.”, he exposes the class relation for what it is. His boss has a moral sense, but he prefers to be able to have his employees actively leap to his commands. Bartleby's comment is a challenge for him to drop the pretense and give Bartleby a task to actually do, instead of beat around the bush.

Bartleby's usage of the concept of preference is also revolutionary because it induces the idea of very human desires back into the workplace. Capitalism, in the end, is an anti-human institution: it views people and processes as reductive singularities, and people in particular as atoms of consumption and production, all fighting each other tooth and nail to extract as much from the market as they can. Bartleby's act introduces back the idea of something beyond simply working for money, the concept that the lawyer seems to show. Bartleby hearkens back to an idea of work being about spontaneous and creative fulfillment, and he thus seems inscrutable to the rest of his co-workers who are focused on the money they will get. To him, the intangibles of life, such as liberty, are more important than money.

Bartleby never says “No”, and he never demands to be paid. He instead honestly says that he hates every job that could be offered him, but he has no problem with doing any of them if he is but told to. He takes a gamble and wins it. As compared to Peter Gibbons from Office Space, he is at once more and less plausible. He is more plausible because his promotion comes from the lawyer's desire to appeal and be humanitarian, but he is less plausible because Peter's promotions come from his sincere statement of a need for an incentive to work in the office that the capitalist can understand.

The unfortunate part of Bartleby's insurrection is that it is ultimately a failed one: he dies because of his commitment. And this is where Office Space and Bartleby the Scrivener have parallel endings. Office Space ends with a failed insurrection, with the virus failing to accumulate the necessary money, and a lucky escape from the authorities. Peter finds happiness within the framework of the current system, doing physical labor and feeling empowered by it. Bartleby dies because he cannot find such satisfaction. Both fail, because both are operating against massive institutions: markets, corporations, the commodity structure of labor, etc. The answer is key: For those who identify, as I do, with Peter and with Bartleby, even if I may disagree with them on some issues, there must be a revolutionary movement that changes those unjust and dignity-destroying institutions, a movement that allows the means of production to be shared democratically among the workers. This is a matter of critiques as varied as libertarian municipalism, centrally planned state socialism, green bio-regionaliam, primitivism, and my personal advocacy, parecon. Without movements principally committed to a change in structures, people like Peter and Bartleby are likely doomed to failure, acquiesence or hermitage.

Parecon: A Ration Economy

2005-11-07T02:15:00.000-08:00

Is parecon a ration economy? This allegation has been raised in discussion.

Does this mean that sometimes people won't be able to get what they want? Of course. Every economy does this. If I were to try to buy a million bottles of cold medicine at my local pharmacy, I probably wouldn't have enough money or storage space, they wouldn't have enough cold medicine, and certain laws against methamphetamine production would prevent me from doing so. Economies thereby restrict access to shared resources through "prices" or pre-set allocation limits per unit or similar (the latter of which is called "rationing"). The way someone gets money to purchase things vary. At smaller levels, things can be more flexible, of course, but with more complex resources there tends to be a need to formalize access.

Does this mean that certain rarer objects may be distributed by lottery or rationing to each household? Yes, but this strikes me as an advantage. Why should the first person on the scene or the wealthiest person have the most access to a rare resource? After all, the bastion of "free markets", the United States, chose rationing in WWII.

Does this mean that if a local store had too much supply it would still deny it to people based on "the plan"? Of course not. The local worker's council and consumer's council have the latitude in that regard to distribute. Anyone who has read Steinbeck, on the other hand, knows that markets offer an incentive to deny excess production (oranges) even when that production is perishable because they don't want to encourage giveaways.

A parecon sets prices and wages according to a participatory planning process that has different methods for determining inputs and outputs than a market society as well as different actors, but it's not a "ration economy" any more than a market society is. It can use what is commonly accepted as rationing for some goods, of course, but it does so quite naturally and normally. The rebuttal is that black markets form, but that difficulty was faced by the US and largely surmounted, and I think that shows up the problem of markets, not their success: they form at least as often to allow some to break the fairly determined rules of society and trump other people's decisions.

I would hope that parecons would allow as much "unplanned" consumption as possible and as much free traffic as possible. But I believe history and institutional analysis of markets tell us that in fact they do not offer freedom, convenience, equity or fairness.

Emma Brockes, Retract Your Interview With Professor Chomsky

2005-11-06T17:24:00.000-08:00

Note: This is a letter to the Guardian, who ran possibly the worst interview I've ever seen, supposedly with one of my heroes, Professor Noam Chomsky. http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,1605276,00.html has the original "interview", really Ms. Emma Brockes mercilessly beating up a straw man. David Peterson's new blog post http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/entry/chomsky/ has resources.

Emma Brockes has violated the first rule of any interview: She has allowed her political opinions to eclipse the interview itself. Though she was ostensibly interviewing Professor Chomsky because of Chomsky's status as number one rated intellectual in an Internet poll, the piece is really a thinly veiled slander creed.

How blatant can it get? How about when Ms. Brockes quoted Chomsky's theory of media and then said, as if we were reading an article about an interview with Chomsky to hear the unsubstantiated driveby opinions of the interviewer, "I would argue individual agency overrides this..."? Do you imagine, Ms. Brockes, that Professor Chomsky never had this allegation lodged against him, that his and Edward Herman's model had never been prepared in the case that perhaps some young turk would ask the transparently obvious question? Throughout, we get a distinct impression that Brockes' intellectual caliber is superior to Chomsky's. Is the piece really just an attempt to prove her cutting wit as opposed to Chomsky's slow, plodding speech?

It is worthwhile given this article to note how the propaganda model would rebut Ms. Brockes' allegation. Of course, a propaganda model proponent argues, that each individual reporter has the ethical and intellectual responsibility to report the truth, which would be a good argument for Brockes' immediate resignation. But the "individual agency" of advertisers, publishers and editors matters quite a bit more than the same agency of reporters, such that reporters either learn to write what is wanted or are fired. Articles are filtered through a long, extensive, and sometimes quite subtle process from reporter to end-viewer to create a picture of the world that, while sometimes narrowly accurate, is favorable to powerful constituencies. Ms. Brockes' piece is in fact a proof of the second-order predictions of the model, which is that any critique of such a system will be answered with slime by the system's components, even ostensibly liberal ones such as the Guardian.

The critique of Brockes' letter has discussed how her allegation that Chomsky puts the word 'massacre' in quotes when discussing Srebrenica is blatantly false and plenty of evidence to prove the contrary is available. It is just worth noting that Chomsky's position is not that massacres didn't occur, but that those atrocities, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes not, were used as justifications for further NATO involvement (despite the fact that that NATO involvement rarely helped and, as Chomsky relentless documented with sources including Wesley Clark and the OSCE) and were further far overplayed in contrast to the crimes going on in Timor and Turkey, crimes that liberal newspapers like the Guardian could have done much good by reporting about.

And her allegation that Chomsky is a hypocrite is just another example of Brockes' apparent belief that her eminently unoriginal smears are brilliant examples of a superior mind. For one thing, it is an ad hominem (imagine a teenager such as myself having to educate a reporter for the Guardian on basic logic! Perhaps I deserve to snidely interview world-class intellectuals? I have some great questions for that apologist for war criminals, Chris Hitchens); Chomsky may be a hypocrite and also right. But, as Brockes' did not even attempt to rebut, Chomsky's point is that only complete extrication from the "system" of capitalism and imperialism, which also reduces one's potential impact on such a system to near zero, can possibly mean one is not impacted by proverbial "blood money". In fact, Chomsky had loudly declared that he feels personal responsibility (a mantra that an eighth grader confronted with Chomsky's work could discover is repeated ad infinitum by the Professor over several decades) for what his country does and does not feel his hands are clean in the slightest, which is why he fights selflessly for justice instead of being quiet like many intellectuals Brockes seems to prefer (including the arch-criminal Sharon, who Brockes put on kiddy gloves with; Ms. Brockes, do you only treat those with an army behind them and the support of American intellectuals with respect?), enduring interviews that take his comments out of context and seek to slander him in intellectual circles as an apologist for crimes. Because he feels that he is responsible for the predictable consequences of his actions and for what his community and his nation does, he tirelessly offers a substantive and informed critique of his own country instead of summoning up the utter lack of courage necessary to write about how horrible Serbs or Sunnis are.

The Guardian owes Professor Chomsky and its readers an apology as well as a full, unedited transcript of the original interview and critical debate about Chomsky's position. They cannot ever fully eliminate the slander they have perpetrated, but perhaps they can serve to shove it into the Memory Hole instead of Chomsky's work.

-Frederic Christie
University of California, Davis

Anime Rule #13

2005-11-06T01:53:00.000-08:00

Always make your main character as uninteresting and obnoxious as possible. That way, when s/he becomes tolerable, you can argue that the character has compellingly grow.

Cigarettes, Parecon and Externality

2005-10-29T00:18:00.000-07:00

In discussions with comrades on Z Mag's blog comments, blogs.zmag.org, some errors have come up. Bwong, an otherwise progressive and intelligent individual, even claimed that externalities have to do with any complex system. But that's simply false. Under market systems (and, of course, central planning, tribal, etc. systems have also destroyed ecologies), one not only acts in destructive ways out of ignorance, but is even given incentives to do so when one knows perfectly well. To get more concrete, here's an example:

Take the cigarette worker's council in a theoretical American parecon circa 1950. This worker's council begins to discover evidence that their products cause cancer. None of them have any incentive to lie about this fact, as their personal incomes are not tied to net cigarette sales. It is highly unlikely that a parecon would ban cigarettes after such a revelation, and would indeed violate civil rights and thus would be checked by any competent judiciary. But even if it were, it is unimaginable that the cigarette council workers would be so specialized that, either after a reasonable period of training that costs them nothing or no training at all given the general utility of most of their skills, they could not be rehabilitated to work. If they could not, they would be taken care of by society. Further, the scientists council, likely the ones doing the epidemiology, will presumably demand frequent reports and papers from their scientists, so a scientist working for the cigarette council would have little reason to lie, both due to the lack of bribery ability of the worker's council in question and the obvious concerns over reputation and getting paid. And since the whole process is far more transparent, with the "worker bees" having far more say and information (indeed, there are no "worker bees" to contrast against "queen bees"), each individual potential whistleblower has far more impact. And the consumer's council in question can always launch investigations pending complaints, yes, with a law enforcement council of civil servants, and encounter far fewer obstacles of transparency. And those who are externalized upon, whether it be from global warming or similar, have not only judicial redress but also direct economic redress, and since political power is not connected to money as a matter of course, they have as much political say and capacity. Under capitalism, the opposite is true in almost every respect. Cigarette companies squashed data, then when it became too difficult to squash they hired mercenary scientists (who could be doing good work) to defend their interests, put legislators and health industries into their pockets, launched suits against scientists and newspapers who dared to differ, and began a trend of "junk science" questioning of anti-corporate science leading to USSR-like questioning of real science.

Now, the above remains true even if corporations are gone, as managers are still around to muddle the waters of transparency, the workers' success is still linked to sales, scientists and regulatory agencies can still be bought, etc. etc. etc.

Public and Private Ethics

2005-10-27T16:27:00.000-07:00

There has been some confusion in conversations with others about my distinction between rights and ethics: that I determine that, while abortion begs some ethical questions, it should be legal. What makes me say this seemingly unintuitive conclusion?

I propose that privately we behave with compassion, selflessly, helping others, etc. But that is my parochial outlook. There are many others who could believe quite differently and nonetheless not be doing anything wrong, having the right to behave as they wish. So I distinguish between a public ethic, codified in rights, and a private ethic.The two, of course, do get intermingled, as should all complex things. Murder is both unethical (in my view) and a violation of the right to life. But theft is more complex, because I personally don't feel people should take other people's things, but I can definitely see situations in which it'd be justified. A capitalist who believes in the right to property and I will sharply disagree on the public side even if we can see similar ethical facts on the private side.

Take the abortion issue. The abortion issue SHOULD be a hot topic. I think quite a few people, even the feminists towards whose side I lean very much, are very much too cavalier about the rights/ethics conflicts. That's precisely why I don't think there should be a ban. When a society, particularly one filled with elitism/statism, sexism, racism, etc. bans something, it means that that question cannot be settled publicly. The behavior goes underground, often becoming more dangerous and spawning other crime. If the matter is complex enough, having the issue in the open is vital. Just an example: Let's say that we make abortion the same as murder one. Who do you imagine will escape prosecution: Rich women with the resources to hire “discrete” doctors and to afford legal fees? Or poorer women without those abilities?

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't be having the conversation somewhere. Indeed, we should, and on physician assisted suicide and drug use and all the other controversies. I think most people can see that allowing something societally doesn't make it right, and that to pretend that a lack of societal PROSCRIPTION is a PRESCRIPTION is silly and not taking personal accountability. There must be a few playing rules for that shared space, what I call “first-order” or political rules. But then there are things we do publicly that are nonetheless not going to be policy: publicly decry abortion or physician assisted suicide. Those are “second-order” or cultural rules, defended by first-order constitutional guarantees of rights. And the last are “third-order” or private rules.

The problem with a state is that everyone feels they must rush towards it in self-defense, either to put into place a ban or to prevent it.

The public ethic should be the right to influence decisions insofar as one is impacted. That includes rights to free speech, assembly, petition (though that means something different under direct democracy), self-management of one's labor, for privacy and against certain actions by law enforcement, etc.

My private ethic is found in the Buddhst tradition, but heavily modified by the public ethic, as one can probably tell.

I have a post coming up on an overview of anarchist perspectives on a variety of topics, but the one I'll preview here is anarchist ethics. Many people view freedom and ethics as somehow in conflict: we grudgingly allow freedom, but we recognize that that will increase unethical behavior. While narrowly accurate, I think this has the situation backwards.

Freedom and ethics are not in conflict: they are two sides of the same coin. As Immanuel Kant (a 19th century German philosopher of unbelievable importance) points out, "Ought implies can". If we were rocks, our "actions" could have no ethical character. He also points out that the maturity for freedom is only arrived at by having freedom. The way we become ethical actors in a truly honest way is through freedom. If being mean to other people kills us, or if we are kind because Santa will shower us with gifts, we aren't being honestly ethical. This isn't to say that, in practice, ethical behavior carries rewards: of course it does. But that shouldn't be why someone behaves in a right way.

The Prince and I

2005-10-26T22:04:00.001-07:00

Foreword: This essay may make it seem that I applaud Paul's letter to the Romans. I juxtaposed the two rather favorably to show up Machiavelli's failings, but certain quotes in Romans are as statist as you can find. In fact, I considered writing an essay that discussed Machiavelli's sole

Throughout history, humans have arranged themselves in societies ranging from tribes to city-states to feudal kingdoms to nation-states. From the relatively democratic tribal councils to the less democratic Greek city-states onto monarchy and empire, it appeared that societies became more authoritarian as they grew larger and more complex. Soon, to paraphrase St. Augustine's pirate, thieves molesting the oceans in small boats were called pirates and emperors molesting the oceans with large navies were spoken of as great men. In this environment, using the heuristic of circumcision, Paul joined many religious figures arguing that the world of flesh and empire was superseded by the world of spirit and common mankind. Paul's sentiment created a church supposedly at odds with temporal power. In the Renaissance, Machiavelli argued for an opposite sentiment, elevating the temporal above the spiritual. The war between Paul and Machiavelli is a war between an ethic that seeks to make the polity its servant and an ethic that makes the state the highest good. Irrespective of whether or not one views rights or ethics as the fundamental political goal, both outlooks at their core demand a revolutionary new polity that exists only insofar as it can propel these needs, different from all forms throughout history. One's particular spirituality is also largely irrelevant, as no consistent spiritual development is consistent with hierarchical and callous power, which inevitably follows Machiavelli's path rather than Paul's. Politics should be concerned wth the practical, spiritual and ethical development of every human being as well as their involvement in decisions insofar as they are impacted; it should not be concerned with aggrandizing elites or developing a cult of nationality, and to avoid this requires a break with the nation-state.

Machiavelli is explicitly statist in The Prince. Chapter I even denies the concept of anything beyond “either Republics or Princedoms” (Dover Thrift Edition of The Prince, page 1). It is hard to describe Viking or Native American societies as either Republic or Princedom, but irrespective, Machiavelli makes no argument as to why that which has not been seen in the past cannot exist today. After all, Machiavelli argues for a united Italy in Chapter XXVI (pages 68-70), something that had not been achieved since Rome and is different in conception from the Roman Empire. Chapter XXVI also demonstrates Machiavelli's commitment to a unified nation-state, which (by definition) must be either Republic or Princedom. In Chapter VI, Machiavelli argues, “They who come to the Princedom, as these did, by virtuous paths, acquire with difficulty, but keep with ease. The difficulties which they have in acquiring arise mainly from the new laws and institutions that they are forced to introduce in founding and securing their government.” (page 13). In short, they are “forc[ed]” to establish new laws to crush those who happen to think that a prince taking what he wants with violence should not be rewarded with obedience. “Securi[ty]” must be established to preserve the rule obtained by “virt[ue].” It seems to slip Machiavelli's mind that any conqueror will claim to have arrived at his success through “virtue”, and that such a conqueror may have interests beyond “security” when he creates institutions to aggrandize him. Machiavelli masterfully obscures the cynicism of this sentiment by combining Moses, Romulus et al, despite each's almost qualitatively different circumstances, into a seamless mold of Princes who are “virtuous”. Thus Romulus, who murdered his own brother, and Moses, who liberated his people from slavery, are made into moral equivalents. For Machiavelli, what matters is power and success.

To give Machiavelli the benefit of the doubt, he appears to have a reason beyond simple power-worship to propose any crime in service of the State. He even admits that not all Princes are equal; Chapter VIII acknowledges that Princes can come to power through “crimes” (pg. 20). However, he gives the game up in the first paragraph; “...a man may also rise to be a Prince in one or other of two ways, neither of which can be referred wholly either to merit or fortune”. But Machiavelli's description of “merit” is precisely the willingness to commit crimes, at least as the word “crime” is normally understood. He also seems to consider it just that some may rise to power based on no “merit” of their own but simple “fortune” (“fortune” such as being born with the Princedom, as he discusses in Chapter II, which even under his twisted ethic has no bearing on merit of any kind). The two ways he speaks of are “paths of wickedness and crime” and “becom[ing] ruler of [a] country by the favour of [one's] fellow citizens”. His description of “crime” in the case of Agathocles (pg. 21) is “to slaughter fellow-citizens”, which implies that human worth is connected not to humanity but due to membership in some arbitrary nationality. More importantly, did not Moses also slaughter his own “fellow-citizens”? Machiavelli seems to find some distinction between Agathocles and Moses in merit, yet this speaks more of the positive associations of any Biblical character and the malleability of Machiavelli's doctrine to state power than to the reasoning involved.

Machiavelli makes an astounding revelation later in the chapter (pg.23): Cruelty may be “well” or “ill” employed, with the only criterion to decide being the effectiveness of the cruelty. And what of the second path? Princes who secure the favour of the “people” must reconcile them to the fact that, “A Princedom is created either by the people or by the nobles...” A world without nobles is beyond Machiavelli's imagination. Luckily, Machiavelli does imply that “the aim of the people [is] more honourable than that of the nobles, the latter seeking to oppress, the former not to be oppressed”. However, such a Prince arrives at a dilemma: “And in times of peril it is too late for a Prince to assume to himself an absolute authority, for the citizens and the subjects who are accustomed to take their orders from the magistrates, will not when dangers threaten take them from the Prince...” Why does such a citizenry need a Prince? Why do they even need magistrates? Why does the Prince necessarily need to consolidate his rule, even during times of strife? Answers are not forthcoming.

It appears Machiavelli has a few values to which he puts his crass utilities. The first is a concept of “greatness”. In Chapter XVI, Machiavelli posits, “In our own days we have seen no Princes accomplish great results save those who have been accounted miserly.” (page 41). Apparently generousity and kindness is not greatness in and of itself; great things are “enterprises” such as what the contemporary King of Spain embarks on (p. 42). He does argue in this chapter that all liberal princes must tax, but he ignores the very concept of taxation: to have a centralized authority invest in things worth more over time. Of course, this liberality is not a problem when acquiring power or when dispensing with “the property of others”. The implication, of course, is that the Prince owns everything in his domain and has the right to take away that which is outside of it. Other than mentions of “greatness”, he offers no reasons why the Prince is needed. However, the greatest hint is in XXVI. There, he begs for a Prince (particularly he who Machiavelli is writing to) to unite Italy. Thus, for Machiavelli, all of the conquering and domination is justified by the continued stable existence of the State.

Machiavelli's fundamental flaw of both reasoning and ethics has to do with a naivete of the true operations of power. There are roughly three symptoms of this consistent mistake. First, Machiavelli assumes that the state is the only means to accomplish what he desires: some kind of unity and security. Yet Machiavelli offers precisely one paragraph describing why he assumes this, and the paragraph has to do with his impression of history, which is a patent irrelevancy.

One can imagine a polity with multiple levels of governance, thus satisfying the people's legitimate urges for self-government while allowing them to unify for the common good. One can also imagine such a polity where the binding “glue” is not a Nation defined by borders and common identity (a fundamentally exclusive identity) or a State defined by hierarchy and coercion, but a different form described by Bakunin, Proudhon, Rocker, and others defined by voluntary interaction and participatory self-management. Such a polity can at least in theory accomplish “greatness”, stability and the common good; indeed, much more effectively.
Second, Machiavelli assumes that there will be no cost to such a state. But the fact is that there is no plausible argument that the Prince will always rule out of even enlightened self-interest, especially since there is every incentive for him for aggrandize himself with more power and wealth and virtually no check upon him doing so. Machiavelli even admits that it is highly unlikely that any Prince will have the good qualities that a reasonable person would desire in a leader; thus, he says, “It is not essential... that a Prince should have all the good qualities which i have enumerated... [but] he should seem to have them.” (p. 46). (Obviously, even a totally enlightened Prince is a fundamentally wrong category because it denies the rights of individuals to influence decisions that affect them, but Machiavelli has assumed those away). A foolish, greedy, callous, insane or vile leader is beyond Machiavelli's conception, yet any one of these cases destroys the Prince's necessity. His state also represses individuals and minorities, who inevitably will let hate and anger fester until the society unravels by violence; creates national identities that establish possibilities for war and genocide (after all, Hitler's extermination of the Jews was because they supposedly stained the German body politic); requires entire classes of commissars, apologists and mercenaries to maintain, all of whom create hierarchy and disorder; and exists in the long term by constructing threats and repressing the citizenry. At the bottom, this state serves the elites of its society, whom the Prince is ultimately beholden to; Machiavelli's own descriptions of failed rulers makes this much clear. These elites do not have security or stability as primary interests

Third, Machiavelli assumes a mean and crass human nature, yet describes no possible explanation for how people got that way, thus replicating the error he critiques in others of assuming that people behave in any particular fashion (whether good or bad). For Machiavelli, men are “dishonest” and “do not keep faith”. Putting aside the obvious ethical argument of universality that what is wrong in others is equally wrong in oneself, Machiavelli's proposed solution is thus to have one “wise” person (of course, the idea that the type of wisdom required to brutally gain power is not the same type required to rule effectively is one he does not bother to explain) who is encouraged, indeed required, to have all of these properties and more. It seems rather more logical to create a state where people are encouraged to be good and where being bad is very difficult, but Machiavelli objects for reasons that remain nebulous.

Paul, on the other hand, supports no special rules for Princes or magistrates. In Romans 2:3, Paul asks, “Do you suppose, O man, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God?” To Paul, one's status as judge does not obviate the crime one iota; that which is wrong is universally wrong. Further, ethics and blessings do not belong to any one group; “There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek... For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law... When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law” (Romans 2:9-14). To Paul, Jews are “instructed in the law” (Romans 18), but this does not grant them any special privileges, because that is merely hearing, not complying, with the law (“law” here meaning ethics, not the law of the state). Indeed, such individuals acquire unique responsibilities; they must be a “light to those who are in the darkness” (Romans 2:19). Compliance with the law of circumcision is only useful if one complies with the broader law of ethics (Romans 2:25). This law acquires an oddly temporal character, in that ethics are deemed to reside in living beings; thus, in Romans 7: 1-3, Paul offers the example of a woman whose husband dies who “lives with another man”, and says she is not an adulteress.

Paul admittedly may fall in an ambiguous sense. Romans 13 begins with, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” But there is a hidden implication: Those in authority owe allegiance to God; they do not rule by virtue of power or innate right. He also says, “Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenu is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due”. One must compensate for the fact that Paul was writing under a powerful empire that persecuted his sect. The hidden implication is that a just society in line with God's law (ethics) should be complied with, but one that is not worthy of respect is owed none. Paul goes on to say in Romans 14:13, “Then let us no more pass judmgnet on one another, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother”. Paul seems to argue that people should live and let live; not impede other's spiritual development... in short, a nascent anti-statism.

When applying these insights to politics, a few things must be altered. The rightness of the society, based on the notion that ethics accrue to living creatures and that men should place no impediments to each other, is distinct from the rightness of the spirit. Paul may seem to imply a theology, but a theology would explicitly be an institution that judges, and thus would be vulnerable to hypocrisy and oppression. They key to derive from Paul is that a society that is right deserves involvement from its citizens and that such a society should be based on tolerance and freedom, but should not eschew ethical considerations. The modern formulation is that of rights. While this may seem to imply secular humanism, it does not necessitate it whatsoever. Paul states in Romans 14:6, “He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord...” In short, mundane actions that seem non-spiritual on the surface can be spiritual at the base of it. The point of individual rights is to acknowledge that there is something sacred to one's free actions and that those rights reside in every human being by virtue of existence, and that to challenge them is fundamentally to judge and to impede in violation of God's law. These rights are not designed to make atomistic individuals, but precisely to facilitate full and free interaction between people in safe and tolerant forums leading to all sorts of new and sacred acts.

What, then, would Paul's vision bring? A world without borders that divides human beings into antagonistic clans, no matter how well disguised. A world where an injury to one is perceived as an injury to all. A world with concrete economic, political, cultural and gender institutions that promote happiness, spiritual development, and the free development of all forms of spontaneous interaction. Machiavelli posits that such a world is impossible with the meanness of humankind, yet he has the problem precisely backwards, for it is the world of Princes and authoritarian institutions that reward what innate greed and violence is there and that make cooperation not a normal fact encouraged by the society but an extraordinary feat that requires constant war with the society. It is Princes who make “men” bad, not men who require Princes be bad. In any respect, even if “men” are bad, by Machiavelli's logic they are not bad enough to continue in evil even when the government prevents such actions. All Paul's vision requires is that there be no Prince who is allowed to commit the evil.

Princes must by their nature “judge”; they must by their nature not “respect” those to whom respect is due; they are concerned with their power and the existence of their state and not the power and existence of God; they intrinsically put “stumbling blocks” in the way of their fellow human beings. In short, though there is a nascent statism to Paul's letter to the Romans, it is a statism entirely at odds with Machiavelli's crass utilitarianism. Even if one sheds the concept of Princes, the very notion of a nation-state that judges some to be privy and others not and that draws lines upon the world that God created is antithetical to Paul.

It is essential to note that one need not believe in the Judeo-Christian God or indeed any God to identify with Paul's sentiments. One can take his tack and complete the ambiguity of “law” and “ethic” that undercuts Romans and simply speak of “law”, not “law” generated by elites seeking to maximize their power and wealth in whatever forms the polity encourages but rather “law” that resides in the rights of individuals arrived at in voluntary congress that allows rights conflicts to be resolved and people to fully influence decisions that affect them. A libertarian society would want “law” of some form, if only because having predictable norms is essential for the proper working of a society. The key is that the law is arrived at with the participation of all impacted, that the law is subject to change and scrutiny, and that the law does not become an independent organism that takes on sanctimonious robes but is always a tool. In short, one can be a secular humanist (thus saying that one particular religious ethic, or any religious ethic, should not enter into politics) and not thereby conclude that politics thereby become vapid subservience to violence (in a positive formulation, that politics include a secular ethic grounded in the rights of humans as temporal, not spiritual, creatures). One can even note that many oppressors throughout history have said words similar to Paul and that Paul's own Catholic Church precisely judged and impeded and still nod to the sentiments in Romans. Surely, such sentiments at least contain some notion of an ethic and an obligation of the “rulers” if such a category must even exist, whereas Machiavelli is simply a crass justification for any crime committed by the state because it is committed by the state, in the worst form of circular logic.
Machiavelli ironically provides one justification for an alternative polity. In Chapter XXV, he argues that, “...no man is found so prudent as to know how to adapt himself to these changes [changes created by Fortune], both because he cannot deviatre from the course to which nature inclines him, and becausem having always priospered while adhering to one path, he cannot be persuaded that it would be well for him to forsake it” (pg.67). He then goes onto argue that the most successful Princes are those who can adapt to changing circumstances. Yet one of the arguments for democracy is precisely that democracy, even if taking longer (and Machiavelli in this sense makes no mention of limited time or the necessity for decisive decision-making), incorporates more viewpoints and has more time for deliberation, precisely leading to more complex and flexible policy-making. A truly federated, democratic polity with complex decision-making procedures and paradigms could be more flexible than any one woman, who will always be constrained by her parochialisms.

Such an alternative polity (featured most prominently in the anarchist literature, but developed by and proposed by utopians and revolutionaries of all ilks throughout history) would facilitate both Paul's and Machiavelli's vision. Through federation, it would govern more effectively, having more actors at more levels capable of evaluating circumstances and making democratic decisions. It would endure longer because it would be more flexible in meeting the demands of the people; indeed, it would be the demands of the people incarnated. It would honor people both as “Jews” and “Greeks” (categories that Paul does not scorn unless they are used to provide excuses for judgment) and as people, allowing minorities say in their own affairs and cooperation with broader constituents. Indeed, it would alter identities in a truly revolutionary fashion; one could be cosmopolitan, regional, parochial and local all without skipping a beat. It would be more stable and more creative in responding to the exigencies of Fortune. It would not “judge”; its existence would be predicated on the concept that actions should only be prevented if they impeded the rights of others in a worse manner. Not only would it not allow Princes, magistrates, advisors, flunkies, criminals, and maniacs to impede people, it would precisely create the material conditions under which true freedom would be possible.

Depleted Uranium: Radiological Genocide

2005-10-26T22:02:00.000-07:00

Gulf War Syndrome attracted some attention after the Gulf War. It was a set of mysterious, unexplained and rather nebulous illnesses, including dizziness, memory problems, fatigue, loss of muscle control, and similar. The symptoms were wide-ranging but disproportionately affected Desert Storm veterans. Captain Joyce Riley alleges that the United States provided biological weapons to Saddam who in turn used them on American troops. Other explanations have included chemical agents. But very little attention has been put on a disease that affected both American veterans and Iraq civilians: depleted uranium leakage.

Depleted uranium (hereafter known as DU) is used in combat because of its incredible density. It is a “tank-killer” or armorpiercing (AP) munition. This fact is fairly widely known. Less known is an additional aspect of DU usage. When depleted uranium makes contact with metal, it balloons outwards in an explodng superheated cloud of radiological gas. The upside for military application is that this kills the soldiers inside the armor effectively. The downside is that this radiological material concentrates in flora and fauna and eventually makes its way into humans.
Depleted uranium has seen theatre application in Iraq, Kosovo and (allegedly) Palestine and Afghanistan. It has led to 11,000 deaths of American troops as of March 28, 2005. Iraq has attracted particular attention from Depleted Uranium activists. The worst part about the impact is that it appears to be exponential, continuing to do more damage over each subsequent generation. Cancer and deformities have multiplied, and the expected death toll is upwards of a million men, women and (particularly) children. The impact of such intense radiological material causes congenital diseases the likes of which are never seen, such as internal organs on the outside.

The government claims in public that DU is safe, but leaked documents and internal materials show that they are perfectly aware of the danger. Whether they continue through malice or disregard is a question for discussion, but it is the wrong question. DU is 60% as radiological as enriched uranium and it is disposed of in the same location. The United States and its allies are dumping our nuclear waste on other countries in the prosecution of terrible, immoral and illegal wars. It is up to us to stop them.

Resources:

Wikipedia – Gulf War Syndrome, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_war_syndrome

Riley, Joyce (Captain). January 15, 1996 speech at Houston, Texas. Transcript available at http://www.all-natural.com/riley.html.

Flounders, Sara. Another War Crime: Iraqi Cities “Hot” With Depleted Uranium. August 18, 2003. International Action Center. Available http://www.iacenter.org/du- warcrime.htm.

World Health Organization. Depleted uranium. Last revised January 2003. Available http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/.

Sharp, David. Maine Judge Sentences Depleted Uranium Activists to 1-Year in Prison. Associated Press, February 2 2001 6:49 pm.

NewsTarget.com, Antiwar activists say depleted uranium has led to 11,000 American deaths. Wednesday May 18, 2005. Cites Arthur Bernklau and Marion Fulk.

Green, Robert (Retired Commander of Royal Navy). Reflections on War: the immediate and long-term effects of modern weapons.

International Action Center. What Government Documents Admit. http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/dugov.htm

Tucker, James P. Jr. Nationwide Media Blackout Keeps U.S. Public Ignorant About This Important Story. American Free Press, March 28, 2005.

Scherrer, Christian. DU and the Liberation of Iraq. ZNet April 13, 2003. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3453

The Marx of Freedom

2005-10-26T21:56:00.000-07:00

In 1789, the French National Assembly, a token democratic body to appease those railing against monarchy, had a clear distinction between the noble, reactionary First Estate and the peasant, revolutionary Third Estate: the former sat on the right and the latter on the left. Since that time, the terms “right” and “left” have come to be catch-phrases for “conservative” or “reactionary” and “liberal” or “revolutionary”. In the more than two hundred years that have followed, the terms have expanded to mean almost diametrically opposed things, but generally those on the far left, while all being revolutionary in at least one or two spheres of activity, split into a few camps. Marx and Rousseau are two philosophers from whom an astute political reader can get a sense of the divergent and convergent opinions of the Left, especially in the way the individual relates to the state and what the state is designed to do.

Marx and Rousseau agree that the State must either be fundamentally altered or replaced. Rousseau says in Chapter 1 of Book I, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they... If I took into account only force, and the effects derived from it, I should say: '...for, regaining [people's] liberty by the same right as took it away, either it is justified in resuming it, or there was no justification for those who took it away.' But the social order is a sacred right which is the basis of all other rights.” Rousseau explicitly argues that individual rights are sacrosanct, and notes the dangers of a traditional state in Chapter 2: “[In Grotius' argument], the human species is divided into so many herds of cattle, each with its ruler, who keeps guard over them for the purpose of devouring them.” Rousseau explains his government and its relation to the citizens in Chapter 17 of Book III,
...the Sovereign [meaning the 'general will' of the people, a phantasmal concept that government is supposed to emulate as closely as possible] decrees that there shall be a governing body established in this or that form; this act is clearly a law. By the latter, the people nominates the rulers who are to be entrusted with the government that has been established... The difficulty is to understand how there can be a governmental act before government exists.... It is at this point that there is revealed one of the astonishing properties of the body politic, by means of which it reconciles apparently contradictory operations; for this is accomplished by a sudden conversion of Sovereignty into democracy, so that, without sensible change, and merely by virtue of a new relation of all to all, the citizens become magistrates and pass... from legislation to the execution of the law.
Rousseau advocates something similar to Swedish direct democracy and makes clear that the will of the majority is the primary determinant of policy. (A modern anarchist advocate of something similar is Murray Bookchin, who argues for green libertarian municipalism).
To compare, Marx alleges on page 142 of the Dover Thrift Communist Manifesto, “When... class distinctions have disappeared... the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly speaking, is the organized power of one class for the purpose of oppressing another.” Both Rousseau and Marx, then, clearly view political power as fundamentally oppressive and want to see it replaced by something else.

Marx thought of the State primarily as the bulwark and fulcrum of revolution. This is demonstrated rather aptly in a few key ways. On page 141, Marx argues for some familiar reforms: a progressive income tax, socialized public education, mass transport, etc. In fact, Marx critiqued bitterly on pages 142-149 a whole set of schools of socialism, some of whom would be what is now called “reformist”. Clearly, seizure of the State in the authoritarian fashion Marx describes was not the end goal. He makes this clear before his proposals on page 141: “The proletariat will use its political power to wrest by degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase as rapidly as possible the total mass of productive forces. This, naturally, cannot be accomplished at first except by despotic inroads on the rights of property...” For Marx, an authoritarian action on the state's part could not be justified by an appeal to nationalism but only by revolutionary necessity, and even if the existing state did an act the revolution would do in precisely the same form, Marx makes it clear that for him the revolutionary agent must be the proletariat themselves or else one will get at best a decrepit 'socialism' that does not dispense with class conflict. Nonetheless, he does propose an “obligation of all to labor” and “organization of industrial armies”, something a libertarian would balk at even when they to seek a totally new economic and political order. Marx is possibly the penultimate revolutionary: though he does assume a transitional state to create a machinery of abundance, he argues on page 140-141 to those who say that Communism dispenses with all previous historical forms and that this is dangerous, “The history of all past society is the history of class antagonisms, which took different forms in different epochs. But whatever form they may have taken, the exploitation of one section of society by another is a fact common to all previous centuries.” There is clearly a strong libertarian strand running through Marx's work, one Rousseau would applaud, and Marx only tolerates usage of the state as an interim.

Other members of the left even at Marx's time disagreed with the notion of hijacking the state. To choose a response Rousseau would undoubtedly resonate with, let us consult Rudolf Rocker: “Anarcho-syndicalists are convinced that a Socialist economic order cannot be created by the decrees and statutes of a government, but only by the solidaric collaboration of the workers with hand and brain in each special branch of production; that is, through the taking over of... [economic] management... by the producers themselves under such form that the separate groups... of industry are independent members of the general economic organism and systematically carry on production and the distribution of the products in the interest of the community on the basis of free mutual agreements.” This is the notion that the facts on the ground must be created during the pre-revolutionary, revolutionary and post-revolutionary period by the workers and that any State action is highly risky in that it could be used to create a new authoritarian elite, as anarchists would argue occurred in the Soviet Union. To contrast, Engels' response to this argument was, “But to destroy [the state] at such a [revolutionary] moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power...” Rousseau similarly argues in Part 10 of Book III, “Government undergoes contraction when it passes from the many to the few, that is, from democracy to aristocracy, and from aristocracy to royalty. To do so is its natural propensity.” In other words, the state is fundamentally directed towards expanding its tyranny.

Rousseau and Marx also seem to agree that the State is not legitimate in any form unless it conforms to a higher end. Rousseau in Chapter 16 argues in the very title that “The Institutions of Government is Not a Contract”. Rousseau cannot imagine transcending the state, but he makes clear that the most radical democracy is optimal; thus, in Chapter 3 of Book IV, he posits, “In every real democracy, magistracy is not an advantage, but a burdensome charge which cannot justly be imposed on one individual rather than another. The law alone can lay the charge on him on whom the lot falls.” Thus, the general will is something that can only be imperfectly reached, and the measure of the polity is the extent to which it reaches it. Marx's position is even more radical: As we have seen, he believes all political power to be an attempt to prolong and stabilize class conflict, and thus he imagines a post-statist world, where (as he argues on 142), “an association appears in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Like Rousseau, however, there are totalitarian overtones; Rousseau makes clear in Chapter 2 of Book IV that liberty is derived from the general will, and Marx makes clear that he believes a very authoritarian state will be needed to transition into the next era. It is difficult to balance the rights of the community and the rights of the individual, to answer the question of whether a decision one disagrees with is legitimate if it is obligatory, to fight injustice without inflicting it, and it is disturbing that two thinkers about freedom made such mistakes.

Marx and Rousseau are also both concerned with inequity, alienated labor and private property, but in rather different ways. Rousseau says in Chapter 11 of Book II, “...[B]y equality, we should understand, not that the degrees of power and riches are to be absolutely identical for everybody; but that power shall never be great enough for violence... no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself ”. What is capitalism but the imposition of poverty such that someone has to sell themselves? Marx's critique is substantially more thoroughgoing; on page 130 and 131, he says, “These workers... are a commodity like every other article of commerce... [The worker] becomes a mere appendage of the machine...” Rousseau does believe in private property, but with caveats he explains in Chapter 9 of Book I: “Each member of the community gives himself to it, at the moment of its foundation, just as he is, with all... the goods he possesses. This act does not make possession, in changing hands, change its nature, and become property in the hands of the Sovereign; but, as the forces of the city are incomparably greater than those of an individual, public possession is also, in fact, stronger and more irrevocable... For the State, in relation to its members, is master of all their goods by the social contract, which, within the State, is the basis of all rights... Having his share, he ought to keep to it, and can have no further right against the community.” This indicates that Rousseau believes that property is contingent and is not axiomatically granted, that each individual can only ask for a certain amount (and surely cannot aggrandize themselves at the cost of the community amassing profit), and that social goods are necessary. His anti-capitalism is drastically different from Marx's, but anti-capitalism it would be nonetheless. As we have seen earlier, Marx seeks to abolish private property; he cops to it in characteristic terms on 137 by saying, “... you reproach us because we would abolish your property. Precisely so; that is our intention.”

The real point of distinction between the two can be summed as followed: Marx is anti-nationalist and futurist, Rousseau primitivist and nationalist. On page 135, Marx talks about how the Communists hold common interest of workers above nationality, even implying that nationalism is a delusion (page 139: “The workers have no country. What they have not got cannot be taken from them.”). Rousseau, on the other hand, argues in the Second Treatise, “...when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom." Rousseau has a romanticism about tribal structures and non-Western cultures. The question is a difficult one, for the left wishes to be anti-statist, and many liberation movements wish to create a state, but the left also strives to be anti-imperialist in values and proposals. Marx's position would be that the left should not support such movements because they simply reincarnate class conflict, while Rousseau would say that this is reasoning about freedom from a European enslaved intellectual and that it is not Marx's place to pass judgment. A compromise is to support a national liberation movement but to propose that the liberation not take place in the traditional form of the state. Marx inexorably looks towards the future for salvation, and Rousseau believes that we do our best by looking towards the past and the 'noble savage'.

Regarding political loyalty: Rousseau believes that the general will is the source of loyalty and that it justifies creating laws that are binding upon all. Marx believes that political loyalty is a phantom to make an illusion of unity over a reality of division, but that social unity is needed; thus, on 137, he says, “When... capital is converted into common property, belonging to all members of society, personal property is not thereby converted into social property... It loses its class character.” Marx also clearly states on 127, “The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every profession previously venerated and regarded as honourable. It has turned doctor, priest, poet, and philosopher into its paid wage-workers.” Many would say that Marx and Rousseau are both collectivist, and this is true, but it is not true that collectivism is authoritarian. Yes, it can have authoritarian overtones, but so can complete individual freedom. The question is the conflict of rights. Where the individual affects others' rights, there must be collective action; where the collective oversteps such boundaries, there must be individual act. Putting aside capitalism's usage of totalitarian states, so evident at Marx's time, and putting aside the totalitarian nature of corporations, the abrasive nature of wage slavery and the rights conflicts generated by capitalist institutions mean it must be transcended, either politically (as Rousseau would put it) or economically (as Marx would argue); and, of course, the state must similarly be transcended, as Rousseau would advocate if he believed it to be possible and Marx advocates (but with the caveat that the state must be a transitionary force for the economy, a fact that anarchists disagree with).

Rousseau wants complex direct democracy, a 'general will' that creates rights, a original position of humankind that humans should try to emulate, and believes that the society is suspended by the agreement of all to make the society. Marx believes that society is historical, that it goes through inevitable cycles, that the feeling of political loyalty is a historical illusion created to allow the continued existence of class conflict, that political forms are largely irrelevant and that a utopian economy is key, that the individual is defined by his labor, and that looking romantically to the past will enslave the movements of the present. There are disagreements and agreements, but aside from a shared resistance to oppression, a willingness to have communalist values and a desire for equity, the two share almost nothing.

Citations Taken From:

Engels, Frederick. Personal correspondence. Cited by Robert C. Tucker, The Marxian Revolutionary Idea, in Tucker's comparison of Marxism and anarchism.

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Available from The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings, Dover Thrift Edition
2003.

Rocker, Rudolf. Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 94.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract; Or Principles of Political Right. Originally
published 1762. Translation by G.D.H. Cole. http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm. Also the Second Treatise on Inequality, translated by Roger D. and Judith R. Masters.

Deviance of Hegemony

2005-10-26T21:52:00.000-07:00

Would the Mongols have viewed their devastation of Asia, Europe and the Middle East as "deviance", or rather as the just expansion of their illustrious empire? Would the Nazis have viewed the Holocaust and the conquering of Europe as "deviance" or as the Aryan race taking back its rightful position and cleansing itself of cancers on its body politic? And why did the Nazis term what are now universally agreed to be the courageous and legitimate resistance to them "terrorists"? The point of these questions should be clear. It seems that there is a double standard in the mainstream culture about "deviance": the rich using cocaine is acceptable, the poor using crack is not; corporations engaging in cutthroat practices for profit is fine, gangs are a major danger (not to mention the common association of "gang" with black or Latino groups, not, say, mostly white bikers). But this is in fact not a double standard. Rather, their position is very consistent: the crimes of the powerful are just and right; the crimes of the weak and poor are either specimens to viewed at a distance with disgust (assuming any attention is paid, and assuming that those crimes do not harm the prerogatives of the politically and economically potent), or alternately brutally crushed and repressed.

One can argue that the disdain shown in popular culture for organized crime or criminal groups and "gangs" (though there is always the morbid fascination: see The Sopranos, The Godfather, Scarface, Carlito's Way...) is the competition of different epochs. The Mafia, the Triads, the Irish gangs, all were in one view ruling groups that set themselves apart from the official state and protected communities. Since those groups compete with the new power structures, the bourgeois corporation, they must be repressed, even though their values are identical, and in fact better, in that they make more than paeans to community value and service while corporations simply despoil. As Martin Jankowski indicates, “... the entrepeneurial spirit, which most Americans believe is the core of their productive culture, was a driving force in the worldview and behavior of gang members.” He even quotes a gang member named Sweet Cakes saying, “...no, I wouldn't mess with my community that way, but the rest of the folks is fair game”. Given how corporations are willing to export or “outsource” jobs out of their community, move their headquarters to take advantage of differential policies (say, tax policies), threaten such moving unless communities give favorable treatment to them, and build excess production around the planet so they can play workers off against each other, it seems uncontroversial that gangs, considered criminals, are far more community-oriented than the average capitalist institution, considered the norm. One can argue that gang members still victimize their communities, but this is at best a deeply simplistic description of the relationship. There is also the proposition that gangs engage in black market activity, but that in turn makes us question why legal sanction or prescription is necessarily congruent with the ethical nature of an act, especially given the obvious argument that the rich run the polity and of course will design the laws such that they are benefitted. The obvious example here, as above, is the distinction between corporate profits off of alcohol and tobacco, not to mention their complicity with drug laundering, and the illicit market of heroin and cocaine, which are certainly at least roughly equal in terms of social cost.

Even mental illness, seemingly "objective", is in fact socially contingent. It is one thing to find a distinct behavior, perhaps neurologically caused. It is quite another to say that this is good or bad. Was Einstein's dyscalcula a flaw or his greatest strength? Is an ADD child in the modern, strict classroom a monster or a precocious intellect and spirit that is being oppressed? These are value and social questions that are obfuscated by the veil and hammer of overzealous science. Now, in actual fact, according to the dominant definition of insanity (the rapidly burgeoning DSM, now in its fourth edition), America has the highest incidences of mental illness in the industrialized world.1That has clear roots in culture, polity, economy, gender, etc. To quote Tim Wise on the topic, “And since dominant group members have not had to deal with major obstacles to our advance, or in terms of our being accepted and valued in society, we really haven't had to develop those coping skills. So when the going gets tough, so to speak, we, more so than others, are more likely to react in a manner that seems so bizarre that it literally defies logic.” He justifies this conclusion by pointing out that what we call “control” illnesses are disproportionately found in white communities. But, looking even more closely, we find that what is called "deviant" behavior has a distinctively female tone: that is, we define what is "deviant" by what is female and what is "normal" by what is male, in line with the ancient association of moon, night, darkness, insanity and femininity, and sun, day, light, rationality and masculinity.2 This isn't the only critique of the DSM, either. Critical race theorists have argued that the DSM is culturally imperialist; civil libertarians have noted the frightening trend to increase the amount of disorders “punishable” by institutionalization; postmodernists have noted the problematic nature of the discourse of “mental illness” and psychiatry; and anti-capitalists have argued compellingly that beneath apparently benevolent impulses lie the inevitable pressure of the market towards commodifying solutions to problems in the form of “silver bullet” pills and making profit off of suffering rather than presenting solutions involving community, solidarity and liberty. Then we must consider the stigma associated with mental illnesses such that people hide in shame, further severing them from community and family such that the conditions get worse.

All of the above indicates the complex social flow, wherein the fish run with the current and yet we decide to pretend that the fish have complete freedom of choice to move how they wish as if no river existed. The final aspect of deviance is the aspect of punishment. Institutions preserve themselves not least through assigning disincentives to destructive activities: Social ones of stigma, material ones of deprivation, political ones of force and unequal access to judicial and legislative redress, etc. It is not my intention to declare that all anti-system movements and tensions are equal ethically. We often see old systems of power attacking the new, ostensibly for noble reasons but really for self-interest, such as with organized crime. But we see this same pressure against completely legitimate resistance groups and revolutionary societies. Let us make no bones: Any successful movement seeking true justice will face the punishment of State, Capital, Gender and Culture.

Sources:

1.For discussion of the linkage between hegemony, white privilege, acrid sexual politics, and the other social confluences with mental illness, see: Chuckman, John; “First in the World in the Deranged”, Counterpunch, June 3 2004. Wise, Tim, “Whiteness and the Social Entropy of Privilege”, http://www.diversitycoalition.org/uploads/82/35/Membership_has_its_Disadvantages.htm.2.

See Wiley, A. (2001). The absence of the feminist critique from abnormal psychology. Presented in "Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis" symposium. Association of Women in Psychology conference. Los Angeles. And Collins, L. H. (1998). Illustrating feminist theory: Power and psychopathology. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 22, 97-112.

Certainty as Chance

2005-10-26T21:46:00.000-07:00

It is clear, for a philosopher, that some kind of certainty of claims is vital. Yet in one paragraph, David Hume seems to declare all of philosophy to simply be quibbling over instances and hoping that truth will arrive by accident: “...`tis impossible for us to satisfy ourselves by our reason, why we should extend that experience beyond those particular instances, which have fallen under our observation.” What is the evidence for this claim?

Assume, for a moment, that one could discover a completely self-evident cause-and-effect relationship in the past, such that one is absolutely confident that an apple released from a man's grip would fall to the ground or that a particular trajectory of billiard ball would propel a different ball to a different trajectory (or, to use an example discussed in lecture on October 20th, that a certain fermented concoction in a chilled glass would instill a feeling of warmth and freedom). Even this will not do, Hume says. For, as he describes in T 1.3.6.12, “ Your appeal to past experience decides nothing in the present case; and at the utmost can only prove, that that very object, which produc'd any other, was at that very instant endow'd with such a power; but can never prove, that the same power must continue in the same object or collection of sensible qualities; much less, that a like power is always conjoin'd with like sensible qualities.” Even if we are totally confident of one instance of cause-and-effect that we can identify as not mere coincidence, or even an infinite array of past instances, we have no reason to expect based on empirical evidence or the story of our senses and memories that that power will be retained into the future. The rules of the universe, or of a localized space, may change completely tomorrow. Attempting to establish with evidence from the past that evidence from the past is reliable, a classic scientific response, is viciously circular; as Hume indicates, “If you answer this question in the same manner as the preceding, your answer gives still occasion to a new question of the same kind, even in infinitum; which clearly proves, that the foregoing reasoning had no just foundation.”

In addition, as Hume declares in 1.3.6.15, “We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction”; the causal relationship is uncertain because it is a human conjunction. While one may see event X followed by event Y, it is only the provision of the mind that generates the causal relationship. To be fair, Hume almost seems to establish this through definition, moving through his fork until it becomes clear that of course a cause cannot reside in an impression and must be an idea that is formed. Yet this does beg a question: If one lights a fuse of a bomb, is there not a cause that is clearly visible that one can see? Or is the cause rather the chemical interaction of the detonation? Nonetheless, the point is reasonable to accept. Though Hume does not have the language to make this claim, one can bear in mind the admonition in statistics to avoid confusing causation with correlation, indicating that causation requires something more than simple consistent connection between two vectors.

To analyze properly, one must separate the cognitive implications of Hume's argument from the epistemological import. Hume proposes not only that constant conjunction is an empirically uncertain way to proceed, but that (strangely enough) it is what humans automatically assume. In 1.3.6.15, he proposes, “We only observe the thing itself, and always find that from the constant conjunction the objects acquire an union in the imagination.” One wonders: If Hume is such a skeptic, how is he willing to make such concrete claims about human cognition? Putting that aside for a moment, there are a few ways one could test the hypothesis. It seems some danger responses are ingrown: no matter how uneducated the man, he will always duck a fastball; a baby will not cross a glass pane unless he has good reason to believe it will be safe1. It seems there are certain reflexes that are inborn. Yet it is also obvious that a man who has not been told that a particular liquid will be intoxicating or that a particular small white ellipsoid shape will help cure some malady will proceed as comes naturally to him without that information: perhaps drink the liquid without checking, perhaps smell the liquid and taste it thereby deciding not to drink it, perhaps not take the pill because most people don't put random objects into their mouths. With that information, they will proceed differently. More, they are more likely to trust that the above results will be inevitable if they are told by a trusted friend or professional. Here, the causal chain is, “X actor that has given good results before tells me to do Y thing. Since good results have always emerged from doing what she tells me to do, Y will also have good results.” (To reaffirm the causal questions above: Epidemiology tells us that some drugs are allergic to a minority of the population, such that the person above might be mistaken in making that assumption; and that many medicines work to varying degrees, sometimes not at all; and often inaccurate diagnoses of either symptoms or causes occur such that the drug will be ineffective). If the person drinking the liquid or taking the pill then discovers that the results are pleasant, they may continue to do so in a variety of different circumstances, even without guidance or with trusted friends; and, alternately, if the results are poor, no amount of trust may elicit a repetition of the result.

Does Hume mean that this response occurs involuntarily, such that every time one sees or somehow confronts X external influence it becomes associated with Y idea or impression? Evaluating this claim is difficult, of course, but it should be obvious that people forget some events such that they thereby will not draw a cause-effect relation, or will only vaguely remember, or will remember competing things, or will dismiss the associated memories as irrational or coincidence. Indeed, what is often called an “open mind” is precisely the ability to suppress this bias of linking two events. One may have bad memories from a particular ethnic group, such that encountering a member of that group makes one imagine a causal relationship wherein an unpleasant result will occur, yet one will (perhaps on the advice of friends or family) try to ignore that association. Yet this may be unfair to Hume. As indicated above, Hume is not necessarily speaking of the rational inference through induction of causal relationship; he would view those as intellectual constructions of convenience. Rather, he is saying that the human mind does not imagine something without connection to other referents and, more importantly, that “'tis an idea related to or associated with a present impression”. One would clearly not assume a theory of gravity if one regularly saw apples floating in mid-air. The more times one sees a particular set of circumstances being conjoined and the more clear the conjunction, the more likely the inference of a causal relationship, even if that relationship cannot be spelled out. If a man sees a black cat and then is struck by lightning once, he may view it as a freak coincidence. If that number were ten, or one hundred, he might view the situation somewhat differently.

To refine the above: Consider the matter of the billiard ball. Hume alleges, in the eleventh paragraph of the Abstract, that “Were a man, such as Adam, created in the full vigour of understanding, without experience, he would never be able to infer motion in the second ball from the motion and impulse of the first.” This may or may not be true. A person of a more Chomskyan persuasion would propose that there might be and probably is a natural instinct of humans to track motion and anticipate its result. But even if one assumes this result, it does not go very far in disproving Hume. Hume, in fact, was setting out to produce a science of human nature. The fact that cognitive biology and psychology may complete his vision would appeal to him, not irritate him. One must also remember Hume's assumption of a Lockean framework, including the tabula rasa principle. Now, assume Adam decides to become a novice billiard player, with some degree of talent. He may have a vague natural notion of the motion of objects. But he would have no reason, when beginning the game, to assume that the balls weren't too heavy to move with a wooden stick, or perhaps were unfairly weighted to lean to one side or the other. After enough repetitions, as Hume says in the 12th paragraph of the Abstract, “If he [Adam] had seen a sufficient number of instances of this kind, whenever he saw the one ball moving towards the other, he would always conclude without hesitation that the second would acquire motion.” Over time, he would refine this notion, acquiring a more and more precise understanding, perhaps even intuition, of the way billiard balls operate, of how to coordinate his body and his stick to produce desired velocities and trajectories, of how to avoid “scratches”, and of all the other necessary faculties to play a good billiards game. He would do so through a process of more and more sophisticated cause-and-effect relationships that would indeed become so ingrained as to be almost automatic.

What does all this mean for humanity? Is it doomed to proceed blindly with no certain knowledge whatsoever? Or is it to use reasonable certainty, in line with its unique cognitive abilities, to survive in a complex world and satisfy its ethical and personal passions? Hume will take this up later on in his work.

Sources:

Gibson and Walk, 1960. The experiment was called “the virtual cliff”, wherein babies were placed on one table, a glass pane set across to another table, and a mother at the other table called the baby. Infants regularly refused to cross the pane. This is why many psychologists argue that the only two innate fears are of heights and loud noises. http://www.learningmatters.co.uk/sampleChapters/pdfs/cognitive%20chap%202.pdf for more.

Running Responses to The Corporation and Frankenstein

2005-10-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

People within it make decisions that design where it goes. It has defining components just like parecon does. The only difference is that parecon has not existed per se (but by that logic authoritarian societies are natural and ruleless because we couldn't find representative democracy).

Markets aren't robust at all. This is an empirical statement: Do markets accept a wide variety of conditions? They simply don't; markets are among the first things to collapse when crises occur, and in Katrina's wake we saw the natural choice to be cooperative institutions, not market-based asocialism. Parecon, on the other hand, can handle a whole number of varying situations and circumstances, indeed far more.

"It's common sense that social skills are very important in getting jobs and promotions."

Under a market economy, of course. There are some differences and some similarities. Also, we have to bear in mind the cultural and gender changes we want in this discussion as well. But let's take this example headon.

Someone who is attractive and fun to be around would be in sales now. They could be public debaters of plans, or laywers, or could be in the "sales" department. But the "sales" department, as Albert makes clear in Parecon: Life after Capitalism, is paid not based on their sales but only based on their effort/sacrifice, which means they only have the incentive to offer information to those who want it.

People can make social interactions as they please, getting connections or what not. There's no way to deal with that that's worth it. But they don't get paid more for it and there are redreses. Best of both worlds.

If people can sweet-talk their councils into hiring them, fine. But when they don't commit the proper effort, they hurt the whole council and thus everyone has an incentive to pay them less. If they also happen to be qualified, no problem. I would hope that, insofar as possible, worker's councils can see through charisma and hire the best candidate, but if they can't markets have the same problem.

”We all externalize and be extranalized on. The point is how to be relatively balanced.”

This is laughable. An externality is defined as a cost not borne by the consumer or producer in a transaction. Since a producer benefits from artificially low prices, they have every incentive to continue to externalize costs even when they detect a process that does. You are now showing how ignorant you are about markets' uncontroversial features, admitted EVEN BY ADVOCATES.

“How do you decide who deserve what from their efforts? I have no problem if you get more than I as long as I have enough(which is modest)I think most folks would agree.”

You don't. You look at effort and sacrifice and reward it. I think most people agree that if I work harder than you, I deserve more pay. And since that gives me more

In any respect, markets don't just set us all equal because hey, we're really not jealous of people; rather, it rewards output or bargaining power, which isn't fair or efficient.

“To reiterate. I would rather live in a society with some inequalities but with enough opportunities and social mobility rather than one which forces everyone to be uniform at the expense of all else.”

But your own argument says that we shouldn't really care about opportunities or social mobility since we're all just good with whatever we get.

“Life is about trade offs. For some reason you keep missing this point.”

I don't miss meaningless points. Unless you can identify the tradeoff for me to answer, this is just rhetoric.

“Only a crackpot would sell you a scheme with no catch.”
Of course there are catches to parecon. Some people can't be super-rich. And by your argument a catch is that we can't use markets anymore. Great. Those sound like good catches to me.

“Your method of argument is clear. Parecon claims it "solves" a problem but 1) its proposed solution is at best dubious and 2) it simply brushes aside the side effects that the "solution" may create”

I don't agree. You're simply wrong about parecon. If you can actually IDENTIFY FOR ME why you think the solution is dubious and what the side effects are, we can have an argument. If you can't, then you're asking me to accept your position based on faith. Sorry, no dice. At the moment you're behaving like a snake oil salesman, not answering problems about markets or just brushing them over and asserting with no evidence what the other properties are.

"I could say a polity is a type of state and be no more wrong than you."

Well, except that you're precisely inverting the commonly accepted definitions of the word, but that's not pure semantics if I can show the two aren't identical. When most people say "the state", they imagine a political organization, centralized, with national borders.

The fact that some people can be quite domineering has nothing to do with the system practically requiring everyone to be domineering even in self-defense. Just consider: Whether its abortion or gay marriage or what have you, everyone rushes for the state to ban the activity, rather than trying to convince people in the cultural realm to do what they'd prefer.
"and adjust my expectations now and then than to live in a rigid, ration economy."

But it's not a ration economy. You can buy whatever you want. You submit your consumption proposal and then throughout the year you can alter it as you please, but you might discover a shortage. Just like in capitalism where things get sold out.

Your next bit about not knowing is, of course, irrelevant in light of the above, but you're making another misunderstanding. My Mom plans pretty much on going to a yard sale every other week because she likes it (so yes, I prefer a parecon that allows yard sales). Sometimes things change, but nothing substantial. Under our tax code most people pretty well anticipate the kind of things they'll buy (say, X amount on entertainment), even if they don't know what it will be.

"Doestovsky said that if you design a rational paradise and put people in it the human heart would rebel."

Doesn't mean you should put people into a hell. I think people want a reasonable society that doesn't force them to practically try to kill each other.

“How do you decide who deserve what from their efforts? I have no problem if you get more than I as long as I have enough(which is modest)I think most folks would agree.”

You don't. You look at effort and sacrifice and reward it. I think most people agree that if I work harder than you, I deserve more pay. And since that gives me more

In any respect, markets don't just set us all equal because hey, we're really not jealous of people; rather, it rewards output or bargaining power, which isn't fair or efficient.

"So I ask you again, what would be the motivation to attain training if education is not compensated accordingly?"

You missed, as I noted, that within a reasonable degree the effort and sacrifice expended to acquire training is remunerated. But if that's the case, we can remunerate during the training process as well, if it's so onerous. And training may be difficult, but it ain't working in a coal mine, which also needs to be done. In any respect, except for a very few positions such as advanced professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.) most people don't use anything like what they learn in college, and even most doctors and lawyers don't require half the classes they take. I admit this is a slightly different topic, but what it indicates is something I know Bwong agrees with: one can have a ton of mediocrity and have a working system.

There are also other incentives to be a doctor. There is the very natural social status and approbation, fairly important (as we all know when we cut through the crap and remember why people really buy fancy cars and houses), the desire to satisfy one's dreams and talents (do you imagine that most people who go through all those years of med school are thinking "Man, fat paycheck" or "I really want to help people"), the daily empowerment of being a doctor. What I wonder is, why wouldn't TOO MANY people try to be doctors?

You're also ignoring that the class "doctor" versus "janitor" doesn't exist per se. A balanced job complex provides for highly trained professionals in virtually every field.

I recommended you actually read on the topic, as good FAQs and introductory pieces are easily available. You apparently haven't done so yet.

"who charge $12,000 per lecture and live in rich suburban neighborhoods"

Chomsky doesn't charge $12,000, he charges nothing.

Albert and Hahnel developed parecon, and it grew out of what they quite naturally did at South End Press with others. The experience of left coops tells us that, even with the demands of the market, cooperative institutions can be quite effective.

"I think Fred has a disdain for markets because no one wants to buy his parecon bullshit."

It's not my bullshit (Eric Patton and others have advocated it on this forum alone), and when I speak to the working class I find broad appeal for parecon. The people interested in it and advocating it is broadening, not shrinking. I hear a lot of questions from more privileged intellectuals, very much predicted by coordinator class critiques. And Yakov, by that standard, you must have a disdain for, well, practically everything, as no one buys your crap. I may also note that Hahnel/Albert's books have sold reasonably well, given the difficulties leftist books face.

"You achieve so called "efficiency" by basically trying to match demand and supply exactly"

Yes, with direct information from consumers and producers.

GM only plans for cars (and weapons), but GE plans for, well, practically everything, and Microsoft plans for software, and... Since the vast majority of products are produced by corporations of middle to large size, EVERYTHING is planned to an incredible degree. Yes, of course market research is just statistical, but here's the thing. Since there's no apparatus that allows that information to be filtered, that information must be attained multiple times, which requires replication of services (a fact that you did concede). That means, on average, that there are huge inefficiencies: production of excess goods, etc. Those don't disappear in parecon, but they're sharply reduced.

The main problem with your argument, Bwong, is that you're arguing against a small group of eggheads who produce and implement a plan based on forms from absolutely everyone. But that's simply not the model, and the barest read of the topic would show that. Rather, there are rounds of "negotiation" wherein expected consumption (not "eggs" and "lettuce" but rather "groceries") is contrasted with expected production. This occurs on federated levels. It's not too hard to construct a computer program that makes a guess at the end result. Finally, given the data, a few plans are formed and there is a vote for each.

The nice advantage here is that a worker's council can detect that they're producing too many eggs based on information fron consumers just like in a market, and demand/supply can be constantly adjusted throughout the year just like in a market, but we have a good guess at the beginning of the year. But Bwong, this IS the way OUR economy works too. Every year, we all go through tax time, we all plan what we think we can consume, and producers in particular constantly plan all the time for everything: marketing, focus groups, advertising, assessment of sales from last year, quarterly earning reports, etc. all not just to BEAT but also CONTROL the market.

I can't imagine the number of times I thought of something that would be excellent to have and didn't see it, or didn't find a product I needed, or had to search through dozens of stores to get what I wanted.

You're also ignoring a vital point: provision of social goods doesn't require nearly as much of the planning effort.

“But these are MACRO plannings. Macro plannings only set up broad conditions, constraints and rules to guide the market process.The market mechansim then work out the deatils.”

But here's the analogous situation, then: Participatory planning does the macro strokes; consumers, as represented by consumer councils, and workers, as represented in worker's councils, do the finetuning.

No, it's not just macro planning. Small businesses plan every day, trying to figure out how much they should put out onto the storefront. Individual consumers plan.

If a worker's council notes that there are too many eggs, they can cut down on how many eggs they get from the agricultural councils. The participatory planning process is not a straitjacket, but a guide. Further, as Steinbeck notes in The Grapes of Wrath, the market leads to oranges rotting while people starve, NOT DUE TO “MACRO PLANNING” or some other crap, but simply the incentives of the market. The fact that other institutions can restrain this tendency is IRRELEVANT, just as the fact that the state can make some strides against racial and gender inequity is IRRELEVANT.

“Your so called intrinsic inefficiencies of the market is the nature of macro strategies.”

They're not the failures of central planning models, which are just as macro, they're unique failings of market. Commodity fetishism is ONLY possible under markets where producers are limited in linkage to each other, indeed competing, and consumers can't access except through non-systemic means information about the true social costs of their products. Markets depend on some degree of trust, even though they are instituted as a substitute for trust, because if someone lies about what they have someone gets profit from an inferior product. There's no incentive again fraud in markets, there is in parecon because one's wgaes are not linked to sales.

“Macro plannings only aim for optimal solutions "on the average". Glitches, mismatches of expectations and wastes are unavoidable.”

Yes. So we pick the best macro planning system or choose smaller systems. Here's another advantage: Parecon is the only economy I'm aware of that can rationally choose to go more bio-regionalist or more macro.

Since we know central planning can accomplish basic production, often more effective in some vectors than markets (as markets are invariably disasters), your argument is simply false.

“Parecon's planning is MICROMANAGING each and every aspect of the economy. It may seem more efficient because you're able to track the economy in a much finer scale.”

No, it simply isn't. The participatory planning process provides for guidelines, occuring at multiple levels, with information available to all producers and consumers. The back-and-forth nature of the process allows for qualitative information. And, since the economy is based on voluntarism, everyone has incredible freedom to refine their choices over time. Further, since after a few years a good record will emerge, the planning process will get better over time, not worse.

Bwong, you continue to have this fantasy about markets that any honest economist can tell you is just pure bull. There are giant database banks that contain minutiae about you or me, a veritable biography of practically every person who has ever registered online or used a credit card. As you continue to pretend that it's impossible to micromanage, what business is loudly yelling about is “narrow casting”, wherein we target consumers (and voters) WITH INCREDIBLE PRECISION, often appealing to demographics of a few thousand people. While you continue to pretend its impossible to run a good economy, capitalism is developing the means to do so.

“But this is misleading because the inefficiencies in setting up such a system,-just based on what you describe,-- vastly outweigh whatever efficiency gain you may derive from it. Again this is an instance of trade off, which the parecon totalists evidently cannot comprehend. Albert has no appreciation of complexity and nuances. All "plannings" are not the same.”

All rhetoric without warrants, implying arguments that I've answered. What parecon provides for is planning without inflexibility. The fact that we have a complex world doesn't mean we proceed blind.

The Princeton Volume contains proofs using a very interesting principle, one of the things that attracted me most to parecon. Your view was that parecon would mind control people to becime homo socialis. But what parecon does is the opposite: assuming homo economicus, it provides the incentives and the institutional roles that make homo economicus closely estimate homo socialis. It allows people's greed to be socially beneficial, not socially destructive.

“Who are the managers accountable for and whether managers are necessary?”

Wrong. The existence of “manager”, someone who transmits orders, is the problem. This is why advocates like you don't appeal to the working class, Bwong. The dude at the bottom doesn't care about the capitalist. He cares about the jerkoff telling him what to do. Of course management responsible to capital and not workers is bad, but having managers without capital does not lead to managers responsible to workers but managers responsible to themselves. This is the core of the coordinator class critique. This is an elementary derivation of the principle, “Power corrupts.” If people are in a dominating position, even if the first generation has the best intents, eventually that class figures out that, hey, they can rig the system to their benefit. This is what the USSR tells us. And the fact that you misread my argument this deeply is truly frightening.

I want to eliminate capital as a class to be accountable to. I also want to eliminate managers, though not policy-making (but that'll be democratic). People can, of course, have foremen or

And “necessity” doesn't really appeal to me, because people have the right to self-management, period.

“The first paragraph proves that management under the current system is accountable for capital but not workers, which I totally agree.”

No, it doesn't.

“But that does not prove that bureaucracies and managers are unnecessary.”

But it does indicate how dangerous they are. However, I have argued, to little onpoint rebuttal from you, that managers and bureaucracy are in fact not necessary, but deeply inefficient. A democratic decision-making process is not only possible, but with technology even easier. This is the import of my automation comment: Automation could have been used to eliminate managers and allow workers to run their workplaces; instead, it was used to empower managers and deskill workers, even when that reduced profit. We have seen, from SEP, from the Spanish Revolution, from numerous coop and revolutionary experiences, that we can have non-hierarchical rule.

I hope you see why I become very skeptical and critical of the perspective that we just need to have smart guys run everything. It's elitist, hierarchical, and is guaranteed to be justified regardless of actual merit by people like, say, mathematicians, who would benefit from such a system. It is why the Left will never appeal to the working class with your proposals: they don't want to have to deal with more crap. They might even prefer capitalism, not just prefer inaction, because at least the people who give them crap and tell them what to do every day are in turn humiliated by richer people.

“I indeed argue for a "bottom up" models(co-ops, say) where the management is accountable to the workers(=owners).”

Problem is that the workers, by virtue of having imbalanced job complexes, and the managers, by virtue of actually controlling the coops, will eventually be in conflict, and the maangers will almost always win. The managers will demand more power and money, and eventually you see Soviet totalitarianism or capitalism reemerge. The only way to prevent this is to eliminate a class of people who transmit orders. But I don't even need to prove that: people deserve to determine their own workplaces' policies and their own labor.

To quote: "For example, if you were a central planner, in a centrally planned economy, able to bend and massage economic outcomes to serve your class by further enlarging the advantages it enjoys due to promoting investment patterns that enhance information centralization and thus the further aggrandizement of intellectual workers – coordinator class members – your claim would be quite right."

“But for large institutions you still need professional managers and bureaucrats to handle day to day functions of the organization.”

Maybe, maybe not. In that case, you have a few options. They become a separate class but cannot issue orders, instead propose plans for the workers to ratify. Or you have foremen, or conductors in orchestras, but they're fundamentally answerable to the workers, replaceable, accountable, and don't issue “orders” per se. And the advantage, as you conceded, is that decisions arrived at democratically require less enforcement and monitoring, as well as include more viewpoints and styles of contribution and thus are superior.

“I am aware of your Dad's experience. But managing a workteam of 5 is not the same as running the payroll department of IBM.”

The comment about my Dad was not about his workteam but about how a coop is undermined by the market. I hope you rebut to that onpoint, as I (on a blog post) and Albert spend a lot of time talking about how the market pushes towards managerial dominance, worker disenfranchisement, etc.

But let's talk about that for a second. The payroll department of IBM could be arranged democratically, too. And, as you missed completely, my Dad isn't unique. The whole of the tech economy has been based on small teams of smart guys in somewhat democratic, BJC arrangements.

“The world is not black or white.”

Direct contradiction isn't non-dualism.

“Except it won't work on a large scale.”

Markets don't work on a large scale. They're catastrophes that require corporations and states to manage their screwups. We can't get much worse than that.

Your tradeoff argument, of course, is fun, because it implies that we just pick on various vectors to choose one or the other thing. Fine. So I just need to prove that the choices parecon makes are best. Suddenly your crap about “It won't work” disappears; after all, it's just another tradeoff,.

“To say that South end press is a model of a whole country is laughable, just like you fail to see the difference between your dad's workteam and IBM.”

Fallacies answered above. The Spanish Revolution was a largescale success. And even if SEP doesn't establish my argument in toto, it does prove that I have a practically 100% success rate so far. Markets have, what, 10%? 5%?

“Quantitative difference IS qualitative if it is sufficiently huge. This is complexity.”

Don't see the import of this comment, as parecon has both on its side.

"Not surprisng parecon sounds so perfect. All Utopian schemes are insanly simplistic. "

So now it's simplistic, eh? I really want you to explain how parecon can be simplistic, utopian, too detailed, authoritarian, and inefficient because it denies the dominance of managers and bureaucracies. This is blatant contradiction.

Parecon has simple principles, but with proper understanding they are very robust and offer quite a few potential answers and responses. It is an economy designed first and foremost to increase liberty, self-management and rights.

"Markets exist in very town and village since the dawn of civilization. Even nomads trade."

No, they don't. But, as you conceded, hierarchy and authoritarianism has existed in almost every society too; is it impossible to transcend those too? Was it impossible to institute representative democracy or private ownership because you didn't see it before? And of course people adopt a system that lets them screw each other when they don't trust each other, another matter you didn't rebut.

"Being so bitter about managers I expect you have some understanding of the managerial perogative."

I'm not bitter. I'm from a manager family and I may end up being one. It's pretty tiring for you to launch these ad homs all the time. A manager tells me what to do. Why should I have to listen? I can't get any simpler.

"If you can draw a red line directly from ANY market activity to the hell you describe..."
I have been. You then play with definitions, what you accuse me of, or say that it's a problem of all societies even when you can't establish that claim for parecon and can't rebut its unique nature in markets.

"Direct democracy doesn't work except for communes of a few hundreds."

Then liberty might require small communes interlinked, what Sale proposes. You then go onto talk about "complexity" with the utterly stupid consequence that you're ignoring that, hey, maybe we SHOULD choose the above. But I described how delegates could be used to transcend this problem, to laughable rebuttals.

arekexcelsior2.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_arekexcelsior2_archive.html for more.

Re: Managers needed

In what institutions? By your own argument about mediocrity, most managers I know sit on their thumbs, micromanage useless things and do nothing of improtance. The only reason they're necessary is because workers don't want to contribute their energy to their totalitarian employer, their capitalist enemy.

What workers councils allow is for the rules to be formed so that people can arrange what they're doing. In most situations, that's by far enough, as you would know if you had done physical work recently. I know from my varied work experiences as both a temp and a tutor that managers were at best an obstacle and inconvenience. But if, say, a foreman is needed, that's fine. The point is that the foreman's role and behavior is democratically determined and she can be "fired" by the workers if she deviates.

I have no problem with a reasonable degree of flexibility for whatever bureaucracy is left. But they must be fundamentally accountable and their role is primarily to propose plans to democracies.

So now we have another of these "tradeoffs". You lean towards domination. I lean towards freedom.

Another advantage I describe: Markets lean towards production-oriented jobs and underpay "quality of life" jobs such as teaching, art, etc. But those are things we need to encourage, especially since we're running out of resources to do product-based jobs with. Parecon can provide for that.

Reflections Found in Chaos

2005-10-22T22:39:00.000-07:00

Reflections Found in Chaos

As an anarchist, I argue that all forms of social oppression and coercion are fundamentally illegitimate. They may be justified only tendentiously and temporarily on the basis of extreme need, and even then only when fundamental rights are not violated. Anarchists hold, in general, that social institutions, though not determinative of all human behavior (otherwise no revolution against them would be possibly), project outwards both in cultural/attitudinal forms (what I term “fluid” power) and in solid forms (institutions such as corporations, states, etc.). These institutions of culture, polity, economy and gender are particularly vital because they contour individual relations no matter the merits of the individual. Consider that a racial slur is insulting to some no matter the intent of the speaker because of the social generalization of the individual circumstance. To quote Michael Albert in his article “The Personal is Political” (the New Left phrase that describes how seemingly individual circumstances can be linked by social institutions), “In each instance we uncovered that "the personal is political," i.e., the experiences, feelings, and possibilities of our personal lives were not just a matter of personal preferences and choices but were limited, molded, and defined by the broader political and social setting. They feel personal, and their details are personal, but their broad texture and character, and especially the limits within which these evolve, are largely systemic. In this sense, the contribution of the New Left was to say that we suffer a "totality of oppressions," systemically based, entwined, and all needing to be eliminated via a "revolution" in existing institutions, and the creation of new liberating ones. The 'personal is political' therefore meant that our personal lives are in considerable part politically delimited and determined so that improving our personal experiences meant we must collectively address political relationships and structures.” What does the practice of sociology have to inform my political practice?

C. Wright Mills, in his classic “The Sociological Imagination”, explains the basis of sociology: “When, in a city of 100,000, only one man is unemployed, that is his personal trouble... But when in a nation of 50 million employees, 15 million are unemployed, that is an [social] issue...” One can add to that argument the point that, even when one or two people are impacted, it may still remain a social issue: perhaps a small clique of people so obsessed with material possessions and status that they defraud billions for status symbols, clearly not normal behavior but caused by social influences. Yet Mills is clearly not immune from these influences: He argues that the common person is “[s]eldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of their own lives and the course of world history... They do not possess the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man and society...” (my emphasis). And, of course, Mills provides the solution: a sociological imagination possessed by a select few who will tell us ordinary folks without the quality of mind to understand the world where our selves come from and who we are. Funny, I thought that every individual person was the best judge of their own best interests. Why does the working class need education about the injustice of managers? Or blacks, Latinos and Native Americans need primers on racism?

Steven A. Holmes argues that there is a phenomenon (he terms it the “whoops factor”), wherein “shoddy research or the misinterpretation [thereof]... moves on quickly to public outcry, segues swiftly into the enactment of news laws or regulations...” He implies that Americans have a “willingness, almost eagerness, to accept a Hobbesian view of man as a brutish thug...” Might this be, in line of the above arguing for an institutional focus, that the constant “disaster pornography” (as Baudrillard termed it) script that is run by mainstream news organizations and lawmakers in fact has the intention (as it clearly has the effect) of causing widespread public panic and confusion, increasing as the claims are disproven, causing increased mistrust and apathy about institutions? Holmes, of course, describes how his own preferred school of inquiry can help prevent this. My response is that those struggling for social justice must teach intellectual self-defense and common sense tools to people to help save them from the deluge of falsehoods coming from their ostensible ideological superiors, rather than relying on the same institutions that benefit from this campaign to clean up their act.

The Horace Mirier article, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, points out that, “The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different peoples behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs...” This indicates to me that people can in fact live under revolutionary conditions, that the attitudes of capitalism are not in fact ingrained and eternal. Unfortunately, this writer in 1956 could take a rather instructive look at his own zeitgeist by this standard, as he goes onto say, “... for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies... a preponderantly masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists...” Strange, I wasn't informed that a culture of disparate people with different attitudes and backgrounds can have psychological ailments such as “sadism” and “masochism”. Is this anthropologist also an experienced clinical psychologist? Anecdotes of 19th century anthropologists indulging in fantasies of differential cranial size along racial axes come to mind. And might Americans be argued to be masochistic, as they suffer under a system that they seem to despise; as Noam Chomsky notes in Necessary Illusions, “Polls show that almost half the population believe that the U.S. Constitution -- a sacred document -- is the source of Marx's phrase "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," so obviously right does the sentiment seem”? Simultaneously within the same article, a description of why radical politics are possible and an example of why radical critique of our institutions (in this case, racism and imperialism) must be launched lest such prejudices influence otherwise good people (in this case, good scholars) occurs. This indicates quite a bit to me about radical critiques' simultaneous potential efficacy and absolute necessity.
Each of these authors provide critiques that are valuable to those of us with a radical agenda, yet each reveals their own limits in fending off the influence of elitist social norms. If such intelligent individuals can fall prey, what about the rest of us? The solution is clear: develop the movement institutions that will allow us to carry on the fight together, catching each other's errors.

Special Election

2005-10-22T00:26:00.000-07:00

A brief thought.

Many of you have heard of the Governator's plan for a special recall election. Some popular attitudes to it can be seen here: http://www.theunion.com/article/20051021/OPINION/110210155. A quote:

"If Republicans don't get their way they cry "Special Election." Costing taxpayers millions of dollars, again."

Now, let us be clear. This special election is an attempt to cram propositions through people's throats by circumventing the constitutional system. The propositions are overwhelmingly reactionary, openly described to be attempting to break the mythical union stronghold on "special interest" money (though commentators sometimes mention corporations, they mention corporations alongside unions, as if the two were remotely identical in terms of character, amount, quality or social utility). And so on.

But nonetheless, what the above indicates is that, to many, democracy just ain't worth the cost.

How horrible is it that we consider MORE participation, MORE issues being directly available to the public, is terrible because it costs some money? Because people spend some time? And since when is any legislature, especially the California legislature, something to retain and protect?

Passive Voice and Double Negatives

2005-10-21T21:17:00.000-07:00

For those frequent readers: I apologize for the dearth of posting. As a copout, I'll post something about English.

I was a tutor for English, but I thought I had left that far behind. Now I go to a meeting of my Sociology class and am lectured about active and passive voice.

For those who didn't pay all that much attention the first time around, "passive voice" is a syntactic structure involving "to be" verbs (be, being, are, is, am) whereas "active voice" involves the verb directly. For example:

Passive: I was running.

Active: I ran.

Now, there is a reason why English teachers focus on this like a drunk man focuses on finding his keys: Active voice has a nice, vibrant quality; people are doing things or things are happening rather than things just being there; and active voice (as you can see from the above) is often superior in brevity.

But there are no hard and fast rules in English. Contrary to what you've been told, there are times when someone would want to use passive voice. For the reader's convenience, they're numbered.

1) Finality: Sometimes, in order to communicate that a circumstance is static, permanent, perhaps in the past, one would use passive voice. For example: "He is dead." rather than "He died." The former communicates the unbreaking reality of it.

2) Authentic Dialogue: This should be a no duh, but beginning writers often forget it. Your dialogue shouldn't sound like an essay. It can obviously be unrealistic in a literal sense (no one in Shakespeare's time spoke in strict iambic pentameter, and no one will ever speak like in Star Trek: The Next Generation), but it should sound authentic, and one way to make it sound authentic is to have sentences in dialogue that are not strictly grammatical.

3) Softening of the Message: Sometimes (and this will come up in the double negative discussion too), you don't want a sentence to have all the impact it can get. "Bush is killing people" and "Bush kills people", though identical in strict terms, have different connotations and imagery, and would be used in different contexts and for different implications.

The same thing happens with double negatives, such as "I'm not not happy." Why would someone use it?

Well, because "I'm not a bad man" isn't literally or connotatively identical with "I'm a good man". If you want to soften your message, you use double negatives. Language isn't math.

And the lesson to be drawn?

Maybe that our schools don't stress real understanding but irrational compliance with easy memorizable rules?

I dunno. Probably nothing.

Fundamental Problem with Sociology

2005-10-05T00:17:00.000-07:00

Let me point out a fundamental issue that we have with historical analysis. I'm not speaking of the tendency to either underrepresent historical forces or to behave in cultural imperialism by looking at other cultures and ascribing to them not just intrinsic but also deterministic accounts of "sadism", "masochism", "laziness", etc. as if culture was an entity that made every person behave the exact same rather than being more of an permeable web. Rather, the difficulty has to do with the markovian process of society.

"Markovian process" is most commonly applied to evolution. It describes a system where each phase is determined in part by the previous system. In evolution, a stage where single-cellular life is dominant does not turn into birds. Further, random chance plays a major role. The moths in England that became black-winged did so because of the coal burning in industrial England, something they had no role in. There are theories that amphibians became predominant thanks to a random event, perhaps a prolonged drought that would make access to land more strategic.

How does this apply to society? It is very easy, looking at history, to say that hierarchy, domination, etc. is permanent, indeed even human nature. The many problems with this are obvious: There's no intrinsic evidence (say, genetic) to establish it; we all know from personal experience and cultural analysis that human can live under a great amount of institutions and cultures; the institutions we have precisely ENCOURAGE destructive, anti-social, etc. behavior, roles, decisions, and outlooks; etc. Further, to establish the point, the social evidence is necessarily restrictive: we only can get insight into about 10,000 years of the 100,000 or s years of human history, so we have no idea the cultures and the institutions that have passed away. But let's say that all of our history has indeed been hierarchical. Must this be because of human nature?

Suppose that one hierarchical group, maybe thanks to local resources, or a particularly large group, or some utilization of hierarchy, managed to gain success. Others followed. Given that quite a bit of modern civilization developed in Sumer and the Middle East/Africa more generally, this conclusion doesn't seem so limited. Also note that technology can change things. For a long time, nomadic groups would devastate hierarchical and stable groups.

The point is that we can't be sure about what institutions are best, or can be supported by humans, or what not, given that not all institutions are going to have been given a fair shake, that our understanding of history and the evidence we have available is contoured by that very hierarchy that self-selects future societies, and that one could imagine many living arrangements that humans might be able to support.

Audacity Part II

2005-10-04T19:16:00.000-07:00

Frequent readers may detect that the outlook of this blog is that "success" in the narrow defined success in Iraq is in fact not the critique well-meaning people should be offering, that in fact beating the insurgency would be worse, not better, that we should pull out of Iraq not because we're failing but because we never had the right to be there in the first place. Yet even under the far more conservative framework, it is incredible to see the total lack of honesty of conservatives. I'm not even discussing the accusations being levelled against chief Republicans, who will remain unnamed and have been honestly replying that they haven't been doing anything, well, unusual. Illegal is quite another question.

No, I'm talking about the pretense to security knowledge of the totally inept chickenhawks that have hijacked US Corp's CEO and board positions. As the Daily Show reported, Bush claimed that more Iraqi battalions have been trained and are ready to fight "the terrorists". Let's put aside that we are "terrorists" too, that they are the resistance to illegal colonial occupation, that the cities that were captured from "the terrorists" were really captured from the Iraqi people (involving the mass slaughter of civilians), and the shades of South Vietnam (need I remind you that the last part of the American "defeat", really an incomplete victory, was the transfer to the South Vietnamese puppet army, who buckled within no time flat?) In fact, the actual military was saying that, well, LESS battalions were trained and ready, not more. I also continue to be amazed at Rumsfeld's proclivities for totally vague and meaningless responses.

Hulk Hogan: Public Intellectual?

2005-10-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest lessons I think I've learned is to listen to everyone and try to find a lesson or a value to everything. I was watching a CNBC show with Donny Deutsch about pro wrestling. Obviously, one of the people being interviewed was Hulk Hogan. Finding this interesting, I listened for a second. Hulk isn't a perfect public speaker (though, compared to Bush, he is a Mark Antony). He was asked about wrestling's social impact, and he pointed out that wrestling has a script wherein good eventually wins, but more importantly, he pointed out how he and other pro wrestlers try to get involved with charities. He then went onto say that someone in the public eye, an actor or athlete, has an obligation to use the fact that s/he is in the public eye 24 hours a day to try to do charitable work and behave as befits a role model. I found that was very interesting, and could be listened to by a lot of actors and athletes.

Hulk did unequiovocally discuss how wrestling is a scripted event and discussed himself as an actor as much as a wrestler. I don't like to insult pro wrestling: those guys are good actors and know how to make a spectacle that appeals to their fans. And yes, people do get hurt in it. Brandon Lee died while shooting a movie, but no one argues that those aren't blanks in the guns. Mick Foley (Mankind, Dude Love, etc.) pointed out in his book that wrestling is fake, but so is life.

One could argue, of course, that wrestling's good/evil script is banal and silly, but that's one's own opinion. What is entertaining to someone is entertaining. Someone can be snobbish and turn their nose up, discussing "high" culture, but everyone seems to have a different idea about what that means. Aesthetic judgments are subjective: "high culture" is in the eye of the beholder. I think that someone can be reasonable describing failure to meet the vision of the project: in German terms, the teknkik. But to attack the geist using some kind of intellectual framework is laughable.

Externalities Ain't All That Radical

2005-09-25T15:14:00.000-07:00

I frequently discuss externalities in markets because I think it cuts to the core of the inefficacy and fundamental injustice of markets, that they allow some to profit off of forcing others to pick up their mess. This may sound radical, but it really isn't.

For one thing, externalities say nothing about the justice of the existing wage and production system. Forcing either the end user or the producer to pay the cost may exacerbate inequity.
Mind you, to deal with this, I also propose raising the minimum wage, full employment policies, socialized health care, etc., all to reduce inequity. As a heuristic case, let's take oil and answer the question: Are the poor better off if people have to pay the full social cost of oil? Say, through some kind of sales tax levied on oil?

Sales taxes tend to be regressive: that is, because they add a constant amount, they harm those with less to spend more. However, poorer individuals spend less on consumption items and more on necessities, proportional to their income. Raising the price of oil raises prices across society since oil is involved with so much (agriculture, transportation and production of almost all goods, plastics), of course, but if it's done through a tax system, it could be put into programs that benefit the poor, perhaps even oil waivers for the poorer, as well as the obvious programs to cut carbon emission and deal with pollution.

Making people pay the full social cost of the products they buy has, of course, a major incentive value, in that it encourages socially beneficial production, and encourages producers to choose better methods that previously they would not have chosen because it was more expensive than the externalizing production type.

Also consider that those who pay the cost of externalities are typically the poor. They are the soldiers who forcefully extract from the Gulf. They suffer from the terrorism that ensues. They are proportionally the most harmed by the pollution and the global warming (heat strokes and such).

I don't know if this answers the question. There may indeed be a tradeoff between the proper cost of products and reducing inequity. What does this indicate to me? That even a very basic concept (people should pay for all their stuff) indicates how terrible markets are.

Affirmative Action: Thank You, Law and Order

2005-09-21T00:29:00.000-07:00

Recently, I watched two Law and Order episodes in which defendants (one a college student, and the other a star reporter for The New York Sentinel) cheated in some way, were involved with a murder and finally let their lawyers claim that affirmative action put them over their heads and put additional pressure upon them. This is actually a very broad conservative argument: Affirmative action is bad for minorities' self-image or perception somehow.

Tim Wise's piece, "Lamont in the White House", discusses a number of the issues very eloquently, such that I doubt I will top it. http://www.alternet.org/story/15822/ But there are even more problems Tim didn't discuss.

One of the lawyers arguing this came up to Jack after a plea bargain was made and said he had a dream that the US Supreme Court had not voted the way it did in the Michigan case, going onto say that the white students were applauding those black students who did succeed. But this stems from a flatly false notion of white behavior: this idea that we've just been waiting for the black community to be able to pick up the pieces from racism and move on. No, successful black individuals are scarcely more acceptable now than they were ever before. As Jack said, "I'm barely white enough to live in Greenwich." Witness the whole of black history, where any attempt to improve one's standards (escape slavery, learn to read, create businesses, leave the ghetto, go to better schools) were vigorously and violently denied. Think that that's all nasty things of the past? Fine, add in the diatribe that many will launch about how much money those black sports stars make. Or the fact that social scientists have argued that were there no racist pressures operating there would be no de facto segregated communities in the United States, and that when too many blacks move in to a white neighborhood whites leave in droves for another sub-sub-suburb. Black success doesn't make us happy; it makes us scared.

Now, it is true that affirmative action may deepen the perception of the black woman and man as black rising above other variables in their lives, but as Jack pointed out, that's putting the problem backwards. For black people in this country know the negative stereotypes held about them and their culture very early on in life, often before they are ten years old. They were already self-identified themselves racially because they had no luxury to do otherwise: race was part of their lives. Indeed, this is yet another race privilege: To be able to pretend that racism does not exist. The lives of most black individuals are filled with examples; for them to deny it would be highly suspect.

Another issue that came up was the "Dinner with Spike Jones" problem: The whole black community identifiying with the successful black individual propelled by preferential treatment. Indeed, this is a problem, but to identify this as a problem with affirmative action is eminently silly. For that pressure will obviously accrue to any successful person of color, non? And if that's the case, doesn't that mean that blacks are carrying a unique burden, because their actions are viewed as not just representing themselves but also their community's intelligence and character? In fact, this isn't hypothetical or anecdotal. Claude Steele has done good work about the "stereotype threat", wherein blacks who take standardized tests that are viewed to matter (SAT, AP, etc.) suffer compared to comparable white students because they feel the additional burden of justifying their ethnicity; sometimes they go too quickly to finish early, sometimes too slowly because they are paranoid about checking answers. Give them a practice test or a test that they are told does not matter and scores improve drastically.

One does, of course, have to bear in mind that affirmative action, however needed, is in essence picking up for the failure of somewhere else in society. The high school system was terrible; thus, the college must take that into account. The black employee has had fewer years of employment because of racism. If this is deferred for too long, it may indeed be that a student, however bright and gifted, or a potential employee, however qualified, is behind the curve somehow, such that they cannot compete.

What do I say to that scenario? Give them the opportunity to try.

Small Thought on Epidemiology

2005-09-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting article: http://metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050914-074440-3222r. I particularly direct you to this paragraph: "Two US Air Force C-130 planes meanwhile started low altitude spraying of the city with insecticides in a bid to combat the spread of mosquito-borne disease."

Now, one can make a reasonable argument, though with a number of ethical problems, that it is acceptable to sacrifice some for the good of all. It may even be so when those who are being affected are not consulted and do not agree. But there is always a race, a class, a gender story lurking behind the situation.

Israelis have installed some basic sewage and other systems in Palestinian territory, but this has been openly admitted to be because otherwise diseases will spread into Israel. Those insecticides are only guaranteed to do one thing: harm the people still left in the city. It is the poor and black who disproportionately "serve their country" in the military, and whose 60 and 80 hour a week sacrifices of time and effort keep the economy afloat.

In other words, when a white commentator says that military service is the most noble profession, it's remarkably easy for her to do so, because it's highly likely that she won't in fact be asked to make that sacrifice. When insecticides are dumped or high-intensity agriculture harms workers, it is not the white, male or rich whose lives will be disrupted.