pink scare

What's the Point of Education?

2012-02-14T15:00:00.012-06:00

If you ask Chicago's Rahm Emmanuel—known locally as "Mayor 1%"—the point of education is to provide for the specific needs of the owners of big corporate firms. The owners sketch up the job descriptions, they decide what will be produced, according to what modes of organization, when and where. Schools, then, are nothing more than publicly-subsidized training centers whose curriculum matches the fleeting demands of profit-hungry corporate leaders.

In their classic, must-read book on the topic, Schooling in Capitalist America (2011, Haymarket Re-issue), radical economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis elaborate more on this perspective:

How can we best understand the relationship between education and the capitalist economy? Any adequate explanation must begin with the fact that schools produce workers. The traditional theory explains the increased value of an educated worker by treating the worker as a machine. According to this view, workers have certain technical specifications (skills and motivational patterns) which in any given production situation determine their economic productivity. Productive traits are enhanced through schooling...

...The motivating force in the capitalist economy is the employer's quest for profit. Profits are made through hiring workers and organizing production in such a way that the price paid for workers time—the wage—is less than the value of the goods produced by their labor. [If the price paid for the worker's time (i.e. the wage) wasn't less than the value of the goods the worker produces during her shift, the boss would have no reason to hire her in the first place -t]...

...Schools produce workers...Schools foster types of personal development compatible with the relationships of dominance and subordination in the economic sphere, and finally, schools create surpluses of skilled labor sufficiently extensive to render effective the prime weapon of the employer in disciplining labor—the power to fire and hire.

In short, according to the 1%, the basic goal of education—which includes everything from curiculum to methods of student and teacher evaluation—should be to foster and sustain corporate profitability. Considerations such as human development and flourishing are irrelevant. Developing the talents of students and enabling them to lead free lives doesn't even enter into the picture. To the extent that music, arts, and the humanities fail to provide corporate owners with the sorts of traits their looking for, they should be completely eliminated. (Although they're less commonly the object of direct ruling-class ire, I note that the natural sciences are distorted and abused by this educational program as well—especially on the question of how grant money is allocated and so forth). The knowledge and skills woven through disciplines such as literature, philosophy, history, art, anthropology, languages, culture and so on are—as far as the 1% is concerned—useless at best, and dangerous at worst. What's needed, instead, is a surplus of people who empathize with orders, defer gratification, respect the authority of bosses, come to work on time, who possess the technical skills needed to do whatever the boss needs them to do. (For more on this see this (esp. 6:40-onward) as well as this (as yet unreleased) book Capitalism and Education)

It's clear that there is no space in this educational vision for the needs and interests of educators, parents and students to be voiced. Their job is to take orders from above. The goal is set for them and their only use lies in efficiently maximizing that ready-made goal. It should come as no surprise that, more often than not, the people charged with running school systems and universities come from directly from the corporate world. For example, in the case of the Chicago City Colleges (which used to be called "Peoples' Colleges") a corporate business executive with no specific expertise in higher education, Cheryl Hyman, has been charged with overseeing them. Charged with the task of "re-inventing" the former Peoples' Colleges, Hyman been assisted by a slew of corporate consultants. As the Reader reports:

[Hyman] was assisted by consultants from McKinsey & Company and the Civic Consulting Alliance (the consulting arm of the Commercial Club of Chicago) who worked, initially pro bono, to "dig into the metrics" with her. By midsummer she'd hired former McKinsey consultant (and Renaissance 2010 Fund official) Alvin Bisarya as vice chancellor of strategy and institutional intelligence. In March 2011, Donald Laackman, a principal at the Civic Consulting Alliance, was installed as president of Harold Washington College. And last January, McKinsey was awarded a half-million-dollar contract for work on City Colleges changes this year.

The idea is that educational institutions should be subordinated to, and take their order from, corporate "experts". The ignorant public—students, teachers, and parents—have no meaningful role to play in determining how schools are run. After all, for the corporate "experts", students, parents and teachers are thus seen as noting more than the passive objects of "reform" rather than agents whose interests the school system should serve. For those parents, students or teachers who dare to dissent from this ruling-class consensus, the reply is something like this:

Look, if you're going to survive in this society, you need a job. But to get a job, you have to do what exactly we say. We—the "job creators"—decide what jobs there are and who gets them. If you disobey us, we'll freeze you out of the system and leave you with nothing. So it's either a life of obedience to ready-made goals and (if you're lucky) precarious employment, or a life of destitution and marginalization.

This goes for students and parents as much as it does for teachers. Students and parents are denied a voice and threatened with marginalization if they don't do what the system asks of them. And if educators themselves speak up and try to resist the corporate re-structuring of their curriculum, they are scapegoated, threatened, attacked and punished. Aside from the fact that teachers unions are the most powerful organized labor force in the contemporary United States today—which makes them a clear target for an employing class on a warpath to smash the union movement entirely—unionized educators are also in a position to resist commands from above demanding that they teach only what corporate leaders want them to teach. Hence, the corporate elites have a clear interest in bludgeoning,discrediting and otherwise attacking teachers unions.

The most perverse part of this is that ruling elites use the threat of unemployment to make it appear as if they're performing some kind of philanthropic service by using educational institutions to shoehorn people into low-paying, precarious jobs. By exploiting the economic misery of the 99% (caused by austerity and the global crisis—both forced upon us by the 1%), Rahm and his goons are attempting to sell themselves as "job-creating saviors" of the 99%. But it's not hard to see through this sham, even by their own lights. If Boeing wants 100 more workers to enter the labor market today (because, say, they want to drive wages down in order to make hiring new people maximally profitable), there's no guarantee that they'll want those 100 people next year. Maybe they'll change their mind because their profit margins aren't high enough, or maybe they'll leave Chicago in search of a more easily exploitable labor force. Though educational institutions are being forced to serve corporate interests, it's not the case that corporate elites are being asked to reciprocate. The profit-driven demands of the labor market are volatile and fleeting. There is nothing to stop them from benefiting in a one-sided way from public funds in the here and now, only to pack up and leave at a later date.

***

Often, political struggles within the sphere of education are struggles over the question of access: who is granted access to which schools, who isn't, and why. The struggle over access is the struggle against school closures, against teacher layoffs, against tuition hikes and user fees. It is the struggle against a university system financed through the exploitative—and fabulously profitable—student loan industry. Traditionally, working class people and oppressed minorities were completely excluded from the university system. Struggles from below created inroads for previously excluded groups to get a foothold in the university system. But today, the ranks of those being entirely excluded is growing by the day as austerity causes living standards to plummet and tuition and fees to soar. The question of access is a key question. In the context of cruel regimes of austerity being imposed from above, it is perhaps the central question facing millions of ordinary people in the 99% right now.

But the question of access, taken by itself, is only part of the struggle. After all, what is it that we are fighting to gain access to?

The only way to answer this question is to put forward a perspective on what the point of education is. We already saw the 1%'s answer: educational institutions should either be made to subsidize corporate profits or they should cease to exist entirely. But what kind of answer should the 99% give?

***

Human beings flourish when they are able to cultivate their talents and exercise their capacities for imaginative thinking and creative activity. Living a rich and meaningful life requires that we have the space to reflect and figure out who we are and what we really care about. Leading a free life means honing one's capacity for critical thinking, for seeing the world as it really is rather than the way our leaders want us to see it. Living a free life also means learning about our own history, that is, the often untold stories of groups women and men who struggled against forms oppression and exploitation in the past—in contrast to history-as-seen-from-above which focuses on the alleged "heroics" of a small group of "Great Men". These important—indeed necessary—goals can only be accomplished through education.

I stress that these goals are not "luxuries". They are necessary conditions that must be met for any human being to fully realize their own potential, call forth their creative capacities, and live a fulfilling, rich life that they can freely endorse as one they have chosen. As G.A. Cohen puts it:

We have needs beyond the needs to consume and these aren't recognized by capitalism. We have a need, for example, to develop and exercise our talents. When our capacities lie unused, they don't enjoy the zest for life that comes from having one's capacities flourish. People are able to develop themselves only when they get good education. But in a capitalist society, the education of children is threatened by those who would contort education to fit the narrow demands of the labor market....We shouldn't stake our children's future on the hope that the capitalist market will need what's good for them.

...There's a lot of talent in almost every human being. But in a lot of cases that talent goes undeveloped, because people lack the time, energy, resources and facilities to develop it. Throughout history, only a leisured minority has enjoyed this fully. And they did so (and continue to do so) on the backs of a toiling majority...

...The ruling class wants education to be geared toward restoring profitability to the system... But it's dangerous to educate the young too much, because they will become cultivated people who are likely to be less satisfied with the low-paying jobs the market offers them. This might create aspirations that capitalism can't match.... Therefore, people must be "educated to know their place"...

This is a powerful diagnosis of the problem and a vision for how things should be different. The most basic claim is that we shouldn't cater to the tendency in capitalism to view people only as sources of profit, and when they can't be profitably exploited, as redundant and expendable.

Even the members of the ruling class cannot deny the power of this argument. That is why, by and large, the arts and humanities are well-funded and relatively protected at elite colleges and universities. If Rahm and the 1% in Chicago are openly and publicly calling for the complete corporatization of the City Colleges—largely populated by working-class people of color, a large number of them recent immigrants—they are not suggesting that the University of Chicago be transformed into a training facility in which professors and administrators are the mere servants of corporate leaders.

Of course, there are trends—even in the halls of so-called "elite" institutions—toward corporatization. And they need to be rooted out, criticized and fought against. The systematic underfunding and debt-financing of graduate programs in music, creative writing, visual art and film (among other endeavors) is a grave problem even at the "top schools".

But it remains true that the "plan for transformation" of the City Colleges in Chicago—and elsewhere—evinces racist and anti-working-class assumptions on the part of those at the top.

After all, Rahm isn't sending his own children to the corporatized charter schools or public military academies that he favors as models for the Chicago Public School system. He sends his kids to an expensive private school where students have full access to art, music and other "luxuries". And we can bet that he isn't going to send his children to the City Colleges when they graduate from high school. So, for the children of wealth and power, there's one kind of education. But for the children of working class people—and especially working class people of color—there's another kind of education. For Rahm and his buddies, the people at the bottom should be "educated to know their place" so that they can effectively and willingly fill the role that the 1% has selected for them—whether it's as a temporary part of the corporate workforce or as member of the unemployed industrial reserve army.

***

There's a profound contradiction between what the capitalist system—premised as it is on profitability for the employing class—requires and what human beings require. As long as the basic priorities of society are determined by forces outside of our control, we will be faced with this contradiction. The proponents of the system as it is will say that education should be a mere means for efficiently satisfying ready-made goals determined by the employing class. Proponents of the human interests of the 99% will insist that education be part of putting ordinary human beings in a position to decide for themselves what the basic goals should be.

As long as the priority of the social system is shackled to the ready-made goal of profit maximization for the rich, it will always be possible to paint "non-productive" forms of knowledge as "useless", "irrelevant" or, at best, mere "luxuries" available only to the children of the rich. It will possible to make high-stakes testing and corporatized school structures look necessary and unavoidable.

But right now these market ideologies that are regularly used to legitimize the system are ringing hollow for millions of people. Masses of people rose up and took to the streets last Fall in the US because they are sick and tired of living underneath an economic and political system dominated by the 1%. The Occupy movement awoke a sleeping giant which, although disturbed from its slumber, has yet to realize the full extent of its power to change society. Millions of people are coming around to the idea that system doesn't work for them—and they are hungry for alternatives. The only way to resolve the contradictions plaguing education in a profit-based society is to fight for a different kind of society—one in which the social forces of production are controlled democratic and made to work for human ends rather than the iron law of profit accumulation.

The Importance of Movement Democracy

2012-02-10T08:37:00.016-06:00

I think it's good that there is so much debate ensuing around tactics and strategy within Occupy right now. Movements only move forward if they are able to vigorously deliberate about their own strategy and goals. Avoiding debate and discussion means leaving our views unexamined and uncriticized. It means allowing the inertia of the status quo to set in and dampen progress. When this happens, movements wither on the vine. To the extent that the arguments about Black Bloc tactics have ignited discussions of this sort, they are productive for the movement as a whole.

Still, there are several unfortunate consequences of the framing of many of the debates raised by Chris Hedge's polemic against Black Bloc tactics. Some of the debates appear to have devolved into a shrill, abstract and moralistic back and forth about non-violence/violence. Others ignore matters that deserve a lot more attention than they're getting from the media. As a result of the framing of the "Black Bloc debates", a number of crucial questions have been lost in the fray.

What do I have in mind? The question of movement democracy, on the one hand, and the related question of how consciousness changes, on the other, are two deeply important questions that are not well-served by the debate instigated by Hedges's polemic.

As many have pointed out, the "Black Bloc" is a tactic, not an organization. Many who employ the tactic seem to have a roughly similar set of politics, but there is nothing like political homogeneity among the Bloc's participants. Different people employ the tactic in different contexts for different reasons. I'm inclined to say that any sweeping, abstract assessment of the Black Bloc as a tactic is bound to get things wrong. Only by conducting, as Lenin puts it, a "concrete analysis of a concrete situation" can we hope to get things right here. But what would a more concrete assessment of the tactic look like?

In order to answer this question, we have to back up for a moment. Who is it that's supposed to be doing the assessing here? And what method or practices for assessment should be used? There has been a lot of general debate over whether Black Bloc tactics are effective or justifiable. But the question of who should make this decision (and how they should make it) has been largely ignored. Before we can know which tactics are the right ones, we have to be clear about who should make that call.

One perspective here would be the following: the question of Black Bloc tactics is a matter best handled behind closed doors by activists already committed to using such tactics. According to this perspective, Black Bloc tactics should be employed whether or not the rest of the movement is won through dialogue and debate. Perhaps an attempt to win the rest of the movement should be tried, but if, in the end, that argument isn't won at a G.A., those who prefer Black Bloc tactics should simply go ahead with their plans anyway. Thus, activists of this persuasion see movement democracy as a mere means to achieving their pre-deterimined goals, rather than a genuine deliberative process where their own minds might change in the course of collective discussion with their comrades. Ultimately, this perspective assumes that decision-making power about movement tactics should rest with a relatively narrow group of people who decide internally what to do. I use the example of Black Bloc tactics, but this perspective could just as well be employed in support of any tactic whatsoever.

I'd like to suggest that this is a deeply problematic position.

A far better perspective would be one in which movement democracy is central. It is deeply undemocratic to use democratic bodies (like a G.A.) as mere means to achieve pre-determined goals (which can be discarded if it proves to be an unreliable means). The person who approaches movement democracy in this way says, in effect, "I'm for democracy only if it means I get my way, otherwise I'm against it." In the end, this person will say "I don't care if most people disagree with me about what this movement should do, at the end of the day I don't have any obligation to justify myself to fellow activists." This is not a democratic approach in the least. This individualistic/strategic perspective brushes against the grain of the cooperative and deliberative attitudes necessary to the flourishing of movement democracy.

But why is movement democracy important? It's worth going through the most significant reasons why effective mass movements have to be internally democratic.

First of all, an internally democratic movement draws everyone involved into active participation in the determination of the goals and tactics of the movement. Rather than allowing a self-appointed clique of "experts" to issue orders from on high, vigorous movement democracy mobilizes and activates all participants and enables them to be the co-authors of the movement (rather than mere followers or sympathizers). People have a much stronger stake in a movement when they are actively involved in running it. Mass participation goes hand in hand with genuine movement democracy.

Mass participation is key because it fosters that crucial element of all successful social struggles and revolutions: self-activity. As the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky once put it, a "vibrant and active democracy" is needed within movements so that all members can "participate actively and consciously in working out its views and in determining its course of action." The point isn't that democracy is the most fair procedure in some abstract sense; rather, the idea that democracy is an essential political element of active social movements from below. Mass participation generates political energy and an anti-conservative spark that cannot be achieved in any other way. All of the most successful and inspiring social movements in history have created radical new forms of democracy from below that draw everyone into active participation (the revolutionary workers council is a key example). The success or failure of Occupy depends on its ability to draw the masses of people into active participation in determining its course of action.

Furthermore, a movement that eschews vigorous internal democracy risks running aground on the shoals of substitutionism. Substitutionism is the political mistake of substituting oneself (or one's small group) for a mass movement. Without vigorous movement democracy, where everyone debates publicly and openly what their common course of action should be, the door is left open for a group (or competing groups) to substitute their own perspective and goals for the perspective/goals of the movement writ large. Substitutionism is problematic for at least two reasons. First of all, it it elitist. Rather thank seeing liberation as a process in which the masses collectively emancipate themselves through their own self-activity, substitutionists assume that a minority must step in to grant the benighted masses liberation from on high. Second, substitutionism has the effect of de-mobilizing people. By drawing a sharp line of demaraction between themselves and the rest of the movement, substitutionists give others the impression that their active participation lacks value and importance. Substitutionist posturing does not win new people to the struggle. It doesn't radicalize the masses and encourage revolt from below. It tends to be perceived as top-down, insulting and de-mobilizing by those outside of the substitutionist clique.

Substitutionists aren't always self-professed radicals, although many are. Gradualist, conservative groups who have a stake in the status quo (esp. groups close to the Democratic Party) can step in and substitute themselves for the movement just as easily as ultra-left radicals. The key to preventing substitutionism is unfettered, vigorous movement democracy. That way, the direction of the movement is, ideally, determined by nothing except the unforced force of the better argument in mass deliberative bodies like G.A.'s. Of course, organized radicals can and must participate in those debates and deliberations. The experience and depth of politics they bring has a lot to offer the movement. But they must do so as participants in the collective-self governance of the movement, not as "experts" standing above and outside of the movement purporting to show the "ignorant masses" the unvarnished truth.

Finally, direct participation of the masses in intra-movement democracy is essential because of the collective learning process that it makes possible. This brings us to the question of how consciousness changes and how people are radicalized.

According to some, the best way to radicalize people is through provocative, small-scale actions that suddenly shake ordinary people from their "dogmatic slumbers". By witnessing daring examples of the "propaganda of the deed", people are radicalized and drawn into participation in struggle.

Now, I think it would be abstract and unhelpful to say that small-scale, bold actions have no progressive effect on consciousness. Everything depends on the form and content of the action and the context in which it occurs. But if there are examples of successful political interventions of this kind, there is also a long list of examples in which this approach resulted in spectacular failure. And even the most successful examples of the "propaganda of the deed" pale in comparison with the radicalizing effect of direct participation in collective struggles against the 1%. People are radicalized in the course of actively fighting back in concert with others. In a society in which people are bombarded everywhere they turn by advertisements and injunctions to buy this or that, it is unreasonable to expect that a mere slogan or image will be enough to win people to joining the fight for their own liberation. Drawing people into participating in struggle is the key to changing consciousness.

But how are people drawn into mass action and participation in struggle? Worsening material conditions and discussion/direct-engagement are essential here. Peoples daily lives are being shaken by brutal austerity from above, worsening living standards for the 99%, mass layoffs and unemployment, foreclosures and school closings, etc. They don't need a small clique to tell them that something is wrong with society. What they need is someone to engage them critically, to talk to them, to challenge them in discussion to link arms with others in struggle. Radicals need to talk to people in their own communities, to meet them half-way and engage them directly. This is all the more important if the Occupy movement is going to successfully collaborate and integrate itself with communities that face racial oppression, residential segregation and police intimidation. It's not enough to pull off creative political stunts that, in effect, fly the flag and demand that people rally to it. Direct political discussion with the 99% is essential to building mass movements.

Importantly, political discussion has to begin from where people's heads are at; if it abstractly sweeps in from elsewhere it is unlikely to get any traction. What's more, this dialogue has to draw on people's concrete experiences. Take the question of the role of the police. It would have been abstract to aggressively scold and berate new activists who were sanguine about the police in the early days of the movement. To be sure, raising objections to their attitudes toward the police was necessary, even at the beginning, because the cops never have been, and never will be, on our side. But things have changed drastically since then. After all of the repression from the police that the movement has faced, radicals are now very well-positioned to draw on those people's experience in arguing that the cops aren't on our side. Without a democratic forum for debate and dialogue that can draw on the collective experience of the movement, we can't expect to win fellow occupiers to the perspective that the police aren't a force for social justice. People's views are not set it stone; they are liable to change rather quickly on the basis of political debate and concrete experience through struggle. There's no substitute for engaging people in critical political dialogue in a way that draws on their own experience and concerns.

Now, critical dialogue doesn't mean that activists should leave people's existing views intact or simply pander to what they already think. This would be conservative and ultimately antithetical to the entire spirit of activism itself. Activists try to change the world, not merely interpret it as it is. Critical discussion and dialogue should be a combination of listening to people's concerns and questions, on the one hand, and challenging them to be more militant and active on the other. In the context of escalating attacks on the 99% from above, people's consciousness can develop extremely quickly. Seeing others engaged in mass struggles is a radicalizing force as well, which is all the more reason to build a mass, vigorously democratic movement from below.

This kind of critical discussion and debate can only flourish in the context of a democratic mass movement. If everyone simply does their own thing, without discussing among one another which way forward is best for all, these discussions may never transpire. If some groups, under the guise of a "diversity of tactics", simply opt out of democratic deliberation when they feel they won't get their way, this thwarts the capacity of the movement debate out and discuss tactics effectively. As a result, we can't generalize from each other's experience or learn from each other's mistakes.

The collective learning process that mass movement democracy makes possible is impossible to experience any other way. As socialist Norman Geras describes it, with mass movements:

"...the end must already be operative in the means employed, the liberation of the masses can only be their own work, and it it is in this very process of achieving it that they must develop those qualities which will sustain a socialist society. Thus, for Trotsky, mass participation in the political forms thrown up by a revolution is not only a manifestation of the widespread desire to assume more active control over political and economic life, it also promotes and consolidates that desire. Revolution is consistently seen as an educative process, in which the same mass actions which are necessary to destroy the existing economic and political structures, also have the effect of delivering the working class from bourgeois ideology, of making it conscious of its interest as a class, of raising its confidence in its own ability to organize and decide, and of providing it with the experience of these activities."

This educative process, where we learn from each other and radicalize through the course of struggle and collective self-determination, is impossible if some groups regularly opt out and decide that tactics are best determined by small groups who separate themselves from the movement.

So, the question of "Black Bloc: Pro or Con?" is not one that can be answered abstractly. It should only be answered by direct participants in a mass movement who collectively debate and deliberate together in an open, democratic spirit. To think that a few self-apointed "experts" could answer this question for everyone in a couple of widely-publicized internet debates misses this crucial point.

Against Hedges on the Black Bloc

2012-02-07T19:59:00.014-06:00

Many readers will have seen Chris Hedges' polemic against the Black Bloc titled "The Cancer in Occupy". It's getting a lot of play on the internet, so I figured it would be worth joining in the fun and offering a few of my own unsystematic, incomplete remarks on the topic. What follows is more a critique of Hedge's polemic and less a thorough analysis of the Black Bloc phenomenon:

Socialist critics of the Black Bloc (and, to be clear: I consider myself one of them) should recognize the basic tone and method of criticism employed by Hedges right away: it is closely analogous to red-baiting. I'm unsettled by this language of "cancer", "beasts", "criminals" and so forth. This strategy is a hop, skip and a jump away from classic red-baiting tactics used by liberals to purge and denigrate radical elements from movements. To be clear: I'm not accusing Hedges of red-baiting in this particular polemic. But this strategy of argument lends itself rather easily, with a few changes here and there, to liberal red-baiting and anti-radical hysterics. That should give socialists pause. Sure, there are plenty of political criticisms that engage with the ultra-leftism and adventurism of some of the Bloc's participants. But let's set aside the language of cancer and disease, beasts and criminals. These are comrades in struggle, and their ideas aren't fixed in stone. To the extent that it is possible—and it may not be, given the way that the Bloc often operates—revolutionaries should be in critical dialogue with them about how social revolutions happen, why we have to build internally democratic mass movements, why the working class is key, etc. Neither the Bloc nor their sympathizers in the movement are persuaded of anything when it is derided as a "disease" or a "cancer".
Hedges blames the Bloc where he should blame the cops. This comes out rather clearly when he says that "this is a struggle to win the hearts and minds of the wider public and those within the structures of power (including the police) who are possessed of a conscience. It is not a war. Nonviolent movements, on some level, embrace police brutality." After everything that's happened, I find it absolutely incredible that Hedges has the chutzpah to say that the Occupy movement is presently engaged in a mission to win the "hearts and minds" of the cops. This perspective completely misunderstands the function of the police as an institution in our society. Are white Occupiers supposed to encourage their black comrades to go up and start polite moral discussions with the legion of armed thugs in blue who regularly brutalize and murder people in their communities? Are white people supposed to tell people of color in the movement that they should embrace police brutality? Moreover, are we to think that the cops are a more worthy political audience for the movement than the "disease" that is the Bloc? Hedges misses the mark here by a wide margin.
There is a moralistic thread running through Hedges's piece regarding the issue of non-violence. It is patently absurd to say that there are only two positions here: one of fetishizing violence for its own sake and one of fetihsizing non-violence. I absolutely agree that it's bone-headed to think that Occupy can go toe to toe with the State in a physical confrontation and win. It can't. And I completely agree that the strength of the movement lies in mass character, and especially in its capacity to mobilize the working majority to use its special social power to disrupt the profit system. So, I agree that it's important to challenge elitist insurrectionist ideas within the movement. It's important to distinguish genuine social revolutions from coups waged by small self-appointed elites. Whether or not it is possible to engage a group that appears to place no stock in intra-movement dialogue and debate, it's certainly not the case that we should have to adopt Hedges' abstract and ultimately fetishistic perspective toward non-violence. Moralistic injunctions to "obey the law" are not left-wing criticisms.
Hedges's critique of ultra-leftism is ham-fisted. He makes it sound as if it is a crime to offer radical critiques of mainstream "left" elements and institutions. It would be easy to contort his arguments against ultra-leftism to serve the purposes of a soggy reformist apologia for the conservatism of the Democratic Party and the higher-ups of the AFL-CIO. Although I disagree with his generally warm embrace of the Hedges piece, Louis Proyect usefully compares the ultra-leftism of many of participants in the Bloc to the sectarianism of Stalinist parties during the so-called "Third Period" in the 1920s and early 30s. (I also think the Weathermen and Red Army Faction comparisons are apt as well, but I won't discuss them here). During the so-called "Third Period", Communist Parties under the direction of Stalin's Russia were instructed to view all non-Communist groups on the Left (e.g. reformists, other revolutionaries, trade unionists, etc.) as "social fascists", on par with groups on the far Right. Everyone who wasn't in the Communist Party was to be viewed as a class traitor and a tool of the system. Of course, this was a disastrous policy and it eventually gave way to its equally problematic opposite, the sycophantic tailism of the "Popular Front". The "Third Period" perspective, it seems to me, accurately captures some of the rather abstract and highly sectarian dismissals of groups on the organized Left with whom the Bloc evidently disagrees (e.g. the Zapatistas, organized labor, etc.). But the problem with ultra-leftism isn't that it offers criticisms of mainstream Left forces such as the labor movement or Left parties elsewhere in the world (e.g. the Zapatistas or Bolivia's MAS or the PSUV, etc.). That criticism is necessary and it underscores why we should steer clear of lesser-evilism and tailism. Instead, the problem with ultra-leftists is that they are abstentionist, abstract, and ultimately sectarian. They are incapable of understanding what "critical support" means at crucial conjunctures, and they fail to grasp that fighting in the here and now for reforms doesn't necessarily make one a reformist. Many are elitist and cynical about the possibility of mass revolt. Most have an un-dialectical and implausible perspective when it comes to the concrete question of how movements are built and how peoples' consciousness changes in the course of struggle and self-activity. So, I'm all for critiquing ultra-leftism. But let's not do so in a way that lends itself to easy co-optation by lesser-evilists and liberals.
Hedges is probably at his best when discussing the need to build mass movements that are internally democratic. But this argument needs to be closely tied to an analysis of how successful social transformations occur. And this requires bringing the centrality of the working class into the picture. But so far as I can tell, this is not a major part of Hedges's analysis. He seems to think that the movement is trying to win the support of "the people" plus those in power with a conscience. But the politics here are soggy at best, and conservative at worst. The 1% is not our audience. Occupy is at its strongest when it draws the masses of working people into self-activity with an eye to engaging in industrial actions such as strikes, sit-downs, factory occupations, walk-outs, and all the rest.
Hedges derides the Bloc for sectarianism (rightly), but takes himself (wrongly) to be non-sectarian. In fact, his polemic is highly sectarian. Sometimes he makes it sound like the enemy isn't the capitalist state or the ruling class, but rather the "cancer" within the movement. He sometimes makes it sound as if the Bloc is a bigger threat to the movement than the State, the ruling class and the organized Right. But that is to merely reproduce the sectarian mistake of those in the Bloc who label everyone who isn't a BB'er a "tool of the system" or a "sellout" and, therefore an enemy of the movement. He, like Bloc ultra-leftists, makes it sound like the main enemies are within the Left rather than without. To be fair, Hedges says plenty of things that brush against the grain of this sort of sectarianism. But too much of what he says in the piece is at odds with this non-sectarian impulse. I'm not saying that the Left should handle the Bloc with kid gloves. But let's not single them out as the single most significant challenge that the movement faces. Surely the 1% and the State have that distinction.
The language of "criminal" is useless to the Left. When Hedges follows a discussion of property destruction with the charge of criminality, he might as well have said "and get a damned job!" next. To be an anti-capitalist is to think that the institution of property as its configured in capitalist societies is illegitimate. Of course, that doesn't mean that one should steal from other members of the 99%; ethical and political considerations here overwhelmingly speak against such an opportunistic and ultimately selfish conclusion. I don't destroy the property of my neighbors because it would be ethically wrong and politically useless; considerations of "legality" don't enter in to it. Moreover, socialists think that the working class should own and control the means of production. That is a sharp objection to the legitimacy of capitalist property rights. So, the rebuke to the Bloc isn't "But you don't respect capitalist legal institutions!". Rather it should be: "hey comrade, you aren't doing anything to advance the cause of winning a socialist society", or "what you're doing is opportunistic and individualistic; it's not a political strike against property but a selfish orgy of appropriation and abstract destruction". "Criminality" does no critical work here. It makes it sound like Occupy should call the cops on the Bloc. For all I know, that's what Hedges thinks we should do.

Clint Eastwood and "Halftime in America"

2012-02-06T14:07:00.031-06:00

If you watched the Super Bowl last night, you couldn't have missed the nationalistic theme running through all of the commercials for the "Big Three" US car manufacturers: Ford, GM and Chrysler. A particularly striking example of this was Chrylser's halftime advertisement which consisted of little more than a two-minute monologue by Clint Eastwood. View it here. A Chicago Tribune article described the halftime ad as follows:

Is what is good for Chrysler good for America?

The auto maker courted controversy and won kudos for a two-minute Super Bowl advertisement that was less a car sales pitch than a political message in a presidential election year.

Rugged Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood proclaimed it was "Halftime in America" in the spot that did not mention a Chrysler car or truck but intoned that the automaker's successful turnaround could be used as an example for the United States as it struggles with high unemployment and a slow economic growth rate.

"Detroit's showing us it can be done," Eastwood said.

Traffic on Twitter showed overwhelmingly positive comments for the advertisement. The "Dirty Harry" star and Academy Award-winning director spoke to Americans as if he were a football coach making a halftime speech encouraging his team to work together to win in the second half.

"This country can't be knocked out with one punch," Eastwood said in the ad. "We get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines. Yeah, it's halftime America. And, our second half is about to begin."

The beginning of the ad says little specifically about cars but describes the sense in which it is "halftime in America", adding that "people are out of work and they're hurting. And they're all wondering what they're going to do to make a comeback." Later, Eastwood adds that "the people of Detroit know a little something about [hardship]...they almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again." Eastwood also toes the post-political bipartisanship-consensus line, adding a few remarks impugning "the fog of division, discord and blame" which prevent us from "coming together as one".

What should we make of this? Various hysterical right-wingers are upset by the advertisement (e.g. evidently Karl Rove is "offended") since it appears to give cover to the Obama administration's bailout of the auto manufacturers in 2009 (which, of course, the Republicans would have carried out just the same had they been in power). Although some Obama apologists—as well as car industry higher-ups—will counter this charge by dismissing the idea that the advertisement is political at all, the right-wingers actually have a point here. The ad is deeply political. And it is also—despite numerous claims to the contrary—still very much a car advertisement. The politics go hand-in-hand with the hard argument to buy what Chrysler is selling.

The right-wingers are wrong, of course, to object to the content of the politics of the ad since they are basically right-wing politics (more on that below). If the Right thought twice about it, they'd realize that the message is in fundamental harmony with their outlook (even if it it appears to lend support to the "wrong faction" of the ruling class). But the claim that the ad has political significance is quite right. In fact, the ad is simply unintelligible unless it is set against the backdrop of political ideas of such as the Nation, of being "American", or the "National interest" and so on. If you weren't already familiar with these political concepts you would not have understood what was going on in the ad at all.

On the surface, the ad strikes a populist note. It begins by noting that lots of ordinary people are hurting, that the economy is bad, that jobs are scarce. All of that is, of course, quite true. But rather than connect the source of the economic misery of the 99% to the actions of the 1% (and the policies of their servants in Government), the advertisement takes a stridently nationalistic approach to these problems. Suddenly the 1% is no longer the culprit and its time for us to link arms with our wealthy rulers and unite for a "better America".

The basic premise underlying this nationalistic message is that all living in the US—the very richest and the very poorest—have the same basic interests. The idea is that everyone does well when the 1% does well, so we all have an interest in learning to love and trust the 1%. The only obstacle to success becomes, as Eastwood puts it, "division, discord and blame". The message is clear: stop complaining that the 1% dominates the political and economic system, stop creating discord and division by fighting against racism. Embrace your corporate overlords and unite under the banner of "the Nation" and then "we" can rise up together and "win the game in the second half."

According to Eastwood, America's "second half" is just beginning. It's time for "The Nation" to bounce back and start scoring some goddamn touchdowns. This sports metaphor transforms all US residents to equal teammates, all engaged in a common project, all agreeing that we want to "win" (as if it's clear what that means).

But there's more to the sports metaphor: we are also encouraged to think that the interests of the 99% coincide with the interests of the ownership of the Big Three. As the Chicago Tribune article points out, the idea is that "what is good for Chrysler is good for America". Of course, it's no secret that from the perspective of the US auto industry, the "team" has not been doing well for the last 30 years. "We've" been knocked down and "beaten by competing teams". The obvious solution, then, jumps out at us: "our team" needs to get back up, unite, and pull off a come-from-behind win. "We" have to set aside our "petty differences" and stop "blaming" other "teammates" with all these complaints about the dominance of the 1%. "We" have to stop "pitting Americans against other Americans". "We" have to come together and "win the future" before the Chinese beat "us". This is a line toed by the Democrats every bit as much as the Republicans.

Of course, this whole nationalist message is rotten to the core. It rests on a fundamental fantasy: the myth of the "Nation", an imagined community of people who all more or less have the same basic interests, who all live in a closed society designed to enable everyone in that society to flourish equally. The only real threats to the "National Interest" are in-fighting and "attacks" from without. Thus a "strong" Nation pushes other nations around and demands unity at home.

Watch the ad and you'll notice that Eastwood, on behalf of the Chrysler Corporation, talks a lot about "us" and "we". But who does this "we" refer to? And who the hell authorized him, or Chrysler for that matter, to speak on behalf of everyone? Evidently the "we" refers to everyone who is properly considered "American" (we can leave aside for the moment the question of who decides who's "American" and who's not).

This idea of the "National interest" is part and parcel of this message of "let's all band together as Americans—regardless of class position—and pull together." The trouble, however, is that the idea of a "National interest" is a myth. The concept assumes that everyone who is properly called an "American", regardless of class divisions, shares some core set of interests so that what's good for the 1% is good for the 99%. It'd be nice it were true, but it's "radically false" as Noam Chomsky puts it:

The whole framework of discussion is misleading. We’re sort of taught to talk about the world as a world of states, which, if you study international relations theory, there’s what’s called “realist international relations theory,” which says there is an anarchic world of states, and states pursue their national interest. It’s all mythology. The interests of the CEO of General Electric and the janitor who cleans his floor are not the same. There are a few common interests, like we don’t want to be destroyed. But for the most part they have very different interests. Part of the doctrinal system in the U.S. is to pretend that we’re all a happy family, there are no class divisions, and everybody is working together in harmony. But that’s radically false.

The Chrysler ad pushes this radically false claim to its breaking point. It conflates the interests of the ownership of Chrysler with the interests of ordinary working people. It also pits those considered "American" against "foreign competitors" rather than against our own 1% right here at home. The effect is to make it appear as though those in power are benevolent parental figures—like NFL coaches—who just need our cooperation so that we can pull together and just fucking win goddammit.

Of course it's not hard to spin xenophobic, racist (esp. sinophobic and islamophobic) and anti-immigrant conclusions from this outlook. Moreover, the close identification of the interests of "the Nation" and the interests of Big Business, combined with this xenophobic element, is reminiscent of Fascism. This isn't to say that the Chrysler ad is fascist; it is not. It is an opportunistic employment of the language of the "Nation" to put a positive spin on the interests of the owners of the Auto Industry. But it is no exaggeration to say the basic drift of this nationalistic political approach, if taken seriously, points us in the direction of fascist politics.

The most insidious part of this nationalist argument is that gathers surface-level plausibility from its sober acknowledgement of the economic suffering of the 99%. It's not false that the people of Detroit have been hit extremely hard by the decline of the auto industry. But this decline isn't the result of anything the 99% did or didn't do. The decline, disinvestment, layoffs, and economic misery that has plagued the Rustbelt is 100% due to the choices of the 1%—at home and abroad.

The bottom line is this: the Chrysler ad turns our ire away from the 1% and, cloaked in the flag, advises us to love and trust our oppressors.

The fact that the Big Three are exploiting the economic misery of the Rustbelt in a multi-million dollar ad designed to strengthen their political and economic clout is more than just a little twisted. After all, the ultra-rich investors of the 1% who own the auto industry are the ones to blame for all of the Rustbelt's economic misery in the first place. They are the ones who decided to downsize, close plants, and disinvest—all in an effort to keep profits high so that they could continue to line their pockets. And let's not forget that even amidst declining profits, the owners of the Big Three have been doing quite well—at the same time that the living standards of everyone living in the Rustbelt have sharply plummeted. Even during their worst quarters as business owners, the owners still live in fabulous wealth, 100% insulated from the decline and economic misery forced upon millions of working people. They don't deal with the reality of hospital bills, unemployment, school closings, soaring crime rates, foreclosures and lots retirement. Even when things look "bad" for the industry, they live lives of plenty. It is sickening to think that these assholes can get away with selling themselves as humanitarians in the struggle to help "America win in the second half". They are the cause of the misery they say they want to help mitigate.

Of course, the reasons for the decline of US auto manufacturing are complex, but it is no exaggeration to say that the decline has everything to do with ruling class missteps and anxieties about profitability, and nothing whatsoever to do with ordinary working people. But, predictably, the industry's owners have an interest in externalizing all culpability and blaming everything on "high labor costs" forced on owners by the UAW. Never mind that auto workers everywhere else in the world are better paid and enjoy stronger unions than in the US (we can also set aside the fact that the Chrysler ad evidently edited out Wisconsin pro-union signs from one of the clips in the montage). It's nuts to think that the Big Three would do anything except try to manage public relations to their benefit by hammering away at was once one of the strongest unions in the US.

The "high labor costs" argument is repeated over and over by industry ideologues in the Wikipedia article on the auto industry. The narrative coming from the self-serving owners of the auto companies is simple: If only those pesky workers had just given in to the owners' violent campaign against unionization back in 1937, then the Big Three would be sitting on top of the world right now!

But, of course, the answer to our economic woes, to mass unemployment, to the sharp decline of once prosperous industrial centers, isn't to put our faith in the 1% and the imaginary community of "the Nation". The answer is for ordinary working people to take direct control of our massive industrial capacity and put it to use meeting human needs and developing human being's capacities and talents.

For example, it is far from obvious that the US auto industry needs to be producing more cars right now. Set aside the fact that effective demand does not exist right now for an expansion of car sales. What's more, environmentally speaking it simply makes no sense to continue to manufacture tons of cars (most of which aren't even designed to last more than 4-5 years) in a world where global temperatures are rising and oil reserves are shrinking. Building millions of personal automobiles a year is wasteful, inefficient, and unsustainable. The workforce in Detroit would be far better employed building buses, train cars, wind turbines and other green technologies that the country desperately needs. Every single city in the United States has a substandard and inadequate fleet of public transportation vehicles. Equipping every city with a vastly enlarged fleet of modern, state of the art hybrid buses manufactured in Detroit would be a huge step forward for everyone. This would put surplus labor and surplus industrial capacity together to meet human needs in a sustainable way. It seems like a no-brainer although, to be sure, it is hardly a feasible short-term goal.

Of course, the owners will retort: but none of this is profitable. All of the research and long-term planning brushes against the grain of our stock-holder's demand for short-run profits. These measures would also require big capital investments up front, which could cut into short-run profit. What's more, these projects would require a larger paid workforce, but employing more people increases labor costs and reduces profit. Moreover, if we build buses and vehicles that are made to last, this will reduce yearly sales and cut into profits as well. The owners therefore have every incentive to resist doing this.

My response to the owner's complaints are simple: I don't care what they think, because we really have no use for them. They do nothing except skim off the top for themselves and keep willing workers from using existing capacity to meet human need.

It's true that profit-seeking owners have no interest in combining excess industrial capacity and excess labor to meet human needs. But that's not an argument against my proposal. That's an argument against private ownership of the auto industry. Cut out the owners 100% and let those on the shop floor hire new co-workers to work on this project with them. All of the worries about profitability melt away.

By letting workers run production democratically, pay scales become more egalitarian. By cutting out profiteers, wages may be raised and the working day can be shortened. In order to maintain high productivity alongside shortened work hours, more workers are brought aboard and employment levels soar. Previously unemployed workers are brought back into the fold. And instead of producing overpriced shit that we don't need, we would be able to efficiently meet human needs in a sustainable way. Rather than wasting surplus labor and surplus industrial capacity, both would be utilized their fullest extent.

POSTSCRIPT:

While doing a bit of research for this post, I wanted at one point to find some figures on how rich the owners of the auto companies are. First, I searched "Chrysler CEO wealth" in Google. The first 20 results were scary. They all offered different links to articles with the title "Business must address wealth gap, Chrysler CEO says". Next, I searched "Chrysler CEO rich", and the first 30 hits all had the headline "Rivals' UAW deals too rich for Chrysler, CEO says". It's not easy to stumble upon any facts about how much money the owners make. If you search "Chrysler CEO earnings" the first hit is "Chrysler CEO receives no salary for 2010: filing | Reuters". They have clearly invested a lot of money and energy manicuring their online image so that enraged citizens can't look up how much money they're raking in (much of it tax-payer subsidized) at a time when we Democrats and Republicans are harping on the "need" to tighten "our" belts and accept austerity. The ruling class is clearly worried about the class consciousness raised by the Occupy movement. We should see ever imaginable aspect of their public image as calculated moves to mitigate the effects of the political atmosphere created by Occupy.

Power, Domination and the System

2012-02-01T09:30:00.008-06:00

On the radical Left, broadly construed, there is a long history of debates concerning the relationship between the agency of dominant groups and the structure of social systems. On the one hand, talk of the 1%, for instance, calls to mind a dominant group—a ruling class—which stands over and above the majority of society. On the other hand, it is part and parcel of radical politics to condemn not just this or that dominant group, but the entire system. I suggested in a recent post that we don't have to see these two complaints as at odd with one another.

Still, numerous questions remain: Is power always exercised by one agent over another? Or is power built into the infrastructure of the system itself? Is domination, a familiar concept in the vocabulary of the Left, always a matter of one agent dominating another? Or does it make sense to speak of people being dominated by a system?

A couple of examples might illustrate the problems lurking for anyone trying to answer the questions above. Compare and contrast, for example, radical feminists who conceive of gender oppression as dyadic relation of domination between dominator (man) and dominated (woman), with post-structuralist feminists (influenced by Foucault, for example) who understand gender domination as a process in which agents are produced by a certain regime or system of power. (Note that I by no means aim to suggest that these are the only two viable positions on offer). The former—and it must be conceded that we're oversimplifying here—tend to tie domination to a certain kind of social relationship between an agent of domination and a subject of domination. The latter, however, might argue that domination is not something agents can be said to do to other agents at all; agents are dominated not by other people, but by non-agential features of social life (e.g. agents may be said to be dominated by institutions, social norms, practices, or by the system itself).

This same debate, in slightly different forms, surfaces in critical race theory as well as in the Marxist tradition. In the Marxist tradition, the debate between Miliband and Poulantzas in the pages of New Left Review during 1970s is exemplary. I've argued elsewhere that the debate between so-called "structuralists" and "instrumentalists" over the character of the State generally misses the mark; both fail to adequately theorize the complex dialectic between structure and agency, system and lifeworld.

Still, there are a lot of things going on in these debates—far more than a simple disagreement about the nature of social domination. But in this post I'd like to say something about the question of whether it makes sense to say that someone is dominated by a social system. I'd like to keep this discussion within a broadly materialist register, so I'm going to ignore approaches that reduce everything to linguistic/discursive matters. My question is this: does it make sense, within a materialist social theory, to speak of persons being dominated by a system? It clearly makes sense, in my view, to speak of some agent (or group of agents) dominating another agent (or group of agents). What's not so clear is whether it makes sense to say that someone can be dominated by some entity that is not an agent.

In most treatments of this question, players in the debate tend to talk past one another or dismiss the merits of the other's view entirely. This was to some extent evident in the famous Miliband-Poulantzas debate of the 1970s. It is evident in the contemporary literature in political theory on domination, and it surfaces quite often in exchanges between theorists sympathetic to Foucault's writings on power and those who are not. A more nuanced assessment is needed.

I stress, however, that these are not merely academic questions. The question of the relationship between dominant groups and the system we live under—capitalism—is in some ways a key question on the table in the Occupy movement. Marxists, in particular, need a nuanced way of emphasizing both that the system must be changed, on the one hand, and that it makes sense to speak of struggling against a ruling class on the other. There are also complicated questions about how various kinds of oppression tie into the ruling class model and the system of capitalism. Gaining clarity on these matters is politically important.

***

Let's begin with the example of dyadic social relationship between dominator and dominated. Let's say that the relationship is social (rather than merely personal) in the sense that it is structured by background conditions of various kinds (e.g. institutions, practices, laws, norms, social expectations, etc.) What makes a social relationship an instance of domination is that one party has a certain kind of power—a certain kind of unsavory influence or sway—over the other. That sway could be grounded in various ways. For example, it could emanate from dependence, vulnerability, coercive power, institutionalized authority, etc. But what matters is that one agent stands above the other in a problematic way, on the model of master/slave or master/servant.

Importantly, this kind of social relationship exists whether or not the master is benevolent or relatively gracious. A master who treats his subordinates relatively well is still a master. As Fredrick Douglass puts it:

"My feelings [toward slave masters] were not the result of any marked cruelty in the treatment I received; they sprung from the consideration of my being a slave at all. It was slavery—not its mere incidents—that I hated."

Paternalism—no matter how nicely administered or well intended—is still paternalism. What's problematic is a certain kind of social relationship—not, in the first instance, how well superiors treat those beneath them. Advocates of "socialism-from-above" systematically miss this point. Hence, apart from defending technocrats and administrative layers of elites who lord over dis-empowered populations of subjects, they place themselves in the same camp as philanthropic capitalists—think of Jeffrey Sachs—who propose a increased flow of aid and resources from powerful to powerless groups (while leaving the asymmetrical relations of power fully intact). To stand for socialism-from-below is to stand uncompromisingly against relations of domination as such, regardless of whether the "superiors" in question—be they bureaucrats, lords, or capitalists—are relatively benevolent or gracious. To stand for socialism-from-below means to stand firmly against social relations in which some group enjoys a certain kind of arbitrary, discretionary power over others. Socialism means empowering the masses of the population to take control of their own destiny and run society themselves.

Now, the point here isn't that the consequences of domination (e.g. poverty, deprivation, etc.) don't matter; on the contrary, the point is that the causes of those consequences—certain kinds of social relationships—are more fundamental than the consequences themselves. Merely examining a person's standard of living or level of consumption isn't good enough. Even if I have a relatively high standard of living, I am dominated if I am dependent on small, powerful class of people for employment and for the goods I need to survive.

So, even when the consequences of domination are relatively good—in the case of a benevolent tyrant—the relations of domination don't cease to be unjust. The Marxist complaint against capitalism, after all, isn't in the first instance that it distributes certain kinds of social goods unequally. That's because the essence of the Marxist complaint isn't about distribution; it's about production. We remain trapped in a liberal framework if we only think in terms of how given social goods get parceled out. Redistribution takes the existing relations of production as given and asks how we can mitigate the effects of capitalism. Marxist politics aren't fundamentally about taxation and redistribution; they are about founding society anew by transforming the structure of social production. Rather than merely examining how already-existing goods should get distributed, Marxism examines the exploitative social relations built into the basic structure of society, thereby laying bare how distributions come about in the first place.

But Marxists are concerned with more than just exploitation. Marxists have long argued that capitalism is a system built upon social relations of domination. There is a sense in which workers' lives in capitalism cannot ever be fully their own. Workers' lives—on the shop floor as much as in society writ large—are largely determined by the decisions of capitalists. Absent collective resistance from workers themselves, capitalists unilaterally make decisions about investment, the organization of the workplace, what is produced, the pace of work, wages and benefits, interest rates, levels of employment, and so on. Workers are, of course, denied the material benefits—high levels of comfort, consumption, financial security, etc.—that accrue from membership in the ruling class. But capitalists—because of their dominant position in the production process—enjoy a degree of decision-making power and control over their own lives that workers cannot never enjoy within capitalism.

In the workplace, the boss is a dictator. Without the collective power that comes from being organized in trade unions, individual workers are under the complete control of the boss while they're on the clock. They are forced to take orders, to do what they're told, to play a role in the boss's overall project, whatever that may be. When under the eye of superiors, workers are forced to work at the bosses pace. They are forced to show up when they're told to show up, and they forced to accept the wages that are handed down to them without complaint. They are to have no say in any of this. The only power the isolated individual worker has is the power to quit—and, ultimately, try to get a job working for a different capitalist. "If you don't like, you can leave... and there are plenty of others waiting to take your place."

So, the boss is clearly in a dominant position vis-a-vis the workers. The social relationship between worker and capitalist is one in which the capitalist enjoys a high degree of arbitrary, discretionary power over the worker's life. Workers are barred from participating in the governance of the workplace, where the discretionary power of capitalists reigns supreme. Their work-lives are determined by a group who neither shares their interests nor intends to share any of its power.

Of course, domination doesn't stop at the factory gates. Liberal reformers have often made this mistake and argued that because the working class has the vote it follows that the capitalists only dominate workers in the workplace. Outside the workplace, the argument goes, workers and capitalists are equals because they both enjoy equal political power.

If there were times in history when this argument could get at least get some traction—e.g. when there were a strong working-class political parties vying for majorities in government—it rings hollow today. It is obvious that the State is a class State—a capitalist State. It is not a neutral vessel that the working-class can lay hold of. The State is little more than a "a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

So, the ruling class enjoys dominance not simply in the workplace but in society writ large. In controlling both the State, as well as the overall direction of the productive process as a whole, the ruling class dominates all other classes in society—working class and middle class alike. Of course, the threat posed by the working class to ruling class power means that the State will come down particularly hard on workers, sometimes leaving middle class groups relatively unscathed by comparison. But it remains true that the middle class is under the thumb of the ruling class and enjoys no substantial means of attenuating its power.

***

What I just sketched was the "dominant-group" model of power and domination. The focus is on certain kinds of social relationships between persons (or groups of persons). It is conceded, of course, that these relationships don't rest on thin air—they are structured by background conditions (e.g. law, norms, practices, institutions, economic organizations, etc.). But domination itself is only said to exist between agents—domination without agents is not possible.

Now, many—especially those influenced by post-structuralism but also proponents of structuralist versions of Marxism—will reject this as foolish. Some might argue that agents are nothing but the mere products of power or material processes. Others would stress the epistemic priority of functionalist explanations that derive from a theory of the system as a whole—as opposed to action-theoretic explanations that focus on the intentions and purposes of agents.

These opponents of the dominant-group model don't aim to extend or broaden the analysis. On the contrary, they seek to deny the conceptual space occupied by the dominant-group theorists entirely. For these opponents—call them eliminativists—it is fundamentally problematic to define power or domination in terms of relations between agents. Agents are just epiphenomena—what matters fundamentally is structure, systemic processes, the basic function of social institutions, and macro-level forces. It is fair, I think, to attribute this sort of view to Althusser, for example.

I think eliminativists are radically mistaken. I won't argue for that claim here (although I've criticized their views elsewhere (e.g. here), because I'd like to explore the more interesting debate between dominant-group theorists, on the one hand, and those who seek to extend and broaden our conception domination to include agent-agent domination as well as system-agent domination.

***

So, while preserving the analysis of agent-agent domination, I'd like to consider certain cases of system-agent domination. Why consider such cases? I think it would be a mistake to say that we should because we need to capture the unintentional character of certain kinds of domination. The dominant-group model, as I understand it, already captures that. Nor would it be correct to say that we need to understand system-agent domination because otherwise considerations of institutional structure fall by the wayside. The dominant-group model also captures such concerns insofar as it is a basic premise of that theory that social relations of domination are—in order to be such—structured by background conditions that include institutional structure.

The reason, in my estimation, why we need to consider system-agent cases of domination is that there are compelling examples, especially in Marxism, that go unexplained by a solely agent-agent approach.

What I have in mind, for example, is Marx's claim in capitalism people are dominated by accumulated dead labor. Humanity comes to be dominated by its own products. For example, as Alan Ryan puts it:

"Marx supposes that under capitalism, there are two sorts of oppression at work, rather than one. Capitalists oppress workers, driving them as hard as they can to extract maximum surplus value from them. But this is not because capitalists are individually brutal; they themselves are driven by their capital. The irrationality of a capitalist economy in which production is dictated by the accidents of market interaction is read by Marx as the blind tyranny of capital over its human subjects. The fact that capital is in any case only dead labor leads Marx to tremendous rhetorical flights in which he describes capital as a vampire, renewing its life-in-death by sucking the blood of living laborers...what humanity has done is create Frankenstein's monster; so far from the world submitting to human control, it has been set in motion as a blind force tyrannizing over all of us... Capital dominates all of us and turns all of us into its purposes."

The image of Frankenstein is apt. We needn't develop this fecund metaphor fully in order to see that capitalism is like a monster humanity has created which is entirely out of control. With the historical development of capitalism we get the tyranny of the bottom line, the iron cage of instrumental rationality, a tendency toward universal commodification, reified consciousness, and all the rest of it. But the paradox is this: history is made by human beings—it's not the case that it is merely something that happens to us. What we do or don't do in the here and now has historical ramifications. So, what we have is a situation in which a product of accumulated human actions—capitalism—comes to lord over and dominate the very beings whose actions and historical development brought it into existence. A system constructed by human beings through a complex dialectic of historical development comes to appear as something natural, inevitable, and immutable. The system destroys the natural environment, degrades human relationships, and shackles humanity to an end—accumulation for accumulation's sake—which it cannot really endorse and remain truly human. And we seem to have to ability to steer or control the system within the horizons of capitalism.

Even capitalists, who are a dominant group in a position to lord over and exploit the working majority, are shackled by the pressures of the system. A capitalist who refuses to re-invest today's profit in expanded production, who refuses to drive down wages and fight unionization drives is not likely to remain a capitalist for long. The coercive force of market competition locks capitalists into a situation in which their forced to sink or swim, accumulate or go bust.

But it's not as though all actions undertaken by the ruling class are wholly determined by the system. The ruling class, which is a group of consciously acting agents, makes blunders, fails to recognize their class interests, and sometimes even fail to do what the system demands of them. To say that they are in some sense dominated by a system they can neither wholly control nor fully understand is not to say that they lack agency. Nor is it to deny that they have power over others and, as occupants of a certain office in the economic structure of society, are in a position to make important decisions within a constrained set of possibilities.

The ruling class deserves the righteous scorn of the toiling majority. It is a mistake to think that the problematic structural features of the system absolve the ruling class of culpability of various kinds. In the heat of struggle against ruling class repression, to not feel this righteous anger is a political failing of a certain kind. If I'm a leftist in Chile in 1973, I resent the repressive counter-revolutionary violence instigated by the ruling class in a way that I cannot resent a natural disaster. We need to preserve the power of the dominant-group model while also allowing that domination is a relation that can obtain between agents and a system. Reductionist and eliminitivist positions distort the terrain here considerably.

***

Human beings make their own history, but not in conditions of their own choosing. As Alasdair MacIntyre once noted, phrases of this sort abound in Marx's work, and the goal of socialists has got to be to eliminate that "but", the caveat that must always accompany acknowledgements of the fact that we make our own history in the context of class society.

For that to be a goal, it has to be possible. Eliminativists foreclose it as a possibility. But in focusing on the workings of social systems as concrete, historical totalities, system-level analysis catches all sorts of processes that would go unnoticed from the perspective of the participant in social practices. We don't capture everything that matters if we only talk in terms of the conscious actions of dominant groups. But the system we criticize isn't natural, although some functionalist social theorists (e.g. Luhmann) would disagree. It is a human construction. As such, it is in our power to consciously change it.

Do the 2012 Elections Matter?

2012-01-27T12:51:00.008-06:00

A common liberal argument is that Obama was "punished" in the 2010 elections because he drifted too far to the Left in his first two years in office. The argument often uses the fact that the 2010 elections brought a return of Republicans to power as a premise to argue for the conclusion that Obama went "too far to the Left".

But, of course, this argument misses the mark by a wide margin. A cursory glance at Obama's first two years in office evinces a deep conservatism, not an excessively "left-wing" trajectory. And, as far as 2010 is concerned, it's clear that the Democrats were "punished", but by whom? For what reason?

The most obvious thing to say is that turnout for the 2010 elections was abysmally low. A sizable fraction of the large, energetic crowds of people who enthusiastically voted for Obama in 2008 did not turn out to vote in 2010. The Right did not increase its share of the vote in absolute terms between 2008 and 2010. And, if you'll recall, there as a lot of talk in 2010 about the so-called "enthusiasm gap". Democrat voters were harassed and berated by high-ranking Democrats (and their apologists) for not being sufficiently "enthusiastic" about rushing out to vote in 2010. Some liberals fretted about this and participated in various "scare out the vote" campaigns.

Of course, ordinary people had good reason to be "unethusiastic". They took Obama at his word in 2008 when he said he wanted substantial change that would fund increased access to healthcare with increased taxes on the rich. But Obama's first two years were remarkably continuous with Bush's last two years in office. Nothing really changed. Hence, many people quite reasonably concluded that they didn't have much of a stake in the two-party horse race in 2010. The results bear this out.

But what of 2012? If we take the media at face value, the amount of coverage they devote to the upcoming elections should mean that 2012 is a momentous event of enormous political significance. But is it?

If polls are any indication, the American people don't seem to think so.

When asked, less than 13% of Americans say they approve of the job Congress is doing. Over 70% say they disapprove. Less than 26% say they approve of the Democrats, with 65% saying they disapprove. For the Republicans, it's even worse: 19% approve whereas 70% disapprove. Almost nine tenths of the population has no confidence in Congress, which is an indictment of both the Dems and the GOP. And disapproval of both corporate parties stands between 65 and 70 percent.

Why isn't that front-page news?

It shows that there is a massive gap between the concerns and interests of the population and the choices on offer in the electoral arena. It shows what many in the Occupy movement know first hand, namely that there is widespread discontent with the corporate two-party system. The capacity of the two corporate parties to pretend that they represent the interests of the population is being eroded daily. Yet, the media hardly takes note. Instead, it continues to barrage the population with excessive coverage of the 2012 elections, thereby grossly inflating their significance.

To shoe-horn people into pretending that they have stake in the 2012 horse-races is to do little more than paper over the widespread discontent bubbling beneath the surface of corporate media headlines. To get worked up over Obama's current populist posturing is to help aid in this effort to keep anything from actually changing.

Jobs for All

2012-01-25T13:53:00.015-06:00

In the midst of skyrocketing unemployment, it is perfectly reasonable to put forward demands such as "jobs, not cuts!" or "jobs for all!". Likewise, the call for full employment is similarly reasonable amidst a deep-seated bi-partisan consensus on the "need" for austerity. Many workers are fighting for dear life against employers who are downsizing workforces. Public sector workers, in particular, are facing brutal attacks from above. For the unemployed, the battle cry of "jobs for all" carries a burning urgency. For the precariously employed, which is a group of immense size right now, the most resonant battle cries have to do with staving off cuts, furlough days, and layoffs from above. The battle is to preserve what they've already got and beat back ruling class attempts to worsen their condition. It would be deeply abstract and ultra-Left to denounce demands such as these on grounds that they ultimately preserve the status quo and fail to fundamentally challenge the class relations that are the core of capitalism.

Nonetheless, it remains deeply important that socialists keep alive the radical critique of jobs and work under capitalism. These radical concerns should not be seen as contradicting the anti-austerity struggles already underway in the US. On the contrary, the present struggles against austerity have to be seen as a necessary condition of building the kind of movement that it would take to radically reconfigure work-life, the division of labor, and class relations. The key is to concretely link together immediate grievances with more systemic complaints against capitalism itself. The fight for reforms in the here and now need not be reformist. Even small victories can increase the confidence and courage of the working class to fight harder and ask for more. It is in the course of collective struggle--for what are, at first, no more than modest reforms--that people learn that their not alone, that they have the power to fight and win.

But it remains true that socialists have to make sure not to dilute their politics in the course of struggling for reforms.

For example, when discussions about jobs and employment operate abstractly, that is, simply in terms of who has a job and who does not, many important concerns fall by the wayside. Among other things, abstract discussions of employment tend to take the existing division of labor as given. Taking this for granted, questions are then asked about how, in Iris Young's words, "pregiven occupations, jobs, or tasks are allocated among individuals or groups." But the question is never raised as to why we should accept pregiven occupations and jobs that are handed down from above. Why shouldn't we also have a democratic say in what work is like in a qualitative and substantive sense as well?

Now, I certainly don't mean to say that the abstract way of examining unemployment is unimportant. Given how devastating unemployment in capitalist societies is, whether or not one can find work--even poorly paid and highly exploitative work--is an issue of grave importance. The fact that capitalism can't even deliver poorly paid and highly exploitative work to everyone who wants it shows that it is highly dysfunctional--even by its own standards.

But important though the "abstract" question is, it's not the whole story. As I suggest above, the abstract question leaves much unexamined and uncriticized. It's not just about who has work and who doesn't. For socialists, it also matters what the content and structure of that work is like, what kind of power you have in the workplace, and who is in a position to make decisions about what gets produced, according to what rules, and so on.

For socialists, we also have to examine the "range of tasks performed in a given position, the definition of the nature, meaning and value of those tasks, and the relations of cooperation, conflict, and authority among positions." This, in turn, requires that we consider "the corporate and legal structures and procedures that give some persons the power to make decisions about investment, production, marketing, employment, and wages that affect millions of other people." In short, it means that we have to draw capitalism itself into the discussion.

More often than not, work in capitalist societies is alienating. Most jobs do not give workers the space to cultivate their creative potential, to exercise and develop their talents, or have the autonomy or decisionmaking power to determine the character of their own work life. Most workers are simply told what to do while their at work. While on the clock many workers are determined by forces outside of their control. And despite all of the obscene mantras about "team building" and so forth, most workers have no immediate stake in the goals of their company at all. They are merely subordinate servants of some other person's bigger project to amass profits. They're along for the ride and they have no say in where the company is heading. Many service employees have to endure strict dress codes and repeat inane advertising jingles to help their boss sell more products. And, of course, the bosses don't just enjoy authority and arbitrary power in the workplace, they profit from extracting surplus value from those beneath them who do all the work.

So, in fighting alongside people struggling against brutal regimes of austerity, socialists must always push the envelope. Once people see that they can fight austerity and win, there's no reason why that confidence shouldn't lead them to ask for even more. Asking for more has to mean challenging the class relations at the sight of production. It must also entail a rejection of the alienating character of work under capitalism, where a minority ruling class determines the basic priorities or production, the basic organization of the workplace, and so on. Workers power isn't just about winning concessions from the ruling class in terms of pay, that is, negotiating the terms of exploitation. The working class movement must ultimately aim to challenge the very exploitative core of capitalism itself. The key is to find ways to concretely intertwine the fights for demands in the here and now with these more global concerns about the system itself. Doing this well, of course, requires an organization, rooted in struggle, that is capable of generalizing the experience of local struggles and linking them together with broader struggles against the system.

More on the Non-Political Character of the Presidential Race

2012-01-24T15:27:00.015-06:00

If you read the section titled "politics" in the New York Times, the so-called "paper of record", you would be hard pressed to find anything remotely political. What you find, more often than not, is strategizing, instrumental tactical arguments and an intense focus on efficient means to electing some given candidate. You find inane debates focused intensely on the public relations management strategies employed by the campaigns of different candidates. You find talk of "branding", marketing, the manufacturing of "narratives", and so on.

What you won't find is anything remotely political.

Why is that? One simplistic, but nonetheless perspicuous explanation is given by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie has... since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

Accordingly, what gets discussed in the halls of power by politicians, by and large, are matters of common concern to the ruling class as a whole. This is as true of domestic policy as it is of foreign policy. Political discussions in Washington tend to presuppose, as a condition of legitimacy, that the basic goal of government is something like "economic growth", i.e. creating favorable conditions for capital accumulation. If ruling class profits are down, that's bad; if they're up that's good. Whatever else happens only matters to the extent that it affects this basic goal. The need to secure legitimation and political stability leads Democrats and Republicans to give this basic function a populist gloss, e.g. "what's good for GM is good for America", "rising tides lift all boats", "increasing wealth at the top trickles down to the bottom", "growth creates jobs", etc.

The debates among politicians, then, largely center around how best to administer growth from above. But even this non-political administrative debate is extremely narrow. These debates 100% exclude, for example, the Keynesian wisdom of mainstream, globally renowned economists at a number of elite institutions: Nouriel Roubini, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and many others. All of these folks largely accept the administrative perspective above, but argue for policies very different from those considered in Washington, e.g. a new, considerably larger public stimulus package, a massive public works program that puts people to work rebuilding infrastructure, a steep increase in the marginal rate of taxation, increased spending on health and education, and so on. For these folks, the way out of the crisis is to stimulate demand by avoiding austerity and increasing the purchasing power of the working majority. These aren't radical ideas. These were commonplace ruling class policies in the postwar (i.e. pre-neoliberal) period. What's more, all of these economists accept capitalism more or less as it is, but propose different ways of getting it running again. Yet, even these ideas aren't given a moment's notice in Washington.

By and large, Democrats and Republicans agree that the only viable way forward in the short term is austerity for the working majority. They disagree, of course, about how deep the cuts should go. But they are in firm, uncompromising agreement on the "need" to make deep cuts of some kind to public programs ranging from public transportation, roads and infrastructure, to health care, education and so on. At the same time they agree on the "need" to bail out the banks, to subsidize corporate profits through quantitative easing, to grant large tax breaks to the 1%, and so on. Their approach could be summed up as follows: austerity for the 99%, prosperity for the 1%. Of course, some Republicans talk as if they oppose the bailouts on principled, neoliberal grounds. But the truth is that these initiatives, begun under Bush and continued by Obama, already have their rubber stamp.

Anyone who, like Ron Paul, still genuinely believes in the viability of the neoliberal medicine of "small government" and "structural adjustment", so popular with elites in the 1980s and 90s, is simply deluded. They naively identify with ruling class window-dressing without realizing that that's what it is. Rather than drawing the obvious conclusion that capitalism is a highly unstable system which, when freed from even modest regulatory and counter-cyclical measures, periodically generates devastating crises, these bone-headed "free" market fundamentalists perversely draw the opposite conclusion: all of that neoliberal stuff really does work, it's just that there weren't enough tax breaks for the rich, not enough deregulation, not enough austerity, and so on. There are, of course, a number of people of this persuasion in the Republican Party (many of whom voted against TARP the first time around). But, as I say above, the national leadership of the GOP understands full well that this is mostly just talk. There is no reason to think that corporate welfare, quantitative easing, bailouts, tax breaks for the 1% and so on would end under a GOP-controlled government. As staunch advocates of the capitalist system, they realize that its stability depends for dear life on these sorts of policies.

This is all a way of saying that politics and government have been almost entirely disconnected from one another in the contemporary US. What goes on in government is largely administrative: how can we best manage the common affairs of the ruling class by promoting polices that achieve high levels of accumulation?

In a democratic society, the people would be sovereign. They would be able to have a voice in determining what goals society undertakes. But in our society, we have no say over goals. We have no voice in determining what the basic priorities of our society will be. The goals are fixed in advance, and we are asked to get worked up over various means of achieving these ready-made goals. And, what's worse, we aren't even given the full spectrum of reasonable means. As I say, the broad consensus among mainstream Keynesian economists at schools like Harvard, Princeton and Columbia doesn't even register as a possibility in Washington. So as if being locked inside the iron cage of instrumental rationality wasn't bad enough, we don't even get the freedom to exercise it fully!

Yet, despite the thoroughly non-political, administrative and fundamentally undemocratic character of our electoral system and our State, we are encouraged by the media to think that this election is the most important one of our lifetimes. We are bombarded, everywhere we turn, with the injunction to tune in and participate in the inane chatter about what's going on with the election. It is assumed that this process is the essence of politics, it is assumed that this it is a hugely significant event that warrants 24-hour television coverage. But those assumptions are not harmless. They are highly damaging and deeply conservative. They are, in effect, suffocatingly anti-political.

The media, of course, positions itself as a populist force that merely "gives the people what they want". But that is nonsense. This top-down argument assumes that what's going on in, say, the Republican debates actually reflects the genuine interests and concerns of real people. It grafts the priorities, framing and rhetoric of those approved candidates onto real people. It imposes the TV chatter about a given set of political candidates and organizations onto the people. But why should we think that entire top-down procedure is legitimate? A far more sensible procedure, would be to start with ordinary people, in complete and total abstraction from their relationship to the electoral system, and see whether or not the system actually has anything to do with their interests and concerns. Of course, this bottom-up procedure, though far from perfect, is non-existent in the for-profit media industry. The interests of ordinary people only become intelligible to the media to the extent that they fit within pre-existing rhetoric and ideology. Rather than demanding that a political party actually earn its significance and legitimacy from speaking to the needs and interests of the people, the media antecedently grants significance and legitimacy to the Republicans and Democrats because they are the status quo. They are given a free pass each election cycle and it is assumed that the population could have no needs or interests in excess of what those two parties offer. No remainder is possible, therefore no discontent with the two-party system is possible.

Though common sense tells us that they are everywhere, these contradictions between the whole political system and the interests and concerns of ordinary people are rarely visible in the mainstream media. And even when these contradictions are there implicitly, that is, when a poll reveals that super-majorities of Americans favor single-payer, they are almost never explicitly discussed. No mention is made of the fact that the political system simply doesn't register this pro-health care sentiment. Instead, it conflates what people want with what's on offer from the two-party duopoly. It's almost as if the media operates as though it's logically impossible to register discontent with the system itself, rather than with this or that politician within it.

Some readers may think that I am too extreme in firmly rejecting the 2012 elections as a genuinely political event. But I challenge them to defend a system that makes it impossible to articulate the jarring contradiction between the daily experiences of the 99% and the priorities in Washington. I challenge them to defend a discourse that robs us of the very language with which to articulate our own oppression. I challenge them to give us reason to accept the legitimacy of a system that has nothing whatsoever to do with giving the 99% a voice in determining its own conditions of life. I challenge them to explain why we should accept a list of pre-approved candidates who all, in any case, stand for the pre-determined goal of maximizing capital accumulation.

At this point, the more intensely we are asked to focus on the (ultimately marginal) differences between this or that Republican or Democrat, the more we obscure the underlying issues and foreclose the possibility of any real change.

If we are to achieve even the most modest reforms in the here and now, we have to be prepared to struggle independently of the electoral system. We have to stand up and fight alongside all those resisting foreclosure, school closures, layoffs, wage cuts, furlough days, student loan default, pension "reforms", and so on. We have to stand up, against the two parties of the 1%, and fight for the 99% because nobody else but us is going to do it.

Who Decides What Work We Do?

2012-01-23T11:42:00.001-06:00

"Who decides what work we do and how we do it? In the industrialized capitalist countries the answer is: capital (in the person of its administrators and/or owners). Production techniques and domination techniques are... inextricably linked." -Andre Gorz

Unemployment in Capitalist Societies

2012-01-22T11:51:00.007-06:00

Figure from EPI

Unemployment in the US, according to official figures, stands close to 16%. Millions upon millions of people want full time employment, but are denied it. Why are they denied employment? Not because there isn't enough surplus capital laying around. The ruling class is literally hoarding heaps of it right now. Factory equipment, raw materials, and funds sit idle alongside masses of workers who desperately need work to make ends meet. Why aren't the two combined together? It can't be because the population is simply too satisfied and has no need of things that workers could produce using that equipment and raw materials. The economic crises has devastated millions. Unmet human needs abound. But how can that be? Why is it that millions of unemployed workers, desperate for work, are kept at arms length from masses of unused capital, when there are so many unmet human needs? What does this say about the basic priorities of our economic system?

Unemployment is devastating. It can entail eviction, foreclosure, going without meals, mounting debt, family collapse, deep insecurity, and health crises. In addition to the crushing effects it has on one's finances, it can also be a punishing blow to one's self esteem and sense of self-worth. That is because unemployment is often discussed as if it were a purely personal problem. If you're unemployed, it must be that you just haven't tried hard enough to find work. Or maybe you're just undeserving. You have no one to blame but yourself.

Of course, that is bullshit. At any given time, there are fixed number of jobs and a fixed number of people looking for them. The number of jobs is always smaller than the number of job-seekers. Even during boom periods. It's simple arithmetic. The main issue isn't whether some individual person "tried hard enough" to find work. The main issue has to do with the total number of jobs available at any given time.

Of course, if it's not the moralizing "personal responsibility" line on unemployment, it's the fatalistic "weather" perspective that dominates. According to the "weather" perspective, unemployment should be thought of as if it were the same as bad weather. Just as the shifting of temperatures or the movement of destructive storms is beyond our control, so is the unemployment rate. Maybe we can learn to better predict when and where it will increase or decrease, but by and large we have to accept that it is largely a process beyond our control. Human intervention in both meteorological and economic matters boils down to an apolitical process of "scientific management" from which we can expect very little.

But this image of unemployment as a "natural" process we can neither understand nor control is not just false. It plays a particular political function: it obscures the fact that unemployment is persistent feature of economic systems based on profit.

As I noted above, we are witnessing a situation in which masses of surplus labor sit idle side by side masses of surplus capital amidst a world of human need. For Marxist theorist David Harvey, this is the definition of a capitalist economic crisis: "surplus capital and surplus labour existing side by side with seemingly no way to put them back together".

But why aren't they put together? If there are tons of unmet human needs, tons of people willing to work, and tons of machines, raw materials, etc. what's keeping them from being combined to meet those human needs? The answer is simple: profitability.

Our society is one in which there are masses of capital, unused, sitting side by side masses of labor, which are unemployed, simply because it is not sufficiently profitable for the ruling class to combine them at the present moment. Right now, those with vast resources and millions in assets are, in effect, waiting for more profitable investment opportunities to come along. They can afford to wait, after all, because they don't have a mortgage to pay, a family to feed, or bills to pay. There's no urgency. They're under no duress to hire anybody or invest in anything. They are perfectly happy to sit and wait until they can get the kind of return on their investments that they've come to expect. Meanwhile, millions of people are forced to endure escalating degrees of economic misery and all that accompanies it, with little hope of anything changing in the short run.

The same system that over-works people to the bone f0r poverty wages when its profitable to do so, casts workers aside and denies them employment when exploiting them is no longer lucrative. Either workers are exploitable or they are redundant and expendable. If the capitalist doesn't want to buy their labor-power they do not find work. For the worker in capitalism, the only thing worse than being exploited, it seems, is not being exploited. At no point in this process are the goals of human development or meeting human needs paramount. Profit is the law of the land.

Accordingly, for both of the major capitalist parties, the answer to this calamity, to the extent that it is discussed as a calamity at all, is to restore profitability to the system. Both parties think that the way to reduce unemployment is to once again make it profitable for the ruling class to invest their masses of capital. Of course, they disagree about how to do that. But they agree that that's the way to fix the problem. All we need to do, they tell us, is to find a way to induce the ruling class to invest their huge surpluses by making it worth their while. If we can just get the big profits flowing back in the direction of the ruling class everything will be puppy dogs and ice cream.

To say that this is remarkably short-sighted is a massive understatement. As we know, capitalism is a highly unstable system in which devastating crises (with high unemployment) are frequent. But set that aside. How are the politicians from the two major parties going about trying to restore profitability?

One strategy is to bailout corporations by injecting billions of dollars in public funds into them. The Federal Reserve revealed that more than $3.3 Trillion has been spent doing just that since 2008. That means that toxic assets were purchased by the government, thereby allowing private losses to be transformed into public losses.

A related strategy is austerity. Austerity is required because of the massive amounts of toxic private assets were transferred to public rolls. This massive increase in public indebtedness, combined with sinking revenues from taxation, has unsurprisingly caused public budgets to tank. But rather than asking the ruling class to pick the mess that it made, governments are forcing the masses of the population to pay for the crisis by accepting cuts to our standard of living (e.g. cuts to public transit, housing, health care, education, unemployment benefits, basic city services, utilities, you name it).

Another strategy, related to the austerity, is to weaken the bargaining power of labor. Because the ruling class won't budge, the thought is that the State should try to force labor to give up ground. That means some combination of union-busting, layoffs, wage and pension cuts, and so on. If wages can be driven down low enough to make it profitable enough for the ruling class to invest again, then this strategy will have achieved its basic goal. This is what lies behind the assault on the stronger public sector unions in the US right now.

Of course, even from a ruling class perspective, these strategies are deeply contradictory. First of all, as the example of Greece has clearly shown, austerity only further depresses the economy. By eviscerating the living standards of ordinary people, their purchasing power takes a hit as well. And by gutting unions and imposing wage cuts and salary freezes on workers, demand is similarly pushed down. This, of course, means that there is nobody to buy all of the shit that capitalists sell on the market. The old solution to this problem, popularized in the 1970s, was to pick up the slack in demand by giving everybody a credit card. But, for obvious reasons, this isn't a solution available to the ruling class at the moment. Austerity is not a viable way out of this crisis. To be sure, the ruling class can eek out a meager existence for 10-15 years or so amidst stagnant growth rates and high unemployment. But austerity provides no path to short term recovery.

Austerity, however, is what the ruling class knows best. It is rooted in a theory and practice that has been the bread and butter of economic policy for more than 40 years: neoliberalism. Whereas that set of ideas and practices is experiencing a deep crisis, it is not the case that the ruling class has decided to abandon it. It is still the ruling dogma, even if voices calling for a return to Keynesian demand-management are more frequent today than they were in the 1980s and 90s. The ruling class is not a well-oiled machine that learns quickly from what's going on around it. It is still convinced that austerity, which is no more than good ol' IMF-style structural adjustment, is the only way forward.

Joe Moreno: A Fighter for Chicago's 1%

2012-01-18T18:01:00.013-06:00

Joe Moreno is the Alderman of Chicago's 1st Ward. Now, anyone who knows anything about Chicago knows that the City government isn't exactly a bastion of grassroots democracy. Typically Chicago city government calls to mind corruption, collusion with the rich and powerful, strong-arm tactics, and police violence. We think of the "Chicago Machine". Still, despite all of this, Moreno wants you to think that he's different. If you take his word for it, he is something of a progressive who stands up for justice, freedom of expression, and the interests of the 99%.

But Moreno is no progressive. He's a dogged fighter for the privileged and powerful.

Moreno, like the vast majority of his obedient colleagues on the Chicago City Council, recently voted for an ordinance that cracks down on the rights of protesters in Chicago. The intent of the ordinance is obvious: it is designed to criminalize and discourage legitimate protest. Rahm doesn't want there to be any dissent or protest this May when he is planning to host two of the foremost representatives of the global 1%: NATO and the G8. To make sure that there's no protest, Rahm is using a combination of fines, brute intimidation, and red tape to severely curtail Chicagoans ability to organize demonstrations. Like the recent austerity budget Rahm proposed which made punishing cuts to the living standards of ordinary Chicagoans, Moreno enthusiastically voted "yes".

Moreno recently penned a self-serving article in the Huffington Post offering a defense of his vote for the crackdown. It is a litany of half-truths and irrelevant fist pounding from start to finish. No matter what he says, his actions make it clear whose team he's playing on. Moreno is a staunch fighter for the 1%.

According to Moreno, it's OK that he voted to crackdown on protesters because "almost everyone agrees that having these two summits in our city is a great opportunity to solidify our rightful place as a world city."

That's just false on two fronts.

First, neither Moreno nor Rahm ever asked Chicagoans whether they wanted to treat the global 1% to a $65 million dollar party. I don't recall ever being given the opportunity to have a voice in whether or not the City would spend those resources on NATO/G8. In classic Chicago Machine form, Rahm and his lackeys on the Council just did it, just like they did with the infamous parking-meter privatization deal. They could care less what the rest of us actually want or need—the NATO/G8 summit isn't about us. Of course, Rahm and Co. have self-serving reasons to pretend as if the decision to host the summit was sparked by some grassroots initiative. But we know better.

Second, it's far from obvious that the NATO/G8 summit is going to do anything good for ordinary Chicagoans. As I say, it isn't intended to help out the 99% in Chicago—it's little more than a get-together for the 1%. Even some bourgeois economists are claiming that it will be a financial disaster. And it's absolutely criminal that Moreno thinks its better to spend $70 million (and counting) on a big party for the 1% when the city is laying off librarians, closing health clinics, cutting transit, closing schools, and cutting back on a number of different basic city services. If Moreno and Rahm actually cared about making Chicago a "world class city", they'd fully fund our public schools, fully modernize and expand our aging transit system, open new health clinics, and so on. But instead they are letting all of those basic social goods wither on the vine. And more cuts on are on the way. So it's ludicrous to think that a big party for NATO and G8 is what Chicago needs. Powerful groups like NATO and G8--which stand for the interests of the 1%--are the source of the misery of ordinary Chicagoans. They are stalwart defenders of the system that is forcing austerity down our throats.

If Moreno were, in fact, a "progressive", he could easily have put his foot down and fought for the basic interests of ordinary Chicagoans. Yet, rather than standing up against Mayor 1%, Moreno has decided to regurgitate Rahm's talking points about how the summit is such a "blessing" for all of us here in Chicago. Maybe it's a blessing for Rahm's resume. But it's a nightmare for the rest of us.

A progressive would have stood up against Rahm and his plan to spend millions entertaining organizations responsible for war, occupation, and economic exploitation. Moreno, however, did what the vast majority of his other obedient, conservative Council Members did: he did Mayor 1%'s bidding and betrayed the rest of us.

Rather than actually explain, in plain words, why he is so fond of the crackdown ordinance, in his article Moreno patronizes the vast numbers of people who opposed the bill (2,000 of whom, by his own admission, sent him emails urging him to vote no). According to Moreno, the thousands upon thousands of Chicagoans who criticized the bill just don't know what they're talking about. As Moreno puts it, there seems to be a big gap between "perception and reality." Translation: "C'mon guys... there's really nothing to worry about! The city government and the Chicago Police have a great track-record. They're trustworthy and I can assure that they how to "handle things". Or maybe you're just too dumb to understand the facts because you have some "special agenda"."

Wait, so you're not convinced by Moreno's suggestion that you're just too ignorant to see the facts for what they are? Well, don't worry. Moreno's still got more up his sleeve. He wants you to know that he's actually a big fan of protesting. That's right! He loves protests. Freedom of speech is something he absolutely treasures. So don't worry. His vote for the crackdown doesn't mean you can't still be pals. He loves the idea of protesting injustice!

It's just that he, like Rahm, doesn't want you to actually do it. Especially not this May when NATO and G8 are in town.

OK, so you're still not convinced by Moreno's apologetics? Well, not to fear: he's got one more piece of shit to sling against the wall in the hopes that something sticks:

It would have been easy for me to vote no on this ordinance. I know that I disappointed many of my supporters today. But, I don't want to be someone who refuses to compromise and doesn't give any ground. I'm not interested in beating my chest and becoming someone who can't get anything of substance done for my constituents.

Yes, it would have been easy. But Moreno didn't want to "beat his chest" and stand up for what's right. Instead he gave in to Rahm and the Machine because he wanted to continue to be someone who can, as he puts it, "get things of substance done for his constituents". Translation: "Look, if you didn't buy any of my other bullshit, then at least blame the Machine and not me. Because if I had opposed Rahm, then Rahm would have punished me. I'm weak: don't blame me, blame the Boss."

Still not convinced? Well, just fill out hundreds of pages of paper work a week in advance, pay a hefty fee for a permit, send in details on your proposed placards, prepare a detailed list of which contingents will be marching with you, and Moreno and the City will consider whether they feel like granting you the right to protest. In the event that they don't give you the permit, you can, well, shove it. Oh, yes, and don't forget to fund and publicly support your local Democratic Party in 2012 because without it we wouldn't have progressives like Moreno to stand up for the people!

Mayor 1% and Allies Crackdown on Free Speech in Chicago

2012-01-18T17:33:00.007-06:00

See here for background on the anti-protest ordinance that Rahm and his lapdogs on the City Council recently passed. The bill jacks up fines for peacefully resisting arrest in an effort to scare away protesters during the NATO/G8 summit planned for May. It also institutes a series of draconian polices designed to discourage protest: increased fees for obtaining a city permit to march, rules requiring that a permit be received over a week in advance, ordinances requiring protesters to specify in advance which contingents will be marching and in which order, as well as a heap of red tape involving the content of protesters signs. Of course, these measures don't just apply to traditional protests and parades, they apply to any large gathering on a public sidewalk (including picket lines). Here are some more details of the bill:

Surviving measures include: more surveillance cameras; parks and beaches closed until 6 a.m.; sweeping parade restrictions and higher fees for those events and empowering Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to “deputize” out-of-state law enforcement personnel in the event that demonstrators overwhelm Chicago Police.
The mayor would also be granted sweeping authority to purchase goods and services for the summits — without City Council approval or competitive bidding — provided those items cannot be purchased under existing contracts.

The intent of the measures is clear: they are designed to strongly discourage protest through intimidation. It is not surprising that Rahm—aptly dubbed "mayor 1%" by Occupy Chicago—has taken such a hard line against protest for the upcoming NATO/G8 summit. He cracked down on Occupy Chicago from the very beginning and used mass-arrests to try to disperse the movement on more than one occasion. He also said, after arresting hundreds of Chicagoans attempting to exercise their right to free speech, that he was using this as a "dress rehearsal" for NATO/G8.

Now, Rahm and his obedient followers on the City Coucil recently passed a cruel budget that punishes ordinary Chicagoans with austerity and lavishes the local 1% with cash. This, we were told, was necessary because there just isn't enough to go around.

Yet, he and the City Council are spending untold sums bringing the global 1% to Chicago for a party that the rest of us aren't invited to. Estimates already range from $50-70 million, and the City Council has already given Rahm a blank check to spend as much as he pleases.

The message is clear. For ordinary Chicagoans, Rahm and his minions offer nothing but school closings, library closings, health center cuts, layoffs, transportation cuts and other forms of austerity. For the rich and powerful of the world, Rahm and his crew have unlimited amounts of cash to fork over.

What if the majority of the population doesn't like it? Rahm's answer, which he's put forward on more than one occasion, is simple: "fuck you".

Where is the Occupy Movement Heading?

2012-01-16T17:20:00.005-06:00

By any measure, the impact of the meteoric rise of the Occupy movement on the media was substantial. Suddenly, talk of the 1% versus the 99% had, at the very least, bled into mainstream discussions which, for the first time in ages, tackled questions of inequality and power. Now, we could also compile a long list of complaints about the way in which the Occupy was being covered (or, rather, distorted) when the movement was white hot in October. But it's undeniable that the movement had a huge effect on the content and tone of discussions in mainstream media outlets. In the space of a few weeks the inane dead-end chatter about deficit reduction was swept aside as people talked about grassroots democratic self-governance, the role of the police in capitalism, the economic and political dominance of the 1%, and so on. Millions of people were electrified and catapulted into militant political action for the first time in their lives.

But, in the wake of a violent counter-attack from above, co-ordinated eviction efforts by Democrats and Republicans alike, and other less blatant forms of repression, the movement has come back down to earth. That is not to say that it has dissolved—nothing could be further from the truth. The movement proper is still going strong in numerous cities accross the nation—and not just in New York: struggle in Chicago, in particular, has been propelled forward by repression from above, hard-edged austerity and the upcoming NATO/G8 summit in May. But, though the movement has by no means been defeated, it is also undeniable that it has been dealt a momentary setback. Occupy has entered a new phase—one that is characterized by regroupment, reflection and local-level struggle against austerity and repression. That is not due to any inherent failure. On the contrary, all movements experience an ebb and flow in terms of the intensity of struggle. With the hard-nosed repression from above, it could not have been otherwise. And the movement has learned a lot of lessons along the way that will inform the future trajectory of struggles from below against a political and economic system dominated by the 1%.

But with the momentary ebb of struggle and mass mobilizations, the bourgeois media has, predictably, reverted right back to business as usual. In doing so it gives us no doubt as to its basic social function: to preserve status quo conditions, legitimize the way things are, and discourage any discussion that might involve imagining alternatives.

If there is an unspoken message to mainstream media writing and TV production right now, it is this:

Forget about Occupy. Pretend as though it never happened, and forget about inequality, power and all the rest of it. Sit down, shut up, and tune in to the horse race. Pick your favorite contender from the list of approved candidates, and cheer from stands. We'd appreciate it if you remain calm at all times and purchase plenty of concessions while you're waiting. We'll keep you filled in on what all the experts say about the race—don't bother asking yourself whether you have a stake in it at all. Just get excited, focus on the innane chatter about which horse has got the "goods" and bet accordingly. It will be fun. This is what living in a free society is all about.

Of course, I exaggerate slightly. But only slightly. The way in which the politically meaningless 2012 elections are aggressively shoved in my face by the media is not a figment of my imagination. I should also say that I don't think that this media phenomenon represents some kind of conspiracy from above to try to control people's minds. I think we are just seeing the for-profit media industry for what it is: a conservative force that does not reward critical thinking or speaking truth to power. On the contrary, it generally panders to advertisers and "received wisdom" and bows before the alter of greed. Think about it: why shouldn't Big Media cover the election in such an aggressive way? It's what they know best: it's predictable, they know the lingo, and its an ever-ready source of sensationalist, gossipy tid bits about so-and-so's sex life, etc. What's more, the election is talked about in a way that is familiar to a business culture in general: the ways that candidates "market" themselves, "brand" their "narratives" and so on are fodder for an industry whose lifeblood is advertising and consumption.

The macro-level consequences of this are apalling. Think about what's happened in the last 6 months. The people—unpredictably and semi-spontaneously—erupt in anger over the injustice of our system. And, after doing its best to ignore the phenomenon, the media is forced to weigh in and pay attention. But, at the first available opportunity, the media coverage recedes sharply. And what replaces it is exactly what the movement opposed: the ossified, politically meaningless, broken electoral system and its exploits.

It's hard not to feel that the message here is that we should keep our heads down, stay isolated from others, and buy into the self-image of the age: that we live in the "best society in the world", that our system is vigorously democratic, that "things are getting better every day". The trouble is that this deeply conflicts with the daily experiences of the vast majority of Americans. More and more people are everyday seeing this system for what it is. Confidence in the major electoral parties is at an all-time low. Young people tell pollsters they are more sympathetic to socialist ideas than to capitalist ones. For this reason and many others, we can expect that Occupy (just like Wisconsin) was not a flash in the pan. People are going to fight back—in larger numbers than we saw at the height of Occupy—and the only question is when and where. The task of the Left is how to organize in the meantime, participate and strengthen Occupy, and join arms with millions facing wage cuts, layoffs, school closures, austerity, and police repression. There is nothing less political than the scripted 2012 horse race that is thoroughly administered from above.

The Politics of Elizabeth Warren

2012-01-15T14:13:00.011-06:00

The following quotation from Elizabeth Warren, who's running for office in Massachusetts, seems to surface again and again in liberal circles:

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But, I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Now let me say that it is, in a sense, refreshing to see a genuine left-liberal, or even social-democratic, argument being put forward in these circles. Genuine liberals are hard to come by these days. Most apologists for the Democrats don't even bother to argue for liberal views anymore--they simply wax poetic about the virtues of the "free market".

But, refreshing though it may be in certain respects, this argument is deeply flawed.

Warren's argument, expanded a bit, is this: all of the profits that a capitalist firm earns are premised upon a huge system of social labor that they benefit from but are not obliged to pay for unless they pay taxes. The pre-tax income of a capitalist is not really "theirs" in some natural way, because it takes for granted a huge system of institutions, laws, and goods without which their earnings on the market would be impossible. No profit is possible without roads, infrastructure, a repressive security force capable of maintaining "order", a standing army capable of defending business interests abroad, a system of schools that train the labor force, etc. Without social stability, in particular, capitalist business cannot thrive. In periods of struggle, say, when workers refuse to accept the authority of capitalists in the workplace, the profits of capitalists are threatened. When workers go out on strike, the income of business owners is strangled momentarily. As history shows, capitalists therefore require a force capable of "restoring order" if they are to continue on earning profit. In short: without a set of institutions and organizations that create a "good business climate", no profit is possible. On this much I can agree with Warren.

But Warren, and left-liberals and social-democrats in general, draw the wrong conclusions from these facts. They conclude that the rich should see that they in fact owe society rent. Because all of the things the ruling class needs to survive aren't free, they should actually take responsibility and "pay their bills". That means accepting higher levels of taxation and higher levels of social spending on these pre-conditions of profit.

There are too many problems with this approach to count, but I'll offer four criticisms.

First, it's not just that private profit is premised upon a State that performs certain functions (e.g. maintaining "order", repressing protest and strikes, "educating" the labor force, building infrastructure, etc.). Those who work for a living create all the value, and those who live by owning create nothing. If workers stop doing what they do, nothing is produced, no profit can be had. But if the bosses stop doing what they do, there is no reason in principle why anything needs to stop. To be sure, the bosses could call in the State to coercively force workers to respect the owner's authority over their means of production. But failing that, there is no reason why workers couldn't simply continue on as they were before without need of the boss. "The boss needs you, you don't need the boss."

It's therefore wrong to say that the owners of Capital deserve a huge "chunk" of anything, even by typical liberal criteria (e.g. "productive contributions"). To the extent that capitalist earn by owning, rather than working, they don't deserve even a thin slice. The succinct way to put this complaint is to say that Warren's argument assumes that the wealth of capitalists is legitimate. It is not. In suggesting that it is, however, Warren lends support to capitalist social relations, which is tantamount to rejecting the idea of genuine democratic self-governance.

Second, Warren, like everyone persuaded by social-democratic ideas, has no plausible analysis of how power is distributed in our society. She assumes that a nice, neat compromise between capital and labor is possible, such that the ruling class will be content to "pay its bills" through high levels of taxation that are used to fund social spending. All we need do is elect the right people and the ruling class will happily go along. But, as the history of the welfare state, and of social democratic regimes in general, has shown, such arrangements are inherently unstable. They depend, first of all, on a strong, politically organized labor movement capable of forcing Capital to the bargaining table. As soon as the possibility exists to undermine the political and economic power of labor, Capital wriggles off the hook and breaks the compromise. Thus follows a period of cuts to social spending and a lowering of regulation and taxes on the ruling class. This is more or less a concise history of what happened all over western Europe (and in the US) from 1973 onward.

What's more, Warren lacks a viable analysis of how we could even win the modest reforms she and other liberals favor. The New Deal is unthinkable without a mass, militant, extra-electoral revolt by the working classes in the 1930s. The fact is that to win even modest reforms--e.g. higher marginal tax rates, increased spending on health and education--we'll need a movement capable of forcing concessions out of the ruling class. Electing officials like Warren, one by one, is not going to cut it. Even if we could do that, which we can't, it's not guaranteed that, once elected, these officials would pass reformist policies. Recent history suggests otherwise. Her approach is a non-starter.

Third, Warren's argument amounts to a wonderful justification of the repression that Occupy has endured as well as the daily repression and violence that people of color endure every day at the hands of our enemies in blue. Of course, I assume that she would want to resist such a conclusion. But her liberal politics entail it. After all, she explicitly praises the police and treats them like a basic social good that we should be thankful to have. What she doesn't realize is that the police, as an institution, are there to prevent the sorts of struggles that make possible the modest reforms she favors. Her argument is addressed to the ruling class: "don't you know that you need the police to protect your own profits? why, then, won't you pay the bill for them by accepting higher taxation?". I reject this wholesale. The ruling class won't be moved by it, and everyone else shouldn't care whether they are or not. The more important question is how we can organize our side to fight back--by way of demonstrations, strikes and occupations--against austerity, even in the face of brutal police repression.

Fourth, Warren's argument assumes that education should basically serve to train the workforce. After all, her argument is that because public education trains workers and thereby adds value to the products capitalists sell on the market, the ruling class should pay the bill for education. But if you don't think that the basic aim of education is to foreground profitability, then you're at odds with Warren. I'm sure she would reject the idea that education should be subordinate to profit, but her argument forces us to endorse just that conclusion. Whether or not the ruling class pays the bill for education, there is still the question of what the point of education should be, what the curriculum should be like, etc. If we accept the profitability imperative, it looks like we should be friendly to high-stakes testing, math/science curricula that exclude art and humanities, etc. What's more, we should have no quarrel with schooling techniques that encourage passivity, deference to authority, etc. I would dissent from this view and argue that education should first of all serve to fully unfold human potential and promote flourishing and critical thinking. It should help us learn how to live well as free and equal citizens among others.

The 2012 Elections Are Not Political

2012-01-15T10:08:00.016-06:00

If, as Alain Badiou puts it, politics has to do with "collective action, organized by certain principles, that aims to unfold the consequences of a new possibility which is currently repressed" by the status quo, then it is clear that our existing electoral system is an essentially apolitical procedure. Rather than offering us the possibility to changing things, the election accepts things as they are and asks us to adjust our expectations.

Rather than giving the people a genuine voice, it silences them and encourages them to sit down passively and choose between tweedle dee and tweedle dum. Rather than allowing the 99% to have a say in decisions of momentous importance that affect everyone, we are told to join in supporting one or other of a list of approved candidates who all share the basic aim of furthering the interests of the 1%.

At this point, the 2012 elections aren't even political--they fail to even register as an instance of democratic self-governance. They don't provide us with an avenue to change things. They don't even offer us an opportunity to discuss what's wrong with our society. The elections are a little more than a cynical performance, already scripted from above, which shoehorns us into certain courses of action we did not choose.

Now, some left-liberals will strongly disagree here. They may acknowledge that the analysis is basically correct. But they'll argue that the Republican candidates are substantially worse than Obama. And they'll talk about how Obama has done the best job possible under the conditions: he passed a stimulus bill in 2009 that had good elements, he fought for health care reform and "succeeded" in a way that no other past Democrat was able to do, he "ended" the war in Iraq, he has a great plan for jobs, etc.. They'll concede, of course, that it would have been better if Obama had passed single-payer, if the stimulus had been bigger, etc. But they will counter that we must, nonetheless, loudly and publicly support Obama in 2012. Because to fail to do so would be to let the "best be the enemy of the good".

Let's leave aside the lowly Republicans since liberals and radicals can agree on their reactionary character. What about Obama and the Democrats? All things considered, does the balance of "good" that they've accomplished outweigh the bad?

Context is needed here. The economic meltdown that began in 2007 was threatening to drag down the entire global economy in late 2008. The crisis had origins in the speculative activities of the financial sector, most of them enthusiastically encouraged by the Clinton Administration in the 90s. Profit-hungry financial institutions had systematically engaged in a huge orgy of reckless speculation that left them holding massive heaps of toxic assets in 2007. The whole system seemed on the verge of collapse. In October of 2008, Henry Paulson (Bush's secretary of the treasury) stepped in with a hastily thrown-together bailout plan that aimed to inject the nine biggest banks--all in dire straits--with billions of dollars. Paulson's plan was pieced together through behind the scenes negotiations with the CEO's of the nine largest banks. The Treasury didn't ask for anything in return for this massive $700bn bailout and, predictably, the financial sector did not resume lending and did not give relief to homeowners facing foreclosure. Instead they dolled out massive bonuses to themselves, invested offshore, etc.

Now, $700bn is a lot of money. But the actual bailout figure stands closer to $3.3 Trillion. And add to this "quantitative easing", i.e. the practice of printing money to lend to the banks at interest rates close to zero. The banks, of course, don't use this cheap credit to invest in production or lend to small businesses. They don't help restructure mortgages and create jobs. Instead, they use it to buy up US government bonds (which give them a return of 4-5%) or high-grade consumer debt (which pays as much as 12-18%). This is what explains the record-high profits reported by the financial sector in 2009 and 2010--despite soaring unemployment, low growth, and general economic misery for the 99%. Through quantitative easing, the Federal Government has been, in effect, heavily subsidizing their profits by giving them huge piles of cash at low interest rates which are used to by government bonds that pay higher interest rates. Add all of this up over the period of 2007-2010 (including the TARP bailout) and you get a figure of $3.3 Trillion given away to the US ruling class--i.e. the group who led us into this crisis to begin with.

To sum up, the response of the State in the US was to shift massive amounts of private debt onto public rolls, thereby enabling the ruling class to resume profitability in the short run.

Now, this policy began under Bush with Henry Paulson. But it was continued, consolidated and extended under Obama at a time when the Democratic Party had a super-majority in the Senate and crushing majorities in the House.

Of course, once the public absorbed such a massive amount of private debt, it threatens the solvency of the government itself. Obama and the Democrats have a simple solution here: let's make deep cuts to basic social programs and force the 99% to foot the bill for the bailout of the banks. In order to erase the massive amounts of public debt that were incurred through a bailout of the ruling class, we should force the 99% to pay for it through cuts, layoffs, and austerity. The Republicans, of course, agree wholeheartedly with this solution. Their only disagreement concerns how deep to cut and where to stick the scalpel.

Predictably, the news media exaggerates this disagreement and tries to make it appear that the overblown sabre-rattling between Democrats and Republicans evinces serious differences in "political philosophies". This leads confused idiots to step in and call for "reconciliation", "dialogue" and "post-partisan civility", thereby giving a vigorous defense of the status quo while purporting to criticize it. Of course, the idea that the Dems and Republicans sharply disagree over fundamental matters couldn't be more false. They disagree over minutiae. They agree 100% on the idea that the government should bailout the banks, subsidize their profits, and then force the majority of the population to pay for it with unemployment and reduced living standards.

Obama himself, of course, has lead efforts to slice and dice working class living standards through austerity. He hasn't just been pulled along for the ride. He pieced together the "Bipartisan Commission on Deficit Reduction" which had such great recommendations as raising the age limit for Social Security, cutting Medicare and reducing the marginal rate of taxation on the 1%. What's more, Obama's "deficit deal" with Republicans ended with pledge to cut more than $4 Trillion in spending--the biggest austerity plan in history--in order to pay for the give-aways to Wall Street. Obama has even offered up cuts to Social Security as a bargaining chip with the Republicans. Along the way, he has defended a pay freeze for Federal workers, given massive tax breaks to the wealthy, and chastised us for getting upset about the massive bonuses given out on Wall Street.

But what about Obama's stimulus bill from 2009? Didn't that do a lot of good? Here I basically agree with many liberal economists (e.g. Krugman and Stliglitz) who argued repeatedly that the Obama stimulus was far too small and included too little spending and too many tax breaks. This has been proven true over and over again (although I disagree with Krugman and others that a Keynesian stimulus would have resolved the contradictions that produced the crisis in the first place). After the extremely brief economic boost that the 2009 stimulus spending made possible, unemployment began soaring again as municipal and state budgets plummeted. And the tax-breaks in the bill have done virtually nothing to boost demand--if anything all they've done is drain public finances of much-needed funds (thereby exacerbating crisis by priming the pumps for public layoffs and austerity). The economic crisis continues unabated and it shows no signs of letting up in 2012.

In stark contrast, Obama need not have continued the Paulson bailout, he need not have subsidized the profits of Wall Street, he need not have extended the Bush tax breaks, and he need not have lead the charge to force austerity on the 99%. He could have nationalized failing banks, raised taxes on the 1% (or at least demanded that they pay what they already owe), spent money rebuilding infrastructure thereby creating jobs, forgiven household debt rather than ruling class debt, and so forth. Obama could have forgiven the massive amounts of debt held by students who can't find jobs because of the bad economy that was wrecked by bailout-recipient bankers. At the very least, he could give students the same interest rates on their loans that he's giving to the ruling class, who pay interest rates near zero. He and the Democrats could have decided to stop spending billions more on war and occupation. They could have used that money to give us single-payer. But they did none of it.

Instead, they decided to more or less exactly what we could've expected a Republican regime to have done. Obama, from the very beginning, has surrounded himself with forces drawn directly from the 1%. When it was revealed that GE paid no taxes last year, Obama appointed a high-ranking official from GE to be his "jobs czar". To be sure, the public legitimacy of the Democrats depends on convincing their "base" that they actually believe in things like Medicare and Social Security. So it is possible that the Republicans might have been more assertive in attacking those programs than the Democrats have been. Or maybe not. The Republicans understand as well as the Democrats that Medicare and SS are extremely popular and are difficult to attack directly. The difference between the two parties is minuscule when set across the backdrop of everything they agree on. This makes it obvious that we're going to have to fight if we want to win even modest reforms.

And what of the crown jewel of Obama's "legislative achievements", the so-called healthcare reform bill? First off, it is hardly reasonable to call it a "reform". It's not even much of an adjustment. Aside from snatching low-hanging fruit by nominally opposing recision and denial of care on the basis of "pre-existing conditions", the bill made things considerably worse for the 99%. It consolidated and further institutionalized the role of the for-profit health insurance industry in the US health care system. It provided subsidies to these goons at the same time that it cuts funding for Medicare under the banner of "efficiency". Worse still, it includes an individual mandate which forces citizens to purchase a product from one of these for-profit parasites, without a public option. The plan also solidifies the tie between health care and job benefits--contributing to job-lock and punishing the unemployed. The health care crisis continues unabated as the for-profit health care industry continues to reap big profits on the backs of ordinary Americans. And let's not forget that Max Baucus (D-Montana), who oversaw the committee that wrote the bill, was the #1 recipient (in all of Congress) of campaign contributions from the health insurance industry in 2008.

By any reasonable measure, Obama and the Democrats have done far more harm than good. They have fought tooth and nail to lower the living standards of working Americans to finance a ruling-class bailout. They have attacked teachers, called in the cops to brutalize Occupy protesters, and deported more immigrants than Bush did. They have expanded wars and drone attacks. They have kept Guantanamo open for business. They insulated BP from any liability for one of the worst environmental catastrophes in recent memory. They have placed Pell Grants and Stafford Loans on the chopping block. They have made cuts to Medicare and other vital social programs. They have made attacks on civil liberties that would make John Ashcroft blush. They are a menace to the 99% and staunch allies of the 1%.

As the Occupy movement has decisively shown us, we can and must ask for more than what the lowly Democrats are able to offer us. We do not need to profoundly scale back our demands. Neither should we sit back passively in hopes that Democrat politicians will do the right thing when we know they won't. And what's more--we have to organize ourselves to resist the attacks that Democrats--just as much as Republicans--are launching against us. We have to stand up together and build collective struggles capable of exerting pressure on the entire system. Rather than buying the lie that the 2012 elections are the most important thing on the horizon right now we have to be clear: they are not political at all. They are a charade. Politics right now is on the streets, at mass demonstrations, on the picket lines, in workplaces and schools, in rooms where powerful figures are getting mic-checked, at GA's held by Occupy movements around the country.

The 2012 elections, on the other hand, are nothing but a mass of confusion, disorientation and cynicism meant to convince us to forget everything that's happened since the Occupy movement burst on the scene. They are nothing more than a way of making our broken system appear as if it enjoys democratic legitimacy. It is meant to corral us back into the "proper channels" that are neatly organized to insulate the power of the 1% from any challenge from below. The 2012 elections offer us neither a voice nor a genuine choice: they offer us two different avenues to place a stamp of legitimacy on the bailouts, on austerity, on repression, on war and occupation. As such the elections are not political: they are merely an occasion to choose which hack is going to misrepresent us for the next 2-4 yrs.

Against "Selection Theory"

2012-01-11T14:18:00.002-06:00

Titles announcing a coming revolution in the study of cultures and societies have poured from the presses in recent years. A new evolutionary approach promises not only to introduce quantitative rigour and objectivity to social science, but also to gather its disparate elements—psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, economics—into one unified intellectual enterprise. Conferences at major universities, special issues of social-scientific journals, a veritable library of treatises and theoretical outlines announce an impending perspectival shift: in the future, social and cultural change will be understood as resulting from a selective-evolutionary process. The higher peaks of this vast output would include, in economics, Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter’s Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change; in sociology, W. G. Runciman’s Treatise on Social Theory and Theory of Cultural and Social Selection; in anthropology, Pascal Boyer’s study of belief systems, Religion Explained; in comparative literature, Franco Moretti’s Signs Taken for Wonders and Graphs, Maps, Trees. Growing numbers of specialists in the social sciences and humanities have set about reinterpreting their previous work in social-evolutionary terms, or at least speculating on how this might be executed, while citing with approval the research agendas of the social evolutionists. The activities of scholars send reverberations down the intellectual supply chain: public intellectuals champion the approach in the broadsheets; journalists weave references to the concepts into their columns; in due course, airport bookstores flog intellectually diluted popularizations.

Read the rest here.

Moralism

2012-01-10T16:06:00.007-06:00

Samuel Scheffler offers what could be the most incisive and succinct of what moralism is:

To describe a person as "moralistic" is to say that that person is too prone to make moral judgments: that the person relies on moral categories to an excessive degree, invoking them prematurely or in contexts where they are out of place, or using them in a rigid and simplistic way which ignores the nuances and complexities of human predicaments... Moralism is the enemy of insight and illumination, and one of its most common functions is to place obstacles in the way of genuine understanding. There are critics of moralism who think, in effect, that all moral judgment is moralistic, but moralism is in fact a moral flaw: a deformation or disfiguration of the moral. it is a moral failing to neglect the often complex reality of people's circumstances or to subject them to unjustified criticism.

I think this is spot on. Not only does Scheffler nicely characterize the usage of "moralistic" in Left circles (more on that below), he makes the important point that criticism of "moralism" does not entail a wholesale rejection of morality. Moralism, in Left circles, usually refers to the mistake of judging a political question to be a moral one (or judging a political failing to be a moral failing). It is, in other words, to invoke moral concepts in contexts where they are out of place, where what we really need are political concepts. Morality, however, is another matter. Morality has to do with what we owe to others, how we ought to treat them, etc. A critique of moralism, then, does not entail a critique of morality, the idea that we have obligations to other people, that their interests give us reasons for action, that we shouldn't treat them in certain ways, etc.

Moralism is simply the mistake of bringing moral concepts where they don't belong. And, as Scheffler points out, bring moral categories where they don't belong often hast he consequence of thwarting genuine understanding of the social and political factors at work. They obscure the political dynamics at work and thereby distort what's really going on. Ideology often (but not always) functions in just this way.

I recall reading something that Alex Callinicos says in Making History about moralism. I can't remember what he said, and I don't have the book on me at the moment, but I remember thinking it was good. I suppose his remark deserves runner-up for most concise accounts of moralism.

Democracy and the "Tyranny of the Majority"

2012-01-09T13:41:00.015-06:00

The Right has never been a friend of democracy. Pick any period of history you like. Examine any struggle from below and you will find a slew of Right-wing arguments attacking the idea of collective self-rule. Mostly, these arguments seek to insulate or protect some powerful group from any democratic challenge by the people. Early liberal thought is concerned to defend the freedom and power of the rising mercantile class from threats from above as well as from below. The main goal of liberal politics was to restrain the State, as much as the people, from negatively interfering with the capitalist economy. On the one hand, liberals wanted to protect the business interests of the emerging capitalist class from the old Aristocratic elite. But, on the other, liberals wanted to protect those same propertied businessman from any challenge from the majority of the population who quite obviously had no basic interest in maintaining the capitalist status quo. This dual attack on both feudal power as well as the democratic power of the people gestures toward the sense in which Marx saw the anti-feudal bourgeois revolutions as both progressive as well as regressive. They tore asunder the repressive contours of feudalism at the same time that they created and consolidated new forms of exploitation and elite rule.

The American Revolution was no exception. It was progressive in rejecting many of the feudal aspects of Old Europe. But the new "republic" was by no means an experiment in genuine democracy. Nor was it intended to be. On the contrary, the founders were explicitly skeptical of democratic self-governance and sought to insulate themselves from any challenge from below, whether from unpropertied whites, indentured white servants, white women, or black people. After all, if a majority of the human beings in the US had been allowed to have a genuine voice in government, neither slavery nor the existing distribution of property would have survived for long. The early American ruling class was every bit as hostile to the monarchical power of England as they were to laboring majority of the population.

This is a clear theme among the authors of the Federalist Papers. The authors aren't worried about some abstract majority that could impose its will on some abstract minority. They weren't in the business of designing ideal societies in the realm of pure theory. They were talking about concrete groups of people, with conflicting interests borne out of their conflicting class positions, colliding in the political arena. In good bourgeois fashion they were worried that the majority of the population, over whom they presided, could overpower them if allowed to have unrestricted democratic power. Hence the need for all sorts of restrictions on what democratic bodies may do, restrictions on the pace of change, "checks and balances", etc. All of these fundamentally undemocratic measures were put in place to stabilize and consolidate a particular distribution of power, resources and control. The ignorant rabble must not be allowed to have too much of a say or else the power, expertise and "superior knowledge" of the propertied minority would be threatened.

So, there is a long Right-wing tradition of skepticism about democracy. The masses were either too dumb, too immature, too beholden to base/irrational impulses, too uneducated, or too inferior to be genuinely equal co-legislators in the process of self-rule. For these reasons, some version of elite rule was necessary. The wealth and power of a minority is thereby made "legitimate".

This is the tradition out of which the idea of the "tyranny of the majority" arises.

One version of the argument is as follows. Democracy, if left unfettered, will produce tyranny. In particular, the allegedly sacrosanct property rights of the owners of capital, who are a minority of society by necessity, will be threatened by the envious masses. The wealth of the rich will not be safe if the majority, who has no interest in protecting the power and wealth of the 1%, is allowed to decide matters of public significance. Hence, democracy cannot be unfettered. At the very least, it must be severely constrained by a set of inviolable rights (e.g. the right to property). Or perhaps the economic sphere needs to be walled off from democratic energies entirely. But it's also possible that the threat democracy poses to capitalist property relations is so great in certain periods that democracy itself has to be eliminated or severely restricted. This is the lesson on Chile in 1973. See Friedrich Hayek for versions of this anti-democratic argument, as well as for various harebrained schemes which aim to empower a "wise elite" to insulate capitalism from any democratic challenge.

Another version of the "tyranny of the majority" argument, which is far more plausible on the face of it, is the following. Democracy means that the will of the majority prevails over the minority. But if that is so, what is to stop a dominant group from using democracy to further entrench the oppression of minority groups? Worse yet, how will the interests of oppressed minorities ever be taken seriously if they can always be overruled by the votes of the majority?

The two different versions of the argument are worlds apart. The first seeks to insulate the power of an already dominant group from any democratic challenge by the majority. The second expresses a worry that currently dominated and oppressed groups will not be well served by majority rule. Still, although the motivation for both versions are extremely different, the reply to both will be the same.

First of all, democracy is not mere majority rule. The mere fact that a majority of people support something does not mean that democracy endorses it, nor does it mean that its the right thing to do. Everything depends on why people support something, what their reasons are, and who is allowed to participate in the discussion. Democracy is an arrangement in which citizens collectively self-govern themselves through reasoned discussion and deliberation. For that to have any meaning at all, citizens must be substantively equal to one another. That is to say, there cannot be any social relations that exhibit domination, exploitation, subordination or oppression. Otherwise, democratic self-governance is not possible. Exploiters and exploited cannot participate together in a reasoned process of democratic deliberation. Their interests, being diametrically opposed, prevent them from having a reasoned discussion as equals. The arguments of the exploited will fall on deaf ears, and the exploiters will be in a position to issue threats and throw their weight around. Collective self-governance between such groups is impossible. The only way forward is struggle. Since the exploited are the only ones with an undistorted interest in entirely overturning relations of exploitation, they are the group most likely to bring such a social change about. The exploiters, on the other hand, having no interest in altering the status quo, will fight to keep things as they are. The task of those committed to democracy in such a situation is to organize alongside the exploited to fight for a militant, internally democratic movement capable of overturning social relations that exhibit exploitation.

In virtue of what is someone an exploiter? In virtue of her social position in the economic structure of society. A person who owns and controls means of production is in a position to dominate those who don't. Moreover, the owner of means of production has influence and power over society insofar as that person has disproportionate control over such important matters as employment, investment, workplace organization, wages, and so forth. It is a farce to say that the 1%, given their concentrated economic power, are equal co-legislators alongside the rest of us. Collective self-governance is impossible if an unelected group enjoys exclusive control over the basic structure of society. The basic concern of those who defend socialism from below is "who decides?" If the answer is: an aristocratic elite, the capitalist class, the military brass, or state bureaucrats, then we don't have democracy (and neither do we have socialism).

The same goes for other relations of domination. Suppose that a majority of people vote in favor of a racist policy in the contemporary US. Would that be a genuinely democratic outcome? Hardly. Democracy means collective self-governance among equals. If a segment of society push for the exclusion and oppression of another segment of society, that is fundamentally undemocratic. For it means undermining the ideal of collective self-rule in favor of a situation in which one group lords over and dominates another. Real democracy means that citizens participate together as equals in determining what their shared life together should be like. But that equality is impossible in a society marked by racial oppression. Reinforcing racial oppression—by whatever means—is tantamount to increasing the undemocratic character of a social formation. As long as some group is oppressed, its members cannot be said to be equal with others. So, the second version of the argument is correct to worry that oppressed minorities may be ill-served by majority-rule, but majority-rule is not necessarily democratic.

Any action which undermines continued collective self-governance among equals is undemocratic. Thus, restricting free speech isn't wrong because it violates some "natural" right; it is wrong precisely because it makes genuine collective self-governance impossible.

Second, democracy is not identical to voting. Voting is simply one possible way of trying to institutionalize democratic decision making. But the mere act of voting is not the most important part of democracy. Far more important is the discussion that preceded a particular vote. This should be evident to anyone who has participated in a General Assembly at an occupation. A vote is really only as good as the discussion that preceded it. If that discussion was distorted by asymmetrical relations of power and threats by more powerful groups, then the upshot of the vote is unclear. If the discussion was dominated by a powerful misconception propagated from above, the results are similarly dubious. Or, if the voices and concerns of certain groups are not heard or taken seriously in the discussion, this can similarly devalue a vote. Only a discussion which generalizes from the experiences of all, which proceeds on the basis of reasoned deliberation, which takes seriously the interests of all those participating, is likely to produce an outcome with genuinely democratic credentials.

The point is that democracy is not something that happens merely in the act of voting. It occurs in and through the arguments and deliberations about what to do. To the extent that those deliberations are skewed by threats, self-interested bargaining, private gain or by certain groups throwing their weight around, what results from them is not democratic. To the extent that those deliberations exclude parties that are affected by a decision, they are similarly undemocratic. Moreover, if those deliberations proceed on the basis of ideological manipulation or deception, they are similarly undemocratic. Democracy happens when substantively equal participants collectively and openly discuss together—by exchanging reasons among one another, not by appealing to unexamined "preferences"—how to settle matters of common concern. Thus, a vote may or may not, in this sense, be democratic. The mere fact that a majority supports something does not make it democratic.

It should be clear, then, from what has been said above that democracy is not identical with existing electoral procedures. Democracy, properly understood, is antithetical to these illegitimate procedures and to the society in which they are situated. Democracy is general assemblies, workers' councils, consciousness raising groups, strike committees, mass demonstrations and public speak-outs. The ossified electoral structures in the US—which revolve around around two massive corporate-backed party organizations—are anything but democratic. US elections—especially presidential elections—are little more than opportunities for us to choose which wing of the ruling class will misrepresent us for the next couple of years. To encourage us to choose between the Democrats and Republicans is to do nothing more than attempt to cast a system of, by and for the 1% in a favorable light by making it appear as if it enjoys democratic legitimacy.

One closing thought about "consensus" procedures in social movements. I think those who defend these sorts of procedures do so in part for democratic reasons. That is, the goal of every deliberation should be consensus. Consensus is not compromise. Compromise occurs when parties who have different interests, or at least different views, agree to disagree and bargain rather than try to convince the other of what they take to be correct. Consensus means that a group of people are won to a position because they agree that it is best supported by the relevant reasons.

In democratic deliberations and discussions, consensus should always be the goal. We shouldn't start off the discussion by strategizing about how to bargain, threaten, deceive, or frighten people in to voting one way or another. We should begin by trying to convince them through reasoned argument—and we should be open to having our minds changed by the arguments we encounter in the discussion. Genuine democracy means that all of the relevant arguments are heard, all of the reasons for and against considered. No voices are silenced. After all of that, the hope is that the view best supported by reasons will win out. Of course, real life is hardly ever so clean cut. Sometimes group deliberations about what to do yield deep disagreement. Sometimes that disagreement is over what's best supported by reasons, sometimes not. Sometimes certain groups refuse to seriously consider certain arguments because they threaten their authority or power.

What's more, we never have an unlimited time frame in which to discuss and deliberate. At some point, the need to act intervenes and cuts short the ideal of unconstrained, endless deliberation. So, in the absence of a real consensus, working democratic bodies need a decision procedure that best captures what the will of all is at that moment. Some version of majority rule (whether that's simple majority or super-majority) is unavoidable here for practical reasons. First, genuine consensus is one thing, but so-called "consensus procedures" are another. "Consensus procedures" endow each individual with veto power. That individual need not have good reasons for her veto. She need not convince others that her views are correct. In order to derail a collective discussion all she need do is veto it and the whole thing is shot. This hardly encourages reasoned argument and collective deliberation among equals. Neither does it encourage aiming to achieve real consensus. On the contrary, it encourages threats, raw bargaining (which is not the same as arguing), foot-stomping, and other non-deliberative interactions.

One final thought, just so that the above is not misunderstood. I am not saying that we need "more dialogue" and discussion between oppressor and oppressed, exploiter and exploited. Reasoned argument from below tends to fall on deaf ears when it is aimed at convincing those in positions of power. In these cases, only struggle can carry the day. An all-encompassing democracy isn't possible in social conditions marked by systemic oppression, exploitation and marginalization. The system must be changed in order to lay the groundwork for such a possibility. But, among those organized to fight for a better society, democratic self-governance is key. The movement for a better world has to embody many of the attributes that the future world must exemplify. So my comments about democracy, discussion, deliberation, reasoned argument, etc. should be taken to apply to movements from below that bring together people concerned to fight against all forms of oppression, domination and exploitation. I'll sit down and have a reasoned discussion with the ruling class when they give up all of their wealth and power.

Corey Robin on "Ron Paul's Two Problems"

2012-01-05T15:38:00.015-06:00

See Robin's piece here. His argument is that "Ron Paul has two problems, one his and another ours". By "ours" he means "the Left" (more on that below). The problem "we" have is that our side doesn't "really have a vigorous national spokesperson for the issues of war and peace, an end to empire, a challenge to Israel, and so forth, that Paul has in fact been articulating."

Paul's problem is that he is, well, Ron Paul. Set that aside.

Does Robin have a point regarding the need for a strident anti-imperialist voice on "the Left"? Yes and no, depending on what we mean by "the Left". Robin, to his credit, is quite clear what he means by "the Left": "I mean a left that's social democratic (or welfare state liberal or economically progressive or whatever the hell you want to call it". He doesn't come out and say so, but it's possible he also means to say electoral Left and, more specifically, the Left wing of the Democratic Party. He might also mean to say that he wishes that there were a presidential candidate who was both "Left" (in his sense) and also vociferously anti-imperialist.

Now, there is a sense in which I agree with Robin here. All of the political confusion generated by the 2012 campaigns presents challenges for the Left. Anyone who is against the wars, who is attracted to principled anti-imperialist positions, cannot be satisfied with the bellicose, empire-expanding, drone-loving Democratic Party (or its representative in the White House). Thus, in the context of a media that vastly over-inflates the importance of the Republican primaries, some (otherwise left-leaning) people are attracted to Ron Paul's arguments against the wars. It is a shame that some people—who may not have any contact with the organized Left—may be tempted to conclude that Ron Paul-style hard-Right politics are the only anti-war politics on offer. Robin is also surely correct to say that Paul doesn't oppose war and imperialism for the right reasons. He is coming from a pro-nationalist and pro-isolationist (and, I would add, racist) position that informs his anti-immigrant xenophobia as much as his stance against foreign interventions.

I also agree with Robin that it would be nice if there were a visible "Left" figure who had the opportunity to make principled anti-imperialist arguments to a mass television audience. I wish there were a Left figure of this sort who was given the light of day by the media in order to bludgeon the lousy Democrats from the Left. I've even thought a couple of times recently that it would be nice to have a third-party Left candidate who was able to at least get a critical message out via the Presidential media frenzy (although this strategy has its limitations as well). On this much I can agree with Robin.

But there are several deep problems with his analysis.

First, there already is a principled, intellectually rigorous anti-imperialist Left in the US, although it is marginalized by the two-party system and the media. Moreover, the Occupy movement has adopted generally anti-war positions and has frequently made use of slogans such as "end the wars, tax the rich!" and "money for jobs and education, not for wars and occupations". In Chicago, the Occupy movement joined in marching against the occupation of Afghanistan. But Robin seems less interested in these developments than he is in having a "strong national state" that can "ally" with movements. Set aside the problems with this view about the relationship between movements and the State for the moment (I concede that I not have yet not read Robin's elaborations on this topic on his blog). Robin's main lament here seems to be that there is no visible figure or candidate (in the mold of Ron Paul except left-wing) making anti-imperialist arguments on prime time television. That's not, in the first instance at least, a lament that there's no movement—it's an expression of frustration that there are no electoral candidates making use of the "proper channels" to make anti-imperialist arguments. As far as it goes, I wouldn't mind if there were a Nader-like figure making anti-imperialist and anti-austerity arguments on prime time TV right now. But I hardly think that's the be-all-end-all of politics. I'm far more interested in the promise of Occupy, that is, in the power of strikes, mass demonstrations, workplace actions, occupations, mic checks, community pickets, direct actions, and all the rest of it. What's more, it is no exaggeration to say that the resistance of extra-electoral social movements are the key to explaining virtually all progressive changes in his US history. The Democrats, on the other hand, are a graveyard of progressive social movements, not a force for progressive change. The Democrats started every war that the US was involved in during the 20th century—they've never been and never will be anti-imperialist. Movements are the way forward, and the State and the two-party system are nothing but obstacles.

Second, one answer to Robin's complaint that the liberal Left isn't anti-imperialist would be to say, "well, what does that say about the politics of the liberal Left in the US?" He complains that the "welfare state liberal" Left doesn't have enough staunch anti-imperialists, but I would reply that that simply speaks ill of the liberal Left in the US. Paul Krugman, a liberal if ever there was one, has consistently spoken out against the Iraq War. But he's no principled anti-imperialist and doesn't offer wide-ranging "pungent" critiques of imperialism. Neither do the editorial board of the American Prospect or The Nation. Why might that be? One reason has surely got to be that anti-imperialism is, at least in its classical form, generally anti-capitalist. Imperialism is the violent military form that international economic competition takes in a global capitalist system. It makes little sense to impugn one without criticizing the other, given their intimate relationship.

Third, Robin is wrong about the State and gives generally unconvincing arguments against Paul's "federalism". First off, Ron Paul and "libertarians" are not genuine federalists. To be sure, Robin is right that White Supremacists and other reactionaries have inhabited the language of Federalism when it suits them. But it's window-dressing. They aren't for genuine local-level democratic control of anything—just try asking Ron Paul if he'd allow workers in a company town to democratically run the factory themselves without the boss. Paul, after all, is no fan of democracy. He believes that capitalist markets should determine what our society is like—hence his fundamental distrust of the popular will of the people expressed through democratic self-rule. There is a large sense in which a genuinely democratic society would require a massive decentralization of power compared to really existing US capitalism. That point gets lost in Robin's argument re: the need for a strong national state.

Moreover, "libertarians" like Paul are not anti-State. They love the State. Neither are they anti-intervention. They love intervention as well. Everything depends on what the State does and how it intervenes. When workers refuse to obey the authority of their bosses—Ron Paul says call in the authorities to protect the property of the capitalist class. When workers go on strike—Ron Paul says call in the State's bodies of armed men to break the picket. When masses of black people revolt against police brutality and repression—Ron Paul stands firmly with the racist cops in calling for violence from above. When landless peasants try to occupy the land of colonial elites—Ron Paul and libertarians are for vigorous state intervention to stop the peasants from fighting colonial oppression. When movements arise that challenge the legitimacy of capitalism, you can bet that Ron Paul (and every last "libertarian" on the planet) will be rooting for the coercive power of the State military to put down the uprising by force. The fact is, without a coercive, interventionist State, you simply couldn't have the system—capitalism—that Paul favors. At least Fredrich Hayek and Milton Friedman were honest about this feature of their politics (both, after all, were enthusiastic supporters of the brutal Right-wing Pinochet dictatorship given that it was staunchly neoliberal and anti-socialist). Capitalist property relations require a coercive State that maintains the unequal power of the ruling class.

Of course, when the State is forced—by pressure from below generated by movements—to relent and give concessions to try to undercut challenges to its authority, Ron Paul is against those State interventions. When the labor movement explodes in the 1930s and wins concessions from the State (e.g. Social Security, collective bargaining rights, etc.), Ron Paul is against that kind of State activity. When black people die tearing down Jim Crow and, in the process, win modest gains from the political system, Ron Paul is anti-State. When the womens' movement wins abortion rights and anti-harassment legislation, Paul cries foul and whines of excessive "State interference". When people like Ralph Nader challenge the Big Three and win safety regulations on car corporations, Ron Paul complains of a "tyrannical" State.

What this shows is that he, and other defenders of capitalism, love certain interventions and hate others. They love interventions that protect the privileges and powers of property owners. They hate the interventions that reduce the power and privileges of business—even when these "interventions" vastly increase the freedom of marginalized groups.

The fact is that talk of "limited government" is nothing but rhetoric. Those who extol the virtues of "small government" say one thing and do another—they are all about a government that doesn't limit the freedom of the ruling class but they could give a fuck about the freedom of the rest of us. And when the majority of us get restless, all that "small government" talk is lost in the fray of riot gear, bullets, billy clubs, tear gas, and calls for "law and order". The question of whether government should be "big" or "small" is vacuous. It's far better to ask: who controls the government? Whose interests does it serve? Or: to what extent is our whole society—including the economy—genuinely self-governing? And: to what extent do dominant groups make use of the existing government apparatus to extend and consolidate their power? The talk of "big" and "small" government is nothing but ideological bile. Let's talk about power, who has it, how they use it, and what we need to do to fight back.

"PR Politics" Overload

2012-01-04T10:45:00.006-06:00

The New York Times is overflowing this morning with what I've pejoratively labeled "Public Relations Politics". Strictly speaking "PR Politics" isn't really political at all; it is anti-political. As I wrote during the 2010 midterms:

If we go on what's said in the big newspapers (e.g. NYTimes, WaPo, etc.) and TV stations, I think we get a definition of politics something like the following. Politics is nothing but a game of rhetorical strategies and public relations. This game is only to be played by one or other of two well-defined and recognized teams: the Democrats and the Republicans. Thus, when we analyze "what's happening politically" in this society, we look at various institutionalized "matches" between the two teams, who compete by hurling different rhetoric back and forth at one another, employing more or less effective strategies along the way. Of course, it is acknowledged that money also plays a role, so perhaps we could add that another element of the game being played is that one team has to try to out-fund-raise the other (by, presumably, constructing a more cleverly packaged P.R. game plan, etc.). [Sidenote: this is where the ideology of "apathetic voters" emerges from... perfectly rational people feel excluded and alienated by this stupid PR game, and they are subsequently derided as "apathetic" cynics who don't see the point of "making freedom count".]

According to this sham PR game, when we care about politics, what we do is pretend that we're inside the campaign headquarters of some particular candidate and strategize about what to do. We don't ask what kinds of changes we want to see in our society. We don't ask whether or not any of the candidates will bring about these changes. Instead we pretend we're inside the candidates war room and quibble over rhetorical tactics. We always remain at the meta-level, never actually touching politics itself. According to this way of thinking about politics, all "political analysis" must confine itself to conniving about whether, say, Santorum has a good "narrative" (or hairdo) that could be used to outmaneuver Obama's different "branding". The ubiquity of marketing language is appalling.

The effect of this ideology is to stave off any criticism of the economic and political system itself. Rather than asking whether our interests are well-served by existing political and economic institutions, instead we're encouraged to cheer for (and strategize alongside) one of the "legitimate" contenders for the super-bowl-like presidential game. Real politics never enters the picture. We are simply not afforded the opportunity to express discontent with the system itself within this framework.

The exciting thing about Occupy is that it casts all of this nonsense aside. If people thought that the two-party duopoly served their interests and expressed their will, they wouldn't have taken to the streets in the first place. My hope is that the movement will remain fiercely independent of the two-party straitjacket so that it's power and political energy doesn't get strangled by the anti-political PR game-show this November.

Say what you like about Badiou, but he was certainly right on the money when he said that: "If we posit a definition of politics as ‘collective action, organized by certain principles, that aims to unfold the consequences of a new possibility which is currently repressed by the dominant order’, then we would have to conclude that our current electoral mechanism is an essentially apolitical procedure."

Debate: LaBotz vs. DSA on the Question of the Democrats

2012-01-03T12:42:00.004-06:00

See here. LaBotz hits the nail on the head by making the following points:

The chief political difference between you and me and between the DSA and some others on the left with whom I identify (Solidarity, ISO, and the Socialist Party) is the nature of the Democratic Party. This is a question both of one’s theory as well as of one’s attitude toward the Democratic Party. It is a theoretical question, but also a question of whether or not one takes an active role in creating an independent alternative to the Democratic Party as part of the process of building an independent party of working people.
I and other like me believe that the Democratic Party is a capitalist party. We argue that capitalists provide much of the financing, leadership, program, and a significant portion of the higher level cadres of the Democratic Party. I have not found in the DSA position papers any serious analysis of the Democratic Party and its role in American politics, nothing comparable, for example, to ISO member Lance Selfa’s The Democratic Party: A Critical Analysis and nothing comparable to the papers on the Democrats and elections found on the Solidarity website.
Since we believe that the Democratic Party belongs to another class, we believe that it is impossible for the working class to wage a fight to control the Democratic Party or to use it successfully for its own class objectives. More important, we believe that working class, labor union, and social movement participation in the Democratic Party inhibits the political self-development of working people and the movements, making it impossible for them to figure out who their leaders are and what their program should be. We therefore reject participation in the Democratic Party and refuse to work in its campaigns.

Duhalde tries to deflect some of the criticism of his group by emphasizing that there is diversity of views within the DSA on whether to support the Democrats in certain contexts. But even if we grant that, the more general political (or, if you like, "theoretical") problems that LaBotz points out remain. The DSA does not (at least, not that I've noticed--feel free to point out a counter-example) offer trenchant analyses of the basic function of the Democratic Party in US capitalism. In being so closely tethered to the Democrats the DSA fails to create sufficient space for working people to debate genuine alternatives, and thereby retards the political self-development and confidence of the 99%.

75th Anniversery of the Great 1937 Sit-Down Strikes

2012-01-03T12:17:00.003-06:00

Here, here, here and here.

Luxemburg and Trotsky on Political Organization

2012-01-02T12:48:00.020-06:00

Leon Trotsky writes in his History of the Russian Revolution:

"The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historic events. In ordinary times the state, be it monarchical or democratic, elevates itself above the nation, and history is made by specialists in that line of business—kings, ministers, bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new regime...The history of revolution for us is first of all the history of the forcible entrance of the masses into rulership of their own destiny."

This characterization of revolution boldly places the direct participation of the masses and collective self-emancipation front and center. But how is such a revolution made? Trotsky did not endorse a thoroughgoing "spontaneist" conception of revolution according to which the masses of workers would—without any political strategy, organization or leadership—spontaneously carry out a social revolution. Trotsky did not think that revolutionaries could simply sit back and wait for the inevitable spontaneous revolution to occur. This strategy, he argues, leaves revolutionaries inactive and trailing behind at "history's tail". He realized that strategy, tactics, organization and leadership were crucial to the success of a mass revolt from below. Thus, Trotksy thought that revolutionaries had organize themselves to collectively participate in the struggles of the day and win people to socialist politics. As he put it: "The very need for a party originates in the fact that the proletariat is not born with the innate understanding of its historical interests. The task of the party consists in learning, from experience derived from struggle, how to demonstrate to the proletariat its right to leadership." The party must learn from the direct participation of the struggles of the class, but it must also draw on this knowledge to help win the class—through participation in struggle and political argument—to perspectives that will carry the struggle forward.

The fatalism of the spontaneist perspective means that nobody actually involved in struggle can really endorse it. Everyone that is actively engaged in political struggle has to think that the interventions and participation of revolutionaries in movements make a difference (otherwise why be actively engaged in struggle at all?). And to have any hope of making a substantial impact on events, collective organization is key. But what kind of organization is needed?

One option in the early 20th century was the parliamentarian model of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). This model was successful in certain respects. It had millions of members, it was growing in influence and power, it was tightly linked to the labor movement, it had educational institutions, it held cultural events, and so on. But it had a number of fundamental flaws that eventually led revolutionaries to sharply reject it as a viable way forward for socialists. First, the SPD worked entirely within the purview of the German capitalist state which, it was assumed, could be reformed to eventually make possible a socialist society. Marx, however, had long argued that the role of the state in capitalist society was to maintain class domination. Given that the state is a class-state rather than a neutral vessel that the working-class can lay hold of, it must be totally done away with in order to make space for something completely different. Marx himself argued that the Paris Commune was an example of the necessity of this process in the course of revolution, and Lenin echoed these arguments in his State and Revolution, which is nothing more than a clear exegesis of, pace Kautsky and some anarchists, what Marx actually said about the state. Another problem with the SPD was that it, like all of the Second International parliamentary socialist parties, ended up breaking with internationalism, cheering on the chauvinism and bloodshed of World War I. Finally, the SPD, like all parliamentary organizations, was fundamentally top-down and deeply suspicious of workers taking matters into their own hands outside of the "proper" electoral channels. This flaw reached a nadir when the SPD played a role in using state repression to murder revolutionaries, among them Rosa Luxemburg.

In contrast, revolutionaries argued that there could be no compromise on the need to completely do away with the capitalist state, on the need for fierce internationalism, and the need for genuine working-class revolt from below. Some kind of revolutionary organization would be needed to realize these principles. But what kind?

There are clear pitfalls to be avoided here. Trotsky is clear that the organization must not be substitutionist, that is, it must not substitute its own efforts for the actions of the working-class. The SPD did precisely that: the SPD politicians told the workers to sit down and let them take care of everything and thereby substituted their own maneuvers for the actions of the entire class. But substitutionism isn't merely a pitfall that the revolutionary party must avoid vis-a-vis the working class. Substitutionism within the party must also be avoided at all costs, so as to avoid a scenario in which, as Trotsky puts it, the "party organization substitutes itself for the party as a whole; the Central Committee substitutes itself for the organization; and finally, a single "dictator" substitutes himself for the Central Committee." Instead, a "vibrant and active democracy" is needed inside the organization so that all members can "participate actively and consciously in working out its views and in determining its course of action." Moreover, the foundations of a revolutionary party "must be sought... in an active and self-acting proletariat." To be sure, Trotsky himself ran afoul of these very principles in adopting several substitutionist positions in the early 1920s. But, taking his thought and political practice as a whole, these principles are dominant themes in his work. As in the quote above on revolution, Trotsky thought that the independent initiative and self-activity of the working-class was absolutely essential. If a top-down party substitutes itself for the masses, it's not a revolution—it's something else.

Rosa Luxemburg held very similar views. What Trotsky calls "substitutionist", Luxemburg derides as "sectarian" or "Blanquist", after the French socialist Blanqui who believed that revolutions had to be made by a small, clandestine clique rather than by the masses themselves. Luxemburg is sometimes caricatured as having defended a fatalist and thoroughly spontaneist Marxism. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Norman Geras notes, "the collapse of capitalism presented, according to Luxemburg, two alternatives: on the one side, crisis, reaction, war, finally catastrophe and barbarism; on the other side, socialism. Active struggle for socialism was therefore necessary and urgent."

Luxemburg, like Trotsky, argued that the key element of social revolution was the self-activity of the masses. The following quotation bears a striking resemblance to the quotation above from Trotsky:

The world-historical advance of the proletariat to its victory is a process whose particularity lies in the fact that here, for the first time in history, the masses of the people themselves, against all ruling classes, are expressing their will. But this will can only be realized outside of and beyond the present society. On the other hand, this will can only develop in the daily struggle with the established order, thus, only within its framework. The unification of the great masses of people with a goal that goes beyond the established order, of the daily struggle with the revolutionary overthrow--this is the dialectical contradiction of the socialist movement which must develop consistently between two obstacles: the loss of its mass character and the abandonment of its goal, becoming a sect and becoming a bourgeois reformist movement.

Here we see that for Luxemburg, as for Trotsky, socialism cannot be introduced on behalf of the working class. It can only be won by the workers themselves. The key is to determine what kind of organization is needed to move workers to join together in fighting for their own liberation. Two pitfalls are to be avoided here: bourgeois reformism and elitist sectarianism. The working class itself has to be directly involved in winning its own liberation. But the established order does not automatically make workers into revolutionaries. Agitation, propagandizing, struggle and conscious organization is therefore essential. Yet, if the reefs of a do-nothing bourgeois gradualism are to be avoided, so are the shoals of an elitist, sectarian approach in which a minority steps in to give the benighted masses socialism from on high. Direct participation of the masses, then, is key for several different reasons, among them the process of learning that occurs in the course of struggle as well as the energy and anti-conservative spark that mass involvement brings to the table. As Geras describes it, for Luxemburg, as for Trotsky,

"...the end [socialism] must already be operative in the means employed, the liberation of the workers can only be their own work, and it it is in this very process of achieving it that they must develop those qualities which will sustain a socialist society. Thus, for Trotsky, mass participation in the political forms thrown up by a revolution is not only a manifestation of the widespread desire to assume more active control over political and economic life, it also promotes and consolidates that desire. Revolution is consistently seen as an educative process, in which the same mass actions which are necessary to destroy the existing economic and political structures, also have the effect of delivering the working class from bourgeois ideology, of making it conscious of its interest as a class, of raising its confidence in its own ability to organize and decide, and of providing it with the experience of these activities."

If, for Trotsky, the two pitfalls are "economism" (or "spontaneism") and "substitutionism", for Luxemburg they are same concepts described in a different vocabulary: "reformism" and "sectarianism" (or "Blanquism"). It is clear that they are quite close politically on the question of organization.

But if Trotsky and Luxemburg are very close on these matters, it is often assumed that Lenin was of an entirely different mind on such questions. The trouble with Lenin's work is that there are few venues to have a reasoned discussion about it given that he is either taken to 100% evil or 100% divine, depending on whether you're talking to right-wingers or Stalinists. I won't address the argument that Lenin's work on political organization is beyond the pale of Trotsky and Luxemburg's work in detail, but I'll say a bit about why I think its mistaken.

The first piece of evidence for this anti-Lenin position is surely the fact that both Luxemburg and Trotksy (the former in her Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy and the latter in Our Political Tasks) took Lenin to task on grounds of "Blanquism", "ultra-centralism" and "substitutionism". Now, there are, to be sure, plenty of errors and mistakes in What is to be Done? It could not have been otherwise—Lenin, like any thoughtful activist, made plenty of mistakes and learned a great deal from most of them throughout his political life. He also changed his views when conditions changed or when new evidence falsified his hypotheses. Not all of his changes of position can be glossed as mere "stick bending", although it is definitely true that the polemical character of some of his interventions fit that bill. And, like Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky changed their views throughout their career as well.

Still, be that as it may, the line of argument in What is to be Done? is usually badly misunderstood. For starters, as is tirelessly pointed out by people like Lars Lih, What is to be Done? had a specific ideological target: "economism" (or, if you like, a certain version of "spontaneism"). This target, as Geras describes it, stressed

"the economic, trade-union struggle as against the need for political-revolutionary perspectives; which stressed day to day practical tasks--getting on with the job, so to speak--as against the need for broad revolutionary socialist propaganda and agitation; and which in order to reinforce these emphases made a kind of principle of spontinaeity of the working class, arguing along these lines: this is what the workers are doing in any case, so that is what we should support, rather than getting carried away with grand perspectives of revolutionary socialism and so forth."

Lenin's text is a sharp polemic against this position and, as such, places heavy emphasis on the need for organization, on the need to bring politics into the day-to-day class struggle of workers, and so on. The most controversial and widely cited passage from that text is the following:

"The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals..." Elsewhere Lenin cites Kautsky who argues that "socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without [von Aussen Hineingetragenes] and not something that arose within it spontaneously [urwüchsig]."

Many anarchists cite this passage in an effort to demonstrate that Lenin's political thought evinces a substitutionist, or, in Luxemburg's vocabulary, "sectarian" or "Blanquist" approach to organization. Of course, matters are more complicated. They might just as well have cited wildly spontaneist claims Lenin makes in works published only a year earlier. Moreover, as Geras points out, there are at least two meanings of "from without" here.

The first is that socialist consciousness has to be introduced from outside of the working class, by bourgeois intellectuals. This is clearly wrong and it does seem as if Lenin held some version of this position in the text. It is also false, as numerous revolutionary situations have made clear, that workers will only ever attain mere trade-union consciousness through struggle. But the main point of making this claim at this point about intellectuals in WITBD is to emphasize the central importance of revolutionary theory (something that the spontaneists shunned). On this point Lenin was quite correct even if he errs in other respects. The second meaning of "outside", however, is generally overlooked by those looking for a "gotcha" quotation with which to dismiss all of Lenin's political ideals. It is also far more important to the central argument of the text. As Lenin describes it, that other meaning is summed up by the

"basic error that all of the Economists commit... namely their conviction that it is possible to develop the class political consciousness of the workers from within, so to speak, their economic struggle... class consciousness can be brought to workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships of all classes and strata to the state and government, the sphere of interactions of all classes."

As Geras points out, inside/outside here pertains not to sociological groupings (e.g. workers versus intellectuals) but to the partial and the global. Socialist consciousness, after all, is not wholly particular to a certain struggle and neither is it entirely local. Rather, it is a global perspective on the relationship between the system and all classes. One can be against, say, foreclosures and evictions without understanding how this problem is linked to other injustices in society. In this sense, Lenin is summarizing the most crucial aspect of the revolutionary party, namely, its capacity to generalize, to link various struggles together, and forge a unified perspective that brings the entire capitalist system into focus (rather than emphasizing simply this or that local struggle in isolation). The key role of socialists is to show those involved in individual struggles for justice that they are not alone, to encourage them to link arms with others, and to situate and contextualize their struggle within the system as a whole. The Economists and some syndicalists rejected this wholesale, opting instead for an uncompromising focus on the workplace economic struggles of workers to the exclusion of all things political. But in this sense of inside/outside, Lenin is, in my view, correct to emphasize that a global political perspective is needed (this becomes even more pressing when we consider the need to connect anti-racist and anti-sexist struggles to the trade-union struggles of workers for better conditions). And, what's more, Lenin is very close to Luxemburg and Trotsky on this matter as well.

Both Trotsky and Luxemburg emphasized the need to for socialists to fight for a general political perspective that brings into focus the whole system (indeed the whole global system rather than one national conjuncture). Both Trotsky and Luxemburg argued that organization was key, that spontaneism was a pitfall to be avoided. Moreover, both understood that the ruling ideas of the epoch are ruling class ideas by and large. That is, both understood that workers were not innately revolutionary and that they were subjected to a large amount of bourgeois ideology throughout their daily lives. Still, neither thought that the actions of a small enlightened clique could actually produce a genuine revolution. Moreover, neither thought that the appropriate learning processes were possible if the movement was controlled from above. A vigorously democratic organization in which every member is involved actively is key. Yet this is precisely what Lenin argued for and this perspective was evident in the activities of the Bolsheviks before the Civil War.

Left Talking Points on Ron Paul

2011-12-31T11:12:00.017-06:00

"Ron Paul 2012" signs are seen at Occupy-related events from time to time. This seems to happen more in the South. By and large, these forces seem marginal and have little hope of achieving wider influence in the Occupy movement, given the movement's basic politics (i.e. class-conscious, anti-austerity, anti-racist, radically democratic, generally skeptical of the two-party system, critical of capitalism, etc.). Still, there are many newly politicized folks who have questions about the relationship between Ron Paul-style right-wing politics and the movement. This is by no means a central question facing the movement today. But, to the extent that there are questions of this kind arising in certain local contexts, the following may be useful. Here are a couple of suggested talking points that the Left can draw on in clarifying the politics of Ron Paul:

Paul is out of touch. Occupy stands for taxing the 1%, resisting all cuts and austerity, reigning in the unchecked economic and political power of the financial sector, among other things. In sharp contrast, Ron Paul's position is that the 1% are over-taxed, that we need even more cuts and austerity, and that big banks and corporations are over-regulated. This is not a marginal political disagreement. This is a fundamental divide between those who genuinely want to stand up and fight for the interests of the 99%, on the one hand, and those who want to cede even more power to the system—capitalism—that empowers and enriches the 1% on the other.
Paul stands for the two-party system. Occupy is a grassroots social movement that has taken to the streets in order to challenge the political and economic dominance of the 1%. It has used general strikes, direct actions, mass marches, speak outs, and general assemblies as its tools. It has empowered millions of ordinary people to stand up and fight for their own interests. It has not begged for crumbs from above, it has not placed its faith in leaders on high, nor has it confined itself to pandering to the existing political system. At its best, it has been fiercely independent of our broken electoral system and the two-party straight jacket. But Ron Paul is operating 100% within that broken system, as a candidate for Palin and Perry's Republican Party—with whom he votes more than 80% of the time. Those who support him in this journey miss the entire point of Occupy, which is to empower people themselves—not high and mighty leaders—to fight for their own liberation. We do the work in this society, we make it run. The 1% doesn't pick up their own garbage, they don't pilot their own private jets, and they don't produce the necessities of life they need to survive. The 99% produces all of it—and when we stop doing what we do the system grinds to a halt. That's all the power we need to topple the system that enriches the 1%.
Paul's politics are racist. This is not a moral judgment about his character (that is another matter). This is about politics. For example, his position on the Civil War is that it was unjust because it infringed upon the "legitimate property rights" of slave owners. Instead, he claims, the Federal Government should have compensated slave owners for their lost "property". Paul is also a staunch opponent of the Civil Rights Act which, he claims, is an unjust incursion on the right of big business to discriminate against blacks. Noticing a trend? Paul doesn't, at the end of the day, really care about freedom and liberation for all--he cares about the property and privileges of business owners. Paul has also made numerous racist anti-black public comments, and he put out a newsletter, The Ron Paul Political Report, which regularly printed far-Right racist commentary. Don't take my word for it, read the newsletters for yourself (see here). Even Paul's most calculated and measured remarks on race evince colorblind racism. Paul is also a staunch defender of draconian, xenophobic anti-immigrant laws. Paul also regularly refers to undocumented people as "aliens". The Occupy movement, in contrast, stands in uncompromising solidarity with black people and immigrants in their struggle for freedom and equality. Tolerating Ron Paul's politics in the movement is an insult to working-class people of color who are being hit harder than anyone else by the global economic crisis.
Paul is anti-education. Occupy has challenged the profiteers who are hijacking public education and lining their pockets on the backs of heavily indebted students. The movement has called for a moratorium on student debt and free, quality public education for all. But Ron Paul, like most of his Republican brethren, fiercely opposes the stands that Occupy has taken on these issues. He stands for abolishing the Department of Education and slashing education spending. He stands for cutting all Pell Grants, all Stafford Loans, indeed all public financial aid, since these programs "discriminate" against the wealthy. He is for privatizing and corporatizing public education. He stands against teachers and opposes their right to collectively bargain. He claims that education is not a right, but a commodity that should be bought and sold for a profit in the marketplace. His position on health care is the same: health care is not a right, but a luxury commodity that should be sold by private corporations for profit. In other words: if you can't afford to buy it, well fuck you. Capitalist property relations matter more than human life.
Paul is anti-choice and homophobic. Paul has attempted to ban abortion at the federal level (see the Sanctity of Life Act). Paul also wrote a bill called the "Family Protection Act" that starts with talk of abolishing the Department of Education and ends with a proposal to "prohibit the expenditure of Federal funds to any organization which presents male or female homosexuality as an acceptable alternative life style or which suggest that it can be an acceptable life style." In 1990, a Ron Paul Political Report newsletter complained about President George H.W. Bush's decision to sign a hate crimes bill and invite "the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony," adding, "I miss the closet." "Homosexuals," it said, "not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities." Comments of this ilk abound in the Ron Paul Political Report.
Ron Paul will not end the wars. Only a movement will end war—in particular a mass movement from below that has the power to challenge capitalism, the political and economic system that produces war and imperialism in the first place. Moreover, the mere fact that Paul is against the wars doesn't entail that he deserves the support of Occupy. Pat Buchanan and David Duke are also against the wars. So are the editors of the hard-Right journal The American Conservative. But none of those bigoted reactionaries deserve an ounce of support from Occupy, and neither does Paul. Furthermore, isolationist nationalism--Paul's basic foreign policy—has no place in a movement that is global and fiercely internationalist. Occupy stands in solidarity with the global 99% in its struggle against the global system—capitalism—that holds it in contempt. We oppose war and imperialism not because they violate the principles of right-wing isolationism, we oppose them because they oppress and brutalize our sisters and brothers in the global 99%.

There are plenty of other things to say here. But these points really make clear how wide the gulf is between Ron Paul conservatism and the radicalism of Occupy. Readers interested in more detailed refutations of the sort of politics pedaled by Paul and other so-called "libertarians" should consult the following: why the wealth of the rich is illegitimate (1, 2, 3); capitalist property rights vs. freedom (here and here); how "libertarians" oppose liberty (here and here); the "free" market as illusion (here). For a socialist analysis of how power works in our society, see here.

Marx Against "Crude Communism"

2011-12-23T11:12:00.011-06:00

I can still recall some of the first things I learned about "Communism" in elementary school. According to what we were taught, "Communism" was supposed to be a system which did not reward hard work. We discussed the parable of the ant and the grasshopper, where we were encouraged to conclude that the upshot of the story was that the productive should flourish and the lazy should perish. Since capitalism allegedly exemplified this moral principle of just reward for hard work—never mind that this is totally false—we were supposed to prefer it to "Communist" systems that rewarded the lazy and stultified the diligent.

A close corollary of this teaching was that socialism is little more than a "politics of envy". That is, since socialism is the institutionalization of the principle that the lazy shall be rewarded and the productive shall be punished, it follows that the main motivation to adopt socialist politics must be envy. The poor, the oppressed, the exploited masses of workers are just jealous of what their allegedly hard-working wealthy counterparts have amassed. Everyone wants the same thing, the story goes, and that thing is rather simple: maximum consumption. The only difference, then, between workers and the ruling classes is that the former is denied high levels of consumption whereas the latter is not. Socialists and defenders of capitalism therefore agree that the basic goal of society—whether its socialist or capitalist—should be maximum production and endless consumption for its own sake. Socialism appears here as little more than a leveling down maneuver that aims to realize a certain patterned distribution of material goods. Equality—or, more specifically, possessive equality—appears to reign supreme.

But what has this to do with genuine socialism as Marx himself described it? Nothing whatsoever. In fact, this picture is precisely what Marx excoriated as "crude communism".

Now, to be fair, this image of socialism as conforming to the basic goals of capitalist society, as aiming at consumption and possession, does describe the basic contours of the Stalinist system rather well. But that is no stain on the socialist ideal—it is simply one further reason to think that those state capitalist regimes had nothing to do with socialism properly understood.

Marx weighs in against "crude communism" in many different places, among them in the Manifesto, the Critique of the Gotha Program and in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. Let's examine what he says about "crude communism" in the latter text:

"[In crude communism] the domination of material property looms so large that it aims to destroy everything which is incapable of being possessed by everyone as private property. It wishes to eliminated talent, etc. by force. Immediate physical possession seems to it the unique goal of life and existence. The role of worker is not abolished but is extended to all men. The relation of private property remains the relation of the community to the world of things. Finally, this tendency to oppose general private property to private property is expressed in animal form; marriage (which is incontestably a form of exclusive private property) is contrasted with the "community of women", in which women become communal and common property. One may say that this idea of the community of women is the open secret of this entirely crude and unreflective communism. Just as women are to pass from marriage to universal prostitution, so the whole world of wealth is to pass to the relation of universal prostitution with the community. This communism, which negates the personality of man in every sphere, is only the logical expression of private property, which is this negation. Universal envy setting itself up as a power is only a camouflaged form of cupidity which reestablishes itself and satisfies itself in a different way. The thoughts of every individual private property are at least directed against any wealthier private property, in the form of envy and the desire to reduce everything to a common level; so that this envy and leveling in fact constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of such envy and leveling-down on the basis of a preconceived minimum. How little this abolition of private property represents a genuine appropriation is shown by the abstract negation of the whole world of culture and civilization, and the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and wantless individual who has not only not surpassed private property but has not yet even attained it. The community is only a community of work and of equality of wages paid out by the communal capital, by the community as universal capitalist. The two sides of the relation are raised to a supposed universality; labor as a condition in which everyone is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community."

This critique of "crude communism" is as much a searing indictment of contemporary capitalism as it is an indictment of the state capitalism of the Stalinist regimes. Let's take a close look at specific passages to get clearer on what Marx's socialism is and is not.

First, Marx is not arguing for a leveled, conformist society in which personality and individuality are obliterated. Neither does he stand for a society in which people are not able to develop their talents, cultivate their natural powers, and develop their full potential; on the contrary, the basic aim of a socialist society would be to fully realize these goals. For Marx, it is a profound problem with capitalist societies that "immediate physical possession seems to it the unique goal of life and existence." That is, rather than placing human development at the center, capitalism privileges having and possessing capital at the forefront. Profit trumps human flourishing whenever the two come into conflict (which is often) in capitalism. But Marx's argument against crude communism here is that it doesn't depart from the basic aim of capitalist societies. It merely reproduces them in a slightly different form.

What's more, Marx argues that in "crude communism", "the role of worker is not abolished but is extended to all men. The relation of private property remains the relation of the community to the world of things." There are two deep insights here. First, Marx didn't think that socialism had to do with increasing workers' standard of living, winning better working conditions, shorter work hours, etc. Of course, Marx was for all of these reforms, but he didn't think that they were enough. For Marx, socialism is about full working class self-emancipation—which is equivalent to the worker's self-abolition of her status as worker. That means abolishing the division labor characteristic of capitalism—especially the sharp division between mental and physical labor—and fundamentally restructuring the organization of socially necessary labor. A socialist society, for Marx, is precisely not one in which workers are simply treated better by the bosses than they are in capitalist societies. On the contrary, a socialist society is one in which there are no bosses, no workers as such, indeed no classes at all. No group would enjoy exclusive ownership and control of the social means of production and no group would be dispossessed from it. No propertied group would be in a position to rule over those without property. In short, socialism would not mean leveling-down all to the status and social position of the worker in capitalist societies. It would be a qualitative break from the present in which human development and genuine individuality were possible for all.

The second deep insight is that crude communism preserves the possessive, reifying tendency of capitalism. In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels complain that capitalism has torn asunder traditional (i.e. feudal) social relations, norms, practices and rituals with the result that the fundamental bond between individuals consists of little more than cold cash transactions. The point isn't that we should be nostalgic for feudal social formations; the argument is that capitalism tends to colonize human relations, leisure, recreation, even family and "private" life. These spheres come to be ruled by the basic coordinates of capitalist property relations, with money as the mediator and accumulation of profit as the basic aim. To be sure, the colonization and commodification of these domains isn't total or all-encompassing. But one only needs to think of the ways in which Christmas has been packaged, commodified and transformed into a orgy of consumption to see that Marx was on to something here.

Neither is genuine socialism (or genuine communism—I draw no principled distinction here) about "abstractly negating" (a Hegelian concept) all culture and "civilization". On the contrary, it would represent a "determinate negation" within the history of culture and civilization, a dialectical maneuver that takes stock of what is good and true in the present while negating what is false in the act of going beyond it. It would draw on the promise of the elements of existing progressive culture as leverage to forge something new.

This brings us to envy. Envy usually has the form of resenting someone for having something (a good, a status, an ability, an office, etc.) that you wish you had. It is not to be confused with wishing that you had your needs met—envy is about resenting a particular person (or group of persons) who have something you lack but wish you had. Thus, it's often enough, as far as the envious impulse is concerned, that that person is cut down to your level. This kind of sentiment surely simmers underneath those workers who resent other workers for having better pensions or wages. On the other hand, to envy a capitalist, from the perspective of a worker, would be basically to wish you were in their shoes. But the goal of collective working-class liberation is incompatible with the individualist urge to leave the class to join the small clique of rulers. Envy, then, is certainly not a revolutionary impulse. It does not brush against the grain of exploitation and oppression. Nor is it like the sort of righteous anger that we feel toward oppressors of all kinds. Envy is a self-regarding, possessive impulse that is based on avarice. It is a police concept—something that is essential if one wishes to artificially ensure that everyone is off in their own respective corner consuming equal amounts of stuff.

But socialism is not in the first instance about ensuring that everyone earns exactly the same income or possesses exactly the same amount of stuff. Negatively, socialism is a society in which there are no social relations of domination: no exploitation, no oppression, no high and mightiness, no bowing and scraping. Positively, socialism is a free community of equals, or, if you like, freely associated producers who, through organization and democratic self-governance, put human development first. Socialism is about making the flourishing of all human beings the basic priority of social production—not private profit.

This is all a way of saying that envy has no basic place in the argument for socialism. We shouldn't want to be socialists because we're jealous of the nice cars and mansions that the ruling class lavish themselves with. We should be socialists because we cannot tolerate a system in which a small class dominates, oppresses and exploits the majority—all for the sake of the endless accumulation of capital. Envy presupposes the competitive, possessive mindset we are encouraged to adopt in capitalism. Thus, it has no legitimate place in a socialist society.

Hedge Your Bets

2011-12-10T10:15:00.004-06:00

From the latest Harper’s Index:

Amount employees of private-equity firm Bain Capital have donated to the campaign of its co-founder Mitt Romney: $69,500

To the Obama campaign: $119,900

(hat tip to Proyect).

Proyect on Cynical Lesser-Evilism

2011-12-09T11:06:00.002-06:00

The Nation Magazine’s Ari Berman wrote:

"You’re likely to hear elements of this speech over and over as the campaign heats up, as the Obama campaign attempts to stand with the 99 percent and paint Gingrich or Romney as core defenders of the 1 percent. None other than Chuck Schumer, one of the senators who represents Wall Street, told Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent that Democrats would focus on income inequality “like a laser” in 2012."

This is the same Chuck Schumer that the NY Times described as embracing the financial industry’s “free-market, deregulatory agenda more than almost any other Democrat in Congress, even backing some measures now blamed for contributing to the financial crisis.” The December 13, 2008 article added:

"He succeeded in limiting efforts to regulate credit-rating agencies, for example, sponsored legislation that cut fees paid by Wall Street firms to finance government oversight, pushed to allow banks to have lower capital reserves and called for the revision of regulations to make corporations’ balance sheets more transparent."

None of this matters to liberals who tend to have a short memory. As long as you toss them a bone, stroke them on the chin, all is forgiven.

Read the rest here.

Occupy Xmas? Consumerism or Struggle?

2011-12-06T09:37:00.005-06:00

SW.org has an (in general) excellent article (see here) on why this is a bad idea. The bottom line is this: "focusing hostility against consumers instead of the 1 percent only serves to mystify the circumstances that create such [Black Friday shopping] frenzies." Moreover, the article makes the important point that:

...#OccupyXmas accepts the very logic of consumerism that it decries at a time when millions of people are open to looking at the world in a new way. After all, it's the 1 percent that relentlessly encourages us to think of ourselves only in terms of what we consume, to measure ourselves by what we can buy, and to define our identities in terms of the products we possess.

What the Occupy movement has succeeded in doing was taking the discussion beyond a focus on the consumption choices that we as individuals make, and creating a new focus on how those decisions are embedded in a larger social framework--one that benefits the 1 percent at every turn, from individual and corporate tax policy, to the drive to privatize public institutions, to the outsized political influence that the 1 percent wields.

This is the key problem with "Occupy Xmas". It works 100% within the framework of consumerism that it purports to criticize. That is, it reinforces the capitalist principle that "you are what you buy/possess" and merely encourages us to buy different stuff (or make it or whatever). It also reinforces the capitalist myth that our only power is to be found as atomized consumers floating around alone in market forces. Adbusters is, in effect, encouraging us to give up on collective struggle and to think of our primary power in terms of what we have in our pocketbook. That is reactionary, as far as I'm concerned. Particularly after a year like 2011 when collective struggle--the world over--has been steadily increasing in a way that it hasn't done in a generation. To tell us to go home, put down our placards, and look to our pocketbook for salvation is to stand against everything progressive that the Occupy movement has achieved thus far.

To illustrate the bankruptcy of the "progressive consumerist" argument, let's examine one incarnation of it in the environmental movement. It has been pointed out time and again that brow-beating everyone into buying all organic food is not just ineffective, it's also racist and pro-capitalist if you push it to its logical conclusion. It often evinces a "personal responsibility" paternalism that focuses more criticism on individual consumer choices than on the structural conditions that lead to poverty, unemployment, that produce food without nutrients, neighborhoods without grocery stores, etc. That's pro-capitalist insofar as it both papers over the role capitalism plays in these social problems and emphasizes that the solution is a capitalist one that the "free market" will fix for us if we just "vote with our dollars" for the right goods. Never mind whether you actually have the dollars--the middle class liberals who typically push this argument certainly have enough to prop up their consumerist fantasy world. The racist version of this argument might, for instance, take the form of scolding working-class black people for not purchasing organic alfalfa sprouts from Whole Foods. This sentiment surely lies behind those well-intentioned (if paternalistic and, ultimately, racist) white folks who sometimes come into the neighborhoods of these "ignorant" people in order to lead them to the "light" of "progressive consumerism". But, of course, the problem with "food deserts" isn't one of poor individual choices. Neither is it basically a lack of education about what nutritious food is. Nor is it an effect of a so-called "culture of poverty". The problem is economic and political. Blaming individual black people for structural forces that work against them is, perhaps, the most common form of contemporary racism (notice that "colorblindness" does exactly that).

Now, notice what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that people who shop at Whole Foods, or who buy organic milk (like me, incidentally) are the problem. To interpret me in this way is to reiterate the consumerist model I've been attacking. I'm not hating on a particular consumer group or milieu for making choices I disagree with. I'm not siding with some other consumerist bloc against the Whole Foods shoppers. On the contrary, I'm criticizing this whole conservative framework of thinking of oneself (and one's political power) solely in terms of consumption choices. You miss the whole point if you take me to be saying that problem is just a group of consumers that makes "snobbish" choices or something.

In fact, the basic problem lies in thinking that buying organic milk is going to change the world. The problem lies in discouraging collective struggle and replacing it with individualized capitalist consumption patterns. The problem lies with seeing the primary locus of struggle as existing solely in the sphere of consumption, rather than production.

Still, there will probably be at least one person who reads this post convinced that I just have it in for those who drink organic milk, buy fair trade coffee and buy free-range cage-free eggs. In fact, I don't. I do all of those things myself. But I don't think that I'm doing anything political when I do. I don't substitute my atomized actions as a consumer for my political power as a person who has the capacity to link arms with others in struggle. Nor do I scold those who may not have the luxury of choosing to buy this or that at the grocery store.

Is consumerism a capitalist disease? Yes, it is. Has capitalism colonized a large amount of leisure activities and culture? Yes it has. Does capitalism manufacture certain "needs" ("beauty" products come to mind) in order to create new markets and maximize profit? Of course it does.

So, how do you fight the ideology of consumerism and the commodification of leisure? Not by accepting it 100% and operating entirely within its logic. You fight it by fighting the system that produces it. You fight it by linking arms with other people in struggle against that very system. Consumerism, after all, is hardly the sole problem--it is merely one feature of a global political-economic system: capitalism. It is but one ideology (and an accompanying set of practices and norms) that serves to stabilize and reproduce the system. It also serves to discourage the true weapon in our arsenal--collective struggle. To single it out as the sole problem is to misunderstand what it is (and what function it plays in the system). Moreover, to single it out misses the crucial fact that in capitalism choice is only an illusion. Even if you have the money to acquire whatever you want from what's on offer--the majority of us don't--you still lack the power to determine what the possible objects of choice are. A choice between A or B in capitalism is still a prescribed choice: we have no democratic say in what's produced, so we have no say in the qualitative features of A or B (nor, for that matter, do we have a say in whether or not there should also be a C and a D, etc.). The range of choices before us is out of our control as consumers. Our only power, as consumers, is to walk out of the store and not buy anything. We lack a democratic voice in the conditions of production. Buying different things from the capitalist's shelves will never change that.

As Arab Spring Goes Forward, Israel Goes Backward

2011-12-04T10:05:00.002-06:00

Here (obviously not the only such example)

Sober Look at the Legacy of Judt

2011-12-03T19:21:00.000-06:00

Here.

Obama's Immigration Policies in Action

2011-12-02T11:33:00.003-06:00

See here. Raids and deportations have drastically increased under the Obama administration.

The Conservatism of Liberal Pundits Revealed

2011-12-02T10:27:00.008-06:00

This excellent article is a great starting point for beginning a discussion of the recent political positions on the occupy movement staked out by many "progressive" or, if you like, "liberal" politicians and pundits. The thesis of the article is that the radicalism of Occupy has provoked a counter-attack from liberal pundits and politicians, thereby evincing their underlying conservatism.

The article explores a variety of Chicago-specific examples. But this problem is hardly specific to Chicago.

My favorite incarnation of this phenomenon is the following story: Occupy is bad for "progressive" change in this country because it is going to alienate mainstream voters--particularly working class voters--who are repulsed by its radicalism and "counter-cultural" rituals. The Occupy movement, in fact, is "bad" in exactly the same way as those crazy anti-Vietnam War protesters were back in the 1960s. Those long-haired dirty hippies alienated all manner of working-class voters and provoked a conservative reaction that landed Richard Nixon in the White House! So, if these smelly Occupy kids don't get their act together quickly--and stop criticizing Democrats who back austerity and police violence--this country is going to get really bad, really quick because Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann are going to take power! Conclusion: be afraid, stay home, turn on the TV, forget about Occupy, don't criticize the Democrats, and drastically lower your expectations.

This is the "bad cop" strategy used by the Democrat political machine. The "good cop" strategy is one of co-optation and merely rhetorical support. But both aim at the same goal: winding down protest, lowering expectations, getting votes for Democrats who defend the status quo, and, ultimately, dissolving elements that could develop the power to criticize the Democrats from the Left.

As pointed out in the In These Times piece linked above, we sometimes see interesting shifts between these two strategies. Whereas allegedly "progressive" Aldermen in Chicago gave rhetorical support to Occupy Chicago (which at one point had the support of 79% of Chicagoans) at one point, they quickly withdrew that support when the movement started targeting them for voting for a cruel austerity budget that favors the 1% at the expense of the 99%. Instead of sweet-talking Occupy, they switched gears rather quickly and adopted all of the verbal bile of Right: the protesters are smelly, they are all white trust-fund babies with no idea what's going on, they are idiots, etc. The ease with which they adopt the same language as Newt Gingrich is astonishing, isn't it?

But what of the scare tactics? Do they hold any water? No. I think they are evidence of desperation among Democrat politicians and their lackeys.

First, this thing about the anti-war movement being to blame for right-wing backlash is preposterous. The same thing has been said about the black freedom movement of the 50s and 60s by racists in the Democrat Party: it "divided" the country and caused the Southern Democrats to jump ship and abandon the postwar Keynesian consensus. According to these ridiculous stories, we should come away thinking that the Civil Rights and anti-war movements were bad. It's as if they single-handed caused a conservative reaction and therefore deserve all the blame for what followed.

This is nonsense through and through. First of all, the black freedom movement won huge concessions from the powers that be (who were Democrats) because of extra-electoral struggle. That movement shattered Jim Crow (something that couldn't have ever happened by working exclusively through the ballot box), dealt a series of blows to de jure racism, and won Federal legislation that attempted to dismantle some of the worst forms of legal and institutional racism. They reconfigured the politics of race in this country for generations to come. The movement's impact extended far beyond the ephemeral swells of the election cycle. To say that the civil rights movement--or, for that matter the anti-war movement--produced nothing but right wing reaction is nonsense.

This bogey-man strategy is extremely self-serving as far as Democrat politicians are concerned. What they're afraid of is a serious challenge--from the Left--to their tepid, ultimately conservative and pro-corporate party. They want their "base" of voters to shut up, sit down, and robotically support and vote for them. They don't want pressure from below to actually enact policies that benefit the majority. That could hurt, among other things, their clout and fund-raising potential.

But what of holding up Richard Nixon and the "silent majority" as a scare tactic? Two things must be said. First of all, Richard Nixon was a more conventionally "liberal" political figure than Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. He, for example, expanded Medicare, whereas Obama is cutting it. Notice that I'm not saying anything good about Richard Nixon the person. He was a reactionary. But he was more or less forced by the conditions of the time to continue to fund and expand programs like Medicare. This shows that the party who takes the White House matters a lot less than the extra-electoral conditions. So the scare tactic here misses the point that genuine changes come when pressure is exerted from below through extra-electoral struggle and resistance.

This scare tactic also uses an old trope--familiar to the Democratic Party as much as the Republicans--that Americans are fundamentally conservative people who simply don't like anything "radical" or Left. Because that is supposed to be so, Democrats are justified in being "cautious" and thereby defending the status quo.

That this is bullshit is obvious for any reasonable person to see. First, people's ideas and political beliefs are constantly in flux. It is absurd to say that Americans are fundamentally conservative for all time. People are pissed off and feel that our economic and political system does not serve the interests of the 99%. The slogans "banks got bailed out, we got sold out" and "how to fix the deficit? end the wars, tax the rich" resonate deeply with a significant portion of the population. But, of course, Democrats are for the bailout of banks, for selling-out homeowners and debt-encumbered students, for the wars, and for giving tax breaks to the rich. They're also for austerity, layoffs, school closures, and all the rest of it. So, naturally, Democrats want to sell us the lie that Occupy's demands are "too radical".

Second, Occupy has consistently had (and continues to have) higher levels of support among the public than Congress. This has been true across the board in every single poll, which hasn't been hard to accomplish considering that Congress's approval ratings are regularly lower than 25%. If anything, these self-serving politicians should be asking why what they're doing is alienating 75% of the public, before they dare to criticize Occupy. Third, Occupy has--quite obviously--electrified millions of Americans who have either directly participated or indirectly supported the movement in various ways. Many have said that Occupy was the first time they ever took to the streets to protest and fight for their interests. Organized labor has come out strongly in support of the movement, showing a great deal of working-class interest in the politics of Occupy. Moreover, Occupy has forced the discourse in mainstream media to shift to, occasionally, deal with issues of inequality. To say that it is alienating people is false on many levels.

The key is to recognize the "tactical advice" given from above by Democrat politicians is 100% self-serving. They aren't on our side. They aren't our allies. They want us to be docile and blindly supportive of their efforts to "take care of things for us." They don't want a challenge to their authority. They don't want pressure from the Left to fight for the 99%. So, naturally, they don't want Occupy to exist as an independent, Left force in American politics. They either want to control it and convert it into blind support for whomever the Democrats put up for election, or they want to destroy and discredit it in order to stop it from undermining the authority of the corporate-backed Democrat Party.

Ruling Class Education Policy

2011-12-02T10:21:00.001-06:00

Here. It's the same medicine being prescribed around the country by Democrat and Republican alike.

Are Campus Police Necessary?

2011-11-27T11:17:00.013-06:00

At my college, campus police were commonplace. For most of my time as student, it never occurred to me to question their existence or their authority. Like the classrooms or the library, I assumed that the university police had a justifiable (perhaps even necessary) role to play on campus.

What led me to question their role was political activism. We're constantly told what a "free" country we live in, but you learn how deeply conditional this freedom is when you actually try to change the way things are. That is, we're "free" to do as we please on the condition that we don't... protest, demand reforms from ruling elites, organize ourselves, assemble with large groups of fellow citizens, or otherwise resist existing relations of power. That is, so long as we calmly walk through the shopping mall with a big smile on our face, we're free to do whatever we like. But the minute we gather with others to ask why we're, so to speak, locked inside of a privately-owned shopping mall with rules that we did not choose, we're faced with pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets.

Millions of people are seeing the function of the police (campus or otherwise) for what it is. And, with the recent wave of repression on campuses in particular, many are wondering whether campus police are necessary at all.

It's worth noting, before getting any deeper into this question, that universities haven't always had private police forces of their own. Indeed, many universities around the world lack them. In Britain, for example, the vast majority of colleges and universities lack campus police forces. Indeed, before 2003, Oxford had no campus cops. But how is it that Oxford was able to stop itself from sliding into a den of chaos, violence and disorder before 2003? Without a powerful coercive force dedicated to maintaining campus security, how was a war of all against all averted?

These questions are, of course, absurd. But they are part of a common rhetoric of law and order that is used by University administrators (and their loyal police regiments) to justify the need for a coercive security apparatus on campus.

This is exemplified by the interesting stories campus police often tell about themselves to justify their existence. Take the following (disturbing) excerpt from the University of Pittsburgh Police Department's website:

From the very beginning, the University of Pittsburgh Police Department has steadily progressed into a premier state of the art law enforcement agency. With the constant support of the university community, the police department has utilized educational and training opportunities to become a contributing and well-respected part of the community.
In the mid 1950's, the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, which is home to Pitt Campus, experienced the same problems as any other inner city neighborhood throughout the country. Vandalism, theft and parking problems became a concern for the university, and so, the first Pitt Security Department was created. This small group of individuals became the foundation of what is now the University of Pittsburgh Police Department.

In the 1960's, the department dealt with unrest and other civil problems that plagued America. Like all campus police organizations, the University of Pittsburgh Police Officer's were often on the front lines of the conflicts and learned to deal with the students with fairness and authority. By the late 1960's, the university became a state related institution that eventually, in turn authorized police officers with the same powers and duties as Pennsylvania Capitol and Commonwealth Property Police.

In the early 1970's, the department was restructured and grew in number. Pitt's Department of Public Safety, as it was then called was recognized as the third largest police organization in Allegheny County. In 1974, the first acting Chief was named and the agencies official title became the University of Pittsburgh Police Department. Modernization was the theme of the department as computers and state of the art security systems became an integral part of police work.

I was struck by two things in particular about this story (which, as a casual survey of other university police websites reveals, is rather typical). The first is the heavy emphasis on "modernization" and "state of the art" tactics and technology. This fits neatly within the technophilic, robo-cop rhetoric of contemporary representatives of the military-industrial complex. One almost expects Pitt cops to wander around with laser guns and hover-boards, all the better to deter would-be "bad guys" from disturbing the serenity of campus life. This rhetoric of "modernization" is also indicative of the neoliberal turn toward re-establishing structures of authority during the 1970s and 80s by technologically upgrading, militarizing, and growing police forces across the board. It's not for nothing that incarceration rates literally skyrocket starting at the dawn of the neoliberal era. In the aftermath of an era marked by urban revolts, organized revolutionary groupings, strikes and mass protests, it is unsurprising that our rulers decided to resort to increased policing and imprisonment to re-establish "discipline" and deference to their authority.

The second thing is how remarkably blunt the Pitt cops' story is about the 1960s: "In the 1960's, the department dealt with unrest and other civil problems that plagued America. Like all campus police organizations, the University of Pittsburgh Police Officer's were often on the front lines of the conflicts and learned to deal with the students with fairness and authority." "Civil problems plaguing America", huh? What might those "problems" have been? Mass protests and marches, sit-in's against Jim Crow, student occupations of campus buildings, and resistance of all kinds against war, racism and the political/economic domination of the 1%. Predictably, the role of the police was to ride in on horses and re-establish authority by meting out discipline and "fairness" from above.

Combine this view of the 1960s with what campus cops are being asked to do all over the country right now and we see their role for what it is: a bulwark against student/faculty/staff resistance meant to stabilize and enforce the power of administrators on university campuses.

And it's worth noting that college administrators aren't acting alone here. The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) was formed in 1958 in order to "discuss job challenges and mutual problems, and to create a clearinghouse for information and issues shared by campus public safety directors across the country." The IACLEA even has a corporate partnership program, which helps with "strategic initiatives" to help advance the "educational mission" of the IACLEA. It's refreshing how blunt the cops are here about their "educational mission", i.e. to instill a sense of respect for existing power, etc. See below:

IACLEA has established the Corporate Partnership Program to support the implementation of IACLEA's strategic initiatives, to further its educational mission, and to enhance the ability of campus public safety agencies to protect institutions of higher education. We can tailor a partnership program that meets your company’s values, mission, and business goals.

A couple of things come to mind here. First notice the comfortable fit between "company values", "business goals", "corporate partnerships", and the language of "educational mission", "protecting higher education" and so on. Second, on the face of it, why should corporate entities have an interest in involving themselves with campus policing? What shared interests might these two groups have? And through what lens do corporate firms see institutions of higher education? To answer the last question is simply to re-state the basic priorities of the capitalist system: profit-making and the bottom line. The university, from the perspective of capital, is two things: One, a potential factory to manufacture future employees with certain dispositions (docile, obedient, hard-working), competences and skills. Two, a potential threat to the continued reproduction of the capitalist system insofar as universities can (gasp!) lead people to think for themselves, criticize the status quo, and sometimes organize themselves to resist it collectively. Before the 1960s, the potential threat posed by the populations on campuses across the country was largely overlooked by the ruling class. But they have learned well the lessons of that era.

This brings us to the question posed in the title of this post. Are campus cops necessary?

It certainly depends on who you ask. They probably are a necessary factor in the continued corporatization of the university system. And they are surely a powerful tool in the hands of administrators intent on keeping students from rocking the boat.

But are campus cops necessary to further the real mission of universities, namely to facilitate higher learning, human development, free inquiry, and community? No, they are not.

Defenders of campus police are likely to object here in one of two ways. They might take a paternalistic line and say that students are children and, as such, require the disciplinary power of a police force to keep them in line and "on task". Without threat posed by SUV's roaming around campus filled with armed police, students will be unable to look out for their own best interests. Drunkenness, drug abuse, and lawlessness will rule. This argument, be it noted, is pitched more to parents than to the actual residents of college campuses.

Students will be unmoved by this paternalistic nonsense. College students are legal adults, they have the right to vote (and they can be drafted) even if the law restricts them from having a beer until age 21. They often juggle multiple jobs on top of a demanding set of courses. They are also deemed old enough to be saddled with massive amounts of debt. Moreover, many students take it upon themselves to get involved in political organization and "extra curricular" of various kinds. Students don't need a "stern father" looming over them with billy clubs, pepper spray and guns. We can handle ourselves just fine, thank you very much.

The second argument is more subtle than the first. Defenders of campus police can argue that campus police are needed to protect students against robbery, mugging, rape and sexual assault. In fact, they'll say something stronger: without an extensive (and "state of the art") campus police force, these crimes are likely to increase dramatically.

There are, of course, the racist incarnations of this argument that aim to convince well-to-do white parents that their sons and daughters will be "protected" from the people of color living in close proximity to their university. But let's focus here on the problem of rape and sexual assault on campus to see whether there's any merit to the pro-police claim.

First of all, very few (if any) US campuses are without a small army of "modernized" and "state of the art" university cops. Yet, for all that, rape on college campuses is at epidemic levels. The majority of rapes go unreported. Of those that get reported, few press charges against their assailants. Of those that press charges, even fewer actually secure convictions against their assailants. And of those that successfully press chargers the first time round, even fewer see that ruling upheld in a court of appeals. Often the victims of rape are ridiculed, pressured not to continue prosecuting or are forced to endure a drawn-out process that merely exacerbates the pain caused by the assault in the first place. None of that has anything to do with police tactics.

But, of course, all of the above problems have to do with the inability of existing institutions to successfully deal with rape once it has occurred. This to say nothing at all of the campus organizations, norms, and conditions that encourage rape on a wide scale. What do I have in mind? I wont get into all of it, but surely fraternity culture is high on the list. We all know the drill: frat parties invite women with the understanding that the drunker they get, the better. Date-rape drugs are commonplace. All of the norms that prevail in these well-funded and entrenched institutions at US universities tend to reproduce this sordid state of affairs. Another related feature of campus culture that reproduces this problem is the typical media (campus or otherwise) reaction to rapes. The typical response is dismissive, even accusatory, and involves the usual litany of bullshit questions: "what was she wearing?", "how drunk was she?", "did she lead him on unfairly?", etc.

The bottom line is this: rape is a social and political problem, not a law-enforcement problem. Through mass emails detailing crimes on campus, universities often suggest that rape only occurs when a stranger jumps out of a bush to attack a woman walking alone on a dark street. But, in fact, the vast majority of rapes are committed by fellow students and co-workers. That is, the vast majority of rapes occur between people who already know one another.

So how do we make war against the rape crisis on U.S. universities?

Not with campus cops. The first step might be to abolish the Fraternity system. If that's too ambitious, then we could also institute mass education campaigns in which incoming students are taught about rape statistics and how sexist campus culture contributes to them. I'm not talking about giving women prudential advice about how they must always walk in groups at night or whatever. I'm mostly talking about how to educate everyone--especially freshmen--about the social and political causes of the problem and how the victim-blaming "what was she wearing?" nonsense perpetuates it. SlutWalks across the country have already raised many of these issues so that they are fresh in many people's minds. It only remains to pressure universities to change their ways. Another step would be to actually punish rapists on campus. "Yes means yes" policies are helpful in shifting the burden of proof off of women and onto the offender. I can't emphasize enough: none of these changes have anything to do with campus cops. If anything, the discretionary powers of campus police create the possibility of more rapes, not less. If you think I'm being cynical, take a look at the statistics on police sexual assault. The cops are more a part of the problem than they are a part of any viable solution.

So why not abolish campus cops altogether? Their main function is to do the bidding of those empowered by the corporatized status quo of US universities. They exist to prevent the legitimate organization and protest of students, faculty and staff. When struggle escalates enough to actually threaten the power of administrators, the campus cops will be called upon to brutally repress democratic forms of social protest. They do almost nothing to serve and protect students. The fact is that they simply aren't necessary (unless you're a university administrator looking for shock troops to stabilize your power.) Students, faculty and staff simply don't need campus cops. (We don't need a layer of bureaucrats and administrators looming over us either). We can run the university by ourselves, in our interests.

And, let it be known, campus cops ain't cheap. In an era in which we're told that tuition hikes, scholarship cuts, layoffs, and all the rest are "inevitable", I think we'd do well to look at the "state of the art", ultra-modern police forces roaming around campus. The London Review of books reports that the cop that sprayed mace in the faces of protesting students at UC Davis made himself $110,000, which is more than all but the most highly-paid professors. UC Davis employs over 101 police personnel, which is bigger than any university department. Let's leave aside here the related problem of bloated administration and non-academic bureaucracy. Just think about the scholarships that could be funded with the money saved by axing the police force.

UC Davis Police Force

2011-11-27T11:06:00.001-06:00

Like most US universities, Davis maintains its own police force, employing (as of 2009) 101 people (including administrators), far more than the largest academic departments. The officer wielding the spray is on record as earning $110,000 in 2010, more than all but the better paid full professors.

Rest here.

The Basis of Middle Class Ideology

2011-11-26T16:23:00.005-06:00

"Market returns are to a certain extent affected by a person's effort and willingness to take risks. Since that is so, it can seem preposterous to those [read: middle class professionals, small business owners, managers, etc.] who are both better-off and very hard-working to suggest that they do not deserve to be paid more than others who may be lazy and unadventurous. And... because people care more about what unjustly harms them than about what unjustly benefits them, they can easily ignore the fact that some of the other factors contributing to their economic success are not in any sense their responsibility and therefore can be said to have produced advantages that are not deserved. The natural idea that people deserve to be rewarded for thrift and industry slides into the much broader notion that all of pretax income can be regarded as a reward for those virtues. Here... a normative concept is being taken beyond the context in which it legitimately applies." (Nagel and Murphy, The Myth of Ownership).

Of course, nobody denies that in order to be a successful doctor, or lawyer, or small business owner (or whatever), one needs to be hard-working and disciplined in certain ways. Often, success in any of these fields depends on deferred gratification of various kinds. To be sure, many people have a far easier time, given a wealthy family background and all that that entails, making their way into these walks of life. But it must be conceded that some degree of effort, hard work, and so on are key to being successful in these middle-class endeavors.

Still, members of this social class tend to have a distorted picture of society (along the lines described in the quotation above). This isn't universally true of all members of this roughly coherent (though, to be sure, internally differentiated and complex) class. But as a sociological generalization that explains a good amount of the data, I think it's more or less true.

Middle class people, because they worked hard to get where they are, assume that it must be true that all offices in society (including their own!) are more or less awarded on the basis of "merit" alone. They are tempted to generalize from their own specific social location and apply the values of hard work, thrift, individualism, and deferred reward to the entire social system. Many of the "professions" in question (especially Law and Medicine, but also Academia) are pre-capitalist in many respects and have well-defined profession-specific values and norms of excellence. Thus, it's easy for many middle class people to get lost in their specific mode of social existence and to generalize from it. It's also easy, given the often (but not always) individualistic character of their work lives, to forget that their own well-being depends upon a massive network of social labor that draws the entire working population (excepting the industrial reserve army) into its operation.

It's also easy for professionals to assume that because they satisfied the qualifying procedures internal to their profession, that they are 100% responsible for their economic "success". Thus, they are encouraged (by their social location) to overlook structural and biographical contingencies that helped land them where they are. They overlook structural features of capitalism that determine the total number of jobs available, the funding for professional education, etc. They also overlook any familial advantages, social connections, and so forth that helped give them an edge over those without such informal means of personal advancement. But everything "good" (i.e. everything that connotes social prestige or "success" conventionally defined) is due to nothing but their hard work and ingenuity. Accordingly, those worse off than themselves deserve their plight. Or, perhaps, they deserve paternalistic acts of charity from above.

What I'm describing is an ideal-type. It's not as if everyone in such a social location is mechanistically determined in such a way that they can't but exemplify the ideal type. The point, however, is that there are structural pressures that encourage people located in this role within the system to adopt this picture of the world (because, in many ways, it looks plausible from where they're standing).

So what is to be done about it?

Let me first of all say that I'm not advocating for increased middle-class guilt or acknowledgement of "privilege". In general, I don't think the Left is well-served by adopting the language of "privilege". When I hear people talk about "underprivileged groups" I feel nauseated. "Underprivileged" suggests that a person is only suffering from a lack of "privileges" that others enjoy. This language fits neatly with talk of "social mobility" and individual achievement and all the rest of it. It's primary function is to individualize social injustices. It's secondary function is to make it sound as though we only need to make it possible for some fraction of the "under-privileged" to be able to fight their way into the camp of the "privileged".

I reject this kind of talk wholesale. Let's not individualize what are, in fact, social and economic forces occurring on a macro-level. Let's not talk about "lack of privilege" or the "less favored". Let's talk about what social reality is actually like. This, of course, requires a different vocabulary that often offends the delicate ears of the well-to-do "bleeding heart liberals": exploitation, oppression, domination.

But let's tie this back to the middle class and the question of middle class ideology. If I'm not calling for an acknowledgement of "privilege" on the part of the middle class, what is the political upshot? I don't begrudge people who, as individuals trying to make a life for themselves in this system, navigate it as best they can and work hard. So I'm not saying that lawyers, doctors, academics, small business owners, and so on should all feel really guilty or something like that. The political upshot is that they must resist the fact that they are encouraged to adopt a false picture of what capitalism is like. They must resist calls to side with the ruling class by means of subtle mechanisms of social control that trade on cultural capital, prestige, and the ideology of merit. But many don't buy into this. Many professionals--particularly in periods of escalating social struggle such as what we're seeing today--are won over to the idea that the system is fundamentally flawed. Professionals are open to revolutionary politics when they see that--despite their relatively cushy social existence--their interests are not prioritized by a system bent on accumulating profits for the 1% at any cost. Moreover, some of the pre-capitalist values and norms internal to the practices that define their profession--medicine is a great example--lead them to criticize capitalism for distorting their craft for the sake of profit. The interesting thing about the middle classes is that they can be pulled either way in period of struggle.

But the key to any successful social revolution is the level of organization, confidence and militancy of the working class majority. Not because workers are more virtuous people, or more morally deserving, but (primarily) because they have a social power unlike any other class to shut the entire economic system.

Repressive State Apparatus at Work

2011-11-25T12:31:00.002-06:00

Many will have already seen this. And, of course, there are tons of other recent examples.

Is the Wealth of the Rich Legitimate? Part 3

2011-11-25T11:27:00.013-06:00

In previous posts (here and here) I've examined two stories that the rich tell to explain why their wealth is legitimate. Or, more precisely, I've considered and rejected two arguments meant to show that the wealth of capitalists is legitimate. The first was that capitalists deserve their wealth because their incomes are exactly proportional to their productive contributions to society. The second was that the wealth of capitalists is their reward for taking risks. We saw that neither argument succeeded in showing that wealth of the rich is legitimate. But another important argument, which we have yet to consider, still looms large. That argument is that wealth of capitalists is legitimate because it flows into their hands by way of voluntary market transactions between individuals.

Before we look at that argument more closely, let me situate it within the overall context of attempts to justify capitalism. As I see it, there are three main strategies: consequentialist, rights-based and desert-based. We've already seen two desert-based attempts at justification. Desert-based arguments claim that the wealth of capitalists is legitimate because they can be said to deserve it (e.g. because it matches their productive contributions or because proportionally rewards some risky activity that yields a productive contribution). I examined two desert-based arguments already and argued that they were untenable.

Consequentialist arguments, on the other hand, claim that capitalist wealth is justified because it is a means to desirable consequences (e.g. overall economic growth, socially useful innovation, etc.). Most consequentialist arguments for capitalism focus on incentives (not on what we can be said to deserve or have a right to). We have seen at least one consequentialist argument already within the post on risk-taking, namely, that some capitalists need big shares of wealth in order to incentivize or motivate them to take risks to innovate. That particular argument is consequentialist because it says that big cash rewards (for capitalists) are a necessary means to good overall consequences (i.e. generating socially useful innovations). I'll examine consequentialist arguments in more detail in part 4, which will be the final installment of this series on the wealth of the rich. The main focus of this post, however, will be to refute rights-based justifications of capitalism. Rights-based arguments claim that capitalist wealth is legitimate because they acquired it through a series of legitimate, voluntary individual market transactions.

The typical rights-based argument for capitalism goes something like this: Provided that there is "no force or fraud", everything a capitalist can get from the market is legitimately theirs. Or, put another way, because the market is nothing more than a space for free individual exchange, everything that results from it is legitimate. Why should voluntary exchanges between individuals yield legitimate holdings? Because voluntary market exchange, it is argued, tends to exemplify individual freedom. On this view, people are free if they enjoy certain rights of non-interference. But because the market is (allegedly) no more than an aggregation of free, voluntary individual exchanges, it follows that any third party interference with market activity would curtail freedom (and violate the rights) of market participants.

The most famous statement of this argument was given by right-wing philosopher Robert Nozick in his 1974 book Anarchy, State and Utopia. In that book, he puts forward a thought experiment involving Wilt Chamberlain that purports to show that capitalist market distributions are just (and that any interference with them is illegitimate). The gist of it is this. Suppose that lots of people want to see Wilt Chamberlain play basketball. Suppose that they are each more than willing to part with $5 to see him. So, Chamberlain collects a $5 admission fee from each person who wants to come see him play. Each person, let us suppose, is freely and voluntarily making the choice to pay $5 for a ticket to see him play. At the end of the day, Chamberlain has amassed quite a fortune from ticket sales. But it looks as if he's done so in a way that is 100% unobjectionable. After all, hasn't he done no more than transacted with hundreds of individual persons, all of whom were very pleased to pay $5 to see him play?

Nozick's point is two-fold. First, it appears as though any interference with this process would be wrong. After all, would a third-party be justified in paternalistically judging that the fans shouldn't spend $5 on a ticket? Would it be fair if someone prevented Chamberlain from individually interacting with any of the fans who purchase the tickets? Nozick's point is that any interference with this process would be tantamount to "prohibiting capitalist acts between consenting adults." Put more plainly, it would interfere with the freedom (and the right to non-interference) of those involved. Second, it looks as if any redistribution of Chamberlain's earnings would unjustly tinker with his legitimate holdings. After all, if he acquired all of his earnings fair and square, and if each individual transaction freely gave them to him through a market exchange, what gives some third party the right to interfere? Wouldn't any redistribution, or social system that prevented such free exchanges, curtail the freedom of people like Chamberlain and his fans to come together for mutual gain?

Before I show why Nozick's argument doesn't work, let's get even clearer about what it attempts to show. Notice that Nozick is not saying that Wilt Chamberlain deserves the money he receives. Neither is he saying that the fans deserve to see him play. Desert doesn't enter into it. Nozick's own view--and other hard-Right defenders of capitalism are with him on this--is that it would require a lot of third party interference to actually have a society in which we could be sure that everyone got what they "deserved". In other words, he thought there would have to be some agency charged with monitoring whether someone was industrious, thrifty, lazy, etc. in order to see that they got what they deserved. So, unlike many a defender of capitalism, Nozick isn't naive enough to think that capitalism simply gives each what they deserve. What he does think, however, is that capitalism is the only system in which freedom from external interference reigns supreme. The Chamberlain example is supposed to show us that allowing voluntary market exchanges typically produces inequalities of wealth that are fully justified. Any other kind of social system--or any redistribution of Chamberlain's wealth--would, for Nozick, require that we sideline individual freedom for the sake of something else.

There are number of well-known problems with the argument. I make no claims to being original here--a good number of the most convincing criticisms are made by G.A. Cohen in Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality.

One problem is that it is far from clear that a "voluntary" market exchange is therefore one that is freely entered into. This problem is simply not addressed by the WC parable. Take the case of price-gouging during natural disasters. Now, if I sell you a bottle of water for $100 in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and you're really thirsty, there's a sense in which I'm not coercing you to buy the bottle. You could walk away and try to find water somewhere else. So if you buy my $100 bottle of Aquafina, there's a sense in which it is voluntary. But are you free in such a case? Hardly. You are disempowered, desperate and vulnerable to exploitative treatment from people like me. Moreover, I'm in a dominant position with respect to you because I have some crucial thing you need to survive, and I am under no duress to give it to you whereas you are under a lot of pressure to get it. Lots of market exchanges, while not quite as vivid or extreme as this, are very similar. Market transactions between buyer (capitalist) and seller (worker) of labor-power are lopsided. And, of course, the worker is forced (and thereby made unfree) to sell her labor-power to a capitalist on the market because she has no other means to earn a living. Prenuptial agreements are often lopsided in favor of men because they have more bargaining power (maybe because of sexist social norms, maybe because they are the "bread winner", etc.). There are any number of examples here. The point is that market exchanges--from the perspective of freedom alone--look a lot less innocent than the WC example lets on once we examine the real world. Nozick isn't for the greatest overall amount of individual freedom in society. He's simply against certain restrictions on the property rights of owners of property. Accordingly, he rejects redistributing wealth from the 1% to the 99% in order to increase the aggregate amount of freedom in society. As I've noted elsewhere, this is one reason that the epithet "libertarian" simply cannot reasonably apply to those who defend capitalism.

Another problem is the following. The fans in the example are imagined to want nothing more than to see Chamberlain play. But there will surely be a gap between what they think they're getting and what will actually result from their aggregated transactions. The fact that they want to see WC play doesn't mean that they want him to individually amass a huge fortune. Neither does the fact that they're willing to pay $5 to see him play mean that they voluntarily consent to the power over others that a large mass of wealth might grant WC. Holdings in capitalist societies are, after all, not simply means of consumption, but sources of power. Suppose everything is put up for sale on the market, and that someone uses his wealth to purchase what were previously public streets in a particular city (I borrow this example from Elizabeth Anderson's paper "The ethical limitations of the market"). This quite obviously leaves open the door for a great deal of tyranny. When roads are publicly owned, I need not ask anyone for their permission to use them. I am free to move about where I please and I need not bow or scrape before some particular owner. But when the roads are the private property of another person, Nozick thinks the guns of the State must be used to protect whatever arbitrary decisions the owner makes regarding their property. So if, for example, the owner forced everyone to get his explicit permission to use the roads, that would be protected by the coercive power of law. Or, if he only allowed roads to be used on Tuesdays, that would fly as well. Or, he could charge an exorbitant fee. The point is that all the non-owners of the road would be subject to arbitrary restraints on their freedom of movement and association by owners. They would be forced to subject themselves to whatever crazy terms the owners demand. Nozick could have no complaint about any of this. Stronger still, Nozick would staunchly oppose any democratic decision-making process that aimed to regulate or reclaim ownership of the roads. Thus, we see what side he's really on: property owners come first, even if the vast majority is made less free as a result of their actions.

But Nozick wants us to think that the resulting consequences of the market transactions in the WC example are legitimate because each person voluntarily willed them into being. But, in fact, they didn't. All each fan did--from their individual perspective--was consent to pay a small sum to see WC play. They didn't consent to all of the macro-level economic consequences that might follow from allowing one person to amass large sums of wealth. Nor have the explicitly given WC their blessing to buy up public roads (or whatever else WC might do with his holdings).

All of this is concealed in Nozick's thought experiment. He asks us to blindly jump from the micro-level ("what could be wrong with parting with $5 to see WC play?") to the macro-level without asking how it is that the decisions within the former should justify consequences in the latter. More often than not, the large-scale consequences of market transactions are opaque to individual actors. And, what's more, often the choices of some market actors curtail the choices of others by impacting supply, demand, employment, investment, etc. So it would be absurd to say that the narrow perspective of the individual consumer lends legitimacy to the macro-consequences of the aggregation of millions of uncoordinated individual actions. When I purchase a can of soup, I may be said to have made some voluntary exchange with the owners of the grocery store. But I haven't freely consented to all of the consequences of that transaction, since I may not even know what they will be (or what they are likely to be). Yet Nozick wants to confer legitimacy on the large-scale outcomes of market transactions by appealing to our free consent in small-scale individual transactions. There's a massive gap in the argument here. Everyone knows that capitalism is arranged in such a way that individually "rational" actions produce collectively irrational outcomes that no particular individual endorses. Why should the individual attractiveness of buying a ticket to see WC for $5 grant legitimacy to those macro-level outcomes, particularly when it's hard to see them from the perspective of an individual consumer? It's almost as if Nozick is simply blotting out any critical analysis of the social system itself, preferring instead to keep us focused on small-scale transactions. The ideological effect of keeping us on the micro-level is profound.

Another problem is the following. Just because I'm willing to pay $5 to see Wilt Chamberlain play doesn't entail that I'm willing to pay Wilt Chamberlain that money. I might be willing to part with $5 to see him play, but I might not want him to acquire a disproportionate share of resources (because that would give him unjustifiable power over others, say). Maybe I'm willing to throw into a public pot to see WC, but I'm unwilling to allow one person to amass all of the earnings. Nozick simply glosses over the difference between these two--which clearly adds to the rhetorical power of his example.

There are deeper problems with the WC parable, however. Nozick wants to generalize the WC example to all of society. But once the market rules all spheres of public (and private) life, there's no space left for democracy at all. This doesn't bother Nozick himself, or many so-called "libertarians", because they aren't fans of democratic self-rule.

But suppose that Nozick had swallowed his disdain for democracy and argued instead that markets are democratic since, as in the WC example, people can "vote with their dollars." Notwithstanding the obvious undemocratic fact that "voting with dollars" means that those with more money get more votes, there are still other more fundamental reasons why markets are not democratic. The trading floor of a stock exchange is not like a public forum for deliberation and debate among equals. The market, as André Gorz describes it, "is a place where huge production and sales oligopolies...encounter a fragmented multiplicity of buyers who, because of their dispersed state, are totally powerless... [the consumer] is only able to choose between a variety of products, but he has no power to bring about the production of other articles, more suited to his needs, in place of those offered to him." The problem here is that markets respond to unreflective individualized wants--consumer preferences--expressed by buying or not buying something. Genuine democracy, however, is not fundamentally about unreflective individual wants. Democracy is about the exchange of public reasons between free and equal citizens about matters of collective concern. We could rephrase this in terms of exit vs. voice, consumer vs. citizen. Markets give the consumer (or the seller) freedom of exit. The buyer can simply walk away without buying, just as the seller can say "take it or leave it". But the consumer has no freedom of voice. That is, consumers have no power to shape the background conditions that structure the choices before them in the marketplace. Moreover, they have no say or voice in decisions about what gets produced, how it gets produced, etc. All they have is the freedom to buy or not buy--as consumers they lack any other means of having a voice in the basic structure of the economy. Notice that workers--if they are not organized--also lack freedom of voice and only have the power to quit their job (but no genuine say in their work conditions, what gets produced, etc.).

Freedom of voice, however, is central to any plausible notion of democracy. Democracy means that we collectively base our decisions on collective reasoned argument, not on unreflective individual consumer preferences. For example, if I'm in a convenience store looking to buy a candy bar, it would be absurd for the store owner to come and criticize, question and debate me about my taste in candy. I would be perfectly justified in saying, "look, I don't have to justify myself to you, I just want the goddamn snickers." But the same is not true of relations between citizens in a self-governing society. Democracy requires that we give public justifications--that others could in principle accept--when we advocate for doing this or that. When we democratically decide what to do, it must be based upon free discussion among equal citizens where nothing but the force of the better argument prevails (e.g. not power, not domination, not threats, etc.). Moreover, democratic processes require that citizens be able to hold one another to account. It wouldn't make sense to say that I "prefer" or merely "want" to cut the Pentagon budget in the same way that I prefer or merely want a snickers bar. Similarly, if you were working in a small group on some project, it would be ridiculous if you said "look, I just want to do X" and then followed all questions from your fellows with "look I just do, OK?". What this makes clear is that there is a profound difference between being a consumer and being a citizen in a self-governing society. Defenders of capitalism often generalize the model of the individual consumer to all spheres of life, thereby eliding more important roles such as that of the citizen.

Let me raise one further objection to the rights-based "entitlement" defense of capitalism. In order to transfer ownership titles through voluntary market exchanges, there have to be things--commodities--that can be bought or sold. But the market cannot create commodities--it is only a mechanism for transfer and exchange. Thus, the rights-based defense of capitalism is incomplete without a story about "just acquisition", that is, a story about how previously unowned things can legitimately become commodities (buyable and sellable on markets). I note, in passing, that any consistent advocate of the rights-based argument for capitalism would have to concede that massive redistributions of wealth and reparations would be necessary to correct for the enslavement, expropriation, violence, colonial domination and oppression that was a central part of how the riches of contemporary capitalism were created. Let us set that inconvenient fact aside, however, and ask a different question: how could unowned things in the world come to be legitimately owned by someone? Rousseau had an answer to this question: "the first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, took it into his head to say, "this is mine", and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. The human race would have been spared endless crimes, wars, murders and horrors if someone had pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out with his fellow men, "Do not listen to this impostor! You are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to everyone, and the earth to no one!". In other words, why wasn't the "original acquisition" of previously unowned parts of the earth not a theft of what should be rightfully held in common? And there are further problems here: aren't some things distorted or degraded if they they are turned into commodities? Take friendship. Friendship, properly understood, may not be bought or sold and still remain friendship. Love is the same way. It also seems wrong to allow (as Nozick does) human beings to be bought and sold as property. Moreover, isn't there something wrong with allowing rights to free speech to be bought and sold on markets? And isn't it wrong to allow people to purchase and sell political influence, justice in the courts, political offices, fire protection, honors (e.g. the Pulitzer Prize), etc.? If this is true--and I think it's obvious that it is--we see quite clearly that generalizing the model of "voluntary market exchange" to all spheres of life makes no sense. It generates irrationalities, unfreedom, lack of democratic voice, and oppression.

So where does this leave us in terms of the rights-based defense of capitalism? What we've seen is that entitlement on the basis of voluntary exchange cannot be generalized to all spheres of life without giving up on the ideals of freedom, equality and democracy. But does that mean that a socialist society would forbid all voluntary exchanges? Of course not. The defining feature of socialism, after all, isn't located within the sphere of exchange or distribution but within production. Socialism has to do with who owns and controls society's means of production. Socialists argue that the people should democratically own and control them; capitalists argue that a small class should own them and all others should be excluded. So, socialists need not deny that there is a role for voluntary exchanges (whether they be in the form of gifts or in the form of market exchanges). What socialists do have to say, however, is that certain goods should not ever be treated like commodities. Political power, access to education, the means of production, human beings, etc. should never be bought and sold through market transactions. Let candy bars be bought and sold, but leave the important features of our shared life together under the jurisdiction of democracy from below.

Chicago's Democrat Machine Votes Unanimously For Austerity

2011-11-16T19:59:00.003-06:00

This is a declaration of war by the 1% against the 99% right here in Chicago. The bill cuts over $400 million out of city services: It shuts down 6 of 12 Chicago Dept of Public Health clinics, it cuts $63 million from Family and Support services (which has already eliminated 63 full-time jobs this year alone), slashes full-time public library staff by 32% (on top of the 10% cuts last year) laying off more than 300 librarians, reduces hours for libraries, makes cuts to firefighter pay and closes fire-stations, etc. Meanwhile Rahm is pushing hard for big tax breaks (e.g. $23 million for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange) for the wealthy as well as public transit fare hikes.

If the Occupy movement is for taxing the rich, Rahm is for taxing the poor, cutting services and giving big tax breaks to the 1%. No wonder he spends most of his time fraternizing with millionaires. But let's not forget that he's one of them. Rahm made over $10 million during a brief two-year stint as an investment banker in between being a "public servant" of some sort or other.

The bill passed unanimously. This wasn't hard to see coming, but given the increasing levels of struggle in Chicago, one would have thought that were would at least be some hesitation. The City Coucil, like the rest of the city's government, marches in lock step with the Democrat Machine in general. And of course, when they aren't actually members of the 1% themselves, the leaders of the Machine march to the tune of the 1%. Sure, some of the so-called "progressives" on the City Council like Joe Moore made a few critical remarks before hand to keep up appearances. But in the end, they all voted for 100% of it (just like the infamous parking-meter privatization deal). Cuts, tax breaks for the rich and all. As Moore himself put it, “it's an honest budget." Yes, I agree. It's nothing if not honest. It's a ringing endorsement of the status quo. It's a huge gift to the 1%.

Is the Wealth of the Rich Legitimate? Part 2

2011-11-14T11:29:00.015-06:00

In a previous post I argued that the wealth of the rich (more precisely: of capitalists) could not be justified by reference to the principle that "each person deserves that amount of wealth that reflects her productive contributions". Capitalists need not do anything productive in order to be capitalists. The pure capitalist earns everything from owning and nothing from working (that is, to the extent that a capitalist can be said to earn from working, she is to that extent not a pure capitalist).

But, as I discussed in the previous post, this story about desert and productive contributions is only one among many. Another (perhaps the most popular?) story that's told to legitimate the wealth of capitalists is that their wealth is a reward for having taken bold risks. Or, put another way, since the capitalist risks her capital when she invests it in some business venture, she deserves exclusive rights to all of the returns above and beyond costs paid out for raw materials, wages for workers, etc.

This story is told so frequently that it almost seems odd to question its plausibility. But how plausible is it?

Let's try to first figure out exactly what its saying. Is it saying that people should be rewarded in proportion to how much risk they take on? That can't be right. That would mean that the riskier I behave, the more I should be rewarded (whether or not the risk pays off). But, of course, it's a fact about risks that they can turn out for better or for worse (otherwise they wouldn't be risks). Risks always involve some element of luck and chance wherein the risk could turn out badly. But nobody in their right mind would say that the mere fact that I've taken on some risk (whether or not it pans out) means that I should be rewarded. For example, no one would say that some particular capitalist, just because they take on risks, deserves a return on their investment. If I, for example, invest in a business that has a 10% chance of succeeding, and it doesn't succeed, nobody thinks that this entitles me a cash "reward" of any kind.

But if that's not what's meant by "reward for risk", what is? Perhaps what's meant is that the capitalist's riches are her reward for having taken a risk that ended up panning out. If I bet against the odds and win, then it looks like what I get is my reward. Why not say the same about capitalists whose investments pay off?

There are several things to say here. First, it's just false that risky capitalist activity actually gets higher rewards when it pays off. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. And lots of capitalist activities aren't risky at all. An investment need not be risky to be very lucrative. If some public asset (a natural monopoly, say) is privatized and I get ownership of it, I may be able to charge fees and earn big profits even though there is virtually no risk. Or, consider that many financial institutions are, and they know that they are, "too big to fail."

We must also take into account that risk context sensitive in various respects. What may be risky for me (given my situation) may be less so for you (given your situation). Imagine a working class person who saved money for years to open up a small coffee shop. This is surely a risky activity since she will need to take out big loans on a project that could very easily go bust (and it's not as if they have millions to spare if it does). Now, imagine that I invest $40 million of a $140 million fortune in relatively low-risk securities that turn out to pay out big dividends. Instead of risking my capital on start-ups, I put it all in well-established, multinational corporations. So, I'm reaping large cash "rewards" from my investments, much larger (even in proportional terms) than the returns a successful small coffee shop owner will ever earn. But I am taking on very little risk whereas the newly petit bourgeois coffee shop owner is taking on a great deal of risk. There are innumerable examples of this sort. What they show is that capitalism doesn't, as a matter of fact, distribute wealth in accordance with the principle that riskier bets (that pan out) receive larger cash rewards than those that involve less risk.

But this isn't likely to satisfy defenders of the "risk and reward" view of why the capitalist's earnings are legitimate. They will probably reply by offering two different objections. The first has to do with the idea that capitalism is a fair game where the winner deserves to take all the spoils of victory. The second has to do with incentives and innovation. I'll examine (and refute) each in turn.

The first objection is as follows. Capitalism can be thought of as a fair game in which everyone (legally speaking) has a chance to be a successful capitalist. As long as the rules of this game are fair, then whatever outcome results from it is legitimate. So, for example, when I play blackjack and the casino hasn't rigged the game in their favor, and both the casino and I have consented to play the game, whatever I take home in winnings is legitimately mine. Capitalism, you might think, is the same way. If I risk $10 million on a risky investment and it pans out, why aren't I entitled to (or deserving of) all of the cash returns in the same way that I'm entitled to the cash returns of the game of black jack? In fact, wouldn't taxing the capitalist's profits be similar to stealing a gambler's winnings, even though she made a fair bet in both cases?

There are a number of things to say here. We might ask whether the "game" of capitalism really is fair (I shall argue that it isn't, and that the gambling/investing metaphor is misleading). But even if it is fair, we might still ask whether it makes sense to structure our economy like a winner-take-all casino game. I shall argue that there are deep problems (both structural as well as normative) with allowing the economy to be run like a casino.

Let's examine the fairness of the "game of capitalism." First, recall where capitalism comes from (read Part 8 of Capital for a detailed historical analysis): the expropriation and killing of indigenous peoples and European peasants, the forcible seizure and enclosure of commonly owned land, colonial domination and forced labor, the enslavement of human beings, and so on and so forth. And we could add that capitalism didn't leave imperialism, violence, oppression, racial domination, coercion, theft, and expropriation behind after the 17th and 18th century: these have been permanent features of the system throughout its existence. So the "game" is rigged from the start. There has never been a "level playing field" from which to begin the game.

But, suppose that there was a level playing field. Would that fix capitalism's problems? Would that mean that the "game of capitalism" is actually procedurally fair? I think not. First of all, not everyone can play the game of capitalism. In order to play, you must have something to invest (because that's one of the rules of the game). Now, defenders of capitalism will say that nobody is legally excluded from playing the game. But that's clearly a flawed argument. First of all, it's a fact that lots of people, indeed the vast majority of people, do not have the discretionary funds to play the game. David Schweickart makes the second point forcefully as follows.

Suppose you and I flip a fair coin; we each bet a dollar per round; heads I get your dollar, tails you get mine. The game is "fair" in the sense that we both face the same odds at any toss of the coin. However, a complication arises when we look at the game in light of its initial conditions. If I enter the game with $20 and you with $10, you are twice as likely as I to go bust. If you do go broke, and another player enters with $10, he will be three times more likely to be cleaned out than will I (because my initial stake has been supplemented by your losings)... So the large investor, although he has more to lose, is less likely to lose than is the small investor. Add to this that wealth gives one access to information, expert advice, and opportunities for diversification that the small investor lacks, and we see that the balance between magnitude of loss tilts toward the wealthy.

What this shows is that even textbook "ideal" capitalism isn't a fair game.

But there are further problems with this game, even if it was "fair". First of all, it presupposes that some people are playing the game--the capitalist investors--while others, who own no capital to invest, do the work--the workers. And while the capitalists are busy playing the casino-like game of capitalism, workers have no say in what is going on. Yet, and this is key, they stand to lose even more than the capitalists if the bet fails. That is, if a capitalist investor loses $10 million on a deal, but still has $3 million back at home, it's not as if he will be going hungry any time soon. But if 2,000 workers lose their jobs, we can be sure that they don't have million dollar nest eggs sitting at home waiting to be spent. Unemployment, as millions of Americans know first hand, can be absolutely devastating--particularly when wages and benefits are so meager even during periods of full-time employment. Capitalists, of course, stand to lose more in absolute dollar terms, but because of the diminishing marginal utility of money, it means much less to them. Think of the way that the economic crisis has gone thus far. The reckless, profit-driven investments of the financial sector produced a global crisis that has had devastating effects on working class living standards at the same time that it has primed the pumps for austerity administered from above. The point is this: casino capitalism is unfair because it presupposes a class of working people who can't play the game but, nonetheless, stand to lose a great deal if the capitalist's gambles don't pan out.

Imagine a capitalist who replies to a labor union as follows. "I risked all of my capital on this business, so who are you to collective bargain to get a piece of it? That's unfair because I assume all the risk, yet you want to share in the rewards." Now, we've already seen that this doesn't work because the workers do share in the risk--the risk of losing their job--even though they are guaranteed none of the winnings. But we can also add that it's not as if the workers were asked to share in the risk. It's not as if the boss will ever say: look, if you like, we can make this a worker-owned and worker-run collective in which we all share the risk (and the profit) equally. So it doesn't make sense to complain that workers share none of the risk.

One further thing to say regarding the idea that our economy is best thought of as a casino-like game in which the winner takes all. It is not clear that it makes any sense to structure basic economic institutions in this way at all. The economic system should exist to draw on the mutual benefits that we get from social cooperation. What we can accomplish together is far greater than what we can accomplish alone: that should be the basic organizing principle of any just economic system. The casino-style setup, however, exploits the fact that an economy requires mass participation, takes this mass participation for granted, and then haphazardly doles out lump sums to individuals who happen to get a good roll on the dice. That makes no sense to me. Let's use the power of economies of scale and increased productivity to maximize human capabilities, to meet socially recognized needs, to do great things together that we couldn't have done alone. Rather than being trapped inside a casino that I never asked to enter in the first place, I'd rather be a member of a self-governing community in which the condition for the free development of each individual is the free development of all.

But there is one last objection to my argument--which has to do with incentives and innovation--that I mentioned above. It goes as follows. A flourishing society requires that people take risks, innovate, try out new methods and techniques, and produce new things that may not ever pay off. I agree so far, but the objection isn't finished. It continues: in order to get people to take risks and innovate, they must be motivated by large cash rewards. And that means that capitalism is the only system in which innovation and risk-taking can flourish, because without the big cash rewards that the market hands out to successful businesses people wouldn't be motivated to innovate.

First of all, we've seen that capitalists don't need to do any innovating at all. They can pay someone else to do it. Capitalism--where there is private ownership of the means of production which are run in order to enrich the owners--does not distribute wealth in accordance with who is the most innovative or who takes on the most risk to make some socially useful good. There is no close connection between being a capitalist and being an innovator. R&D departments--many of them subsidized by public funds (this is called "externalizing costs")--do that. Much R&D is located within universities--which are more feudal, guild-like institutions than they are capitalist.

Second, it is demonstrably false that people need huge cash rewards in order to innovate and do great things. Great scientists, great novelists, great musicians and artists, and so forth rarely do what they do out of a single-minded focus on cash reward. Think of those who develop open-source software. I think it is true of a lot of people that if they were guaranteed a basic standard of living, they would be happy to spend a large portion of their time developing open-source, free software for the betterment of all. There are too many examples here to count. People, of course, want an adequate standard of living in which they don't want for any basic necessities, in which they have adequate leisure and a degree of discretionary spending. But that doesn't mean they have to have huge million-dollar rewards to socially-useful things.

Finally, capitalism thwarts a ton of really important innovation while it privileges others. Many know about the strange murder of the electric car. There are other examples of this kind --particularly green technologies that aren't profitable or undermine the profitability of natural resource extraction. In fact, we may never know how many great ideas are out there that haven't been given a try simply because capitalist production can't earn a profit off them (or because they take too much long-term planning or upfront investment, as is the case with much green technology). To be sure, there is a place for competition to determine who should win socially-produced funds for some new innovative project. But that doesn't require capitalism. Despite encroachment from corporations and moneyed interests, grant funding for scientific projects doesn't involve capitalist markets or profits.

Is the Wealth of the Rich Legitimate? Part 1

2011-11-12T11:05:00.008-06:00

Is the wealth of the rich in contemporary capitalist societies legitimate? Of course not. But the rich have a vested interest in making sure that the majority of the population --who aren't rich-- think that their wealth is legitimate. It hardly matters whether it's aristocratic privilege, family lineage, racial or sexual supremacy that makes a group dominant. It remains true that dominant groups almost always try to preserve the basis of their own dominance.

Dominant groups typically have two (analytically distinct, but in practice interwoven) means of maintaining dominance. The first is obvious. Dominant groups typically monopolize control of the means of exerting physical repression. If you push too hard against the status quo, dominant groups will always (if possible) push back with physical repression in order to protect their dominant status.

But dominant groups never maintain their dominance through naked violence alone. They have another means at their disposal: ideology. That is, dominant groups stabilize their rule by telling stories about why their rule is legitimate. Think of the "divine right" of Kings, the "positive good" doctrine that purported to justify the dominance of Slave owners, the so-called "civilizing mission" that Colonization attempted to carry out, the supposedly "scientific", technical expertise of bureaucrats. The stories the rich tell about the supposed legitimacy of their wealth are a key part of this long tradition of lying to the masses to protect privilege and power.

What are those stories? The most common one is that the rich deserve their wealth because they work hard to produce it. Because the wealthy (the "job creators"!) make such important productive contributions to society, the story goes, they deserve every cent they earn. Another story is that the rich deserve their wealth because they undertake a great deal of risk when they invest it. Yet another story that is told, perhaps the least plausible of all of them, is that the rich deserve their wealth because they sacrifice more than others (by saving and foregoing consumption). Finally, there is the claim that the wealth of the rich is legitimate because they are legally entitled to it in a regime of private property where ownership titles are distributed by way of voluntary exchanges.

Now, in practice these legitimating narratives are often run together and interwoven. The war of ideas is never as clear cut and organized as academic discourse aims to be. But for our purposes --that is, for the purpose of showing that all of these stories are pure fiction-- we'll examine them each separately in a series of blog posts (of which this is the first). In examining each, I'll follow closely along the lines of the arguments put forward in David Schweickart's excellent book Against Capitalism. Anyone interested in seeing a detailed, rigorous refutation of every familiar argument in favor of capitalism would do well to pick up a copy. In what follows, we'll just examine the first. The other stories will be taken up in subsequent blog posts.

The first story says that the wealth of the rich is legitimate because it is their reward for making productive contributions to society. A more technical way to say this would be the following: in a "purely competitive free market" what the wealthy earn directly corresponds to their marginal productive contribution in the economy. In neoclassical economic theory --which is little more than an elaborate way of cheerleading for (rather than critically analyzing) capitalism-- this is called the "marginal productivity theory of distribution." As an early defender of this view puts it, "the natural effect of capitalist competition is... to give each producer the amount of wealth that he specifically brings into existence."

Before we show why capitalism is not a system in which each receives according to what each produces, we need to do a bit of table setting. In order to produce anything at all, two things are required: labor and means of production (e.g. factory equipment, instruments, technical knowledge, land, space, etc.). It is a fact about capitalist societies that the vast majority of those who labor for a living do not own the means of production they use at work. The owners of the means of production are usually distinct from the group uses those means. Up to this point we've been talking about "the rich" or "the wealthy" --but to be more precise we're actually interested in capitalists (i.e. that group who earns a living by owning, rather than using, the means of production).

Now, everyone knows that those who labor (by using means of production) to produce goods make productive contributions to society. Auto workers, for example, use their own two hands to build cars that wouldn't have existed if they hadn't built them. Their productive contribution is clear, and so it is with all workers in society. But what we want to know is whether capitalists actually make any productive contributions to society in order to receive their income. If they did, and if capitalism rewarded their productive contributions proportionately, it would look like their wealth was pretty legitimate.

But what is the productive contribution of capitalists in our economy? Notice that we can't just define their productive contribution in terms of what they receive from the market, since that is circular. We want to know whether the market actually gives each what they deserve. So we can't very well say that what people deserve is what the market gives them --that begs the question. What we're trying to figure out is whether the market actually distributes according to productive contribution.

Some will say that the contribution capitalists is their entrepreneurial spirit and innovating attitude. Others will say that capitalists do a lot of work co-ordinating and managing the productive process. No doubt ingenuity and creativity are required to make a capitalist firm successful. Even a socialist society would require ingenuity, innovation and "entrepreneurial" spirit of some kind or other. Likewise, co-ordination and workplace organization are essential. But notice that capitalists can simply pay someone else to do all of the innovating, all of the managing, and all of the co-ordinating. And they often do. If I'm a capitalist, I can hire a management consultant, an industrial engineer, and a research and development team to do all of the managing, organizing and innovating. But I'm still a capitalist --and I'll still earn handsome sums of cash for myself (indeed, I'm in a position to earn far more than anyone else in the entire firm even though I don't do any real work). So in this case, where's the productive contribution that supposedly legitimizes my massive sums of wealth?

Some will say that what I'm doing is "providing capital". After all, we said that two things --means of production and labor-- were needed to produce goods. We know that workers make contributions by laboring to produce things. But it is, of course, true that the means of production (e.g. capital, the factory space, instruments, etc.) add value to the final product. And capitalists, by definition, own and control the means of production. So aren't they performing an essential productive function by providing it? Couldn't we say, then, that this is productive contribution that justifies capitalist wealth?

But let's think about this for a moment. What exactly is going on when a capitalist provides capital? They are doing nothing more than "allowing it to be used". They are doing no more than granting permission to make use of an already existing material thing --e.g. factory equipment, raw materials, etc. But, as Schweickart points out:

...an act of granting permission, in and of itself, is not a productive activity. If laborers cease to labor, production ceases in any society. But if owners cease to grant permission, production is affected only if their authority over the means of production is respected. If it is not, then production need not diminish at all. Workers can continue doing exactly what they were doing before --producing corn and bread and steel and machine tools and all the other commodities required by their society. Whatever the owners are doing when they grant permission for their assets to be used, it should not be called 'productive activity'.

To drive the point home, consider the following example.

Suppose a government suddenly nationalizes the means of production, then does nothing else but charge workers a tax to make use of it. We wouldn't say, would we, that the government is engaging in productive activity, or that the tax is a return for the government's productive contribution? Not even if the tax rate is exactly equal to the marginal product of the productive labor.

But some will reply here that there's a difference between providing physical means of production (e.g. raw materials, tools, factory equipment, etc.) and providing capital investment funds to finance a productive endeavor. Surely providing an already existing material thing --whether it be factory tools, land, etc.-- is not a productive activity. It is no more than granting permission. But isn't financing production by lending capital a productive activity that takes a great deal of skill? Schweickart gives us an excellent example here: "Consider a person with a chest full of cash, eager to invest. How he acquired it need not concern us. We want to understand how his disposal of it will increase production. To produce something, there must be brought together equipment, raw materials, and laborers. Let our investor lend his money to an entrepreneur who purchases these necessaries. The laborers are set to work with the machinery and raw materials, and soon goods are produced. It is all quite simple. But notice, this is also a matter of granting permission. The workers, the raw materials, and the machinery already exist. The workers could begin production themselves, except that property rights intervene. They cannot gain access to the machinery and raw materials, for these things are the property of others. To use them, one must have permission, which the entrepreneur secures by means of her borrowed capital." But permission is only needed if one respects the authority of the legal titles to ownership of the things needed to produce. So the workers could produce just as well without permission if they didn't respect that authority. It follows, then, that permission is in no way a productive contribution.

Take another of Schweickart's examples:

Suppose, instead of relying on our friend with the chest full of money, the government simply rolled out its presses to produce the same quantity of crisp bills and gave them to our entrepreneur. Exactly the same production would result. But would we want to call the printing of the money a productive activity? That would surely be misleading, perhaps dangerously so, tempting officials to believe that rolling the presses longer and longer would miraculously generate wealth.

The point of all of this is that "providing capital" is not a productive activity. But if that's true, then we are forced to conclude that capitalists, qua capitalists, make zero productive contributions even though the market gives them the lion's share of the surplus created by society. As even John Kenneth Galbraith put it,

No grant of feudal privilege has ever equaled, for effortless return, that of the grandparent who bought and endowed his descendent's with a thousand shares of General Motors or General Electric. The beneficiaries of this foresight have become and remain rich by no exercise or intelligence beyond the decision to do nothing, embracing as it did the decision not to sell.

Or, if you'd like another example, examine a graph showing real wages for workers and worker productivity from 1973 to the present. What you'll notice is that productivity goes way up whereas wages stagnate. Someone reaped all of the difference and got filthy rich, but it wasn't the workers who were producing more and more each year. Again, we see that market distributions don't reflect productive contributions.

So what explains the fact that capitalists own the vast majority of wealth in our society? They don't receive this wealth as a result of any productive contribution they make. When they earn interest or dividends on their invested wealth, they need not do anything productive at all. When they make millions from arbitrage, they haven't done anything productive whatsoever. So in virtue of what do they earn such vast sums of wealth? In virtue of their ownership. Whereas the vast majority of us have no choice but to earn a living from the work that we do, capitalists earn their riches merely by owning things. But if the vast majority --the 99%-- does 100% of the productive activities in society, how could be legitimate that the unproductive 1% owns and controls the lion's share of the wealth produced? Good question.

So, what I've shown is that a certain argument, i.e. that capitalism distributes wealth according to productive contributions, is false. In a series of upcoming posts, we'll look at other fairy tales told by the rich to protect their wealth and power.

Greek Capitalism's Safety Valve

2011-11-10T09:06:00.006-06:00

It would have been an understatement to say that Papandreaou's government was hemorrhaging legitimacy and credibility in its final weeks.

The task, then, for the Greek ruling class (and the EU) is to ensure that this massive loss of legitimacy attaches only to Papandreou (and PASOK), and not to the entire Greek state as such. This is the function of the electoral mechanism in Greece. Only 2 years ago, Papandreou and PASOK rode into power, winning in a landslide due to the growing unpopularity of the Right in the context of deep economic crisis. Now, 2 years later, the Right, indeed the very same morons who were rejected when Papandreou took power, stands poised to do the same thing. The consensus seems to be that the current "unity" government in Greece is little more than a face-saving device meant to by time until general elections are held (when, it is expected, the Right will re-gain power due to the (justifiable) unpopularity of PASOK).

What we see here is that the electoral mechanism in Greece, far from giving the Greek people the opportunity to self-govern, is little more than a safety valve for the Greek status quo. When the steam builds up to such an extent that an explosion of social struggle seems on the horizon, the safety valve ensures that some of that pressure is released and dissipated. Thus, when the government looks on the brink of collapse, when it has squandered the confidence of the vast majority of the working population, it does not immediately amount to a loss of confidence in the system as such; it only seems to immediately impugn the sitting government.

In the midst of the rule of any particular government, of course, it is clear that real democracy is non-existent. The government --whether Right or center-Left-- will push through austerity measures meant to protect the assets of the EU ruling classes. They don't care what the population thinks --they'll pursue austerity one way or another. Of course, it behooves a sitting government to at least try to convince the population that austerity is necessary, or to scare them with doomsday talk of what would happen if Greece were to leave the EU. So they'll do that because it's prudent --but when push comes to shove they're going to ram through austerity whether or not the population consents to it.

The media discussion of the appointment of Papademos is interesting. The consensus seems to be that he is, in some thoroughly apolitical sense, the "most qualified" for the job. But who is it that is supposed to be convinced that he is "most qualified"? And what job, for whose benefit, is he supposed to be doing? Papademos was chosen because he would win the backing of the the EU's ruling class (what's euphemistically called "the market") and its political leaders (particularly Sarkozy and Merkel). Hence there has been a "collective sigh of relief" among political elites and ruling class investors. Papandemos's "job" is to find a way to ram through austerity in order to avoid a default so that the profit-seeking investments of the EU ruling classes (in Germany and France in particular) are protected. What are Papademos's qualifications? "Papademos, 64, was seen by many, both inside Greece and internationally, as the best choice to steer Greece through its worst post-war economic crisis due to his technocratic credentials and perceived financial expertise."

So let's take stock of what's been said above. Papandemos applied for a job and won it. His employer is a conglomeration of the EU ruling classes and their political representatives. The description of his office is to find a way to ram through austerity in order to protect the assets of his employer. His (ostensibly non-political) qualifications are that he is a deft technocrat with lots of "financial expertise".

So, democracy doesn't even enter into it. When Papandreou called a referendum on austerity, he was excoriated by business, the business press, and the business-backed politicians alike. The ruling classes panicked (i.e. "markets plummeted"). But now that democracy is off the table, everybody's happy. Now that a technocrat trusted by EU Capital is at the helm, it's all good.

But just imagine: what if the system couldn't simply switch out different ruling class representatives, dumping one as a fall out guy and picking up another who promises "change", when the going gets tough? It's clear that the system would have a far more difficult time legitimating itself. We get to "decide once in three or six years which member of the ruling class is going to misrepresent the people in parliament...", but we don't --if we play by the rules of established electoral procedures-- get to actually decide whether we should be dominated by a ruling class at all. For my part, I'm hoping that the growing extra-electoral political struggles --in the streets, in the public squares, in the universities, in the workplaces, in government ministries-- continue to grow. That's the only hope the Greek people have of conquering for themselves the power to meaningfully self-govern.

Occupy Paris (1871)

2011-11-09T18:31:00.006-06:00

"The Commune, they exclaim, intends to abolish property, the basis of all civilization! Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labour of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land and capital, now chiefly means of enslaving and exploiting labour, into mere instruments of free and associated labour." -Karl Marx "The Civil War in France" (1871)

Thomas Friedman: "Imperial Messenger"

2011-11-08T09:10:00.000-06:00

I love it.

Papandreou Steps Down; "Unity Government" Formed

2011-11-06T15:46:00.002-06:00

Papandreou set the ball rolling on Monday with a shock announcement that Greece would hold a referendum on the terms of its October bailout deal which calls for further fierce austerity measures.

The move stunned fellow European leaders, sent global markets into a tailspin and earned the Greek prime minister a humiliating dressing-down by France and Germany on Wednesday ahead of a G20 meeting.

Hastily retracting the proposal, Papandreou then turned disaster into temporary victory by winning a nail-biting confidence vote early Saturday by offering to step down in favour of a unity government.

The Greek people, meanwhile, battered by two years of stringent austerity measures that have crippled the economy and sent unemployment soaring, appear to have had more than enough of their squabbling leaders.

"The people are suffering at the moment and they [politicians] are not budging," said Marianna, a shopkeeper.

"A unity government with whom? With the same people? We will have the same results," she said gloomily.

"Papandreou. Samaras. They are all the same," said Takis Karalambos, as he sipped coffee outside a market in Athens.

Read the rest of the Al Jazeera article here.

The call for a referendum on the brutal EU austerity proposal set off a firestorm among EU leaders, all of whom have severe cases of "demophobia". The European ruling class made their disgust known as well as markets plummeted after the announcement of a referendum was made.

But no sooner than Papandreou had announced the referendum, he'd retracted it in favor of an arrangement favored by the EU, particularly the French and German governments: form a "unity" government with the Right-wing parties in parliament in order to more effectively push through the brutal austerity measures recommended by the EU proposal.

Of course, Greece is a capitalist country. That is to say, Greece is not democratic in any genuine sense --the control of the means of production (and all of the social and political power that this ownership and control entails) is private rather than democratic. But even the political realm --where ostensibly democratic parliamentary processes prevail-- recent events prove that there is no real democracy.

Think about what's happened. The EU ruling elites, who are looking first and foremost to protect their profit-seeking investments in Greek debt, were horrified when they learned that their favored policies would be submitted to the Greek people for approval by way of referendum. They were horrified both because the masses of Greek workers would have a voice in policy and because they knew that Greek workers, quite reasonably, would value their own standard of living more highly than the profit margins of the EU ruling class.

The vitriol of the EU ruling classes has now been translated into concrete consequences. Papandreou called off the referendum after being openly and explicitly excoriated by the political represntatives of European Capital, particularly Merkel and Sarkozy. And, following their lead, a "unity" government is being formed with the Right (who, predictably, is far more aggressively pro-austerity than PASOK).

Here we see the capitalist system for what it truly is. It not a system sensitive to the needs and interests of ordinary Greek working people, for it is administering deep cuts to their standard of living. It is not a system that allows the majority of the population to have a voice in decisions that have huge effects on their lives, because the recent strong-arming of the EU proves that the will of Capital prevails over the will of the Greek people. Read the financial papers --in Greece, democracy is the enemy and the rule of technocratic EU elites is the solution. And neither is capitalism a system that is rational, since it is undermining itself by eroding the conditions for future capital accumulation by pursuing austerity.

Voluntarist Currents in the Occupy Movement

2011-11-05T10:21:00.010-05:00

Check out American Leftist for an excellent roundup (and commentary) on recent events relating to Occupy Oakland. I won't weigh in specifically on anything that's going on there, simply because I don't know enough about the situation on the ground there. I would, however, like to make a rather general argument about the occupy movement as a whole and what it needs to do push the struggle to the next level.

First, all eyes were on Oakland because of the size of the protests, the numbers of people drawn into the movement, and the explicit call for a general strike. As countless commentators have reminded us, the last gen strike in the US was in Oakland in 1946. We've clearly entered a new era of class struggle not seen in a generation or more. Class struggle, on order to be such, has to draw large numbers of working people into a fight against some segment of (or, better, against the entire) ruling class.

Likewise, OWS was able to defend itself from Bloomberg's bid to destroy it because it mobilized huge masses of people, many of them union workers, to defend Zuccotti Park in its moment of need.

Succinctly put, the most exciting thing about the entire occupy movement is that it is --quite explicitly-- about drawing the whole 99% into the fight against the 1%. It's primary strength is that it is a mass movement against a political and economic system of, by, and for the 1%.

It goes without saying that this is an exciting time to be on the Left (and I mean the real Left, i.e. the anti-capitalist Left). Finally, a movement has broken through and challenged the legitimacy of the system through direct actions of various sorts, unpermitted protests and marches, occupations of public space, and now strikes and labor actions.

Still, countless challenges and obstacles remain. How, for example, can the continued occupation of a public space help us to win the changes we're fighting for? And, in cities where the authorities have physically prevented an encampment from taking hold, to what extent is it important to continue trying to occupy a public space on the model of OWS? Or, if occupations are meant to be a spring board for growing mass demonstrations (and, potentially, even mass strikes), how do we get from here to there? Finally, how do we build successful general strikes that have the potential to shut down entire cities? These are not easy questions to answer.

However, in a context where newly radicalized people have had their expectations about what's possible raised astronomically, there are bound to be folks who think that must be easy answers to these questions. There are bound to be folks whose legitimate excitement is driving them toward a position of impatience. This is understandable. All of us surely feel this way to some extent or other. I can say, for one, that this movement has electrified me politically in a way that no other movement has.

Nonetheless, I think we need to focus on how we got where we are in order to see where we need to go. As I described above, we didn't get where we are by way of small-scale provocations attempted by folks who feel that they can, through sheer will-power, force the movement into a more radical direction. That is, we didn't get here by way of voluntarism. Voluntarism is a politics that takes it to be possible for a small group, or even an individual, to more or less will a large-scale social change into existence through clever actions or provocations.

The trouble with voluntarism isn't that the individuals attracted to it lack motivation, political energy, or enthusiasm for changing the world. They have all of that and more --and that is not what I aim to criticize. The trouble with voluntarism is that it presupposes a perspective on social change that is problematic. As I described above, progressive social change happens when masses of people --in open defiance of the powers that be-- pour out onto the streets, occupy parks and factory, blockade capital flow, etc. In short --it happens because of some accumulation of people power that has the potential to threaten the powers that be. The 1% in Chicago, for example, isn't afraid that a small group of activists might roam the city performing street theater, banner drops, or other spontaneous or unpredictable actions. The 1% in Chicago is afraid of a mass movement drawing tens of thousands of working class people into the streets to oppose its continued dominance. That is why Rahm cleared out Grant Park by force and arrested hundreds of protesters.

But, and I'm speaking exclusively about the movement in Chicago at the moment, I think some occupiers have drawn the conclusion that because mass actions aimed at occupying Grant Park were met with police repression, they were failures. Because those actions didn't successfully "take the horse", some are now beginning to wonder whether mass movements are actually the way to change things. Understandably, this has led some to veer toward voluntarism, wherein the way forward involves pulling off unpredictable, small-scale and spontaneous actions (rather than public, mass actions drawing in as many participants as possible). In other words, this sense that we were defeated has led some to lower their expectations about what is possible. I think that perspective is understandable, but it should be re-thought. We have no reason, given what's happening all over the world right now, to doubt that a mass movement is both possible and worth fighting for.

I think we have good reason to be excited about the two failed attempts to take Grant Park. Those attempts weren't unqualified failures at all --both actions drew out more than 5,000 people to march, without a permit, through the heart of Chicago's financial district. Both actions won the movement international attention and coverage. And both actions, where over 300 people were arrested in defiance of the police order to clear the park, have elevated sympathy for movement among ordinary Chicagoans. A crew of nurses got arrested in defiance of the City's hard-line refusal to grant OC a space. A poll after the second attempt to camp at Grant Park revealed that 79% of Chicagoans stood in support of the movement, with only 8% opposed. Those actions were not failures. We should not lower our expectations in their wake --we should collectively assess them so that we can learn from their mistakes.

But why didn't those actions succeed in winning Occupy Chicago an encampment? It's hard to say exactly. For one, we would have needed more people there to actually force the cops to back down from mass arrests. The second attempt to take the horse was voted on 4 days before it went down --and as of the Friday before the action there was still no official flyer, no official Facebook group, no organized publicity or outreach. And nonetheless 6,000 people turned out. It could have been much bigger if we'd have had more time to consciously build the event by handing out leaflets at subway stations, making posters and flyers, etc. One lesson we should learn from the second attempt to take the horse is that the more time we get to build an event the bigger it has the potential to be.

We need the movement to be big if its going to succeed. OWS didn't hold Zuccotti Park because it was the perfect strategic location in all of Manhattan. It held the park because a hundred thousand people turned out to defend it. The cops, and the powerful billionaire mayor who called on them to attack OWS, were forced to back down by the sheer numbers of people who turned out to defend it. That is our fundamental strength as a movement of, by, and for the 99%: we are the vast majority of society!

So, whatever we decide to do to take this movement to the next level, it has to take stock of this fundamental fact: our strength is in numbers. If some folks want to organize small-scale, spontaneous actions meant to raise awareness and critical consciousness, they should go for it. If some want to do banner drops, small-scale bank protests, street theater, public guerrilla art projects, etc. etc. they should be cheered on for their enthusiasm and fighting spirit. But we also have to be clear: these actions are only worthwhile if they encourage more people to join and participate in the movement as a whole. Any action meant to substitute itself for a mass movement is a step in the wrong direction. Any action that discourages mass participation, is a waste of precious time and energy. Any action that isn't building toward the kind of mass 99%-strong occupy movement we all need is counter-productive.

We can't let discouragement or impatience get in the way of fighting for the kind of movement we need. Voluntarism is tempting, but revolutionary patience is what we need. Not passivity, not complacency, not conservatism. Just a sober, patient perspective that enables us to see that building this movement will not be easy. I'm not suggesting that we set aside our sense of urgency. On the contrary, I think we have to be patient in order to think through and discuss precisely how we can convert all of the excitement, energy, and urgency into a victory for our side!

Neither I am saying that we must "work within the system" or ask for modest demands. On the contrary, I am suggesting that we need to think through how to build this movement as big as possible so that it has the power and militancy to challenge the foundations of the system itself.

Occupy Oakland Shuts Down Port

2011-11-02T20:45:00.002-05:00

Here. The MSNBC article includes a quote that says that the intent is to "halt the flow of capital." YES! The best info on offer, however, seems to be on twitter. Also, see here for other updates and suggestions for Left coverage of OccupyOakland. I've been following this closely all day. Inspiring stuff!