A Night of Dostoevskian Smiles and Sadean excesses

Adolf Hitler on Standpoint-Epistemology.

2012-01-23T18:33:00.000-08:00

Of course, Hitler didn’t live long enough to rub shoulders with supporters of foucauldian discourse theory, feminist-standpoint epistemology or any form of ‘post-modern’ sociological analysis and the parallel does not invalidate their position. But, Rob Moore’s use of the quote in Towards the Sociology of The Truth was a delicious if somewhat cheeky deployment of the dictator’s views to attack epistemological relativism, which is self-undermining and damaging to the discipline of sociology if taken too seriously. As of now, I’m only a couple chapters into the work but I’ve found nothing to quibble with and find myself nodding and agreeing - perhaps, that’s a fault in and of itself but I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the sociology of knowledge, science or education.

God Against The Maelstrom: Fundamentalism and Modernity.

2011-12-31T00:58:00.000-08:00

Fundamentalism is a term that originated in the United States. Early in the 20th century, Protestant groups adopted the designation to differentiate themselves from forms of liberal Protestantism and secularists (Jones, 2010). The recent coinage of fundamentalism suggests that its development is related to modernity, and while fundamentalist movements are characterized by their commitment to traditional belief-systems, they are often highly innovative adaptations to the modern experience. In this paper, the relationship between fundamentalism and modernity will be analysed; first by elaborating the concept of modernity and then reviewing the theoretical literature on the defining characteristics of religious fundamentalism, which will be tied together with two specific case studies: Protestant fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism. It will be shown that religious fundamentalism is a defensive strategy employed in response to the uncertainties and rapid shifts of modernity.

The concept of modernity is elusive and has acquired several different connotations, each contested against each other (Joyce; 1995, p. 73). It can be employed both to denote a historical period and an attitude towards history. However, Marshal Berman (1997, p. 15) defined modernity as the experience of being swept up in the maelstrom of creative destruction and continual adaptation in which, as Marx and Engels put it, “all that is solid melts into the air”. This definition of modernity highlights the fleeting and ephemeral aspects of contemporary life, which are in turn dependent upon a series of social, political and economic forces that drive the maelstrom. “The bourgeoisie cannot exist”, Marx and Engels’ (1950, p. 36) argued, “without constantly revolutionising of the instrument of production” which overturns existing relations of production and causes “disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation”. Thus, in a more definitive sense, the experience of modernity is the experience of modern capitalism and its related political, social and cultural trends. In the contemporary period, it is the experience of globalization, the processes of industrialisation and deindustrialization, nation-states, secularism and the Enlightenment world-view that constitute modernity (Berman, 1997). Fundamentalism developed in response to thetrends of modernization.

Fundamentalism, like the concept of modernity, has been defined by various features observed through empirical research and some convergence of understanding has been achieved. While the term was originally applied to one religious movement, within American Protestantism, it has now come to be applied to a wide range of movements across many religious traditions (Armstrong; 2009, p. 140). Fundamentalism is, according to Altemeyer and Hunsberger (1992, p. 118), defined as the belief that a religious tradition contains the absolute truth with regards to the laws of god and the rightful place of man, which have been neglected and opposed by malevolent forces that need to be combated to restore balance to the world. Hunter (1990, p. 58.) conceptualized fundamentalism as orthodoxy in conflict with modernity: modernity comprises a largely secular and sexuality infused popular culture that somewhat homogenously spread world-wide by the processes of globalization, which is culturally anathema to several religious traditions. Though, as it will be argued later, fundamentalism is both doctrinal and anti-doctrinal, fundamentalists adapt received scriptural traditions in furtherance their aims and cannot be considered strictly a form of orthodoxy. However, it can be argued that, as Hunter (1990, p. 58) continues:

‘‘All fundamentalist sects share the deep and worrisome belief that history has gone awry. What ‘went wrong’ with history is modernity in its various guises. The call of the fundamentalist, therefore is to make history right again.”

The notion that the world requires rectification is a prominent feature of North American Protestant fundamentalism that arose during a period of industrialization that displaced millions of people late 19th and early 20th century (Salzman ; 2008, p. 319). The origins of Protestant fundamentalism can be dated between 1910 and 1915 with the serial publication of twelve pamphlets, called The Fundamentals, which asserted the inerrancy of the bible and proclaimed a return to the fundamentals of faith against the influence of “higher criticism” from biblical scholarship and an opposition to the teaching of evolution and moral turpitude in the form of alcohol (Munson; 2003, p. 34). Protestant fundamentalism suffered an early defat with the Scopes Trail in 1925 and remained relatively dormant until it was revitalised during the era of stagflation and economic woe in the late 1970s with the emergence of the Jerry Farwell’s Moral Majority (Armstrong; 2009, p. 141). The perceived decline in Family values associated with the breakdown of the nuclear family and the granting of reproductive rights to women motivated a more publically visible fundamentalist movement (Munson; 2003, p. 34). Thus, in line with Marty and Appleby (1991, viii-x) conceptualization of fundamentalism, it is engaged in militant opposition to modernity: “militant, whether in the use of words and ideas or ballots or, in extreme cases bullets”.

The term “Islamic fundamentalism” has been applied to forms of Islamic ideology that developed during the early to mid-20th century in the context of Western cultural and political incursion into Middle East and repressive governments that attempted to imitate the West’s secular version of modernization (Armstrong; 2009, p. 141). The Egyptian scholar Sayyid Qutb, often regarded as the founder of Islamic fundamentalism, was subject to political repression as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood by Nasser’s secular regime and developed the notion that secularism and Islam were incompatible (Armstrong; 2009, p. 144). His opposition to the cultural and political influence of the West, and the repressive regimes that imitated Western modernization, lead him to expand the concept of Jahiliyya, or pre-Islamic ignorance, and redefine the duty of Muslims as opposition to jahiliyya which he applied to modernity throughout the world without distinction (Euben; 1997, p, 442). The redefinition of Jahiliyya was a major theological innovation, which demonstrates the adaptability of fundamentalist ideology, at once stridently doctrinal and implicitly anti-doctrinal (Armstrong; 2009, p. 144). Islamic fundamentalists are militant in their opposition to jahiliyya, which is equivalent to opposition to modernity en masse, which further underscores the relationship between the modernity and the rise of religious fundamentalism.

The concept of modernity, an elusive attempt to conceptualize the ephemeral and neoteric, has been defined as the experience of modern society and the economic, political and cultural trends that mark the era. Globalization, the process of economic and cultural interaction and acculturation, the processes of industrialization and deindustrialization that contribute to the maelstrom of modern capitalism have led to defensive reaction by religious groups known as fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is defined by the strong adherence to religious traditions, such a Protestant fundamentalists belief in the inerrancy of the bible and Islamic fundamentalists belief in the absolute truth of the Qur’an, and the belief that history’s proper path has been disrupted by malevolent forces that require militant opposition from true believers. Economic malaise and uncertainties conjured up by the rapidly shifting condition of modernity can accentuate the appeal of religious fundamentalism as an explanation of current woes and panacea for insecurities. But, while attached to the idea of traditional values, fundamentalists can be both doctrinal and anti-doctrinal. Sayyid Qutb’s use of the Islamic concept of Jahiliyya as the functional equivalent of modernity demonstrates this tendency. In this sense, fundamentalism is not orthodoxy in conflict with modernity: Fundamentalism is a defensive and innovative response to modernity, which attempts to arrest the maelstrom of uncertainty and rectify the world.

Bibliography.

Altemeyer, B. and Hunsberger, B. (1992), “Authoritarianism, Religious Fundamentalism, Quest and Prejudice”, The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, Vol. 2., pp. 113-133.

Armstrong, K. (2009), Islam: A Short History, London; Phoenix.
Berman, M. (1997), All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience Of Modernity, London; Verso.

Euben, R. (1997), “ Premodern, Antimodern or Postmodern? Islamic and Western Critiques of Modernity” , The Review of Politics, Vol. 59, No. 3, p.429-459.

Hunter, J.P. (1990) “Fundamentalism in its Global Contours”, N.J. Cohen (ed.), The Fundamentalist Phenomena, Michigan; William B. Erdmans Publishing Company, p. 56-72.

Joyce, P. (1995), “The End of Social History?”, Social History, Vol.20, No. 1, pp. 73-91.

Marty, M.E. and Appleby, R.S. (1991) Fundamentalism Observed, Vol. 1, Chicago; University of Chicago Press.

Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1950), “Manifesto of The Communist Party”, Selected Works, Vol. 1, Moscow; Foreign Languages Publishing House, pp. 33-61.

Munson, H. (2003), “‘Fundamentalism’ Ancient & Modern”, Daedalus, Vol. 132, No. 3.

Salzman, M.B. (2008), “Globalization, Religious Fundamentalism and the Need for Meaning”, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 318-327.

Henry Miller Asleep and Awake

2011-11-27T17:42:00.000-08:00

Tom Schiller's documentary on Henry Miller, the author of The Tropic of Cancer, and the intricacies of his bathroom walls.

'Risk'

2011-08-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

And then the day came,
When the risk to remain tight
In a bud
Was more painful
Than the risk
it took
to blossom.

- Anaïs Nin.

E.P. Thompson's Queen: Class Theory and Historical Materialism.

2011-05-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

E.P. Thompson’s The Poverty of Theory is a critique of Louis Althusser’s structuralist interpretation of Marxism and it’s relation to discipline of history. In this critique, Thompson defended his formulation of the materialist conception of history, the importance of historical analysis and an outline for the proper use of conceptual abstractions. Thompson’s theoretical framework, that favoured the “empirical idiom”, underpinned his historical work on the English working class. His discussion of working class experience between the 1780s to the early 1830s became a crucial reference point in the class theory of the Marxian tradition and generated much contention and debate with his assertion that class is neither a “structure” or “category”, but a “historical relationship” that is not reducible to economic relations. Thompson attempted to reintroduce human agency into the study of class and redress the failings of economic reductionism that stemmed from the base-superstructure model. Thus, Thompson’s work is at odds with ‘orthodox’ Marxism and draws attention to the difference between class as “structure” and class as “lived experience”. That is, the conflict between structural accounts of class that emphasises the political economy of capitalism and those that conceptualize class in terms of social and cultural formations. However, this tension in class theory needn’t be irresolvable as these two modes of analysis and conceptualization of class are not mutually exclusive. Structural accounts of class, properly employed, are a useful tool for understanding historical processes and historical accounts of class cannot proceed without invoking conceptual frameworks of what constitutes class. Class theory, both with regards to structural approaches and historical analysis, has validity when engaging with both the political economy of class and the historical experiences of class. Insofar as each methodology is applied appropriately and their respective limitations understood.

Class is both a theoretical construct and lived experience. Analytical categories are legitimate to the extent that they are approximations of empirical data and attempt to elucidate actual experience. Thompson’s critique of Orthodox Marxism is based around its perceived processes of sociological reification and economic reductionism that rendered historical hypotheses from the vantage point of overriding economic determination either false or trivial. Class experience cannot be reduced to economic dynamics alone and more comprehensive understandings require a conception of the “dialectical intercourse of social being and social consciousness”. Thus, for Thompson:

“Classes do not exist as abstract, platonic categories, but only as men come to act in roles determined by class objectives, to feel themselves to belong to classes, to define their interests as between themselves as against other classes.”

Thompson’s definition of class quoted above aligns with concept of “class-for-itself” and eschews the category of “class-in-itself” often derived from Marx’s discussion of class in The Poverty of Philosophy and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, though not explicitly categorized as such by Marx it is nevertheless an analytically fertile distinction. The category of class-in-itself refers to a common social position within the relations of production, while class-for-itself denotes a consciousness of this common experience and recognition of the antagonistic interests of opposed classes. However, despite this clear distinction between class-in-itself and class-for-itself the former is never fully explicated within Marx’s overture. In fact, the manuscript of Marx’s final volume of Capital breaks off before answering the question, “What constitutes a class?” Having just defined wage-labours, capitalists and landowners as the three great classes of modern capitalism, Marx identifies the source of each class in their source of income: wages, profits and rents. He then argues that with this division of classes into sources of income, stratification and differentiation can be identified within these social groups. Marx’s truncated discussion of class in Capital does not render class theory invalid, but introduces the complexities of intermediate strata and class fragments not acknowledged in standard accounts of class found in orthodox Marxism. However, Marx maintained that the “continual tendency and law of development of the capitalist mode of production” was ever forming the opposition of labour and capital. And this relation between capital and labour constitutes a structural feature of the capitalist system.

Marx’s account of the political economy of capitalism is based around the opposition of two classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. He acknowledged the existence of other classes and in later writings noted the increase in a middle stratum between labour and capital, but considered these two social groups and their relationship to be of central importance to defining the modern mode of production that developed in Western Europe after the collapse of feudalism. Moreover, Marx argues the intermediate classes between proletariat and bourgeoisie contributed to the “social security and power of the upper ten thousand”. Thus, while Marx recognized the empirical reality of complex stratification both between and within the classes of 19th century Britain, he still affirmed the dichotomous two-class model as representing the most salient and important features of the economic system.

Marx’s simplification of class relations is based on the observation that the mode of production that prevailed at the time was predicated upon the concentration of the means of production within a concentrated social group and the alienation of the means of production from the majority of the population that formed the ranks of free labour. That is, the relations of production that prevailed at the time were largely divided between the class of individuals who owned the means of production and those who lived by selling their labour power, while the middle stratum occupied a marginal position in the mode of production. Marx’s analytical categories of labour and capital were used to represent the economic dynamics of capitalist social relations, with the production and appropriation of surplus-value that constitutes the “absolute law” of capitalist production. Of course, the historical experience of class cannot be reduced to relations of production and economic categories alone, such an attempt to theorize along those lines would lead to crude economic determinism and neglect the agency of class actors.In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx offers an account of the social position and political role of the peasantry during the tumultuous birth of the second French empire, which illuminates the distinction between class in and for itself alongside the interplay of economic and cultural dynamics. Marx argues:

“In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class”

Though, he continues:

“In so far as there is merely local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interest begets no community…no political organization among them, they do not form a class.”

Thus, in the latter case, while not a class-for-itself the peasantry is not capable of “enforcing their class interest” which is distinct from the proposition that that such a group of individual would not constitute a class. In the historical experience of the French peasantry of the mid-19th century, the peasantry was split into class fractions and the conservative fraction of this class supported the regime of Louis Bonaparte. This historical eventuality was the result of a unique confluence of events and part of any explanation of these events must involve the memory of Napoleon and the glory bestowed on the nation from his military victories. Class consciousness and the dynamic of class conflict are not reducible to economic determinates and relations of production alone, but are always a unique cultural and social formation. In this vein, Thompson argued:

“Class is a social and cultural formation (often finding institutional expression) which cannot be defined abstractly, or in isolation, but only in terms of relationships with other classes; and, ultimately, the definition can only be made in the medium of time – that is, action and reaction, change and conflict”

For Thompson, the experience of class is embedded in historical time and can only be understood as a diachronic phenomenon and that reduction to set of ‘laws’ cannot but be a process of reification that obscures and misconstrues actually historical processes. Therefore, Thompson’s conception of class is centred on the historical experience of individuals and their consciousness of this experience as class consciousness. In Thompson’s formulation, class involves the dialectical interplay of both social being and social consciousness. Contrary to accounts of class in political economy, Thompson does not assign an undialectical determinism to the relations of production in his historically grounded conception of class formation. He argues that relations of production have a determining influence on the lived experience of individuals, but this determining influence does not determine class consciousness. Prior to class consciousness, historical relationships can exhibit “class logics” and “ways”, but this does not represent class in the “full sense”. Moreover Thompson argued, the manifestation of class patterns through the historical continuum cannot be rendered into absolute “laws”, commonalities of experience are discernable, however, these never manifest in exactly same fashion in each historical period. In this view, the formulations of structural theories of class perpetuate sociological reification and incorrectly impose class models on ill-suited historical data.

In The Peculiarities of the English, Thompson criticises Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn historical work on the English class system for imposing class models on inappropriate historical data. Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn in a series of New Left Review articles had advanced a thesis regarding the “symbiosis” of the English bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy in the Glorious Revolution and again with the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1832 that extended political representation to men of property. In these pieces, Anderson and Nairn criticised the conciliatory temperament of the English bourgeoisie and the effect of this on the English intelligentsia and working class movement. Thompson criticized the authors on multiple points, particularly for their importation of models derived from the French experience of revolution to evaluate and rebuke the English bourgeoisie for their lack of “courage” and the subsequent impact on the working class movement, which was said to have inherited an improvised revolutionary ideology. He objected to Anderson and Nairn’s thesis on the basis that it neglected the unique experience of the English bourgeoisie that militated against the wholesale overthrow of the aristocracy. Throughout this critique, Thompson’s explicit point is that the experience of class constitutes a unique historical, social and cultural formation that cannot be reduced to an a priori model. Of course, Thompson did regard conceptualization to be an important part of historical analysis. He stated: “without the (elastic) category of class – an expectation justified by evidence – I could not have practiced at all”. However, models crafted on a particular historical episode and extrapolated beyond its original realm often produce gross mistakes of historical analysis.

Thompson noted “concepts are approximations”, and this does not render them “fictions”. Conceptualization is vital to the facilitation of understanding, the extent to which actual historical processes deviate from logical schema can be ascertained from empirical observation. Class is both a theoretical construct and lived experience; the concept of class is useful, only in so far as it pertains to the experience of class. Moreover, the political economy of class is not without its usefulness; class relations constitute an important structural feature of the capitalist system. However, class experience cannot be reduced to economic relations and to apprehend class in its full sense requires an understanding of the unique social and cultural formation of each historical episode. The historical outcomes of class-conflict cannot be understood from economic factors alone and the importation of a model from one historical episode to another without sufficient elasticity to accommodate important differences is often inappropriate and can lead to sociological reification. Thompson’s claim that history is the “queen of the humanities” and that political economy must be “superseded” by historical materialism is not without merit when approaching the experience of class. Class-in-itself is an important economic category, but class-for-itself viewed from the unitary perspective of historical materialism centred on the dialectical interplay of social being and social consciousness renders a more nuanced understanding of class and the experience of class.

Bibliography

Andrew, E. (1983), “Class in Itself and Class against Capital: Karl Marx and His Classifiers”, Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 16, No. 3., pp. 577-584.

Johnston, J. and Dolowitz, D.P. (1999), “Marxism and Social Class”, Marxism and Social Science, ed. A. Gaulile, D. Marsh and T. Tant, Basingstoke, Macmilam, pp.129-151.

Kaye, Harvey J. (1984), The British Marxist Historians: An Introductory Analysis, Cambridge, Polity Press.

Marx, K. (1919), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 3. , ed. F. Engels, Translated E. Untermann, Chicago; Charles H. Herr and Company.

Marx, K. (1950), “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, Selected Works, Moscow; Foreign Languages Publishing House, pp. 225-311.

Marx, K. (1986), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1, Trans Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Ed. Frederick Engels, Moscow; Progress Publishers.

Thompson, E.P. (1968), The Making of the English Working Class, London; Penguin Books.

Thompson, E.P. (1979), The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays, London; Merlin Press.

Glory.

2011-05-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

From an essay written quite some time ago, but I thought i'd draw attention to it:

"The punk sub-cultural style developed in a social malaise of urban youth suffering from unemployment and marginalisation, they reacted by exercising their power to offend and disrupt the social order (Hebdige, 1988, p. 18). "Fuck" and "Cunt", words eschewed by mainstream culture as highly offensive obscenities were a stock standard of punk lyrics and publications (Triggs, 2006, p. 73). This represented an affront to the cultural norms and practices of the mainstream culture and legitimate language used by the respectable classes."

The lecturer had ticked all the way down the side, somtimes twice - no ticks for this part, but still....

2011-05-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

From Hemingway's 'Death in the Afternoon':

"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured, or well-bred, is merely a popinjay. And this too, remember: a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl."

Tim Minchin's Storm

2011-04-17T03:35:00.000-07:00

Absolutely brilliant, a hilarious ‘beat’ poem that nails how I feel on a number of subjects. Check out Tim Minchin and some of his other stuff.

Human Rights and Cultural Relativism.

2011-04-05T05:26:00.000-07:00

The modern view of human rights is the result of successive struggles within Western society. Hence, in historical terms, human rights are a ‘Western’ construct. However this does not undermine the claim of cross-cultural validity, but merely problematizes the issue of cultural rights and their relation to the universal claims of the human rights tradition. This tension and the normative variety of cultural relativism have been crucial points of contestation in human rights theory. Thus, the extent to which human rights are inherently ‘Western’ in character is of vital importance to their practical implantation across cultural divisions. To address this issue, the historical origins of human rights will be briefly sketched and their cross-cultural legitimacy will be evaluated to determine the appropriate cultural designation of human rights.

The question of historical origin, Micheline Ishay argues, is complicated because selection of this point ipso facto “privileges a specific status quo or value-system” and can be used to legitimize and delegitimize historical actors. Following this, the cultural antecedents of human rights and their compatibility with previous value-systems both within and outside Europe has caused considerable contention. However, the intellectual crystallization of both human rights and cultural relativism originate in Europe. The human rights tradition developed out of the intellectual, socio-economic and political transformations of the Enlightenment period and the antecedents of normative cultural relativism can be partially sourced from the birth of cultural nationalism with the consolidation of Germany and Italy in the early 1870s. In this sense, both human rights and cultural relativism are ‘Western’ constructs. However, Jack Donnelly contends that modern human rights are the product of and reaction to abuses prevalent in modernity.Ergo, the development capitalism and bureaucratic nation-state is the vital fulcrum in the evolution of human rights and not the special qualities inherent in pre-modern ‘Western’ value-systems. Furthermore, the spread of both capitalism and nation-states throughout the globe generalises a similar set of abuses that gave rise to the human rights tradition in Europe. Donnelly’s argument is an attempt to firmly ground universal human rights without reference to universal anthropological or ontological claims that he finds empirically indefensible.

The weakness of such universalisms can give credence to normative cultural relativism that is diametrically opposed to the modern conception of human rights. He argues, given a unique historical confluence, that human rights represent the best means to combat threats to human dignity, despite the fact of cultural relativity. In defence of universal human rights claims, Donnelly offers several criticisms of cultural relativism and empirical arguments that attempt to demonstrate the “relative universality” of human rights.

Cultural relativism can be conceptualized in two broad forms. The term cultural relativism was first employed within the discipline of anthropology and referred to a methodological approach to the problem of cultural relativity and ethnocentric biases that undermined objective analysis of different cultures and value systems. Thus, from this methodological approach cultural systems can be analysed in their own terms to ascertain the functional interplay of social practices. From a normative perspective, cultural relativity is given moral force and cross-cultural moral evaluation is reduced to the status of reproducing ethnocentrism. Moreover, claims to universal human right would represent a form of cultural imperialism and signpost the hegemony of the West. From a pragmatic standpoint, cultural relativism provides no means to arbitrate between competing rights claims in a cross-cultural international system. However, this does not imply that cultural relativism is false, per se, but empirically grounded arguments can demonstrate the widespread appeal of human rights and historical tendencies that propel universal human rights claims across cultural divisions.

There is prima facie evidence for the cross-cultural validity of human rights in the widespread adoption of human rights language throughout the globe and the development of non-western human rights organizations. In view of this, Michael Goodhart has argued that human rights need not be grounded in a conception of universality, the continued proliferation of human right’s influenced discourse and organizations testify to its cross-cultural validly beyond its origin in Western Europe. Donnelly moves beyond this prima facie evidence and attempts to ground human right in a “relative universality” that leaves space for “second order claims of relativism”.

Unlike traditional Enlightenment philosophy, that often based rights claims on an a priori conception of the autonomous individual, Donnelly’s appeal to universality is circumscribed by historical contingencies. With the development of capitalism, the nation-state and the rise of the bourgeoisie class rights claims were advanced to counter the traditional authority of the aristocracy and monarchy. The success of these initial claims to rights propagated further rights claims for the advancement of marginalized groups. Karl Marx noted that universal suffrage, a political right, was essentially a “socialistic” measure, so much more than political events on the continent. Thus, with the spread of capitalism and nation-states a case can be made for what Donnelly called “functional universality”, human rights amounting to the best functional response to these transformations. Moreover, the universalism of human rights allowed for the critique of existing conditions relative to normative standards. In fact, human rights discourse has been invoked to redress the excess of power exercised by Western powers in the international system.

The process of decolonization that occurred in the aftermath of the Second World War was often lead by figures educated in the Western tradition of rights. Thus, as Ishay notes, human rights has often been adopted as the language of resistance to power and cultural relativism is adopted to redress marginal groups inability to gain access to social, political and economic rights. In this sense, cultural relativism is one strategy to redress the failure to extend human rights to marginalized groups. Both the human rights tradition and cultural relativism are of European origin. However, both are adapted and adopted by non-western societies and therefore cannot be considered exclusively western.

The European origin of human rights is a historical fact, from the intellectual fervor of the Enlightenment and the socio-economic and political transformation that brought forth the capitalist market system and the nation-state, the human rights tradition developed to combat threats to human dignity and curb excesses of arbitrary power. However, as Donnelly argued, “cultures are immensely malleable” and the development of human rights stemmed more from the problems inherent in modernity than the uniqueness of pre-modern Western culture. The spread of capitalism and nation-state has led to similar threats to human dignity worldwide, in light of this, human rights as conceived of in the Western world have developed a level of functional universality and need not be grounded in universal anthropological and ontological claims. The fact of cultural relativity does not necessarily attain normative power; cultural relativism is often the maladaptive response to failures to extend human rights. Moreover, the use of human rights discourse to resist Western power and the spread of non-Western human rights organization further bolster the argument that human rights are not an inherently Western construct, despite their historical origins.

Bibliography.

Donnelly, Jack. (2007), “The Relative Universality of Human Rights”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 281-306.

Cmiel, Kenneth. (2004), “The Recent History of Human Rights”, American Historical Review, Vol. 109, No. 1, pp.117-135.

Goodhart, Michael. (2008), “Neither Relative nor Universal: A Response to Donnelly”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 30, No.1, pp. 183-193.

Ishay, Micheline. (2004), “What Are Human Rights? Six Historical Controversies”, Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 3. No. 3, pp.359-371.

Pegram, Thomas. (2010), “Diffusion Across Political Systems: The Global Spread of National Human Rights Institutions”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 3., pp. 729-760.

“No Maps for These Territories”

2011-03-06T04:08:00.000-08:00

Traversing through cyberspace today, I came across a little gem “No Maps for These Territories” featuring the man who coined the term cyberspace, cyberpunk novelist William Gibson. It’s a meditation on our nature as ‘mediated’ human-beings, the extent of technological saturation in our quotidian lives and our desire to produce extended networks of prosthetics. Not to mention, he delves into the process of writing and the nature of fiction, of the relationship between our conscious self and the unconsciousness. Well worth the watch, enjoy.

EDIT: The youtube user who had hosted this removed it. However, here is the trailer:

"Should The Bible Be Taught To Children?"

2011-02-26T20:52:00.000-08:00

I saw this one on PZ Myers’s blog and I had to share it around. Wonderful to see someone so young engage in some critical thinking. It warms my heart.

A Tortoise Meandering Around on a Balcony.

2011-02-13T04:55:00.000-08:00

What’s the Aesopian insight of this little clip? It's perhaps the greatest film on YouTube. Except perhaps for this clip, which is essentially Vice magazine in motion.

My channel: Subjectivity101.

Michael Hudson on Reagan.

2011-02-07T21:21:00.000-08:00

Michael Hudson delivers a brilliant cutting analysis of Reagan’s economics, reform of the tax system and post-Reagan class war in the United States. If you haven’t seen or heard of “The Real News Network”, you should most definitely take a look. They provide a hardnosed and progressive take on contemporary events, vastly removed from the flippancy of much cable news analysis.

-Previously on “A Night of Dostoevskian Smiles and Sadean excesses”, take a look at “Minsky and The Financial Crisis”.

2011-02-07T04:49:00.000-08:00

The picture is of a pro-Wikileaks protest in Sydney. I don’t know who took the photo. The angle of the shot,the interplay of foreground and background, and the fact that everyone seems to be animated and smiling endear this picture to me.

2011-01-30T18:33:00.000-08:00

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
~William Shakespeare, "Hamlet" Act 1 scene 5

Tariq Ali on The History of Pakistan.

2011-01-19T07:50:00.000-08:00

"Harry Kreisler welcomes writer and journalist Tariq Ali for a discussion of Pakistan and its relations with the United States. He places the present crisis in its historical context exploring the origins of the Pakistani state, the failure to forge a national identity, the inability and unwillingness of Pakistani leaders to address the country's poverty and inequality, and the role of the military in the country's spiral toward violence and disunity. Tariq Ali highlights the significance of the U.S. relationship throughout Pakistan's history and analyzes current US policy and its implications for stability in the region."

Incitement to Murder

2011-01-11T06:33:00.000-08:00

Given the Tucson assassination attempt on Gabrielle Giffords by Jared Lee Loughner, we should all be aware that political discourse tinged with violent innuendo and subtle suggestions have consequences. In the case of Julian Assange many U.S. commentators have openly called for his assassination. This site here catalogues many individuals who have called for, or suggested, violence against Assange (sourced) and it makes for an interesting read.

Here’s a couple of the quotes:

“"A dead man can't leak stuff...This guy's a traitor, he's treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I'm not for the death penalty, so...there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch." – Bob Beckel.

"Julian Assange is a cyber terrorist in wartime, he's guilty of sabotage, espionage, crimes against humanity -- he should be killed, but we won't do that." – Ralph Peters.

"Why can't we act forcefully against WikiLeaks? Why can't we use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are?" - William Kristol

I wonder: who should be prosecuted?

Julian Assange Interview With Cenk Uygur.

2010-12-23T11:05:00.000-08:00

From all the recent Assange interviews I’ve seen, I would recommend this one with Cenk Uygur- essential viewing.

Here is the transcript of the interview.

Portion of Transcript:

"CENK: Well Julian I want to get to as much as possible here so I want to give you a chance to respond one by one to your critics, first to Mitch McConnell who is of course the leader of the Republicans in the Senate and to Joe Biden who both said that called you a high tech terrorist how do you respond to Joe Biden the Vice President of the United States saying that to you?

JULIAN: Well let's look at the definition of terrorism, the definition of terrorism is a group that uses violence or the threat of violence for political ends now no one in our four year publishing covering over 120 countries has ever been physically harmed as a result of what we've done. Now that's not just us saying that, that's the Pentagon saying that, that's NATO and Kabal saying that. No one, not a shred of evidence. Now believe me if they could find or even easily manufacture a shred of evidence they would be doing that immediately so it's clear that whoever the terrorists are here it's not us. But we see constant threats from people, Republicans in the Senate trying to make a name for themselves, to people like Sarah Palin to Shock Jocks on Fox and unfortunately some members also of the Democratic party calling for my assassination calling for the illegal kidnapping of my staff and just a few days ago on Fox that was the phrase that was used "illegal, he should be illegally murdered if necessary, assassinated by the law if possible if not illegally" what start of message does that send about the rule of law in the United States? That is conducting violence in order to achieve a political end the elimination of this organization or the threat of violence to achieve a political end the elimination of a publisher and that is the definition of terrorism.

CENK: Now I want to give you a chance to respond personally though because here Mike Huckabee is making it very personal you saw that quote we had up, he says "I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty for you" Sarah Palin saying that you are like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and that you should be pursued with the same urgency so how would you respond to Mike Huckabee who is a top Republican leader, likely to run for President again. How would you respond to Sarah Palin, top Republican leader who might run for President again?

JULIAN: Oh it's just another idiot trying to make a name for himself, but it's a serious business I mean if we are to have a civil society we cannot have senior people making calls on national TV to go around the Judiciary and illegally murder people that is incitement to commit murder that is an offense you cannot have senior people on national TV asking people to commit an offense. That is not a country that obeys the rule of law. Does the United States obey the rule of law, because Europeans are starting to wonder whether it is still obeying the rule of law and it needs to be very careful is it going to descend into an anarchy where we don't have due process where those great Bill of Rights traditions about due processes thrown to the wind whenever some shock jock politician just thinks that they can use it to make a name for themselves? Or do we take things according to laws expressly made by the people and their representatives that is the way things should be done and when people call for illegal deliberate assassination and kidnapping of others they should be held to account they should be charged for incitement to commit murder."

Speeches in Support of Wikileaks.

2010-12-19T08:35:00.000-08:00

Here is a series of speeches in support of Wikileaks, from rallies held at Sydney Town Hall on the 10th and 14th of December, 2010.

Greens Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon, Sydney on Friday 10 December.

This speech is by Keith Dodd, an American IT worker. Again, 10th of December.

Green Left Weekly's Simon Butler, 10th of December.

Professor Stuart Rees, Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, addresses a crowd in Sydney for the second rally in support of Wikileaks and Julian Assange held on Tuesday 14th of December.

I Found this speech particuarly interesting. Director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism Professor Wendy Bacon addresses a crowd in Sydney for the second rally in support of Wikileaks and Julian Assange held on Tuesday 14th of December.

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More can be found here. And here.

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Remember:

Next Rally for Wikileaks in Sydney, 15th of January, 1pm at Town Hall

Michael Moore on Wikileaks.

2010-12-15T11:25:00.000-08:00

Wikileaks Rally, Sydney.

2010-12-15T05:42:00.000-08:00

This clip is of a protest in support of Wikileaks in the Australian city of Sydney, on the 14th of December 2010. I was present at the march. You can see quite clearly that the police started to attack the protestors after blocking their path off the road. There is another protest in support of Wikileaks planned for Sydney on the 15th of January, at Town Hall at 1p.m. This is an extremely important issue. Whatever reservations one might have over specific wikileaks releases, this case will be a defining moment for freedom of information and freedom of press in the information age. Wikileaks did not steal or solicit classified documentation; it merely published the material in collaboration with mainstream media outlets. It is a media organization and should be protected from persecution.

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Sign this online petition against any extra-judicial campaign against Wikileaks and to support due process and the rule of law.

The Australian group 'Get Up!' has organized a campaign to buy advertisement in the New York Times in support of Wikileaks and condemnation of those who have called for violence against, Australian citizen and Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange. You can sign a petition in support and donate: here.

Carbon, Tradable permits and Pigouvian Taxes.

2010-09-30T08:29:00.000-07:00

The Stern Review of the Economics of Climate change has identified greenhouse gas emissions as the greatest market failure in history. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are a leading cause of climate change and have been targeted by government and non-governmental organizations as an area of grave policy concern. Policy proposals to ameliorate CO2 emissions have centred around two broadly based methods: “ economic instruments” and “command and control regulations”. The adoption of economic instruments to regulate the problem of CO2 emissions can entail either the introduction of market mechanisms to price emissions and allocate the right to emit limited quantities of CO2, or price-based instruments such as tax regimes and subsidies. Command and control regulations are policies that involve direct government interventions into the forms of practices surrounding CO2 Emissions, from technological standards to performance targets. The mainstream economics literature on policy instruments has largely been couched in terms of economic efficiency according to the marginalist principles. Conversely, ecological economics has developed in contrast to the neoclassical approach and preferences the requirements of the ecological system above that of economic efficiency. The environmental economics case for an emission trading system and carbon permits faces two broad stumbling blocks. Firstly, from within neoclassical economics there is the case for command and control regulation or a hybrid policy that combines such regulation with economic instruments and secondly, theories developed outside of the neoclassical paradigm question its validity with regards to ecological sustainability.

In environmental economics, the problem of externalities and the issue of carbon emissions are often approached from two divergent perspectives influenced respectively by the work of Arthur Pigou and Roland Coase. Both advocated the use of economic instruments to reconcile social and private goods and overcome market failure. However, the tradition stemming from the work of Pigou heavily favoured price-based instruments (i.e. taxes) and the tradition that derives from the work of Coase favoured quantity-based instruments (i.e. tradeable permits). The relative merits of price and quantity based instruments have been a central nexus of environmental policy debates within neoclassical informed discourse. Prior to the work of Coase, Pigou’s position taken in The Economics of Welfare generally informed the discussion of environmental externalities.

Pigou’s approach to internalizing environmental externalities was by the imposition of a tax equal to the marginal social cost of the externality. The standard example of this, according to Coase, was of a factory emitting smoke that affected nearby residences. From the principle of polluter pay, central to Pigouvian taxes, the solution is to make the factory liable for the damages. However, from the perspective employed by Coase, this is not necessarily the most economically efficient solution to the problem of environmental externalities. The clear delineation between offender and victim that is exemplified in the polluter pay principle is therefore not unproblematic in Coase’s treatment of externalities. He argued that the problem was essentially reciprocal in nature. From Coase’s viewpoint, the above factory example is not merely a matter of the factories effect on the residences, but also the effect of the residences on the factory. Economic activity is often associated with positive and negative externalities; pollution from the Coasean perspective implies both utility and disutility. Therefore, with regards to externalities, the economic problem as conceived by neoclassical economics still applies: “how to maximise the value of production?” Coase’s proposed solution to the problem of externalities and imbalances between marginal costs and marginal benefits caused by such market failures is to introduce tradeable property rights to price and allocate resources efficiently. Emissions trading schemes are informed by the logic of Coase’s argument for tradable property rights and an economically efficient method to internalize environmental externalities.

The selection between quantity based and price based instruments to deal with environmental externalities is often defined by the nature of the externality. The cost associated with abetment and the social costs associated with the continued market failure at different levels of production have to be taken into account. Moreover, uncertainties with regards to the underlying scope of the externalities and information asymmetries within the market place and governmental bodies influence the policy instruments selected. Martin Weitzman’s work on the relative merit of price and quantity based instrument influenced the Stern Review on merit of adopting quantity based instrument such as emissions trading scheme to abate global climate change. Weitzman had concluded that price based instruments are beneficial when the price of mitigation is more pertinent than quantity of pollution. Conversely, when the cost of increased pollution levels outweigh the relative cost of abetment quantity based-instruments are preferable. The prospect of global climate change caused by the proliferation of greenhouse gasses and the resultant greenhouse effect renders the level of emissions crucial. Increased levels of CO2 emissions could lead to tipping points and feedback loops that could drastically increase global temperatures that would adversely impact numerous ecosystems. Consequently, given the cost of increasing emissions, quantity based instruments have been recommended to mitigate the market failure of CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gasses.

The economic arguments rendered by Coase and Weitzman in favour of quantity based instruments to that of Pigouian taxes are augmented by a theory of government failure. F.A. Hayek argued for the superiority of the market in conditions of imperfect information. When conditions of imperfect completion prevail, the determination of economic organization rests upon the ability to efficiently utilize information. From Hayek’s perspective, the implementation of Pigouvian taxes would require that governments have information of the individual production functions of firms. Whereas, by employing quantity based instruments, governments can set the level of desired outputs and allow the firms to find the most cost-efficient method of production. The economic rationale for the adoption of quantity based instrument, such as the tradable carbon emissions permit, is that they theoretically provide the most cost effective and least uncertain method of internalizing environmental externalities.

Tradable permit schemes have been successfully adopted to deal with negative environmental externalities in the past. In 1990, the United States’ legislature passed amendments to the clean air bill which established an emissions trading scheme for the emission of sulphur that had lead to widespread acid rain in the 1980s. The stated goal of the scheme was to reduce sulphur emission by 10 million tons annually through the gradual reduction of permit allowances. Before the introduction of the program, prices per allowance were predicted at $300 per permit, the actual average cost early in the program was $100 per allowance. This is evidence that the cost of emissions reduction was miscalculated by planner and that individual firms found a more cost efficient method to reduce emissions given the prospect of having to purchase permits. However, the problem of sulphur emissions and the issue of global climate change differ considerably in scope.

In mainstream environmental economics, the argument advanced either for quantity and price based instruments is crouched in the logic of the marginal principle and partial-equilibrium analysis. This is both a policy benefit and pitfall. Unlike local externalities, such as the smoke from a factory irritating local residences, carbon emissions and the prospect of global climate change affect the entire economy and ecological systems. Both Coase and Pigou’s analysis of the problem of social and private goods are subject to this weakness of scope. However, carbon permits could provide the intermediate means to signal the need to transform the economy to a low-carbon state. The economic case for carbon emission provides a rationale that preferences economic efficiency above that of ecological sustainability. Intuitively, there should be no divergence between these two goals, however, the problem of uncertainty remain whatever policy measures are adopted to address the issue of climate change and carbon emissions.

Bibliography.

Coase, R.H. (1960), “The Problem of Social Cost”, The Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 3, pp. 1-44.

Harris, Jonathan M. (2006), Environmental and Natural Resource Economics: A Contemporary Approach, Boston; Houghtoni Mifflin Co.

Helm, Dieter. (2005), “Economic Instruments and Environmental Policy”, The Economic and Social Review, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 205-228

Hepburn , Cameron. (2006), “Regulation by Prices, Quantities, or Both: A Review of Instrument Choice”, Oxford Review of Economics Policy, Vol 22, No. 2, p. 226-247.

Koldstad, Charles D. (1999), Environmental Economics, New York; Oxford University press.

Mckibbin, Warwick J. and Wilcoxen, Peter J., “The Role of Economics in Climate change Policy”, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 107-129.

Stern, Nicholas. (2006), Stern Review of the Economics of Climate change, Cambridge; Cambridge University press.

La Dolce Vita

2010-09-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

Post-modern Philosophical Martyrdom.

2010-09-23T06:13:00.000-07:00

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An old essay of mine I just found, I find it kind of amusing – in an highly embarrassing way. Originally posted here: http://www.revleft.com/vb/post-modern-philosophical-t38612/index.html?t=38612

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Post-modern Philosophical Martyrdom.

“How unconscionable it is to reproach the master with having a hidden motive behind his insight” Karl Marx, ‘Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy’.

In the age of ‘post-modern’ philosophical martyrdom, writers throw themselves against the jagged edge of absurdity. To demonstrate Deleuze concept of philosophy as the ‘horror of discourses’, post-modernist invoke this horror. A ‘post-modern’ world of narratives with no inherent value, an intellectual ‘Desert of the Real’, a ‘Mire of the Macadam’ as Baudelaire described the 19th century social reality. The Intertextuality (1) not in Barthes view but in Kristeva’s conception in action sees this post-modern intellectual milieu creating and predicating this horror of occult ‘overmen’ which Nietzsche could be proud, though slightly baffled (2).

Michel Foucault defines post-modern as a cultural attitude of critical evaluation of a historical condition; Foucault’s being that of Post-Industrial (3) and Post-Taylorist (4) society. Post-modern is counterpoised with “the will to “heroize” the present” as Foucault defines the ‘modernist’ attitude to Modernity (5). Foucault was proposing a ‘critical theory’ however ‘uncritical’ others have characterised his philosophy. This new critical theory while It claimed to understand “the axis of power” set itself narrow limits:-

“We know from experience that the claim to escape from the system of contemporary reality so as to produce the overall programs of another society, of another way of thinking, another culture, another vision of the world, has led only to the return of the most dangerous traditions.” (Foucault’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’)

The ability to escape, to rapture into world without power is unattainable; certain types of power can be transgressed and transformed. Foucault essay “what is enlightenment?” contains many points worth attention.

A) In not rejecting Enlightenment ideals outright Foucault accepts Kant’s notion of striving to rid oneself of a self-imposed immaturity, the transformation from being a devotee to a free thinker. The process of riding yourself of immaturity in thought is what Kant called the process of enlightenment.

B) Foucault rejects the element of enlightenment that creates universal schemes of transcendence or universal values. Thus Foucault rejects grand-narratives in place of micro-narratives. Foucault wrote “I shall thus characterize the philosophical ethos appropriate to the critical ontology of ourselves as a historico-practical test of the limits we may go beyond, and thus as work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings” (What is Enlightenment?).

C) “Structuralist” was a label Foucault rejected when applied to his work, which is why his is often called a ‘post-structuralist’. His rejection of grand-narratives creates an artificial structure which impedes any attempted Transcendence and transgressing of the barrier of micro-narratives. Thus Foucault’s crypto-Structuralism of micro-narratives is itself a grand-narrative which declares the end of the Marco-process of devolvement and the end of history, the last society.

This philosophy takes the name of ‘critical theory’ but through its ‘critical’ shell it resembles theories noted for their uncritical attitudes and what Foucault would detest as ‘modernist’. Hegel’s aphorism, “What is rational is real; and what is real is rational” encapsulates the uncritical nature of Hegel’s thought and as Marx wrote “Hegel’s standpoint is that of modern political economy” (Marx’s “critique of Hegel’s philosophy in general”). This weakness of Hegel’s philosophy in being an apologist for the established order cannot be avoided with such a system in which its highest aim is “a reconciliation of the self-conscious reason with the reason which is in the world — in other words, with actuality”. Hegel declared the end of history in 1806, the attainment of human self-consciousness highest reconciliation with the absolute (god, reason itself) embodied within the modern state, though he allude to micro changes. Hegel could be considered the embodiment of an uncritical philosophy who ‘heroize’ his historical condition with no chances of ‘grand’ transformation.

Jean-François Lyotard developed a similar system as Foucault; he defined the post-modern attitude as "incredulity towards metanarratives", metanarratives are stories fashioned in a perspective which are used by their creators to assert authority. The Stalinists who declares their parties as the only road to socialism and the “storming of heaven” are constructing a metanarrative to assert their parties dominance and authority. Lyotard considered all grand-narratives and Universalist projects as metanarratives and thus advocated micro-narratives. As Foucault constructed his own structuralism, Lyotard created his own metanarrative.

The restrictive discourse of post-modernist is not limited to Lyotard and Foucault. Jean Baudrillard another French ‘critical’ theorist writes on ‘the end of history thesis’. A similar thesis is held by the neo-conservative Francis Fukuyama. Post-modern ‘critical theories’ differ from the pessimistic praxis detached Frankfurt school(6) critical theories, by lacking the positive dialectic of minimal utopianism and historical imagination, the anthesis of negation the negative(7). Therefore post-modernist with their extreme scepticism towards grand-narratives will remain philosophical Martyrs who throw themselves into criticism and crash against their own creation, a dialogue of universal meaninglessness and restriction, a horror of discourse.

Notes to Post-modern Philosophical Martyrdom.

1)Intertextuality is a term coined by Julia Kristeva in 1966 to denote the interdependent relationship between different texts that quote, allude and generally draw meaning from each other. The use of Intertextuality within modern text is wide spread, ‘the Simpson’ draw much of its hummer from this technique of creating meaning. The ‘New Historicism’ school of literary theory which contends that the meaning of text it to be understood within its historical context, Thus looking to other text of the period to find meaning in the original text of inquiry. This presupposes a form of Intertextuality. Roland Barthes also used this term to refer to different theory relating to literary criticism. The idea that text contains two distinct meanings, a closed meaning traceable to the author and an open meaning depended on the viewer and his hermeneutics of the text. Barthes approach is similar to British ‘New Criticism’ though rejects meaning derived from the author not directly of the text focusing on the viewer.

2) Nietzsche would have been baffled because he believed that creativity derived from reabsorbed sperm, Julia Kristeva though would have twisted his convoluted world. At least we can take contentment in that a man with Syphilis remained celibate.

3) Post-industrial simply refers to societies in which primary and secondary industries constitute a smaller section of the economy compared with the service sector, typical economic structuring of affluent countries.

4) Post-Taylorist refers to the restructuring of management from Taylorist ‘scientific management’ to systems of employee relations which involve more self-activity of workers in the workplace. Elton Mayo through his ‘Hawthorne Studies’ developed a theory of management which stated the need to consider the ‘human’ side of a worker. This lead to less autocratic methods of leadership and the consideration of Human needs within workplaces to a degree though more liberal systems of management are not universal. The development represents a bourgeois reaction in co-opting progressive ideas for the reactionary aim of sustaining capitalism.

5) The question is still being debated if the ‘modern condition’ represents a new stage in modernity or constitutes a post-modernity or even hypermodernity. Marshall Berman conceptualises the modern condition as the continuation of modernity. Arguing that modernity and modernism are not monolithic but dialectical totalities, Modernism and Post-Modernism constitute two cultural attitudes that can be evoked towards modernity.

6) Frankfurt school is a group of heterodox Neo-Marxist scholars, who are criticized for their lack of political involvement focusing largely academic activities and publicists roles. I’ve called Frankfurt schoolers ‘Praxis detached’ because of their limited or non-existent practical engagements in Politics.

7) The Concept of theoretical Criticism or critique implies two parts that of negative and positive. Critical Negativity finds the object of criticism deficient in some form. The negativity leads to the positive which is the affirmation of a value or attribute found deficient in the object criticised. In Praxis negativity manifests itself in negation and the positive manifests itself in the product of transformation. The process of subjective idea transforming into objective condition through praxis involves risks.

Marx and Keynes: The Problems of Unemployment and Crisis.

2010-08-02T05:22:00.000-07:00

Marx's analysis of capital was an attempt to uncover the fundamental laws of motion that govern the capitalist mode of production. Marx differed from many of his contemporaries in that he conceived of capitalism as necessarily dynamic and incapable of homeostasis . This resulted from a complex array of factors, the ultimate source of which is the need to produce surplus-value. Marx claimed this amounted to the “absolute law’ of capitalist production. However, the expansionary impetus of capital is not a smooth linear process of growth and the accumulation of capital is subject to recurrent interruptions and crises. Marx argued that this tendency toward crisis arises from the competition between capitalists and the success of prior accumulation. In apparent contradiction to Marx, Keynes formulated a theory of effective demand that explained economic fluctuations and downturns in terms of insufficient aggregate demand. For Keynes, the causal factor that leads to below capacity economic activity and involuntary unemployment are low entrepreneurial expectations and inducement to invest that result in ineffective demand. Thus, while capitalism has no innate tendency toward an equilibrium of full employment it is not incompatible with the system either. In contrast, Marx held that capitalism required unemployment and underemployment to moderate the demands of labour upon capital. Marx and Keynes, despite some substantive difference of opinion, are not polar opposites in their respective conceptions of capitalism. Differences in political philosophy and technical vocabulary belie many common elements of economic analysis.

In many respects, Marx’s theory of growth was a re-working of earlier models developed by François Quesnay, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. As stated above, the concept of surplus-value is of central importance to Marx’s theory of capital accumulation. The centrality of this notion has given rise to much controversy. However, Paolo Sylos Labini has argued that much of this criticism is confused and can be dispensed with, if it is remembered that the concept of surplus-value largely coincides with the concept of net income developed in the works of Quesnay, Smith and Ricardo and its explanatory power does not require acceptance of the labour theory of value . Labini did note differences; for Quesnay net income consisted of ground rents, whilst for Marx, Smith and Ricardo net income (or surplus-value) is constituted in rent, profit and interest . Marx differed from Smith and Ricardo in that he placed considerable importance upon the expansion of “constant capital” (machines and raw materials that comprise the means of production) and not just “variable capital” (the wage-fund that sustains labour-power) and rent. Marx employed two schemes of reproduction to illustrate the dynamics of economic activity and the nature of surplus-value, constant and veritable capital.

The first of Marx’s schemes of reproduction, simple reproduction, is largely a heuristic tool that models a stationary capitalist economy in which there is no growth. Simple reproduction, heavily influenced by Quesnay’s economic table, helps to define the necessary conditions of economic reproduction. Simple reproduction demonstrates two straightforward ideas: 1) the process of production must also be one of reproduction, and 2) this circular process reproduces the relations of production. The direct implication of simple reproduction is that to maintain economic viability the constituent elements that comprise the process of production must be recreated anew in each cycle of production. Thus, both the constant capital and variable capital required for the next cycle of production must be produced in the last. Marx’s scheme of simple reproduction is often illustrated by sector models. Luigi Pasinetti provides a three-sector model of Marx’s scheme of simple reproduction that contains; 1) a capital goods sector, 2) a wage goods sector and 3) a luxury goods sector. The capital goods sector produces constant capital (C), the wage good sector produces variable capital (V) and the luxury goods sector provides an outlet for surplus-value (S). It follows that in order for simple reproduction to occur, the value of C produced in the first sector must equal the constant capital requirements of all sectors. Similarly, the value of V produced in the wage goods sector must equal the variable capital needs of all sectors. And finally, the value of S extracted from all sectors must be consumed within the luxury goods industry. The assumption that all surplus-value appropriated by the owners of the means of production is consumed in the form of luxury goods is the crucial distinction between simple and expanded reproduction. From the perspective of Marx, his scheme of simple reproduction is an abstraction and leaves aside the issue of accumulation of capital . However, this model demonstrates the circular nature of production that is itself reproduction of its constituent elements. Moreover, the scheme highlights the interrelated nature of production and consumption.

Importantly, simple reproduction can only be maintained when the values that comprise production (C, V and S) are recreated in proportionate quantities. If say, the quantity of C produced in the first sector vastly exceeds the needs of all sectors then the price of C will not reflect the value imbued in the commodities of the sector. Disproportionality between sectors of the economy can result in a form of “realization crisis” if the imbalance is significant enough and within a crucial sector of the economy. Realization crises are defined by the quantitative gap between consumption and production that end in the inability to sell commodities at their value within the market. Crises that stem from a disproportionality between the sectors are only one form of realization crisis. Paul M. Sweezy argued persuasively that disproportionality crises are of secondary importance when compared with realization crises that result from the “underconsumption of the masses”. Marx’s called this lacuna between the consumptive and productive powers of the capitalist mode of production its “fundamental contradiction”. Moreover, Marx argued that: “the conditions of direct exploitation and those of the realization of surplus value are not identical” . In Marxian terms, the rate of surplus-value is determined by the ratio of value embodied in commodities and the replacement costs of production . From this it follows that, the aggregate wages of workers is exceeded by the aggregate cost of commodities. This results in a precarious situation in which the drive for increased surplus-value on behalf of capital can undermine its ability to realize this surplus value in the market.

Similarly, Keynes, in his outline of the theory of effective demand, argued that increased wealth can also increase the gap between the possible production of a society and its actual production. Deficient aggregate demand and the resultant involuntary unemployment form the core of what Keynes called the “paradox of poverty in the mist of plenty”. Like Marx, Keynes had theorized that entrepreneurs (that is, capitalists) are motivated by the desire for profits. Employment of workers is only rational from this premise if the benefits derived from employment exceed the costs of said employment. Expectations of profits are therefore the key determinate in what Keynes called the “inducement to invest”. If aggregate demand, determined in any given society by their propensity to consume and the rate of new investment, is insufficient to achieve effective demand then unemployment and sub-optimal levels of economic activity will ensue. The problem arose, Keynes felt, that the wealthier a given community becomes the harder it is to sustain adequate levels of aggregate demand. This resulted from the inability to of the community to absorb commodities beyond their propensity to consume, that Keynes claimed increased with income, but not by the same proportion. Therefore, new investment has to fill the gap between the community’s propensity to consume and effective demand. However, there is no inherent law that inducement to invest increase in proportion to the existing level of wealth in a society. Marx differed from Keynes, in that; the ability of the community divided between classes to absorb surplus-production was not limited a given propensity to consume, but was derived from its inability to acquire commodities given the narrow basis of their consumptive power relative to productive power.

The contradiction between the consumptive power and productive power of the capitalist mode of production is the result of the drive for surplus-value and capital accumulation. Importantly, the process of capital accumulation does not necessarily reproduce each variable of production in exact proportions. The accumulation of capital, at fist expands quantitatively without qualitative change. This affects the demand for labour-power and therefore increases the bargaining power of workers. Given that profit is defined by an inverse relation to the wage rate, when the latter reaches a point where it threatens the rate of accumulation capitalist introduce technical innovation that displaces labour and relives downward pressure upon profits . Marx’s noted the effect of war demands and legal reductions of the absolute rate of surplus value on the agricultural industries between 1849 1859. At first, it seemed that the agricultural workers had made considerable gains given the shifted nature of supply and demand. However, this quickly gave agricultural capitalist the incentive to revolutionize the means of production. Unemployment, in the form of a reserve labour of army, is a necessary mechanism for the accumulation of capital. However, this moderation of the wage rate functions both ways. Michel Kalecki argued a decline in real wages and therefore consumption can undermine wage-good industries and therefore cause decreased output it not counteracted with increased capitalist consumption or investment for which he saw no necessary reason to assume.

Marx’s conception of capitalism was developed in dialogue with classical political economy that he simultaneously attempted to overcome and absorb. His focus, like much of political economy, was on the phenomenon of economic development and capital accumulation. The circulation of capital and the resultant accumulation of capital is a dynamic process that requires the production of surplus-value above that required to sustain the economic process of production and reproduction. However, this dynamism is subject to contradictions between the productive capacity of capital and the consumptive capacity of labour. As Keynes noted, the gap between the community’s propensity to consume and production becomes increasingly problematic as economic development continues. This derives more so from the inability to the proletariat to consume the products of capitalist production given the extraction of surplus value. In the process of accumulation of capital, whenever demand for labour outstrips that of supply, the wages of labour will increase and can affect the rate of profit. Incentive to introduce labour-displacing technologies then increase and the reserve labour of army is reestablished to adequate levels. As Kalecki noted, decreases in the real wage can also affect the ability of capital to realize their profit and undercut the process of capital accumulation. That is to say, from the perspective of capital, optimal wages are consistent with Aristotle’s ethical aphorism: a mean between two extremes.

Bibliography.

Kalecki, Michal. (1966), Studies in The Theory of Business Cycles, London; Basil Blackwell.

Keynes, John Maynard. (1937), “The General Theory of Employment”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol 51, No. 2, pp 209-223.

Keynes, John Maynard. (1951), The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, New York; Harcourt, Brace and world.

Labini, Paolo Sylos. (1984), The Forces of Economic Growth and Decline, Cambridge; MIT Press.

Marx, Karl. (1986), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol 1, Trans Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Edited Frederick Engels, Moscow; Progress Publishers.

Pasinetti, Luigui. (1977), Lectures on the Theory of Production, New York; Columbia University Press.

Schumpeter, Joseph A., (1950), Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, New York; Harper & Brothers Publishers.

Sweezy, Paul, (1970), The Theory of Capitalist Development: Principles of Marxian Political Economy, New York; Modern Reader Paperbacks.

Nabokov on "Lolita".

2010-06-12T02:40:00.000-07:00

Marx on Religion.

2010-05-21T04:02:00.000-07:00

" The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics."

From "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right" by Karl Marx.

(Pictured: Arthur Schopenhauer and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)

Minsky and the Financial Crisis.

2010-05-17T01:12:00.000-07:00

Hyman P. Minsky’s “Financial Instability Hypothesis” has received renewed interest in light of the current malaise. Minsky attempted to formulate an endogenous theory of financial instability and in this pursuit he focused primarily on income-debt relations and the negotiation between bankers and businessman. This hypothesis is predicated upon the existence of an intricate and highly evolved financial system operating within a capitalist economy. Based upon this assumption Minsky’s hypothesis is a partial explanation of the current crisis. The scope of analysis presented in the hypothesis does not venture to explain the interconnections between the financial sector and the real economy. The increased relative importance of finance and the process of financialization that underlay the current financial crisis are completely outside of the parameters of the financial instability hypothesis. From the perspective of policy formation, explanations of the crisis in terms of both its proximal and ultimate causes inform efforts for an adequate response. To follow this line of enquiry; Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis will be given fuller exposition with reference to different interpretations and extrapolations of his perspective, and moreover the hypothesis will be evaluated as an explanation of the current crisis. Finally, the policy implications of Minsky’s hypothesis will be analysed in light of its explanatory power and in relation to other explanations of the proximal and ultimate causes of the crisis.

Minsky stated that his financial instability hypothesis was developed in large part as an alternative interpretation of John Maynard Keynes’ “General Theory”. He borrowed from economic literature informed by the experience of the great depression and concerned with the nature of boom and bust cycles. Famously, Minsky asked the question: “can ‘it’ happen again?” He answered that ‘it’, another great depression, was unlikely to occur given the role of central banks in the monetary system. However, consistent with the influence of Keynes, Minsky remained concerned with role of expectations and uncertainty in the economy and the possibility of these variables contributing to instability. The insistence of instability stands in stark contrast to the vision of financial markets held by supporters of the “efficient market hypothesis” who conceive of rational actors pushing asset-prices toward their “fundamental value”. From within the Keynesian tradition, Minsky questioned the extent to which financial actors can be construed as rational actors and instead characterized actors as subject to certain attitudinal dispositions and mentalities that affect their decision making processes.

Similarly, Fisher Black, who co-derived the Black-Scholes formula to price financial derivatives, once made the point that: “expectations follow no rational rules”. Minsky’s hypothesis is therefore based upon a psychological understanding of individual actors and their collective dynamics. Alongside of the influence of Keynes, Minsky incorporated the work of Charles Kindleberger on the five stages of speculative bubbles into his financial instability hypothesis. Importantly, the hypothesis is not advanced on an appreciation of subjective elements alone and incorporates an interpretation of over-indebtedness developed by Irving Fisher and the credit view of money developed by Joseph A. Schumpeter. Thus, the central nexus of Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis is the relationship between income, credit, debt and the ability of cash flows to sustain the given level of liability. This relationship is, of course, dependent upon the expectations and impressions of bankers and businessman.

In expansionary economic conditions, where the inducement to invest is strong, businessman are willing to take on debt to finance their investments. Fisher argued that an appetite for debt-fueled investment in buoyant economic conditions leads to economic crisis. Technological progress and new inventions opened up investment opportunities that were expected to return rates of profit in excess of interest rates and the cost of money. Levels of debt increased dramatically; however, the accumulation of debt is not the single factor that results in over-indebtedness. In reference to the early 1970s, David Laibman noted that debt to equity ratios were marginally above 1929 levels and this was taken to be a sound basis to predict an imminent collapse of the financial system. Despite minor recessions and tremors, no major economic downturn occurred within the U.S economy until four decades later. Obviously, the sheer quantitative dimension of debt is not sufficient to explain cyclical downturns and economic crashes. Both Fisher and Minsky emphasized the crucial relationship between debt and income, Minsky took this a step further and developed a tripartite typology of debt-income structures for financial units.

The first debt-income structures for financial units, “hedge financing units”, are characterised by the ability of the unit to realise all of their payment obligations. Higher rates of equity to debt are indicative of hedge financing units. Secondly, “speculative” units are able to meet commitments on interest repayments, but are unable to pay down the principle of the debt from their incoming cash flows. Thirdly, ponzi units are unable to finance either interest repayments or repayments on the principle with exiting cash flows. Ponzi units can only be sustained from the liquidation of assets or the leveraging of more debt, both of which can only ever be stop gap measures. Financial systems that are dominated by hedge units are said by Minsky to be “equilibrium seeking”, while systems characterised by significant portions of ponzi units are said by Minsky to be “deviation amplifying”. Minsky argued that, when conditions of prosperity continue for an extended period of time, the financial system undergoes a qualitative transformation from hedge finance to unsustainable finance dominated by speculative and ponzi units. This transformation is affected largely by the prior success of finance and its effects on the expectations of financial actors.

As Fisher noted, the primary cause of over-indebtedness that underlay the great depression was the existence of good investment opportunities. The abundance of investment opportunities in the 1920s led to financial euphoria and over-confidence, this in turn led to over-indebtedness on behalf of entrepreneurs seeking profitable investment. In Minsky’s terms, hedge finance geared toward the advancement of capital to business operations became increasingly speculative and unsustainable Ponzi finance. Once financial actors realised that the system had become unable to validate current debt levels there was a fall in confidence and the process of debt-deflation and economic contraction set in. The process by which hedge finance is transformed into Ponzi finance via the evolution of expectations has been labeled the “basic Minsky cycle” by Thomas Palley. More controversially, Palley discussed the nature of a “super Minsky cycle” that links optimism within the financial market itself to increased optimism within regulatory institutions. Both cycles help explain the financial dynamics that led to the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in early 2007. Whilst the first cycle has gained wide acceptance, the latter cycle is controversial because its relation to Minsky’s hypothesis has been questioned . Despite this, the super cycle thesis advanced by Palley is clearly inspired by Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis and helps to broaden it perspective with regards to financial regulation.

John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney have argued that by introducing the notion of a “super cycle”, Palley has converted Minsky into “a theorist of a financial long wave”. They contend however, that it is precisely in terms of long-run trends that Minsky’s hypothesis has least explanatory power. To leave aside Foster and McChesny’s criticisms of Minsky’s short-run perspective for now, the extent to which Minsky’s hypothesis adequately explains the proximal causes of the crisis has been questioned. Jan Kregel has highlighted two important short falls of Minsky’s hypothesis when applied to the recent crisis. Firstly, the primacy of entrepreneur-banker negotiations has shifted since the 1980s with increased importance of proprietary trading, and secondly given this, the mechanism by which the financial system degenerated into Ponzi finance was not declining margins of error between liabilities and cash flows as classically outlined by Minsky, but new models of banking operations that were inherently risk-riddled. Kregel placed central importance on the “originate and distribute” methods that bank employed leading up to the crisis . To accrue quick profits by fees and commissions, banks would form new securitised assets and sell them on. The ‘originate and distribute’ model involved a complex set of institutional relationships that Peter Gowan labeled the “new wall street system” that facilitated excessive levels of leveraging via a series of adjunct financial institutions that have been characterised as a “shadow banking system”.

The shadow banking system linked traditional commercial and investment banks to hedge funds and private equity funds. These along with other structured investment vehicle (SIV) provided the context for new financial instruments that hid liabilities and risk allowing for increased leveraging and regulatory escape. Not surprisingly, Minsky had noted the possibility that creative accounting can mask the transition from hedge to ponzi finance. New forms of financial instrument that developed alongside the shadow banking system help facilitate such creative accounting. Credit derivatives, in the form of Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and Credit Default Swaps (CDSs), were two such financial instruments that caused much of the damage to the financial system. Between 2001 and 2006 the total nominal value of sub-prime mortgages increased from $160 billion to $ 600 billion . Banks packaged these loans into CDOs and sold them over the counter (OTC) without a market mechanism to determine the CDOs ‘fundamental value’. Rating agencies, who underwrite CDOs for a fee, would for an additional fee rate these credit derivatives as “AAA”. The complexity of CDOs and the OTC nature of the transitions meant that the financial instruments are extremely difficult to price effectively. This is compounded by the fact that unlike traditional commodity based derivatives the notional value of mortgage tranches was not determinable as the components of any given CDO were not know. It is clear that the over-investment and over-indebtedness that preceded the great depression is qualitatively different than that which precipitated the latest financial crisis. Minsky’s insistence on the primacy of banker-businessman negotiations and the steady decline of margins of error in the transition from hedge to ponzi finance are brought into contestation when applied to the financial crisis of the late 2000s. However, Minsky’s general theorem that extended periods of prosperity bred optimism that lead to over-indebtedness and speculative manias remains valid. Allen Greenspan’s reference to “irrational exuberance” in 1996 underscores this point. The stock market bubble to which Greenspan referred to was overcome by the bubble within real-estate and the financial system layered one problem upon another. While Minsky’s hypothesis remains somewhat helpful for an explanation of the proximal causes of the crisis, he remains silent on long-term trends and the nature of financialization that underlay the financial crisis.

The quantitative dimension of the crisis and its consequences can only be understood with relation to the financialization trend in the U.S economy from the 1970s and with increasing velocity through the 1990s. By the 1990s, financial profits were far in advance of non-financial profits. Keynes’ concern that: “speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirl-pool of speculation” is brought into play when the financial sector grows out of proportion with the real economy. Two general theses have emerged to explain the growth of finance and its correlation with stagnation in the real economy. The issue is that of precedence, either financialization causes stagnation in the real economy by luring capital away from productive enterprise, or a lack of real economy investment opportunities leads to the development of finance to employ surplus capital and generate profits. If the latter, the stagnation thesis, is accepted over the financialization thesis the prognosis is dire. Capital accumulation has reached a point of saturation and the possibilities of productive real economy investments have become scarce. Recurrent financial crises will emerge from the attempt of capital to overcome this underlying over-accumulation. At best, reform can lead only to momentary relief. However, if the financialization thesis is adopted, re-regulation of the financial system is possible and can limit its demonstrated proclivity to instability. The financial instrument that hid liabilities and allowed for the half-conscious slip into ponzi finance could be addressed, along with the regulation of bank and non-bank financial institutions. However, Palley’s extension of Minsky’s financial instability thesis demonstrated that optimism within the financial market can lead to unfounded optimism within the regulatory institutions and therefore the long-term ability to overcome financial instability is brought into question.

Minsky formulated a theory of endogenous financial instability. To construct his hypothesis he drew on the Keynesian tradition, the theories of bubbles developed by Charles Kindleberger, Schumpeter’s credit theory of money and Irving Fisher’s debt-deflation theory of the great depression. He was concerned with issue of the possibility of future great depressions. Minsky’s policy recommendations fit within this tradition and focus on the central bank as lender of last resort and the importance of reflation to fight debt-deflation processes that can lead to sharp contractions in economic activity. Like Fisher, Minsky sought to analyse the financial system in terms of income-debt relations and developed his typology of financial units. He argued that on the basis of prior successes and the extrapolation of these trends, sound financial systems based predominantly around hedge finance can be transformed into speculative and ponzi finance. In regards to the latest financial crisis, the precise mechanisms outlined by Minsky have less applicability than to prior crises. This is linked with institutional changes that occurred in the banking system during the 1980s and the increased importance of proprietary trading and the interconnected web of institutions that formed the shadow banking system that obscured the health of the financial system. On the proximal causes of the financial crisis, Minsky’s hypothesis is moderately useful. Given its endogenous character, the deeper causes of the financial crisis and the process of financialization are wholly unexplained. The nature of such trends and their importance for policy formation are not appreciated by Minsky. Minsky’s hypothesis is partially vindicated by the financial crisis and stands to caution financial operatives and regulators of the continued relevance of uncertainty and expectations in financial markets.

Bibliography.

Barberis, Nicholas and Thaler, Richard, (2002), “A Survey of Behavioral Finance”, Working Paper, No. 9222, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 1-8

Black, Fisher, (1986), “Noise”, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 41, No. 3., pp. 529-543.

Blackburn, Robin. (2008), “The Subprime Crisis”, New Left Review, 50, pp. 63-106.

Fisher, Irving. (1933), “The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions”, Econometrica, Vol. 1, No. 4. pp. 337-357.

Foster, John Bellamy, (2008), “The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis”, Monthly Review, Vol 59, No. 11, pp. 1-19.

Foster, John Bellamy and Magdoff, Fred. (2008), “Financial Implosion and Stagnation: Back to the Real Economy”, Monthly Review, Vol 60, No. 7, pp. 1-29.

Foster, John Bellamy and McChesney, Robert W., (2010), “Listen Keynesians, It’s the System”, Monthly Review, Vol 61, No. 11, pp. 44-56.

Gowan, Peter. (2009), “Crisis in the Heartland: Consequences of the New Wall Street System”, New Left Review, 55, pp. 5-29.

Keynes, John Maynard, (1936), The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, New York; Harcourt, Brace & World.

Kregel, Jan, (2008), “Minsky’s Cushions of Safety: Systemic Risk and the Crisis in the U.S. Subprime Mortgage Market”, Public Policy Brief, Highlights, no. 93A, Leavy Economics Institute of Bard Collage, New York.

Laibman, David, (2009), “The Onset of Great Depressions II: Conceptualizing the Crisis”, Science & Society, Vol 73, No. 3, pp 299-308.

Minsky, Hyman P. (1992), “The Financial Instability Hypothesis”, Working Paper, No. 74, The Jerome Levy Institute of Bard College, New York.

Palley, Thomas I. Palley., (2010), “The Limits of Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis as an Explanation of the Crisis”, Monthly Review, Vol 61, No 11, pp. 28-42.

"True Love Will Find You In The End" by Daniel Johnston.

2010-05-09T05:36:00.000-07:00

" ALL REACTIONARIES ARE PAPER TIGERS"

2010-04-28T07:58:00.000-07:00

"When Chiang Kai-shek started his offensive against us in 1946, many of our comrades and the people of the country were much concerned about whether we could win the war. I myself was concerned. But we were confident of one thing. At that time an American correspondent, Anna Louise Strong, came to Yenan. In an interview, I discussed many questions with her, including Chiang Kai-shek, Hitler, Japan, the United States and the atom bomb. I said all allegedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Wasn't Hitler a paper tiger? Wasn't he overthrown? I also said that the tsar of Russia was a paper tiger, as were the emperor of China and Japanese imperialism, and see, they were all overthrown. U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown and it has the atom bomb, but I believe it too is a paper tiger and will be overthrown. Chiang Kai-shek was very powerful, for he had a regular army of more than four million. We were then in Yenan. What was the population of Yenan? Seven thousand. How many troops did we have? We had 900,000 guerrillas, all isolated by Chiang Kai-shek in scores of base areas. But we said that Chiang Kai-shek was only a paper tiger and that we could certainly defeat him. We have developed a concept over a long period for the struggle against the enemy, namely, strategically we should despise all our enemies, but tactically we should take them all seriously. In other words, with regard to the whole we must despise the enemy, but with regard to each specific problem we must take him seriously. If we do not despise him with regard to the whole, we shall commit opportunist errors. Marx and Engels were but two individuals, and yet in those early days they already declared that capitalism would be overthrown throughout the world. But with regard to specific problems and specific enemies, if we do not take them seriously, we shall commit adventurist errors. In war, battles can only be fought one by one and the enemy forces can only be destroyed one part at a time. Factories can only be built one by one. Peasants can only plough the land plot by plot. The same is even true of eating a meal. Strategically, we take the eating of a meal lightly, we are sure we can manage it. But when it comes to the actual eating, it must be done mouthful by mouthful, you cannot swallow an entire banquet at one gulp. This is called the piecemeal solution and is known in military writings as destroying the enemy forces one by one."

- Mao. November 18, 1957.

Notes on the 'Volker Rule' and the Financial Crisis of 2008.

2010-04-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

The ‘Volker Rule’, proposed by the Obama administration early in 2010, has generated considerable controversy. The two main features of the ‘Volker Rule’ is: 1) a ban on proprietary trading and bank involvement in hedge funds and private equity funds for their own profit independent of their customers, and 2) the introduction of measures to bar the further consolidation of the financial system. Much depends upon the exact wording of the planed legalization, but the ultimate aim is to rectify issues of moral hazard and to mitigate the systemic treat to the financial system posed by reckless financial operations. In terms of moral hazard, the proposed reforms will attempt to demarcate between speculative financial operations and commercial banking operations which are insured by the public. Therefore, according to the Administration’s position, undue risk will not be insured by the public and the costs of which will remain with those who have generated it, thereby reducing moral hazard. Concurrently, financial stability will be further served by the reduction of moral hazard and the interdiction placed upon increased consolidation of the financial system. In an effort to evaluate the proposed ‘Volker Rule’, an analysis of the financial crisis will be rendered, therefore allowing the White House’s position to be compared with prior experience of financial instability and the problem of moral hazard.

The proximal cause of the financial crisis was the increased rate of defaults among holders of sub-prime mortgages toward the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 (Blackburn, 2008, p. 64). The burst of the housing bubble and the free fall of mortgage-backed securities led to a classic liquidity trap. Bank increased their propensity to horde and ipso facto the credit market contracted. The underlying cause of the sub-prime market collapse, which precipitated the wider financial crisis, had deep roots within the evolution of the American financial system and the conditions of the consumption-led and debt-fed growth of the 2001-2006 period (Blackburn, 2008, p. 71; Gowan, 2009, pp. 7-9).

The growth exhibited in the 2001-2006 period was not predicated upon increased levels of productivity, evidenced by the enlarged levels of both corporate and private debt. Between 1997 and 2007 total debt in the U.S. economy grew by almost 100% of gross domestic product (GDP), from 255.3% in 1997 to 352.6% in 2007 (Blackburn, p. 66). Of this, debt in financial institutions grew the fastest with 63.8% of GDP in 1997 to 113.8 % of GDP in 2007, compared with an increase from 66.1% to 99.9% of GDP held by households in the same period (Blackburn, p. 66). This coalescence of debt within the American economy was itself a product of numerous factors, not least of which was the development of pension funds (injection of cheap credit) and the formation of what Peter Gowan (2009, pp. 6-8) has called the “New Wall Street System” that involved excessive levels of leveraging and a series of adjunct financial institutions that have been characterized as a “shadow banking system”.

The first plank of the Volker Rule, the proposed ban on proprietary trading in commercial banks and their involvement in hedge and private equity funds, is aimed at the shadow banking system. However, Paul Volker’s emphasis on commercial banking misses most of this system which is primarily based around investment banks. Senator Mike Johanns responded to Volker’s skewed focus upon commercial bank, he said: “I don’t think the Volcker rule would have stopped the behaviour of A.I.G.” (Chan, 2010). Volker dogged this counterfactual point by stating he wished to foresee future treats to the system and reaffirmed his commitment to end “taxpayer support for speculative activity” (Chan, 2010). The point still remains, however, that the financial crisis emanated from the highly leveraged position of investment banks and the shadowy system of associated financial institutions that facilitated balance-sheet expansion and ultimately debt saturation.

Of central importance to this picture, the shadow banking system was not only founded upon a new institutional framework (often referred to as the ‘lender-trader model’ and ‘prime brokerage model’) that linked traditional banks to hedge funds and private equity funds, but also the proliferation new financial product that dressed liabilities as assets (Gowan, 2009, p. 14). Credit derivatives, in the form of Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) and Credit Default Swaps (CDSs), were two key financial products that caused much of the damage in the financial crisis (Blackburn, 2008, p. 75). Between 2001 and 2006, the total nominal value of sub-prime mortgages increased from $160 billion to $600 billion (Blackburn, 2008, p.72). Bank then bundled these loans into CDOs and sold them over the counter (OTC) to their clients without a market mechanism to determine the CDOs fundamental value. Rating agencies, who often underwrite CDOs for a free, would for a second fee rate these credit derivatives as ‘Triple A’, in terms of credit worthiness (Gowan, 2009, p. 14). The complexity of CDOs and the OTC nature of the transaction meant that they are extremely difficult to price effectively. This is because, unlike traditional commodity based derivatives, the notional value of mortgage tranches was not determinable as the components of any given CDOs were not known (Gowan, 2009, p. 15).

The proposed reforms entailed in the Volker Rule do not address the issue of credit derivatives and the effective pricing mechanism for such financial instruments, a process that fouled up the financial system with toxic assets. Nor does the Volker rule address the issue of leveraging within banking institutions. In fact, in 2004 the Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to effectively render “net capital rule” redundant, therefore allowing investment banks to determine their own debt/equity ratios (Gowan, 2009, p. 15). The thin capitalization that this allowed and the development of high-risk and complex financial instruments combined to cause extreme uncertainty within the financial system and therefore extreme instability. None of the Volker Rule recommendations rectify these underlying issues of financial instability. The attempt to demarcate between proprietary trading and commercial banking activities may decrease issues of moral hazard, depending upon the exact wording of the proposed legalization which remains unknown. The second stipulation of the Volker Rule, the ban on future consolidation of the banking system through a deposit cap, does nothing to address the already highly consolidated nature of the financial system and the spectre of ‘too big to fail’. In many respects, the Volker Rule is well intentioned but wholly inadequate in dealing with either the issue of moral hazard and financial instability.

References.

Blackburn, R. (2008), “The Subprime Crisis”, New Left Review, 50, pp. 63-106.

Chan, Sewell. (2010), “Dodd Calls Obama Plan Too Grand”, New York Times, [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/business/03regulate.html], retrieved: 28th of March 2010.

Gowan, P. (2009), “Crisis In The Heartland: Consequences of the New Wall Street System”, New Left Review, 55, pp. 5-29.

Sketches of Historical Capitalism: From The Protestant Ethic to The Capital-Labour Relation.

2010-04-15T05:34:00.000-07:00

Maurice Dobb’s commenced his “Studies in the Development of Capitalism” with the question of definition. He argued that quite apart from pedantry, questions of definition and definitional stances “ipso facto” implied the implementation of a “principle of classification” and therefore shape the scope of analysis(1).In reference to capitalism, he identified three major perspectives that applied counterpoised principles of classification and causal explanations of historical capitalism. The first popular approach outlined by Dobb, was that of Werner Sombart who attempted to ascertain the essence of capitalism through an appreciation of the “bourgeois spirit”(2). Max Weber followed a similar approach to the problem of capitalism with the proposed connection between Protestantism and the spirit of capitalism(3). The second position, linked capitalism to the separation of production and retail sale with the introduction of intermediaries. The third conception, and the position taken by Dobb, is derived from the works of Karl Marx who defined capitalism as a “mode of production”, that entailed a unique set of social relations of production(4). The adoption of any of these three classifications has the obvious effect of informing historical analysis and the question of capitalist development. Immanuel Wallenstein once argued that, if the accumulation of previously objectified labour-power was the only criterion of capitalism than all historical economic systems could be characterized as capitalist(5). Such a definition would of course, be of little use to explaining the unique social transformations experienced in Western Europe from the fiftieth century onwards.

The development and characteristics of Western European capitalism (and that of the North-American colonies) was a consistent feature of Max Weber’s scholarly output, much of which had been an attempt to challenge and modify the Marxian standpoint(6). Weber identified modern capitalism with; “the rational utilization of capital in permanent enterprise and the rational capitalistic organization labour”(7). He argued that the source of this rationalization was not liberal enlightenment, but the practical rationalism of the Protestant ethic (8). In evidence of his claims, Weber highlighted the social stratification between Protestants and Catholics in many localities of Europe which showed a consistent trend towards Protestant’s attaining higher socio-economic standing (9). However, the correlation between Protestantism and the development of capitalism as posited by Weber is deeply spurious given the historical fact that capitalistic enterprise was first developed in Catholic Italy and later Catholic Belgium before Protestant England(10).

In many respect, the history of Italy between the 12th century and the 16th century is analogous to later developments in Western Europe, though, of course, it diverges in important aspects. During this period, many Italian city-states developed and centralized political and economic power within urban centers, and moreover attained considerable wealth by means of commerce(11). Thus, Adam Smith noted, their wealth was largely predicated upon shipping and the transference of commodities produced elsewhere to foreign markets(12). In this sense, the wealth of these city-states was accumulated upon the logic of merchant capital. That is, money (m) is used to acquire commodities (c) and then sold on at a higher price (m’)(13). Marx expressed the logic of Merchant capital as m-c-m’. Profit is derived by exploiting differences in prices of production between varied “spheres of production”(14). Merchant capital, thus defined, is not directly related to the process of production. However, it had an important role in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, both as a “dissolvent” of feudalism (subject to its “internal structure”) and a fetter upon true capitalist production and social transformation (15).

Increased circulation of merchant capital had two major affects on the dissolution of feudal relation: firstly, the quantitative expansion of monetary circulation allowed for the concentration of monetary wealth, and secondly, the expansion of this circulation affected spheres of production geared towards the creation of use-value and encouraged production for exchange(16).The concentration of merchant capital and the expansion of trade within Western Europe were greatly advanced by the discovery of the Americas and the new path forged to India in the late 15th century(17).However, the expansion of merchant capital was a historically precursor to the capitalist mode of production and not the thing itself. The view that capitalism constitutes merely a commercial system or that intermediates between production and retail sale is the central criteria offer to wide a definition which can be applied from contemporary history back into classically antiquity. Merchant capital functioned to undermine the feudal system, but this was predicated upon the internal weakness of the mode of production as it existed in 15th century Europe.

By the late 14th century, serfdom had largely disappeared in England and the majority of the population comprised of free peasants(18).The historical process that resulted in the transformation of feudal relation of obligation into monetary relation is tided up with the development of towns and the manufacturing of luxuries that allowed the aristocracy to consume surpluses on their own household(19).Aristocratic consumption helped the development of artisan trades and the development of manufacturing curial to the growth of towns and the development of capitalism. Moreover, this increased conspicuous consumption had two other important effects; firstly, the great lord could no long afford to maintain unnecessary retainers and the increased demand for surplus led to the transformation of tenet relations and the improved cultivation of lands(20).The inability of the feudal lords to support the excess population of retainers and tenets led to the formation new class of proletariat unattached to the land(21). This emergence of a new class represented a watershed moment in the development of modern capitalism. Parallel to Marx’s position, Weber had noted that modern capitalism was defined by the organization of labour and the development of permanent enterprise(22).

The socio-economic transformations that led to the development of a new class of ‘free’ laborers within 14th century England is but one element in the development of capitalism. Take alone, this development does not equate to capitalism, in ancient Rome under the republican system there developed an extensive underclass of free labours(23). Needless to say, Rome’s economy was dominated by agriculture interests and the military apparatus that both equated to the prevalence of the slave-system – not capitalism. Historical capitalism is characterized by the relationship between capital and labour. Explanation of this development cannot be rendered in terms of mono-casual theories. The advent of Protestantism cannot explain the complex series of events that fostered the development of industry and capital accumulation. Nor can the exponential increase in merchant capital after the discovery of the new world, taken alone, explain the sudden transformation of Western Europe’s mode of production. Feudalism had already been weaken by internal contradictions that allowed for the development of towns and the emergence of new class of bourgeoisie who’s interests lay in the accumulation of capital along side the proletariat who had nothing to sell but their labour .

Notes.

1)Maurice Dobb, (1951), Studies In The Development of Capitalism, London; Rutledge & Kegan Paul, p, 35.

2)Ibid, p. 332.

3)Max Weber, (1976), The Protestant Ethic and the spirit of Capitalism, trans Talcott Parsons, London; George Allen & Unwin, p. 35.

4)Maurice Dobb, (1951), Studies In The Development of Capitalism, p. 7.

5)Immanuel Wallenstein, (1983), Historical Capitalism, London ;Verso, p. 13.

6)Andre Gunter Frank, (1975), “Development and Underdevelopment in the New World: Smith and Marx vs. the Weberians”, Theory and Society, pp. 431-466, p. 431.

7)Max Weber, (1976), The Protestant Ethic and the spirit of Capitalism, p. 56.

8)Ibid, pp. 76-77.

9)Ibid, p. 35.

10)Andre Gunter Frank, (1975), “Development and Underdevelopment in the New World: Smith and Marx vs. the Weberians”, p. 434; Eric J. Hobsbawm, (1969), Industry and Empire, Harmondsworth; Penguin, p. 37.

11)Adam Smith, (1999), The Wealth of Nations: Book I-III, London; Penguin Group, p. 503

12)Ibid, p. 503.

13)Karl Marx, (1971), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol 3, Edited F. Engels, Moscow; Progress Publishers, p. 326.

14)Ibid, p. 330.

15)Ibid, pp. 331-332.

16)Ibid, p. 327.

17)Ibid, p. 332.

18)Karl Marx, (1988), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol I, Trans Ben Fowkes, London; Penguin Books, p. 877.

19)Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations: Book I-III, p. 512.

20)Ibid, pp. 13-14.

21)Karl Marx, (1988), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol I, pp. 877-878.

22)Max Weber, (1976), The Protestant Ethic and the spirit of Capitalism, p. 56.

23)Karl Marx, (1953), “Marx to Otechestvenniye Zapiski, November 1877”, Selected Correspondence, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, pp.376-379, p 379.

Wisdom was born of a headache

2010-03-25T02:08:00.000-07:00

Wisdom was born of a headache.

Piero Sraffa’s Gesticulation.

2010-03-15T06:09:00.000-07:00

The following quote relays an anecdote with regards to Piero Sraffa and his influence upon Ludwig Wittgenstein. I’ve hear of a similar story in which Wittgenstein was supposedly sent into a tailspin over a cyclist’s contemptuous gesture that he felt belied his work in the “Tractatus Logico Philosophicus”. Anyways, here it is:

“Wittgenstein was insisting that a proposition and that which it describes must have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity', Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And he asked: 'What is the logical form of that?'” -Norman Malcolm. Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. pp. 58–59.

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but Sraffa’s gesture to Wittgenstein is not a proposition. By definition, a proposition is a statement that functions as a truth-claim. Sraffa’s gesture is more akin to a negation and therefore a classic Wittgensteinian logical constant. No?

Nostalgia for Bush.

2010-03-13T00:57:00.000-08:00

In the New York Times, Stanley Fish has published a piece entailed: “Do You Miss Him Yet?”. The central claim of which is that George W. Bush’s reputation is undergoing a slight rehabilitation. The leading edge of a trend that will see him placed somewhere in between the worst and best presidents in history. This, Fish argues, is the result both of the stabilization of Iraq and the faltering nature of Obama’s administration. In my mind, the only rationale for this ostensive recovery (supposed and not demonstrated) is the same impulse that lead the persona of Milan Kundera’s novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” to declare: “[i]n the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia”.

2010-02-03T05:05:00.000-08:00

"If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event - and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed."

—Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Will to Power.

"Albert Camus et le Nihilisme"

2010-01-24T08:10:00.000-08:00

I don’t speak French; I have no idea what he is saying. Presumably something to do with nihilism and absurdity, but I find it interesting to see Camus’s mannerisms and hear his voice. It’s odd, having seen photos of him and imagined from that (and his work) what kind of man he was, to see him move.

Seduction and Panopticism

2010-01-18T19:21:00.000-08:00

Michel Foucault (2002, p. 343) once wrote: “a society without power relations can only be an abstraction”. In contemporary sociology, the ubiquity of power is beyond contestation and forms a fundamental axiom of the field. Beyond this however, the exact nature and dimension of power dynamics are subject to varied interpretations and formulations. Foucault’s discussion of power, disciplinary society, panopticism, and related concepts offer substantive contributions to further studies of relations and economies of power within advanced capitalist societies. The notion of panopticism has enjoyed particular resonance, and contributed to the development of surveillance studies (Simon, 2005, p. 2). Moreover, Foucault’s metaphoric use of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon is a standard reference for theorists who advance the “surveillance society” thesis; such theorists contend that: the primary mechanism of social control in modern society is surveillance and the internalization of surveillance by the population which in turn molds individuals into self-surveilling subjects (Boyne, 2000, p. 293; Yar, 2003, pp. 255-256). Criticisms of this thesis have stressed the importance of “mechanisms of seduction”, that within contemporary society control is largely maintained by “enjoyment imperatives” and not through surveillance (Boyne, 2000, pp. 285-286). Discussion of the so-called surveillance society and mechanisms of seduction draw into question the continued relevance of Foucault’s notion of panopticism.

Through a discussion of these issues, the conclusion to be reached in this essay will reaffirm the importance of Foucault’s panopticism, concurrent with mechanisms of seduction that engender social conformity. Hence, the thesis that modern society constitutes a surveillance society will be rejected on the basis that it over-emphasizes one mechanism of power and social control. Firstly however, to establish a firm basis for this analysis, Foucault’s theory of the formation of disciplinary society and the nature of panopticism have to be given fuller explanation. The backdrop of Foucault’s analysis is the transition away from what Gilles Deleuze’s (1992, p. 3) labeled “societies of sovereignty” that characterized Europe before the end of the 18th century. The model of sovereignty that underpinned monarchal and absolutist regimes were based upon the premise of deduction, the power of the sovereign was asserted through subtractive mechanisms (Foucault, 1998, pp. 135-136).

In the first section of Discipline and Punish, Foucault (1991, pp. 3-6) quilted together a series of eye-witness accounts to the public execution of Damiens in 1757 for the crime of attempted regicide. The punishment was carried out according to a strict symbolism that mirrored the crime; this jurisprudence, Vico had noted, formed “an entire poetics” (Foucault, 1991, p. 45). Through this method of punishment, the sovereign had confronted the criminal on the level of the body, in a purely negative form with an excess of force that demonstrated the supremacy of sovereign power in a retributive ritual. For the moralist and reformer of the 18th century, this surplus-violence betrayed a tyrannical excess and inefficiency in its economy of power (Foucault, 1991, p.73). From the 17th to 19th centuries, there was a series of subtle transformation that modified the state and disciplinary mechanisms. Toward the end of that period, social order was no longer primarily maintained through the spectacle of punishment, but increasingly through surveillance and the internalization of disciplines (Foucault, 1991, pp. 216-217).

The proliferation of disciplinary techniques and the intensification of social surveillance saw the formation of a new economy of power that reduced the costs, economic and political, related to mechanisms of control, whilst maximizing the returns of docile bodies geared toward increased utility and efficiency (Foucault, 1991, p. 218-219). This general confluence of social observation and disciplinary tactics united in what Foucault (1991, p 9) term a general “disciplinary society”. Of paramount importance for the functionality of this disciplinary society was the deployment of panoptical apparatus that served to observe individuals and their interactions. Foucault’s (1991, p.205) notion of varied panoptical apparatuses or a general social “panopticism” were derived from Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, which represented for Foucault “the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form”.

Bentham’s panopticon was an unrealized architectural design. Bentham (1995, p. 31) described his plan as an “inspection house” the multifaceted applications of which could lead to: “morals reformed – health preserved – industry invigorated – instruction diffused”. The two mechanism it utilized to attain these effects was individuation and constant visibility (Foucault, 1991, p. 201). The circular design of the panopticon, with the individual cells arranged on the outer edge of the building allowed for a central vantage point, from which it is possible to observe all occupants and impossible for the occupants to see the observer. Each individual occupant immediately individuated and identifiable, conscious of their constant condition of being under surveillance internalizes their surveillance and begins to regulate their own behavior. Foucault (1991, p. 201) identified this as the efficiency of panopticism it: “assures the automatic functioning of power”.

Panopticism contrary to the Sovereign power, is de-individualized -“a faceless gaze that transformed the whole social body into a field of perception” – it is also “de-institutionalized” and it not centered in the state: church groups, charities, schools and private individuals can all serve as points of social surveillance (Foucault, 1991, pp. 211-214). More contemporary discussions of panopticism and the power of surveillance focus upon the dissemination of technological advancements that function like Foucault’s (1991, 211) “faceless gaze” such as closed circuit televisions or CCTVs (Simon, 2005, p. 6). It is estimated that there are approximately 21,000 surveillance cameras in the United Kingdom alone, it some locals these CCTV systems are linked up with face-recognition program which allow for the individuation of surveillance despite the open dynamics of the space (Boyne, 2000, p. 298). The importance of these new surveillance technologies is undeniable, and their panoptical dimensions are irrefutable. However, this does not preclude the importance of seduction mechanisms in the maintenance of social order.

Herbert Marcuse (1972, p. 21) argued that consumption patterns serve a further ideological function in the maintenance of capitalism rather then merely in the economic sphere. Through the development of mass culture there is a levelling out of contrast, when individuals of hostile social groups attain satisfaction through the same cultural products. This superficial “equalization of class distinctions”, as expressed by Marcuse (1972, p. 21) unifies the population in a desire for ‘needs’, which support the continuance of the establishment. The predominance of consumption and sensation seeking, Zygmunt Bauman argued, is “a condition sine qua non of being amenable to seduction” (Boyne, 2000, p. 298). In Bauman’s view then, panopticism is an outmoded form of social control given the positive incentives and imperatives indicative of conformity to social norms (Boyne, 2000, p. 298). Bauman is right to highlight the importance of seduction, however, panoptical mechanisms are not rendered redundant. Surveillance of individuals is often used in the social manipulation of their desires, advertisers utilize “cookies” to monitor individual internet usage and therefore tailor their advertisements to the observed individual (Boyne, 2000, p. 297). Mechanisms of seduction, therefore, coexist with panoptical apparatus.

Surveillance is a significant feature of modern society, technological advancement have changed the nature of panopticism as exhibited in the late19th and early 20th century. However, given the importance of seduction mechanisms and other modes of control it seems inappropriate and overzealous to describe social order predominantly in terms of surveillance. Marcuse’s analysis of varied consumption pattern’s and there ultimate conservative function underscores the point. Despite this, Foucault’s description of panopticism remains an important contribution to understanding contemporary power relations. In particular, the partial de-individualization of power-relations and the active involvement of the entire social body in exercising the ability to enable or disable modes of behavior – subject itself to the cynical manipulation of privileged discourse and institutions: at which point, seduction mechanisms and panopticism meet.

Bibliography.

Boyne, Roy, (2000), “Post-Panopticism”, Economy and Society, Vol 29, No 2, pp 285-307.

Deleuze, Gilles, (1992), “Postscript on the Societies of Control”, October, Vol 59, pp 3-7.

Foucault, Michel, (1991), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Trans Alan Sheridan, London: Penguin Books.

Foucault, Michel, (1998), The Will To Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, Vol one, Trans Robert Hurley, London: Penguin Books.

Foucault, Michel, (2002), “The Subject and Power”, Power: Essential Works of Foucault: 1954-1984, Vol three, Edited James D. Faubion, Trans Robert Hurley and others, London: Penguin books, pp. 326-348.

Marcuse, Herbert. (1972), One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, London: Abacus.

Simon, B, (2005), “The Return of Panopticsm: Supervision, Subjection and the New Surveillance”, Surveillance and Society, vol 3, no 1, pp. 1-20.

(Written, late 2009)

"People say reading Nietzche (sic) changed me".

2010-01-18T18:58:00.000-08:00

"People say reading Nietzche (sic) changed me".
Drawn by Ann Debono, March 30th, 2007.

"Archaic Torso of Apollo"

2009-11-10T05:25:00.000-08:00

"We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life."

By Rainer Maria Rilke

Herodotus: As Seen On the Train.

2009-11-03T03:14:00.000-08:00

Croesus remembers Solon's point: Call no man happy until he is dead.

On Plato’s Great Love.

2009-11-02T05:10:00.000-08:00

Aristophanes, the Athenian comedic playwright is famous for lambasting politicians during the Peloponnesian war. But also according to Plato’s “Symposium” he put forth a theory of love, in a short mythopoeic narrative. Expressing the idea that human-beings are inherently incomplete, wanting for another individual who represents their other half. This theory was counterpoised with several other conceptualizations of what constituted love. Socrates in the “symposium’’ also postulated a conception of love advocating that love constituted the “desire for perpetual possession of the good”. The purpose of this paper will be to render an account of both Aristophanes and Socrates account of love in more detail. Furthermore discussing the contention between the two theories and critically evaluating which if at all these theories adequately elucidate the nature of love.

The story delivered by Aristophanes started with the idea that originally human-beings had three genders (Plato, 2005, p 26). There were males born of the sun, women born of the earth and the androgynous a mix of the two born of the moon. These early human-being were quite different from their current incarnation, having two of everything, two faces, two pairs of legs (Plato, 2005, p. 27). These human-beings were according to the myth stronger and more ambition and tried to assault the Olympian gods. Zeus desiring the continued worship of the gods refrained from destroying the human race for their insolence. Deciding upon another form of punishment, that of cutting the humans in half. Creating individuals who are merely half of a whole Zeus designed these individuals with more weakness, deficient in their isolation and incompleteness.

To overcome this isolation and deficiency individuals sort the company of another. Sex was invented for the reproduction and propagation of the human-race but also to overcome the sense of alienation. Aristophanes claimed sex had this second function not only in heterosexual relations but also homoerotic liaisons. Homosexuality comes about from those who were split from either male or female wholes. Heterosexual individuals were split from the androgynous whole. Each individual therefore searches to find their perfect match, their other half to gain completeness. Aristophanes claims this desire as a human universality of condition, everyone wishes for a perfect union with their own natural counterpart. Love is therefore according to Aristophanes, the volition to become whole.

When Socrates gives his account of love, he reiterates the position of Diotima whom taught him “the ways of love” (45). Diotima communicated the dimensions of love through a narrative about its creation. According to this story, Poverty wishing to alleviate her condition decided to sleep with Resource. The prodigy of this union was love; love gained its nature from the dual characteristics of its parents. From Poverty love inherited that quality of always being in need and from resource love schemes after that which is beautiful (Plato, 2005, p 49). The short story elucidates the nature of lack and desire within loves dynamic as expressed by Diotima’s theory. Love is not itself an object of desire but a desire for an object. The object of loves desire is that which is good. Diotima counters the theory which Aristophanes represented by arguing that we love another not because they constitute our other half but rather because they have the quality of being good (Plato, 2005, p.52).

The possession of the good and the beautiful is taken by Diotima as the definition of happiness (Plato, 2005, p. 47). Pushing this idea further in their didactic dialogue, Diotima proposes that individuals should wish to posses the good forever (53). As consequence of this, particular actions must be taken in order to perpetuate the possession of the good. Love as a result of this logic gains a function, giving birth to beauty both of mind and body (53). Sexual intercourse is therefore a manifestation of this love; procreation is how human-beings attain immortality and therefore perpetuate their possession of the good (54). This procreation functions not only through somatic means but also through mental procreation.

Mental procreation is therefore another way to attain immortality. Lycurgus and Solon creators of the Spartan and Athenian constitution respectively have gained “fame immortal” by the proliferation of virtue, a mental quality (Plato, 2005, p. 59). Diotima went as far to postulate that there is a hierarchy of goods. The lowest form of good is the beauty of the body; one should then turn towards higher goods in the mental realm if one is capable (Plato, 2005, p. 60). The highest form of beauty put forth by this theory put it beyond the realm of “human flesh” and “moral rubbish’’ (Plato, 2005, p.62). Platonic love at its highest manifestation turns away from the world, towards an abstract idea. This idea is only known to “god” the source of our polluted copy, we cannot grasp the original (Plato, 1987, p. 260). Camus argued against this conception of love inverting its hierarchy claiming “those who love truth should seek for love in marriage” further denoting the later as “love without illusions”(1979, P. 271). This partial criticism of platonic love demonstrates its inadequacy when attaching to the natural phenomena of love a religious dimension and hierarchy of forms.

The two theories of love have been elucidated; the theory held by Socrates is implicitly a critique of the theory put forward by Aristophanes. Aristophanes held that we love another for the unique singularity that they are, as they constitute our other half. Love is the desire to attain a connection with that other half and gain completeness. This theory renders the nature of isolation and feelings of alienation which is not captured in Socrates theory. But Aristophanes is severely critiqued by Socrates, when Diotmia argued that we do not love another for their unique singularity but rather the qualities which made them beautiful. This theory at first seems more practical and therefore adequate in explaining the nature of love and attraction, the desire for the good. But it’s hierarchy of forms is lacking. Because it preferences an abstract ideal above all worldly things. It is furthermore an abstraction which cannot be known, which renders this component of the theory superfluous even dangerous if we follow Camus reasoning that it constitutes illusion.

Bibliography

Camus, A. (1979), “Notebook iv”, Selected Essays & Notebooks, Ed & Trans Thody, P. Penguin, Ringwood

Plato, (2005), Symposium, Trans Gill, C. & Desmond, L. Penguin, St Ives plc.

Plato, (1987), The Republic, Trans Lee, D. (2nd ED), Penguin, St Ives plc.

---
(written early 2007)

Ernest Hemingway's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

2009-10-28T02:12:00.000-07:00

Hemingway didn’t deliver his own acceptance speech. He had been seriously injured in Africa and couldn’t attend. This recording was supposedly made years later in Cuba.

Book Review: 'A Moveable Feast'.

2009-10-27T21:14:00.001-07:00

The first time I tried to read Hemingway I ended by throwing the book across the room. It wasn’t until I read ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ that I started to appreciate Hemingway’s work. ‘A Movable Feast’, unlike ‘A Farewell to Arms’, didn’t end up in the far corner of the room. There is a certain emotional authenticity in his sketches of Paris between the wars. I particularly enjoyed the anecdotes and observations made of Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald, which are the most developed characterizations of the memoir. The notion of “the lost generation” and Hemingway’s meditation upon Stein's point was poignant and Fitzgerald’s problems with measurement left me in stitches.

This new edition contains a lot more than earlier editions, but is not without controversy as to certain editorial alteration. Supposedly, some remarks that are uncomplimentary to Hemingway’s first wife Hadley have been removed. Nevertheless, this is still a great and evocative read.

Alabama - John Coltrane.

2009-10-02T00:17:00.000-07:00

blur

2009-10-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

Žižek on Cultural Studies.

2009-09-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

“Some moths before writings this, at an art round table, I was asked to comment on a painting I had seen there for the first time. I did not have any idea about it, and so I engaged in a total bluff, which went something like this: the frame of the painting in front of us is not its true frame; there is another, invisible, frame, implied by the structure of the painting, and these two frame do not overlap – there is an invisible gap separating the two. The pivotal content of the painting is not rendered in its visible part, but is located in this dislocation of the two frames, in the gap that separates them. Are we, today, in our post-modern madness, still able to discern the traces of the gap? Perhaps more than the reading of a painting hinges on it; perhaps the decisive dimension of humanity will be lost when we lose the capacity to discern this gap…to my surprise, this brief intervention was a huge success, and many following participants referred to the dimension in-between-the-two-frames, elevating it into a term. This very success made me sad, really sad. What I encountered here was not only the efficiency of a bluff, but a much more radical apathy at the very heart of today’s cultural studies” - Slavoj Žižek, from "The Universal Exeption".

The “New Capitalism” and The “Dialectics of Failure”.

2009-09-17T02:35:00.000-07:00

In recent years there has been a spate of news reports on the ‘new economy’, the shifts in corporate structure and the resultant transformations in the nature of employment. Richard Sennett, in a series of works on the culture of “new capitalism”, has attempted to map the connection between large-scale trends in corporate structure and the employee’s experience of work and self. The operational logic of this new capitalism isn’t new; for Sennett (1997, p. 161) the novelty lies in the innovative organizational structure of business, which seemingly flouts Marx’s thesis that the concentration of production goes hand-in-hand with the concentration of capital. In the world of new capitalism, once stable corporate bureaucracies have become increasingly “flexible” and “highly mobile” enterprises, ultimately less secure in their position (Sennett, 1997, p. 161). In turn, Sennett argues, work has become subject to recurrent metamorphoses, engendering more uncertainty and instability in the workforce. An image in stark contrast to Weber’s (2008, p. 245) “iron cage”, were individuals born into the “technical and economic conditions of machine production” found their lives determined by the “mechanism” of capital accumulation. This almost Sisyphean fate had some positive aspects; it provided a measure of certainty for the worker. Their relatively secure position ensured a sense of usefulness and purpose. Sennett’s ultimate concern in his analysis of the new capitalism is the extent to which this picture has changed, the extent to which the modern worker is subject to uncertainties, haunted by uselessness and unable to gain a sense of purpose and coherent selfhood from work.

The backdrop to Sennett’s analysis is the shift from the fordist model of industrial production, to the post-fordists employment structures that developed after the collapse of the post-war boom. The French political economist, Alain Lipietz (1997, pp. 2-3), has argued that Fordism can be construed in essentially three different related ways: 1) as an “industrial paradigm, 2) as a “regime of accumulation”, and lastly 3) as a “mode of regulation”. In terms of industrial paradigm, Fordism combined the scientific management of Fredrick Taylor and the technological advancements of mechanization. The application of scientific management involved a demarcation between the organization of production and the process of production itself. Routines were formalized and carried out according to preset outlines. The gains in productivity which resulted from the fordist principles of organization formed the basis for a new regime of accumulation. Increased profit provided the basis for more financial investment, and the increased wages ensured higher levels of aggregate demand. British Historian, Eric Hobsbawm (2006, pp. 263-4), identified the spread of these fordist principles, both to divergent industries and to foreign counties as a crucial pillar underpinning the post-war “golden age”. Finally, Lipietz posited (1997, p3), Fordism constituted a “mode of regulation”, were the capital-labour relation was subject to a process of “contractualization” and there developed a system of rules that moderated employer and employee interests.

The mode of regulation indicative of Fordism placed heavy controls on redundancy and wage rates, locking Capital into a series of obligations towards labour. For Zygmunt Bauman (2000, pp. 144-5), the underlying ideal of Fordism was the melding together of labour and capital by the “mutuality of their dependency”. Henry Ford, from whose name the term Fordism is derived, famously introduced the five dollar day. This constituted a raise of twice the amount previously on offer at the Ford Motor Company. In Ford’s own explanation, he merely wished his employees the ability to purchase the cars they produced. However, many commentators have rejected this justification as tongue-in-cheek and point to the high level of labour mobility and the need to retain staff. The increased retention of staff and the reduction of labour mobility, allowed Ford to benefit from a relative stable workforce and minimize the cost associated with training new workers on a regular basis.

Given the fordist propensity to lock labour into long-term arrangements, the prospect of life-long employment was not only a possibility, but a probability often confirmed by experience. Bauman (2000, 146) characterized the frame of mind, typical under Fordism, as a “long-term mentality”. Whereby, the “time horizons” in question seemed expansive, often out-striping the lives of individuals. For the employee, life-long employment with the single company was not unheard of, and for the employer they often felt as if they were contributing to a family legacy beyond themselves. Fordism, in its tripartite manifestation, provided the institutional framework to sustain a somewhat “coherent self” based upon the Victorian notion of a life’s work, or purpose (Sennett, 1997, p. 172). Sennett (1997, p. 173) noted that, under new capitalism, the institutional structure that supported the long-term mentality and coherency of self image representative of both the Victorian mindset and fordist paradigm are no longer in place. For both Sennett (1997, p.162) and Bauman (2000, p.147), the shift from Fordism to new flexible organizational structures has caused an alteration in the relation between work and self.

The ‘crisis of fordism’, which had precipitated the cultural dynamics which Sennett attempts to elucidate, was predicated upon a series of economic fault lines that had developed over the course of the long-post-war boom (Lipietz, 1997, pp. 3-4). Throughout the course of the 1960s and 1970s, high-income economies had witnessed a decline in the rates of profit. This trend was associated with a decline in the levels of productivity and the overall cost of labour. The mainstream explanation for the crisis of the Fordism was that the social compact between labour and capital had over-empowered labour and therefore undermined the rate of economic growth (Lipietz, pp. 3-4). In order to surpass the limitations of Fordism, polices of “liberal flexibility” were introduced that slackened employment regulation and undermined social security: allowing for the general destabilization of work (Lipietz, 1997, pp. 3-4).

This general destabilization of work, is the organizational condition that informs Sennett’s (1997, p. 162) thesis that new capitalism is “impoverishing the value of work” by reducing it to short-term engagements that are incapable of forming the basis of a “durable personal purpose”, or a stable sense of self. News reportage on trends in employment often highlight the increased and mounting rates of casual, part-time and self employment relative to full-time employment within the new economy (Kanter, 2009; Bazelon, 2009). These reported figures buttress Sennett’s (1997, p. 166) observations about the increasingly ephemeral nature of work and the attempts of corporate managers to promote a sense of contingency in the workforce. Sennett (1997, p. 166) quoted the comments of an AT&T executive who stated that: “’jobs’ are being replaced by ‘projects’ and ‘fields of work’” with the ultimate aim of promoting a sense of impermanence.

In ‘No Logo’, journalist Naomi Kleim (2001, p. 242) argued that managerial notions of “flexibility” translate into “no promises”. No promises in the era of flexible accumulation have introduced new uncertainties and anxieties in the middle classes, that Sennett (1997, p. 161) asserted were more characteristic of the working classes in a bygone era. Given the continued metamorphoses of corporate structure, driven in part by ever-emerging technological advancements, that often lead to the de-skilling of workers and the ability of companies to do “more with less”, today’s middle classes are haunted by “the specter of uselessness” which for Sennett (1997, pp. 166-167) culminates in the underlying implication of a “dispensable self”. Dislocation from the engine of economic growth, coupled with reference to personal autonomy and individual “informational competence” within the “skill-based economy” forces workers into a double-blind, which denies them control of economic conditions, whilst promoting a sense of personal responsibility (Sennett, 1997, p. 167).

In a recent New York Times article, Sudhir Venkatesh relayed some tentative findings of his current ethnographical work in a series of Manhattan and Brooklyn coffee shops on freelance professionals, who he said exhibited a great sense of guilt and personal failure over their current economic plight (Bazelon, 2009). The self-reports of these freelance professionals have been made within the context of a major economic recession, but this only accentuates trends already observed by Sennett, and moreover highlights his concept of the double blind. Venkatesh’s interviewees have placed the onus of responsibility upon themselves, initiating a sense of guilt and personal failing, despite the overwhelming economic climate (Bazelon, 2009). Kanter (2009) describe how the management of IBM actively cultivate this sense of personal responsibility, insisting that in the current global environment employees continually need to keep themselves relevant to their employers by updating their skill set. In 2007, Sam Palmisano, the current CEO of IBM, talked of a new company program that would credit staff members with educational benefits. The “learning accounts” would reward individual employees for their contributions to the company, but Palmisano insisted that this was not a hand-out; rather, the need for the employee to remain usefull was their own resonsibility (Kanter, 2009).

It is clear that corporations like IBM do not provide the institutional framework required to support long-term mentalities and the sense common under fordist organizational principles of a life-long vocation. Not only does this induce a sense of insecurity and the fear of uselessness, but the lack of institutional cover coupled with the notion of personal responsibility culminate in what Sennett (1997, p. 174) calls a “dialectics of failure”, that place a tremendous burden upon individuals and undermines there sense of self. IBM’s position on personal responsibility and the need for employees to maintain and improve their skill base further exemplify Sennett’s (1997, p. 167) notion of the “spectre of uselessness” and the prospect that economic redundancy is an imminent possibility. This short-term mentality, the casualisation of employment and the reduction of jobs into projects, undermine any sense of loyalty and induce a general sense of uncertainty. In an earlier period, the mode of regulation indicative of Fordism did not alleviate industrial conflict and often facilitated it; however, labour and capital were locked into long-term contractual relations that instituted a relatively stable mutual dependency. The ‘crisis of Fordism’ and the movement toward ‘liberal flexibility’ might be said to have moved capitalism not to a ‘new’ formulation, but out of a momentary metastable social settlement.

Bibliography.

Bauman, Zygmunt. (2000), Liquid Modernity, Cambridge: Polity.

Bazelon, Emily. (2009), “The self-Employed Depression”, New York Times, June 2nd, [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/magazine/07unemployed-t.html?pagewanted=4&sq=Work,%20Flexibility,%20Self&st=nyt&scp=].

Hobsbawm, Eric. (2006), The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, London; Abacus.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. (2009), “IBM and Procter & Gamble's 21st Century Workplaces”, Bloomberg, September 8th, [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/harvardbusiness?sid=Hdd26d1265b97e70baa8bb0101c74dd2e].

Kleim, Naomi, (2001), No Logo, Netley: Flamingo.

Lipietz, Alian. (1997). "The post-Fordist world: labour relations, international hierarchy and global ecology.", Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 1-41.

Sennett, Richard. (1997), “The New Capitalism”, Social Research, Vol 64, No 2, pp. 161-180.

Weber, Max. (2008), “The Protestant Ethic and The Sprit of Capitalism”, Classical Sociological Theory, Edited Craig Calhoun, Joseph Gerteis, James Moody, Steven Pfaff, Indermohan Virk. Carlton: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 229-246.

Miles Davis Quartet - My Funny Valentine

2009-09-13T07:10:00.001-07:00

I’m pretty sure I prefer Davis’s instrumental version to Chet Baker’s vocalized version.

Punk-Style and Sub-Cultural Theory.

2009-09-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

The role and significance of sub-cultural style and its relationship to mainstream culture, moreover its political connotations have been an area of contention within sub-cultural theory. A seminal account of sub-cultural dynamics was postulated by Hebdige who drew on theories from disciplines diverse as Semiotics and Anthropology. Hebdige considered sub-cultural style to be grounded in the re-appropriation and subversion of the mainstream cultural order by alienated groups. This implies that style itself has a political dimension and that sub-cultural style is innately politically challenging (effectively or not) within the power relations of society. The task of this paper will be to shed further light on Hebdige’s theory of sub-cultural style as a form of re-appropriation and insubordination, building up from the theoretical antecedents to an application of the theory to punk subculture. Additionally, I will evaluate Hebdige’s thesis on the nature of sub-cultural style and its political dimensions.

The thesis advanced by Hebdige on the dynamics and significance of sub-cultural style has been influenced by a number of paradigms and theorists including but not limited to; The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, Gramsci’s theory of Hegemony, Barthes’ semiotics and Levi-Strauss’s notion of Bricolage (Nilan, 2007, p. 116; Hebdige, 1981, pp. 101-103). The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies was itself heavily influenced by Antonito Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. That is, that within a class society the ruling class cannot maintain power over subordinated classes by the violence of the state alone. Concurrently, the ruling classes must mobilise intellectual dominance in the form of normalised ideologies (Gramsci, 1988, pp 193-4). Birmingham school scholars utilised the concept of hegemony in explaining the nature of working-class youth sub-cultures in terms of a resistance to hegemony. They saw this class as reacting to social structures which marginalise them (Nilan, 2007, p 116). Resistance does not necessarily manifest itself as a distinct and tangible phenomenon. Are sub-cultures such as punk to be considered legitimate forms of political resistance or are they ineffective and do they inadvertently support the establishment? In response to this, Hebdige built a theory of sub-cultural style borrowing in part from Gramsci and earlier Birmingham scholars as well as integrating the Semiotics of Barthes, among other components.

The semiotic analysis of Barthes (1973, p. 120) was designed as a study of “significations apart from their content”. Arguing that objects have meanings - are “signifiers”, in so far as they are “signified”, to become a “sign”, that is to say, meanings are encoded upon an object rather then meaning being intrinsic to objects (Barthes, 1973, pp. 120-121). The cultural order of represented meanings is therefore a system of signs. Barthes argued that in modern Bourgeois society, cultural systems of representation are constructed to present Bourgeois society as natural and inevitable. He termed this the attempted presentation of the “immobility of nature” (Barthes, 1973, pp. 162-163). Hebdige (1981, p. 102) conceptualized sub-cultural style as an activity of subverting this ‘natural’ cultural order through a process of re-contextualizing. That is, removing objects from there traditional location and assigning new meanings in place of old connotations.

The Bricolage theory was a concept advanced by Levi-Strauss and featured in Hebdige’s work. Bricolage refers to the systems of meanings represented in objects that can be re-worked and re-contextualized spontaneously to produce new meanings and forms of understanding communicated between participants (Hebdige, 1981, p.103). According to Hebdige, style as a collection of diverse elements and objects brought together from a variety of sources to communicate meanings is a form of Bricolage. The sub-cultural Bricolage, according to Hebdige (1981, p. 103) is both an enterprise of “conspicuously refused” forms of consumption, and simultaneously a culture of “conspicuous consumption”. This is communicated through the re-appropriation and re-contextualizing of signs (commodities, bodies, etcetera) to produce new significations. Punk epitomized these dynamics, re-appropriating cultural forms and denying others, forming a neoteric mosaic of meanings - communicating oppositional defiance in the face of mainstream culture. This sub-culture hence can serve as an empirical case study, to test the conceptual framework which has been built up by Hebdige from the Birmingham school, Gramsci, Barthes and Levi-Strauss to form his theory of sub-cultural style.

The punk sub-cultural style developed in a social malaise of urban youth suffering from unemployment and marginalization, they reacted by exercising their power to offend and disrupt the social order (Hebdige, 1988, p. 18). “Fuck” and “Cunt”, words eschewed by mainstream culture as highly offensive obscenities were a stock standard of punk lyrics and publications (Triggs, 2006, p. 73). This represents an affront to the cultural norms and practices of the mainstream culture and legitimate language used by the respectable classes. To this end punk “fanzines”, do it yourself (DIY) publications, often had an amateurish feel with spelling and grammatical errors left unfixed to further emphasize their rejection mainstream conventions (Triggs, 2006, p. 73). Rejection of convention was not limited to the intentional ‘miss’ use of language, re-appropriation of cultural signs and the re-contextualization of commodities was a foundational element of punk sub-cultural style.

The safety pin, an object associated with domestication and the family function of social reproduction, was inserted through the ears by Punks, an ironic play on an old sign to present a confronting oppositional stance (Hebdige, 1981, p. 107). This represents both an instance of Bricolage and subversion of the established sign-system; innovation with existing cultural objects and the assignment of new sign-values over old meanings. In this light, Umberto Eco’s phrase “semiotic guerilla warfare” was utilized by Hebdige (1981, p. 105) as a description of sub-cultural style, insubordination and ironic play with cultural signs. This ‘semiotic guerilla warfare’, along with actual violence provoked intense media attention on the ‘youth problem’ (Hebdige, 1988, pp. 18-19).

Symbolic subversion and physical violence provoked a dual reaction from the establishment; the introduction of new social programs aimed at alleviating youth’s dispossession and the importation of new means of crowd control (Hebdige, 1988, p .18). Therefore according to Hebdige (1988, p. 18) sub-cultural style functioned as a method utilized by subordinated groups (racial minorities, working-class youth) to enter into a dialogue with the establishment, making their position into a salient feature of the social body. Consequently Punks rejected their subordinate position within society; this logic leads to a consideration of punk’s political dimension and the politics of sub-cultural style.

The discussion over the political dimension of punk in particular and sub-cultural style in general spans a broad spectrum; from resistance to the establishment to complicity in re-producing social structure (Raby, 2005, pp. 155-156). The Birmingham school of cultural studies saw youth sub-cultures as acts of resistance to the establishment, in terms of rejecting the hegemonic norms of the ruling class (Nilan, 2007, p 116). For other theorists this resistance to the hegemony of the ruling class has resulted in the re-production of the hegemonic norms and power-relations (Raby, 2005, p.156). Hebdige (1988, p.35) argues between these two positions that sub-culture and sub-cultural style represent neither “commercial exploitation’ nor ‘Genuine revolt” but the creation of an independent, insubordinate identity, if only as an ephemeral phase.

A salient example of this punk sub-cultural style is the punk-rock band ‘The Sex Pistols’; this band symbolized the rebellious and anarchic sprit of the Punks (Moore, 2004, p. 315). Malcolm McLaren, the bands manager, presented the history of the band in the film ‘The Great Rock N, Roll Swindle’ as an intentional commercial enterprise aimed at turning teen rebellion into cash (Moore, 2004, p.315). “Post-subcultural theorists” contend that, in line with McLaren’s history, sub-culture style is often imbibed with features of capitalism (Raby, 2005, p. 157). Marcuse (1972, p. 21) argued that the construction of identity through commodity consumption is an underlying ideological grid which unifies divergent elements into the establishment. Punk sub-cultural style in this schema while subverting the existing sign-system through re-contextualizing the usage of commodities still remains complicit in the establishment by the continued commodification of the self.

Sub-cultural style, in respect to its political opposition to the establishment is superficial, remaining on the symbolic level, leaving the fundamental social structures in place. Punk’s sub-cultural style was an expression of political opposition, arising in reaction to the condition of marginalized groups such as racial minorities, youth and the working-class. Hebdige sort to understand the dynamics of punk and other sub-cultural styles constructing a theory of sub-cultural style complied out of a number of theoretical antecedences as shown through the works of Birmingham cultural studies scholars, Gramsci, Barthes and Levi-Strauss. Gramsci’s theory of hegemony established the foundational research parameters by establishing a model of how class societies are ‘harmonized’ not only by means of violence but also intellectual dominance and the creations of a cultural sphere with inherent value biases. Birmingham cultural studies scholars applied this theory of hegemony to post-WWII youth sub-cultures to understand their ‘deviance’ in terms of resistance to the hegemonic norms of the class society. Barthes’s semiotics went further in elucidating the dynamics of sign-systems and the encoding of meanings into objects as forms of cultural representation (and domination), the manipulation and innovation of these sign-system was conceptualized by Levi-Strauss in his concept of Bricolage. Hebdige’s integration of these elements to formulate a theory of sub-cultural style which can be seen in his conception of the punk movement: punks re-appropriated and collated divergent cultural representations to shock, confront and offend the establishment. In a reaction to their subordination they represented insubordination. Their style was political, yet effectively superficial.

Bibliography

Barthes, R. (1973), Mythologies, Glasgow: Paladin.

Gramsci, A. (1988), “Hegemony, Relations of Force, Historical Bloc”, edited by Forgacs, D. A Gramsci Reader, Lawrence and Wishart Limited, Great Britain.

Hebdige, D (1981), Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Metheun.

Hebdige, D. (1988), Hiding the Light, London: Routledge.

Marcuse, H. (1972), One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, London: Abacus.

Moore, R. (2004). "Postmodernism and Punk Subculture: Cultures of Authenticity and Deconstruction.”, The Communication Review, Vol. 7, No. 3: pp. 305-327.

Nilan, P. (2007), “Youth Culture”, Public Sociology: An Introduction to Australian Society, Edited Poole, M. and Germov, J. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin.

Raby, R. (2005). "What is Resistance?", Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 8. No 2: pp. 151-171.

Triggs, T. (2006), "Scissors and Glue: Punk Fanzines and the Creation of a DIY Aesthetic.", Journal of Design History, Vol. 19, No. 1: pp. 69-83.

(written late 2007)

European Cultural Hegemony and Australian Aboriginals

2009-09-06T00:07:00.000-07:00

The relationship between the indigenous people of Australia and their native lands are essential to their traditional culture. The colonization of their nations by Europeans has lead to a destruction of this relationship and therefore of indigenous cultural practices and norms. This process was predicated upon European cultural norms and established a cultural hegemony of European culture over indigenous culture. The effects of this cultural hegemony by mainstream Australia can be observed through a series of social indicators. Therefore these social indicators can be used to demonstrate the nature of cultural hegemony on the indigenous peoples of Australia.

Cultural hegemony is a concept designed by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (Ganguly-Scrase, 2003:55). Gramsci argued that a dominate group, could not retain power by threat of physical coercion alone, but also needed to retain control of the superstructure, i.e. of Ideology and belief systems (Gramsci, 1988: 193-4). The European invasion and subsequent colonization of the Aboriginal nations maintains itself not only through the ‘legitimate’ violence of the state apparatus but in addition through cultural hegemony.

The notion of Terra Nullius which the European colonists used to justify their invasion of the aboriginal nations was based on a western philosophical idea’s of property and ownership. John Locke’s argument that property arose out of mixing labour with nature, coupled with the biblical impulse to “go forth and till the land” justified the colonization of Australia (Yarwood, Knowling, 1982: 15). The Aboriginal’s semi-nomadic lifestyle, which left nature unscarred with symbols of ‘civilisation’ in a western sense did not satisfy the European notion of ownership, leaving the land open for occupation by whoever claimed it.

For the Aboriginals their relationship with the land was not one of ownership as it was for the Europeans. More then just a means of subsistence land held a spiritual and cultural significance (Warwood, Knowling, 1982:15). The struggle over land, because of its economic and cultural significance for both Europeans and aboriginals is the main axis of the conflict. Social indicators, in the form of statistical data provide empirical evidence of this conflict and cultural hegemony of mainstream Australia over the Aboriginals.

It should be noted that the mere fact of statistical information relating to ‘Aboriginals’ as a monolithic entity exist, infers that there is European cultural hegemony. As aboriginals pre-invasion did not identity as a single ethnic category, rather the indigenous population constituted many different groups and tribes (keen, 1993: 220). Bureaucracy is also a European import, a tool used to label and categorise the aboriginals in accordance with European terms.

The European notions of ownership having replaced aboriginal notions of belonging to the land, and therefore aboriginals have been displaced from traditional areas and culture. The devastating effects of this process of colonisation of the indigenous peoples can be seen in the aggregate population levels pre-contact at 314. 500, compared with the lowest levels of 73. 828 (Saggers, 2003: 217). As of 1996 the indigenous population comprises 2.1% of the total population of Australia (Saggers, 2003: 217). The indigenous minority’s land ownership is much lower relative to the non-indigenous land ownership. Housing statistics bear this out when 32.5% of indigenous people own or are purchasing their own home compared to 72.7% of non-indigenous people (Saggers, 2003: 220). The issue of Land ownership and Housing also have consequences for indigenous people in areas such as health because of such things as over-crowding. Indicated when indigenous male life expectancy is 57 compared to the non-indigenous life expectancy 75 years (Saggers, 2003: 220).

Since the Whitlam government there has been a change in policy towards the indigenous peoples of Australia and the notion of Whiteness which had previously defined an ‘Australian’ (Anderson, 2002: 244). The policy shift was from assimilation into mainstream European culture to one of self-determination and self-management of aboriginal affairs (Saggers, 203: 218-9). This change in policy started a shift in thinking which lead towards the development of Native title.

Native Title give the indigenous people of Australia a right to make claim on land once there own. This is an attempt to preserve their cultural heritage, resisting total submission to European cultural hegemony through establishing aboriginal connection with their land. The “Mabo Judgment” which was the landmark case in the development of Native title, overturned the legal fiction of Terra nullius (Saggers, 203: 215). But there has been continued conflict over forms of ownership. To illustrate the problem western Australia is area of 2, 527, 620 square kilometres, only 35% is vacant crown land, 38% of that is pastoral lease along with many other uses of the land (Manson, 1997: 823). As a result only a fraction of possible land is available for claim because of the European cultural hegemony which places the mainstream economic values and notions of ownership over aboriginal cultural norms and values.

The appearance of multiculturalism within Australian society has been criticised as essentially a monoculture because the fundamental British nature of society is unchallenged (Jamrozik, Boland, Urquhart, 1995: 110-1). This includes the mainstream’s relation to the indigenous peoples of Australia which is an expression of cultural hegemony. These Hegemonic cultural norms of mainstream Australia have suppressed aboriginal cultural norms and imposed themselves on the indigenous population, centrally around the issue of Land and ownership. This can be observed through the social indicators, in particular housing and land ownership which has flow on effect as highlighted with Health statistics. The introduction of Native title has done little to change this situation as European norms are still held by Mainstream Australia to be more worthy then aboriginal norms and cultural practices.

Bibliography.

Anderson, W. (2002),The Cultivation of Whiteness, Melbourne university press, Australia.

Ganguly-Scrase, R (2003), “The search for Change: Karl Marx”, edited Jureidini, R and Poole, M. Sociology Australian connections, (3rd ed), Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest.

Gramsci, A. (1988), “Hegemony, Relations of Force, Historical Bloc”, edited by Forgacs, D. A Gramsci Reader, Lawrence and Wishart Limited, Great Britain.

Jamrozik, A. Boland, C. Urquhart, R. (1995), Social Change and Transformation in Australia, Cambridge university press, Hong Kong.

Keen, I. (1993), “Aborigines and Islanders in Australian society”, edited Najman, M. J. and Western, S. J. Sociology of Australian Society, (2nd ed), Macmillan Education Australia , Hong Kong

Manson, A. (1997), “The Rights Of Indigenous Peoples In Lands Once Part Of The Old Dominion Of The Crown”, International & Comparative Law Quarterly, October, Vol 46, pp. 812 - 830.

Saggers, S. (2003), “Indigenous Australians”, edited Jureidini, R and Poole, M. Sociology Australian connections, (3rd ed), Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest.

Yarwood, A. T. Knowling, M. J. (1982), Race Relations in Australia: A history, Methuen Australia, Singapore.

(written late 2006)

Liberalism and Colonialism.

2009-09-05T23:47:00.000-07:00

The first major wave of European colonization was initiated after the discovery of the Americas by Columbus in the late 15th century. The Colonization of these new lands was at first justified by the catholic nations as their duty to proselytize Christianity. Therefore their domination of the indigenous population was alleged to be of a great service to them, saving their souls from eternal damnation. This ‘Civilizing’ project was also used in an adapted form by British liberal political philosophers to justify their nation’s own colonization and empire building. Liberalism is a political philosophy that developed during the age of Enlightenment, noted for its ideals of individual freedom and rights. Two of Liberalism’s most prominent advocates; John Locke and John Stuart Mill supported the practice of colonialism. The rationalization of colonialism by Locke has been argued to represent the bankruptcy of western liberalism and its purported universal respect for human rights. To ascertain whether colonialism does demonstrate the bankruptcy of liberalism it first has to be established what colonialism constitutes and it’s development. Furthermore, liberalism needs to be more thoroughly elucidated with special attention paid to how Liberals justified colonial expansion.

Colonial expansion has a long history within European society. The Hellenic city states occupied a small territorial region. When population pressures increased, a segment of the populous established themselves in another area (Smith, 1991, p.493). The settlers were autonomous from their city of origin, declaring war independently and conducting its own administration. The Roman Republic implemented a modified form of colonial expansion, sending poor freeman to settle colonies with restricted autonomy (Smith, 1991, p. 495). The establishment of colonies gave poor Roman citizens economic opportunity. But they also functioned as garrisons in conquered localities, further expanding the Roman Republic’s sphere of influence. Colonialism came to denote an expansion of one nation’s territorial domination, through settling and displacing natives or directly administering the newly incorporated territory.

European Colonization was justified via ethnocentric conceptions of what is a human-being and how individuals and societies should function. Originally the Spaniard’s conceptualized the Native Americans as non-human; they had human form according to the Catholics but had the nature of beasts and consequently were “savages” (Parekh, 1997, p. 174). This distinction between Europeans and Native Americans, as human and non-human established a racist underpinnings of colonialism. Therefore under this racist ideological belief system the natives had no rights to life or property (Parekh, 1997, 175). During the initial period after European discovery of the Americas, the Spaniards technique for the expropriation of gold was to pillage it from the natives, a process which was totally completed within a decade (Smith, 1991, p. 499). Later Christians started to re-conceptualize the nature of the native population, observing that they had religious inclination and therefore had a human-essence however misguided and imperfect (Parekh, 1997, p. 175-6). The savage’s misguided and imperfect ways were cryptic-Christian. According to this logic, their conversion to Christianity in the proper sense would be an accomplishment of their “deepest aspirations” (Parekh, 1997, p. 177). This European enforcement of what constituted, the proper lifestyle on the natives marked the beginnings of the civilizing project, which was later adopted by liberalism.

A fundamental proposition of classic liberal philosophy is that human-beings are above all individuals, defined by this quality of individuality above collective identities (Heywood, 2002, p. 43). Liberals therefore insist upon the notion of individual rights and freedom to pursue their own ends as far as their action doesn’t impede another individual from doing the same. Governments which employ the tenets of liberalism must base their authority on “the consent of the governed” maintaining “equality before the law” (Heywood, 2002, p.44). When Good Government is instituted, each individual is therefore in accordance with their nature free to pursue their own development and self-actualization. This conceptualization of the optimal form of government is based upon a theory of the individual; Locke considered human-beings to be endowed with certain essential features (Parekh, 1997, p. 181).

The highest quality of human-beings, as postulated by Locke was their inheritance of reason, which differentiated them from animals (Parekh, 1995, p. 83). This hierarchy of beings, between those who have reason and beasts that don’t, was the basis of human dignity. As such human-beings have a duty to utilize their reason, to approach their interaction with nature and other individuals on a rational basis. To be rational according to Locke was to be productive and take advantage of natural resources to there full capacity. The application of this rationality was evaluated by Locke according to ethnocentric conceptualizations of society its notion of; private property, production optimization and political organization (Parekh, 1997, p.182).

For individuals to fulfil their rational duty they needed private property which leads, in the liberal view, towards individual freedom and industry. The Native Americans lacked private property, their land was left vacant and unenclosed, therefore it could be expropriated by civilized nations (Parekh, 1997, 183).The nature of enclosures were defined in a European sense with the use of fences and barriers that clearly marked the demarcation between properties. The Native Americans delineated between territories, but not in a way recognizable to Europeans (Parekh, 1995, p.85). Even in localities where properties were clearly defined with symbols recognizable to the European gaze, it was not adequate enough for Native American ownership to be respected. If they did not utilize their enclosed lands to maximum efficiency, they were guilty of not fulfilling their duty of rationality. The practice of letting crops decompose every three years, to enrich the soil was considered by Locke to be a waste of resources and consequently a violation of their duty (Parekh, 1995, p.85).

This same argument, of not utilizing land to its optimal efficiency, was used to justify the British colonization of Australia and displacement of the indigenous populations (Yarwood, Knowling, 1982, p. 15). Though even in Europe there were vast geographical regions left empty and vacant, which were not utilised to their maximum efficiency. Locke did not consider these areas as open for colonisation by other nations (Parekh, 1995, p. 86). The key distinction between an uncivilised and civilised nation’s vacant territory was the issue of political organisation and sovereignty. The Native Americans lacked a centralised form of authority in a European sense of a nation-state (Parekh, 1997, p. 183). The liberal argument that the Native Americans “state of nature” allowed for European intervention was couched in moralistic terms. The civilising project, would bring to the uncivilised population great benefits, and Locke thought in that the future the Native Americans would “Think themselves beholden” to the colonizers (quoted in Parekh, 1995, p 88). These notions of European superiority were often rooted in racism and the civilizing project was not always accepted as viable because of the postulated deficiency of non-European races (Jose, 1998, p. 42).

Concurrent with the claim of racism, colonialism and liberalism’s notion of a ‘civilizing’ project often neglects the harsh realities of European colonization. European intervention and colonization was not based on a moral duty, rather it resulted from unequal power-dynamics which enabled European states to appropriate the territories of political societies incapable of holding them. This is an extension of the European state-system, functioning around a “balance of power”, where the sovereignty of a nation was respected in so far as the central authority could maintain control over their territory, quelling internal strife or the incursion of another state (Jones, 1985, p.108).

The Native Americans and other populations displaced by European colonization did not have sufficient ability to resist the aggression and territorial incursion. In Locke’s evaluation British colonialism was in contradistinction to the earlier Spanish colonialism humane. The British respected the indigenous population’s natural rights, as Locke had conceived them. If indigenous people resisted the expropriation of their lands though, it automatically rendered their individual rights invalid (Parekh, 1997, p. 88). Liberalism’s dichotomy between individual and collective rights, of ‘respecting’ the former but not the later, in practice renders both defunct. Consequently the costs in human-lives incurred by non-European populations as a result of colonization were colossal. The Dutch controlled Banjuwangi in Java, which had a population larger then 80,000 in 1750 but by 1811 the area had been depopulated to such an extent that only 18,000 remained (Marx, 1986, p. 704). In India the British between the years of 1769 and 1770 “manufactured a famine” by buying the rice supplies in total, selling it again for exaggerated prices (Marx, 1986, p.705). This Tragedy arises from a system of thought, which tests forms of governance through economic experience (Foucault, 1997, p. 76). Locke’s notion of rationality, especially the optimization of production is symptomatic of this test.

Locke’s defence of Colonialism offers ample opportunity to evaluate Western Liberalism. Modern Colonialism was defined as having the key characteristics of one nation’s territorial domination of another locality through the displacement or rule of the indigenous population with the concurrent settling of the territory. European colonization of the new world and other territories was justified by ideological systems. Christianity and Liberalism, both holding in common the belief in European Superiority were used to rationalize colonialism. This ethnocentric belief in European superiority and the dichotomy between the civilized world and the savages has often been characterized as racist. The original Christians to inhabit the new world did not consider the natives human. This later belief was later abandoned but the belief in their inferiority continued. Liberalism sought to give an explanation and justification of colonialism. Locke, as a representative of this school considered human-beings as endowed with essential characteristics. The most important of which was reason. This separated humans from animals; and as such individuals have a duty to utilize reason which should inform their interaction with nature and other human-beings. A rational society according to Locke supported the rights of individuals above all, supporting private property as a means of self-actualization, the realization of humanity’s inherent nature. Non-European societies which did not conform to European notions of private property, production optimization and furthermore political organization forfeited their collective rights. Individuals retained their rights in so far as they did not defend their collective rights of ownership over land appropriated during colonization. Therefore though liberalism in theory supported native individual rights, in practice they had no rights. But Locke supposed that colonization, even if it undermined collective rights held benefits for the non-European populace through introducing rationality. This idyllic picture of colonization as a progressive force was merely a rationalization of European dominance and exploitation. Consequently Liberalism’s historical record in relation to colonialism has rendered it severely compromised, when it justified the authority of governments over basic human rights.

Bibliography

Parekh, B. (1995), “Liberalism and Colonialism: A Critique of Locke & Mill”, Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, Edited Pieterse, J.N. & Parekh, B. London, Zed Books, pp. 81-98.

Parekh, B. (1997), “The West and its Others”, Cultural Readings of Imperialism: Edward Said and the Gravity of History, Edited Parry, B. & Squires, London, Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 173-193.

Foucault, M. (1997), “The Birth of Biopolitics”, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, Edited Rabinow, P. St Ives, Penguin Books.

Heywood, A. (2002), Politics, (2ed), China, Palgrave Macmillan.

Jones, E.L. (1985), The European Miracle: Environments, economies and geopolitics in the history of Europe and Asia, USA, Cambridge University Press.

Jose, J. (1998), "Imperial Rule and the Ordering of Intellectual Space: The Formation of the Straits Philosophical Society.” Crossroads:An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 12(2) pp. 23-54.

Marx, K. (1986), Capital: A critique of political economy, Vol 1, Edited Engels, F. Trans Moore, S. & Aveling, E. Moscow, Progress Publishers.

Smith, A. (1991), The Wealth of Nations, London, Everyman's Library.

Yarwood, A. T. Knowling, M. J. (1982), Race Relations in Australia: A history, Singapore, Methuen Australia.

(Writte mid-2007).

The Latin War and Rome's Expansion.

2009-09-05T23:32:00.000-07:00

Rome was forged in violent struggle. Wedged between often hostile cities and civilizations from the Etruscans in the north, to Hellenistic cities of the south, Rome seemed to be forever poised between conquest and destruction. Aristocrats of the late republican period lauded their ancestors for their military discipline and glory. The frugality and duty of Cincinnatus appointed dictator and invested with Imperium while plowing his field, was held in great esteem by Cicero in the first century before the Common Era . This nostalgic conception of early Rome may not be too far removed from actuality. Roman history was dominated by almost perpetual warfare, but Rome’s might came not from mere force of arms. Tactical alliances and integration of defeated enemies provided the manpower necessary for empire. This strategy, which established and perpetuated Roman hegemony, was in large part developed by the political settlements enforced after the Latin War of 340-338 BCE. These settlements therefore, offer insights into the Roman state of mind and their methods of Empire building.

Prior to the settlements of 338, Rome had fought the Latins in the aftermath of their aristocratic revolution. In 493, Spurius Cassius than Consul, signed a treaty with the Latin league which ushered in a period of peace between Rome and Latium . The terms of the Foedus Cassianum, or Treaty of Cassius, outline a defensive military coalition with stipulation on the equal division of booty and mechanisms for the resolution of commercial disputes between private individuals . This alliance allowed Rome and Latium to effectively fend off incursions from foreigners, and conduct relatively inexpensive campaigns due to the diffusion of resource requirements among many cities. Most significantly, Rome secured for herself a leadership role within the alliance, providing the commander for the allied army during campaign.

Roman military leadership eventually led to the common identification of Latium with Rome, but this relationship while symbiotic was not equalitarian. According to Livy (c. 59 BCE – 17 CE), the roots of the Latin war lay in this inequality of authority . Demands were made by the Latins before the Senate of Rome, that one Consul is to be elected from Rome and one from Latium, and furthermore that half the Senate be comprised of Latins. These requests were rejected and war ensured. Culminating in a Roman victory, the Latin war allowed Rome to reassert its authority over Latium and impose new political settlements upon defeated enemies and allies alike.

Unlike the Foedus Cassianum, the settlements of 338 were tailored to individual cities and not to Latium as a corporate body. This innovation increased the tie between Latium to Rome, while simultaneously divided Latium from itself. Many Latin cities had the rights of Conubium and Commercium, intermarriage and trade, with Roman citizens. However, such rights and relations were severed between the citizens of different Latin cities . In addition to the dissolution of the Latin league and the segmentation of Latium, different cities received diverse statuses, affecting further demarcation between the cities of Latium.

The statues, rights and obligations of the Latin cities imposed by the settlements, were determined in part by the cities locality, role in the Latin War and past history with Rome. On one end of the spectrum, the Tiburtines and Praenestini were deprived of their lands, not only for participation with the Latin’s rebellion but for their past alliance with Gauls against Rome . Tusculum on the other hand, whilst a participant in the revolt was granted Roman citizenship, after the pro-war agitators had been put to death. Along with Tusculum, Lanuvium, Aricia, Nomentum and Pedum were incorporated into the Roman state as Municipium, or self-governing communities . This method of incorporation of non-Romans into Rome predates the 338 settlements.

Underneath the status of full Roman citizenship, there was also the civitas sine suffragio, citizenship without the vote, a method of integration which represented an innovation of the 338 settlements . This status conferred the rights of trade and intermarriage with non-roman cities, but denied them political rights. Hence the Roman state could expand, without necessarily diluting its traditional political institutions and power bases . Not all cities were incorporated into the Roman state proper, but remained at the status of independent allies. The continuum of statuses from alien to full citizen allowed for flexibility in Roman policy and advancement up the hierarchy of statuses provided incentives for the loyally of communities.

Livy characterized these new arrangements as “acts of generosity” which ensured the “good-will” of the conquered . Roman rule was relatively light upon the Italians, local government persisted and direct taxation was not initiated. However, in essence the settlements represented the end of Latin independence and the solid establishment of Roman hegemony and empire. The major obligation of the newly incorporated cities and allies was the provision of military forces in times of war. Polybius claims that Rome had recourse to a possible 700,000 infantry and 70,000 cavalry during Hannibal’s invasion of Italy . If Polybius is only approximately correct on the total man-power available to the Roman state, it still demonstrates the strength of the Roman mechanisms for integrating prior enemies and allies into their confederation, mechanisms of control largely established by the settlements of 338. Though, these settlements were built upon the precedent of the Foedus Cassianum, and as with the Treaty of Cassius Rome maintained their leadership role.

The Roman insistence upon leadership was an underlying cause of the Latin War and the settlements are a further product of this mind-set. They were unwilling to cede their hegemonic position without the necessary compulsion and managed to strengthen it further. Whilst the settlements of 338 were similar to the Treaty of Cassius, it differed in many key respects. Firstly, it dissolved the Latin league and divided Latium, which demonstrates the Roman application of the divide and conquer principle. Furthermore, the creation of a hierarchy of statues from full citizens to allies was an innovation of the 338 settlement and indicates that Rome was not rigidly conservative with regard to its foreign relations, outside its instance upon leadership and hegemony. The mechanism of control developed by the 338 settlements set the pattern for Rome’s conquest of Italy and the man-power for its expansion into the Mediterranean.

References.

Dillon, Matthew and Garland, Lynda, Ancient Rome: From the Early Republic to the Assassination of Julius Caesar, (New York, 2005).

Cornell , T.J. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC), (New York, 1995).

Crawford, Michel, The Roman Republic, (London, 1992).

Livy, The Early History of Rome: Books I-V of The History of Rome From its Foundation, (London, 2002).

Livy, Rome and Italy: Books VI-X of The History of Rome From its Foundations, (London, 1982).

Scullard, H.H., A History of The Roman World 753-146 BC, (New York, 1980).

(written, late 2008)

A Quick Take on Ricardo’s Theory of Comparative Advantages.

2009-09-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

Adam Smith’s famous analogy of the “invisible hand” was first articulated in regard to the superiority of the market in comparison with import tariffs to protect and augment the national economy. However, Smith’s discussion of the benefits associated with free trade between nations was limited to the theory of absolute advantage. Put simply, if another nation can produce a commodity more efficiently than your own, it is more advantageous to trade then to continue on with inefficient industry. It wasn’t until David Ricardo developed his theory of comparative advantages that free trade between countries came to be considered beneficial in a wider number of contexts. Even if there is no complementary absolute advantage, in terms of inverse production superiorities, Ricardo argued, it can still be more profitable for both parties to trade. The theory of comparative advantages, given its wider applicability, is often taken to be the strongest liberal argument in favour of free trade. Those opposed to the policy of free trade have to contend with Ricardo’s essential argument, updated and reiterated through the neoclassical paradigm.

An originator of the “neoclassical synthesis”, Paul Samuelson, has expressed the view that the theory comparative advantage is one theory which is true, but not immediately agreeable to intelligent observers of economic theory. Smith’s theory of absolute advantage appears manifestly self-evident, while the Ricardian model requires more explanation. Ricardo made the counter-intuitive argument that, even without absolute advantage, there is still an incentive for a nation to specialise its production and engage in international trade. For Smith, the inducement to trade was based on clear cut differences between productive capacities. He likened international trade to the transaction between a tailor and a shoemaker: if the tailor required new shoes, he is better suited to mend cloth and exchange a portion of his income for the shoemaker’s services, rather than attempt to make the shoes himself. For Ricardo, however, the inducement to trade can also be affirmed upon the basis of relative productivity. The classic example Ricardo used, was a two commodity model: trade between England and Portugal in cloth and wine.

In Ricardo’s example, Portugal has an absolute advantage in both the production of cloth and wine. In order to produce a standard quantity of wine, Portugal employ’s the labour of 80 men and for the same output England puts to work 120 men. England fares no better with cloth, to produce the set quantity of cloth she requires the labour of 100 men, compared to Portugal’s 90 men. According to the theory of absolute advantage, there would be no inducement to trade with England given Portugal’s superior productivity in both commodities. From the perspective of comparative advantage though, the motivation lies in relative productivity. If England were to specialize in the production of cloth, and Portugal in wine cultivation, both England and Portugal would make available 20 labours per standard unit of production, than if each had retained both wine and cloth production.

Without a doubt, Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage is a clear advance upon Smith’s theory of absolute advantage. Nevertheless, doubt can be expressed as to if Ricardo’s theory is a conclusive argument in favour of free trade. The theory is limited in many aspects, two major flaws are that; the benefits of specialization are gained once, and therefore, Ricardo’s model neglects to calculate the long-term outcomes of economic restructuring, moreover, Ricardo assumed that capital was largely anchored to national economies, but in the current age of globalization (or perhaps, more accurately regionalization) capital is no longer fixed within national boundaries. These two concerns are related to the issue of economic power. One consistent criticism of free trade has been that it favours those with a dominant position in the international economy. The German economist Friedrich List went so are as to argue that, if free trade had been introduced in the heyday of the Hanseatic League, Germany and not Briton would have been the dominant economic power in the 19th century.

The history of industrialization and the experience of underdeveloped nation provide the context necessary to evaluate Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantages and the ostensive advantages of free trade. In light of his theory of comparative advantages, Ricardo recommended that countries specialize in the production of commodities that lead to an optimization of their labour productivity. In Ricardo’s example, Portugal had both an absolute advantage in wine and cloth, but given the ratios between Portugal’s and England’s productivity Portugal’s immediate advantage was to specialize in the cultivation of wine . Similarly, many nations endowed with great natural resources and therefore a comparative advantage in the production of agriculture and raw materials would be wise to specialize in such endeavours according to the theory of comparative advantage. However, as noted by H. W. Singer, there has been a tendency for the terms of trade for raw materials and agriculture to decline relative to manufactured goods. Specialization in agricultural production would provide an initial spurt of growth, but in the long run, such specialization would be inimical to the nation’s economic prospects.

-References-

Krugman, Paul R. and Obstfeld, Maurice. (2003), International Economics: Theory and Policy, sixth Ed, Boston; Addison Wesley.

List, Friedrich. (1885), The National System of Political Economy, Trans Sampson S. Lloyd, London; Longman, Greens and co.

Ricardo, David. (1933), The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, London; J.M Dent & Sons LTD

Singer, H. W. (1950). "The Distribution of Gains between Investing and Borrowing Countries." The American Economic Review 4(2): 73-485.

Smith, Adam. (1991), The Wealth of Nations, London; Everyman’s Library.

"After The Orgy"

2009-08-31T23:25:00.000-07:00

"The orgy in question is the moment when modernity
exploded on us, the moment of liberation in every
sphere. Political liberation, sexual liberation, liberation
of the forces of production, liberation of the forces of
destruction, women’s liberation, children’s liberation,
liberation of unconscious drives, liberation of art. . . .
This was a total orgy—an orgy of the real, the rational,
the sexual, of criticism as of anti-criticism, of development
as a crisis of development. . . . Now everything has
been liberated, the chips are down, and we find ourselves
faced collectively with the big question: WHAT
DO WE DO NOW THAT THE ORGY IS OVER? Now all
we can do is simulate the orgy, simulate liberation."

- Jean Baudrillard, in "The Transparency of evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena".

It has to be said, Baudrillard is terribly flippant.

A bit of Fry and Laurie.

2009-08-26T19:45:00.000-07:00

"Seeing is Believing"

2009-08-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

First University essay i ever wrote. Written midway through 2006.
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‘Seeing is believing’ is a commonly held opinion. This proposition represents “naive realism”, which neglects the active role of individuals in interpreting perceptions (Gal, 2002, p 529). This is akin to naïve psychology where the individual functions without grasping the mechanism behind his/her observations. It will be shown that the statement is proven fallible by a perceptual illusion that demonstrates the individual’s interpretive role in the attainment and processing of sense stimuli. The effects of these contradictions on the claim ‘seeing is believing’ will also be outlined.

The above “duck-rabbit” illusion is used to demonstrate the experience of “noticing an aspect”, the act of interpreting objects as we see them (Wittgenstein, 1953, p 193-4). The illustration can be seen as either a duck or a rabbit, depending upon how an individual focuses upon the image and how his/her “pattern filters” group the stimuli (Atkinson, Atkinson, Smith, Hilgard, 1985, p 190). When focusing one’s eyes on the left, the picture seems to be of a duck, but from the right, a rabbit. This interpretive act affects the claim by making its absolute stance, ‘seeing “is” believing’ untenable, when we are not the passive receivers of sensory data but active participants.

The fallibility of perceptual information has led some perspectives to argue claims about the external world are dubious. Exemplified by Descartes’ demons and “hyperbolic doubt”, according to which if a source is inaccurate once, we should never entirely trust it again (Fearn, 2002, p 76). Therefore this perspective proposes that as our perceptual faculties can lead to a false proposition it would be absurd to believe them (Fearn, 2002, p77). This perspective contradicts the claim ‘seeing is believing’ as an absolute claim that all belief is reduced to external sensory information.

Another perspective on fallibility argues that particular statements about the world are found true or false “not individually but as a corporate body” (Quine, 1980, 41).Therefore a claim is not falsified as a whole by contrary information, but adjusted to incorporate new perceptual data (Quine, 1980, 43). According to this view, the duck-rabbit perceptual illusion, which can draw someone into inaccurate conclusions and beliefs (i.e. it’s a duck) does not invalidate all sensory information as it does for Descartes. This view characterised the claim that ‘seeing is believing’ as “radical reductionism”, Where the relation of seeing and belief is “direct report” (i.e. ‘I see, therefore I believe’). Quine considered this a naive and dogmatic approach to empiricism (Quine, 1980, 38).

The central claim “seeing is believing” is proven a faulty position to hold by the inconsistent results yielded by particular sensory data, as demonstrated by the duck rabbit illusion. Two possible trends which result from the fallibility of sense experience, one represented by Descartes, choose to doubt it as a source for justifiable belief (Fearn, 2002, p77). Quine on the other hand, takes a more ‘rational pragmatic’ view that seeing does not correlate to believing in particular terms but only in totality with all other observations(Quine, 1980, 43-6). In either view the claim “seeing is believing” is flawed by the philosophical naivety of its position.

Bibliography

Atkinson, R. L. Atkinson, R. C. Smith, E.E. Hilgard, E. R. 1985, Psychology, 9th Ed, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, USA.

Fearn, N. 2002, Zeno and the Tortoise, 1st Ed, Atlantic books, London.

Gal, O. 2002, “Constructivism for Philosophers (Be it a Remark on Realism)”, Perspectives on Science, Vol 10, no 4, pp. 523-549.

Quine, W. V. O. 1980, From a logical point of view, 2nd ed, Harvard university press, USA.

Wittgenstein, L. 1953, Philosophical Investigations, Basial Blackwell, Oxford.

Recommendation: “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism”

2009-08-08T21:42:00.000-07:00

This is a very timely book and Bacevich manages to pack it with a substantial amount of well organized information. His main themes, as evidenced by the title, are the limitations of power projection through military force and the ideology of American Imperium. He traces the history of the National Security State, its organizational apparatus and the friction between various departments and the ideology of National Security which provide the rationale for the projects of political elites. His analysis situates the Bush administration within a tradition of ideology that spans back to the early days of the Cold war. Whilst also demonstrating its discontinuities; above all, the Bush doctrine’s concept of “preemptive war”. For Bacevich, this policy is both morally indefensible and pragmatically inept. He attempts to give both a description of the current crises (the crisis of profligacy, the political crisis and the military crisis) and prescriptive advice on how to readdress past mistakes. However, he does not view the current political, economic and military quandaries of the United State’s as the product of the Bush Administration and its key insiders alone. Though, he does a fine job of dissecting figures like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and linking their ideological dispositions to pervious policy makers like James Forrestal and Paul Nitze. The crucial advantage of Bacevich’s “The Limits of Power”, is that it moves beyond the notion that the Bush Administration is an aberration and contextualizes the last eight years within the broader history of U.S. Foreign policy. Moreover, his analysis of institutional frameworks and the nature of self-seeking political elites add a deeper understanding to the current situation. To mention one failing, Bacevich does little to relate the current crises to the operations of capitalism itself. That however, would have perhaps limited the books appeal to segments of the political spectrum and pushed the book beyond its scope of inquiry. Despite that quibble, I couldn’t recommend Colonel Bacevich’s book more strongly.

On the Absurd.

2009-07-07T07:23:00.000-07:00

Here Robert C. Solomon discusses Albert Camus and the Absurd.

The Philosophy of Leo Strauss: Oligarchs with Myths

2009-07-07T03:25:00.000-07:00

Yet another really old essay. Last modified, Tuesday, 4 October 2005, 5:40:07 PM.

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The Philosophy of Leo Strauss: Oligarchs with Myths

Leo Strauss was born in Germany during the last year of the 19th century, where he studied philosophy, natural science and mathematics. By 1932 though he left his native country and gained a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship through the personal recommendation of the Nazi legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. Eventually Strauss made his way to the United States of America where he gained work as political philosophy professor at the New School for Social Research, and then, the University of Chicago. Through Strauss’s years of teaching at these institutions he gained a following of devoted students who became in turn teachers and implementers of his political philosophy. Through this essay we will analyse the influences on Leo Strauss and what came to be the political philosophy he supported. Furthermore we will look at the influence Strauss philosophy is having on world politics through its influence on the American consciousness.

1

Strauss came to age during a time of great turbulence; the Treaty of Versailles kept the liberal Weimar Republic in constant economic depression leading to high unemployment and street fights between the Freikorps, Brown Shirts of the Nazis against the communist party’s Red Front. It was during these times that he became concerned with the crisis of modernity.

This Crisis of modernity is a phenomenon that many great thinkers have analysed and given answers to elucidate it. Karl Marx saw the crisis of modernity as the Frankenstein nature of capital and its institutions, conjured by the bourgeoisie “like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”(1). For Albert Camus the crisis was the absurdity of life, like Sisyphus working constantly for a meaningless cause. Martin Heidegger views it as an existential crisis of ‘the forgetting of Being’. But for Strauss theses thinkers have misdiagnosed the crisis of modernity, the problem as he views it is the problem of relativism.

The relativism of our modern age leads us into the abyss of nihilism, where everything is subjected to ruthless criticism by individuals who believe in nothing, thus subverting the shared values that underpin society and uphold ‘the natural right’. Furthermore According to Strauss the weakness of liberalism is its compromising nature which is a materialisation of relativism which if left unchecked will lead into the decay and eventual collapse of society. This is how Strauss analysed the Weimar Republic which decayed and collapsed under pressure from communists to ultranationalists and militarists. He viewed American liberalism as in the same boat as the weak compromising relativism of the Weimar republic.

The relativism of modernity comes about because modern philosophers are unable to find essential truths but only accidental truths, thus finding no absolute moral values. Thus Strauss turns to classical antiquity. -

“It is not self-forgetting and pain-loving antiquarianism nor self-forgetting and intoxicating romanticism which induces us to turn with passionate interest, with unqualified willingness to learn, toward the political thought of classical antiquity. We are impelled to do so by the crisis of our time, the crisis of the West.” (2)

This return to classic political philosophy focused mainly on Platonism, because the crisis of modernity was formed not by material processes as Marx would have it. But by modern philosopher starting with Machiavelli and Hobbes who eventually led to the “third wave” of modern philosopher such as Nietzsche or Heidegger were values and morals are contained only within human-subjectivity. Moreover when Sartre declares “if I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad”(3) this leads to certain conclusions in the realm of political philosophy of having no essential values and thus nothing to bound society together and give it direction. The relativism and histrionism of modernity lead Strauss to Plato because “Platonists are not concerned with the historical (accidental) truth, since they are exclusively interested in the philosophic (essential) truth” (4).

Plato’s notion of truth is based on the relationship between "intellectual illumination" or “The Form of the Good” and “representations” and “shadows” (5). In Plato’s theory of forms “the form of the good” is pure knowledge as an abstraction or a priori which is a higher form then matter. Matter is just a representation or substandard copy of the form of the good and thus an imperfect form. Thus opinions based on perception based stimuli are flawed and can never be knowledge even though humans have a divine spark of the form of the good within them. Plato’s notions of truth were expensed with metaphors and allegories, most famously in ‘the allegory of the cave’. In which prisoners are kept from childhood shackled in a cave immobilised with a fire burning behind them which they cannot see, all the while on a raised path way man carry shapes of animals and various objects. These objects project shadows upon the wall which the prisoners see and play a game naming them, at the same time when the man carrying shapes speak the prisoners believe the noises come from the shadows. For the prisoners this is their reality, knowing nothing of the world outside of the cave. Plato thought that because they lived their whole life without direct light to turn and look at the fire would hurt their eyes but to leave the cave and see the sun would blind them, thus the prisoners would rather live in their cave. This draws very closely with Plato’s metaphor of the sun, the illuminating form of the good which we cannot understand because we are trapped within our own “cave”. Thus for Strauss with all his talk of essential truths we find a man walking around in the back of a cave trying to find knowledge while it’s the illuminating light which he shies away from.

But while Strauss has problems finding knowledge as in the highest form of truth that doesn’t stop him from disseminating ‘truths’ to the people. Strauss thought that society needs two pillars of mythology in which to give it strength, direction and the continuation of the natural rights. The myths that hold strong societies together must be propagated by a vanguard of “philosopher kings” as Plato would have it and Strauss encoded. Though the philosopher kings don’t actually have to believe in the noble lies they propagate that is why they must have an esoteric side to their writings to communicate with other philosophers or “superman” if we want to highlight the influences of Nietzsche on Strauss and his followers. Furthermore their exoteric deceptions propagate myths which bind society to the ideal of natural rights.

The First pilar in the mythology of strong societies is the use of religion. Strauss would agree with Marx famous dictum ‘religion is the opium of the masses’ (6) but he would see it as a necessary illusion. A religious belief system puts morals out side the realm of human-subjectivity which characterises the existentialist philosophy (which is the ‘third wave’ of modernity). Thus making a binding self of values by which society is directed and individuals invested. This is also a continuation of Strauss wars with the modern on behalf of the ancients. Plato envisioned a caste society which institutions of education dispensed an ideological imprint on its individuals going as far as to ban certain poets and artist who break with the ideological hegemony of his perfect society. Such banned artist would be Homer or Hesiod because they present gods in a bad image, as plotting and fighting which according to Plato is against the nature of divinity. This kind of religious reasoning was used by monarchist to justly the rule of the king, claiming a divine right. But the enlightenment sort to overthrow notions of divine right and religious reasoning which was seen as hiding material vested interested which should be called despotism. Deism was championed by moderate critics such as Voltaire to install an age of reason in which church and religion were separated from the affairs of state where secularism would reign. Some enlightenment thinkers went as far to expound a mechanical materialism such as Denis Diderot. In the realm of political philosophy Rousseau thought that sovereignty should be held by the general will of the people and that law should be their will universalised(7). But for Strauss this view of things is unacceptable because it was part of the development of relativism which weakened society and the “superman”, “the herd” (8) dimension (the natural rights).

The second pilar of mythology for strong society was the notion of patriotism. The ideal of the nation was for Strauss a tool to unite the people against the relativism of modernity. Hermann Goering once said:-

“Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” (9)

Strauss would agree with this statement, furthermore he sees it’s as a necessary illusion for manipulation of peoples consent and thus obedience. The manufacturing of an enemy is used throughout history to galvanise and unite the people. The threat doesn’t have to be a real threat, did the Spanish blow up the United States ship U.S.S. Maine that exploded in Havana Harbour? We don’t know but the United States of America went to war and managed to greatly increase it influence. The assassination Franz Ferdinand by the Narodna Odbrana a Serbian terrorist group lead to world war one, but it was just the excuse for the war. Europe was set to explode which was well known, the second international met in 1912 two years before the war to work out a policy on the coming imperialist conflict. War has always been used as a tool long before and after Carl von Clausewitz wrote in the Eighteen-hundreds:-

“War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. ... for the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception” (10)

Strauss considered himself a conservative scholar (opposed to philosopher who originate systems of thought, scholars just judge and reason with pre-existing systems, at least this is Strauss own categorisation) who returned to classical philosophy for an answer to the crisis of the west, of modernity. Strauss believed that the enlightenment along with it’s relativism that undermined societal unity and values brought a new conception of nature and the relation of philosophy to society. Strauss wanted to return the Platonist conception of nature opposed to the tradition of the enlightenment epitomised by thinkers like Rousseau who felt human nature shifted under different material contexts. This idea was taken further by Karl Marx, who felt nature was a temporal condition that was negated by the actions of mankind determining their own human nature and conditions. Though this was a two way street of conditions influencing the individual and the individual influencing the conditions:-

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” (11)

The revolutionary humanism of Marx in the tradition of the enlightenment though of cause a critical adaptation of the tradition was of the political movements which Strauss sort to guard against. Strauss was an Anti-histrionist who saw Marx ideas us based on accidental truths in attempt to undermined ‘natural rights’. Thus Strauss whished that bring forward the ideals of Plato ironically would address current historical problems. The natural rights which are being subverted by revolutionary humanism and liberalism were the ideal that society must be hierarchical that the masses must be lead by a vanguard of philosopher kings. The philosopher kings must guard their intentions though and maintain their deception and myths, Straussian Esotericism does not go us far as that of Ammonius Saccas (12) who wrote nothing of his ideas and is only known according to his followers. Though another irony of Leo Strauss is through his works and teaching his philosopher of deceit has become well-known in circles who don’t hold favourable views on his aims. Another why in which the enlightenment challenged Strauss views was in the relation of philosophy to the city or society. For enlightenment thinkers philosophy was to become exoteric even though they wrote in an esoteric way, something of a historical constraint (avoiding censorship and such, Denis Diderot was haunted by the police). For Marx philosophy and theory was consciousness of material forces:-

“We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.” (13)

Which is quite contrary to Strauss who thought truth was only grasped in the abstract. Furthermore Marx felt philosophy to have any relevance must be gripped by the people, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways;
the point is to change it”(14). While Strauss saw all philosophy as political this is not the use he would see it put.

The philosophy of Leo Strauss is based on Plato who incidentally the liberal democrat Karl Popper called a “proto-totalitarian”, (15) this philosophy is an attempt to resecure the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie from subversive and dangerous philosophical-political movements of the moderns.

2

The philosophy of Leo Strauss found its practical expression in a group of his students and readers who rallied together in infiltrating political philosophy departments, think tanks and government institutions and have became known as “Neo-conservatives”. Though there is no group who self-identifies as “Neo-conservative”, even though the press is ready to label them and plain conservatives to draw distinctions. This section of the essay will focus on major events and figures in the history of the Straussian conservative movement and its effect on the workings of government and world affaires.

Karl Marx once wrote that new revolution grown of new struggles find their sprit in old revolutions:-

“Thus the awakening of the dead in those revolutions served the purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; of magnifying the given task in the imagination, not recoiling from its solution in reality; of finding once more the spirit of revolution, not making its ghost walk again.”(16)

The neo-conservatives are not like normal conservatives being as they see themselves as closer to revolutionaries contrary to the normal conservatives who want stability in world affairs and at home. Claes Ryn sees the neo-conservatives as a variant of Neo-Jacobinism, while other see them as trying to create a new roman empire. Others draw the neo-conservative drive for ‘democratic revolution’ as an adaptation of Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” (17) seeing that early Neo-conservatives such as Irving Kristol (sometimes called the godfather of the neoconservative movement) was himself a member of the Fourth international (Trotskyist international, opposed to the third [Stalinist] international). Furthermore Neo-conservatives have been greatly influenced by the ideas of Max Shachtman a non-orthodox Trotskyist who argued with Trotsky over the class nature of the soviet republic drawing the conclusion that it was a Bureaucratic collectivist state which should not be supported even critically (contrary to Trotsky’s notion of deformed workers state). But also the ex-Trotskyist thinker James Burnham who declared “the war of 1914 was the last great war of capitalist society” and that “the war of 1939 is the first great war of managerial society” (18), his notion of “managerial revolution” (19) is capitalism has been slowly eroding away and that Nazi Germany, Soviet union and the united states under the new deal represented a new society – “Managerial society” (20).

Within this new world order however someone wishes to characterise it, two of the most prevalent and longest standing politicians in the Neo-conservative movement are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Both having served under many administrations. Donald Rumsfeld served under the Nixon administration but started to make real headway for the neo-conservative movement during the Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. In the position of White House Chief of Staff Member of the President's Cabinet (1974-1975); and the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defence (1975-1977). It was during this time that Rumsfeld and Cheney became evolved in controversy surrounding the death of CIA scientist Frank Olson who was involved in Project MKULTRA a now uncovered operation researching mind control drugs, experiments often carried out on non-consenting victims (American and Canadian, Theodore Kaczynski the Unabomber is thought to be a victim). Cheney and Rumsfeld helped organise the white house response to Olson’s death, which was not accepted by the Olson’s family and close friends. The government offered settlement out of court which the family accepted. In 1994, Professor James E. Starrs of The George Washington University determined that Olson had suffered some form of blunt force trauma prior to falling out of the window, and called the evidence “rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide”. In1996 Manhattan district attorney opened a homicide investigation into Olson's death but was unable to find enough evidence to file charges. Eric Olson still believes his father developed moral qualms about his work and then the United States government had him killed. But also amidst the controversy in these positions Rumsfeld is attributed a large role in increasing the power of the military within the government at the expanse of the CIA and Henry Kissinger, who traditionally has been an enemy of the neo-conservatives because he supported a pragmatist approach to stability rather then revolutionising the world order. Rumsfeld achieved this power play victory by propagating the view or noble lie that the Soviet Union was spending more on arms and that the appropriate response was a United States arms production increase. This view was contrary to all reports done by the CIA at the time who concluded that the Soviet Union was suffering from economic decline that would lead to collapse of the system. Furthermore at his time Rumsfeld paved the way for the idea’s of Leo Strauss to become more accepted, though the neo-conservatives never attained much weight in directing foreign policy until the Reagan’s administration and the end of Détente.

The Détente ended with a chain of events one being the Islamist revolution in Iran led the United States populace and government to believe they were losing power and their position in the world. During Reagan’s presidency the neo-conservatives were considered only a small faction within the administration. But Reagan was an anti-communist throughout his life, during his acting career he informed on many people he considered ‘un-American’ or ‘disloyal’ becoming a FBI informant under the code name "Agent T-10". On becoming president Reagan heated up the rhetoric of the cold war and increased defence spending, thus producing a renewed arms race between the Russian soviets and themselves. Furthermore the Reagan administration outline to win the cold war was one to increase the negotiating position of the United States by increased strategic position through arms superiority. Too bring out the arms race would lead to increased soviet spending on defence which would contribute to its already declining economy. Three was support of clandestine Anti-soviet forces and right-wing dictatorships (fascism) to Holt any increase in the Anti-USA power bloc (which included many countries and ideologies).

The new foreign policy of the Reagan administration basic aim was the same as all American foreign polices for the last century differing only in scop. The basic aim of American foreign policy is to continue its ideological hegemony and support it’s “interests”. Thus a country that doesn’t pose a military threat to the United States and its citizens can still be a legitimate target because it doesn’t comply with United States ideological alignment and thus represents an alternative. The change in scope however is the area in which this ideological hegemony must be continued and interest maintained. Before world war two the United States ‘sphere of influence’ was largely limited to the western hemisphere, though there are occasions were they bent their own rules. But after world war two the United States became what Burnham called “receiver” (21) of the British Empire. During Reagan’s Administration there was further imperialist aggression, supported by the neo-conservatives.

It was during this time that many world events were shaped and shaped the neo-conservatives. This was the time of the Iranian Islamist revolution, the Iran-Iraqi war, Iran-contra affair, arming of the Contras (short for counter-revolutionaries) in Nicaragua, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lebanon’s civil war and soviet intervention in Afghanistan along with many other events notwithstanding the fall of the Berlin wall. The neo-conservative line was much the same as Reagan’s policy, differing on one issue. That issue was the Iraqi-Iran war, during which the Reagan white house openly supported the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and supplying arms to fight the Iranians. Richard Perle a leading neo-conservative policy advisor said “I was actually rather uncomfortable with the support that we gave Saddam during the war between Iraq and Iran” (22). Perle in explained the reasoning of the Reagan administration and the action he felt should have been taken:-

“the view was that the mullahs in Tehran were worst than the tyrant in Baghdad, and I understand that argument. I don’t agree with it, but even for those who accepted that view, the right course immediately after the end of that war would have been to say to Saddam, now we’ve had enough of you too, and we’re not gonna to tolerate it.” (23)

The reason why Perle was critical of Reagan’s handily of the Iraqi-Iran war was because he believes in using American military power as a means of toppling tyranny, war as a political instrument of cleansing evil elements within the world community. Though Perle was up in arms over this and combating American hypocrisy, other Neo-conservatives have been rather selective in their criticisms of nations they see to be evil, while supporting right-wing dictatorships and nations willing to help them in their “war on terror”. The Soviet-Afghanistan war is one that neo-conservatives are rather proud of.

The soviet-Afghanistan war has often been referred to as the Russians Vietnam because of the gradual evolution from military advisors to full blown intervention but also because it ended in a virtual stalemate. The soviets were draw into the war because the Marxist-Leninist government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was under attack from supporters from the old regime and the conservative Islamic peasantry. Supporters of soviet foreign policy claim that the intervention was a pre-emptive strike aimed at Islamist terrorist to stop them from taking control of the government. In response to the events in Afghanistan the United States administration under the influence of the neo-conservatives supported the Islamic resistance called “the Mujahideen”. Reagan referred to the Mujahideen as "freedom fighters ... defending principles of independence and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability." (24). Though Mikhail Gorbachev warned Reagan that democracy would not be realised in Afghanistan with the United States support of the Mujahideen. The white house went ahead with their plans to support the Mujahideen supplying them with billons of dollars worth of light guns and stinger missiles among other armaments primarily through Pakistan.

After the withdrawal of soviet troops was completed on February 2, 1989 it was expected that the central government in Kabul would collapse but these’s hopes were dashed when the Mujahideen was unsuccessful in taking provincial capitals or Kabul. The civil war continued until PDPA was no longer able to hold together the factions that constituted their government, thus in 1992 the Mujahideen who had only been united through anti-communist sentiments took power divided in two main groups, the radical Taliban which created the central government and the Northern Alliance controlled provincial areas. As Gorbachev had warned the Mujahideen victory would not result in anything approaching democracy, which was correct because the result was an Islamic republic which the soviets had originally feared. As an aside to the victory of the Mujahideen Osama bin Laden and the more militant supports from his Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK, funnelled money, arms, and Muslim fighters into Afghanistan during the war) formed a group influenced by Sayyid Qutb (an Islamist thinker with a hate for Liberalism not far removed from Leo Strauss’s ideals). The group Aimed to install Islamist republics in the Arab world, through attacking the ‘far’ enemy the United States which it sees as the corrupting source of liberalism and anti-Islamic values. Through all this though the Neo-conservatives were more assured of their ideals, believing that they had defeated the ‘evil empire’.

After the Reagan administration the Neo-conservatives found themselves outsiders in the George H.W. Bush administration. It was during this administration that the United States invaded oil rich Kuwait to oust the Iraqi armed forces who had invaded early on the order of Saddam Hussein (Colin Powell opposed the USA lead invasion suggesting sanction would be more appropriate ) . The neo-conservatives pushed for the army to invade Iraq proper and remove Hussein from power. But Bush had a more traditional approach to foreign policy aiming for stability rather then an aggressive moralist stance supported by the ‘hawkish’ Neo-conservatives. During the Clinton administration they remained outsiders but managed to tap into puritan politicalization lead by protestant fundamentalists in groups like “the moral majority”.

The puritan upsurge within the United States has been beneficial to the right-wing of politics, providing a kind of McCarthyite scare tactic. Since the end of the cold war there was not a major outside enemy but the myth of religion was creating a galvanising force in reaction to the ‘lax’ morality of bill Clinton. Some of the attacks on Clinton’s personal indiscretions turned out to have truth behind them, such as the Monica Lewinsky affair. But a lot of the allegations levelled at Clinton were complete fabrications such Whitewater. But while Clinton was hounded by theses alligation it represented a wider social change and focus on moral based issues playing into the hands of the Neo-conservatives.

The next president was George W. Bush of whom many of his critics feel was illegitimately elected in 2000. The new administration was a great victory for the Neo-conservatives with many of its top positions being filled by members of the neo-conservative movement (Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and others). The presidency of George w. bush has been a very controversial one from it’s conception, the influence of the neo-conservatives can been seen throughout this administrations actions, Afghanistan invasion (using the northern alliance), operation Iraqi liberation, puritan religious rhetoric.

The events of September, 11, 2001 will ever remain in the mind of those who lived through theses times. The events of that day are having a far greater effect the death of few thousand innocent people, they have been used has the basis for the invasion of two different countries. Firstly the invasion of Afghanistan because they refused to hand over Osama bin Laden the man believed to be behind the September 11th attacks, though the United States provided no evidence to support their claim. But secondly the invasion of Iraq which the neo-conservatives have been backing for years as outlined in a open letter to Bill Clinton on January 26, 1998 :-

“Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.” (25)

This is not the last time neo-conservative expressed wishes to invade Iraq the same think tank from which the latter was sent “the Project for the New American Century” (PNAC). The PNAC produced a 90-page document in September 2000 that states: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”(26). This statement highlights the intention of the neo-conservatives, the excuse of war, links to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction have turned out to be completely false. But the premeditation to invade the Middle East remains clear and is part of the idea that America should be the sole world superpower and should maintain its ideology hegemony. This neo-conservative foreign policy finds it’s embodiment in the Bush Doctrine. This states the principles of Peremption: that the united state as the sole super power should be allowed to declare war if it feels threaded by terrorist or the states that support them. Unilateralism: the belief that the United States can take unilateral military action when bilateral action is not possible. Strength beyond Challenge: the notion that the United States is the strongest nation on earth and for security reasons must keep its defence above and beyond any rival power. Democracy, Liberty, and Security to All Regions: the notion that the United States has the right and duty to spread ‘democracy’ and other values it sees as good around the world through whatever means necessary.

We have seen that through the years of the neo-conservative movement they have been able to implement many of the notions of Leo Strauss. They supplied us all with noble lies about reasons for war and a constant threat which cannot be found but is there, so the nation unites against terrorism. They have managed to ride the wave of puritan outrage at their enemies in the Democratic Party. But above all they’ve been able to use the circumstances to their advantage as they new they would “The process of transformation,” according to the plan “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event—like a new Pearl Harbour.” (27). but with respect to the underlying philosophical concerns of the Neo-conservatives of uniting the people in common mythology they have largely done this but not without complications. There is a minority but growing groups within the United States from both the left and right who oppose the policies of the neo-conservatives. The Neo-conservatives have long studied classical antiquity for answers to modern historical problems and particularly the Athenian philosophers. So it’s interesting to note that the arrogant city of Athens ruined itself in the pursuit of empire by the leadership of Alcibiades a student of Socrates. If we look at the world situation we see the neo-conservatives students of Plato and Socrates leading the United States in the pursuit of empire on a new Sicilian Expedition.

Notes to “The Philosophy of Leo Strauss: Oligarches with Myths”

1) “The Manifesto of the communist party” by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.

2) “The City and Man” by Leo Strauss.

3) “Existentialism is a Humanism” by Jean-Paul Sartre.

4) “"Farabi's Plato" by Leo Strauss.

5) All quoted from “The republic” by Plato (some translators consider “the state” to be a more accurate translation of the title)

6) This often quoted remark is actually a misquote what Karl Marx really wrote was, “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” In “Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right Introduction”.

7) George W.F Hegel blamed the influences of Rousseau on the French revolution for leading to its excesses of the terror. This is unwarranted because the Jacobins practiced representative “democracy” rather then direct democracy and thus they were not in line with Rousseau’s alternative social contract. Also the terror was at ends with Rousseau’s view on the use of violence in the attainment of said social contract.

8) For clarification the terms “Superman” or sometimes translated “overman” and “the herd” were employed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The first two terms depict people whose volition was strong, thus a strong sense of the “will to power”. While “the herd” were people with a weak “will to power” thus being lead as slaves by the “superman”. Some commentators see Leo Strauss as a closet Nietzschean, see Shadia Drury "The Esoteric Philosophy of Leo Strauss" Political Theory 13:3 (1985) 315-37 and The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (New York, 1988); Laurence Lampert Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago, 1996); and Peter Levine Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities (Albany, 1995).

9) Hermann Goering, Hitler’s second in command, speaking at the Nuremberg Trials which took place after World War II.

10) “On War” by Carl von Clausewitz.

11) “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” by Karl Marx.

12) Ammonius Saccas lived during 3rd century AD and was a Greek philosopher of Alexandria, often called the founder of the Neoplatonic School, but is often confused with a Christian philosopher of the same name.

13) “Letter from Marx to Ruge” by Karl Marx in 1843.

14) “Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis XI” by Karl Marx.

15) “The Open Society and Its Enemies” by Karl Popper.

16) “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” by Karl Marx.

17) See Leon Trotsky’s “the Permanent Revolution”.

18) “The Managerial Revolution” by James Burnham

19) ibid

20) ibid

21) ibid

22) “Richard Perle: The Making of a Neoconservative” Aired 11/14/2002 on Think Tank a PBS program, interviewer: Ben Wattenberg.

23) ibid

24) “Proclamation 4908 -- Afghanistan Day” by Ronald Reagan, Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 3:54 p.m., March 10, 1982.

25) January 26, 1998 PNAC Open Letter to the Honourable William J. Clinton
President of the United States, signed by Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr, Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey and Robert B. Zoellick.

26) “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century” produced by PNAC in 2000.
27) ibid

Neo-Jacobins In the White House.

2009-07-07T03:08:00.000-07:00

Again, an old piece i just found. It was Written 9, March, 2005.

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Neo-Jacobins In the White House.

Condoleezza Rice gave a speech in Paris to the Institut d’Etudes Politiques-Sciences in Paris, on February 8 2005, where she restated the Bush administrations support for the united nation and its affiliates, along with the Administrations plans for democratic revolutions around the world.

The French president Jacques Chirac was one of the harshest parliamentary critics of bush’s foreign policy especially concerning the American lead invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Rice being quite aware of this fact took measures in her speech to pamper to the sensibilities of the French hosts, talking of the shared values of both countries past. Rice Reminiscing said:-

“I remember well my first visit to Paris -- here -- my visit to Paris here in 1989, when I had the honour of accompanying President George Herbert Walker Bush to the bicentennial celebration of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Americans celebrated our own bicentennial in that same year, the 200th anniversary of our nation's Constitution and our Bill of Rights.”

Rice continued…

“Those shared celebrations were more than mere coincidence. The founders of both the French and American republics were inspired by the very same values, and by each other. They shared the universal values of freedom and democracy and human dignity that have inspired men and women across the globe for centuries.”

Condoleezza expressed the idea that France and America share the same value system because of their revolutionary past which upheld the notion of liberty, freedom and democracy.

But to state this is to greatly misunderstand or even mislead on the nature of both the foundations of French revolution and the America revolution.

The American Revolution was an independence movement which wanted the right of self-determination from the British Empire. The declaration of independence issued July 4, 1776 and with the new found independence of the thirteen colonies the founding fathers established a republic. The republic was founded under the notions stated in the declaration as truths self-evident “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness were never betrayed, because the founding fathers never implemented the principles; slavery wasn’t abolished, the genocide directed against the Native American continued, many European Americans suffered a paupers existence and today the death penalty continues for adults moreover only in 2005 being removed as a punishment for children.

A few years after the declaration of independence, in France in 1788, the third estate which traditionally had supported the aristocracy against the despotic monarchy realised that when the parliaments talked of the nation they referred only to themselves. So third estate realised that it’s once allies were really its enemies and set the objective to double it’s representation in the parliaments. Necker a leading figure of the monarchy argued to the royal council that the king had more to worry about from the two higher orders and that introduction of the third estate into the political fray would defeat the aristocratic revolution. Alfred Cobban a leading revisionist historian wrote that with the stroke of a pen Necker, the council and the king had defeated the revolution of the privileged classes. The victory of the third estate would produce the stumbling block for the old feudal order.

In 1789 France suffered from a grain crisis which put the icing on the cake of the inability of the absolute monarchy to reform the finical system which had suffered years of successive wars and capitulation to the demands of parliament. Grain riots followed and hatred flowed towards the monarchy with their perceived indulgence and lack of fiscal responsibility blamed for the people’s problems, the affair of the necklace a campaign of deformation aimed at Marie Antoinette is evidence of agitators attempt to undermine the feudal order. The anti-absolutist monarchist Agitators used the masses of poor peasants and city labourers as a political weight because of their propensity to riot.

The Jacobin club was a major political pressure group within the assembly whose propaganda was aimed at agitating the poorer members of the third estate and thus was able to secure great political power. Originally Robespierre considered the leader of the club was in support of a constitutional monarchy. But gradually Robespierre aligned with the more radical revolutionaries which led to advocating a form of republicanism.

The republicanism which was advocated by the Jacobin clubs during the height of its power named the reign of terror is often seen as the start of modern totalitarian ideologies. The committee of public safety which was the organ of this terror arrested 200,000 people and the options were either acquittal or death. The term terrorism was coined during this time as a reference to official government policy.

This state terrorism was done in the name of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. Liberty like in the American Revolution never really went forward because of the protest of plantation owners and merchants because slaves were in one case the labour force and in the other the commodity. Equality was not meant as the abolition of all class distinctions but rather the removal of feudal hereditary offices and orders in place of a meritocracy, but this has obvious limits because it was still a class society. Fraternity was used for the justification of state terrorism; “a patriot is he who supports the republic in general, whoever opposes it in detail is a traitor” was the call of Saint-Just leading extremist Jacobin.

The morality of the Jacobins which lead to the terror was based on virtue being the will of people universalised and the republic was the embodiment of this while the monarchy represented arbitrary power wiled against the general will of the people. Thus as saint-just proclaimed “the republic is not a senate, it is virtue”. Thus to transgress the general will was criminal and tyrannical and “between the people and their enemies there can be nothing in common but the sword, we must govern by iron those who cannot be governed by justice we must oppress the tyrant” (Saint-Just). The Jacobins standard for the putting their finger on the pulse of the general will was that of which was accepted by the people but of cause anyone who transgressed their decrees was a not a patriot and thus a traitor. So on a practical level what existed in France was not a republic of the people which would be known as a democracy but rather a republic of philosopher kings.

The notion of philosopher kings was the ideal expressed in Plato’s republic which was standard in the education of the republican’s both sides of the ocean. Anyone familiar with this text with recall its fundamental rejection of democracy as a form of tyrannical government which around the time of Plato was leading prejudice of the aristocracy who demonised radical democrats such as Cleon, who has been attacked by the likes of Aristophanes to Thucydides to Plutarch (all aristocrats). Both the republicans of America and France had an innate hate of democracy declaring rather that the government should be run by a political elite (or in Platonist language philosopher kings).

These political elite in America (we’ve already seen how anti-democratic France was) expressed the anti-democracy ideas freely. Samuel Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, championed the new Constitution in his state precisely because it would not create a democracy. "Democracy never lasts long," he noted. "It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself." He insisted, "There was never a democracy that ‘did not commit suicide.’"

The reason why the republicans believed democracy “commits suicide” is because the ‘masses’ cannot understand the underling truths of government thus a philosopher elite must tell them a “noble lie”, The noble lie being another notion out of Plato’s republic. A notion that the republicans of old and new support thus continuing to spread their ‘noble’ lies because we are unable to understand the workings of good government.

Thus Condoleezza Rice is right when she stated that America and France have shared values because of a shared and intertwined past of revolutionary republicanism. But it is not that of democracy and freedom another then in the form of noble lie. But their shared vales rather rest in a moral Platonist-Jacobinism epitomised in the call of Gorge w. Bush "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror", echoed by the call of the totalitarian, Louis Saint-Just “a patriot is he who supports the republic in general, whoever opposes it in detail is a traitor”.

An Incomplete Fragment: “Marxism is a Humanism”.

2009-07-07T02:59:00.000-07:00

Another old half-completed essay. The file description read that it was last modified on the 2nd of March 2005. Segments of this peice ended up in "The Logic of Existential Meaning".

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Marxism is a Humanism

Jean-Paul Sartre a leading philosopher of post-war France was an exponent of atheistic Existentialist ideas derived from those of Kierkegaard, Heidegger and the Phenomenology of Husserl. Sartre’s ideas of existentialism were a direct assault on dialectical materialism. During the period 1950-60 in Sartre’s life his political ideals became more prevalent reaching the conclusion that Marxism was rightly the dominate philosophy of our time and that Existentialism was only a subservient philosophy. Seeing that Sartre was trying to reconcile his basic existentialist tenets with dialectical Materialism we will analyse those before mentioned elements to see if possible there could be a synthesis of the two.

1

According to Sartre consciousness is immaterial thus the rules of cause and effect that govern in the material world have its causation chain broken when an individual’s volition is in play. Man is the embodiment of freedom, man choices his path with a free will and therefore determinism is just an incoherent philosophic attitude of self-deceivers.

The anti-determinism of the existentialist leads to their advocacy of subjectivism. Individuals with their immaterial consciousness interpret objects of the intersujective world and then act upon them. Because human action is subjective there is no objective human nature and no objective meaning thus life is intrinsically meaningless. Subjective meaning is affirmed on life by the action of the individual. Thus man’s existence precedes his essence.

“If indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s actions by reference to a given and specific human nature: in other words, there is no determinism- man is free, man is freedom”. With this in mind the Existentialist declarers “I am thus responsible for myself and for all man, and I am creating a certain image of man I would have to be. In fashioning myself I fashion man”.

The existentialist states that because man is responsible for himself (and mankind) he is in anguish. He is in anguish because as soon as he commits to any act he feels the responsibility for himself and humanity. The existentialist does not claim to have moral authority over humanity his subjectivism doesn’t allow objective virtue; he declares “if I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad”. There is nothing for the existentialist to reference in the process of choosing right or wrong; the choice falls to what he can live with by being responsible for its results on him and humanity.

The humanity during the reign of terror sent alleged royalist to climb the scaffolds. Jean-Paul Marat felt his actions were that of a philanthropist, cutting off five or six hundred heads for the benefit of humanity. In the philosophical system of the Existentialist the moral merits of this action are neither objective nor universal. What Sartre does judge though if wether or not the action is authentic or in bad faith. If one blames others for their own action and denies responsibility that action is inauthentic or done in bad faith.

The existentialist sees the human condition is that of free commitment. God doesn’t exist therefore Mankind is in a state of abandonment with no transcending beings or priori’s to guide us. Sartre commits to the nation of individual freedom as the only human priori but dines that there is any human nature as a priori because there is only a “human universality of condition”. This is a sceptical argument like those of David Hume, ‘the sun rises every morning but how will we know if it will rise tomorrow’ or in our case ‘Man acts in certain pattens but how do we know he will tomorrow? ” Thus because of the uncertainty of our condition man lives not only in anguish but in despair, ‘if I take action in support of a goal, how do I know others will act in support?” This means that despair is the emotion that man feels because he acts without hope. To summarise, the point of Sartre’s existentialism is to give mankind it’s divinity as its own creator and along with this divinity it’s responsibility.

2

We have examined the basic elements of Existentialism or at least Sartre’s version of the doctrine. This would have been much tougher a task if we didn’t limit ourselves to the Sartrean model and ventured into the absurdist existentialism of Albert Camus or the “world philosophy” of Karl Jaspers. This second section though is to examine Marxism which could be a much harder task because we have no limitations of interpretations.

The second international was founded in 1889 nine years after the Belgian comrades first called on the German Social-Democratic Labour Party to form a socialist international. The second international was established to overcome the nationalistic tendencies within the socialist movement which formed artificial barriers to the international proletariat, thus moving to realise Marx’s dictum ‘workers of all countries unite’. Though this was the original conception of the international it found itself the battlefield for polemics between the ‘orthodox’ and ‘revisionist reformers’ factions.

The revisionist Edward Bernstein founder of evolutionary socialism (reformism) wanted changes to the phraseology and rhetoric of the second international to correspond with the practice of the international, which was heavily involved in the bourgeois political process. This though was seen by the revolutionaries or ‘orthodox’ Marxists such as Plekhanov and Lenin as a vulgarisation of Marxism contaminating the revolutionary doctrine of Marxism with petty-bourgeoisies ideals. This vulgarisation though was a symptom of deep rooted misunderstanding within the Marxist movement.

Bernstein’s theories of evolutionary socialism were based on Neo-Kantian ideas; this was evidently more then just an attack the revolutionary edge it was an assault on the very philosophical notions at the foundation of Marxist theory. The reply by the ‘orthodox’ Marxists was at first to ignore to the neo-Kantian foundation of Bernstein’s theories and focus his reformism. Rosa Luxemburg contributed to this critique of reformism with the theory that it represented an opportunist adaptation to bourgeois society i.e. reformist are Careerist. Though Luxemburg never went to the roots of Bernstein’s attack other ‘orthodox’ exponents such as Plekhanov pushed the notion that the foundations of Bernstein’s revisionism should be condemned. Plekhanov called upon Karl Kautsky one of the leading theoreticians of the second international to attack the philosophical notions of Bernstein directly. Kautsky’s reply in a letter written in 1898 reads as follows: -

“I have never been strong on philosophy. Although I stand entirely on the point of view of dialectical materialism, still I think that the economic and historical viewpoint of Marx and Engels is in the last resort compatible with neo-Kantianism.”

The inability of Kautsky to reply to the core of Bernstein’s theory of evolutionary socialism represented the philosophical bankruptcy of the second international. This bankruptcy is because of its positivist notion of scientific socialism.

The King and Saint-Denis.

2009-07-07T02:33:00.000-07:00

I was just looking through old documents and i came across this piece. It was probably written in 2004 or 2005.

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The King and Saint-Denis.

The foundation stone of any society is the individual human-being; societies are just the total sum of relationship between those particular individuals. The different forms of relations and thus societies emanate from the needs and wants of particular individuals grouped in a totality of relations during different historical situations. The volition of particular individuals in an economic system restrained by scarcity leads necessarily to conflict in the relationships between those individuals in the economic sphere. Human-beings are social-beings and while society is not a gestalt we organise along relations of production and exchange for mutual benefit or in the case of a slave because the treat of force coerces their natural volition. Development of these relations of production and exchange leads to the organisation of societies along class lines and a division of labour. Hitherto relations of production and exchange developed unequally because the economic situation was that of scarcity leading to the clash of volition both of individuals and the classes they comprise. Societies organised and divided along class lines because of scarcity inevitably have class conflict and class struggles over the factors of production. Antagonism between classes leads to a particular class’s hegemony over other classes but not necessarily in absolute form combining concessions and power sharing arrangements. Class hegemony maintains itself with state-power but also with ideological apparatus, Theories predicated regarding social and class relations are so because of the interests they represent and thus competing theories represent competing interests. This does not mean to say that all particular individual toting a social theory do so because it is in their best interests, Individuals can be deluded on this point. A person can be trapped in an unlocked room because the sign on the door reads pull and they do not think to push. Theses struggles in consciousness and relations of production and exchange have an existential underpinning the struggle for self-actualisation, autonomy and meeting one’s basic physiological needs in hostile situations.

One such struggle was the French revolution of 1789 which has long been the subject of debates over its very nature, what kind of revolution was it? The many responses to this question indicate the answers position in the spectrum of value systems i.e. their Weltanschauung. The eruption that was the revolution grew out of the fractures of interests between classes but also schisms within classes. The liquid magma that breached the so-called solid crust of French society was building up since before the death of the ‘Grand monarch’. The power and economic structures of Louis the XVI’s regime were by and large the same structures of relationships which existed under Louis the XIV’s regime and thus his regime is an appropriate point to start the investigation into the reason behind class struggle and revolution.

The dominate theories regarding political economy during the grand monarchs reign were transferred into policies by his “contrôleur général"(finance minister) Jean Baptiste Colbert. Colbert’s economics are considered generally to be Mercantilist in nature believing that the expansion of commerce and auspicious balance of payments are paramount to state wealth. Louis XIV and Colbert “resolved to establish a council particularly devoted to commerce, to be held every fortnight in our presence, in which all the interest of merchants and the means conducive to the revival of commerce shall be considered and determined upon, as well as all that which concerns manufactures.”(1) Though Colbert saw value in the expansion of trade his polices favoured the big export and import bourgeois and left farmers and small bourgeois with a heavy tax burden. Internal trade under Colbert’s polices suffered from high tariffs stifling small manufactures advancement under high costs from government regulation. Even if Colbert had seen more value in internal trade there is little he could have done. The fiscal problems of the ancient regime were caused by a schism within the aristocratic class widespread discontent with absolutism and taxes. The Sovereign’s response was to bend to the parliament regarding taxation of aristocrats, leaving the tax burden to the third estate.

The fiscal system of Colbert maintained by subsequent administrations sought to buy off the aristocratic class by burdening the lower classes. Within the bourgeois class there developed a split because of theses policies. Larger manufactures and merchants were able to circumvent incurring the internal tariff costs. Thus the larger bourgeoisie accumulated more capital buying their way into privileged status with the attainment of titles. While the smaller bourgeoisies were artificially trapped within medieval circumstances denying them access to larger markets. The development of larger markets according to Adman Smith leads to growth in production and thus growth in profit. The restrictions on the smaller bourgeoisies to grow in their economic means also excluded them from the status that larger bourgeoisies could attain as nobles of the robe. In manipulating the fiscal system against the lower classes the monarchy and aristocrats used their class hegemony to maximise their own profits.

This power and economic dynamic established as compromises between the monarchy and the aristocracy was not favoured by all in the privileged classes. After the death of Louis XV from smallpox in 1774 a new reformist contrôleur général was appointed, Jacques Turgot. Turgot was an economic liberalist who directly influenced Adam Smith during his stay in France during the 1760s being responsible for some
Ideas contained within Smith’s 1776 book ‘The Wealth of Nations’. Turgot objective was to curve and keep in check government spending while helping to foster the growth of private enterprise. Therefore according to Turgot tax revenues would increase and the kingdom would be saved from bankruptcy. To do this though he believed he had not only to overturn protectionist and interventionist policies of Colbert but to over turn medieval institutions all of which held back free trade and competition. In 1774 he started slowly improving transport, key industries and paying state debt. In 1775 he abolished internal tariffs on the trade of grain unfortunately the potential benefit of this policy was overshadowed by crop failures. The riots that followed were tagged the “flour wars” and for Turgot’s role in the suppression of the rioters he was dreaded by the general population. 1776 saw more sweeping reforms but also his dismissal because he crossed Queen Marie Antoinette. His ‘six edicts’ of that year were a radical change to the system, the fifth edict abolished the guild system and the sixth abolished the mandatory labour owed to the state by peasants and implemented a tax upon land. The aristocracy we’re outraged and opposed Turgot in parliament; he had managed to in a few short years alienate everyone except for the Physiocrats. His reforms though were rough medicine needed to save the monarchy from financial collapse, while Turgot was an economic liberal he was also a royalist.

Jacques Necker replaced Turgot (without the same title because Necker was Protestant and a foreigner) and proceed to reverse the reforms of his predecessor. Necker more interested in the stability of his own position in parliament then the state of the nation took on no policy of grand reform but rather borrowing millions to mean the cost of administration and war. By Necker’s own account he loaned a total sum of 530 million livres which the historian Albert Cobban considers a “considerable understatement” (2). This of course did nothing to save the state financial situation but worsened it Along with the regressive tax system the 1700’s saw successive wars for France which put strain on the finances of the state and by 1787 because of the American war the royal treasury was bankrupt.

The Financial costs of the American war were not the only cost incurred through France’s involvement; it increased her exposure to democratic and republican ideas. The intellectual movement during the 1700s is popularly known as the enlightenment and philosophies vary widely but centre around the conception of reason and sovereignty. The concept which medieval monarchies rested on was that in our prelapsarian state the king’s authority was given by god, therefore kings had a divine right to carry out divine law. In the border Age of Reason conceptions of sovereignty began to change finding their place within the natural conditions of mankind, Hobbes provides us with an illustration. Thomas Hobbes an Englishman writing during his countries civil wars finished his work “Leviathan” while in France in 1651 the same year supporters of Charles the II were defeated by the parliamentarians. The Leviathan while a book of political absolutism shifted the notion of sovereignty from a divine spark to the human condition. The human condition according to Hobbes is one marred by scarcity, individual battling for limited resources which they have ever liberty too take. But the greatest fear of the individual is a violent death so the ‘war of all against all’ is not in the individual’s best interest. Therefore the individuals submit some liberties to gain rights in peaceful society under the authority of the Leviathan (originally a biblical sea monster but in this context it’s the absolute powers of state with no separation of powers). Hobbes conceived a social contract based on a perception of human nature distinct from divinity, while a royalist he represented only the first wave of ‘The Age of Reason’.

The second wave of ‘The Age of Reason’ come during the 1700s and is characterised as ‘The enlightenment’. Second wave philosophies varied in goals and perceived limitations, Voltaire mocked democrats and believed reason could not abolition but only lighten the tyranny of political absolutism. Jean Jacques Rousseau political philosophy represents a different end of the enlightenment spectrum. Rousseau developed a social contract for a direct democracy rather then a parliamentarian system of representation, which influences modern libertarian communists today. This is one of the more ambitious programs of the French enlightenment intellectuals which is attributed more influence then due in the events of the revolution. ‘The Conspiracy of the Equals’ led by Buonarroti and Babeuf organised their failed insurrection to implement ideals heavily influenced by Rousseau. But outside the few comprisal organisations and ‘Secret Directories’ the real directory used a representative system rather direct control by the people. These counterpoised political philosophies varied widely but held an underlying unity; Immanuel Kant elucidated the concept of enlightenment in the “Berlinische Monatsschrift” as follows:

“Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage s man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! "Have courage to use your own reason!"- that is the motto of enlightenment.”(3)

This movement centred on the autonomy of the individual’s reason, the individual as thinker rather then devotee. Kant continued that the achievement of an ‘enlightened’ state was not an easy feat and result restricted by the old tutelage’s limitations:-

“Statutes and formulas, those mechanical tools of the rational employment or rather misemployment of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting tutelage. Whoever throws them off makes only an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch because he is not accustomed to that kind of free motion. Therefore, there are few who have succeeded by their own exercise of mind both in freeing themselves from incompetence and in achieving a steady pace.” (4)

This can be seen within the variations of political philosophy debating over which ditch they can jump. During the late 1700’s though with the American war of independence France rallied for the change to inflict damage to the British Empire, this Anglophobia motivated by imperial jealousy romanticised for some the American struggle. This struggle energised those more optimistic elements which held republican and democratic ideals. Marquis de Lafayette writer of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” was one of many whom joined the American struggle gaining a new perspective. The ideals of enlightenment did not dominate the intellectual climate in conscious form; the leading Jacobins were raised on the classics coupled with nostalgia for Lycurgus’s Sparta and hatred of Caesar. Plato was their philosopher not Rousseau and as follows plutocracy not democracy was their aim.

The struggle of the aristocratic order against the king and his political absolutism destabilised the traditional governmental systems and afforded the bourgeoisie of the third estate with opportunities of agitation and more political power. Napoleon dates the start of the revolution form the affair of the diamond necklace in 1785, a conspiracy by parliamentarians to depict the monarchy and in particular Queen Marie Antoinette as decadent and squanders of the state’s coffers. The struggle between the aristocratic order and the King over the regressive taxation system which need reform to deal with the state’s debts came to a deadlock with the first and second estates unwilling to accept higher taxation. With this impasse the Parliaments were suspended on 8 may 1788, this lead to open resistance the noblesse having the support of the church and Duc d' Orléans representative of the next in line for succession to the thrown. The resistance lead to rioting being organised throughout the providences under such pressure the royal authority capitulated and the states-general (i.e. all three estates, clergy, noblesse and the rest) summoned to meet on first of May 1789.

During these developments the third estate which constituted 98% of French society on the eve of the revolution was realising the falsity of lies peddled by aristocrats who talked of the nation but their meaning was by word for themselves. Pamphleteers such as Abbé Sieyes viewed the third estate as everything and the other orders as mere leeches. Sieyes wrote during this time “Such are the efforts which sustain society. Who puts them forth? The Third Estate” (5). The leadership of the third estate came from the bourgeois class, the class of economic development whose exploits depend upon being able to harness and manage others activity. The immediate aim’s of the bourgeois representatives of the third estate was to double their number of delegates within the parliament. This was achieved on 27 December 1788 when the royal council approved the doubling of representation. The logic of Necker (reinstated after the disturbances that year) was that the king could find an alliance in the third estate to combat the aristocrat opposition to tax reform. When the time came for the king to prove his alliances he sided with the aristocracy calling upon aristocrats to forgo their tax exemptions but leaving the decision to each particular estate on which issues the states-general would vote on. Effectively blocking tax reform, this lead the third estate reaction was the refusal to participate in the political process until it had a majority to meet its demands. On 17 June the third estate done with waiting declared its assembly the ‘national assembly’ insinuating as sieyes had taught that is was everything. The royal session was to be due on the 23 June, though reorganisation of the hall was needed to accommodate the different orders no one informed the third estate. When the third estates representatives arrived for their meeting to find a detachment of troops were guarding the building they assumed their assembly had been dissolved by force. Find shelter in a nearby indoor tennis court the representatives took the famous ‘tennis court oath’ for unity in the furtherance of their aims.

On the 23 of June the royal session took place in Necker’s absence. A plan was laid out for the conversation of France to a constitutional monarchy, but key reforms had been refused or watered down. The taxation reforms were based on aristocratic acceptance thus only on their own terms not a general tax applied to all. The old division of the three orders was not dissolved and the17 June pronouncement of the third estate was declared null and void. 25 June though saw a number of liberal nobles and the majority of the clergy joined the third estate supporting their reformist policies. On 27 June the king capitulated to the third estate and ordered the higher orders to join in unity with the lower estate, while sending of secret orders for 20,000 troops from the provinces. The government’s troop’s lead by Marshal De Broglie started to infiltrate Paris and Versailles showing their strength but the assembly reconstituted itself into the “National Constituent Assembly” in defiance of royal authority on July 9th. King Louis on the 11th of July under the advice of conservative noble sacked the reformist Necker, many considered this to be a royal coup d'etat and thus the class struggle developed into full-blown rebellion and civil war. This period is from July to August 1789 is known as ‘la Grande Peur’ or ‘The Great Fear’ when peasants sacked the castles of nobles and burn documentation regarding their feudal responsibilities along with wide spread grain riots. It was also during this time that the Bastille was stormed by a Parisian mod and renegade soldiers. The Bastille prison was a symbol of tyranny of the ancient regime and the site of numerus riots; one was caused a couple of weeks earlier by the Marquis de Sade shouting from a window that they were killing prisoners. The king on the 27th on July accepted a tricolour cockade a symbol of the revolutionaries thus the king and his military supporters submitted to the revolutionary authority for the time being. Over the next couple of months 20,000 passports were issued, the reactionary aristocrats had proven incapable of deafening themselves their power was shown as mere illusion predicated on the illusion of power.

This period of turmoil had seen the power of the mob in its ability to influence political events and gain a form of power through collective action. It was this power that gave the National Constituent Assembly authority and it was this power that controlled and was controlled by the Assembly and its various factions of demagogues. The factions within the Assembly spaned from far-right royalist opposed to the revolution to far-left republicans who wanted nothing less then for the king to ascend the scaffolds finding his head beneath the blade of the guillotine. Necker was reinstated for a short while allied with the centre-right ‘royalist democrats’ but public opinion soon went against him. Outside of the assembly a commune was sent up as the local government of Paris lead by Jean-Sylvain Bailly (once leader of the national assembly at the time of the tennis court oath).The National Guard also becoming a power lead by Lafayette of centre-left persuasion with membership consisting largely of petty-bourgeoisie.

The Constituent Assembly’s next major step is dubbed as the abolition of Feudalism; August 4, 1789 saw seigneurial rights revoked, including the forms of ownership, taxes and judicial authority associated with the seigneurial system. Between the period called the “abolition of feudalism” and the war on Austria many substantial changes such as the removal of internal trade barriers among others. The anarchist Peter Kropotkin argued the enthusiastic pronouncements of that day actually held back the abolishment of feudal rights until august 1793; revisionist historians have argued that feudalism was long dead before the constituent assembly’s actions. The foundations of capitalism, the primitive accumulation of capital, the decline of artisans and the process of proletarianization had been a long time developing; the French revolution was not a clean and total break with the past. The Thesis, Antithesis, synthesis progression described by Johann Fichte when applied to movements in history incorrectly gives the impression of definite stages, ossified then overturned rather then a dialectical movement of conflicting volitions and forces in a constant state of flux and flow.

This flow, a combination of many streams propelled revolutionary France into many factions and to war with Austria. Liberal republicans of the Girondists faction and constitutional monarchists of the Feuillants faction united under a pro-war agenda. The Girondists lead by Brissot supported the police of a revolutionary war exporting liberal republicanism throughout Europe. The Feuillants supported war on the basis it would increase the popularity of the king or alternatively if the war ended in defeat end the revolution in France. Oppositionists to the war came from the radical republicans and Democrats, Maximilien Robespierre and Jean-Paul Marat favoured consolidation of the revolution at home and feared that militarism favoured reactionary elements. Declaring war on April 20, 1792 indicial battles went against France which contributed to agitation against the Girondists and Feuillants.

The allies(fist coalition) advance against revolutionary France lead to decreasing public confidence in the Girondists and Feuillants factions, leading to auspiciously timed events for the radical republicans with the insurrection of august 10th 1792. The Cordeliers a political club associated with the Jacobins is thought to be the main agitators behind the august insurrection. Georges Danton a leading member of the Cordeliers, had a sudden rise to power as minister of justice which supports the thesis of his and their (the Cordeliers) importance in the insurrectionary movement against the constitutional monarchy. Danton considered the greatest orator of the revolution declared in a1792 speech to the national assembly, “To conquer we need to dare, to dare again, ever to dare!”(6). this romantic and idealistic rhetoric emblematic of the period captured the harts and minds of the multitude. Agitated and disaffected with the king’s actions during the proceeding months on the morning of august 10th the Persian people organised into columns assaulted Tuileries after forming an insurrectionary commune in the preceding days. The radical republican’s agitation and use of the mob effectively ended the monarchy in France. The proceeding chaos which lasted for six weeks included the September Massacres in which started after news reached Paris that Verdun had fallen to the first coalition. The insurrectionary commune remained de facto government until September 20th 1792, when the newly created convention declared abolition of the monarchy and founded the first republic.

The Colonial System and Algerian Nationalism.

2009-06-27T04:53:00.000-07:00

“[A]nd each day hundreds of new orphans, Arabs and French, awakened in every corner of Algeria, sons and daughters without fathers who would now have to learn to live without guidance and without heritage”

– Albert Camus, from ‘The First Man’.

In the early months of 1958, Hneri Alleg’s La Question was published in France and caused an immediate scandal for its first-hand description of torture by the French military in Algeria. For Alleg, the scourge of institutionalized torture not only afflicted the native Algerians, but functioned as “a school of perversion for young Frenchman”. In the long course of the war (1954-1962), dehumanization of the enemy led to increasingly brutal manifestations of violence. Albert Camus bemoaned the war for its extreme tactics and for severing two interconnected communities. However, these two communities, the indigenous and the European, had never constituted an organic whole. Part of the strategic logic of Nationalist terrorism was to provoke a heavy-handed French response that illuminated and reinforced the schism between the French setter and the suspect ‘Arab’, thereby provoking greater collective self-consciousness. The instance of Algerian nationalism, of the struggle for independence can be interpreted as an instance of social imagination postulating a new societal form. In a limited sense this is accurate, but in the stronger sense employed by Cornelius Castoriadis it is not. Algerian nationalism was determining, but it was also determined, and it yields to rational explanation. To understand the violence of the Algerian war, the birth of Algerian nationalism, one must understand the logic of colonialism and the Algerian experience of colonial domination.

The initial step toward Algeria’s experience of colonial domination came in 1830, when a fleet of five hundred French ships landed an army near the peninsula of Sidi-Ferruch. The rationale for the invasion was largely based upon domestic concerns and the need to solidify the July Monarchy. From the outset there was no overall plan to the conquest and debate ensured between those who advocated total occupation of Algeria, and those who merely wanted to maintain a limited foot-hold along the Mediterranean coastline. Those whom advocated total occupation finally won the day and the French army took to the task and fought a protracted war against the emir Abd al-Qādir, who employed tactics similar to those used by Jugurtha against Marius in the Jugurthine War. Ultimately, the Emir’s strategy succumbed to the same fate of Jugurtha’s campaign. French troop numbers increased to 107,000 in 1847 (the year Abd Al- Qādir was defeated), and by 1857, the Kabyles were subdued and in 1871 the last revolt was suppressed. It wasn’t until shortly after 1900 that the area now known as Algeria was completely under French control . Nevertheless, the era of colonial rule, and the process of colonization was ushered in well before the finalization of French conquest of ‘Algeria’.

From the commencement of French colonization there were deliberate efforts to destabilize and undermine the social structures of indigenous tribal society. Central to this endeavour were two key manoeuvres; the destruction of the indigenous elite and the introduction of private property in lieu of communal ownership and its complex arrangement of interconnected rights and obligations. France’s dispossession of Algeria’s traditional elite had the unintended result of depriving France of an easy means to control the population at large. Victorian Britain maintained its rule in India, a population of approximately 250 million, with 900 civil servants and 70,000 British soldiers . In part this was achieved by the integration of indigenous elites into the re-organized power structures. For the most part France maintained control with overwhelming force and the denial of political rights, this was immensely inefficient. Moreover, France’s inability or unwillingness to integrate Algeria’s educated elites on an equitable basis would prove a key failing in their colonial policy. Concurrent with the elimination of the indigenous elite, and perhaps more important, was the introduction of private property.

Two pieces of legalisation, the Senatus Consulte of 22 April 1863 and the Senatus Consulte of 14th 1865, were instrumental in instituting private property and further administrative integration of Algeria into metropolitan France. An advocate of 1863 Senatus Consulte, A. De Broglie said the legalisation aimed “to cause a general liquidation of the land” by individualizing property where possible and in consequence freeing up of land for potential emigrants from Europe. Jean-Paul Sartre argued that these laws had the express logic of enabling land-speculators to buy up indigenous land piecemeal . It was relayed that the Ouled Rechaich upon hearing the news that the new laws of 1863 applied to them were thrown into frightful despair, for they knew, wrote Captain Vaissière, that it amounted to the “death sentence of the tribe” . Indeed, economic ‘liberalization’ was to have grave repercussions for the tribal system and the development of the colonial system.

With the destruction of tribal social structures, and the further penetration French colonizers (colons) with their new forms of agricultural production the natives were dispossessed of their lands in droves and transformed into a rural proletariat. The Historian Alistair Horne reiterated the French statistics on land ownership in 1954, which stated that 25% of land was owned by 2% of the population . The average size of farm land owned were 123.7 hectares for European settlers and 11.6 for Muslims. European settlers often occupied the more fertile regions, and therefore average earnings per hectare were much higher. In 1880, large sections of the French wine industry were affected by the Phylloxera disease which allowed for the development of wine vineyard in Algeria . With the European colonizers concentrated in the costal regions and areas given to the production of highly profitable crops (such as wine) and with the natives pushed further and further out of these areas, there accordingly developed a “geographical form of segregation”. Moreover, there developed a wide disparity between average wage earnings between each community, by 1955 the average Muslim earned 16,000 francs per year, compared with 450,000 francs for the average European in Algeria . In March of 1955, Messali Hadj leader of the Mouvement national algérien (Algerian National Movement, or MNA) placed economic concerns above the issue of political rights, for Messali economic marginalization was the unavoidable result of the colonial system.

The roots of indigenous marginalization lay in the unequal distribution of land, but it was also compounded by unemployment and underemployment. In 1954, 90% of industrial and commercial activity was run by Europeans, Europeans which amounted to 11% of the population held 42% of all industrial jobs. Combined with this limited and diminishing economic foundation, the Muslim population where driven further still into poverty by an exponential birth-rate. The logic of colonialism had led to the pauperization of the indigenous population. Albert Memmi has noted that, despite the obvious economic structures that condition the lives of the colonized, the colonizers developed a “mythical” conception of the colonized that explained their plight by reference to their indolent dispositions. In turn, this validates their own privilege and wealth by reference to their own industry and superior character. While Memmi acknowledged that “the essence of colonization was not the prestige of the flag, nor cultural expansion”, and asserted the primacy of economic profit and privilege at the heart of colonialism, he also acknowledged the importance of colonial mentalities that shape the daily interaction between colonizer and colonized.

For Memmi, the colonizer and the colonized comprise a dialectical nexus, in which one is defined by the other. The colonizer and the colonized are diametrical opposites, situated upon either side of the same circle. Memmi relays a series of binary opposition to elucidate his point: “If his” - the colonizer - “living standards are high; it is because those of the colonized are low” and so forth. He comes to the conclusion that: “the more freely he” – the colonizer – “breathes, the more the colonized are choked”. This inverse relation, between the usurper and the subjugated, or to use Memmi’s terminology, the colonizer and the colonized was not the symbiotic relationship imagined by the defenders of the imaginary of “Algérie française”. For whom, French Algeria represented the unique creation of a cultural synthesis, that merged two historically distinct communities into the equivalent of a gestalt. However, this vision proved problematic given the inherent logic of colonialism and the marginalization of the indigenous population. French Algeria, Pierre Bourdieu argued, functioned more like a caste system than a unified totality.

For Bourdieu, French Algeria was reminiscent of a caste system in that its two “communities” were marked out at birth into two distinct categories, which took on the appearance of relations between superiors and inferiors. This categorization was based upon ethic background and therefore the physical appearance of the individual was a key determinate in their status. The migration from the inferior status to that of superior was all but impossible. Given the historical construction of these two communities, there inevitably developed a feeling of natural superiority among the Europeans and some have argued more controversially, inferiority among the colonized. Memmi argued that there was an element of truth in the notion of the “dependency complex” and “coloizability”, in that the colonized would often comport themselves to the situation of colonization and fulfil the role assigned to them. The important point here is that the colonial mentality, both of the colonizer and the colonized, is the result of the colonial experience.

In 1930, on the centenary of the French invasion, there were a series of celebration to commemorate the assimilation of Algeria into France, and moreover, to celebrate the accomplishment of Europe’s introduction of culture and industry to the native population. The eminent Algerian nationalist Ferhat Abbas, some time later, characterized the preceding as “organized in the best of racist styles”. alternatively, Professor Gautier of the University of Algiers, in 1931published a pamphlet that outlined the great works of France and liken them to the civilising influence of ancient Rome who had conquered the same territory generation upon generation before. Professor Gautier’s self-congratulation, along with that of the entire colonial establishment was profoundly missed placed. The 1930’s saw the rapid growth in Algerian nationalisms and by 1935 there were laws drawn up to prosecute anyone who provoked the colonized to civil disobedience . The irony of French self-congratulation and the gradual growth of Algerian nationalism is that the latter resulted from the hollowness of the former. It was the denial of substantive integration that led to the rejection of ‘Algérie française’.

Within the political currents of the indigenous population there were two distinct threads, an Islamic traditionalism that asserted the importance of cultural integrity and Muslim identity and those who agitated for greater equality and assimilation. The liberal politician Ferhat Abbas, while he maintained the pretence of links to his Islamic heritage, was an advocate of integration and assimilation, but only upon more equitable grounds. In 1936, Abbas made the statement that: “Had I discovered the Algerian nation, I would be a nationalist and I would not blush as if I had committed a crime…one cannot build on wind” . That same year, with the collapse of blum-viollette bill, that aimed to further integrate Algeria into metropolitan France, Abbas became disillusioned with the policy of assimilation and France’s repeated rebuffs of the reform movement. With this turn of events, Abbas discovered his Algerian nation, and his Algerian nationalism.

Ferhat Abbas’s shift from advocating assimilation to independence was emblematic of a generational shift in Algerian politics. However, those who advocated the use of violence to gain independence were differentiated from those who supported peaceful means to attain equalitarian assimilation or national self-determination in many respects. Most importantly, there were differences in terms of both, socio-economic strata and levels of education . The militants that would comprise the leadership of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) were not members of the professional elite; neither for the most part did they originate from the illiterate peasantry. The liberal and radical politicians, who maintained the importance of legality and the use of peaceful method to attain their ends, were often highly educated and occupied, like Abbas, converted administrative positions where often suspected that their open disapproval of French rule, belied there attachment to the colonial establishment that satisfied their own interests. William B. Quandt has argued, in his study of the socialization process and psychological dispositions that what commonly differentiated the militant’s of the FLN from the traditional Algerian politicians was a greater sense of personal injury and indignation with regards to the colonial system . Of course, as Bourdieu noted: “individual conflicts were based on objective situations which conditioned all the dramas that went on in men’s consciousness” . Indignation and sense of injury derive from the objective conditions of the colonial situation. It is a misapprehension of the roots of the Algerian conflict to place the onus of explanation, or non-explanation upon the manifestation of individual aggression and inner turmoil. Algerian nationalism was result of the colonial situation that denied the native population substantive engagement in political life. The colonized imagined national conflict, Memmi posited, because it was a form of conflict from they could not be excluded.

The repeated attempts to reform the colonial system from within the systems mechanisms had proved futile. In the aftermath of the Second World War, all routes of advancement of the Algerian concerns seemed obstructed by colonialist opposition. The Professional elite were becoming increasingly disillusioned with the political process and the ideals of assimilation and the imaginary of Algérie française. This imaginary vision of the colonial system had proved bankrupt. French Algeria and its two communities did not constitute a harmonious whole, in actuality the dialectic that tied the colonizer and to the colonized functioned by their mutual exclusion and inverse condition. If the French colons benefited it was by the dispossession of the Algerians. In Bourdieu’s terms, the colonial situation was characterized by a caste system; it marked out individuals by birth and consigned to them the status of superior or inferior. For many, this situation was unbearable and Politicians agitated for the realization of greater equality. But this was contrary to the logic of colonialism and Algerian marginalization was to be overcome it required definitive breaks with the colonial situation. It required the ability to imagine beyond the confines of the colonial system. In essence the violence of the Algerian struggle for independence reflected three things: the deepening material deprivation of the native population, the obstinate colonial establishment and the ability of the Algerian nationalists to imagine French Algeria without the French.

Bibliography

Alleg, Henri, (1958), The Question, Trans John Calder, London: John Calder.

Bourdieu, Pierre, (1962), The Algerians, Trans Alan C.M. Ross, Boston: Beacon Press.

Camus, Albert, (1963), Resistance, Rebellion and Death, Trans Justin O’Brien, London: Hamish Hamilton.

Castoriadis, Cornelius, (1997) World in Fragments: Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination, Edited and Trans by David Ames Curtis, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Ferguson, Niall, (2008), Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, Camberwell: Penguin Group.

Gordon, David C., (1966) The Passing of French Algeria, London: Oxford University Press.

Horne, Alistair, (1977) A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, London: Macmillan London Limited.

Hutchinson, Martha Crenshaw, (1978), Revolutionary Terrorism: The FLN in Algeria, 1954-1962, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press.

Obuchowski, Chester W., “Algeria: The Tortured Conscience”, The French Review, Vol 42, No 1, (Oct., 1968), pp. 90-103.

Memmi, Albert, (2003) The Colonizer and The Colonized, trans Howard Greenfeld, London: Earthscan Publications.

Quandt, William B., (1969), Revolution and Political Leadership: Algeria, 1954-1968, Cambridge: M.I.T Press.

Ruedy, John, (2005), Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Sartre, Jean-Paul, (2001) Colonialism and Neocolonialism, Trans Azzedine Haddour, Steve Brewer and Terry McWilliams, London: Routledge.

Stora, Benjamin, (2001) Algeria, 1830-2000: A Short History, Trans Jane Marie Todd, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Thomas, Martin., Moore, Bob., Butler, L.J., (2008) Crisis of Empire: Decolonization and Europe’s Imperial States, 1918-1975, London: Hodder Education.

Tyre, Stephen, “From Algerie Francaise to France Musulmane: Jacques Soustelle and The Myths and Realities of 'Integration', 1955-1962.”, French History, Vol 20, No 3, pp. 276-296.

Eugene the Chicken.

2009-06-18T16:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.eugenethechicken.com/

The Stranger: Luchino Visconti adaptation of Albert Camus's novel

2009-06-16T03:17:00.000-07:00

Great Novel, good film.

Marcello Mastroianni as Arthur Meursault.
Anna Karina as Marie Cardona

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062310/

Ideology and Symbolic power: Between Althusser and Bourdieu.

2009-06-01T20:59:00.000-07:00

Western Marxism has often laid considerable stress upon the ideology of modern capitalist societies. This focus upon ideology stems from the failure of proletarian revolution to have either occurred, or establish socialism within Western Europe. The exact nature and function of ideology became paramount in Marxian explanations of the continued stability of Western capitalism after the Great War and Great Depression. Marxian conceptualizations of symbolic domination (under the notion of ideology) remain in the realm of consciousness and intellectual frameworks. Pierre Bourdieu developed a paradigm for understanding symbolic power and domination through his theory of dispositional practices that breaks with the concept of ideology and it basis in the tradition of ‘Kantian intellectualism’. This theoretical model both deepens and broadens the sociological understanding of symbolic power and domination, through the acknowledgment of non-intellectual and bodily elements in the dynamics of symbolic power mechanisms. The theory of ideology advanced by Louis Althusser, with its assertion of the materiality of ideology, despite some tenuous overlap with the theory of dispositional practices provides a good counter-example to Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power, violence and domination.

Like Bourdieu, Althusser endeavor to understand symbolic domination was derived from the problem of social production and reproduction of stratified social structures. That is, for Althusser, the perpetuation of a class system inimical to the very interests of those who comprise the majority and unwittingly carry on their subordinated class position. Marxian analyses of the class system have often noted the repressive function of the state apparatus. Lenin unambiguously argued that the state was a product of “irreconcilable class antagonisms” and an organ for the hegemony of ruling class and their domination of other classes. The violence inherent in the state apparatus is augmented in the Marxian analysis by the subtle coercion of ideology. Althusser was concerned with the nature of ideology and its materiality both within individuals and within the so-called “ideological state apparatuses”.

The conception of ideology developed by Althusser differed in some respects to prior theoretical expositions of the concept, but it still retained essential elements common to Marxian analyses. In the German Ideology, Marx and Engels defined ideology as an assemblage of ideas that distort and mystify consciousness about the nature of human relations . This distortion of consciousness always represents a class position. The class whom controls the means of production, are often said to control the means of intellectual production and therefore, the hegemonic ideas of a society are those of its ruling class . Althusser concluded that “ideology represents the imaginary relations of individuals to their real conditions of existence”.

An archetypal example Althusser offered was the “divine right” of Kings. The notion that the relationship between the serf, the aristocrat and the King was established by the imaginary dictate of God and not to be found in the historical development of class relations and political organizations. Ideological conceptions have the distinctive feature of a seemingly trans-historical nature. The monarchy or capitalism is presented through ideology as the end of history and the eternal law. Bourdieu definitely breaks with Althusserian theory, for him, constitutions and law are obeyed more from custom and habituation than the “misrecognition of the arbitrariness which underlines it”. In Bourdieu’s view, the law and state are not heavily dependent upon intentional mystification, but docile dispositions. This is one central difference between the notion of ideology and dispositional practices. Ideology concerns thought and consciousness, whilst Bourdieu’s symbolic power functions through non-conscious embodied reactions.

Althusser did postulate that ideology had a material existence and a “modality” of “materiality”. Ideology derived its materiality from it existence within the subject and moreover the formation of the subject by ideology transmuted via the ideological state apparatuses (families, educational institutions, etcetera…). However, Althusser is still concerned with consciousness and its imaginary dimension even if seated within the individual subject. Althusser paid little to no attention to the body and its reactions, his assertion of the materiality of ideology seem to be more motivated by a defense of metaphysical materialism than the extent of inculcation. Bourdieu offers a theory that breaks with what he calls the intellectualism of the Kantian tradition in drawing attention to non-conscious and automatic bodily reaction in the mechanisms of symbolic power.

The physical and non-conscious reaction to symbolic power and the acquiescence to symbolic violence and domination are grounded in the imbedded dispositions that individuals acquire through interaction in social fields. Dispositions, or what Bourdieu calls their “habitus”, are durable structures that form generative principles that underpin practice. These generative principles are primarily the product of the family and educational system, but are not passively absorbed. There is an active component in individual practice. Central to the development of dispositions was the “socially elaborated” nature of “desire”; Bourdieu hypothesized a tentative thesis based upon a distinctly Freudian framework of the transition from ‘libidinal’ narcissism to the investment within the social field.

The transition from libidinal energy invested in bodily desire to investment within the social field and social reaction constitutes a crucial transitional point in which symbolic capital and therefore symbolic domination become a reality through the “search for recognition”. The individual develops a looking-glass self, by which is meant the individual start to evaluate itself via other people’s perception of him or her self. This search for recognition and self-evaluation via others becomes the source of satisfaction for what Freud called our primary narcissism, but it can also engender problems for individuals. Bad evaluations can elicit feelings of guilt and shame and individuals can develop phobias and complexes from repeated negative judgments upon themselves. There is also a lack of social capital or social regonition in the form of “glory, honour, credit, reputation, fame” etcetera and these common evaluative schemas allow for the symbolic domination of those with minimal symbolic capital.

“Symbolic violence”, wrote Bourdieu “is the coercion which is set up only through the consent that the dominated cannot fail to give to the dominator”. Symbolic power is constructed through the common evaluative schema that are habituated and inculcated within individual throughout their life, by the primary institutions of socialization and the constant re-socialization throughout day-to-day symbolic activities. The reaction to symbolic power is not initialized in the realm of consciousness, but is prereflexive and expressed as bodily reaction or emotional responses. In this sense, Bourdieu argues we are the outcome of a long process of “autonomization”. This automization take the form of a “quasi-bodily involvement in the world” and is not a process of conscious calculation. To exemplify his position on symbolic power, Bourdieu uses the example of orders and preformative utterances and linguistic exchanges in general.

The “symbolic force” or the illocutionary power of an utterance such as an order is said to derive from the previously acquired disposition of the body. Acquiescence to the order, for Bourdieu, is “automatic” and appears mechanical in its process. This symbolic force also depends upon the position of the speaker and their possession of authority invested in them by social institutions and their linguistic practices. Bourdieu utilized the example of judges to explain the importance of institutions and symbol of power. The judge can sentence someone to prison, not because of his intrinsic qualities, but because his speech is backed by social institution, manifested by the symbols of power and authority, the robe and gavel. Interpersonal linguistic exchanges are also sites of symbolic power and domination.

Linguistic exchanges are often conducted by individuals with an uneven distribution of linguistic capital, competence and expressive styles. This unequal distribution of linguistic recourses is often linked to both the condition under which it was acquired and the market (the receivers of linguistic products) under which it finds it conditions of use. The condition of primary acquisition of linguistic habitus is often highly related to economic capital and class position. Education imbues the individual with both linguistic dispositions and a bodily hexis. Different classes are said by Bourdieu to be characterized by different form of expression and hold their body in different ways. These characteristics are often tailed toward different social fields. When an individual from one class is placed within a social field that his or her upbringing had not prepared them for, they often find it harder to compete for social capital with those whose linguistic expression was formed for the field. This can manifest itself in nervousness and hesitant delivery in linguistic exchanges between those with different levels of cultural capital.

The conceptualization of symbolic power put forth by Pierre Bourdieu breaks with the conceptualization of ideology advanced within the Marxian tradition and Althusser’s work in particular. Althusser sought to understand the production and re-production of stratified social system in terms of ideology and its power over individual consciousness. Bourdieu identified this as a continuation of the tradition of Kantian intellectualism that privileged conscious thought over the body and ignored bodily reactions and habituation in the development of dispositions and symbolic power. Symbolic power and domination are therefore much broader concepts than ideology, despite Althusser’s assertion of the materiality of ideology. Bourdieu’s conception of symbolic power is given an interpersonal dimension with its focus upon the uneven distribution of symbolic capital and the conflict over symbolic profits. Bourdieu’s conception of symbolic power is therefore, both deeper and broader then that of ideology, while also breaking with its intellectualist bias.

Bibliography.
Althusser, Louis, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: (Notes Towards an Investigation)”, Lenin and Philosophy: and Other Essays, trans Ben Brewster, (1971, New York: Monthly Review Press).

Bourdieu, Pierre, Pascalian Meditations, Trans Richard Nice, (1997, Stanford: Stanford University Press).

Bourdieu , Pierre, The Logic of Practice, Trans Richard Nice, (1990, Oxford: Polity Press).

Bourdieu , Pierre, Language and Symbolic Power, Edited John B. Thompson, Trans Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson, (1991, Cambridge: Polity Press).

Lenin, V.I, The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution, (1999, Sydney: Resistance books).

Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, “The German Ideology: A Critique of the Most Recent German Philosophy as Represented by Feuerbach, B. Bauer, and Stirner”, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, Trans and Edited Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat, (1967, New York: Anchor Books), pp. 403-473.