We'll be taking a break for the next three weeks. See you in the new year!
Monday, December 15, 2008
Where will the anger go: reaction or resistance? by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC
As might be expected in hard times, there is a lot of anger around. Much depends on how it is directed. I'd like to make some very brief remarks on the possibilities.
All too often, public anger and frustration about hardship and uncertainty is vented not at the powerful elites who benefit, but at the nearest and most vulnerable scapegoats. The forms this takes may range from reactionary anti-union, anti-immigrant, or anti-public sector chatter on comment threads to brutal hate crimes like the killing of Jose Sucuzhanay, who was beaten to death with an aluminum baseball bat while his attackers yelled anti-gay and anti-Latino slurs. Now, of course, neither anti-union sentiment nor hate crimes are limited to recessions, but there is reason to suppose that we will see an increase in both as the economic crisis deepens: it is an all-too-familiar story. Recently-released FBI figures for 2007 suggest a rise in anti-Latino hate crimes (and anti-gay hate crimes, but a drop in hate crimes overall); history suggests the disastrous consequences if such reactionary trends are left to proceed unchecked.
Some recent events, however, offer another possible story: the anti-bailout rallies on Wall Street, the astonishing victory of the workers at Republic Windows in Chicago, countrywide protest marches against government cutbacks in Ireland, the continuing unrest in Greece. While it is unlikely that all involved in these events experienced an epiphany of class consciousness, we can say at least that their anger was, broadly, on target (if not, perhaps, grounded in a highly systematic analysis); I think we can say, further, that many "ordinary people"-- a curious phrase, I have always thought-- are rather rapidly coming to the realization that their interests just are not the same as the interests of Henry Paulson and his erstwhile officemates on Wall Street.
The "conventional wisdom" usually dispensed in response to recessions is meeting increased skepticism and resistance. Unconditional bank bailouts and severe cuts to public services are not inevitable, "no brainer" responses to economic crisis: they are the result of a very clear and deliberate choice to support the interests of the economically privileged and not those of workers. Budget gaps could be filled by reducing military spending or increasing taxes on the rich, but instead, policymakers choose to cut services upon which middle-class and working-class people depend: healthcare, education, mass transit, fire departments, and so on.
The next step is to see these policy choices not so much as reprehensible actions by individuals but as structural parts of a system-- capitalism-- and that this system, because produced by human choice and action, can be changed or replaced. It is not the only, ultimate, or inevitable system: it arose at a specific time, under specific conditions, and there is no reason that we cannot do better. Marx offers us a way to see an alternative, but he did not sketch the details of that alternative: that's up to us.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Report on US-Latin America's Relations by Matias Bulnes, NYC
Last Monday the Brookings Institution released a report on the current state of relations between the US and Latin America, and the major challenges faced by the region, finally suggesting future policies to president-elect Obama. While highlighting the dramatic changes Latin America has undergone over the last two decades, the report insists on the need for respectful collaboration within the Americas.
The main reason why the US should seek collaboration with Latin American countries, according to the report, is pragmatic, having to do with the nature of some of the challenges faced by the region. Climate change, migratory policies, drug control, and nuclear growth exemplify challenges that demand a joint response—the report says. If everyone takes independent measures, the solutions achieved for these problems will doubtlessly be suboptimal and perhaps even insufficient.
The report also points out the feasibility of such collaboration with Latin America given the democratic stability and relative prosperity many Latin American countries have achieved during the last decades. While it still is poorer than the US or Canada, Latin America is on the rise, and drawing economic and diplomatic attention from various points on the globe. Latin America is entrenching its connections with Asia and Europe and as a result has become more independent of the US. But this boost in international participation is fueled by the consolidation of democracy in Latin American countries which also makes them better partners for the US.
In sum, the report ably argues for the utility and feasibility of uplifting the collaboration between the US and Latin America. What the report deliberately omits is their willingness to partner with each other. The last half a century of relations between the US and Latin America has been rocky, to say the least. There still is much mistrust and animosity between them—especially from Latin America toward the US. And though it is true that they both will pay the price for not collaborating, it is far from obvious that the US will find a warm response from many Latin American countries.
Consider the case of Venezuela—one of the biggest and most influential countries in Latin America. President Chávez has made the US a cornerstone of his political discourse. Chávez routinely uses “the Empire”—as he calls the US—as a scapegoat for all the evils in the world, both real and imagined. Should the US expect a warm response from him to collaborate on a common agenda? Even with Obama as president that seems unlikely. For no collaboration seems possible unless Chávez tempers his anti-American rhetoric. And yet Chávez’s popularity heavily relies upon his incendiary discourse. Thus barring a sudden change in its political direction, it seems unlikely that Venezuela will be on-board with a collaboration plan.
And with Venezuela a number of other Latin American countries follow suit. Cuba, Bolivia and Ecuador, all belong to Chávez’s circle of trust. Moreover, all of the political leaderships of these countries have capitalized on anti-American sentiments in their respective nations. Similarly then, no much warmth should be expected from them.
On the other extreme of the spectrum is Venezuela’s neighbor, Colombia. Unlike Venezuela, in Colombia the leftist rhetoric has worn out. Beset by guerrillas and their paramilitary counterparts, the Colombian people has grown used to the idea that violence will not subside without crushing the guerrilla. The US has thus been perceived as an ally in their efforts to regain internal peace. President Uribe is without a doubt the US’s closest ally in the region and one that will certainly welcome collaboration with the US. However, even here there is a little obstacle: the Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The US congress has proved reluctant to tighten the economic and political ties of the US with a country that tops the lists of violence in the world. In fact, Obama himself has opposed the FTA with Colombia and so it seems possible that it won’t be forthcoming during his administration. If so, the question arises whether the Colombian leadership will take offence. The report recommends approving the FTA but skeptics still remain. In any event, it is a sign of how difficult things can be with Latin America that the US will have to work so hard to get the favor of its foremost ally in the region.
Mexico would make for a good partner if it weren’t for the migration issue. For one, there are anti-American sentiments in the mid and lower classes of Mexican society, but more importantly, the Bush administration has abetted them with its project of building a wall along the border. The Mexican government has rarely been so close in ideology to the US, but I can’t help to be skeptical of the long-term workability of a common agenda with a nation the US is treating with so much disdain as to build a wall between them.
The report also recommends a complete redefinition of the US policy toward Cuba. Cuba has been a tenacious wedge between the US and Latin America, shaping in large measure the relations between the two. The report argues for the need to tamp down the hostilities with Castro’s regime if any close collaboration with Latin America as a whole is to be possible. Obama is in good standing to begin this revival of diplomatic relations with Cuba, but it would seem unrealistic to expect that the trust will be restored within Obama’s mandate. Also, any attempt to restore the trust will require mutual respect for each other’s internal affairs (a point omitted in the report). But this would seem very costly for any administration since it would arouse the fury of the Cuban American community. Again, not an easy task here.
Chile and Brazil are perhaps the best partners for the US in the region. Chile because of its economic leadership, Brazil because of its size, both are emblematic countries which are stable and economically sound. Also, because of historical circumstances there is a healthy distance between the US and their internal affairs. This in turn clothes Chile and Brazil with an image of neutrality that makes them more effective as negotiators within the region than submissive US allies such as Colombia. The US must engage them in a way that preserves this asset.
In sum, I believe that the report recommends the right course of action for the US toward Latin America. Nevertheless, the report does not acknowledge the magnitude of the challenge lying ahead. Latin America has internal divisions of its own, its politics is crossed by historical animosities and aspirations. Get them all to work together may be hard in its own merit. Expecting that Obama’s administration will get them to work together and with the US may well be impossible.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Solidarity post-Prop 8 by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC
I have been both encouraged and disturbed by the activism that has followed the passing of anti-gay ballot measures on November 4th: encouraged because of the energy and engagement that have brought thousands on to the streets in support of equality but disturbed by the all-too-vocal minority of my fellow queers that has scapegoated African-Americans for the California result. This type of discourse is precisely what the gay rights movement needs to disavow if it is to succeed. Indeed, all progressive social movements have something important to learn from these post-November 4th debates.
Because of one exit poll, which showed that African-Americans had supported Prop 8 by a larger margin than other ethnic/racial groups, some white gay people began blaming them for the vote, berating them for failing to support what many see as this generation's greatest civil rights struggle. Why, this segment of white gay opinion demanded, can't "they" identify with "our" struggle when "they" were denied civil rights for so long and had to fight so hard for them?
Explaining all that is wrong with this sort of statement may be a useful exercise in self-examination for the gay rights movement.
First, we should be wary of basing a political analysis on one piece of polling data. African-Americans make up something like 6% of California's population, making it far-fetched numerically as well as politically to place so much blame on them, and exit polls, while sometimes useful, are hardly unimpeachable sources of certainty. Lest we forget, majorities-- albeit slimmer ones-- of other ethnic groups supported Prop 8; in any case, why see race or ethnicity as the more relevant way to "cut" the results? Why not focus on age, sex, religious affiliation, economic status, or other indicators? Moreover, California was not the only state to pass an anti-gay ballot measure on November 4th; although it is understandable that particular attention is given to that result since it was more surprising--- and given that same-sex marriages had already taken place there-- the result is only one part of a broader picture. In Arkansas, with an 84% white electorate according to CNN's exit poll, a ballot measure banning gay couples from adopting children passed with a solid majority. According to this poll, the state has a higher proportion of African-American voters, and the anti-gay measure won more narrowly among them than among whites. But nobody talked about that.
Second, those engaging in scapegoating seem to forget that some African-Americans are gay, and some gay folks are African-American. It may sound silly to have to point this out, but some of the discourse floating around the "blogosphere" and, sadly, beyond suggests that all too many simply do not-- or will not-- recognize this. Why can't "they" identify with "our" struggle? Well, some of "them" are us!
Part of the problem is that the gay community and the gay rights movement have become identified with economically privileged white men. This has had the double effect of marginalizing those of us in the gay community who are not economically privileged white men while also rendering attempts to cast the gay rights struggle as a civil rights struggle not only implausible but quite possibly offensive. While economically privileged white gay men are of course as entitled to press for equal rights as anyone else, I imagine many African-Americans might find it rather hard to take suggestions that they have a common experience and common struggle (especially given the deep-rooted, systematic racism that continues to pervade U.S. society). I am not suggesting that these men should stop participating in the struggle for gay rights, but I think it is a good time to ask why that struggle is not-- or at least is not perceived to be-- diverse and inclusive, and it is a good time to ask how this struggle fits with other movements fighting against inequality, injustice, and oppression.
There was some disbelief among white queers that their vote for Barack Obama was not "reciprocated" in the Prop 8 votes of African-Americans. Unfortunately solidarity is not always so easy, so "instant." If all marginalized groups in U.S. society-- women, people of color, immigrants, the working class-- had voted out of solidarity with all other marginalized groups on November 4th, we would have had dramatically different results: Cynthia McKinney would probably be picking her cabinet as I write! It cannot, therefore, be any surprise that these groups did not "rescue" gay rights. Although many queers of all colors and classes have been active participants in a wide range of social justice struggles, the most powerful gay rights organizations seem more focused on running celebrity-studded awards galas and sending out credit card offers than on fighting oppression on all fronts. There has been a tendency toward "mainstreaming" gay rights issues: that is, removing them from any kind of radical political context and casting them as rights to assimilate. Such a strategy seems to suggest that, as soon as formal equality for LGBT people is achieved, we will retreat behind our picket fences and avoid any disruption to the status quo. Given the dominance of this sort of gay rights politics-- at least in public perception-- people fighting against racism or classism might well ask why they should stand with the LGBT community when there is reason to doubt that the LGBT community will stand with them in their struggles.
The gay rights movement needs to be radical again; its center of gravity should be the streets, not the boardrooms of "gay friendly" corporations, and its mission should be justice for all and an end to all oppression, to the very idea of relations of domination. This means not only acting in solidarity with other communities but looking at its own agenda: for many queers, protection from job discrimination and hate crimes may be just as urgent as the fight for mariage rights (indispensable though they are).
Of course, solidarity should go both ways; homophobia ought to be vigorously challenged in every community. This will surely involve some difficult conversations. The claim that the gay rights struggle is a civil rights struggle is sometimes met with skepticism and even annoyance in the African-American community. Although I think the gay rights are indeed civil rights, I think it is a worthwhile conversation to have. It seems to me that the objections to the comparison with the civil rights struggle of African-Americans are of two main kinds: (1) it is wrong to compare the two because LGBTs have not suffered the same pain as African-Americans and (2) it is wrong to compare the two because gay people can "pass" and African-Americans (mostly) cannot. (Of course there some object to the comparison for purely homophobic reasons, but this is not as interesting a claim.)
With respect to (1), it should be emphasized that it is one thing to compare and another to equate. I think it is true that the pain suffered by African-Americans has few parallels in human history in terms of its sheer scale. This unique history and experience should be honored. Nevertheless, the comparison with gay rights is valid, since there are highly relevant similarities. No-one should be denied civil rights for morally arbitrary reasons (e.g. race or sexual orientation). On this point, a short anecdote: when teaching an undergraduate class on privilege and discrimination, I found that students who at first resisted the comparison of racism and homophobia often changed their perspective after I shared with them some every-day examples of discrimination and lack of privilege that gay people face. Whether it is because of race or (perceived) sexual orientation, it is simply a painful human experience to be stared at, mocked, verbally harrassed, threatened, or assaulted by people who hate you for being part of a stigmatized minority. None of this should be taken to underestimate the extraordinary pervasiveness of racism in our society-- a fact that white privilege tends to obscure for many of us.
With respect to (2), the simple answer is that gay people should not have to "pass" in order to be treated fairly. It is useful, though, to pursue this kind of objection, perhaps with the following thought experiment: suppose there is a reliable and simple method through which an African-American can appear "white." Should any African-American be told to use this method to escape racism rather than pursuing and end to racism? Obviously not.
These are simple arguments, with which I doubt many readers of this blog will disagree, but my aim in airing them here has been to point out that these conversations do not seem to be happening often enough. Without them-- uncomfortable as they may be-- solidarity among all groups fighting for justice and equality will remain something of a chimera.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Will Tuesday's Election Make History? by Matias Bulnes, NYC
Every election is the most important one ever. At least that is how the media portray it and people perceive it. Tuesday’s election is no exception to the rule. The media and public opinion have attached an enormous historical significance to it, using expressions such as "crucial" or "tipping point" to describe it. Of course the US is the most powerful country in the world and American culture a dominant force in our era. If only for this reason the election of its political leadership has a tremendous impact everywhere. But this has been the case with every presidential election in the US since at least the early XX century. More interesting is the question whether this election is special over previous ones, whether we should not take it routinely. Is it really more important than the last election or the one before? Can this election significantly alter the course of history? Let's analyze the issue carefully.
One of the arguments underlying this magnifying view of the ongoing election appeals to the international scenario and an alleged redistribution of power in the world. Since the end of the Cold War there has been no counterbalance to American dominance. This state of affairs, some fear, is beginning to change. China has had a decade of persistent growth around the 10% mark which has earned it both power and influence. China still is considerably poorer than the US or Europe, but if they continue to grow at half the present rate, not for too long. Additionally, its monstrous dimensions grant China an important advantage in the game—same advantage the US has enjoyed over its dismembered European neighbors. China need not equal the GDP of the US to surpass it in power and influence. Can the outcome of this election interfere with China’s raise to the summit?
Like it or not, let’s first accept that China’s investiture as first power is very likely inevitable. It is part of the natural historical progression that countries occupy the position of superpower temporarily. And given China's tremendous success and size it seems poised to be next superpower. The question is when (rather than if) this will occur. In the light of this, Tuesday’s election is crucial if the outcome can alter the speed of China's development. Can either candidate do this? Hardly because China's growth can be explained in large measure by internal events such as an accelerated urbanization and industrialization.
Barring influencing its economic development, the only way the next US president could play a significant historical role in relation to China would be by passing the title of first power to the Chinese. But this also seems highly improbable. Granted that China will likely be the next superpower, the imminence of this event is oftentimes exaggerated. For all its growth China is nowhere near the US in economic stature. The US still doubles China in GDP and its share of the World GDP does not seem to be in decline. Most likely the US will continue to be the most powerful nation on Earth when the next president leaves the White House, and very likely, for the years to follow.
The remaining international conditions have not changed significantly since Bush won the reelection. The threat of terrorism is still lurking, the Iraq War has worsened but is essentially equally untenable, the Israel-Palestine conflict is in the same deplorable state it has been for the last decade. So if the significance of Tuesday’s election is not being played in the international scenario, is it being played in the domestic one?
Some particularities of this election make it look special. First, the two frontrunners, Obama and McCain, stand in striking contrast even aside from their unremarkable political differences. One of them is unusually young, the other is unusually old; one is Black the other is White; one is the child of an immigrant the other belongs to a traditional military family. But all of these amount to simple anecdote. More important is the fact that this election has attracted more public attention than recent ones. The response to phone polls has been better and more enthusiastic than in previous election years and experts expect the turnout to near the historical pick (the 1960 Election between Kennedy and Nixon had a 64% turnout, the highest in recent history). But in itself this does not seem to me to endow the election with historical significance. It perhaps shows that the election is perceived as very significant, but this is hardly enough evidence that it will be. After all, if it is not, it would not be the first time public perception misrepresents reality.
In isolation none of the above conveys the historical significance of Tuesday’s election. But when put together within a cogent, independent historical narrative they constitute strong evidence that we may be witnessing an outstanding presidential race. I believe that the only coherent narrative that brings all these pieces together is the history of race relations and multiculturalism in the US and, more generally, the post-Cold War world.
The significance of this election to the history of race relations within the US is obvious from the fact there has never been a non-white president. But it is more than a mere mention in history textbooks that is at stake on Tuesday: an Obama victory would mark the culmination of a historical process and the beginning of a new era in race relations all across the Western hemisphere. It all began with the arrival of slaves from Africa and has continued intermittently with Asian, European and Latin American migratory waves. In West Europe the immigration is more recent and from Africa and the Middle East mainly. All the same, the last century or two have witnessed a remix of races that can only be compared to the barbarian migration to Rome back in the V century. That story did not end well as the Romans eventually abandoned the city and the Empire fell as a result. In the present case the prognosis is much better since the newcomers have integrated into the host societies—in fact, so much so that the next president of the most powerful one could be a newcomer.
Speaking more practically, race relations will most likely undergo a transformation as a result of this presidential campaign. While the non-white had traditionally been left out of the circuits of power, this has inevitably affected the interaction among individuals of different races and ethnicities. Having darker skin will no longer be a sign of powerlessness—whether or not one is willing to act upon this assumption. When going out to the street on Wednesday and seeing a black person we will have to contemplate the possibility that he or she could be a future president of the US. This slight change in our perception of one another can change American society for good and for the better.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Keeping the pressure on: what now for the anti-bailout activists? by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC
There is, I fear, a sense of bewilderment abroad among working people now that the bailout has passed and as the economic crisis deepens. What coherent counter-narratives are available for those who are beginning to lose faith in the standard ones provided by capitalist politicians and media? What possibilities exist for radical grass-roots economic justice movements in the current context? What, exactly, should we be demanding?
In my last essay, I argued that the best response to those who defended the bailout on the grounds that it was necessary to prevent disaster on Wall Street that would inevitably hit jobs, pensions, and so on was to broaden the question and ask why it is that we have a system that places so much power in the hands of investors. Why should we have pensions depend on the stock market, and why should the moods of investors have such significance?
If we are to find a just and rational way out of this crisis, or rather a way to recover from it, a thorough and profound debate about these questions is essential. Sadly, only a small minority of non-mainstream, that is non-corporate, media outlets have moved beyond reporting the dizzying swings of the Dow or FTSE and, on occasion, giving a superficial account of the controversy over the bailout.
It has been heartening to see so many working people take to the streets in protest at the bailout. Many of the protests have been organized by small, ad-hoc groups and have been publicized through grass-roots networks. I'm reminded of Hannah Arendt's claim that revolutions are carried out not by established "revolutionary" parties or organizations, but by spontaneously-constituted groups of people who, quite simply, have had enough of the system (note, not just the particular rulers) in place. I wonder, however, whether these protests will lose steam as the immediate, relatively concrete issue of the $700 billion bailout fades somewhat from the headlines and generalized economic crisis takes its place. The answer depends on the kinds of analysis available to the protesters and their supporters (and potential supporters).
One obvious thing to do in seeking the understand the prospects for such a movement is to look at the last economic crisis of this scale: the Great Depression. It was the spontaneous, grassroots-led, radical struggle of workers during that period that gave them their greatest gains and caused the greatest alarm in the capitalist class. The consolidation of the "mainstream" labor unions-- the AFL and CIO-- and their co-operation with the new National Labor Relations Board came as something of a relief to big business, since it offered the prospect of industrial "peace" and stability after the militant strikes of the 1930s. We should bear in mind, though, that these workers lived in a culture where worker struggles were always fresh in the community's memory, and where many writers and groups openly advocated various forms of socialism. They would have remembered Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party, who ran for President several times, finally in 1920, winning 900,000 votes. Debs himself had first been radicalized during the long Depression that followed the economic crisis of 1893. Radical movements-- of workers, the unemployed, veterans-- were brutally repressed time and time again and yet, their spirit survived and was taken up by new activists. System-saving reform and the outbreak of the Second World War blunted their edge, but it was really McCarthyism that did what mere beatings, killings, and imprisonments could not: it demonized them and made their own natural constituency hostile to them. (Needless to say, Stalinism's perversion of socialism/ communism helped this process greatly.) Even the tumult of the 1960s did not seriously revive this tradition.
What now, then? For the first time in many years, we can see the possibility of a great moment of clarity: the system's true nature and the interests of the different groups within it are becoming visible to a great many people for the first time. The bailout has shown that those in power in this system-- the capitalist class, including CEOs and Senators-- will do whatever it takes to save capitalists, and little or nothing to save anyone else, when there is trouble. It's not necessarily that the individual CEOs and Senators are cruel or greedy, although many are; it is not about personal qualities of individuals at all. It's about the dynamics of the system. It's simple: their interests are not your interests. If you're stranded on a New Orleans rooftop, bankrupted by medical costs, or facing foreclosure, you will not be bailed out; if you own an investment bank that has run into trouble, you will. That's just how it works. The appropriate demand, I think, is not just the rollback of the bailout and a New Deal re-enactment; the system-- capitalism-- that makes it "necessary" to bail out the bankers, not the workers, should itself be replaced by a system that organizes its priorities differently. As I suggested in my last post, this requires us to think about what economies are for: profit or people?
In short, the situation requires a radical anticapitalist movement with a radical anticapitalist analysis showing what is wrong with the system as a whole and how we can do better. For this reason, it is perhaps better that the anti-bailout and anti-eviction activism we are seeing is not led by "mainstream" groups such as the less radical unions. However, it is hard to create such movements and analyses in a vaccuum. Existing unions, political parties, and other organizations face a decision: will they step into the street or stay in their office suites?
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Change is in the Air by Matias Bulnes, NYC
The situation of the US seems to be as precarious as it has ever been: An unprecedented debt, a looming economic crisis of unbeknown consequences, an unmanageable war, the threat of terrorism lurking, China’s power increasing persistently and, let’s not forget, all this in the midst of a fierce struggle over interpretations of fundamental constitutional principles sparked by the Guantanamo Base prison and the wiretapping of citizens. And when one hits rock-bottom consolation comes from the realization that things can hardly go worse. But this is not to say that things are going to get better. For the US economy can go a long time before it recovers—as it happened after the Great Depression. And in fact, it may never totally recover, as some fear that China might relegate the US to a secondary role sooner rather than latter. The challenge of the day is to get out of the hole as fast as possible and, perhaps more importantly in the long-run, to get out of the course of events that led the country down this hole. The country needs change—and desperately so.
There can hardly be any doubt that the main responsible for the present state of affairs is the Republican Party in general, and the Bush administration in particular. Clinton handed the country to Bush with surplus after a decade of economic prosperity, no major military conflict, in fairly good terms with its European allies, and with the Israel-Palestine conflict having come as close to a solution as it has ever been. The Republican administration will likely return the country in the aforementioned deplorable conditions—may they not have another period to devastate it more.
Not even external, unforeseeable circumstances such as the terrorist attacks of 9/11 can account for the magnitude of the disaster. There are plenty of fingers one can point to decisions that straightforwardly explain much of the problems. Economists from within and without the country had been warning for years of the risks involved in such a ruthless deregulation of the US financial market. Or as many have observed, it is just naïve to believe that a housing market that always goes up might not turn out to be a bubble. Or in foreign policy, even now nobody understands why go into Iraq in order to hunt down someone who is hiding in Afghanistan and, moreover, in a way that undermines international institutions and threatens one’s allies. The list goes on and on.
All of this is familiar territory. But more significant than the usual declamations about Bush’s mistakes is the ideology that has driven him through such unfortunate decisions. For as one would have expected, all the mistakes hang together nicely in a way that reveals American conservativism in the background. The deregulation of the markets is the battle flag of the conservative right, while preemptive war has been advocated by the religious right and the neoconservatives. These two policies account for a good deal of the present distress, both of them courtesy of American conservativism.
The association between the present crisis and the conservative views that have dominated US politics over the last decades is clear in theory. The question is whether it’ll be as clear to the voter’s mind. And I think we can be optimistic about change in the political direction of the country to the same extent that we should be pessimistic about the current situation and the near future. For the American electorate has proved to be more sensitive to shock therapy than to ideological reasons, and crises, when severe, are felt by everyone around both sharply and helplessly. If the crisis is as bad as experts predict, voters will look around for people to put the blame on and eventually find conservatives and the Free-market gurus.
In fact, this path has been traveled before. The Great Depression, lately used to inspire fear of the present crisis, also marked a point of inflection in US politics. After decades of Republican domination the Great Depression ushered in more than 30 years of Democratic control of the White House only interrupted by Eisenhower. In fact, that was the last time Democrats won back to back elections. And then you have Marx all over again: if you want people to change prick them on their pocket.
Democrats brought Keynesian ideas to the table putting thus an end to that old-school Capitalism advocated by Republicans which had led the country to the economic crisis. A smoother form of Capitalism ruled the US for a few decades while Conservatives regrouped around Milton Friedman’s ideas. With the Cold War a new era of Conservative dominance kicked off. Arguably an era that goes on until today.
Neoliberals would probably want to view the historical progression in a different light. They would rather say that the American electorate always falls back to their ideology because in the long-run it pays off. That is, even with the crises the sparkling dynamism created by deregulated markets is the key to the US economic success and its political supremacy in the modern world. But this view does not seem historically accurate as the US has experienced enormous prosperity in times of Democratic presidencies. And more importantly, it is not clear that the electorate should place such a tremendous importance on growth at the expense of economic stability. In the light of the current distress, it may well turn out to be more rational to settle for a moderate though sustained growth while avoiding such traumatic episodes as economic crises.
The analogy with the Great Depression is no more than an imperfect comparison. But it is one that exemplifies the underlying forces that produce significant change in the political landscape. While crises are always regrettable due to their devastating human consequences, they also urge revision of political institution and policies. In short, crises oftentimes ensue reorganization and change. It is my hope that the American electorate will react to this wake-up call and will finally opt for a more friendly form of Capitalism.
Monday, October 6, 2008
What's behind the bailout? by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC
The passage of the bailout in Congress has, thus far, failed to calm the markets: the Dow fell below 10,000 today, and world markets followed a similar pattern, as investors worried that global recession was inevitable. The bailout, even if it works (whatever that means, since there are no clear criteria to measure its success), will not prevent the intensification of this economic crisis. What now?
I have heard comparisons between the bailout and the passage of the PATRIOT Act in the aftermath of 9/11, when sinister forces on the right used fear and panic to rush through a long list of extreme measures. The PATRIOT Act ushered in an era of Constitution-wrecking, torture, war, and repression. What era is being ushered in by the bailout?
As Naomi Klein has been pointing out recently, it is a mistake to think that the current upheavals signal any kind of collapse of capitalism. I do think that the contradictions, dangers, and injustices of the capitalist system have been laid bare in a remarkable way, but I share Klein's view that the (economic) right is preparing to profit-- in more than one way-- from the crisis.
First, the bailout will, as far as possible, protect the interests of the capitalist class, insulating them from the worst consequences of their ventures. As an indication of how the scheme will be run, note that Paulson has appointed another former Goldman Sachs executive, Neal Kashkari, to administer the $700 billion extravaganza. The bailout's provisions on executive pay are full of loopholes; in any case, it's largely a sideshow to distract the public's attention from the structural injustices of the system. They will weather the storm; working people, as usual, will pay.
Second, unless radical change occurs in Washington, for which I don't advise holding your breath, the bailout may have more sinister effects: it may be used to justify spending cuts that will hurt the poorest; it will do nothing to prevent, and may even encourage, the present consolidation in the banking system, leaving a handful of banks dominating the market; it may serve as a prelude to further anti-worker, pro-capitalist measures, all under the guise of meltdown prevention.
What will we be asked to agree to next, on pain of precipitating economic collapse? I want to say a little about this move, because I think it is enormously significant. Discussions about the bailout often run roughly as follows:
"I don't think working people should bail out these Wall Street fat cats who gambled and lost. Let them deal with it."
"But if you let them deal with it, the system will collapse, credit will freeze up completely-- with dire consequences for small-business owners and consumers as well as the fat cats, there will be a stock market collapse-- there goes your retirement, and there will be a disastrous depression."
There are two ways to respond here. The first is to posit alternative models of government intervention; for example, Sen. Bernie Sanders' proposal to fund the bailout by imposing extra taxes on the rich, or the various "trickle-up" proposals involving help for homeowners facing foreclosure, healthcare reform (which will help those struggling with medical debt, a major cause of inability to meet mortgage payments), and public works to provide employment and thus stimulate the (real) economy.
The second, much less discussed, is to look at underlying structures. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the dire threats described above are credible: must we acquiesce and admit the necessity of whatever the bankers and the markets demand? Well, only if we accept a system that allows their demands to determine so much. Why should people's retirement plans depend on a clique of speculators? Why should we need to borrow money to get an education or have a home? Why should the health of an economy be measured by stock market numbers and not by the meeting of human needs? If these sound like naive questions, we should ask why. Even in the midst of a deep crisis, few are pausing to look at the underlying ideas that have caused it. It's not just deregulation, it's capitalism itself; it's the conventional understanding of the concept of "economics" or "economies". What is economic activity for? What is economic success? The conventional wisdom is that such things involve measures such as GNP, stock market indexes, and corporate profits. But why accept this "wisdom" without question? It hasn't worked-- at least not for us, for working people. It tells us, when times are "good" (i.e. rising profits for corporations, rising costs for working people), that the country cannot afford to give us health care or decent public education, and it tells us, when times are bad, that the country cannot afford to give us health care or decent public education-- and by the way, can we give some of our money to the poor folks on Wall Street? Any system that dispenses such wisdom should be considered deeply suspect.
This is a time for urgent and deep reflection, for radicalism in the true sense of the word. If we are not ready with our arguments and analysis, the pro-capitalists will dominate the discussion at a time when, one might say, the mask is slipping and people are getting a real sense of the brutal unfairness of the system. Are we ready?
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
America's Disingenuous Political System by Matias Bulnes, NYC
I have yet to hear an explanation of Ms. Palin's potential contribution as vice president of the US (and, let us not forget, possible president). All I hear is “women will vote for her,” “she is a hockey mother,” “it’s a smart move given the Democratic primaries,” etc. If we focus on her political credentials, the picture is rather unflattering. She has some political experience at the middle administrative level and none at the high level. Her academic training is far from impressive and she acquired her first passport a few months ago. As a result, she seems to be notoriously unprepared on international politics and diplomacy. Why would anyone think that she can be a good vice president? Except for a few million voters I suspect that nobody thinks she would be a good vice president. In fact, I should suspect that not even republicans believe so, on pain of disrespecting their political acumen.
But despite my suspicion the media has mostly welcomed Palin’s nomination (fortunately with some exceptions). Everybody seems to be celebrating the cleverness of the McCain campaign in making this move. And yet I can’t help the feeling that there is something deeply wrong with decisions like this. In this article I will explore what possible justification can ground a decision that by all informed standards jeopardizes the future of the country. I want to pay special attention to the insincerity of decisions such as McCain’s where the politician who makes them knows that they won’t benefit the country. I do not intend to mount a critique of the Republican Party in particular since I believe democrats acquiesce in the same logic—though perhaps with some more scruples. Ultimately I want to invite reflection on what kind of democracy can be built upon such a disingenuous political system and whether it is worth having.
Rightly or wrongly, making political decisions on purely instrumental grounds is widely condoned in the American media and, derivatively, by American society. It is, for example, assumed that politicians care more about winning elections than about principles such as authenticity or sincerity. Journalists and political analysts would not talk about the “real motive” underlying a political move ever so lightly if it wasn’t routinely accepted by the audience that politicians are usually insincere about their real motives. But as much as authenticity and sincerity are normally considered values, the obsession with winning elections has been justified in the liberal tradition in terms of a consumer-based conception of the political system (sometimes also called interest-group politics). According to this view, voters are consumers and political parties are suppliers of political projects designed to fit their preferences. As a consequence, the real motives of politicians are irrelevant; what matters is that their projects satisfy the consumers, hence that they win elections. This view of the political system relies on the hope that by pursuing politics in this market-like way the best optimum will be achieved—and moreover, in a way that doesn’t required a debate about the good.
But I doubt that McCain’s decision (as many others from all parties) can be justified in terms of this consumer-based model. For it would be analogous in an economic market to the case of a supplier selling a defective product to a costumer that he knows wants it out of ignorance or confusion. McCain should know perfectly well that Ms. Palin is hardly qualified for the US presidency in times of an unmanageable war, a looming economic crisis, an empowering China, etc. But instead of warning American voters of their crucial mistake he is happy to use it in his own benefit. Even raging liberals should agree that there is something deeply problematic about economic relations with such a crucial disparity in information.
One way in which the liberal could reply is by setting the responsibility on the Obama campaign to overlook McCain’s decisions and expose their flaws to the public light. Hence, should McCain’s choice of Palin be ultimately harmful to the US, the political system will react to it and eventually punish McCain with a defeat. But like with so many liberal arguments, their faith in the control power of the market is based on an ideal of social organization that is rarely instantiated in reality. In practice, this blind faith has earned the US 8 years of an erratic political leadership that has brought a previously healthy country to a state of tremendous economic and political uncertainty. But more important for the purposes of this essay is the observation that the political agents themselves know that the consumer-based model is at best a rough approximation to reality and bet on its imperfections. There can be little doubt that if the McCain campaign did after all choose Palin for instrumental reasons, they were aware of her profound political deficiencies and banked on the fact that the Obama campaign will not be able to turn the public attention to them in the short time before the general election. Not only doesn’t the political system guarantee an optimum outcome of the democratic process but politicians exploit the naïve expectation that it will.
The alternative to the liberal conception of political systems is unsurprisingly the social democratic one. The contrast between these views is usually brought out in terms of two opposite conceptions of political freedom introduced by Isaiah Berlin. But McCain’s decision can also make for a good illustration of the contrast. I suspect McCain chose Palin knowing that to be an overall bad decision for the country but based on public acclaim. This could be deemed acceptable only if we see the job of the politician as being the representation of the people’s preferences. But in the social democratic conception, rather than the people’s preferences, the job of the politician is to represent the people’s interest. In particular, making a political decision that goes against the interest of the nation but that has public approval is a violation of the duty of the politician. This together with the inevitable feeling that McCain is patronizing the people of the US, is perhaps what explains my discomfort with the choice of Palin. A democracy where politicians carry themselves in such a disingenuous way and voters are treated like means to seize political power sounds to me like a sham or, in any case, like a democracy not worth having.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Personal responsibility and systemic problems, part 2 by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC
This is part two of a two-post sequence. The first, below, was published earlier this summer, and focused on class, race, and gentrification.
Related questions of personal responsibility arise in connection with environmental issues. Many urbanites are becoming more conscious of their impact on the environment and various changes in lifestyle that can reduce it. Many are making efforts to reduce their carbon footprint and generally consume less; they are growing their own food in private or community gardens and urban farms, or are shopping at farmer's markets, food co-ops, or joining a local CSA (community supported agriculture); they are switching to organic, non-toxic or less toxic, and/or energy efficient products. For example, I spent some of this weekend researching recipes for making cleaning products from vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil, and baking soda, and look forward to making the switch from bleaches and artificial chemical sprays; gradually my partner and I are switching to CFL lightbulbs; we now buy electricity from renewable sources. It's not enough, of course: we still contribute too much C02, too much toxic waste. Is it a matter of personal moral responsibility? Am I personally responsible for the effects of water pollution caused by the detergent I used in my laundry yesterday? I cannot deny that I put the detergent in the machine, and that detergent made its way to a river and a sea, where it is going to harm the environment. I know this, and I could have paid extra for a less polluting brand instead of buying a bottle of wine for Sunday dinner. But I didn't.
A Marxist friend chides me for this sort of talk: it's not about you. It's the system. Blaming yourself and thinking you can change things by buying "green" or even getting involved in a CSA or urban agriculture is merely a distraction from the overall task, which is to replace capitalism. Go ahead and do these things if it makes you feel good, but don't think you are thereby fulfilling a moral responsibility. If you want to really do something, get involved in revolutionary politics focused on changing the entire system.
I find myself in sympathy with both sides to some extent here. I share the Marxist view that the overall task is to replace capitalism. Capitalism is-- among other things!-- inherently unsustainable and destructive from an ecological standpoint. Merely becoming a 'green' consumer will not change the overall dynamic: it is constant growth of consumption and production for profit that is the problem. We simply cannot have a model of economic success that is based on "growth" rather than human need. What is more, capitalism distributes environmental burdens unfairly: the poorest people and the poorest countries suffer disproportionately from the effects of global warming and pollution. Wealth and privilege can, to a large extent, allow you to buy your way out of these risks (of course, things will likely reach a point where even this is not possible). Inequality produced by capitalism also means that being a 'green' consumer is a luxury. Of course, we could always just consume less, but how realistic an option is it for most working people in the US, for example, to head off to a mountain somewhere and live "off-grid"-- off the consumer society grid as well as the electricity grid? I'm not packing my suitcase just yet: I love the city, the movies, the cheap seats at the Met opera, the art, the food. If we stay on the grid, so to speak, it can be very expensive to 'consume green', and where it is cheap, it usually involves more time (either time spent researching alternatives, or time implementing the change).
In a previous Intervention, I wrote about food justice issues both globally and locally in New York City. Many people and groups have responded to the problem of unequal access to healthy food by engaging in urban farming or community gardening, by shopping at farmer's markets, or buying a share in a CSA scheme. These initiatives offer alternatives to our current, dysfunctional, TNC-mediated relationship with food. Is getting involved with these alternatives just a matter of making ourselves feel good personally, or do they at least offer the potential of being genuine responses to the problems just described, and therefore a potentially morally and politically significant kind of action? The orthodox Marxist-Leninist will say: "Join the Communist Party and organize with them to try to eliminate capitalism. There's no other game in town if you are serious about social change". I agree, as I've said above, with the aim of replacing capitalism (with some sort of libertarian socialism or anarcho-communism, if you're asking-- I'm open on models just as long as there's no wage labor, and no repression). But I disagree that Being In The Party and fighting the big, abstract fight of eliminating capitalism is the only way of doing revolutionary anticapitalist politics. Depending on how it's done, urban farming and the like can be just as much part of the struggle, as well as being genuinely valuable and morally recommendable in itself. How?
First, urban farming (for example) provides a space for conversations that would not otherwise happen; simply talking with fellow activists or urban farmers about the reasons they have become involved and the insights they have gleaned from it may be an exercise in consciousness raising (for all concerned). For some, getting involved in this sort of concrete activity may raise a lot of good questions about the broader social context. Food justice is not a discrete problem; the more one learns about it, the more one realizes that it is related to a host of other issues, with capitalism-- among other things-- underlying all of them.
Second, urban farming is one way of creating a detailed vision of how the future could be. It is all very well to talk vaguely about how great life would be without capitalism and other forms of oppression and domination. It is quite another to spell out how people could work together without it, successfully providing for the needs of their families and communities. A well-run community garden or urban farm might raise the eminently reasonable question: "Why couldn't more areas of activity be organized like this?" In the US especially, we are so used to hearing that it's not realistic to expect people to work together for common goals. It can be powerful to see an everyday, real-life, ground-level example of people doing just that.
Third, urban farming is one among many fronts of struggle against the status quo. That 'status quo' has many elements-- capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental destruction, militarism, the security state, imperialism, etc.-- so it makes sense that the struggle against it should be just as multifaceted. The danger, of course, is that single issue campaigns will focus on solving their problem through compromise with elites-- for example, 'business unionism', mainstream liberal feminism, HRC and other gay rights groups who seem more interested in cultivating corporate partners than in making common cause with all oppressed people. There is no easy way out of this problem, to be sure; what seems important is what kind of analysis we bring to our various activities. In this sense, it's all about making connections.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Repressive measures at the RNC
Another RNC, another dismaying tale of repression on the streets. You wouldn't know it to look at the mainstream media coverage of the conventions, but there is a major crackdown on free expression happening in St. Paul (as there was to a somewhat less dramatic extent in Denver). Journalists have been assaulted and arrested for doing their jobs; activist groups planning peaceful protests or engaged in monitoring police behavior at those protests have been subjected to preemptive raids and detentions. Police have used pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades on demonstrators.
You would think that all of this would be front page news; it would be if it happened pretty much anywhere else (or, at any rate, in Bad Countries We Don't Like), and yet, of course, it is hardly mentioned in the mainstream corporate media.
When a journalist as well-known as Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, is arrested for doing her job, we should be particularly alarmed. It's the sort of thing that police states do to show everyone that they can silence whomever they want. This might have its intended effect, which is to discourage dissent and make people frightened, but it might also alert people to the seriousness of the threat to our civil liberties and prompt them to take action. I fervently hope it's the latter.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Is Education the Solution to All the Evils? by Matias Bulnes, NYC
Education is the footing for a better society. So at least goes the cliché. And though clichés lack originality by definition, some are nonetheless true. This one, in particular, seems to me to be one of those. So many of the evils of modern society seem to stem from our chronic ignorance of each other’s motives and concerns, ignorance of what society consists in, ignorance of what we are, ignorance of other countries and cultures, ignorance of this, ignorance of that. If ignorance is, as it seems, the root of all evils, then the remedy is education. Economists usually recommend poor countries to strongly invest in education as the best means to strive. At the more local level, people oftentimes blame it on education when faulting somebody for some bad. So if everybody knows what the problem is, and moreover their diagnosis seems plausible, why are so many people uneducated? Why the evils go on? Why don’t we perfect the Enlightenment’s project and educate the whole world—or, to be a bit more modest, the whole US?
Maybe the problem is that Capitalism needs uneducated people. This is reminiscent of conspiracy theories mounted by leftist adolescents who imagine some Machiavellian businessmen complotting against the whole world. However, setting aside the conspiracy part, it may well be true that the market is like an orchestra and in such an organized setting not everybody can play the piano; someone has to hit the drum. And, of course, the problem is that drummers need not be so educated, nor would a mere drum satisfy them if they were. True, education works as a virtuous circle: education ensues innovation, innovation ensues technology and the need for more educated people. But even innovators have to eat and somebody has to take care of at least food production. So there will always be a need for uneducated labor in a Capitalist society.
However, in all fairness this isn’t a problem for Capitalist societies only, for even under a Socialist model some drummers would be needed. Even if, as in a Socialist model, the rewards for labor are not proportional to the sophistication of the job, some people will have to do the unsophisticated work that doesn’t require too much formal education. It seems as though education inevitably has to be distributed unequally no matter which model one prefers. So again, what does it mean to say that education is “the solution”?
There are at least 3 types of answer for this question. The first one is that education is the solution to the extent that it can be carried out given the constrains imposed by the market. Since poor countries have not come near developing their “market potential,” education is what they need to take advantage of the existing technology and thus defeat poverty. In countries with a more comfortable economy, more education may not do any good for they may have exhausted their potential. So, according to this line, education is not “the solution” but rather a solution depending on the country.
Even though I don’t think this is all people mean when they demand better education, I find myself moved by the premises of this view. This is perhaps due to my teaching experience. It is not so rare that I have students whom, in the light of their work, do not seem prepared or even suited for the challenges of college (see this magnificent anonymous article for interesting discussion). This feeling is unpleasant in extreme, and perhaps even remorseful, but anyone who has taught students like these will most likely arrive at the conclusion that high-level education is not for everyone, whatever other utopias are true. Sad as it is, not everybody can play the piano. This much seems out of question.
A second type of answer is that education is “the solution” in certain sense of the term “education.” Not technical but moral education is what we need to solve our problems—so the line goes. And in fact this is probably closer to what most people mean when they explain others’ misbehaviors by their lack of education. The idea is that quite aside from whatever formal knowledge people may have, moral knowledge is what accounts for their moral defects. As a result of this view, moral knowledge is independent of other knowledge one may have about the world. This seems reasonable to me in so far as moral knowledge is understood as knowledge about moral norms independently of their justification. When justification is needed, moral knowledge becomes pervasive and, I believe, continuous with other knowledge. Whether or not I’m right about this latter point, it seems plausible that people learn most moral norms as dogmas, without the justification attached to them. Hence the explanation that somebody’s misbehavior is due to lack of moral knowledge makes sense since it points to the fact that the person in question was not educated into, or in any case, did not learn (if only in the Skinnerian sense of stimulus/response), the moral rules. The only problem is that “moral rules” here has to be understood as a conventional set of norms people take to encompass the right but not the right itself. But life is short, let alone this post, so let’s put this to the side.
The third type of answer recasts the problem for which education is the solution as a political rather than moral problem. Education isn’t so much the solution to all the evils of society as it is a necessary condition for a society to be just. However, this view usually stresses justice as an extremely important political value and failure to attain it as one important source of political evil. The idea is most notably inherent in Rawls’ work, more specifically, in his Difference Principle. Setting aside technical details, the idea is roughly that a just society must guarantee its members that they will be able to attain whatever position in society their natural assets permit regardless of the social class in which they were born, their race, accent, or other consideration irrelevant from the moral point of view—to use Rawls’ own expression. This is known in everyday jargon as “equality of opportunities.” A society can only guarantee its members equality of opportunities if it provides them with high-quality education. According to this line, we need education not to solve all the evils of society but to solve one in particular which is extremely important: social injustice.
This is, I think, the best way of making sense of the value of education and the importance people in the ivory tower as well as in the street place on it. This view also accounts for the remorseful feeling we professors have on occasion that some of our students are just not cut out for college. Everybody should have the right to develop her natural talents; but of course not everybody’s talents are equal. Hence, only some people should receive high-level education. What’s important is that who does or doesn’t, does not depend on their social class, race, accent, or other considerations irrelevant from the moral point of view. And this much we haven’t achieved nor are we any close to achieving.
Let me finish with a bold contention: achieving equality of opportunities should result in dispensing with private education altogether. In effect, it seems plausible that it is a necessary condition for achieving this political ideal that the state levels public with private education, for otherwise economic power would determine one’s chances of developing one’s natural talents. But this in turn seems impossible for any time public education approaches the quality levels of private education, the private students or their parents will have incentives to toss in more money and lift the best teachers from public schools or else switch to public schools altogether. Or to put it more simply, if public and private education are equal, private education is pointless. The reason why private education exists at all is that it gives those who can afford it an advantage. This obviously conflicts with equality of opportunities, but oh well, those who can realize this are precisely the educated, hence, the same ones who take advantage of this defect of our society. No wonder they find it more convenient to look the other way.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Bookmarks
Just marking a few pages worth reading.
1. Today, the Times editorial page notes the disturbing trend in Obama's rhetoric and positions: endorsing the evisceration of FISA, lauding the public financing of religious organizations, and the endorsement of SCOTUS's recent decision on the 2nd amendment. We could add the 'newly' thought out position on Iraq withdrawal (in short the Bush-style nonsense: "I'll listen to my generals"; didn't Clinton rightly say that generals listen to her, if she were president, and not the other way around?). Yikes. Change we can believe in--if we were ostriches.
2. A must read: McClatchy's five-part blockbuster on 'war on terror' detainees, based on an 8-month long investigation.
Some highlights:
--"The McClatchy investigation found that top Bush administration officials knew within months of opening the Guantanamo detention center that many of the prisoners there weren't "the worst of the worst."
--"But the extent of the mistreatment, and that it [abuse detention center at Bagram, Afghanistan--mn] eclipsed the alleged abuse at Guantanamo, hasn't previously been revealed.
Guards said they routinely beat their prisoners to retaliate for al Qaida's 9-11 attacks, unaware that the vast majority of the detainees had little or no connection to al Qaida."
--"The soldier who faced the most serious charges, Spc. Willie Brand, admitted that he hit Dilawar about 37 times, including some 30 times in the flesh around the knees during one session in an isolation cell.
Brand, who faced up to 11 years in prison, was reduced in rank to private — his only punishment — after he was found guilty of assaulting and maiming Dilawar."
--"'Really, nobody was in charge ... the leadership did nothing to help us. If we had any questions, it was pretty much 'figure it out on your own,' " Cammack [a former specialist with the 377th Military Police Company--mn] said. 'When you asked about protocol they said it's a work in progress.'"
--"Sen. Carl Levin, who's leading an investigation into the origins of the harsh interrogation techniques, said at a hearing Tuesday that the abuse wasn't the result of 'a few bad apples' within the military, as the White House has claimed. 'The truth is that senior officials in the United States government sought information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees,' said Levin, a Michigan Democrat."
--"The quintet [senior Bush administration lawyers responsible for detainee policy, including Addington and Gonzales--mn] did more than condone harsh treatment, however. It created an environment in which it was nearly impossible to prosecute soldiers or officials for alleged crimes committed in U.S. detention facilities."
--"Trust between the uniformed military lawyers and the Bush administration collapsed in the months after 9-11."
--"'John Yoo wanted to use military commissions in the manner they were used in the Indian wars," Romig said. 'I looked at him and said, 'You know, that was 100-and-something years ago. You're out of your mind; we're talking about the law.'"
The military commissions that the U.S. used against Native Americans during the mid-19th century were often ad hoc and frequently resulted in natives being hanged or shot.
'As they viewed it, due process is legal mumbo jumbo,' said Romig, who's now the dean of Washburn University's law school. 'They wanted to get them, get the facts and convict them. ... If you're caught as a terrorist, you're presumed guilty and you have to prove you're innocent. It was crazy.'"
Caution: read the rest at your own risk; it will cause nausea and moral disgust.
3. Seymour Hersh's article on secret ops missions into Iran. Bush demanded and (Democratic) Congress approved. Despite appearances, the Democrats are just as willing to subvert democracy as Bush is.
UPDATE:
4. Democracy, Mugabe-style. The Washington Post gets inside Mugabe's (and his military henchmen's) means of maintaining power.
"In the three months between the March 29 vote and the June 27 runoff election, ruling-party militias under the guidance of 200 senior army officers battered the Movement for Democratic Change, bringing the opposition party's network of activists to the verge of oblivion. By election day, more than 80 opposition supporters were dead, hundreds were missing, thousands were injured and hundreds of thousands were homeless. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's leader, dropped out of the contest and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy."
According to the report, after the initial vote, which Mugabe lost, he was planning on relinquishing power. The military "convinced" him that "the choice was not Mugabe's alone to make." This is a well-known problem for leading in an unstable country. Even with the best of intentions and plans (not that this describes Mugabe), the leader of an unstable country needs to keep the wolves at bay in order to stay in power. The reasoning is that it would be worse to let the wolves have total power. However, there comes a point at which it becomes difficult to distinguish the solution from the problem, as the case of Zimbabwe demonstrates.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Personal responsibility and systemic problems by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC
Lately, I've been having some thought-provoking conversations about the extent of personal moral responsibility in the context of vast, systemic problems, such as food injustice, global warming, corporate globalization, racism, and poverty, and in terms of more localized phenomena, such as gentrification and various urban environmental and local food movements, that are connected to these larger concerns. The question I'm left with is this: what is the role and extent of personal moral responsibility in these contexts? What is the significance of personal consciousness and action? What does it mean for me to do what I ought to with respect to global warming or gentrification? Does an emphasis on personal responsibility and action evade systemic questions?
My liberal and left-liberal friends tend to place great emphasis on individual action, arguing that it is indeed a moral obligation, and an important one at that, to make responsible consumer choices and lifestyle choices: for example, avoid buying products sold by corporations who use sweatshop labor, or buy less toxic cleaning products, or choose alternatives to the corporate food chain (grow your own food or buy local organic food), or simply reduce consumption altogether.
My Marxist friends tend to place great emphasis on the systemic nature of these problems, and consider the kinds of personal action just described a futile and perhaps naive exercise which wrongly places responsibility on individual shoulders rather than on the capitalist system (and the racist, patriarchal, heterosexist systems that accompany it). It's just not personal, they argue. The answer is revolutionary change (at the level of the whole system), not individual action (or even collective action on single issues).
My own feeling is that both sides have important insights, but the question of individual moral responsibility in the context of systemic problems is very complex. To make things more manageable, I shall concentrate on two clusters of issues: gentrification and racism, and urban environmentalism. In this part, I discuss the former; in four weeks' time, I shall discuss the latter.
I am a white, educationally privileged young woman living in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, Crown Heights (Brooklyn). The section of Crown Heights where I live has long been a black community, with many people of Caribbean origin. The neighborhood has had a history of poverty and associated problems; now it is seeing an influx of young, mostly white, mostly educationally and economically privileged, gentrifiers. The consequences are complex: the neighborhood is more peaceful, and there is a lot of new development and economic activity. Franklin Avenue is, week by week, seeing new businesses: cute cafes and restaurants, hip boutiques, cheek by jowl with neighborhood mainstays such as West Indian bakeries and small places of worship. The food landscape is changing, and in my personal life as a consumer, I enjoy being able to buy organic milk and fresh produce in my immediate neighborhood. On the other hand, these changes have another side: black, working-class residents have increasingly been displaced by skyrocketing rents (and, according to some disturbing reports, by harassment designed to remove them from their rent-stabilized homes so that landlords can charge new tenants far higher rents). Week by week, month by month, Crown Heights is less black and working class, more white and middle class.
Where do I stand in all this? Gentrification-- and especially the heavily 'raced' version we have here-- is at once personal and not personal. It is personal in the sense that it is lived by individuals face to face, as it were, as they do the most personal, everyday things-- moving in to a new home, shopping for groceries, having brunch at a cafe. There is often tension in the air between old and new residents: sometimes unspoken, sometimes not. Of course, most people are civil and even welcoming. I'm fortunate to have friendly, pleasant neighbors, who have been gracious and helpful. But there have been awkward moments in the neighborhood: the message boards are peppered with them. I've been called a "white bitch" on the street myself. It's hard not to take this personally at least to some degree, of course: I'm human. I've been called homophobic names on the street in my time, too (in Park Slope, of all places!), and it's equally unpleasant at a very raw, personal level. It is, however, politically very different. When I'm subjected to homophobic verbal abuse, I'm the oppressed: I'm in a morally clear position, I'm on the 'right' side of the line in that sense. When I'm called "white bitch" in a gentrifying black working class neighborhood, the dynamics change. I'm part of the problem: I'm a walking symbol of a process that has displaced and marginalized people, I'm on the 'wrong' side of the line in race and class terms. I'm describing a one-off incident, but everyone knows-- or at least, everyone who is paying the smallest amount of attention knows-- that as white people move in, the neighborhood "improves"; who can blame people for feeling aggrieved? I would find it hard not to be bitter at the underlying assumption: nice neighborhoods with good, healthy food and pleasant places to go are for white, middle class people. And it is uncomfortable to know that I am part of the process.
On the other hand, of course, gentrification is not personal. I did not harass tenants, I did not create the housing situation we have, I did not create the race and class systems of which gentrification is one symptom. I moved to my current home for the same reasons most people move: it was a neighborhood I could afford, it was an easy commute to work, it was near places I like to go (the park, the museum, etc). What could I do? Where else could I go? I certainly couldn't afford to live in Park Slope or Prospect Heights-- not my economic class. Why should I feel personally responsible? Why feel bad? It's the system, and the landlords and property developers who are the winners in it. And yet, I do further it every day simply by my presence, and of course my purchases (they started carrying organic milk for people like me). It seems vulgarly insensitive not to be at least conscious of the process I am part of, but my being conscious won't actually make a difference. Will it merely make me feel a bit better?
One aspect of white privilege, especially as it interlocks with class and educational privilege, is that I can choose whether or not to be conscious of these issues in my life. I can choose to tune in, or choose to take the process of gentrification for granted. Either way, I can be fairly confident that I will be at an advantage as a result of that process. Peggy McIntosh and Marilyn Frye have done interesting work on white and male privilege and what Frye calls "whiteliness" (bearing the same relation to whiteness as masculinity does to maleness), and one important lesson from it is just this optional blindness. Privilege means, among other things, being able to take things for granted, being able to not think about certain things, being able to ignore/ be ignorant of certain things (usually, the ways in which your privilege unfairly advantages you in your everyday life). This aspect of privilege relates closely to the issues I discussed in my last Intervention, "Rev. Wright and the epistemology of ignorance". Ignorance has served us privileged people well. And yet: we can plead, I didn't know, I didn't notice, I never realized, I was ignorant, not culpable! I just moved to this awesome apartment, I never thought about the effect it was having on the existing community! It's a protest that is only partly mere self-serving denial. How can we blame people for simply not knowing, being ignorant? It is difficult. Ignorance is an interesting phenomenon, though: it's part plain old not knowing, part ignoring. It's also in some ways a bad habit, for which individuals are partly responsible (their bad habit of ignoring other people's needs and suffering is also nurtured by families, communities, and the corporate media). Kant reminds us in the Metaphysics of Morals that we ought not to shield ourselves from knowledge of others' suffering: we ought not avoid places where we will meet it, but ought rather to act positively to cultivate our sense of compassion (Doctrine of Virtue 6:457). The growing literature on care ethics reminds us, too, that morality is to a significant degree a matter of being attentive/ paying attention, of being responsive/ taking responsibility. Ignorance in the sense of ignoring, not paying attention, not stopping to think, is, to some degree at least, culpable.
Let's say I start to acknowledge all of this. Again, what moral difference will it make? What can I do? It seems a small moral gain to simply realize one's privilege, although it is a start. It is dauntingly hard to know what any individual can do about race privilege in general and gentrification in particular. Only collective organizing can do anything, but of course, it is only if individuals act that collective action will happen. If all the individuals stay home alone and think "there is nothing I can do", or even act as individual consumers, individual sites of awareness of privilege-- as many of us do-- we make it true that there is nothing we can do. Everything about our system encourages this perspective. (Ever wondered why there aren't mass street protests and general strikes demanding universal health coverage?)
There are organizations and a few journalists and bloggers trying to bring attention to problems of tenant harassment and displacement; perhaps the one concrete thing one can do is to support them. Even this, however, fails to get at the root of the problem: we live under a system which allows the principle that living in a safe, clean, pleasant neighborhood with access to healthy, affordable food, public transport, parks, cultural facilities, and decent schools, is appropriately distributed according to economic status (and since race and class correlate in the US as elsewhere, according to race too). It's a principle I find horrifying. So are we back to the orthodox Marxist position articulated by some of my companions-- that the only real option is to fight the system as a whole, the system as such? The problem is: that's daunting. Most of us don't know where to begin with that. What do you build a revolutionary politics out of? Can it come merely from people who think in terms of the system as a whole? The key is, it seems to me, to realize the following: you can't solve the gentrification problem without paying attention to the system that creates it, but neither can you fight (or even understand) the system unless you pay attention to a specific, street-level experience like gentrification. What's more, people have different ways of "plugging in" to political struggle. Not everyone will be inspired by wholly theoretical, system-level talk; many people will want to get involved at a less abstract level. The trick is to get them together. We need theoretical analysis and broad-based anticapitalist, antiracist, antisexist, antihomophobic struggle, to be sure, but we also need, as part of that, lots of visions of how that overall struggle makes a difference in terms of concrete issues, and we need lots of visions of how to do concrete things differently, from how we plan our neighborhoods to where we get our food. Why else would we want a new system, if not to do all of those things differently and make people's lives better? Part two of the discussion next month.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Dealing with Mugabe
Robert Mugabe's coronation was, in most quarters, rightfully looked upon with disdain. The question now is whether he will be allowed to remain in power. Several options are available, none of which need involve the US or military intervention. Even a delusional Mugabe can sense the end, and the time is now for Africa's leaders, who will meet for a summit this Monday, to make a decision.
Kristof offers a solution that gives both Mugabe and Zimbabwe a bright future. FYI: the accompanying multimedia feature from 2005 is worth looking at.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The look of contempt
When asked by Chairmen John Conyer's about the theory of the unitary executive, David Addington asserted that he did not know what that was. Of course, he had heard of the term from reading the newspapers, but as far as a 'theory', well, what theory is that?
Have we been misled all along thinking that the great Addington had devised and articulated such a brilliant conception of a powerful executive. Or, is it rather that he is just contemptuous of Congress and all those meddling fools who want to stop him and Cheney from protecting us--from ourselves?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Freedom and illegitimacy: the Bush Doctrine by MT Nguyen, NYC
George Bush and his administration are known for advancing foreign policy innovations collected under the authoritative sounding phrase 'the Bush doctrine'. This doctrine is in fact a heterogeneous hodgepodge of directives and 'principles' of post 9/11 foreign policy, anchored by the right to preemptive strikes, a deeply troubling, stunning and reckless departure from conventional thinking on international relations. One wonders though, since this anchor is but a means to an end, what the underlying rationale is. In name, the rationale is not far to seek, for in address after address since 9/11 Bush has announced that the ultimate aim of his administration is this: the world-historical advance of freedom or liberty (he uses the concepts interchangeably). Thus, in his 2005 inaugural address, he asserts that "We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world." Throughout this speech and in others (here and here) Bush maintains this theme of bringing liberty to those parts of the world who he deems to not have it but nevertheless have a right to it. I want to avoid altogether the question of sincerity and inquire instead into the stated project on its own terms. So, my two questions are: What does he mean by the spread of freedom? And, Is it a coherent project?
The project's meaning is mostly unclear because of the obscurity of his use of the central terms liberty and freedom. This is so even though the terms are deployed a total of 42 times in the short speech (yes, I counted). Sometimes Bush uses 'freedom' or 'liberty' to mean independence or the general capacity to do as one desires; at other times, he hypostasizes freedom into a world historical force which combats tyranny and the resentment brought on by tyranny. Yet at other times he characterizes it as the political concept of self-government (but then why not use autonomy?). The latter is suggested by his frequent connection (and more often than not, identification) of liberty with democracy and, importantly, it explains why he sometimes formulates his mission in terms of spreading democracy. I return to this last notion at the end. It would be idle and truly mind-numbing to try to locate a family resemblance in his heterogeneous usage of these terms. I will take it however that whatever else he might mean by the concept, he must have in mind at least the following. Freedom as a concept is a property of persons and it basically means the freedom to do and live as one desires. Minimally, since everyone desires to live free from coercion (in all its guises), the basic concept as applied to the political is, crudely, the idea of living a life free from state coercion. This understanding is reinforced by how Bush uses these concepts as the bases for attacks on coercive states.
A quick argument against this is that all states are by their nature coercive, and hence in principle the stated project would run headlong into anarchism. This is too quick for although his rhetoric cannot allow for it, as all Americans know the Bush administration understands and demands that certain restrictions on freedom are necessary for any political life. [We need only remind ourselves of the Patriot Act and the recent debacle on telecom immunity to recognize this.] Given then that political freedom cannot mean living in whatever way anyone desires and given the project to spread it, how are we to understand what Bush aims to spread and what he aims to attack? 
There is a benchmark to use here. This is the concept of the illegitimate state, and if we characterize that concept in a certain way we can see a basic connection between it and an intelligible conception of political freedom. Unfortunately for us all, the illegitimate state is not difficult to locate in the actual world. One case in point is Zimbabwe [update: for an excellent account of Zimbabwe's downfall under Mugabe, see Samantha Power's 2003 piece here]. After an election in which citizens dared to vote for the opposition party, Robert Mugabe clamped down and gerrymandered a run-off. Yesterday, not surprisingly, the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, withdrew his candidacy amidst claims that his supporters were being intimidated and murdered. He said that he would not ask his supporters for a vote which would end their lives. The names of supporters whose life are at risk includes Tsvangirai himself, who is now under the protection of the Dutch embassy.
Being a relatively straightforward case of the illegitimate state, Zimbabwe is instructive. What makes it illegitimate? As Bernard Williams once helpfully put it, an illegitimate state is one in which the solution, the state itself, is worse than the problem, viz., life without an authority to settle disputes. In the case of Zimbabwe the state is but another party to the conflict of interested parties and instead of resolving disputes, adds to them. What's worse, and more problematic, as is obvious to everyone, the illegitimate state is typically the most powerful among the disputants. This makes it worse because being more powerful, it possesses the resources to perpetuate itself. Hence its existence serves to undermine the possibility of a legitimate state.
Prescient in the extreme, Plato recognized the nature of the illegitimate state and put its theory in his mouthpiece for political realism, Thrasymachus. Thrasymachus identified justice with power, defining justice in terms of the sole advantage of the ruling, strongest, party. No doubt he is wrong about that, but the theory is nevertheless helpful for it uncovers the preservatory genius of raw power. This manifests itself, basically, through its capacity to remain hidden: although it is at bottom raw power, it never expresses itself as such. (For all his evident thugishness, Mugabe nevertheless bothered to go through the motions of an election and a runoff.) Thrasymachus declares that the illegitimate state is like the clever craftsman who knows what he can do and what he can't do; and, if he should err on occasion, he knows how to recover from it (Vladimir Putin, Russia's de facto strong man, is perhaps the best exemplar of this). Translated to the conditions of the modern state, this means that the illegitimate state controls the media and hence the primary means by which citizens acquire and disseminate information and opinion, controls the military, and controls the judiciary by which the public pronouncements of justice are made and reinforced.
The illegitimate state so understood has a basic connection to liberty, for the former marks the most extreme curtailment of the latter. Restricted to this context, Bush's mission makes sense (I don't say it would be necessarily justified), for if there exists a good case to support and/or intervene on behalf of the freedom of any body of peoples it is the case of those who are terrorized by their government. However, how are we to evaluate Bush's endorsement of the much more ambitious and suspect extension of the mission to states which are not illegitimate in this sense but rather are non-democracies, non-ideal (from our vantage point) and unjust (again, from our vantage point)? His foray into Iraq (and his consideration of one in Iran) is a case in point.
Answering this question requires a standpoint free from utopian thought (or one might call it, political moralism) and its penchant for believing that politics is just the correct application of moral ideals. Most importantly, we don't want to confuse illegitimacy with injustice, for the reasons to confront the former do not necessarily extend to the latter. The relevant distinction is grounded on the idea that all sane (minimally rational) persons desire to live free from terror and it is the fundamental point of political authority to make that the case. This is a basic psychological fact unburdened by moral theory. Beyond that there are varying degrees of moral value, e.g. freedom of speech, right to economic well-being, autonomy, etc., which can emerge as important depending upon the historical, material, and political circumstances. It is up to political judgment to decide when, where and how these values are to be sustained, supported and protected. If so, it cannot be a coherent ambition to spread freedom per se, for beyond freedom from terror there is no univocal thing that is meant by it. Bush's project is incoherent in the way that a project to bring happiness to all of the world is incoherent. Despite the apparent univocality of these concepts, their application is too multivarious to sustain a unified project.
But beyond these rather fine-grained distinctions, we can certainly acknowledge the wide gulf between promoting freedom from an illegitimate state and Bush's mission, as he sometimes puts it, to deliver democracy (through violence if necessary). We know from history that legitimacy does not require democratic processes, and even if we agree with Bush that we should not "pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies," these are all a far cry from the desire for self-governance. Self-governance requires the kind of self-consciousness, self-reflectiveness and responsibility that represent, we might say, a cultural ideal. To be sure, many societies have no such aspiration even when they are free to do as they desire. Even if they did, however, it can be no part of another country's mission, as it is in Bush's vision, to deliver, no, demand democracy, for this demand has the same air of paradox as forcing someone to be free.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Obama's Negative to Public Financing
On the last entry of Anonymous Liberal, there is an attempt to justify Obama’s negative to use public financing in his forthcoming campaign. The argument presented is roughly that Obama’s fundraising style in the primaries has dismantled the reasons that make public financing compulsory. Obama’s campaign for the Democratic nomination raised a record-breaking amount of money from small donors. His internet-based strategy to raise campaign funds averaged $100 contributions. According to the post, this ensures no substantial influence of the donors on a potential Obama presidency, which was precisely what public financing sought to prevent.
But while it is true that Obama’s fundraising style frees him from some undesirable political pressures, it is far from clear that it frees him from all of them. In a possible political scenario where politicians expect to finance their campaigns by relatively small internet donations, they would still have incentives to define their agendas in accordance with the interest of the potential donors, even if they are not an organized political group. For one thing, this doesn’t seem the healthiest way of doing politics. But for another, it seems likely that the donors, small as they are, won’t represent the whole spectrum of economic classes. $100 may not be a lot of money, but there is a huge number of households in the
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