The Chinese threat

Lao-tse:

Experience teaches that none can guide the community;
The community is collaboration of forces;
as such, thought shows, it cannot be led
by the strength of one man.

To order it is to set it in disorder;
To fix it is to unsettle it.

For the conduct of the individual changes:
Here goes forward, there draws back;
Here shows warmth, there reveals cold;
Here exerts strength, there displays weakness;
Here stirs passion, there brings peace.

And so:
The perfected one shuns desire for power,
shuns the lure of power,
shuns the glamour of power.

Smarts

So I was shucking packages on the old parcel plantation when a distinguished colleague tells me that his life consists of finding food, finding weed; alcohol and "fuh"-gina -- they go together; and sports.

It is a love song to our age: We chase the necessities of life while denying the pain of living.

Union bosses gone wild!

Damn union bosses. Always walking around, getting videographed while they're fat.

Union bosses eat sandwiches. Union bosses drink beer. Time clocks. Pickup trucks. Unions.

I don't know about you, but I've always felt the most incriminating thing about unions is that they're so, well, working class!

Shirkers of the world, unite!

Any politician eager to brand Obama a "socialist" for rescuing particular industries is not likely to be well connected to those industries. If they were, they would argue that rescue is necessary for economic recovery.

The gulf between the two positions -- particularly as observed within the Republican Party, which is roundly pro-business -- is best explained by the scope of the crisis, which puts the natural relationship between government and big business in high-relief.

Normally, this relationship is obscured by market mythology and anti-government rhetoric. But when the dynamic can no longer be concealed, and the marshaling of public wealth for private gain is obvious to all, this presents the pro-business camp with a dilemma. On one hand, competitive edge is ever-sharpened by the protection of the state; on the other, this contradicts the story sold to Joe the Plumber.

From all appearances, it would seem the financial industry favored Barack Obama over John McCain in 2008, explaining much of what has happened since. This may leave the Republican Party with less of a dilemma; much of its "conservative" core is informed by domestically-based industry, not international finance.

Nevertheless, a conflict is evident at the level of Republican leadership, which doubtless includes a robust financial component, with RNC chair Michael Steele resisting pressure to label Obama a socialist for doing exactly what any industry would demand if they had the clout to do so.

Beware the post-natal parasite

Twice I've heard it expressed approvingly that the swine flu is "God/Nature's way of weeding out the weak."

Is this because we face a bigger threat from babies?

Preference and power

Sammy Stephens got me thinking about how the most celebrated African-Americans are the ones that can be reconciled in some way with the preferences of white America.

The preference of white America when it comes to "blacks" is, first and foremost, not to be bothered with their problems. Needless to say, white America is much more comfortable with African-Americans who offer themselves as articles of consumption, to be considered at leisure, admired or discarded accordingly, rather than as people with needs who disproportionately are not having them met. African-Americans who bring some "value" to white America are exalted accordingly; African-Americans who focus primarily on African-American issues are more likely to be perceived as "divisive," even "racist."

Of course, the same argument can be made for women under male predominance: the most celebrated women are the ones who most conform to male preference -- half-naked and underfed, they are easily observed everywhere in the culture; the least popular -- e.g., the distinguished "feminazi" -- may not be outwardly concerned with men at all.

So it goes with all concerns. Those that can be aligned with the preferences of power are accorded legitimacy, while those that cannot are either attacked or ignored.

Post glacial

Barack Obama may be the most popular African-American figure among white college students, but let's not forget who placed second:

We like our coffee, blacks

Ah, the benevolence of global capital.

Rwandans may not drink coffee, but is that any reason to stop them from growing it?

According to BusinessWeek, wealthy Westerners are committed "to [doubling] the income of poor coffee farmers" in Africa.

You remember Africa. The continent where rampant hunger almost never precipitates genocide, political instability, or high-seas banditry?

Just think of it: should the scheme prove profitable, desperate farmers can dedicate even more arable land to the cultivation of something that can't be slapped on a sandwich! After all, it's not like global coffee markets have ever dropped precipitously in the entire history of machete production!

This is the kind of do-goodery Bill and Melinda Gates really need to get in on. Fer certz.

You get what you pay for

Rightly or wrongly, for any manager to bemoan the fecklessness of his or her workers is to reveal a certain lack of self-awareness. After all, the manager is specifically compensated to have a stake in the company, whereas the worker is not. In this sense, a disparity in attitudes can hardly be surprising.

A penny short

Isn't it interesting how the notion of "financial oligarchy" can enter the mainstream just as soon as the oligarchs have tipped their canoe?

As long as the plutocrat is making money hand over fist, the word "plutocrat" will scarcely fall on responsible ears. But place an obstacle between the rich and their money, and no stone will go unturned in the attempt to find it!

Torture

It's fair to say constitutional democracies struggle with the prosecution of their elected rulers. Naturally, rulers will break laws and treaties as they see fit; that is the point of having an executive -- not to mention a justice department which reports to it. But it's also tacitly understood that this will only be done on behalf of the "national interest," that is to say, the ruling class as a whole.

As I've already suggested elsewhere, what distinguishes the liberal democracy from dictatorship is that it aims to advance the rights of elites as a class, not just whatever portion enjoys majority control of the state. In America, this is the spirit of "bipartisanship": something that works for all rich people. In this respect, it is very important that government never serve as a seat of retribution against one's political rivals: this pledge is at the heart of every liberal democracy.

Torture is an interesting example. It's clearly prohibited in American and international law, but, like so many things, it only becomes objectionable when the costs are judged to exceed the benefits for elite concerns.

This is reflected nicely in the current "national debate" -- a debate over whether to enforce the law! -- with Republicans arguing that torture helps the republic by protecting it, and Democrats arguing that torture hurts the republic for miscellaneous reasons, including the notion that it "hurts our image around the world," thereby making the world less malleable to our interests.

(Of course, any random Middle Easterner suspected of something by US agencies who is subsequently detained and tortured would probably insist that the "image of America" is not the only thing harmed in the process, but that is not a concern which registers very high in the art of statecraft; as such, "harm to ourselves" -- to our very soul! -- appears to be the argument the Democratic Party prefers best.)

Whenever the ruling class does not enjoy consensus, the American people are treated to "debate," and solicited to support one side or the other in order to settle the concern. In this case, we have witnessed reluctance on the part of Obama start this process, presumably because it touches on principles that are dear to elites -- like the idea of holding elected officials to account for their actions after they are out of power. Suffice it to say, neither party wants to open this Pandora's box, and for very good reason. But it may be that the level of controversy this issue has stoked makes it impossible to get around; some low-level domestic prosecutions may be necessary.

Reading Capital

The biggest danger of Karl Marx is that his argument against capitalism is so powerful it evokes sympathy towards any authority that will "abolish" it.

Needless to say, harboring a priori sympathy for authority is very bad; it should also go without saying that the newer varieties are always cultivated in response to their older, better understood peers. Marx felt and understood the immorality of capitalism very well, but apparently did not anticipate the raw recruiting power this put in the hands of political agents likely to construct an analogous monopoly within the state. Looking back, this seems kind of dumb.

To their credit, this is one score the anarchists got right, even if they precipitated little more than their own slaughter and persecution by sticking to it. A cynic might say this is what anarchists do best; an idealist that "do no harm" is no small accomplishment in Bolshevik Russia. Remember that someone is always ready to advance their career unreflective of the authority which facilitates it: I mean, it's a job, dude. Humans are quick to learn which way the wind blows, but few are resolved to oppose it on principle.

You say communist, I say trade agreement

In China, human rights are secondary to economic ties.

In Cuba, human rights come first because there are no economic ties.

Murphy's craw

I recently read that while nature is full of redundancies -- two eyes, two hands, two mammary glands -- business always wants to get by with none.

Yet another reason why business is not sexy.

Honkitudnosity!

Nicholas Kristof:

If the Islamic world is going to enjoy a revival, if fundamentalists are to be tamed, if women are to be employed more productively, then moderate interpretations of the Koran will have to gain ascendancy.

Dear Mr. Kristof,

Most Muslims are not fundamentalist. Therefore, "moderate interpretations" of the Koran are already "ascendant," even if your preference is to reduce the whole of the "Islamic world" to whatever minority elements preoccupy your attention.

Like most Westerners, you seem uninterested in Muslims per se; they are only interesting insofar as they carry a criminal potential. You know, kind of like "black people" before they proved their worth in sporting and other culturally valued events. If only some kid from Palestine would win the Masters, we might worry about whether there's any food getting into Gaza -- you know, because there are "people" there.

Additionally, I would love to know how women are "employed productively" in your society. Is it mostly through underpayment or by making maternity leave an employer-sponsored crapshoot rather than a reproductive right? Please let me know; I expect you are as much an authority on your own society as others.

Statecraft haiku

Torture hurts our image around the world.

If only we could get some information out of our image,

there's no depravity we wouldn't subject it to.

Equity

Financial Times:

[A]ny honest observer knows that executive pay in America is, in fact, set largely by rigged systems today. What is needed is a new group of “CEOs against CEO greed” to model better behaviour and speak out against these scams.

"CEO greed" has no meaning except in relation to large shareholders. Executives are supposed to manage productive enterprise on behalf of the wealthy investors who pony up the dough for them to do so. Simply pocketing the cash and walking away as the ship goes down in flames abrogates this compact and ultimately harms the super rich who can't escape.

Hence the concept of "CEO greed" -- i.e., greed that is dysfunctional to the institution -- and the heightened profile it presently enjoys.

What Washington means

New York Times:

To defeat the forces of oppression, Washington must promote and protect the ideals of democracy and human rights.

In Washington, the locus of power shifts between competing groups of investors who hire the government for private objectives, at home and abroad, which they wouldn't be able to pull off otherwise.

The explanation gets to the heart of why the modern nation state ever developed at all: because the average person does not jump into harm's way or consent to less than they deserve on behalf of privileged concerns absent some elaborate pretext.

Needless to say, "democracy" and "human rights" do not figure prominently in this equation, except as code words to describe the "constitutional" right of elite groups to compete more or less fairly with each other in pursuit of the throne, and to not be too put out in the event that they lose -- indeed, the only meaningful difference between "democracy" and "dictatorship" in contemporary political discourse.

Far from denying the "forces of oppression" of which no group will ever exert a monopoly, we are much better served by an honest appraisal of our own complicity in systems where resistance and disruption might render a defensive effect for those on the receiving end.

For example, this could mean putting an end to the bombing of civilians for whom we claim repeated concern in the rhetoric of "human rights."

Impotence

Primo Levi, If This Is A Man:

If we were logical, we would resign ourselves to the evidence that our fate is beyond knowledge, that every conjecture is arbitrary and demonstrably devoid of foundation. But men are rarely logical when their own fate is at stake; on every occasion, they prefer the extreme positions. According to our character, some of us are immediately convinced that all is lost... that the end is near and sure; others are convinced that however hard the present life may be, salvation is probable and not far off.... The two classes of pessimists and optimists are not so clearly defined, however, not because there are many agnostics, but because the majority, without memory or coherence, drift between the two extremes, according to the moment and the mood of the person they happen to meet.

Life or livelihood, future or family -- if you deliberately place what is dear to the individual at any distance beyond their reach, then you're just playing the same game with different stakes.

This is why I recommend Holocaust literature to people facing layoffs.

Identity politics

Then she was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by demons. And when she had fasted forty days and forty nights, she was afterward ahungered.

And when the tempters came, they said, If you are who you think you are, prove your usefulness to the world.

But she answered and said, It is written,

I am much more, and less, than this.

Then the demons took her into the holy city, and set her on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto her, If you are who you say you are, prove that you are not mistaken, and come toward us.

She said unto them, It is written again,

You are welcome to remain unpersuaded.

Again, the demons took her up into an exceeding high mountain, and showed her all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and said unto her, All these things will I give thee, if you will fall down and worship me.

Then she said to them, Get thee hence, tempters: for it is written,

You shall only submit to truth,
and only truth shall you serve.

Then the demons left her, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto her.

Teabagging

The Republican Party is mad Congress won't extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich, so they are portraying their automatic expiration as "taxation without representation."

You would think they might be glad: the increase in government revenue actually contributes to a smaller budget deficits in the years ahead.

It's instructive that the Republicans choose to frame the country's problems this way. If tax paying Americans can be convinced that "government spending" is bad, then the government will just spend it on whoever thinks it is good. It's not like the Republican objective is to end taxation, or big government, or even big government spending. The objective is to minimize public expenditure on the public, because the government's role is to serve the rich at the tax payer's expense. Convincing working people that getting anything in return for their taxes is wrong is a central component of this.

Nobody at any level of power or influence in our society has any illusion that ours is not a system of big government, and, by consequence, a system of big government spending. The practical effect of arguing against "big government spending" within a system of big government spending is that it inevitably preferences certain kinds of spending over others.

This is why when the Republican Party rails against big government spending, it just highlights spending it disagrees with. Assistance to the unemployed is socialism, but the military-industrial complex -- in which the public guarantees the profits of private corporations -- is a patriotic necessity. So it is important to be able to discern between spending that benefits us versus spending that does not.

The highest calling

Political parties appeal to the public with they say, and they betray the public with what they do. This is why it is important not to become enraptured by what they say.

Barack Obama can make a speech to piss your pants, but he can also kill kids no older than his own because his job demands it. This is the same person who, alone, inspired, and, elected, wields the bloody scepter of the state and carries on its mission with aplomb.

Isn't it strange the national impulse to enlist decent people into the service of power, only to question to their responsibilities after it is too late?

One

Conservatives say government is too big; they cut what the people need.

Liberals say government is too important; they keep what the wealthy want.

Tru value

At my retail job I am prompted to pimp the company's "values." One of the values is "creating prosperity through profits and growth," which tickles my better cynicism mightily. I submit the "prosperity" is more evident in the property than among the employees: a cashier described to me standing on a swollen foot through her shift in spite of having a doctor's note for rest at home. For whatever reason, she didn't feel she could miss work. And if pregnant cashiers aren't permitted to sit down, how could she?

Our first company value translates as "employee happiness." But happiness is relative; most employees are just "happy" to have a job, compared with the alternatives.

And this is how the employer arrives at their most cherished "value."

Selective reading

If we take as our point of departure the idea that every human person needs to be fed and cared for, then we can dispense with the elaborate arguments of those who already are as to why everyone cannot be.

In an unequal world, violence protects property

There is a lot of high-minded concern that Africans don't respect private property rights -- but don't Western companies own most of what is valuable in Africa, anyway? Why should desperately poor Africans respect this?

I appreciate the Western impulse to impose by force that which could almost always be resolved peacefully by another means; for example, by taking the concerns of Africans seriously. When it comes to government by the privileged few, every problem looks like a nail, and requires a hammer.

Oblammy

Inevitable as it may be, it's still hard to watch a man so admired make common cause with the dead machinery of the state.

Just be glad you have a job

Nobody is glad they have a job. They are glad they have some way to live with dignity.

Suffering indignity is not something to be glad about, even if you are deemed useful to an employer. People are used all the time -- but it is not because they are lucky. More often than not, it is because they are desperate. Desperation is not something to be glad about.

It may be true that we are living in an age which does not grant you well-being merely because you are a human being who, by nature, requires it. But we have lived through many ages -- and more than a handful rank pretty fucked up. Some people recognize this at the time -- for example, that slavery was not "cool," even if it was the basis of a preindustrial economy comprised of large landholders. This doesn't mean the sentiment always wins, or that it doesn't take a very long time for it to do so; but in any event it begins.

What this suggests is that now may not be the best time to start mistaking what is majorly fucked up about our own circumstances as "a fact of life," or anything to be grateful for. Everyone gets hit by issues of health and well-being in varying degrees; nevertheless, everyone gets hit.

The routing of every great crime begins with a culture of nonacceptance. It begins with a thought and ends with action.

Pirates and mass shootings

Take away somebody's livelihood, replace it with a quizzical grin and upturned palms, and see how long it takes before they "go criminal."

Or just save yourself the trouble and rent Trading Places.

Blood from a stone

New York Times:

...[T]he Obama administration is encouraging several large investment companies to create the financial-crisis equivalent of war bonds: bailout funds.

The idea is that these investments, akin to mutual funds that buy stocks and bonds, would give ordinary Americans a chance to profit from the bailouts that are being financed by their tax dollars. But there is another, deeply political motivation as well: to quiet accusations that all of these giant bailouts will benefit only Wall Street plutocrats.

There's something to be said for an even playing field. That's why I like this scenario better:

1). Wall Street pays off all my debts with their money.

2). The government -- funded by Wall Street -- sets me up with a business, and sells my "services" back to Wall Street via placements in the New York Times on the idea that nobody should miss out on the fun. I then "charge healthy fees to investors for taking part" in this exciting opportunity.

If this sounds too good to be true, it is only because the class roles are reversed.

Yet one more old white dude talks about class

3. Conclusion

What we can say about the Democratic and Republican parties, then, is that they constitute a spectrum of concerns bracketed within the American ruling class.

I have argued that the Democratic Party reflects the management side of this class, while the Republican Party reflects ownership.

Above all, ownership concerns itself with preservation first, and all other considerations second. This lends itself to conservative notions of tradition, defense, self-reliance, even divine providence. It also informs the "libertarian" flavor of conservatism, insofar as libertarianism rejects the de facto authority of the state.

Because the variety of large-scale, centralized ownership patterns of the private sector find their only plausible rival in government, it is not surprising that private ownership remains terrified of "nationalization" and the precedent that might be set by efficiently-run public enterprise.

It is only due to this anxiety that the ownership class has made common cause with libertarian sentiments of the pre-industrial age, as though the modern corporation has the same right to privacy as the yeoman farmer of Jefferson's era.

This is how we arrive, perversely, at Reagan's "government is the problem" declaration 200 years later, which would become the rallying cry of the conservative movement going forward.

Management, on the other hand, is concerned with efficiency, which implies a foundation in higher education, which in turn lends itself to liberalism.

Of course, managers are employed by, and legally obligated to, owners. But because the utility of their skills is not limited to the private sector, managers may not share their employer's wholly negative estimation of the state.

Many private sector managers move to the public sector after growing tired of jumping through hoops for their bosses, particularly in the absence of any socially-relevant pretext. They may also see a role for government in advocating on their behalf vis-a-vis owners.

In any case, managers pride themselves on professional achievement, which presupposes a strong educational foundation, requisite accreditation, and so on. And this in turn forms the basis for liberalism in systems of private enterprise.

David Harvey on class struggle

Riddle me this, bankman

People sometimes tell me I am wasting my "talents" by not pursuing some obvious route to greater influence, or monetary reward -- as though the world needs more people motivated by these concerns, from which the rest of us can take our cue.

But what is so wrong about doing something worthwhile for its own sake? Isn't that the point of living?

I submit the best route to influence is not always obvious.

This note brought to you by: boxed wine, friends, family events

2. Democrats as "managers"

In contrast to the "self-made" mythology of the entrepreneur, liberalism emphasizes educational advancement and compliance with professional standards as the most practical path toward success. In this respect, liberals in the Democratic mold are at ease with the technocratic aspects of both business and government: given the right knowledge and credentials, is there any realm of human affairs liberalism would not surrender to the prevailing "experts"?

The question is salient in the wake of the global meltdown in financial markets, in which the most respected economists, business journalists, credit ratings agencies, industry regulators, and risk-management professionals consolidated their authority essentially by being "wrong" on behalf of the "right" interests. But this is hardly the first example of a liberal failure to ask the obvious questions -- e.g., the Iraq war; and now the Afghanistan escalation -- in exchange for the rewards of power.

This is also notable in popular culture, where expert tutelage seems an increasingly popular substitute for the independent thought and action of individuals -- especially among the wealthy and well-educated. This extends to areas of life where one might not previously think an "expert" possible, as in the case of "life coaching," which judges all human activity by the same authoritarian assumptions of the management structures from which it springs: it cultivates that which can be rendered useful to power at any given moment, thus maximizing potential "benefits" for the client.

As an ethos, liberalism amounts to little more than technical expertise in the service of power, and the deference to professional authority which this implies. Higher education -- liberalism's house of worship -- is dedicated to producing knowledge workers who will prove useful to power, with greater compensation awarded to those who are deemed most useful -- indeed, the way it works in any system. This is holds true whatever we think of the relationships.

The Democratic Party appeals primarily to the educated middle and upper classes. As a group, managers and other professionals, because of their educational background, tend to skew liberal, especially on social issues. This is due to their status as wage-workers, rather than "owners" or majority shareholders: white collar workers want successful careers, but are wary about selling their "soul" to employers in order to do it. Subsequently, they see a legitimate role for government in advancing worker's rights generally, and those pertaining to their professional class specifically. They also view government as a career track for knowledge workers who are willing to exchange potentially higher compensation in the private sector for a "public service" mission.

Why liberal, why conservative?

I have a hypothesis that the American political system basically reflects an institutional split within the private, or corporate, sector. Republicans are like owners, Democrats are like managers.

--

1. Republicans as "owners"

Owners tend to be conservative because they are primarily concerned about the bottom line. Their ethos is "individualist" in the mold of the American pioneers. In this sense, they view success as resulting from innate qualities -- fortitude, dedication, work ethic -- as opposed to university or specialized training. Subsequently, they view government as valid only insofar as it defends ownership rights; they do not want anyone else telling them how to run their enterprise.

The Republican Party appeals to voters -- mostly working class -- by inviting them to share in these "values," in large part by conflating industrial or financial ownership with owning a home or car -- in other words, fostering a unitary conception of "private property." This prompts the very people who suffer most from their dependency on wage-work to rally to the defense of their own exploitation whenever the government makes an appearance on the scene: if the rights of "property" are not sacred in the workplace, then surely they will not be honored in the home! Even the most pitiful attempt at industry regulation is portrayed as "creeping socialism" -- not as a public attempt to address public concerns, but as a totalitarian move to confiscate your PlayStation and your rifle for the communal/egalitarian/altruistic/politically correct good of all. In such nonsense the heady careers of many right-wing "personalities" are moored, and the Republican Party continues to induce many of its worst victims to pull the lever on its behalf.

Chief engineer favors greater buoyancy on the Titanic

The old Marxist saw that capitalism destroys itself could use a little more action these days.

Instead, we are treated to lectures about "living beyond our means" -- because the average person turns to credit for lack of income; or because home ownership seems smart when real estate is appreciating faster than any other sector of the US economy.

Now that the game is over, the public is blamed for playing the very part the rich had constructed for them. By this logic, the average family should have known that what every expert and industry chucklehead said was a good investment, wasn't really a good investment.

This "everybody is to blame"-style rhetoric deliberately glosses over the distribution of power in society. When the fundamentals of our economy are entrusted to unaccountable institutions which make investment decisions privately for their own gain, it is hard to comprehend how the public can be in a position to second-guess what is going on. As such, these kinds of arguments are designed to devolve responsibility from the top to the bottom, thus rationalizing the publicly-funded rescue of those at the top.

The argument that capitalism requires rules -- and therefore rulemakers -- for the sake of its own stability is endlessly repeated in times of crisis. The problem is that it is handily ignored in times of "prosperity." It should hardly be surprising that a system premised on the notion of maxim profit for the profit-maker will tend toward the elimination of any legal obstacle placed in its way. After all, with the wealth of the nation already in their hands, the writing of law in one's own favor is best categorized as a business expense.

Big fish

The President talks tough to a weak industry comprised of blue collar workers. But he cannot talk tough to a powerful industry comprised of white collar workers. In either case, the market approves.

Liberals may point to this as wrong. It's bad policy that rewards the wrong people.

But this ignores our springtime constellation of power. Looking forward, Obama must secure Wall Street's money, not autoworker's votes. It's not like union families are going to vote Republican, after all.

Meanwhile, the men of best quality fret that their bets in Washington might turn out as badly as their bets on Wall Street. To be sure, Barack Obama has been a gamble: he said a lot of crazy things to get elected, and hasn't talked his way out of them since. Will he lend his talents to the dark side, or must the Emperor end his scene?

Ask your conscience if anarchism is right for you

When I was growing up, anarchism was a poorly rendered capital "A" above the elementary school toilet. In this context, it did not capture my imagination. I understood it to mean "anarchy" -- chaos -- and presumed it to be about as well conceived as the myriad of sexual proposals my gradeschool brethren produced alongside it. Sure, life might be bad, I would explain to them mid-pee, but reverting back to romper room was not the answer.

Throughout high school and college, the "anarchists" continued to make no impression. If anarchism meant a lack of structure, what possible use could come of it in the real world? Drop out if you want -- from meat, from paying taxes, from showering; do you expect that anyone will miss you? Conditions that go on without organized resistance go on unopposed, I would say. Government is here: do you want it to work for you or kick you in the shins? Dressing like a Mexican peasant in a hoodie and stewing in your own subculture might make good theatre, but it stands rather shabby as a threat.

-- -- --

It was much too late in my life before I discovered the intellectual tradition that underpins contemporary anarchism, and which disabused me of prior impressions. The main thrust of it was the notion that all authority requires the consent of those it affects. Without consent, authority has no legitimacy, by default.

There are exceptions to this rule, but where there are exceptions, there are justifications. For example, adult authority does not always enjoy the consent of a child during childhood, but that does not mean such authority is always illegitimate. It just means such authority must demonstrate why it is legitimate.

This orientation toward power informs our understanding of every exercise of authority in life. For this reason, anarchism does not prescribe specific behavior as much as it describes the natural human preference for making one's own choices; or, conversely, the human resistance against being told by others what to do.

One needn't call this "anarchism"; in fact, most people would not consciously think about it all. But insofar as the anarchist tradition strives to illuminate this innate tendency and defend its practice, it stands as a useful resource for anyone wanting to develop their own capacities further.

Servitude, and the responsibilities of freedom

One of the best mechanisms for controlling people is to deny them economic security. People who do not enjoy a basic "right" to well-being inevitably spend much of life in outward appeal to those that do.

Inwardly, the creative impulse of the individual is rerouted from personal to external need. The gradual process of "giving up our dreams" for the sake of career, dramatically amending them, or in other ways altering them to be compatible with the "realities of life" -- i.e., employer preferences -- is regarded as an inevitable mark of maturity and sober responsibility, in light of the obvious alternative, which is to burden those who are fending as best they can for themselves. But this ignores the general disenfranchisement of most of humanity by default.

Under such conditions of disenfranchisement, "individual liberty" becomes the sensation of an empty stomach and the anxiety of ever-mounting bills. "Freedom of choice" becomes the freedom to choose whatever course of action will best impress employers that we might prove useful to their purpose, even if this betrays our personal values in some way. It is a job: for want of economic security, people are socialized to get the most of it, regardless of what this means in the big picture.

The more money we want to make, the more we submit to the requirements of those who supply it. Historically, this has not been a very good thing for the world.

The conditions imposed on securing a reasonable livelihood should not be allowed to compromise human health, personal freedom, the viability of the planet, or other universally shared concerns. To the extent that conditions of employment violate these terms, they must be challenged and modified. It is everyone's responsibility not to solicit the promise of personal security as a bribe to look the other way on issues that affect everyone, and which we know in our hearts to be right. We can no longer afford this as the prevailing standard of success.

Israeli housekeeping

New York Times:

“When we entered houses, we actually cleaned up the place,” said Yishai Goldflam, 32, a religiously observant film student in Jerusalem whose open letter to the Palestinian owners of the house he occupied for some days was published in the newspaper Maariv.

The things worth saving

Financial Times:

Ordinary citizens do not comprehend obvious elite truths such as the financial crisis was a systemic failure, not a personal one, that Wall Street wizards need to be paid as much to unwind the mess as they earned creating it, and that saving the system as a whole is a more worthy and urgent task than punishing individual miscreants.

I suspect what ordinary citizens comprehend is that the system does not work for them.

When times are "good," the ordinary citizen is placed on a treadmill and asked to run faster and faster, making little if any progress personally, while the owning classes absorb the gains. Profits are skewed towards owners, and "obligations" -- for one's welfare, health, and retirement -- are hung on the average American, who lives indebted just to scrape by.

When times are "bad," the ordinary citizen is taxed in order to preserve this relationship.

I have a feeling the ordinary citizen would be open to ending this relationship altogether if a more equitable arrangement was proposed. There is scarcely anything left to lose in working towards it -- and quite a lot to be gained for our grandchildren in succeeding.

Politics

The strategic question is not so much left or right as it is up or down.

A healthy dialogue

Wall Street Journal:

The health-insurance industry said it would be willing to stop charging sick people more for coverage if all Americans were required to buy insurance.

In response, Americans said they would be willing to accept better health outcomes at half the cost by abandoning the "health-insurance industry"-model of for-profit care altogether.

Choosers, beggars

It's a good thing executives call the shots at work. Otherwise employees might demand explanations for how they are treated.

Investing for the long term

Financial Times:

The stock price performance, though, perhaps reflects FedEx being more sensitive to shareholder pressure, taking on debt and expanding aggressively in the boom, including the unwise acquisition of Kinko’s, a retail printing chain, for $2bn in 2004. Since the economy began to falter in 2007, however, UPS shares have fared far better. Perhaps there is some truth to the argument that managers with unionised workforces tend not to succumb to short-term solutions to boost growth, but are forced to innovate and invest for the long term.

Power is safest when diffused, in this case on the job.

That UPS executives are constrained by their employees, whose welfare is partially secured through labor contracts, directly contributes to the long-term efficiency of the organization, because the free hand required to pursue "short-term gain into the flames" has been checked.

Just one example of the many useful things ordinary people do for society in defense of shared interests.

Corporate personhood

Democracy Now!:

It is a democracy crisis. The question we started asking as our lawsuit [against Exxon] went on and on and on, and we didn’t get paid, was how did corporations get this big, where they can manipulate the legal system, the political system? What happened here? And I thought that was a really good question, so I went to answer it. And that became the final chapter of Not One Drop.

And I learned from other people’s work that there’s actually two ways to amend the Constitution. One is formally, through people-made law, which we’ve done twenty-seven times. And one is informally, through what Thomas Jefferson called the engine of consolidation, the federal judiciary, the Supreme Court.

And in 1886, the Supreme Court made sort of a seminal decision, where it granted a railroad corporation equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, which is, of course, a civil rights amendment for due process and equal protection for African American men. For the first forty years after that passed, there were 307 lawsuits brought, nineteen by African American men, the rest by corporations.

And at that point, when the Fourteenth Amendment passed to corporations, this thing called a corporate person arose. And that corporate person, in the eyes of the law, is able to access our rights, human rights, the Bill of Rights, constitutional protections. This is wrong. The word “corporation” never appears in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. This is how we’ve lost freedom of speech. We still—we, as people, still have the First Amendment, but so do corporations. Free speech equals money. Those with more money have more speech. Pretty simple. So I began to understand that the legal system is broken. The election process is broken, all because of the same reason, this corporate personhood.

It might not be all right on the nightshift

Financial Times:

A review of recent studies by the International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that night work disrupted the body’s circadian rhythms, inhibiting the production of melatonin, a hormone important in fighting cancer. “Shift work that involves circadian disruption is probably carcinogenic to humans,” it concluded, putting the risk at the same level as chemicals containing lead, anabolic steroids, creosote, diesel exhaust and sun lamps.

...Up to a fifth of employees in Europe and the US work shifts including nights. More than 30 per cent work at night in healthcare, manufacturing, mining, transport, communication and the leisure and hospitality sectors.

Speaking for myself, my spouse, and many of the people I know working two or three jobs: if we can't work at night because it is going to kill us, how can we afford to live through the day?

I know cancer sucks, but have you ever tried not paying your bills? Cancer at least has an end point.

Ah, the choices we are asked to make on behalf of investors. If only they were the poor: the producing class would be counted among the world's greatest philanthropists.

Towards a democratic banking system

Labor Notes:

We need banks. But we don’t need private bankers. It’s like health care: we need nurses, doctors, hospitals, and clinics, but we don’t need insurance companies.

Al Jazeera: Israeli T-shirts mock Gaza killings

Economic miracles

Dean Baker:

Suppose Timothy Geithner announced a new program that would tax every family $10,000 dollars and give the money to Wall Street banks and hedge funds. (Any resemblance between this hypothetical program and real world programs is purely coincidental.)

We would expect the stock of Wall Street banks and other financial sector firms to rally based on the anticipation of higher profits. Is this good for the economy? It's not in any obvious way. After all, we can always tax people more to raise profits for Wall Street, but that doesn't help the economy.

It's always worth remembering that losses and gains are distributed throughout societies. What is "good for America" depends on who is defining the terms, and what their interests are.

Similarly, "the economy" or "the market" are often just terms used to describe the dominant players within them. When the "economy is doing great," the rich are doing great, and so on.

Or as the Brazilian dictator once observed of his country's privatization reforms: "The economy is doing great, it's just the people who aren't."

Accompaniment

When we obligate ourselves toward each other, not the arbitrary demands of power, our differences become the basis for movement, not borders beyond which we fear to tread.

It is the difference between walking amongst people, being known to them as a friend, and spending one's life trying to climb a ladder in order to get over their heads.

Power dedicates itself to soliciting servants, and it does this by portraying the wealth of human diversity as a perpetual threat. Nationalism conjures fear of monsters outside our borders, in service to the State. Racism continues the notion of a criminal class based on color, in service to various industries, including weapons manufacturers and what is called the "legal justice system" (two-thirds correct insofar as it is both "legal" and a "system.") Sexism makes of women the ever-ready servant to men. Terrorism, remarkably, has made of entire cultures a caricature that justifies the kidnapping, torture, and murder of their members -- the kidnapping and murder which continue unreservedly today -- in the service of international trade and finance, the current practice of which the world's people, in various ways, resist.

In every case a ladder is offered as though there were no way to remain on the ground, and the reward offered by power is to stand over the heads of others, with whatever privileges this brings.

It's important to emphasize that one of the rewards of removing oneself from the larger concerns of the human family is material security in the form of a respectable livelihood. This is not to say that anyone with a respectable livelihood has achieved it through this means. But because the promise of a respectable livelihood has always been a useful tool for recruiting people into the service of power, rulers of every age have sought to monopolize it: people who lack an independent means of survival inevitably turn, at great disadvantage, to those who do.

Consider this in light of the kind of work you spend your life engaged in, versus the kind of work you might prefer to be doing, the conditions under which you are expected to perform, etc.; or, if your work is agreeable, the degree to which it serves some purpose that is aligned with power. Because there is never much money to be made keeping company with people who are themselves purposefully denied a livelihood -- namely, us -- the world goes on looking the bloody mess it always has: our obligations don't extend horizontally toward each other, but vertically toward power, the very thing, in Foucault's words, "that dominates and exploits us."

Of course, it is a trap. My idea of what waits at the top of any ladder is more material wealth than one could ever make useful, with no where to take it -- but plenty of takers all around. It is a lonely, well-stocked tomb, situated in a politically untenable position. It is the big house in the gated community requiring full-time security to keep it from being sacked -- that is, if you can trust the underpaid security service. It is the middle-class dream of world travel, which amounts to dodging one poverty-stricken vista after another, where the wealthy Westerner is viewed as a target -- whether for cash or something else -- not a "friend."

This is the price of separation from the concerns of most people; and trying to reconcile this separation after the fact -- for example, by "giving back" -- does not return us to our family in a natural way, but rather pimps us out as some lofty, distant benefactor who holds the keys to a tolerable life, and subsequently demands celebration. The ascent to power has divorced us from humankind all along.

Freedom of movement happens alongside people, not apart from them. This requires obligating ourselves toward their concerns, educating ourselves about shared interests (which presupposes that we understand our own), and conditioning ourselves not to respect the boundaries proposed by power, demarcated as "differences." This means aligning oneself with one's neighbor, not one's ruler -- even if your neighbor is your political or religious opposite, and your ruler holds your "values." There is no atheist or Church-goer, Republican or revolutionary, Arab or Jew who cannot be talked to merely on the basis of these distinctions. Do the creationists need to feed their families? Do their daughters need health care? Then there is a broad space in which to stand, and move, amongst them.

Corporate wrongdoing, and exercising your "right" to quit

Jack Welch, former CEO at General Electric, writes a management column with his wife and/or daughter(?), Suzy, in every installment of BusinessWeek.

A recent piece entitled, "An Employee Bill of Rights," deals with the "expectations" employees can "reasonably" hold vis-a-vis their employers, as divined by the "Welchway."

Because corporate culture frequently adopts progressive, democratic language to mask the powerlessness of its human material, real "rights" never enter into the equation. Employees do not have "rights" except to accept or reject a contract of employment, as laid out on the employer's terms. Simply put, this is the situation that arises when one group owns what everyone else requires for survival: people sell themselves to others for a wage.

Whatever rights employees otherwise enjoy are rights that have been imposed on employers by force, through the coordinated activity of employees in their own self-interest, in either the political or economic sphere, as with laws and unions.

But where the law cannot reach, or sleeps unenforced; and where the cooperative spirit of self-interest has been gradually whittled down over time to reveal the easy target of self-promotionalism, the employee is asked to pay the highest price -- to family, leisure, education, art, and other free pursuits -- for advancement, respectable compensation, or even just to keep a job.

Under the terms of any dictatorship, no human value is sacred. Jack and Suzy raise, for example, the issue of "integrity" -- timely, one might suppose, in light of the kinds of corporate fraud which have precipitated the collapse of the world economy. Here is their program for advancing "integrity" in the workplace as a "right" of employees:

[I]t's reasonable to expect a boss who demonstrates integrity. It's awful to go to work each day wondering if your boss is shading the truth, adding spin to his real beliefs, or violating company values. So hold tight to this expectation. And if you feel it ebbing, you may need to ask yourself if it's time to move on.

Clearly, this is something the world could use a lot more of: people who recognize what's wrong in their organizations, but never bother to say, or do, anything about it. Integrity is best served by preserving one's deference to power -- and changing your life around if you fear you're not up to it.

Freedoms

Take away their land with conglomerate farming;

take away their tools with the assembly line;

take away the family business by flooding the market;

take away their art by owning all venues;

take away their homes through indebtedness;

take away their health by denying them care;

take away their government by writing its laws;

take away their sanity by rewarding compliance;

you are left with a country that is free for the taking.

Excerpts from the wars we pay for

Haaretz:

According to the squad leader: "The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.

"I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way," he said.

Nation of laws

What do union workers and Wall St. traders have in common?

Not much when it comes to honoring contracts.

Say no to Mexican drug gangs

American cities deserve American drug gangs.

Appeal to heaven

If science and faith seem to be at war, it's worth taking a step back before joining the fray. Trace the fault line and one is likely to find political motivations at the core.

If science aims at organizing what we know about our universe, and faith aims at asking deeper questions of it, then the two occupy different roles in human affairs. All things being equal, there is nothing about these roles that should prevent them from being complementary.

Globally, most of what is portrayed as a conflict between secularism and religion is a political question about integrating people into the world economy. If you practice a faith in which usury -- lending and borrowing -- is proscribed, then you are not going to make a very good "entrepreneur," or consumer.

The traditional approach of contemporary "globalization" has been to beat with a club those who do not avail themselves of these modern "freedoms." Unsurprisingly, this breeds resentment and militancy among those under the club. In the Middle East, for example, the club is often wielded by Arab governments at the behest of Western strategic and commercial interests. In other cases, Western forces assume this role directly.

Closer to home, the bumper sticker battles between Darwin and the Jesus fish are a sad testament to the ability of the political class to enlist beleaguered citizens in an ongoing feud between contending rulers. This is called "culture war," and it has been ordained by elite groups as legitimate terrain on which to capture hearts and minds. Since neither side gains from raising issues for which there is an established consensus -- defense spending or private sector health care, for example -- these subjects are excluded from public debate.

The Republican Party, whose only goal is to transfer maximum power to economic monopoly via the bottomless purse of the state, makes common cause with any social trend that further alienates citizens from their government, if only to inoculate them against economic obstructionism. Demanding that schools give equal time to creationism is fine because it imposes no burden on business either way. Neither do a number of other pointless initiatives -- amending the constitution to prevent flag burning or gay marriage, for example -- which have no practical relevance to advocates except to make the nation that less free for everyone else.

In light of such depravity, the Democratic Party is happy to assume the mantel of enlightened statecraft for professional, managerial, and urban constituencies. Democratic standing has been harmed considerably among the rural working class, who no longer have the benefit of an entrenched labor movement from which to frame their hardships in economic, rather than cultural, terms; and who, for too long, have been left to right-wing radio personalities uncontested. The conservative caricature of liberals as "elitist" is accurate to the degree that the Democratic Party is dominated by the same class interests as Republicans; only the Democrats are made more vulnerable to the charge insofar as they do not refute what they share culturally with the educated professionals who manage most American institutions, lending "substance" to the claim that "liberal elites" run the country, oppressing the average American at every turn. In fact, the Republican Party has merely found political advantage in distancing itself from its own institutions on strictly cultural terms, because its only practical consideration is the bottom line.

Insofar as one party identifies with "science," the other with "faith," it's worth taking the purported "war" between the two with a large grain of salt. The war is for political supremacy, and supremacy requires ratification from the population. Science and faith are merely two positions reeled out as bait for any willing takers, and they conceal a consensus between parties which comprises what neither have in common with anyone.

Thieves

This New York Times columnist has some choice words for the man who stole billions, primarily from the rich and well-connected, in no small part thanks to his seductive reputation for consistent, if unexplained returns:

Is there a Hell painful enough for him? A place where, say, he can listen to Bush economic theorists espouse the joys of toothless regulation while looking at pictures of the Holocaust survivors who are among Madoff’s victims?

The writer goes on to highlight the decency of other wealthy individuals, who do not sin against their peers, and whose enterprising brings them such fortune that they are left no relevant social role but to retire into philanthropic activity in their twilight years. For this, they are celebrated as exemplars of the community by their class, their works championed as a model for addressing the world's problems: if only we had more emperors of wealth to benignly rule over the health and well being of most of humanity.

Democrats and Republicans

It's notable that the Republican Party opts to wield state power under the guise of opposing "big government." Indeed, this is their entire shtick: appealing to people who distrust governmental authority so strongly that they are willing to endorse a political party -- the purest expression of the pursuit of governmental power -- to show it.

Whether "conservative" or "libertarian," it should go without saying that anyone who genuinely distrusts the state is not going to spend 100% of their time trying to monopolize it. This is probably why practicing libertarians, who are most commonly known as "anarchists," devote 100% of their time to building their own self-managed institutions -- cooperatives, unions, mutual banks, etc. -- which exist independent of the state altogether, rather than making a lifetime career out of the very "big government" they pretend to oppose.

For its part, the Democratic Party does not feign any principled opposition to big government. It merely pretends that the state can be harnessed for the good of all through a kind of scientific managerialism, as practiced by qualified elites. Hence Barack Obama's call for "a government that works" -- which just means big government that is more equitable in its distribution of benefits, though, importantly, no less vulnerable to interference from large economic actors.

Traditionally, the effect of contemporary Democratic rule has been materially superior for the majority of Americans as compared with its Republican analog, which always seems to redirect wealth from public to private concerns. (It should be said that for people of other nations, Democratic administrations can prove equally murderous, but that deserves a separate discussion.)

But this is still distinct and separate from self-management and democracy, which should be the goal toward which anyone with an instinct for freedom would keep a view. People make good and bad decisions in all circumstances of life, but there is far less danger in having these choices administered from below, where their scope is limited to the people who make them. Surrendering to them to a centralized authority just means imposing them by force on everybody.