A trip to the mall

In the same way that marriage has become culturally bound to the state, our lives in late capitalist societies are materially implicated in consumerism. How we react to this is complicated: we might bemoan materialism but love the new Snooki Minaj track. At least I do -- are you kidding? Yet how could capital be more concentrated, and artistry more controlled? All I know is, in the new society, there damn well better be auto-tune -- and, of course, Snooki.

Earlier today I took a stroll through the King of Prussia Mall. Commodities -- by which I mean commercial products and not raw materials or whatever in the stock markety sense -- on exhibit in a zoo! From a strictly Marxist perspective, you could get very bent out of shape about the whole thing. But that's not always what's called for in a social setting where people are very excited to satisfy their material needs, myself included. The fact is, I needed new pants. And do you know what? There they were, neatly folded, just like the old boy Tommy Friedman is always crowing about.

My suggestion to you is: Don't get bent out of shape! But at the same time: Don't forget about what has transpired. Remember! Rest assured that a time will come when you can put those memories and that understanding to use in a way that does not alienate you from what has become the social life, but secures affirmation to others when they invariably come away empty. Every principle you care about is best deployed in the service of other's needs; it should never approach them as condemnation. Mao said: Swim in the sea of the people. I say: Swim in the sea of commodities, because this is where you will find the people.

I want to make an analogy about your feelings when you think about injustice in the world. Some members of my extended family have something in their fireplace that they call an "insert." It's something that goes in your fireplace, presumably, but more noticeably forms a full glass and metal enclosure in the front. By means of this device, you can control the airflow to the fire.

This is the important part. When the airflow is turned to the minimum, that fire will last who knows how many times longer than it would if exposed to the direct environment. I've heard the fire will last all day or all night. Conversely, when you dial up the heat, it's hot as fuck. It will heat the better portion of your home. It's crazy.

Your passion about the things you care about is like that. If you let it get direct exposure to every goddamnable thing that comes along -- yeah, it's going to flare up; but it will only be a matter of time before you burn out. You know what I mean by this, many of you, I am sure. So create an enclosure, and let that fire burn indefinitely; and, moreover, grant yourself the ability to choose when you are going to let it run hot or let it go unnoticed by everyone else but you. Never let circumstances dictate how you dispense with your own energy -- or for that matter any antagonist. They will try, but this must always remain your choice. And you will make these choices based on what is required by the people in your life, intimate or afar, in solidarity with their struggles.

Commonweal

Wall Street Journal:

Less than a quarter of Americans support making significant cuts to Social Security or Medicare to tackle the country's mounting deficit, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, illustrating the challenge facing lawmakers who want voter buy-in to alter entitlement programs.

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable" to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."

Yet for all the effort put into dividing them politically, and all the significance attached to that divide, there is consensus within the working class -- and it stems from economics.

The morality of power

Robert Kaplan, Financial Times:

The moral differences between one dictator and another are as vast as those between dictators and democrats. There is such a thing as a benevolent dictator –- and we should not turn our back on all those that remain.

Vision, perceived legitimacy, the existence of a social contract and the ability to make society more institutionally complex –- and thus ready for more freedom –- are the distinguishing characteristics of good dictators.
...
This legitimacy [of dictators] depends on a social contract that treats the population as citizens rather than subjects, and has as its primary goal the economic and social advancement of society.

Once we accept power as an established principle, the political "dictator" really isn't that different from a CEO or your garden-variety household patriarch.  The issue is no longer what they are -- one who rules  -- but rather what they do; and, moreover, whether or not we agree with the outcome.   This explains how the author can glide effortlessly into performance-style appraisals of people who regularly use the army to make their societies "ready for more freedom," by his standard.

Furthermore, the distinction between the "citizen" of the republic and the "subject" of autocracy is a lot like the difference between the "team member" of today versus the "worker" of yesteryear: a status in name only.  The material concern in any hierarchy is always one's proximity to the bottom.

Love and tactics

David B. Rivkin Jr., Lee A. Casey; Wall Street Journal:

Marriage is unlike any other governmental benefit. License to marry carries with it far more than mere permission, as in obtaining a license to drive or practice a profession. The reason that gay-rights supporters are so determined to achieve equal status for same-sex unions, and the reason that so many others vigorously oppose that recognition, is that marriage is an affirmative statement of societal approval.

Congress took account of this fact in enacting DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act], and of the fact that large majorities of Americans still oppose recognition of same-sex marriages. Significantly, most Americans do not oppose some other form of legal recognition for same-sex couples that isn't called marriage.

"Civil unions. Because you're not a person -- you're a gay!"

Marriage is an example of a social practice that has become so thoroughly conflated with the state that it is difficult -- even for people who love each other bunches -- to imagine undertaking the endeavor without making it "official" in the eyes of virtually everyone.

In the present context, to deny one group of people this "affirmative statement of societal approval" which has become culturally bound to the state can be interpreted in turn as an affirmative statement of societal disapproval as regards those individuals in particular.

Of course, there is always the argument to be made that what is elemental about "marriage" does not spring forth from the blessing of a loveless bureaucracy, but is rather whatever two people and their immediate community can sustain by the force of their own creative design. But this does not mitigate the injustice at the point where it presently resides: within a society that, for now anyway, cannot imagine "marriage" developing toward its most fruitful maturity in the absence of a state.

Feed the world!

Economist:

In his 1981 essay, “Poverty and Famines”, Amartya Sen, an Indian economist, argued that the 1943 Bengal famine, in which 3m people died, was not caused by any exceptional fall in the harvest and pointed out that food was still being exported from the state while millions perished. He concluded that the main reason for famines is not a shortage of basic food. Other factors -- wages, distribution, even democracy -- matter more.

Yet The Economist isn't interested in other factors. Instead it wants to talk exclusively and at length about what are called "agricultural yields" -- how much can be produced at a given cost, within a given acreage; in other words, the efficiency of agricultural output.

And while I am no expert, the impression I get from this article is that The Economist, rather than confronting the fundamental problem of profit in production, would merely prefer that agricultural yields, by the entrepreneurial magic of state-sponsored biotechnological chicanery, increase by a million percent!, so that "farmers" -- corporate agribusiness -- can finally produce commodities at so minimal an expense to themselves that they can feasibly sell them to people living on less than a dollar a day and still make a profit.

Failing that, all bets are off.

The state

Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in Nationalism and Culture:

All great periods of culture are periods of political decline. Whatever is great in a cultural sense is non-political, is even anti-political.

We can think of "the state," or the government, as politicians and their institutions; a professional class of "governors" who do the work of creating and enforcing the rules by which everyone else is expected to live. This is odd when you think about; why would one group within society be invested with the power to do this?

When I was growing up, the rationale given was that having professionals do the "political work" of society freed everyone else to "live their lives," so to speak. But we often notice that when people are obligated to act in a "political" capacity -- for example, to attend jury duty -- they are quick to defend the many obligations they have to their employer, unaccustomed as they are to deny these for any other purpose. "Living our lives" has come to take on a particular meaning in this respect!

Nietzsche puts "culture" in opposition to "politics" because where the former embodies the free creation of norms between people, the latter mandates them by force. What is "political" could be negotiated between people on their own terms; but without a specialized group "entrusted" with a monopoly of violence, such endeavors would merely be social, not political. This is what Nietzsche means when he says, "Whatever is great in a cultural sense is non-political, is even anti-political": the best things to come from human relations come freely, without one group presuming to set the terms for all others -- i.e. without power as an established principle; without "government" as an institution separate and distinct from the work of our everyday lives.

Anarchism has long recognized that what best makes a society democratic is not the "democratic credentials" of its ruling class -- not one political party that "better represents the people" than the rest -- but an end to the artificial machinery of "politics" altogether.

We can imagine life without government as entailing not the abolition of everything that government does -- like running schools or installing traffic lights -- but rather that the work of our everyday lives would change to include the many things that are now entrusted to permanent bureaucrats. But how can we take on extra responsibilities when we are already overworked as it is? The answer is: the structure of our work lives has to change. Our time would be devoted to producing what we want and need: part of the day would be devoted to the kind of economic work we do now, only its purpose would not be the enrichment of our bosses but the improvement of our communities; and the other part of the day would be comprised of relating to each other about what we want and how best to go about it. Such activity would then have the chance to develop as cultural practices amongst society as a whole.

We see that in a community of free individuals, what is "political" is superfluous; institutionalized power is only necessary when you want to preserve the rights of some against the needs of others. This is another important thing to know about the state: it has always attended the division of society into distinct and hostile classes. This is why anarchists have always identified the state as a necessary instrument of class rule.

It is important to reiterate the fact that what the state is shouldn't be conflated in every instance with what the state does. The fact that the state administers certain social programs or upholds certain laws is not proof that people wouldn't prefer similar services or "rules of the community" in a stateless society. The point is, it has to be determined what people want, and in some ways the state prevents this; but in other ways, people have forced the state to recognize what they want. So we mustn't confuse everything the state does with the underlying purpose for which it exists. Something that Marxists have been good to emphasize is the fact that the state is an important site of class conflict; for anarchists, the impulse to "smash the state" must take care not deny the importance of some things the state does which would need to be performed by communities in its absence.

Living to work

New York Times:

Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard, said he saw the hostility toward unions as a sign of decay in society. Some working-class people see so few possibilities for their lives that it is eroding the aspirational nature that has long been typical of Americans.

“It shows a hopelessness,” he said. “It used to be, ‘You have something I don’t have; I’ll go to my employer to get it, too. Now I don’t see any chance of getting it. I don’t want to be the lowest one on the totem pole, so I don’t want you to have it either.’ ”

An intrinsic feature of capitalism, compensating people for the work they do imposes costs on the profits necessary to sustain economic growth. In other words, your salary, benefits, and ability to retire; not to mention whatever communal goods like roads and bridges, schools and libraries -- these things will always exist in a state of potential conflict with the kind of concentrated wealth accumulation required by capitalism.

This is what we mean by class conflict: you would like to be compensated for your work by some standard appropriate to the productive capacity of your society; but your employer sees in your compensation an obstacle to their success. Accordingly, either you are persuaded by various means to accept their point of view, or you struggle to advance your own.

The standards by which any society regards itself are elastic. In the early industrial period, people (including children) regularly worked 16 hour days; by the mid-20th century, that standard was cut in half -- and yet people were compensated better. Those elements within US society that understood how this transpired sensibly proposed "a 4-hour day with no cut in pay." They did this by advocating the production of things that people needed as opposed to the production of wealth for an owning minority.

Today we are witnessing a slide back toward the living standards preferred not by the average person but by those interests engaged in wealth maximization for themselves. After all, if we agree that a decent salary, health benefits, and a retirement you can live on -- like those presently retained only by unionized, public sector workers -- are "overly generous," what are we spending more and more of our lives working for, really?

The right to marry

Wall Street Journal:

One of the cases that prompted the [Obama administration's Defense of Marriage Act] shift was filed by Edith Windsor, who sued after the federal government refused to recognize her 2007 marriage to her partner, Thea Spyer. After Ms. Spyer's death, Ms. Windsor faced a $350,000 estate tax on her inheritance from her partner, a tax she wouldn't have incurred had her marriage been recognized by the federal government.

Because US history is to a large degree the story of very wealthy people asserting their rights as a group -- leaving everyone else to play catch up -- any attempt to discriminate against groups that include very wealthy people are often frustrated until that group can be reconstituted along class lines.

In the case of gay marriage, the stigma attached to homosexuality has until only recently proven itself superior to the appeals of upper class gays to take their rightful place amongst their wealthy counterparts -- to marry whomever they want.

If US history is any guide, we can expect that what is likely gained by all gays in the realm of marriage will not translate so well to other spheres, like health services, which can be delineated much more easily by the criteria of class. In other words, in the case of marriage, it will be hard to deny to poor people this right that is increasingly seen as inalienable for the rich -- but others will remain out of reach.

About unions

A union is nothing more than the coordinated resistance of employees against employer rule. For example, if your boss tells you to do something unsafe, and one or more of your coworkers is willing to stand by you in your refusal to obey, whatever this may entail, that is a union. That is how unions began, and it is fundamentally what makes unions important.

Whether or not your challenge to the boss's authority has been preapproved by your employer's representatives in government is a whole other consideration. But it is worth mentioning that this what 90% of the discussion about "unions" amounts to in the United States. By this criteria, a "union" and its activities are legitimated and regulated by politicians, who in turn decide what kind of resistance will be tolerated by law. In a class society, we can imagine a scenario where politicians, influenced by the economic monopoly held by employers, end up restricting most of the types of activity that give employees and their communities real strength in the face of employers. Long story short, this explains a lot about why mainstream unions are deficient: in a word, they suck. But that has more to do with the profound disadvantage they sustain just as soon as they gain "legitimate" status in an employer-run society than it does with some special failing amongst labor leaders (i.e. the two happen in succession).

Most US unions are run on the employer-sanctioned "business union" model, which basically turns unions into businesses themselves. These unions serve as legal representation in relations between employers and employees. Employees pay dues, and the business union provides the "service" of talking to your boss when you have a problem, or negotiating what is called a "collective bargaining agreement" -- a contract which spells out raises and work rules, and so on, for a given period of time. Basically, you pay money, and your union representatives "represent" you.

In contrast to business unionism, there is something called solidarity unionism. Solidarity unionism is a model which seeks to advance the interests of all employees as a class. We know that when we talk about "class," we are talking about a very inclusive concept: the "working class" is everyone compelled by economic necessity to work for anybody else. Solidarity unionism sees unions as an outgrowth of community concerns which happen to find their expression in the workplace. In other words, unlike business or what is called "craft" unionism, solidarity unionism is opposed to the narrow pursuit of economic advantage for certain parts of the workforce vs. others. Traditionally, this orientation has worked to bring the conditions of the poorest and most vulnerable up to the standards of others in the labor market, while at the same time demanding an end to "wage slavery" altogether.

Because solidarity unionism is informed by a class perspective, it understands that the role of government in very unequal societies is to defend the wealth of the haves against the needs of the have nots. We see this playing out in particular splendor as of late: the bankers who wrecked the economy keep their contractually stipulated bonuses, while their political servants wail that school teachers are bankrupting the nation! Limited government, predictably, has meant limiting governmental utility for the working class, while at the same time increasing governmental aid to the nation's owners. For this reason, solidarity unions are reluctant to be drawn into legal contracts with employers, since a union's real strength lies not in governmental mediation, but in the original spirit of what unions are all about.

Concerning the various sins in Wisconsin

Financial Times:

It is easy for Republicans to point to Labour Department statistics that show benefits for unionised state and city public sector employees have increased 20 percentage points more than for private sector workers since 2001. Or that the relationship between unions and the Democratic party is a cosy one. (For example, more than $1m of contributions to Wisconsin’s Democrats came directly from unions last year, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.)

But that does not mean that collective bargaining caused Wisconsin’s projected $3.6bn deficit over the next two years or that ending it will fix the Badger State’s fiscal woes. Unions have already agreed to the necessary cuts in pension and heath benefits. Any debate for or against collective bargaining should be held well away from the heat of a fiscal crisis; the topic is a complex and well-researched one, deserving careful consideration.

There are a couple different groups to watch for in the course of our national budget cutting extravaganza. Let's start with the ruling class, which includes our nation's industrial and financial proprietors, as well as their "public" servants in government: Whether in Congress or on the job, you know them 'cos they make the rules! Then you have the working class, which includes private and public sector employees and their communities.

These classes aren't strictly separate from one another -- there is some overlap. One of the most important places where there is way too much overlap in interests is the mainstream US labor movement, which has surrendered most of its effectiveness vis-a-vis employers in exchange for a place at the table of the ruling class. This has produced a lot of contradictory dimensions to the US labor movement as a whole, and opens it up to criticism at many levels, which are in turn used by the ruling class to discredit not only its place at their table, but its right to exist at all. It is a perennial lament of working class advocates that US labor leaders insist on walking into this trap again and again by channeling resources to political parties of the ruling class.

One of the difficulties for any political party enjoined to safeguard the prerogatives of a tiny portion of the total population is to appeal to everyone else in a persuasive way. This is what the Republican Party has tried to do by making the national deficit their #1 issue. I see bumper stickers to the effect of, "My family can balance its budget, why can't Congress balance theirs?" But a family knows that if they are in debt to pay for a child's schooling, the answer is not to discard the child in order to balance their budget. In some cases it may not be practical to balance a budget or reduce a debt load right away. But because the idea that the government spends too much is a popular one, Republicans hope this can be used to enact "reforms" that will reduce the public obligation of the owners of America to its workers.

Political systems persist in large part by being so universally corrupt that individual parties can legitimately call each other out on their corruption forever. In this case, Republicans can get a lot of traction out of the above-stated relationship between the Democratic Party and public-sector unions. Aspects of "right-to-work" legislation are also buoyed by legitimate concerns, as when individual employees object to contributing union dues as a condition of their employment.

In navigating the conflict in Wisconsin and elsewhere, it is useful to separate the different groups by their fundamental class interests first, political allegiances second. This means putting the profit-seeking owners and their political agents on one side, and private and public sector employees and their communities on the other. The Democratic Party should not be seen as "standing up for working communities" when the only union model they endorse is one that funnels cash their way on the backs of even unwilling union members, leaving the broader movement vulnerable to resentment from their own communities.

Intellectual history of anarchism

Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism:

Anarchism has in common with Liberalism the idea that the happiness and prosperity of the individual must be the standard of all social matters. And, in common with the great representatives of Liberal thought, it has also the idea of limiting the functions of government to a minimum. Its supporters have followed this thought to its ultimate logical consequences, and wish to eliminate every institution of political power from the life of society. When Jefferson clothes the basic concept of Liberalism in the words: "that government is best which governs least," then Anarchists say with Thoreau: "That government is best which governs not at all."

In common with the founders of socialism, Anarchists demand the abolition of all economic monopolies and the common ownership of the soil and all other means of production, the use of which must be available for all without distinction; for personal and social freedom is conceivable only on the basis of equal economic advantages for everybody. Within the socialist movement itself the Anarchists represent the viewpoint that the war against capitalism must be at the same time a war against all institutions of political power, for in history economic exploitation has always gone hand in hand with political and social oppression. The exploitation of man by man and the dominion of man over man are inseparable, and each is the condition of the other.

"Liberalism" in this case refers to classical liberalism, which is the 18th century political philosophy out of which both of today's "liberal" and "conservative" camps were sprung. We still find in conservatism this preoccupation with limited government; and, in liberalism, a certain conception of rights guaranteed or respected by the state.

Classical liberalism was important at the time because it was the first western attempt to locate rights at the level of the individual. For a long time, kings ruled under a presumed legitimacy granted to them by God. Then, around the same time, you had the development of both classical liberal and democratic ideas. As we have said, Liberalism pushed this idea of individual rights, a private sphere that could not be transgressed by the government. Democracy on the other hand, at least in Rousseau's formulation, served as a powerful indictment of monarchy; but his "general will" proved extremely dangerous as an absolute formula with no space for Liberalism's "private sphere."

Socialism developed in response to the centralizing tendencies of industrial capitalism, which relocated Liberalism's privacy for individuals into an abstract legal construct known as the corporation. Socialism intended to put whatever was productive under the democratic control of communities; but it fell into many of the same traps of the earlier democratic era: it eliminated all private life in its attempt to cull only one. Put differently, whatever began as genuinely socialist was quickly subsumed by the state.

This brings us to Rocker's passage above. Among the many different strands of contemporary western thought, Anarchism remains truest to the classical liberal ideal; it might best be described, to paraphrase Chomsky, as classical liberalism adapted to the modern era. The important point is that it is comprised of a combination of things; and you can find in it even a relationship to modern conservative thought -- a useful thing when we want to propagate our values amongst the Tea Party-types.

Failed states

Guy Debord; Society of the Spectacle, 107:

Stalinism was a reign of terror within the bureaucratic class. The terror on which the bureaucracy's power was founded was bound to strike the class itself, because this class had no legal basis, no juridical status as a property-owning class that could be extended to each of its members individually.

When ruling classes say that communism failed, what they mean is that it failed them.

Democratic states

Guy Debord; Society of the Spectacle, 134:

To reflect upon history is also, inextricably, to reflect upon power. Greece was that moment when power and changes in power were first debated and understood. This occurred under a democracy of society's masters, a system diametrically opposed to that of the despotic State, where power settled accounts only with itself, in the impenetrable obscurity of its densest point, by means of palace revolutions whose outcome, whether success or failure, invariably placed the event itself beyond discussion.

To hear the politician tell it, "Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." So the devil himself quotes scripture! And more than this, he is sincere by his own terms: what he means is a "democracy of society's masters" -- the liberty of the ruling class -- "a system diametrically opposed to that of the despotic State, where power settled accounts only with itself," and which left individual elites unprotected against the collective whole.

Love in exchange

Continuation of an interview with Jaded Sixteen, contributor at Oi With The Poodles Already.


Do you think Bronte saw love as a "space" where power becomes what we choose?


JS: Short answer: Yes and No


Long Answer: If this book was written some 120 years later, and you replace 'love' with merit, then you have All The Works That Ever Came Out Of Ayn Rand's Rectum. But I digress.


Slightly Longer Answer: While the narrative does believe in some twisted way that there can be a 'freedom' and equality in choosing and creating this space where 'love' is more-or-less like a utopia, open and available to all, the protagonists 'Catherine-Heathcliff' or 'Heathcliff-Catherine' are still caught in the bigger, imperial war of possessing-fighting-claiming each other and by extension themselves. Quite similar to the Marxist vision and its outcome, isn't it?


Bronte uses 'love' as an object, that is pawned off, gambled, re-bought many times in the narrative. Going by this reading alone, one can read Wuthering Heights like a stock market assessment and plot it on a graph even -- and they say ladies don't know economics. Heh. -- until we remember who is writing and what her epidermal tissue embodies and carries as an emblem.


Quite predictably it's Heathcliff (the 'gypsy') who has to 'earn' status and class, for being 'an outsider' means class-status can be bought; as for Catherine, Edgar and Hindley, their dwindling class-statuses aren't as big a challenge as it was for Heathcliff, because their Skin affords them more power than Heatcliff can ever 'earn'. Catherine's daughter who is set to marry the 'servant boy' Hareton, is not seen as a person transgressing any boundaries, while Heathcliff was reprimanded for doing the same thing. Insert quip about colonialism here.


The 'love' between Nelly and Catherine can also be seen as an empowering space, only till we see that Nelly (whose real name is Ellen) is a Creole, and she speaks as a narrator only and not the interpreter. Much like Margaret Mitchell's Mammy, Nelly too is the loyal-overbearing-servant-animal-slave who keeps up the order, reprimands Hareton for showing affection for his 'superior' Catherine, and probably whistles praises of her 'masters' while being bogged down by servitude.


So this 'commodity' love becomes a viable medium to 'free' spaces only if we assume everyone is either


• The Default Human i.e. a White Male (Edgar Linton, Hindley Earnshaw)

• The Default Human and Half i.e. White Female (Both Catherine's)


Now, if you're neither of these people -- Heathcliff, Nelly, Zillah, Me (a dusty lady) -- then the narrative pretty much roars "Backlash!"


I have to admit, I feel like I'm out of my element -- but that is something I appreciate about your writing. It is beautiful and challenging at the same time. How much unqualified support for your writing do you get from men as an audience, and men in your life?


JS: I'm not too sure how much 'support' I get from men as an audience, considering about 70% of my trolls are right-wing Indian dudes, unhappy with the idea that someone from India is 'tainting' the 'image' of India. Especially when I speak out something against nationalism or 'national heroes'. This is the most recent troll and probably the least threatening. The remaining troll-ratio is filled with (generally) White dudes who are 'angry' the way only White dudes can be, the moment they see WOC speaking out of the pecking order. Surely, I have had good comments and e-mails from men too, but those are few and far between. Generally women write in and offer support, many feel 'safer' writing e-mails than having their comments out.


Going to the men in my life, my father and uncles see this as a 'silly' hobby that I have -- as we all know Blogging isn't Real Writing. The day I did write in a newspaper under my name, and stated some reverse-capitalist views, "Shit got real" if I were to use Americanese to describe that episode.


What was their response?


JS: Multiple responses. Denial: Most people won't even know who this is so it's not a Big Deal; Anger: that their kid wrote something anti-State and critical of Obama in a leftist newspaper -- and people recognized whose kid I was; and Acceptance: that they can't control what I write whether they like it or not. Mild Annoyance: that I had such 'anti' views to begin with.


I find this whole process amusing because they assumed they did have a say in my opinion or writing in the first place so I'm generally laughing at this presumption. Somehow, they don't like it very much.

On being a force for goods

Wall Street Journal:

Companies may not want to be lapdogs to dictators. But they also don't want to tick off their chief customer. It's a balancing act, one that inevitably leads to a policy of corporate discretion: Best to stay off the radar screen.

Reflecting on Mr. Ghonim's extracurricular activities, an executive at one big U.S. manufacturer operating abroad was adamant: "Anything that affects the brand -- we hate that," he said. "It wouldn't be allowed." Mr. Ghonim can be admired for his considerable contribution to civil liberties in Egypt, but also shunned as too great a liability to business.

Let's put it this way: You might not believe in dictatorship, but if your employer is "cool" with it because they perceive some benefit, and you spend most of your waking hours doing what they say; then for all practical purposes you are "cool" with it too, at least most of the time.

What I would ask you to do at this point is to substitute for "dictatorship" any other social malady of your choosing -- pollution, poverty, war, animal suffering -- and see whether you are any better positioned to respond as you might like; taking into account this prior obligation that forms the basis of your daily life!

So it is said that all that evil needs to thrive is for good people to do nothing. I say: All that is required for good people to do nothing is to spend their lives working for people whose fortune is made by doing the same!

Democracy in Egypt

Financial Times:

As the Obama administration has scrambled to respond to the unfolding drama in Egypt, political leaders and activists across the spectrum in Washington have split over how the US should handle the crisis.

On the right, Egypt has provoked sharp clashes, largely over whether by default the US should support democracy movements. Those who say it should are ranged against pragmatic advocates of US power more willing to back autocratic allies.

The political debate over "whether the US should support democracy" is best understood in relation to the class character of American democracy. Democracy in the US is not a completely fraudulent idea, as it would be under monarchy or totalitarian dictatorship. Democracy, equality, the rule of law -- all of these things apply, but their scope is restricted to the propertied classes. If two corporations go to court, they are better served by "equality before the law" and a crack team of lawyers than they are by trying to out-bribe some random official whom they can't prepare for. The legal system is helpful for rich people insofar as it establishes a kind of fairness between themselves, without extending it to anyone else.

Whenever US politicians sing praises about democracy, they have this "ruling class democracy" in mind. It's one of the reasons why "freedom" and "free-markets" are so often paired together, when the former just implies the ability to choose, while the latter is in fact a choice. Given the ability to choose, people may very well not choose "free-markets" (i.e., they may place restrictions on how wealth is accumulated and deployed) -- this brings us to source of our ruler's trepidation!

It is good to encourage "democracy" in other lands if it amounts to expanded rights for the rich. But if you can't guarantee that outcome, better to have a dictator who can at least keep a lid on expanded rights for the population, also known as "labor costs." "Democracy for everyone" is the absolute worst outcome, because "everyone" tends to have different priorities than 0.1% of the population.

So the debate here is essentially between one part of the ruling class which believes the events in Egypt will evolve naturally into an expansion of rights for local elites and western investors in Egypt, while the other is afraid that the democracy could undermine this -- they say because the Muslim Brotherhood will take over and impose Sharia law; but equally bad, if invariably unmentioned, is the not impossible prospect that a legitimate democracy would take root that simply puts its own priorities above those of the super-rich. And that is something our so-called "liberal democracy" thus far cannot abide!

Feudalism's feminist

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Financial Times:

The problem with political Islam was something identified by Elias Canetti in his classic Crowds and Power. “Believers,” he says, “yearn for God’s force; His power alone does not satisfy them; it is too distant and leaves them too free. The state of continuous expectation of command, to which, early in life, they surrender themselves for good and all, marks them deeply and also has a momentous effect on their attitude to other people.”
...
But is it realistic to have a leaderless revolution? In my view it is not. In the absence of leadership -- which means not just one man but a legitimate command structure, as well as some kind of explicit manifesto -- these protests will never achieve the truly revolutionary changes we saw in Europe in 1989.

Hirsi Ali is one of those commentators plucked from an oppressive feudal background whose career is secured in the West by selectively "speaking out" against the crimes committed by her host country's villain-du-jour: She attributes to "Islam" everything that is wrong with pre-capitalist or insufficiently capitalist regimes in the East, in order to promote the crimes of capitalism; even excusing them in places where the two clearly intersect, as with US aid to Mubarak and other Arab tyrants ("It is easy to blame the Zionists and America." Not for you, my dear; your paycheck would record the hardship!).

In this case, Hirsi Ali's utility as an apostate Muslim far exceeds her ability to produce an argument: She says the "Islamic world" harbors the "continuous expectation of command," only to reproach the Egyptians for rejecting "a legitimate command structure, as well as some kind of explicit manifesto" in favor of a leaderless uprising! Rather than ditching the whole pointless endeavor, she lets the very absence of authority prove her point that a much worse authority lies in wait -- if only because Muslims are involved.

Dependents

Wall Street Journal:

Newly trained women doctors are being paid significantly lower salaries -- about $17,000 less -- than their male counterparts, found a new study published in the February issue of Health Affairs. The disparity exists even after the researchers accounted for factors such as medical specialty, hours worked and practice type. Women had lower starting salaries than men in nearly all specialties.
...
Anthony Lo Sasso, the study's lead researcher, and a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the pay gap may exist because women doctors are seeking greater flexibility and family-friendly benefits, such as not being on call after certain hours.

Meanwhile, the "pay gap" for women starting at the minimum wage, who seek greater flexibility and family-friendly benefits will be realized either as part-time hours, or no hours at all: It is to the employer's advantage that "greater flexibility" is always made inversely proportional to the "family-friendly benefit" of satisfying one's material needs.

An ever-expanding "smaller government"

Wall Street Journal:

Governors around the U.S. are proposing to balance their states' budgets with a long list of cuts and almost no new taxes, reflecting a goal by politicians from both parties to erase deficits chiefly by shrinking government.
...
"I do recognize some low-income Iowans can't afford to pay for preschool, but even they can pay something, maybe just $10 a month," says Mr. Branstad, who took office last month and who had previously served four terms as Iowa governor.

It suffices to say that politicians don't want to shrink the government. They want to shrink only that portion of government that helps low-income Americans afford preschool; in fact, they want to increase "taxes" -- i.e. actual living expenses -- for the poor by reducing the public obligations of the rich. But make no mistake that government is ever-expanding into areas that benefit the rich; this is why it never really gets smaller over time, even under conservative rule.

In the words of Rudolf Rocker, "The state is capable only of protecting old privileges and creating new ones; in that its whole significance is exhausted." Who is protected by the state? is the main question for participants at any given moment in the broader class war. The owning classes are protected by default, the general population is not; they have to win whatever rights they have, and fight to maintain them, through struggle.

See no evil

Economist:

As the Mubarak regime’s patron and armourer, the Americans have had a tricky balance to strike. They could not be seen to abandon a longstanding ally at the first whiff of tear-gas. That would scare other loyal Arab allies, such as the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and risk ruining relations with Egypt if Mr Mubarak were somehow to hang on. Nor, though, could Mr Obama be seen to take the dictator’s side against the people. That would offend American principles and hurt relations with a successor regime if the people prevailed.

As the Mubarak regime’s patron and armorer, Mr. Obama could not be seen to take the dictator's side against the people -- this would offend American principles!

This is significant in light of the fact that for 30 years the United States acted as the Mubarak regime's patron and armorer, but was not "seen" to take the dictator's side against the people by the standards of liberal US commentary.

Only by authoring the headlines themselves could Egyptians temporarily relieve Western editors of the responsibility for recording what has for three decades been plainly in front of their face, but that they refused to "see."

American values in Egypt

Timothy Egan, New York Times:

Egypt gets $1.3 billion a year in United States tax dollars to behave in a certain way. It’s an easy relationship when it’s all about tanks and fighter jets. But when pressed by its own people for a thimble of self-respect, the leadership sends out goon squads to crack the heads of journalists and everyday citizens practicing the most powerful of American values.

The most powerful of American values are no doubt communicated to everyday Egyptians when the weaponry used against them bears the label "Made in the USA."

And they tell me The Daily Show is funny

Edward N. Luttack, Wall Street Journal:

... Egyptian democrats should not be denied eight months to build viable opposition parties before the next election.

It is wrong to deny Egyptians the opposite of their demands. Remember that you heard it from the Wall Street Journal first.

The trouble in north Africa, and the Arab world in general

Paul Betts, Financial Times:

The trouble is that in north Africa and the Arab world in general, western governments and their corporate champions have indulged in cultural relativism whereby the local context determines the moral values you apply. Companies cannot really be blamed for this. If anyone is to blame, it is their governments for encouraging them to engage with these regimes and helping keep them in power. The public and shareholders, too, must share the blame for keeping quiet and not complaining.

Oh, yes: If anyone is to blame for commercial immorality, it is the government, which of course by Mr. Betts' estimation includes "the public": We are all, each and every one of us, to blame! After all, pretty much anybody can get their hands on the terms of contract between a multinational firm and an African police state, for review at one's leisure.

But note how unlikely the formula becomes in the case of praise: "If anyone is to thank, it is government, as directed by the public, for encouraging businesses to create popular products and services in compliance with community standards. Companies cannot really take credit for this."

Dress for success

Wall Street Journal:

Sarah Whittaker, a Savannah, Ga., image consultant, looks at workplace clothing as battle dress, which should be strategically planned. "There are penalties in everyday work environments," she says. "If someone wears the wrong tie, you may not think they're worthy of working with you on a project."
...
Purple, she notes, is a power color. And in most professions, the ultimate question is how powerful you look. "Set a standard for yourself," says Ms. Whittaker, "and decide what sort of authority you want to have."

Done.

Marx on agriculture

Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 3:

The moral of the tale, which can also be extracted from other discussions of agriculture, is that the capitalist system runs counter to a rational agriculture, or that a rational agriculture is incompatible with the capitalist system (even if the latter promotes technical development in agriculture) and needs either small farmers working for themselves or the control of the associated producers.

So "rational agriculture" requires either "small farmers working for themselves" or "the control of the associated producers."

We see where this puts Marx in relation to pre-industrial figures, like Jefferson*, in the first case; while his criteria for evaluating large-scale agriculture as it has developed since can be found in the second. What is the common principle between examples?

*It should be said, in principle.

The dark art of freedom

Ronen Bergman, Wall Street Journal:

Past experience suggests that if Mr. Mubarak's regime is toppled, not only will American interests suffer, but the cause of freedom in Egypt could be set back dramatically.

The author is credited as "currently working on a book about the Mossad and the art of assassination."

Our boy, Roger

Roger Cohen, New York Times:

The big shift is in the captive Arab mind. It is an immense journey from a culture of victimhood to one of self-empowerment, from a culture of conspiracy to one of construction. It is a long road from rage to responsibility, from humiliation to action.

Roger Cohen, reporting on location, inside the Arab mind.

Redemption songs

zunguzungu:

I don’t know any of the people in the pictures and images I’m seeing from Egypt. I’m not sure what my connection to them is, or should be, or could be. But I am pretty sure that, yesterday, I was glued to Al Jazeera’s live coverage of what was happening in Tahrir Square – that means “Liberation Square” in Arabic, it seems — because I needed to be, and for me. A word like “Liberation” should not have become such a dead letter in my mind. I have become too cynical, too jaded, too hopeless. We become spiritually dead inside when we accept injustice, when we think that expecting it is “realistic,” and watching and being realistic about the world around me has made me a much more angry, frustrated, and bitter person than I would like to be, need to be. I suspect there are a lot of holy things I’ve forgotten how to dream, a lot of words for “freedom” that I’ve lost or misplaced.

Cynicism is an important tool, but you have to know how to deploy it.  You can't just shoot from the hip at everything. There are good reasons for being cynical about the world, but they aren't evenly distributed. In my view, the people who use cynicism to best effect already know where they are most likely to hit their mark.

I think we always want to draw that line between the monopolists and the people. There will always be many more reasons to be cynical about people in power than there will be about people like you and me. I'm not saying there aren't any reasons to be cynical about people like us: we know them better than anybody!  But there's an important difference: while power may chart a predictable course, we don't have to. So I believe it is always to our benefit to keep an open mind in matters concerning each other, and to try to contribute to one tendency as opposed to another.

Many possibilities evolve behind what we think we know, or what we think we can see.  In this sense, cynicism is important, but limiting: it confines us to ourselves.  I think this is why in most traditions of wisdom, salvation or transcendence happens in community with others.  We can never place on ourselves the expectation of saving others, but we should never rule out the possibility that they might be saving us.

Good news from the Middle East

The Angry Arab News Service:

Of course, the US is now trying to capitalize on the situation and to feign identification with Egyptian popular sympathies when in reality the US has supported AND funded every crackdown on the Egyptian people since 1975. That won't change. The US [wants] to control change and replace a puppet with another puppet (preferably someone with a better hair dye). But there are limits to US ability to control: Tunisia and Egypt will be undergoing a revolutionary process. Tunisia a year from now will be very different from what it looks like today. You have to [be] a Jeffrey Feltman, or a toddler, to think that Tunisia will freeze in time as it is today. And the people's pressures will produce demands for free elections (something the US has thus far NOT called for for obvious reasons -- the US never favor[ed] free elections -- or it did until Bush discovered that people favored Hamas to his puppets in Palestine). And elections in Tunisia and Egypt are not as easy to control as they were in Lebanon with the sectarian factor. I read that Kenneth Pollack was talking about the Egyptian army (and he knows about the Arab military), and that he said that top rank of the Egyptian Army are all loyalists who favor Egyptian foreign policy or words to that effect. But Pollack needs to realize that loyalties are so easily shifted and radically altered [e]specially after a regime change. Are you aware how many of the top rank of the Egyptian revolutionaries in 1952 had expressed loyalty to King Faruq in previous years (I am sure that comrade Kamal would provide me now with names and details). The US, if it is led by intelligen[ce] experts on the Middle East and Shapiro at the NSC [National Security Council] and Feltman at the State Department are far from that, to put it mildly and charitably, would realize that there are limits for US imperial powers at a time of revolutionary transformation. Things will change in a way that would surprise the US, and would surprise you and me too. Now there is a race between the various political factions to assert control. Expect to hear of new groups that we have not heard of before.

I am reminded of the syndicalist expression, "Violence is not necessary when, united as a class, all that workers need to do is fold their arms to gain the world." In other words, stop participating in that which you don't condone, and support others in doing the same.

Sometimes we forget how simple this can be -- or how effective. But the good news is that even when we forget, others will be there to remind us.

Promotions and punishments

Commenter Brian M asks: Is it mere propaganda, or do editorial pontificators really believe the piffle they rewrite?

Whether or not they believe what they say, we mustn't lose sight of the fact that in any system of concentrated power there are penalties and rewards for saying some things versus others.

We learn this at a very young age; and, for most of us, knowing the difference between what will garner us one versus the other is a more necessary survival trait than establishing "what we believe" as a matter of individual preference.

As individuals, we are dependent, whether it is on "good grades" or the employment prospects they imply, in order to "make something" of our lives; it can't very well be accomplished by thinking whatever you want, and acting accordingly -- at least not without the legitimating consent of external institutions.

In consequence, unequal societies are populated by those whose private thoughts to whatever degree diverge from their public acts, leaving them vulnerable to depression or despair; or whose lives are spent without any independent sense of self at all; or who, lastly, bear the full penalty of thinking unsanctioned thoughts when they are expressed as public acts.

It follows from this that editorial writers who are retained in highly unequal societies will fall either under the first or second description.

The rules of law

Staughton Lynd, From Here to There:

Law is like history with dessert. For instance, I'm working on a case that involves a company moving away from Youngstown after allegedly promising to the union, during collective bargaining negotiations five years ago, that it would stay. Maybe it's called law instead of history, but I'm doing exactly what I used to do as a historian. I'm ferreting out documents. I'm talking to people. I'm trying to understand why the policy changed from one point in time to another. But as a historian when you get to the last chapter, that's it, whereas the lawyer has the chance of going a little further.

I have all the questions that anybody else does about the law and whether it misleads people more than it helps them to hold out a sense that maybe you can accomplish something in the courts. But at least for me there's the satisfaction that after you get done analyzing the situation, you can have a shot at trying to do something about it. I find that very satisfying. And another thing, I noticed in looking at the E.P. Thompson interview his comment on Whigs and Hunters where, in the last chapter, he suddenly bursts forth and says, in effect, "You know, the law is not such a bad thing. Marxists have gone overboard with the idea that everything is relative. There's something about the law as a society's encapsulation of its sense of right and wrong that's extremely important." I suppose it's very obvious that he also spoke for me in saying that.

E.P. Thompson:

[T]here is a difference between arbitrary power and the rule of law. We ought to expose the shams and inequities which may be concealed beneath this law. But the rule of law itself, the imposing of effective inhibitions upon power and the defence of the citizen from power’s all-intrusive claims, seems to me to be an unqualified human good.

… If we suppose that law is no more than a mystifying and pompous way in which class power is registered and executed, then we need not waste our labour in studying its history and forms. One Act would be much the same as another, and all, from the standpoint of the ruled, would be Black. It is because law matters that we have bothered with this story at all. … Since we hold this value to be a human good, and one whose usefulness the world has not yet outgrown, the operation of this code deserves our most scrupulous attention. It is only when we follow through the intricacies of its operation that we can show what it was worth, how it was bent, how its proclaimed values were falsified in practice ... we feel contempt for men whose practice belied the resounding rhetoric of the age. But we feel contempt not because we are contemptuous of the notion of a just and equitable law but because this notion has been betrayed by its own professors.

Because social institutions are shaped by considerations of power, insofar as they fail in practice against their "proclaimed values," we should always be looking to isolate power as the culprit first, before institutions or values. Sometimes the two (or more) are bound up together; but this has to be demonstrated.

No minority opinion should be in a position of deciding -- certainly not as a measure of their radicalism -- which social institutions deserve to stay and which must go: again, not without demonstrating, as in the case of something like slavery, that what is arbitrary about power is bound up in the institution; and that by dismantling it we don't create greater possibilities for the unrestrained exercise of power.

The taxpayer's revolt

Wall Street Journal:

[T]he postal service is hoping to ramp up a cost-cutting program that is already eliciting yelps of pain around the country. Beginning in March, the agency will start the process of closing as many as 2,000 post offices, on top of the 491 it said it would close starting at the end of last year. In addition, it is reviewing another 16,000 -- half of the nation's existing post offices -- that are operating at a deficit, and lobbying Congress to allow it to change the law so it can close the most unprofitable among them. The law currently allows the postal service to close post offices only for maintenance problems, lease expirations or other reasons that don't include profitability.

The news is crushing in many remote communities where the post office is often the heart of the town and the closest link to the rest of the country. Shuttering them, critics say, also puts an enormous burden on people, particularly on the elderly, who find it difficult to travel out of town.
...
Some lawmakers say closing post offices is the wrong answer. Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) says the agency should instead cut waste in its ranks. Although the postal service has cut its work force through attrition in recent years, it is still weighed down by overly generous employee benefits, she says.

No matter how winding the journey, official tours of the nation's fiscal woes inevitably conclude by naming a specific category of persons as the culprit: those who, by working, have secured more from life than mere work, and who in consequence are costing the society more than it can bear.

From this perspective, it is only by confining individual development to the strict requirements of work and consumption that the broader development of society is assured.

The implications are clear enough for anyone who works; which is to say, they are constituted explicitly around the idea of class. It is for this reason that the argument is instead pitched to everyone that pays taxes. "Taxpayers" is a category which encompasses all classes, so the "waste" of "overly generous employee benefits" must offend us all! Yet only some of us who feel Taxed Enough Already could regard the idea of employee benefits as redundant in and of itself.

Class consciousness

Financial Times:

[T]here are two main areas of concern within the business community about deficit reduction plans being floated around Washington.

One is that aggressive spending cuts at federal agencies, from the Pentagon to the education and energy departments, could damage the revenue stream and profitability of large government contractors, which are concentrated in the technology and defence industries.

The other concern is that any attempt at tax reform aimed at deficit reduction -- including an overhaul of corporate taxation -- could involve the loss of critical tax breaks and incentives that benefit specific companies and sectors, even if it were accompanied by a lower corporate tax rate.

It comes as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that the purpose of government in a class society is contested between classes; "class" being a concept that is buried beneath the unifying claim of "the nation" to the degree that it references power, and which is retrieved from it only in truncated form, as a measure of income.

Whatever social class best discerns its existence as a class and in turn organizes its activities to promote its interests is most likely to see them advanced, both for better and for worse, by means of "the coercive power of the state," as our observant friends at the The Economist have put it. Even if you and I are not class conscious, the possessing classes by necessity are; and this goes a long way towards explaining why the United States looks the way it does, at least when any modicum of time is spent regarding it honestly.

Alternative explanations never go so far; they leave us with equality under the law -- "even if the rich can afford better lawyers"! Subsequently, they proliferate, and gain the kind of acceptance that comes not out of an acknowledgment of what is true, but what is true in the face of class power, presently constituted.

We learn a lot by reading the most class conscious literature of any class. Consider the above example, and what it tells us about the role government must play for the purposes of one class versus another.

Monopoly!

Economist:

The elite are most likely to do harm when they rely on the coercive power of the state: for example, when they persuade it to grant them special favours. In autocratic countries such as China and Russia the most influential people devote a disproportionate amount of energy to such rent-seeking. In liberal democracies ordinary folk are better defended. Elections force politicians to take the public’s wishes into account every few years. Competitive markets force business leaders to heed their customers’ demands all the time. And the law applies to rich and poor alike, even if the rich can afford better lawyers.

Here The Economist holds liberal democracy in contrast to "autocratic countries such as China and Russia," where elites "devote a disproportionate amount of energy" to furthering their interests through "the coercive power of the state."

The line being drawn, in Edward Thompson's words, is not between "the monopolists and the people," but instead between monopolists of two different stripes: Governments that enjoy a monopoly on everything, including commerce, on one hand; and commercial interests that enjoy a monopoly on everything, including government, on the other. Both varieties are happy to reside within the political and economic continuum known as "state capitalism."

As a publication, The Economist takes a principled stand against one while excusing the other. We see how persuasive this can be when discussion is restricted to the first model; I wouldn't want to be writing this blog in Russia or China, in other words.

On the other hand, monopolies which arise out of commercial enterprise, and which also rely, ipso facto, on "the coercive power of the state" bring with them their own customary brand of harm to "ordinary folk." If our champions of "market competition" are more comfortable with these outcomes, it is no doubt because a more "proportionate" amount of energy has been spent designing them in the interest of their designers!

"Between equal rights, force decides"

Zalmay Khalilzad, Financial Times:

[A] new freedom agenda for the region [Tunisia, et al.] must be articulated. This should emphasise our shared interest in promoting liberal democracy, meaning elected governments that respect the fundamental rights of their citizens.

Let us recall the long-standing socialist critique of liberal democracy that we discussed earlier in the week. Liberal democracy is the terminology used to describe capitalism with democratic formalities like elections, "individual rights," and so on.

By definition, capitalism implies that significant parts of the economy will be privately owned, as a kind of property. Private property might be a family owning a food truck; it might also be a multinational corporation owning the water supply of a community, as was attempted in Bolivia in 1999. You have to be able to distinguish between the two if you want to have anything meaningful to say about private property. Some forms of private property may be endorsed by the broader community; others will not.

Socialists criticize liberal democracy for deliberately confusing the two kinds of property. For example, you will often hear mainstream politicians using the language of the "small" (small business, etc.) in order to promote the interests of the big and powerful. Political operatives can't come out and say they are in favor of further centralization of power in the economy, because this would be unpopular. So they use a coded language of "individual rights," the implication being that even if you and a multinational corporation enjoy the same rights in principle, you sure as hell won't enjoy the same rights in practice. As far as the powerful are concerned, that is all that matters; moreover, they hardly object to regarding themselves as exemplars of enlightened societies where everyone has rights!

That's the scam of liberal democracy as far as socialists see it. "A new freedom agenda for Tunisia" will mean pushing property rights for the big and powerful within the country (because, you see, they are best positioned to "push" in the first place!). The post-revolutionary difference is that big western firms will be able to monopolize what matters in Tunisia, as opposed to an autocratic domestic government. This is how men of principle, like Mr. Khalilzad, choose to distinguish themselves in the world.

Tunisians

Financial Times:

That a regime was toppled through a peaceful civic uprising is extraordinary in the Arab world.

Seriously! Who put them in charge, anyway?

Obamacare revisted

Wall Street Journal:

Researchers at Goldman Sachs Group estimate that the top four publicly traded [health] plans will show earnings increases averaging 21% in the fourth-quarter of 2010 compared to the year-earlier period. UnitedHealth could see profit rise in the fourth quarter by 17%, according to Bernstein estimates. Aetna Inc., which reports its numbers in early February, could see a 65% jump in the quarter just ended, says Goldman analyst Matthew Borsch.
...
In 2014, insurers will need to begin accepting applicants with pre-existing illnesses, and new health-insurance exchanges will increase competition. Insurers will get millions of new customers from the law and that could counteract any negative effects, since individuals will be required to buy coverage.

Health insurance profits come from whatever revenue isn't spent on providing patient care, relative to the total pool of customers. Because profit is the name of the game, you can't ask the US health system to treat sick people if it means taking money away from deserving executives and investors. They'll just move that money into their legislative war chest, and produce the bill they want.

In the case of "Obamacare," that's pretty much what happened. Insurance companies will spend more on patient care because the government has legally guaranteed them millions of new customers. The relative relationship between the insurer's expenditure and profit has likely changed, but in their favor. This brings with it political and economic consequences (the power of insurers and overall cost of health services, respectively) that are worth thinking about, even if we concede the importance of this reform for many patients.

Notes on socialism

New York Times:

Relative to the situation in most other countries -- or in this country for most of the last century -- American employers operate with few restraints. Unions have withered, at least in the private sector, and courts have grown friendlier to business. Many companies can now come much closer to setting the terms of their relationship with employees, letting them go when they become a drag on profits and relying on remaining workers or temporary ones when business picks up.

Socialism, in a nutshell, is the idea that companies should be owned and operated by their employees, rather than dictating the terms by which they live.  Communities, in other words, would exert popular control over economic decisions -- what gets invested, what gets made, how it is distributed, and so on.

That's old school socialism, and it evolved out of an acknowledgment that "employers" should be the community, not some minority element that tells everyone else what to do because they are rich enough to buy what's important.

Socialism was aimed squarely at this question of making the economy democratic; it opposed the dictatorship of bosses in the workplace, from whom life itself must be "earned."  Being able to live decently was always assumed to be a human right by socialists, because threatening someone's livelihood if they don't do what you want isn't an acceptable foundation for liberty in any context.  That's just a fucked-up relationship -- and we know this because that's exactly what we call it when it happens anywhere else in life, whether the relationship is a marriage or between adults and children or whatever.  You can't ask people to make choices in a context where one of the outcomes is that they could very well starve, only to congratulate them on their "freedom" to choose.

The idea that you can have a "political" democracy when many of the most important decisions never even enter the political arena because they are "economic" (and therefore private) is perhaps one of the longest standing criticisms of liberal democracy by socialists -- "liberal democracy" meaning capitalism with democratic formalities.  If you read Volume 1 of Capital, for example, Marx spends a lot of time on this; even defending Enlightenment conceptions of private property against their industrial counterpart; and ultimately advancing them as communism: he keeps the large-scale industry while jettisoning any "private" claim to it.

Because you are more likely than not a contemporary US audience, when you hear the word socialism, you know it is vaguely bad; perhaps you think it means that the government owns everything instead of individual firms.  I'm not going to get into a whole discussion about government here (read: the state) except to say that there is a distinction to be made between democratic and totalitarian forms.  The socialist argument has always been that liberal democracy isn't democratic enough: the people who own what matters will inevitably dominate the government, using it for their purposes against whatever the general populace might prefer.  This blog and many others comment on that phenomenon nearly every day.

However, it follows that if the people who own everything are the government, and these people aren't "the people" but some privileged minority, you end up with the same problem.  Remember how Marx begins his discussion of class: the "haves" are the people who possess their own independent means of survival, the "have-nots" are anybody that doesn't.  If you look at a country like North Korea, which is nominally communist, you basically have one guy that possesses every means of self-sufficiency while everyone else is dispossessed.  It might call itself "Marxist," I don't know.  But the class antagonism is more pronounced than in most capitalist societies.  Marx postulated a scenario like this in Capital, with his idea of having one big company ultimately hold a monopoly on all economic life in society.  That is basically what totalitarian governments adorning themselves with the label "socialist" have produced.  You have to regard them accordingly.

What's my motivation?

Poor people frighten us more than dictators.

Let's be reasonable

"American political discourse" is optimal when it hovers just above intolerance for each other as human beings, without quite spilling over into shooting our leaders in the face.

Renewing a working class propaganda

Hello. I would like to call your attention to something you may not be able to do if enough of your day is spent working a dead-end job for the national prosperity; that is, writing criticism in the manner of a professional academic.

Professionals have time to do research and substantiate their claims. They also have time to read the kind of lengthy arguments they produce. Even if you produce something in your free time that approximates the professional standard, this doesn't mean that I have the time to read it. That in itself is a problem, insofar as one working stiff hopes to communicate anything to another.

Of course, some things need to be researched and substantiated. But there is a whole universe of primary experience that you can draw from that doesn't require 1000 words or elaborate referencing. A lot of what we go through on a daily basis is shared, but unmentioned. Those are good things to talk about, even with a couple words. Many people will know what you are talking about; they don't need an article from the New York Times to corroborate it.

Personally, I think an entire category of working class propaganda needs to be renewed. The left has come to see propaganda as somehow inferior to professional studies that the working class doesn't read. Propaganda -- brief, accessible media that promotes a specific perspective (namely, ours) -- is a format that was once widely embraced because it suited working class requirements. In the case of the IWW, it often took the form of songs.

I know a lot of you are talented bastards who could come up with all kinds of ways to do this, whether it's coining slogans or, I don't know, knitting revolutionary yarn bombs. At one of my jobs we used to wind down managerial enthusiasm by replacing their acronyms with ours. The "Total Service Plan" became "Time to Smoke Pot" -- and soon we were bigger advocates of "TSP" than they were. That is a small, situation-based example -- and I don't smoke pot -- but thoroughly rewarding nonetheless. The important thing is what we are communicating to each other.

The prosperous few and the restless many

Wall Street Journal:

While difficult for individual workers, lower wages can make U.S. industries and companies overall more competitive and allow employers to hire more workers than they would otherwise. In the long run, that may make the nation more prosperous.

A "nation," in this case, made up of employers, not individual workers.

Union yes

Economist:

In the United States several rising Republican governors are keen to turn the short-term struggle over pay and benefits into a bigger battle about trade-union power. New Jersey’s Chris Christie and Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty have both eagerly taken on the new “privileged class” of public-sector workers. Do the public exist to serve public-sector workers with their high pay and inflated benefits, they ask, or do public-sector workers exist to serve the public?

Unions and their extravagant compensation! Good pay, health benefits and time off from work! Being able to retire! What a drain on the economy, that people should be able to live at the same time they are employed -- not to mention after! Unionized industries are out of step with the private sector, where no such thing is guaranteed. This, we are forever reminded, is their gravest error.

The making of the socialists

E.P. Thompson, quoted in From Here to There:

[S]uch a revolution demands the maximum enlargement of positive demands, the deployment of constructive skills within a conscious revolutionary strategy -- or, in William Morris' words, the "making of Socialists." ... Alongside the industrial workers, we should see the teachers who want better schools, scientists who wish to advance research, welfare workers who want hospitals, actors who want a National Theatre, technicians impatient to improve industrial organisation. Such people do not want these things only and always, any more than all industrial workers are always "class conscious" and loyal to their great community values. But these affirmatives coexist, fitfully and incompletely, with the ethos of the Opportunity State. It is the business of socialists to draw the line, not between a staunch but diminishing minority and an unredeemable majority, but between the monopolists and the people -- to foster the "societal instincts" and inhibit the acquisitive. Upon these positives, and not upon the débris of a smashed society, the socialist community must be built.

Personally, I like to promote the maximum enlargement of positive demands. That way, when somebody wants to share their excitement about a promotion, I can say: "That's awesome, you deserve to be recognized for all your hard work" -- because that much is true. If what they are being recognized for happens to contribute to the death of the planet -- and lots of things do, you can't always help it -- you have to find a way to support people on an individual level while "drawing the line, not between a staunch but diminishing minority and an unredeemable majority, but between the monopolists and the people." Do you see that? We have to support each other while drawing the line, not between each other, but between the monopolists and the people. That is fundamental for me.

So if you know someone who is excited to be going into a particular field, you have to zero in on the motivations which are admirable and promote those over and above -- and inevitably against -- the short-sighted motivations which are always pimped out by power, like the fact that they'll make a lot of money, or whatever. People are going to aspire to these things anyway: you have to lend weight to some but not others.

"These affirmatives coexist, fitfully and incompletely, with the ethos of the Opportunity State." This is a brilliant sentence. The affirmatives coexist with the prevailing power structure. In other words, people don't merely chase money -- not even in the cases where they mostly do. That means something else is happening at the same time. We chase money, but we also spend a lot of time telling ourselves that we are basically good people; we aren't engaged in a 100% evil occupation, and so on. We would prefer to take pride in whatever it is we are already doing ... because there it is. For anyone else around us, there is an opportunity to affirm that part of who we are, and encourage us in the more difficult, if ultimately more fulfilling, direction. If we could figure out a way to do this for each other on a lasting basis, that could very well be the start of a better society within the shell of the old.

Power and the left

I should add to yesterday's post that "the left" isn't a meaningless category. But it describes an orientation toward, not a category of, power. You might have lots of power, or very little power, and be "of the left" -- in other words, favor a more equitable distribution of power.

Many admirable proponents of social change come from privileged backgrounds, and what often makes them admirable is what they choose to do with their privilege. They find themselves in a particular situation -- for example, due to their skin color -- and they have to make a choice about how to respond. Too often I think people condemn others for falling into the "wrong" category of power, rather than judging them on the basis of their response -- or, orientation.

Individuals can't always control the kinds of power they are implicated in, but they can acknowledge their situation and orient themselves in one direction or another. To the extent that their choices prove useful to people in other, lesser categories of power is in my view the most important basis for evaluating their work. So the value in "being of the left" is something that can only be realized in our relationships with other people.

Class, on the other hand, is a category of power. If you are working class -- i.e., you work for others to survive -- this puts you at an objective disadvantage vis-a-vis the ruling class. You don't know if you are going to have a job tomorrow, and you don't know if your health coverage will meet your family's needs today, etc. There are all kinds of stresses and demands that seem to grow with each passing year. Meanwhile, the owning, and by extension the ruling classes are sitting on top of untold fortunes which they won't invest unless they are guaranteed whatever return suits their fancy. They are in possession of the wealth of the society, which they use to write laws and elect representatives, while the rest of us are "just lucky to have a job" and subsequently spend most of our waking hours working them.

So there is an importance difference, as well as an important relationship, between occupying a particular position of power, on the one hand; and advocating for a more equal distribution of power, on the other. The first might be "class" or "gender," while the second is usually called "the left." Problems can come from either department: whether, as in yesterday's post, the working classes pursue a rightward position; or when lefties abandon them in response, and prefer to condemn them as idiots or racists because they are reacting to their relative powerlessness in destructive, socially prescribed ways.

Class conflict in the Republican Party

Financial Times:

[T]ranslating the Republicans’ campaign ambitions to cut $100bn from government this year into a budgetary reality will be a difficult task. Top Republican lawmakers backtracked on that promise on Wednesday, saying they were likely to push through only less than half of the promised cuts.
...
The speaker will have to juggle the expectations of conservative activists, who are dead set against political compromise, with the demands of many in the business community, a crucial constituent that is at odds with the Tea Party movement on issues such as trade and immigration.

This is a very good example of class conflict. Working class communities want to seal the border between Mexico and the United States, because they bear the brunt of an illegal immigrant-based economy, at least in relative terms (their standard of living declines the most). The business community is opposed, because illegal immigration affords them workers without rights. Between working class and business objectives, "force decides" to use Marx's expression.

The important point here is that all of this is happening within the Republican Party. It is a class conflict. On the one hand, we have Republicans who own productive wealth and decide how it is used; on the other, we have Republicans who have no way to live except to work for the former group. Between the two, the working class Republicans take the hits and absorb the betrayals, because that is the role assigned by all rulers to their working class.

If we want to understand how anything happens in human history, we have to begin by examining the capacity of different groups to produce an intended effect: our political categories must reference power. In and of themselves, the categories "Democrats" and "Republicans," or even "left" and "right," tell us zero about power, because they imply a spectrum. They obscure what is meaningful, the conflict between classes, in order to elevate what is not, the "conflict" between ruling parties.

Time bandits

Anybody who spends most of their life on somebody else's time won't have much to spare for anyone else -- much less if they require a modest amount for themselves!

Thinking freely

Commenter Marcus asks whether we can't dispense with -isms (e.g. Marxism) and try to think freely.

Thinking freely will always mean engaging on some level with organized bodies of thought, especially prevailing ones. Personally, it would be dishonest not to acknowledge what I have taken from where: I certainly did not come up with all of my ideas by myself. And besides, others might be interested in knowing where they came from.

Of course, no body of thought is "necessary" to have an informed opinion about your own circumstances. Our relationship to ideas should in and of itself be "free." In other words, whether we take from established traditions or develop our own will vary, appropriately, depending on the circumstances we are in.

Interview with a reader: Jaded Sixteen

JRB: Describe the hate mail you receive in response to your writing.

Jaded Sixteen: Most of the critique I get is focused on my gender and 'nationality'; specifically to not conforming to expected standards. Other bloggers in the Indian Blogosphere think I get these awesome haters because I'm noticed 'internationally' on Womanist Musings and SexGenderBody. I'm not too sure about that, because I have another anonymous blog too, and that gets trolled along similar lines. As long as dusty ladies speak up in a manner threatening to the world pecking order, we're going to be despised, I think.

JRB: What is "dusty?"

JS: 'Dusty' is a neologism I came up with a while ago. I saw this ridiculous fairness-cream ad on TV and they said something along the lines of 'dusky' skin. Only, I kept on hearing it as 'dusty'. Plus, we Indian people ALL squat in the mud, (if I'm to go by the most sticky and determined stereotypes about us). So I figured all the dust has to stick somewhere, no?

JRB: "Fairness cream" isn't a reference to social justice?

JS: Oh crap. I forgot you're not dusty. So you probably don't know about fairness creams. Okay, this should help. And this too.

HA! Fairness cream as 'social justice', that metaphor is genius. Can I borrow it sometime?

JRB: I hope you will. To prepare for our interview, I chose Emily Bronte, instead of bullfrogs and plutonium, as a subject for discussion. I have read the first three chapters of Wuthering Heights; you submitted this poem for consideration. What makes Bronte significant for you?

JS: Colonial texts have always fascinated me, even as a child I've loved the whole canon of lady writing, from Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Emily Dickinson. What interests me is these ladies were writing against the 'male' canon and form of literature, and 'colonising' their own spaces, so to speak. More often than not, the protagonist or the author gives a rationalisation of the Empire that was doing the literal colonising Out There. So within each plot, there is another war to occupy, possess, punish spaces and sometimes even people. Jane Eyre or Villette is a good example of this trope, where the protagonists -- Jane and Lucy -- are introduced in male-dominated spaces and standards, and both manage to subvert the practice as well as colonise the 'space' -- both literal and metaphorical. George Eliot's protagonists somehow can't 'colonise' their spaces, but the narrative remains firmly imperial, so the Mary Evans writing the novel still in a way has 'possessed' space, so to speak. I'm not saying these lady writers are to be condemned for such space-politics, but rather we acknowledge that to become these famous authors or to birth one of the earliest feminist heroines, they too had to step over and oppress others, namely the Third World Woman (Maggie from Mill On The Floss or Bertha from Jane Eyre).

Now, Emily Bronte -- whose text is imperial too -- she does more than just 'occupy' spaces. I read Wuthering Heights as a novel with a single protagonist, which is Catherine-Heathcliff or Heathcliff-Catherine. They occupy, embody, imprint over, and dislocate each other's spaces continuously in the narrative; sometimes they destroy each other, each other's 'spaces' and each other's voices in this zeal to occupy and carve things as one's own, reducing the Self and the Other to bones by the end. Call it silly but I find it reassuring to see that not everyone Out There was successful or even bent on colonising. Moving away from the text, the character we know as Emily Bronte is supposed to have been a recluse, she 'waches' (her word for watching) people, shapes, consonants but cannot claim anything as her own -- and the Glass Essay does a fabulous job bringing her alive. Again, a voice from the canon questioning colonialism, the 'right' to occupy spaces? I can't not fall in love with her.

...