Book Review: Debt: The First 5000 Years

The book Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber was given to me by someone kind of on a whim. Neither of us had any idea what it was. At first glance, it seemed like a very detailed historical account of debt, which might be somewhat interesting, but probably also very dry.

Actually, it is a very detailed history of debt. And the book is very long. However, it turned out to be a book that I could not put down, and the length was well worth the read. The historical detail was interesting and novel. Furthermore, the historical evidence was supplemented by anthropological research (which always makes for a great analysis). Graeber challenged so much conventional wisdom that in 300 and whatever pages, I never found myself thinking, "Yup, read this before" (well, aside from some anthropological concepts/studies that I happen to already be familiar with).

Some common assumptions that Graeber refutes with historical and anthropological evidence:

1. Money has it origins in barter (and debt was the last to appear)

Actually, the real historical sequence (at least so far as the evidence points us) is the reverse. Complicated system for managing debt arose before the existence of any currency. Furthermore, each stage of this "evolution" was accompanied by a profoundly new order of violence. For example, debt arose out of "human economies" (or ritual spheres of exchange) that highlight the incalculability of human life, and serve to create or strengthen social bonds through marriage, exchange of ceremonial objects, and the like. When violence rips people out of their social context (say, through a murder or kidnapping) then the ritual means of payment are used "compensate" the family/village for the loss, even while the use of such payment simultaneously serves as a reminder that the loss can never be repaid, as ritual exchange objects signify the incommensurability of human life rather than serve as its equivalent. Thus, something quite like "debt" emerges.

In the history that Graeber delineates, the development of the phenomenon of debt is inseparable from this type of violence, as well as the history of slavery. In some sense, Graeber sees debt as a perversion of a more fundamental human mentality: I will give things to people in need when I have the means, in the expectation that others will provide for me when I am in need. The nature of the perversion is to remove the expectation from the context of a social bond. Rather than a relation of equality - that of mutual aid - it is an inequality in which one party has recourse to the violence necessary to force the other party reciprocate (even if that "reciprocation" takes the form of slavery).

Similarly, the rise of currency is tied to creation of large state militaries and the building of empires. The return to reliance on metallic currencies, in the early era of capitalism, was also inextricably linked to the slave trade. Graeber also notes that periods where currency predominates are characterized by increased warfare and general social instability. Debt requires a minimum amount of trust and faith in others in order to function. When no such trust exists, one has no choice to but to rely on currency.

2. The state are the market are two independent, often even oppositional, forces.

Graeber's historical evidence indicates that, quite to the contrary, markets actually originated in the state. Throughout history, states have created markets for strategic purposes - for example, as a means of provisioning a large standing army. Only in the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age were markets able to develop relatively independent of the state. Very precise historical circumstances (conquest of state power by an external nomadic tribe, distance between state centers and commercial fringes, etc.) allowed this to occur. Interestingly, Graeber supplies compelling evidence that the writings and ideas of Adam Smith can be traced back to Middle Eastern scholars of that time period (some of his examples are nearly word-for-word identical to theirs). However, Adam Smith attempts to universalize based on the experiences of a particular group of people whose social life is shaped by very singular historical/social forces.

3. Capitalism is characterized by free markets.

Actually, I have already attacked this idea at length. David Graeber simply provides additional support to the contention that capitalism has, more than anything, limited the freedom of the market.

4. Debt is a sign of moral failing, for states or individuals

On the individual level, Graeber notes that debt is part of the very fabric of our social relationships, for better or worse.. For better, when it exists as an expectation of mutual aid; for worse, when it is backed up by violence.

On the state level, Graeber argues that entire currency systems are literally based on debt (say, the loan made by the Bank of London to the British monarchy). If this debt were ever repaid, the entire system would crumble. For the United States, government debt serves to maintain a vast imperial tribute system, where client states buy U.S. debt, and then wealth is transferred to the U.S. (who remains in possession of a large portion of the world's gold) when the value of the U.S. dollar falls in comparison to gold.

Thus, according to Graeber, debt is not the result of individual or national moral failings, or lack of fiscal responsibility. It is built in to the way our society functions, by which relationships are maintained and managed.

Nevertheless, Graber insists that we are in need of a Jubilee. He says that now is the time to erase all debts, wipe the slate clean, and determine on what sort of moral foundation we would like to rebuild our society.

Border Control: Conflict or Symbiosis?

It occurred to me that immigration/border security is an entire domain that I have only touched on lightly and indirectly. This is as good a time as any to go into more detail, particularly with the recent discussions about immigration reform. Obviously, I could tackle this from the perspective of nationalism and xenophobia/racism, as that is certainly an important aspect of the situation. However, I am most interested in some of the contradictions that are entailed by the concept of “border security” and its surrounding activities.

The first contradiction has been fairly well observed and commented on. In theory, capitalism entails a constant circulation of capital, and this includes labor (in essence, human bodies) as a form of capital. Any impediments to the movement of labor in response to market needs would be an infringement on the functioning of the capitalist system. In this way, the assertion of sovereignty in the control of populations appears to run against the grain of the capitalist system (as capitalism always appears to be in conflict with the state). More radically, in its ideological construction, capitalism is premised on the free market, whether that is the market of products, raw materials, or labor. Of course, in reality capitalism has nothing to do with free markets, and historically has necessitated more state involvement and a more rapidly growing concentration of capital among fewer competitors than any other system. Capitalism has limited the freedom of markets more than anything else, and capitalism and the state are not in inherent conflict. In many ways, then, this contradiction is a matter of ideology versus reality.

But not entirely. It is true that the cheap and grueling labor supplied by migrant workers is highly profitable for many industries – especially agriculture in the United States. In fact, many farmers have discovered to their dismay that their labor reserve dried up when the immigrants were chased away. This stems from the fact that, although in many ways symbiotic, capitalists and the bureaucratic apparatus of the state do act independently, and this may result in friction. The basic problem is this: state sovereignty and nationalism often have a life of their own and work toward insular, self-reinforcing ends, even while they are under the control of (and wielded by) capitalist interests. How can this be? I have never heard a satisfactory explanation, and I do not have one myself. However, since control of the movement of people and objects across borders is one of the primary manifestations of state sovereignty, the identity of the state and the very existence of sovereignty itself have come to depend on the acts of defining citizenship and managing immigration.

Or maybe there really is a definite economic interest underlying the expressions of state sovereignty. One very recent development in immigration/border policy is the placement of the whole enterprise within the framework of domestic security and the “War on Terror.” One interesting effect of this rebranding is that it has allowed for the creation of another “parallel military” (in terms of its structure, power, funding, and equipment, the Department of Homeland Security now acts as much like a shadow military as the CIA), as well as a new area for the fusion of the domains of military, intelligence, criminal justice, and industry. The boundaries among these four groups are steadily eroding. The activities of police, FBI, and CBP constantly interlace. Furthermore, the increased securitization of the border control issue is a boon to arms and military equipment manufacturers, who happily peddle their latest products at security conferences.

Could this be a case of certain groups of capitalists becoming empowered and benefiting at the expense of others (those who rely on migrant labor)? In fact, it’s even possible that the manufacturers who profit off of the securitization of borders simultaneously avail themselves of cheap immigrant labor (knowing, perhaps, that border security will never been 100% successful). It’s possible. Capitalism is always contradictory.

One could take the economic argument even further and suggest that all of the money spent on border security is actually another emergence of military Keynesianism. For example, Doug Noland argues that an illusory economic recovery is currently developing by means of a “government finance bubble,” which includes increased government spending on arms and security. What this would mean, if true, is that it is not just certain groups of capitalists who stand to benefit from the expenditures, but the entire system, in the erroneous perception of the dominant classes, or at least those members of dominant groups who have reached the absolutely influential consensus that the financing of border security (and other such activities) will serve all of their interests by protecting the base conditions necessary for the maintenance of the capitalist system.

The bureaucratic processes and nationalist ethos of the state may conflict with the needs of the capitalist class, but they often work seamlessly together. The interests of particular capitalists may conflict with each other, yet capitalists often collaborate to secure their common aims. It is hard to tell which of these situations is reflected in the securitization of our borders.

However, there is a final contradiction that goes right to the heart of the nature of capitalism, and while in many ways more interesting than those outlined above, is a bit more straightforward. Capitalism is an inherently centrifugal system that is completely global in its extent. Yet, it simultaneously requires various sorts of inequality (uneven development), including those of geography that strict border enforcement helps to maintain. The classic example is the simultaneous development of the West and impoverishment of the Third World. To this end, it is interesting to note that securitization makes borders more impermeable to some people while at the same time it eradicates those boundaries for others. People with “medium skin” (as the classification goes) find it more difficult to cross borders without being detained and abused. On the other hand, border enforcement requires cooperation between neighboring states, and in this way securitization entails a much freer flow of officials, equipment, and information across national boundaries. Border patrol officers are able to work on both sides of the line with more ease. Drones and other surveillance technology roam without restriction. And information sharing agreements may soon allow for the unimpeded transfer of biometric and other personal data between states. In essence, a securer border means greater disparities in the ability to cross boundaries. Organizations imbued with authority (corporations, state officials, etc.) more freely transgress borders while people as mere individuals, especially disadvantaged and "medium-skinned" people, are spatially, geographically contained.

The big question, then, is the implications of all of these changes. That, too, is difficult to answer. However, I can’t help but wonder how the military-prison-industrial trinity (involving intelligence and security agencies and the criminal justice system) can continue to grow and cohere into a violent capitalist juggernaut without some sort of very obvious and overtly unpalatable police state emerging.

Will Statehood Help the Palestinians?

The hope that Palestinians pin on the UN and statehood status is just another example of the pitfalls of trying to create change within the system.

The Palestinians are not being screwed by Israel. They are being screwed by a global system, of which Israel is merely one component.

Do the Palestinians really believe that having the status of a sovereign state will protect them from being occupied or invaded? Do they think that, in obtaining statehood, they will suddenly be freed from their open-air prisons and no longer be deprived of basic necessities? The answer, of course, is no, but the hope is that any steps toward statehood will give them certain rights under international law and perhaps some leverage via the UN.

Then I must ask, do you really think the UN is going to deliver? We're talking about the same UN, right?

The fact of the matter is that the UN serves the interests of the global capitalist elite who control its institutional machinery. So long as Palestinian subjugation is useful in the capitalist system, it will continue.

The Palestinians would be better served by recognizing the way in which all modern institutions (including the system of nation-states and international law) functioning together with capitalism as an integrated whole. If the Palestinians want their freedom, they will not find it in the international legal system. Perhaps the only way out of captivity is the path (more or less) of the Zapatistas.

Freedom and the Necessity of Coercion

I had a conversation with someone a few days ago which relates to my argument (from my previous post) that "freedom" is a problematic term that, in its use, glosses over a complex social reality.

We were discussing associations - groups that supposedly exist for no other purpose than a specific need common to its members.  In particular, we were talking about how associations will raise the price of their products (publications, certifications, dues, etc.) while members complain about the burden of the costs.  Our debate hinged on the question of whether members should have any say in the matter (or whether the solvency of the association is more important).

I provocatively asked, "Well, don't the members have a right to run their association into the ground, if they want to?  It is THEIR association, after all.  It exists for them."

The response:  But these associations MUST exist.  Otherwise there would be no professional ethics, regulations, standards.... no way to ensure that people keep their knowledge up to date.  It's like the federal government. Most people wouldn't pay taxes if they were given a choice.  Plus, people don't agree on what they want.  I would pay more in taxes for defense spending; you told me you wouldn't pay anything.  So you can't let people decide what they want for themselves because society wouldn't be able to function that way.

Now, obviously complete anarchy in a society like ours would be a disaster.  And in general some degree of social coercion is necessary.  That's why the term "freedom" is not very helpful for a nuanced understanding of social life.

The issue is, then, the means and ends of social coercion.  It is also the type of society that necessitates certain (undesirable) forms of coercion.  It is important to remember that most of us live in societies that are large and lack clear boundaries (globalization).  We operate in a system that is structured by forces that redistribute the majority of wealth toward a handful of people.  So, if I don't have any say in how my tax dollars are being used, that is not an evil because I have to bow to communal interests; rather it is an evil because the allocation of my tax dollars is being dictated by the agenda of an insanely wealthy ruling class, whose decisions do NOT benefit either me or society as a whole.

I understand that in a large society like that of the U.S. it would be impossible to have a true democracy (assuming, that is, that we have any democracy at all, which I would dispute).  Rather than resigning ourselves to current conditions based on that fact, though, shouldn't we think about whether or not large societies are really beneficial to most people?

And going back to associations.  Yes, I understand that when groups of people work together that some sacrifice and compromise is necessary.  But associations exist within a context of a stratified, exploitative capitalist system.  When prices of membership and membership benefits become too high, then it becomes a barrier to participation, further exacerbating the stratification of society.  We have developed a society in which the costs of basic social necessities (medical care, education, etc.) rise at astronomical rates, and become prohibitively expensive for a critical number of people.

You can throw your hands up and say "it's the market," or "it's the industry," or "that's what it takes to live in society."  But really, that is what it takes to live in this society.  And there is no reason why we should not be able to critically evaluate the particularities of our current system, and weigh the harms against the supposed gains of social progress.  As always, I just wish this was something that could be discussed or thought about.  It seems that the really interesting questions can never rise to the level of conscious consideration and debate.

Book Review: Between Equal Rights

In this work, China Mieville attempts to develop a Marxist theorization of international law. Ultimately he draws on the work of Soviet legal scholar Pashukanis and defines a “legal form” as essentially the framework inhering between two formally equal owners of commodities, with different means of force to protect or infringe rights of property. International law, then, is merely a case of the legal form in which the juridically equal subjects are sovereign states (their property being their territory).

Some of my previous critiques of Marxist theorizations of law apply to Mieville’s work: 1) He ignores the specificity of modern legal discourse and practices (notions of “rights,” the status of written records, the treatment of evidence, etc. – these are not, I would argue, superfluous, as they are important criteria on which determinations of “legality” are based); 2) Although he is fond of very judicious use of the word “dialectic,” he does not seem to understand the real meaning of this term, such that 3) He cannot adequately explain the independence of law (how its practices are employed by a large variety of people who hold its inherent validity above personal interests) and how law itself may impact political-economic conditions; and 4) He treats sovereign states as coherent entities.

The biggest weakness of Mieville’s analysis, however, is his conceptualization of the “international” realm. Scholars such as James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta (see 2005 article: “Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality,” in Anthropologies of Modernity: Foucault, Governmentality, and Life Politics) have argued that different orders of geography should not be treated as sub- or supraordinate. It is not a case of nesting Russian dolls. The nation-state is not “above” regional interests, and transnational organizations are not “above” sovereign states. Rather, a type of lateral reasoning must be employed, in which actors of supposedly different scale are treated as different agents interacting within the same plan of action. For example, if one looks at a vote over a controversial issue taking place in a transnational organization, one might see a variety of different actors involved: corporations, acting either individually or as an industry, voting representatives who may be tied to state bureaucrats and/or local elites, and organized interest groups, with or without financial resources. A transnational organization is nothing more than an additional place where people can interact with one another. The idea of certain organizations existing on a higher level than others is a image cultivated by these very organizations as a ploy to "secure their legitimacy, to naturalize their authority, and to represent themselves as superior to, and encompassing of, other institutions and centers of power" (Ferguson and Gupta, 2005, pg. 105-106).

Now, I would agree with Mieville that violence is inherent to law. But I also think it matters what kind of violence. Specifically, law is inextricably tied to the notion of “legitimate” violence. Law is the foundation of the legitimacy of violence. This is another place where I part ways with Mieville, when he insists that, whatever a state is able to accomplish via its means of violence, is law; in fact, the reason why states may be seen to violate international law is not purely a matter of interpretation. Forces like the UN “peacekeeping” troops (which may be comprised of armies of individual nation-states) are imbued with legitimacy, providing they stick to certain guidelines (following UN votes, etc.). State violence is legitimate within its own borders (and also following certain legal guidelines), but generally is not considered legitimate when it interferes with another state’s sovereignty. It is for this reason that states may be seen to violate international law.

Now, returning to the concept of the state itself. Is, as Mieville claims, a sovereign state even necessary for the existence of international law? I would argue that any entity (really existing or ideologically constructed) that can legitimize violence is sufficient for the existence of law in general: that may be (and usually is) a state, but it may not be. Contrary to Mieville, states are not real, bounded entities; they are not parties or subjects. The idea of “the state” is part of the ideological construction of the legitimacy of violence in the modern era, and that is why it serves the purposes of law so well. However, since an organization like the UN is also capable of bestowing legitimacy on violence, regardless of how frequently it employs that violence or whether or not it is effective, its role should not be so readily dismissed.

Hence, I would distinguish international law from domestic law only in that the executor of “legitimate” violence is different in either case. Of course, the discourses and types of disputes involved may also be differently focused in each case, but any actor that may be a subject of international law may also be a subject of domestic law, and there is no fundamental difference between the two.

The "problem" of international law really is not a problem at all.

Defining Religion

To solve the problem of properly conceiving of "religion" and its relation to other social institutions, it is first necessary to break down social life in general into its constituent elements. These are: interpretive frameworks (systematic ways of organizing and perceiving reality), practices (including habits, techniques, and ritualized behavior), discourse (particular ways of using language), relationships, and artifacts. All of these things are absolutely necessary for mutual understanding and the coordination of collective ends. Without any of these things society would not be possible.

Now, interpretive frameworks include what we understand as "belief" and "morality"; practice includes public and private ritual; discourse includes liturgy, prayer, scripture, symbols, and "religious language"; relationships often involve hierarchy and authority; and artifacts include what are deemed sacred objects, relics, churches and cathedrals, vestiments, books, and so on. The question then becomes, what quality makes any of these things particularly or essentially "religious," as opposed to "normal" or "secular"? What makes them special?

The answer is nothing. Religion does not have an essence and nothing is in its essence religious. Religion is, rather, a social construction, and as I mentioned in a previous post, the concept of "religion" as we know it today was a product of the social processes and institutional rearrangements that resulted in the modern world order. In some sense (and running the risk of sounding functionalist), the concept of "religion" was needed to create space for new institutions and domains of authority (the state, science, capitalist enterprises: the trinity of the capitalist mode of production) that were independent of previous relations of power. And, to some degree, elements that were associated with these older power structures were reformulated as "religion": an entity that could be separated from public life as it was organized by the state and capitalism.

To the extent that this explains the emergence of the concept of "religion," it is interesting to note the complementarity in the definition of religion and modern social institutions. For example, as it is differentiated from the domain of science, religion takes the form of a set of propositional beliefs, primarily concerning the existence of various beings and states (and the notion of "existence" and "being" is exactly that which underpins the positivist philosophy of science). The thing that separates this new concept of "religion" from science is that science is concerned with the existence of "natural" beings and states (and remember how instrumental the construction of "nature" is to state formation), while the beings and states affirmed by religion are "supernatural."

Digression. Just as the concept of "nature" emerged around the time of the Enlightenment, so too did "supernatural," as its complement. The hypothetical alien who visits earth might wonder, isn't reality, reality? Certainly, for some people a spirit might be just as real as a tree. So why isn't it "natural"? But that is just the point. The concept of "supernatural" is in itself a judgement about the reality of that to which it applies. In a sense, it is the imposition of a perspective that already presumes what entities are and are not contained in the universe. And just as there is nothing essential about religion, there is nothing essential about the supernatural. Invisibility and immateriality, for example, are not exclusive properties of the "supernatural"- they apply equal well to certain elements of the "natural." Furthermore, a thing can belong to the realm of "nature" even if there is no evidence for its existence; usually the "thing" in question arises from logical or mathematical deduction. But that means that what are usually given as the defining characteristics of the "supernatural" (invisibility, intangibility, lack of evidence) can also apply to the "natural." Which is only to say, once again, that these two categories are historically contingent social constructions and not distinct essences. I make no claims about whether the existence of a superstring is just as likely as a god, because that is missing the point entirely. End of digression.

Politics and religion are also defined in a complementary way, using the common grammar of the individual subject. Religion is ideally contained in the "private" realm, compartmentalized within an individual's life, while the civic dimension - the individual as the citizen - takes precedence in the constitution of one's identity. Of course, as I mentioned before, the religious idea of the "sacred man" with divinely bestowed rights forms the foundation of the "citizen." In this way, religion never was and could never be relegated completely to the "private." Still, it is interesting to note that the phenomenon of nationalism contains many of the same elements attributed to religion: particularly the symbols, rituals, pageantry, use of the senses and emotions, relics and monuments, "scripture" (like constitutions), and appeal to authority (founding fathers) and interpretation thereof. Yet, nationalism is not a religion, and that is not because of any essential differences between the two. It is due to their differential historical positions and relations to the state and other modern institutions.

What these complementarities (between religion and science and religion and politics) demonstrate is that, not only were certain aspects of the old social order brought together under the category of "religion," but all of the things so labeled were also reformulated on new terrain and brought into complex relationships with the emerging domains of authority associated with "modernity." Thus, it would be wrong to conclude that everything belonging to "religion" is some sort of "survival" or hold over from the past. Because it has transformed and integrated itself into the modern world, it is simultaneously new and modern as well.

So how would I define "religion"? Perhaps as a historically emergent category that contains a teleology and a vector of change, and as a concept that is created by modern institutions even while it supports and makes possible these very institutions by articulating a dimension of human subjectivity that is employed in modern power relations. Or, it is the necessary element of "modernity" that is not considered modern.

Thanksgiving: Politics, Religion, and Nationalism

I have kind of mentioned before that I am a big fan of the fall holidays, and that would include Thanksgiving. It is still interesting to note that this holiday marks an important anniversary in the wedding of American politics and religion. The idea that America is a "Christian nation" may, in certain respects, not be true. But the idea that the founding fathers were all deists who divorced political strategies from religious sentiment is false to a much greater degree. In fact, they used religious rhetoric for political purposes in much the same way that politicans do today. Things haven't changed all that much. In this way, the idea of America as a "Christian nation" may be true in a normative sense - in the role Christianity has actually played in the construction of narratives that constitute national identity. Yes, it is exclusive. But nationalism is always exclusive.

In the case of Thanksgiving, its first civil incarnation occurred when a national day of prayer was decreed by president Washington. This was during a time of increasing anti-federal sectarianism, and immediately following the Whiskey Rebellion. The national day of prayer was deployed in an effort to use clergy to promote nationalist/federalist messages, and indeed, the celebration mixed nationalism and Christianity quite harmoniously.

I will have to discuss religion in greater detail in the future, but for now I will make a few comments (as it relates to the above discussion) and allow that to suffice.

The concept of "religion" has not always and everywhere existed. The categories that we use to carve up the social order have a distinct history. The idea of "religion," as we currently understand it, was shaped through the reorganization of institutional domains that resulted in the modern world order. The way that we conceive of "religion" has everything to do with authority and the bases on which it is constructed. The idea that "religion" should be separated from other social institutions - politics, economics, education - is an ideology, and one that does not acknowledge either the socially constructed nature of these categories, or the complexity of their internal constitution and the blurriness of their boundaries. Case in point, the secular state itself was founded on principles of the "sacred man," and divinely bestowed human rights (all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."). In their very foundations, "politics" cannot be separated from "religion."

Often "religion" is defined as a set of beliefs. Of course, that definition is inadequate even to encompass all that is placed within the domain of religion. For example, sets of symbols, ritual practice, interpretive and moral frameworks, certain ethics for conducting human behavior (interestingly, all elements of nationalism as well). It is as much concerned with the "here and now" and all the materiality of life as it is with the beyond and unseen.

It stands to reason, then, that many of the above elements - particularly moral and ethical principles and modes of interpretation - associated with a particular religion can either overlap or conflict with the moral/ethical/interpretive frameworks employed by "secular society" and nationalism. Practices and material elements of certain religions may be proscribed or differently valorized by the state and its legal system. Conversely, symbols and practices associated with nationalism may easily be appropriated by religious institutions, while the state can just as easily make use of symbols and practices belonging to a particular religion.

It is because of this more-than-latent potential for overlap and conflict that religion and politics can never be entirely separate.

(A similar argument can be made for the case of economics, if one is willing to admit, unlike classical economists, that the economy is often understood and framed in moral/ethical terms, and that it involves, at its heart, human relationships.)

So... Happy Anniversary American politics and religion!

Why Libertarians Are Wrong

I have elaborated on science, and now I would like to elaborate a bit on the state. It got a nice pummeling from me a couple of posts ago, when I claimed it was essentially a tool of violence wielded by capitalist interests. Does this put me along side "small government" libertarians?

Maybe in some respects. But here are all the areas where I think libertarians are flat out wrong:

1. Libertarians do not view the state as a servant of the capitalist class; they believe it is in an independent source of power (by which capitalists may actually be oppressed);
2. Libertarians completely misunderstand the nature of capitalism. They believe it is primarily characterized by free markets and private enterprise, when it is actually characterized by wage labor and monopolization of production and, in fact, both limits the the freedom of the market and subsidizes enterprise (through use of the state, of course). Libertarians tend to see these things as "corruption" rather than the inherent nature of the system.
3. It follows that libertarians believe if the extent of the state were limited, free markets would flourish and the market would more rationally and efficiently organize society than the state. They do not realize the beast we are dealing with, and that eliminating government agencies would be akin to simply cutting off one of its limb (with the possibility of regeneration).
4. Libertarians accept without question all aspects of liberal/neoliberal ideology: the sacredness of the individual, the rationale of the social contract, the principle of "liberty" embedded in "democratic societies" (whatever liberty and democracy mean in actual practice...), and the ability of all people to be successful if they just try hard enough.
5. Regarding that last point, libertarians are totally blind to the inequalities that are built into the system. They seem to think the playing field is level, and that everyone could be a millionare if they just worked sufficiently hard (maybe they even take it for granted that there will always be people naturally "lazy" enough to take all the undesirable, low-paying jobs).

In essense, libertarians buy into all the myths and ideologies of the modern social order, probably more than anyone else, and simply try to make reality conform to those myths. What they really need to do is think more critically about what is actually going on.

There is one more significant way in which I diverge from libertarians, the explanation of which will entail that I contradict my two-posts-ago comments somewhat... which I think is totally healthy behavior. Yes, I believe that the state exists at the behest of the capitalist class and that it always ultimately serves capitalist interests. That is vitally important to remember because pinning one's hopes on the state is a risky business (as many of the Russian revolutionaries discovered). BUT, under very narrow and circumscribed circumstances, eliminating any longer-term perspective, it has its benefits.

Generally, once again if one is only thinking in the short-term and within the bounds of the current system, state management of social services is more beneficial than complete privatization. This holds true for education, health care, transportation, and would likely also hold for financial services if such a thing were ever attempted (it won't be). This is the case because the people who are actually involved in the administration of these programs and services cannot profit in the same way as those who are more indirectly involved. It ensures standards, quality controls, and more or less universal accessibility (often more towards the "less" end though...). And often the people who directly provide the services are knowledgable and driven by the noblest of intentions (not profit). On the other hand, when the profit-motive is directly involved in the provision of services, the consequences are often disasterous. Scams abound, unqualified people jump on the bandwagon, and disparities in quality widen (thus reinforcing existing social inequalities). The ability to profit brings out the worst of human qualities, not the best, as many libertarian types and others insist. But isn't government wasteful and inefficient, they counter? Everything is wasteful and inefficient; that is the nature of bureaucracy, whether public or private. The arena of education, in particular, demonstrates very desicively that public management is by no means less efficient or less effective than private management; to the contrary, public schools often do a better job - particularly with the challenges they are given - than private schools. As I have mentioned in previous posts, the supposed "crisis" of American education is a fabrication of political/economic interest groups.

So, if the only two options I am given are state control within the framework of the current system, and privatization within the framework of the current system, in most cases I would prefer state control. But that is like a slave choosing the house over the fields. I would REALLY prefer not to be enslaved.

The State and Science are Tools of Capitalism

I have argued quite a few times now that, in order to launch a full-scale attack on capitalism, one must include all interrelated structures of the modern world. This is an important point, and commonly neglected, as many Marxists continue to look for solutions in the state, socialism, or even a type of socialist world government.

The state is, at its most basic level, a means of violence, which, via ideological manipulations, is construed as somehow "legitimate," even necessary. Usually this legitimacy is derived from social contract ideology, which posits that a certain degree of coersion is necessary to maintain social order. Despite the fact that there is evidence to the contrary (and in fact, state violence often exacerbates violence of all kinds), this "fact" is rarely questioned. But more than that, the modern state is a tool of the capitalist class, and is therefore a weapon of violence inflicted upon the masses by the ruling elite.

As an arm of the state, the justice system is one of the primary means by which this violence occurs. In addition to capital punishment and all the manifold forms of violence employed on a daily basis by the police (witness, for example, the response to the "Occupy" protests), there is also the gigantic prison-industrial complex, which also serves as a playground for capitalist interests with a sadistic bent. The term "justice system" is an oxymoron, as the system is inherently unjust and inherently violent. Once again, this truth is cloaked behind ideological rhetoric and popular imagery: notions of "human rights," for example (of which it is supposedly the duty of the law to uphold), layers of bureaucratic procedure, and the persona of the lawyer, who grounds the integrity of the justice system in the infallibility of human logic and reason.

Capitalist interests use state violence to uphold the limits to competition that are requisite for profitability (for example, regulation of the labor market), and to maintain neocolonial control over other nations (or in the case of underdeveloped nations, to resist neocolonial control to the benefit of local bourgeoisie). It has even been argued that the prison system functions essentially as a sort of "plantation" on which young African American males once again find themselves providing free labor. (The primary lesson here is that progress is an illusion: if you try to abolish something, they will find another way to reconstruct it. This is why comprehensive systemic transformation is necessary.)

Of course, capitalists have expanded the role of the state to include other functions as well. First and foremost, it is used to ensure the general conditions necessary for the existence capitalism. Maintaining the limits to competition (by patroling borders, regulating citizenship, enforcing copyrights, creating regional disparaties via monetary policy, etc.) falls under this umbrella. So does the protection of property rights, and the provision of infrastructure. It has also become increasingly important to diffuse (subsidize) the costs of labor and investment (including research and development): the latter, in particular, has been growing at an unmanageable rate, such that it now requires a LOT of capital to start and maintain an enterprise, making it both difficult and exceedingly risky.

There is an illusion that the state provides a social safety net. Don't be fooled. Partially, the "safety net" is a means of subsidizing the costs of labor (i.e. the state pays for certain things in lieu of the employer, thus forcing the working population to contribute). When this is not the case, it is a means of pacifying and controlling labor. Certain concessions are made to suppress discontent and unrest, to make the workers more or less agreeable to the conditions of their oppression. People who would actively change the system are encouraged to work in state agencies, subtly maintaining the status quo and all the while believing they are "making a difference." Furthermore, state agencies, in concert with their partners in crime - the nonprofit sector and institutions of medical and social science - collect copious amounts of personal information ("data") and work tirelessly to manage the populations under their jurisdiction: to quell unrest; to homogenize and induce "desired" behaviors (often through educational campaigns and strategic use of the law); and, in a contrary move, to reinforce social categories (every survey inquires about race and gender) and maintain the social division of labor based thereupon.

Which is a perfect lead in to a discussion of how science fits into the picture. Science is not neutral. It is not a matter of "truth." It is not independent of the state, capitalism, or human social relationships in general. In fact, the institutional development of modern science occurred, not in a void, but amid a shifting world order in which the authority and role of different institutions (religious, political, economic) were being redefined in relation to one another. As such, science is an indispensible component of the capitalist world system that eventually emerged. For a number of reasons, including:

1) Historically, science has been instrumentally involved in the social construction of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality... all that comprises the social division of labor which is necessary for capitalism. Even seemingly "neutral" scientific ideas (such as Linnean classification) have been fundamentally shaped by these cultural assumptions.

2) Science is the ground on which "nature" is defined (and redefined). I plan to elaborate in future posts, but the concept of "nature" (not a universal concept, and not equivalent to the concept of "reality") helped constitute a new terrain on which the authority and power structures intrinsic to the modern world system are premised. The idea of "human nature" and "man in a state of nature" provides a rationale for the authority of the modern state; social contract ideology, after all, is the chief legitimizing rhetoric of the secular state. With the concept of "nature" comes a new perspective on what it means to be "human," and therefore what can be protected by the state and, conversely (and more importantly), subject to its violence. To be fully human, one must be cut free from other social relations (which are relegated to secondary importance) and be constituted in one's primary being as a citizen of a particular nation-state, thus creating the atomized, calculating individual who can function as a consumer and wage laborer within the capitalist mode of production.

The concept of "nature" is also an important component in the construction of what is "normal." "Natural" and "normal" function together to judge, act upon, and limit certain types of behavior. They define the "deviant" and "pathological" and provide ground for managing such illicit behavior. Scientific rhetoric has undergirded appraisals of sexual preferences, bodily functioning and appearance, illegal and destructive actions, and nonconformity in general. Thanks to scientific definitions of "nature," when one contravenes social norms, one's essence as a human being is called into question (thus priming one to be a recipient of state-sponsored or condoned violence).

The driving goal of many social and biological sciences has been the decisive disentanglement of the "natural" from the "cultural": the determination of what separates humans from animals. This is not merely an intellectual exercise.  It is an ongoing political necessity.

3) There is no clear, distinct boundary between science and industry, and there never has been. Without the technologies that result from the practices of science, capitalism would not be possible. Technological innovation is a necessary component of the capitalist system. I would also be willing to guarantee that the money for "research and development" follows lines of political and economic interest (i.e. military technology). In that vein it is important to note that, not only is technology a double-edged sword (a lot of bad comes with the good: pollution, weapons of mass destruction, undesirable prolongation of life, car and machine-related accidents, assembly line drudgery, etc.), but as new technologies proliferate, the requirements for existence become increasingly more expensive (making it that much more difficult for many to survive - just witness the ballooning costs of healthcare) and technological benefits become concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. Most people in the world cannot enjoy new technologies; in fact, their own poverty increases as a direct result of the system it sustains. In that sense, one should really question whether technology represents "progress."

4) Scientific practices, know-how, and technology are also indispensable for (in fact, form the crux of) the operation of governmental power. Demography and statistics allow for the management of populations, as well as the reinforcement of social categories and ideologies. Technological developments enable more effective surveillance techniques (it is now a contentious issue whether police should be able to use GPS tracking without a search warrant, for example). Personal information disclosed over the internet (I'm looking at you, facebook) is used by corporations for marketing purposes. Twitter and google have been used to track the spread of epidemics.

In addition, representatives of sociology and psychology have found their way into pretty much every institution in the modern world: business (marketing, human resources, and training); criminal justice and law in general; religion; education, the family, and the entire child care industry; public health; military, intelligence, and defense; department of state and economic development agencies; social work; urban planning; and the list goes on... (and includes all the nonprofit organizations dedicated to these and other causes). Psychology, in particular, is the modus operandi of governmental power, in its attempt to use universal, objective laws to penetrate and shape individual subjectivity.


What implications do I think should be drawn from all of this?  1. No authority should be beyond questioning or criticism; 2. Nothing is sacred; 3. The roots of the current world system run deep and wide; and 4. Nothing short of complete systemic transformation will solve the real problems of injustice, inequality, and exploitation.

Corporations and Banks are Big Brother

In my post about George Orwell's 1984, I commented that one weakness of the work is its supposition that power is centralized in the state.  I argued, to the contrary, that power is more diffuse, and that a group of corporations has become our Big Brother.  I must now include banks along with corporations, and I have a story to back up my claim.  A relative of mine was asked a number of security questions by his bank (with which I am completely unaffiliated) in order to verify his identity.  He was surprised by all of the questions, as he could not figure out how the bank was in possession of this information. One, in particular, shocked me:  they asked him in which state I reside.  Not only does the bank know we are related (which is not a given), but it also has personal information about me.  Needless to say, I am pretty creeped out. We joked that the bank probably got its information from Mark Zuckerberg (the CEO of facebook). It is known, after all, that facebook sells people's information to corporations.

Don't worry about the size of government.  Worry about the size of the "private sector"!

The Basis of the State is Violence

[Note:  I actually wrote this yesterday but didn't get a chance to post it.]

For the past few days I have wanted to write something about Troy Davis, but didn't think I was capable of doing anything other than emoting and ranting. I think I will try to take a stab at it now.

It is difficult, at the outset, to not feel outrage that a man convicted on such flimsy evidence could be put to death. Just to recap: there is no physical evidence linking Troy Davis to the murder; there were 9 witnesses, most of whom were not even present at the scene of the crime (just claimed that Davis confessed to them), 7 of whom have recanted their testimony (one was at the scene of the crime), and one of whom has been accused by 5 others of being the real culprit; several of the jurors involved in the original conviction have said that they now regret their decision. Thus, there is beyond reasonable doubt that this man is guilty, and still he is going to be executed today.

However, this need only seem outrageous if one buys into the ideology of the justice system.

All the talk of "due process," the practice of having trials by jury, and the like, are ways of legitimizing the system - making it seem like it is in the hands of the people, and designed to protect everyone's rights at all costs.

In reality, the "justice" system is part of the apparatus of legitimate state violence, upon which the state's sovereignty rests. As such, it is also inextricably linked with the prison-industrial complex, which, in the United States, serves as a sort of internment camp or concentration camp for people of color, particularly young black men, who are dispropotionately represented by an astronomical margin. (I will come back to this point if/when I write a post about the war on drugs.)

So why should I feel surprised or scandalized by the outcome of the Troy Davis case? Killing black men is quite a normal function of the "justice" system. Is this not just another example of the system exhibiting it's "true colors" (even while it is being interpreted as a "perversion" of the system)?

Just as the nation-state is a necessary component of the global capitalist system, and efforts to effect change through the state result in further absorption into the system, the same can be said for the legal system. That is the one fatal flaw of the concept of "human rights" and associated organizations such as Amnesty International.

Troy Davis does not represent a perversion of a good system. He is not merely a posterboy for policy change (abolition of the death penalty). Instead, he represents the distopian society we live in.

Creating "Problems" as Strategy

Although in the 1950s and 60s expanding the federal government's role in education (albeit only slightly) was preferable to allowing what could have been a major challenge to the existing socio-economic hierarchy, by the time Reagan took office in 1981, a powerful movement had developed, in opposition to the past decades of Keynesianism, devoted to "reducing the size" of government.  Although this monetarist approach (which was actually inaugurated during Carter's term) resulted in stark economic decline and Keynesianism had to be resumed as a last-ditch effort, Keynesianism was pursued in the form of massive military spending and the ideological commitment to cutting government programs and agencies remained.

What happened with education at this point is a good lesson in how the government is not a unified entity.  While members of the Reagan administration were eager to get rid of the Department of Education, those who were employed by the agency, of course, were dependent on its existence.  I mentioned previously that the creation of problems often serves as a strategy to garner human and material resources in the service of some end.  What happened in the Department of Education is a great example of how this can work.  The Department commissioned a study of the state of education in the U.S.  Conveniently, considering the fact that they were being threatened with non-existence, the department found that there was a crisis in American education, one that jeopardized the very future of the nation and necessitated action, thus re-establishing the importance of the Department of Education.  The report that it distributed with great fanfare in 1983, A Nation At Risk, used hyperbolic language and was designed to create hype and engender fear.

The first of the report's main arguments was that achievement levels were dropping from what they were in the past.  Statistics based on SAT and other standardized test scores were used to support this claim.  The problem with these statistics, however, is that they are comparing different people in different contexts.  For example, college was becoming less exclusive and more people were taking the SAT.  Furthermore, as times change, so do the skills and knowledge that are relevant to current conditions.  Tests necessarily have to change over time (the same test is never used repeatedly without updates), and so not only are different people being compared, but they are being compared with different tests!

The second major claim was flawed for similar reasons.  The report argued that U.S. students were not performing as highly as students from other countries, and that threatened our economic future.  Using extreme rhetoric, the report warned, "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."  Once again, the comparisons being made (this time global rather than historical) are not valid.  The tests from which these global comparisons are drawn are not administered to comparable groups of people in each country.  In the U.S. all students take it, whereas in countries like Japan, only the best-performing students do.  Furthermore, in some countries students face consequences for their performance, while in the U.S. they do not, and are thus less motivated to do well.  Finally, and most importantly, the U.S. has a much more diverse population.  In particular, it has one of the largest income gaps in the world.  Because educational achievement gaps are reflections of income gaps, one would expect measures of average academic achievement to be lower in the U.S. than in other places, because the average is brought down by these disadvantaged groups.  On the other hand, it does not seem reasonable to assume that the American education system is significantly worse than other countries, as the nations with supposedly better systems still do not dominated the global domain of academic research in higher education, as the U.S. does in many fields.  The fear of "falling behind" other nations in terms of the quality of education has been salient ever since Sputnik was launched.  But that does not mean it is anything more than fear.

If there is any problem with American education it has only and always been the achievement gap.  However, as argued in my previous post, this is a problem that has roots entirely outside of the educational system, and therefore cannot be resolved via education reforms.   It is not a problem of education, it is a problem of poverty and inequality, and that requires full-scale systemic change.

The idea that there is some sort of "problem" that needs to be fixed has, however, been persistent in the history of education.  Earlier, it was mainly used as justification for educators to tinker around and try out new ideas.  But now the idea has become a fixture of the public consciousness.  It has reached the level of common sense, unquestioned hegemony.  Because we take for granted the "fact" that our educational system is failing and in dire need of reform, we waste time debating, discussing, researching, and trying out all the new ideas and latest fads.  No one thinks to stop and consider what the "problem" really is, and what evidence there is that any problem exists.

Kucinich Knows What's Up

I read this interview Dennis Kucinich yesterday (page 4).  It is definitely worth a read.  In particular, he makes a point that I have been trying to emphasize on this blog:  that the state is a tool of corporate interests, and that individual presidencies are largely irrelevant, surface-level distractions.

People who believe that Obama is Marxist, communist, socialist, or even just liberal are way to easily influenced by political propaganda.  Obama is just as much of a corporate puppet as any of them...

Inside Job

I managed to not see Inside Job (the 2010 documentary) until a couple nights ago.  Well, I guess I'm only a year behind, and for me that's pretty good.  Naturally, I want to write about my reaction to the film.

The film did a fairly good job at demonstrating the lack of separation between private and public, business and government.  Although this is in keeping with Marx's contention that the state is merely a tool of the capitalist class and not an independent entity, Inside Job suggested that this state of affairs is a sort of perversion rather than the norm.  In fact, just restricting one's attention to the United States, there has never been a time when business interests were independent from the state.  The country was founded by elite land owners, and has been run by people with business connections ever since.  That is the inherent nature of a state, not a perversion of it.

The film also showed how these business interests cut across the boundaries of individual presidencies.  It does not matter who is in office, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative.  That is more of a symbolic matter.  Behind the illusion of different personalities and disparate ideologies, there lies the same corporate elite making all of the decisions.

The primary argument of the documentary is that the root cause of the financial crisis can be traced back to the period of deregulation of the financial sector inaugurated by Reagan.

First, I think it is important to note that deregulation began under Carter's presidency, not Reagan.  Volcker, who they noted was a VP for Chase Manhattan bank (but failed to mention was the chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 into the 80s, and thus responsible for many of policies they decried), was appointed by Carter.  Once again, individual presidencies do not matter.  It was the VP of a major bank who was really calling the shots.

Second, it is also necessary to remember that financial deregulation was a response to global economic stagnation which set in at the end of the 1960s.  It's not like the economy was doing great before hand.  Yes, Keynesian strategies prevented any major recessions from occurring, but they did not resolve underlying stagnation (thus, "stagflation") or contribute to any growth.  Therefore, financial deregulation cannot be held as a root cause; it itself is a symptom of a broader crisis of overproduction.

This is all in keeping with a general pattern regarding periods of economic stagnation.  Such periods are always characterized by a shift in focus from productive activities (which no longer yield good returns) to high finance.  And the shift toward financialization is always the nail in the coffin, the thing that leads to ultimate collapse before global economic and political structures are eventually reorganized.  It is representative of the attempts of the wealthy elite to try to get as much out of the system as they can before it finally implodes.

Several of the interviewees in Inside Job made a good point:  the wealth that was created from the 1980s onward was imaginary:  it was not rooted in material or creative processes; it was spun out of thin air (out of debt, actually).  This is in keeping with my point in the last paragraph (that dependence on high finance is a last-ditch effort that is chosen when material/creative processes are declining in profitability), but it also illustrates a more general Marxist principle.  Marx insisted that economic processes could not be understood apart from material productive relationships.  When one forgets that profits, investment, monetary transactions, etc. only occur in relation to production - particularly the manufacturing sector - then one imbues statistics and economic indicators with a power they do not have.  For, if material productive processes are faltering, it does not matter how much stock prices are rising or asset values increasing, or income growing.  Because wealth can temporarily be spun out of thin air, but only temporarily.

Book Review: 1984 by George Orwell

I decided some time ago that I wanted to review this book on my blog, simply because it is such an iconic portrayal of the political and economic issues that dominate the contemporary world. In some ways, this work is incredibly prescient. To be sure, it is probably one of the most frequently quoted works of literature of the twentieth century.  At the same time, this novel embodies some fundamental misunderstandings and creates a number of false oppositions which I believe deserve some discussion, as they have attained the status of taken-for-granted dogma.  In particular, Orwell ascribes some characteristics to totalitarian/socialist states which, rather than being the end point of some slippery slope away from capitalism/democracy, are actually endemic to capitalism/democracy.

Disclaimer: it has been a while since I read the book, and it is fairly long, so this is not a comprehensive evaluation of the work, by any means!

Let me start by acknowledging the strong points of 1984. There are two areas, in particular, where I believe Orwell hit the nail on the head. Most significantly, his concept of a "permanent war" was incredibly predictive of the rise of the military-industrial complex and the use of military interventions and military spending as a means to increase demand and facilitate economic growth. According to Orwell, large-scale production for the arms industry allows those in power to keep the working class busy, without having to create demand for what is produced (i.e.  allowing the workers to buy more and raise their standard of living) since all that is produced is eventually destroyed. The working class becomes more productive but still makes do with the bare necessities. Ernest Mandel, in Late Capitalism, made a similar argument regarding the role of the permanent arms economy that has developed following WW2.  Mandel, however, sees the rationale less in any direct concern for the conditions of the working class (lower wages/standard of living is only advantageous in so far as it raises profits margins for the capitalists), but rather in capitalists' need to find another outlet for investment if they are to maintain profitability.   Remember the general principle that continued investment in a profitable enterprise decreases its profitability.  The advantage of the new investment in the armament industry is that it creates demand by forcing the working class to finance it through tax dollars. Thus, even in this case, Orwell overlooked the way in which the "permanent war" derived from the inherent principles of capitalism itself.

A second strength of 1984 is the way in which it demonstrates the power of language, and in particular, the relationship between thought and language. This is a topic that has been endlessly pondered and debated among linguists, anthropologists, linguistic anthropologists, philosophers, and literary critics. Although there are widely diverging opinions on this subject, most would agree that language is neither neutral nor natural. It is not natural because it is an arbitrary social convention: for example, the word "tree" could just as easily mean "rock" if we decided it was so.  There is nothing about the sound "tree" that is inherently connected to the physical object to which it refers.  Language is not neutral because the words one chooses always convey a point of view.  The existence of words themselves entail a specific way of categorizing the world which is never the only means of doing so.  How one categorizes the world (the language one uses) will, then, affect how one views and interpret the world.

 Orwell is absolutely correct that relationships of power involve strategic use of language to influence consciousness and generate consent.  Yet, Orwell also misses the mark here.  First, even while he acknowledges the political use of language, he still seems to uphold a naturalist perspective of language, in which there are "correct" and "distorted" uses of words.  For example, Orwell assumes that the word "peace" has one "correct" referent in the real world, regardless of social usage (he doesn't seem to countenance the idea that meanings are arbitrary and can shift and change).  If conventional use of the word "peace," however, changes or broadens to include circumstances that previously would not be accorded such a label, it is not the original concept itself that is disturbed, but merely the word, the symbol.  The real question is, if a concept has no word to refer to it (through shifts in language use) does that concept suddenly cease to exist, and can it never be brought back into existence?

Because he does not allow for the fluidity of meaning, Orwell's view on the politics of language amounts to something like absolute control:  the powers that be essentially brainwash people by forcing them to adopt new forms of language use.  In reality, however, meaning can never be controlled and manipulated that effectively; one cannot prevent the multiple interpretations, misunderstandings, and resignifications that make resistance a perennial counterpart to power.  Most problematically, Orwell seems to think that the "manipulations" of language he describes are a problem endemic only to totalitarian states.  Yet, one need only look at the United States to find examples of Orwellian abbreviations (CENCOM, USSTRATCOM, etc.) as well as the application of words to circumstances that contradict their own meaning (the "free market").

This last point is illustrative of two major weaknesses of Orwell's work. First, the book is premised on certain fundamental oppositions between socialism and capitalism, democracy and totalitarianism, which I have already argued are false distinctions (follow the links to see those discussions).  It is clear that many of the trends Orwell describes are already present in the capitalist, democratic world, and it is much more due to the inherent nature of these systems themselves, than in any movement toward anything else.

Second, Orwell's fallacious construction of the relationship between language and power is symptomatic of his more general mischaracterization of the nature of power, the state, and government (once again, follow links to view my previous discussions of these issues). Orwell presumes that power is centralized in a single person (Big Brother) or group of people (the Party), and in a single institution (the state). This contradicts the principle that power is without a unified center or source, and is most certainly NOT monopolized by the state. Just look at the criticism leveled at Facebook and Apple for their invasions of privacy!  If anything, a non-unified group of corporations has become our "Big Brother."  More radically, using these technologies we have all become each other's "Big Brother."

To this end, Orwell also misunderstands the way in which power works. He views power primarily in terms of direct, coercive and restrictive force, while overlooking the more subtle, consent-based and productive strategies that can achieve more spectacular results. Power relationships have extended their reach not primarily through the use of police, surveillance, imprisonment, and torture. To the contrary, power relationships have extended themselves inward, penetrating consciousness in a manner that allows the subject to act freely.  Strategies of power encourage behaviors, and they do so without force.  (Following from my last series of posts, consider how images and discourses about "health" promote consumption of diet products, gym memberships, and pharmaceuticals, just as they more generally shape personal eating habits and behaviors.)  Recall my argument that the difference between dictatorship and democracy is the extent to which democracies are able to use wealth and other resources to build phsyical and ideological infrastructure to reduce reliance on coercive mechanisms of control.  Coersion is less effective, and if this were the sole base of power, as in the world of 1984, there would most surely be an uprising.  (Just witness events in MENA right now.)

However, Orwell justifies the scenario by portraying the workers as too uneducated and ignorant to recognize their own interests and challenge the system.  This is a third weakness in his work. Orwell severely underestimates the capabilities and consciousness of the working class, even when denied an education and saturated with propaganda.  One need only look at historical and anthropological evidence to see that this hypothetical scenario has no empirical justification.  Nationalism and propaganda do work, but only to a certain extent.  At some point, when conditions become harsh enough, a breaking point will be reached.

Orwell's neglect of the most common mechanisms of power also prevents him from foreseeing the type of imperialism that eventually emerged in the post-WW2 era.   It is not, as in the past, an imperialism based primarily on military violence and direct force, though this is the nature of Orwell's "permanent war."  In contrast, imperialism today is more often a matter of manipulating social and economic polices via transnational lending organizations, multinational coporations, and foreign development aid programs.  The generation of consent through the spread of neoliberal ideology, and the creation of a guise of "humanitarian" motives, have become extremely effective ways of maintaining control without violence or coersion (although the latter do still have their place, and may also appear under the guise of "humanitarian" motives!).

Thus, the most harmful aspect of 1984 is the way in which it encourages us to look for power in places where it does not reside ("Big Brother," particular forms of government) and to ignore all the relationships of power in which we ARE enmeshed, in increasingly subtle ways.

The Real Threat of National Debt

There has been a lot of talk in the U.S. recently about national debt, balancing the budget, and reducing the federal deficit.  Many Americans think that our debt has become just too high.

It is true that national debt can undermine the long-term stability of a country.  I don't think many people would try to argue that debt is a good thing.  However, to what extent is our national debt simply a problem endemic to the U.S., and more narrowly, of irresponsible governance?  How does U.S. national debt compare to other countries?

The answer to the last question is, it's high, but certainly not the highest.  About 35 other countries have national debts that exceed the U.S.  Furthermore, world debt, as a whole, has been steadily increasing.

The increasing debt of any single country is merely a symptom of a global phenomenon that is inherent to the capitalist world system.  Manufacturing, the base of the industrial capitalist economy, has for the last few decades been characterized by a crisis of overproduction, decreasing profitability, and overall stagnation.  This, in turn, is a result of the general contradictions of the capitalist system:  in particular, the drive to increase production through economies of scale and investment in technology, while simultaneously limiting demand through the containment of wages and employment rates.

To counter the crisis of overproduction, capitalist interests have been forced to turn to the state (the life-support system of capitalism) to create demand through deficit spending, most especially on a permanent arms economy.  Thus, worldwide state deficit spending and rising national debts are a result of the inability of capitalists to sustain the profitability of their enterprises.


So, the capitalists can't maintain a high rate of profit, and what do they do?  They continue to engorge themselves with wealth, essentially by leaching money from everyone else's pocketbooks.  We all drown in debt to finance the 38% increase in wealth of the handful of the world's wealthiest.  That is where all this debt is going!!

Will balancing the budget and cutting government spending solve all our problems?  No.  Because the root of the problem is overproduction and stagnation within the manufacturing sector.  Cutting spending will just further cripple the already ailing economy... which may or may not be a bad thing.  Clearly real systemic change is needed.  If hitting rock bottom is necessary to give impetus to this change, then perhaps spending cuts will ultimately help move things in the right direction.  It will just be very painful for most of us.

Summary

Now that I have set out most of the main premises of my Marxist worldview, which I will be elaborating in future posts, probably with more attention to specific current events, I thought it would be a good idea to summarize the ideas I have presented so far before moving on.

• Accumulation of wealth, in general, occurs through relationships of exploitation and the limitation of competition (often via use of state mechanisms).  Accumulation of wealth is always a redistribution of wealth, and as such, it strains the very system by which it occurs, rendering it unsustainable for any particular individual or corporation in the long run.
• Power is not a "thing" that one "has" but a characteristic of relationships (acting upon another's actions).  Most forms of power are decentralized and present in any type of social relationship.  Sovereignty is a more centralized form of power that adheres between an institution wielding legitimate use of violence and enforcement of law, and those upon whom the legitimate violence and rule of law are exercised.  Nominally, the former is "the state," although the state is actually a tool employed by the dominant groups of society.

• The primary defining characteristic of capitalism is wage labor.
• Wage labor allows for large-scale organization of production and investment in technology that creates "economies of scale."
• When production occurs at such a large scale and is simultaneously oriented only toward profit-making goals rather than the actual societal need, over-production is the inevitable result.
• To overcome crises of over-production, capitalists must create demand (results:  excessive marketing and advertising, constantly outmoded technology and outdated fashions, a consumerist lifestyle, state deficit spending, extension of credit, increasing public and personal debt).
• However, the ultimate result of over-production is decreasing profitability of the manufacturing sector and economic stagnation, as well as waste on a large scale.
• For example, as we have all seen, U.S. deficit spending and the stock-market and housing bubbles created by extension of credit were not ultimately able to overcome the global crisis of over-production and economic stagnation that emerged in the late 1960s.  It only postponed the inevitable and made the fall much more drastic.
• Since the late 1960s, any period of economic growth in one country has been accomplished primarily through the manipulation of exchange rates and other monetary policy (rather than resolving the global crisis of over-production) and, thus, has occurred directly at the expense of all the others.

• Under capitalism, the condition of wage labor constituting the basis of value provides a point of intersection between sovereign power (self-interested, territorial, focused on wealth and resources) and governmental power (oriented toward the management and cultivation of the life, productivity, and health of populations).  Governmental power relationships have greatly expanded, encompassing more areas of life, and have been appropriated to a limited degree by the state.  Simultaneously, life itself has come to constitute a basis of sovereignty, whereas previously people were only encountered as objects of secondary importance to territory and resources.
• Thus, under capitalism, life itself has become a grounds of political struggle and power.  (For example, the issue of abortion and defining when life begins.)

• The profitability of capitalist enterprise requires cheap inputs.
• This was initially provided by the emergence of a class of landless, unemployed peasants (dispossessed of their land) whose labor could be exploited.  This was followed by the large-scale use of slave labor in the American colonies.
• Later, capitalists were forced to turn their attention toward procuring cheaper raw materials.  This was achieved via colonization of the rest of the world where these resources were located.
• More recently, there has been a swing back toward the pursuit of cheap labor, as well as cheap "light" manufactured goods as inputs for more "value-added" industry.  This is accomplished by using "neocolonial" relationships of exploitation to open the markets of formerly colonized nations to multi-national corporations.  This also serves the purpose of creating additional markets for commodities in the face of global over-production.
• These are the relationships of exploitation that characterize capitalist accumulation of wealth.
• The end result is an increasing gap between the wealthiest nations and the poorest.

• These realities are concealed from popular awareness by a number of ideologies that uphold the social order.
• Social contract ideology promotes the belief that states have a power of their own, apart from dominant groups, and by consent of all the citizens.  In so far as states are seen as the real locus of power, rather than dominant groups, all attempts to limit or combat power are errantly directed at the state, such as trying to "reduce the size of government."
• Social contract ideology also encourages people to view economies as nationally bounded, and to assume that state policies (or lack thereof) are the root cause of economic growth and recession.  Thus, economic crises are not seen as resulting from inherent flaws in a global system, but as something which can be "fixed" and permanently avoided through the proper state action (or inaction, depending on one's perspective).
• Neoliberal ideology supports the belief that the system is fair, the playing field is level, and any inequalities result from "natural" inadequacies and moral deficiencies.  Thus, poverty is accepted as the just due of the unworthy.  It is not the consequence of exploitation or an inherently unjust system.

Social Contract Ideology

One important ideology (though not the most important ideology) structuring common perception of the political-economic order is that of the Social Contract.

Contrary to the notion of power that I have been using, Social Contract ideology treats power as something that is centralized in and wielded by the state, with the consent of its citizens, and is exercised primarily via direct force and/or the rule of law.  The state, for its part, possesses discrete boundaries and is coincident with a "public realm."  Wealth, in this view, derives from property (the protection of which is the primary function of the state) and its acquisition is atomistic rather than relational, such that wealth in itself begets further wealth.

Social Contract ideology is often combined with nationalist ideology, which presupposes that the human race is naturally divided into a number of discrete units (nations or ethnic groups), which should ideally form the basis of state-territorial boundaries.

Social Contract ideology legitimates the social order in a number of ways.  Most significantly, it ignores social structures and forms of power other than the state and sovereignty, and thus conceals real sources and means of domination.  The power of a state, in turn, is seen by the citizenry as deriving from their own consent, for their own benefit and protection (and in a democracy they may even believe they have ultimate power), obscuring the fact that the state is merely a tool employed by the capitalist class in the service of capitalist interests.  The aims and interests of the capitalist class, moreover, are easily construed as "the public good," even as they disadvantage and endanger the majority of the population.  As a corollary, whenever a state is perceived to act in a manner contrary to the public good, this is construed as an isolated abuse of power which can be rectified, and does not call into question the nature of the state in general.

Additionally, Social Contract ideology has enabled the construction of political spectra constituted by discrete "forms of government," often including oligarchies, monarchies, dictatorships, democracies, republics, and anarchy.  This supposed range of options conceals the reality that there is only one type of rule (the rule of the few over the many:  oligarchy), and that the only political difference is the way in which domination is exercised and maintained (which is, itself, merely a function of particular socio-economic circumstances).  Thus, citizens of supposed "democracies" operate happily under the illusion that they live in the best and freest conditions possible, and are too complacent to really challenge the social order.