Who Is Privileged: Part 2 (Gender Edition)

In the wake of the killing spree at UCSB, which was perpetrated by a young man who wanted "retribution" for all the girls who refused to date him and have sex with him, there have been numerous conversations about misogyny, fueled by the #yesallwomen trend on Twitter. There has, of course, also been the predictable backlash from the usual chorus of men who try to derail every discussion about the problems women face. What lies at the heart of these men's protests is a fundamental misunderstanding of what sexism, oppression, and privilege really are all about. In my last post I addressed some of these misconceptions, with a particular focus on race and class. Given the things I have heard some men say in the last day or two, I ought to give some attention to gender as well.

To start off, let me acknowledge the fact that, yes, there are aspects of being a man that are undesirable. Ask Jane Feminist and she might tell you that she is glad she can smile and wave at strangers' children without being perceived as a pedophile. She is glad that she looks less inherently suspicious to police or other authorities. She is glad she doesn't have to engage in idiotic displays of masculine bravado (which usually amount to dangerous dares), nor hide her admittedly irrational fear of spiders, if she doesn't want to. She is glad she has never felt compelled to spend lots of money buying things for her dates.

So men have it bad too, and that means feminists are wrong about all that male privilege stuff. ...right? Well, no. I explained in my last post how rough times and bad experiences don't equate to systemic inequality. This is true even when those bad experiences directly relate to one's membership in a specific demographic category. Privilege and oppression come into play only when that category is deemed inferior to or somehow "less than" the other. Furthermore, hierarchy of this sort always has its basis in institutionalized inequality.

If the hardships of being a man are on par with those of being a woman (and therefore a thing called "sexism" doesn't really exist) then why is it that Jane Feminist knew from the time she was a small child that there was something inferior about being a girl? Why did her brother and the neighbor boys with whom she played always place limits on what things she was "allowed" to participate in? Why were girls praised for doing things like boys, while boys were derogated by being compared to girls? Why did Jane feel, until she reached college, like she had to embrace the disadvantages of masculinity anyway (namely, hiding her emotions, acting tough, displaying physical strength) in order to prove that she really wasn't that inferior human being they thought she was? Why did she feel, even through the duration of college, that she always had to prove that she really was intelligent, and didn't get confused by math problems?

In creating a gendered hierarchy we have constructed the male-female divide in a way that is damaging to those at the bottom as well as the top of the hierarchy. Men feel pressure to be athletic, to be successful (in order to provide for a family), to place themselves in danger in times of crisis, and to hide all vulnerability, weaknesses, and emotions. Furthermore, in simultaneously constructing masculinity as inherently violent and aggressive, we urge men to act counter to our general sense of morality in order to "prove themselves." The result is that we cultivate a type of pathological consciousness that is responsible for such societal problems as rape and killing sprees. This is not good. But the reason why men are encouraged to be strong and successful and violent and hide vulnerabilities is because these are the things that required to maintain power in society. These are the things that are needed to uphold one's place at the top of the hierarchy. Therefore, we cannot deny that this hierarchy exists - e.g. that men are held ideologically and institutionally in a position of dominance over women - but we can also recognize that the "bad male experiences" are a form of blowback, which inevitably results from the exercise of power. It is possible to acknowledge that hierarchy exists, while also recognizing that dismantling the hierarchy may have positive consequences for oppressor and oppressed.

There is more to this, though. Men in higher social classes enjoy more freedom from traditional gender stereotypes. A wealthy man may express his enjoyment of the arts, and fail to express interest in beer and sports, more freely than a working-class man. There is a well-documented interplay of class and gender. Working class cultures of any race have been marked by hyper-masculinity (think about hard rock, metal, hip hop, etc.) - as well as, it should be mentioned, an intensification of sexist tropes. It is true that the genres I parenthetically referenced are diverse, and it is actually the specimens that are processed by the corporate world and thrown into the mainstream that most exemplify the hyper-masculinity and sexism. This indicates that the relationship between class and gender is in some degree shaped by corporate interests. There is another, complementary argument to be made that people who are subjugated on the basis of their race and/or class might cling on to the one form of power (masculinity) that is available to them, however superficially. Either way, it is clear that the men who are most burdened by the negative consequences of masculine stereotypes are those who are marginalized on a race or class basis.

It should also be mentioned that, even in cases where the pressures are shared by men and women, there is still an inherent inequality. For example, both men and women are held to pretty narrow and unreasonable standards of how their bodies should look. Yet, there is still an idea, popularized in movies and tv shows, that even when men fail to meet those standards, ultimately they can still "get the girl" as long as they are a decent person (notice all the tv and movie couples where the woman is far more attractive than the man... and in my experience this holds in real life). On the other hand, the cinematic cliché for women is the awkward, nerdy girl who gets a makeover and then is able to get the guy (also, she just happened to have the perfect body from the beginning). We do hold women more strongly to our unreasonable standards than men, and the end result is the high incidence of eating disorders among young women.

Here's another example that relates more directly the UCSB killings. Both men and women experience rejection; they both get their hearts broken. When Jane Feminist is rejected, she kind of wonders why he wasn't interested, kind of tries to convince herself that it wouldn't have worked out anyway, but mostly spends her energy trying to "get over" him. She recognizes that she has not had a lot of successful relationships, and blames it on the fact that she has some emotional issues she needs to deal with. She notices, though, that she often hears men blame women for their lackluster dating record."Girls never go for the nice guys! Those sluts always pick the jerkiest guys and not me! Wahhh!" (And somehow, Jane notices, those self-proclaimed "nice guys" are always the creepiest of all.) Jane is also bothered by the frequency with which men don't take the "hint" (or, the blatant, direct message) and keep persisting, even, sometimes, to the point of stalking or harassing. They are no doubt harboring some false hope provided by all those romantic comedy films where the guy just keeps asking the girl out, and finally she caves in and they fall happily in love. Jane wonders, "Why can't they just accept the fact that we're not interested when we say we're not interested?"

The point is not some sort of contest of Who Has It The Worst. We should all be sympathetic to the things that men have to deal with. The point is that, if we want to make things better for men, it just so happens that our task is the same as if we want to make things better for women: eradicate patriarchy and sexism.

We will all be better off for it.

Myths about Communism and Capitalism

Someone sent me this article, and I think it's worth a read. I believe I have raised some or many of these points in my blog; however, it is nice to get them from someone who can write more eloquently than I can.  

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/02/why_youre_wrong_about_communism_7_huge_misconceptions_about_it_and_capitalism/

Stand Your Ground in Vietnam and Florida

Recently I've been reading Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse. Turse examines the evidence of countless declassified reports (accessed by the Freedom of Information Act) and eyewitness accounts (the latter of which he even travels around Vietnam to procure) to provide a better understanding of the nature of the war waged in Vietnam. His conclusion: My Lai was the norm. The U.S., along with its Vietnamese allies, was essentially destroying everything in South Vietnam - killing anything, bombing anything, setting fire to anything, bulldozing anything. Now, this does not suprise me at all. I critiqued war, in general, before and have specifically argued against the myths of what war entails.

Still, something struck me.

Turse was describing many of the institutional characteristics that encouraged this destructive behavior - everything from the body count incentive to the ethos of basic training. He mentioned, regarding the latter, the racism that was embedded in the discourse of the military. From the beginning, recruits were told not to think of the Vietnamese as fully human. They habitually used racial epithets to refer to the Vietnamese people. Still, though, at this point, nothing surprising. I have written before about the way in which racism is inherently linked to warefare.

Turse went on to describe how civilian deaths were justified. First, there was an exhaustive (and contradictory!) list of behaviors that marked a person as "the enemy": say, running away, or staying still, or making eye contact, or not making eye contact. The list was so comprehensive, in fact, that any behaviors a civilian exhibited prior to being killed would invariably be on the list. So, you could always classify a civilian as an "enemy."

Sometimes, though, trigger-happy individuals were looked upon with some suspicion. For example, they said they had 10 enemy kills, but no recovered weapons. How likely was it that it was really the enemy?

Apparently, Stand Your Ground logic could be applied. One could say that they thought they heard gun shots, and they were just acting in self-defense. (Actually, the list of enemy behaviors also fit into this logic, because one could claim that those behaviors led them to believe they were being ambushed by the enemy, and therefore they were acting in self-defense.)

This is what struck me: the similarity of the logic employed in Vietnam and in Stand Your Ground laws.

1. You can kill an innocent person if you are acting in self-defense.
2. You are acting in self-defense if you are legitimately afraid for your life.
3. Your fear may be legitimized by a set of behaviors (real or imagined) that, when applied to a specific racial group, is supposed to indicate likely impending aggression.
4. But really, you can kill an innocent person because that person is deemed to be less human according to their race; the justification above is just for mental solace.

If you are Vietnamese, running away in fear from helicopters is a sign that you are Viet Cong and therefore you must be killed. If you are a black Floridian, walking through a neighborhood in the evening with a hoody on is a sign that you are a murderous criminal and therefore you must be killed.

Once again, there is a strong link between violence and racism. Violence is facilitated by dehumanization of victims. And dehumanization precipates violence.

Sexual Violence and the Military

Recently there has been a lot of reporting on the high prevalence of sexual assault in the U.S. military. My favorite is the guy who was in charge of the Sexual Assault Prevention Program, accused of sexual assault himself. I have heard people speculate that this is a result of the transition to allowing more gays and women into the military. Yeah, it is always integration itself that is the problem, not the people who refuse to be integrated.

However, this is just another case in which people are resistant to (or completely incapable of) scrutinizing the military. Not certain things that it does here and there, but the logic of its operation – in fact, its very existence. The natural response to the current scandal is to think of more ways the military can be regulated, or more effective policy that can be put in place. I say, have fun with that.

The truth is, the predisposition toward violence against women lies in the very fabric of the military itself – and not just the U.S. military, but any military. For all of human history, from what I can tell, pillage and plunder has always been associated with rape. You can’t have one without the ooooothers. To understand why, we have to revisit the inherent nature of violence.

Violence is not a universal aspect of human nature, but rather a feature of structures of inequality. There are, of course, plenty of ways to sustain inequality without resorting to violence, and some have argued that power must defined in terms of the ability of both parties to act (thus precluding violence). Therefore, the relationship between violence and inequality/power is not merely a matter of direct practical necessity. Violence is, rather, one component of a particular kind of authority - an authority that is established upon the differential valuation of human life and dignity. Just as the distinction between man and animal, which entailed the exalted status of man, was traditionally justified by man’s dominion over animals (and this was always expressed through the act of hunting), the imposed hierarchical distinctions among different types of human beings are ideologically sustained by the “naturalness” (in some cases even virtue) of violence committed by white men, as the vanguards of human progress, and the complementary insignificance or invisibility of acts of violence carried out against Others (women, people of color, etc.).

In other words, while hierarchical structures do not always require violence to sustain their general existence, individuals employ violence to maintain the day-to-day, lived experience of hierarchy. Wherever the particularity of social life lies in the interstices of structures of inequality, violence works to reproduce the larger structures within the gaps that escape the hierarchy, and in so doing extend the hierarchy into its own margins.

So, with the notion of “legitimate violence” comes the white man as the legitimate purveyor of legitimate violence. There are two ways in which this is ideologically reinforced. First, violence is construed as a masculine characteristic. Science does its part by lending pseudo legitimacy to nonexistent data. Testosterone provides the link between gender and violence, despite a serious lack of knowledge about the effects of testosterone (for a number of reasons, testosterone is very difficult to study). Then families, schools, and entertainment media join the effort by subtly (or not so subtly) implying that “boys will be boys” and promoting violence as a valued expression of masculinity. Real men punch back. If men feel that their masculinity (i.e. superiority) is being threatened, they reliably resort to violence. This is why rape, or any violence against women, is essentially a means for men to assert their hierarchical domination over women.

Second, violence becomes part of the “white man’s burden” when it is encapsulated within the narrative of Progress. This has been true since the colonial era (as colonialism was ostensibly designed to bring civilization to the savages), and it is just as true today when military interventions are supposedly undertaken to support human rights and democracy, by fighting the forces of darkness, as represented by Muslims...err, terrorists... well, really, Muslims.

So yes, the military is inherently racist too. (Since race and religion are co-constructed and intricately entwined, Islamophobia does indeed count as a form of racism.) I have seen photo evidence that basic training primes recruits to view “the enemy” as someone existentially unlike them. Make them look like a cartoon version of the Evil Arab, and suddenly it’s not so hard to envision killing them. That is not to say, of course, that in the end many people in the military don't find it psychologically impossible to cope with the things they are doing. The military doesn’t seem to care too much about anyone’s psychological health once they’ve done their duty, but they do need to make it just a little easier for people to actually accomplish something before they develop PTSD.

If one wants to do anything about the scourge of sexual assault in the military, one has to accept the role of the military in sustaining gendered and racial hierarchies both ideologically and materially. The military itself is the problem. Or, rather, the military functions primarily to enforce the ideological and material regimes of domination that make sexual assault possible in the first place. Only with the dissolution of the military and radical systemic change can anything really be done about sexual assault.

Hactivism: The Nonviolent Revolution

It’s hard to be a cynic. I do appreciate the fact that it prevents me from occupying myself with ultimately futile activities. However, cynicism can too easily turn into hopelessness, which begets apathy. I don’t want to be apathetic. How do I reconcile my ideals and my desire for social change with the reality that the ideologies and relationships that constitute power permeate every single aspect of life, including institutionalized movements for change? Including revolutions?

I am opposed to violence. Violence is a function of structures of inequality. It is the basis of patriarchy and slavery and capitalism. Yet, is it possible to transform our world without violence? How?

I don’t believe in the “political process” – whatever that means in reality. There is no boundary separating corporate and financial interests from the institutional apparatus of sanctioned violence and social coercion that is the state. Trying to re-shape the system from within the system is like trying to dry yourself off in the shower. When is the last time that a boycott or a petition created lasting, meaningful social change? Even the protests that constituted the so-called “Arab Spring.” What is fundamentally different in Egypt or Tunisia or Libya, aside from greater poverty and more weapons floating around? Yet, if I take violence and politics off of the table, what is left?

I have long held that technology would be the “creation of the system that ultimately destroys the system.” I have talked a bit about the potential of the internet, in particular, to subvert and escape global capitalism. Yet, I have never given too much thought to hacking, as an aggressive action against the system. It’s getting hard to ignore these days. For one thing, we now live in a world where cyber attacks and cyber security are a solid reality. We have WikiLeaks providing us with classified documents. And we have groups like Anonymous, who hack corporations, governments, and other groups to make social/political statements.

We don’t need weapons to dismantle capitalism. Its entire infrastructure is digitally based, and totally vulnerable to cyber attack. We don’t need to engage in endless debates about the nature of power and the government, trying in vain to convince people that democracy is a sham. Hackers can pull away the curtain and show us who’s really back there and what they are doing.

The only problem is that, currently, hactivists tend to be stuck in the old mindset. They employ a “rights” framework and fight for isolated “freedoms.” They protest against particular governments – governments that are under the thumb of industrial powers, no less – without seeing the larger forces that are responsible for the actions of these governments. Overall, they retain a very reformist attitude, and they are not able to keep sight of the larger picture: the particular articulation of capitalist relations, liberal discourses, bureaucracy, and governmental power that orders global and local social structures.

Hactivism could be a very effective nonviolent form of resistance. It just requires a very clear definition of the enemy, and a will to complete transform 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.

Drones and the Universal Battlefield

I was very happy this morning when I saw drones on the front pages of the newspapers. Finally, I thought, this is being raised to the level of public discussion. As the day wore on and I read all of the variations of the story, with associated comment threads (yes, I did my actual reading online), my excitement continued, but I also grew irritated by a couple of things. On the positive side, I was happy to see people, including those who have believed that Obama is the answer to all their dreams and aspirations, starting to seriously question some of his choices. Yet, predictably, the debate centered entirely on the subject of the targeted killing of American citizens, and all criticisms of these killings were amply qualified with paeans to the virtues of killing terrorists.

The American Citizen Angle
Obviously it is a breach of domestic law and the Constitution (specifically that part about due process) to assassinate American citizens without a trial or any sort of legal procedure that might justify the act. This is and should be an outrage to those people who believe in the virtues of the modern institution of law. (I, on the other hand, have argued that the modern concept of “law” is a bourgeois institution/ideology/set of practices that create different spheres of actions and different types of citizenship – as such, laws are not made to be followed, and the U.S. has never consistently followed the rules upon which it supposedly is founded; infringements on civil rights have been the norm for the nation’s entire existence.) However, this departure from the Constitution is seen as the extent of the scandal. The targeted killing of non-citizens is not seen as problematic, and I have not seen it raised for discussion.

However, drone strikes, regardless of whom they are directed against, represent a fundamental shift in our notion of the “battlefield.” Up until recently, if one wanted to intervene militarily in another country, one declared war. It was the declaration of war itself that triggered the application of international laws pertaining to Just War. For example, the rationalization of “collateral damage” (which I nevertheless do not believe is in any way "rational") occurred within the context of a declared war, with a specified battlefield in relation to where the combatants were located. It was this official declaration of war that made a “special exception” for the killing of civilians located in a conflict zone. Now there is no declared war. And the “battleground” has been redefined as “anywhere a terrorist moves.” Since “terrorist” itself is a vague word (more on that below), any location on earth can be defined as a battleground, and therefore the “special exceptions” of war have become universally applicable laws. Despite the misleading contentions that drones only kill terrorists, less biased international organizations estimate that the vast majority of victims are innocent civilians. What the drone apologists are arguing is that they have the authority to indiscriminately kill anyone in the world, without any approval or oversight, or any framework of a “war.” This is just as much of an abrogation of previously accepted law as the assassination of American citizens.

The Secrecy Angle (/Killing Terrorists is A-Okay)
One common sentiment that I encountered today went along the lines of:  "Of course, no one would have much of a problem with the U.S. killing terrorists without due process. They just shouldn't be so secretive about it." Yes, it seemed that the main problem was simply the covertness with which the drone program has been carried out. Not the the loss of life or physical destruction or psychological trauma in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. The telling thing is that a lot of people are more than willing to give up their sacred laws if terrorists are involved. This is where the problematic definition of "terrorist" comes in.

It has been noted that the U.S. retroactively (and erroneously) identified some drone victims as high-ranking Al Qaeda members in order to justify the killings. Yet, many victims are young and only marginally involved in Al Qaeda, posing no serious threat to the U.S. The problem is that one does not have to possess both the means and the intent to inflict harm on the U.S. institutional apparatus or citizenry to be considered a terrorist. Generally, anyone expressing any views that challenge the U.S. and its vital interests can be labeled as a "threat" - and if they are Muslim, a "terrorist." Of course, one can view this as a freedom of speech issue. But there is a broader issue. All nations are not created equal. The U.S. is a neo-colonial power with substantial influence in pretty much every country, particularly in those areas where "terrorists" reside. Expressing anti-American sentiments must be seen in the context of feeling the domination of the U.S. in a very physical way (poverty, dictatorships, etc.)

It is an established fact that when one group of humans dominates another, the subject populations will resist. It is also an establish fact that the dominating power will label the resistance movement as "terrorists" or some other such pejorative term. For a while, the popular term was "communist." Whether one talks about "terrorists" or "communists" the effect is always the same: the demonization of people resisting domination, and the legitimization of all manner of activities that would in normal circumstances be unpalatable (e.g. killing random people with drones).

Drone attacks should be seen for what they are: another expression of American domination of the Middle East and Africa. That is why they largely increase anti-American sentiments. When drones kill "terrorists" they are not eradicating evil-doers. They are annihilating the resistance to neo-colonialism.

Why Does Everyone Hate Pacifists?

I’ve noticed that whenever someone makes an anti-war argument, they feel the need to preface it with “I’m not a pacifist, but...” Similarly, if you admit to being a pacifist in the course of a conversation, all further arguments will be immediately dismissed. If you’re lucky, you might get a pat on the head, and you will definitely be told that you are too naïve and idealistic. Clearly, you don’t understand how the world “really works” and no one should take you seriously. If your interlocutor is fervent leftist, you may even be met with hostility, for your unwillingness to engage in or support “real revolution.” As a self-identified pacifist, I feel like that is the one aspect of my personal identity that no one feels a need to respect or tolerate.

I keep wondering, why is a principled love of peace so vile to the general public? Why has political realism become such a sacred cow? Violence is vital to the functioning of the global capitalist system, and we are psychologically primed to accept violence from a very young age. Perhaps it is the necessity of violence and the strength of the brainwashing that can account for the widespread aversion to pacifism. What this means, then, is that contrary to popular belief, it is the revolutionaries who have some trouble with reality. They are accepting the ideology of the capitalist system hook, line, and sinker.

This is where pacifists have the upper hand. Institutions do not operate in isolation from each other, but rather function as an integrated whole. As I have already discussed at length in this blog, all modern institutions and associated ideologies arose together as part of the bourgeois transformation of society. A revolution cannot be successful if everything is not attacked together, as one unified package - and this includes the ideology that justifies violence. To put it another way: it is so difficult to escape the world within which one is entrapped, that one often resorts to using the same tools and strategies as the dominating power one is trying to resist. But how can one effectively destroy a power when one is relying upon the foundational institutional and ideological components of that power? If one is to escape, one must completely and absolutely leave behind the Old World Order. It is failure to recognize this fact that always results in the unwitting reconstitution of the very type of society that one is trying to abolish.

So, I would argue that pacifists are able to more radically challenge the system and its ideologies than anyone else. Furthermore, pacifists are more faithful to underlying principles and values – holding them as ultimate ends in themselves and thus not willing to compromise for any other ends. Is it really so terrible if a person is not willing sacrifice their values?

Book Review: Humanitarian Imperialism

Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human RIghts to Sell War by Jean Bricmont

This short book is really a persuasive essay targeted at Bricmont's fellow leftist who have abandoned the idealism of their youth (the revolutionary 1960s) and have for decades been advocating humanitarian interventions in other countries. Bricmont, though not writing from a pacifist perspective per se, highlights the weaknesses of the leftist criticisms of the anti-war movement, and explains how interventions ostensibly undertaken to defend human rights in reality always serve to strengthen Western imperialism.

Although I didn't agree with every single line of reasoning used by Bricmont (e.g. faith in international law), as an argument against the pro-militaristic left it is fantastic. Bricmont situates U.S./NATO military campaigns in the context of colonial history and present neocolonial hegemony. He makes a compelling case as to why a Western state will never have altruistic aims, and why an army can never be used to promote human rights.

I do wish he could have expanded a bit more on why WW2 can't be used an example of justifiable intervention. He mentions that Western elites admired fascist regimes; that the purpose of waging war with Hitler had nothing to do with concern for human rights abuses; and that, in fact, mass killings of Jews did not occur until after Western powers became involved (thus, the war was not really an effective tool to stop genocide). Bricmont could have also mentioned the role of U.S. capital investments in Germany's rearmament - in fact, the role of capitalism more generally.

On the other hand, I was very interested by some of Bricmont's arguments regarding the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is always used to make the case that communism/socialism/Marxism has "been proven wrong." This frustrates me to no end, and I think I may just devote another entire post to the subject. However, one interesting idea proposed by Bricmont is that the instability caused by Western intervention in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution should be factored into the type of dictatorship that emerged. It is true that threats from the outside always engender a curtailment of civil liberties. Bricmont also rightly points out that there were plenty of cases of democratic socialism/communism, but they just happened to be undermined by Western-sponsored coups and the like. Bricmont argues that dictatorships are harder to topple, and thus the only socialist/communist states that were able to survive the Western onslaught were those that were dictatorial. Thus, the most popular examples of the failure of communism do not really prove anything about the inherent nature of communism.

The conception of violence as a useful tool is one of the last bits of dominant ideology that is so entrenched as to be nearly unquestionable. Bricmont takes a great step toward demystifying the nature of violence and war. I can already think of several people who I would love to get to read this book!

Toys, Cultural Transmission, and Recruitment

We like to think that a protective barrier separates children from society. Kids live in a bubble. They have special books and toys and television programs, all of which present them with a sanitized version of the world. We don't like to think about the ways in which the cultural elements of children's worlds are saturated with "outside" social forces of nationalism, imperialism, and capitalism.

Sometimes it is obvious. Feminists have done a fine job critiquing the image of womanhood and the female body promoted by Barbie dolls. Disney has been duly criticized for its patriarchal values and often explicit racism. Fads such as pogs (or bottle caps) have really laid bare the money-making schemes that, with the help of creative marketing and television/movie product integrations, have the power to shape children's behavior.

Then there are the still obvious but less uniformly accepted social/political implications of youth culture. There are endless debates about the harms of Gangsta Rap and violent movies and video games. We just had another round of this after the tragic shooting in Sandy Hook. Some people say, "It's no wonder we have all these mass shootings. Look at the games young people are playing, and the movies they are watching." And then of course others fire back with either the less persuasive argument that "kids really don't take the violence seriously and exposure to video games/movies alone doesn't predict whether any particular person will become a mass murder" (and then they typically blame the news media, because, as we all know, there is no greater young adult influence than the news) - or the slightly more convincing but nonetheless fallacious argument that "other countries have violent video games and they don't have these mass shootings.... ipso facto, there is absolutely no relationship between violence embedded in cultural artifacts and real, enacted violence."

Any kind of culture - whether it is adult culture, teenage culture, children's culture - penetrates individual consciousness and shapes behavior. If your argument is premised on culture being in any way inconsequential, then you are clearly wrong. Every encounter with a cultural production provides us with images, vocabulary, and morally charged narrative, which together compose a framework for interpreting, valuing, and talking about the world. To put it crudely: the images, words, and narratives that we are presented through cultural media determine what we believe and how we perceive the world around us.

So, for example, if one is consistently, from childhood, being presented with variations on the Good vs. Evil narrative, and if violence is perpetually being portrayed as the only effective means for Good to triumph over Evil (add in some patriotic symbols, perhaps, for greater emotional effect), then violence will likely occupy an ambiguous position within one's moral framework, making it easier to justify particular violent acts. On a more sensory level, the abundance of everyday play that involves acts of violence (from toy water guns to graphically violent video games), which are sanitized to remove both the physical gore and the psychological/moral quandaries associated with brutality, serves to normalize and trivialize violence. This can numb one to the real effects of violence and also allow an easier transition to actual brutality.

Meanwhile, as people continue to debate these sorts of issues, a third (but not unrelated) consideration lurks in the background. Are the purveyors of youth culture simply trying to make money, or is any active, purposeful transmission of values taking place? (We have agreed that some transmission of values is taking place; the question here is to what degree it is intended.) For example, there is a striking parallel between the attitudes and behaviors indigenous to team sporting events (from school sports to professional leagues) and those that are characteristic of nationalism. It is clear that the cultivation of these dispositions early in life prepares children to be receptive to nationalist ideology. Was that ever planned, and/or is anyone currently trying to maximize its political potential?

Similarly, we may never know whether Disney intended to reinforce racist attitudes or whether Mattel tried to promote a particular image of an ideal female body. We do know about all the various ways in which the makers of toys, games, and tv shows try very intently to promote the development of different cognitive skills (we now even have Goldiblocks to encourage girls' interest in engineering) - but this is not only an uncontroversial goal, but more importantly, it is a great marketing ploy.

What about the violence? It is so pervasive in youth culture... does it serve any purpose other than its supposedly inherent entertainment value? I think it is clear that the processes of normalization and desensitization are supremely useful to the maintenance of a social order that requires violence as its modus operandi. Plenty of movies and video games have explicitly defended and glorified courses of action taken by the United States. More than this though, the military has seen the motor coordination skills that are cultivated by video games as a valuable resource in the operation of drone technology. They have a keen interest in video game competitions and view the events as recruiting grounds. How innocent, then, are video games when the military seriously considers them as a preparatory stage to real warfare?

We all, generally, feel a need to brainwash children. Usually this is framed in terms of socialization, education, and instilling values. Regardless, though, we still see children as the blank slates that we can form to our liking. The problem is that, through mass-produced cultural productions, multiple interests are trying to shape any given child, and we hardly know who or what they are.

On Violence

I thought it would be fitting, given today's horror of an elementary school shooting, to repost some of my previous discussions about violence.

Why gun control is not a panacea

Violence and gender

More on the systemic nature of violence

Male Violence

The other day I came across an article discussing the gendered nature of mass killings. I took a look because I was curious about what this person might have to say about gender and violence.

To start, the author presented some fairly obvious data illustrating the disproportionate prevalence in the United States of mass killings committed by men compared to those committed by women.

Now, the author took the data as an indication that males possess some sort of innate tendency toward violence. In fact, she chose for an analogy illnesses like lupus and anorexia, which disproportionately affect females, and to which an awareness of gender is employed in treatment and prevention.

And so I completely lost interest in this ground-breaking analysis. Any argument that rests on the concept of "human nature" - particularly a nature whose variations follow exactly along lines of gender and race - is automatically suspect to me. I have already discussed the rhetorical use of "human nature."  Yet I do not think I have touched on the social construction of gender in enough detail to warrant a link here.

I don't want to get too far off course, so I will limit myself, for now, to violence and aggression. It is commonly believed it is a biological fact that males are more aggressive than females. And testosterone is the culprit. In fact, no such evidence exists. Studies on testosterone are notoriously difficult to conduct, and the best ones have been conducted on birds, not people. Furthermore, they do not yield any conclusive findings.

You will argue, surely the prevalence of violence among males (compared to females) throughout history is proof enough. The problem is, it is difficult to make judgements about some sort of pure, unadulterated "human nature" when it has, for its entire existence, been so thoroughly polluted by society and culture.

To me, the fact that acts of mass violence are almost entirely committed by men suggests that this violence does not stem from any human nature at all. There is no evidence that anything biological is driving gender differences (gender as a set of behavioral traits, as opposed to sex, a set of anatomical features); and heaps of cross-cultural evidence prove just the opposite. However, there are countless numbers of societal features that do create and sustain gender differences. So it would be logical to suppose that these same societal characteristics are responsible for nurturing a male tendency toward violence.

To that end, I have subsequently come across the following articles that argue precisely that point.

http://jezebel.com/5928584/why-most-mass-murderers-are-privileged-white-men 
http://mona-uwi.academia.edu/ChristopherADCharles/Papers/1266846/Hegemonic_Masculinity_and_Mass_Murderers_in_the_United_States

Prevention Rhetoric

Every so often in the U.S. (this is true all over, but I stick with what I know), someone who never attracted too much attention before will buy a bunch of weapons and go on a killing spree. Everyone is shocked, of course. And ultimately, there is speculation and debate about how this might be prevented from happening in the future.

Prevention may be sought at the level of policy: say, gun control laws? It also may be attempted at the level of individual psychology: looking for the so-called “warning signs” that supposedly, if we are vigilant, can alert us to potential disaster.

Prevention discourse is a perfect example of the way in which the contradictory aims of neoliberalism and government function together in modern capitalist society. On the one hand, prevention rhetoric forms a key component of governmental power and the ideology of progress. That is, the impulse to try to rationally order human life to maximize happiness and minimize harm, along with the belief that this goal is attainable. Or, in raw terms: the urge to manage human beings with the tools of law and science (especially psychology) for the purpose of the common good.

On the other hand, prevention discourse simultaneously locates responsibility for phenomena NOT in the structure of society as a whole, not in the system itself, but in individuals. That, of course, is why psychology is key. (Once individuals are responsible for personal and collective goods, interventions can take place at the individual level.)

The problem is, responsibility does ultimately lie in the system itself, as much as people may want to attribute things like mass killings to some mystical psychosis or neurosis. We live in a society in which the production of arms in ridiculously large quantities is vital to the functioning of the economy. We operate within an economic system that alienates and dehumanizes masses of people. Our consciousness is permeated by a discourse that frames violence as a useful tool that can be justified by a variety of ends. To the latter point, I find it a bit ironic that the same people who are so horrified by an act of violence are, in the next moment, advocating (and almost relishing the thought of) violence against the perpetrator as a just and noble act.

It is impossible to prevent people from doing things that are unexpected. It is impossible to control people. Attempting some sort of technocratic solution to violence of this nature is futile. (A friend of mine tried to start a discussion about "If guns were regulated like cars..."; I was so tempted to respond:  yes, and those regulations adequately prevent drunk/angry/mentally impaired people from driving and killing people.)  Government policies and psychological research may be unable to restrain human actions, but the system itself, in terms of the availability of the means of violence that it proffers and the attitudes toward violence that it engenders, can make these mass killings more or less likely.

Colonialism, Boundary Creation, and Rival Groups

In many interpretations of disparate current events, analyses often boil down to the same basic principle: at some point in the recent past, national boundaries were created (whether purposefully or not) that do not align with regional “tribal” or ethnic divisions. One should of course always be troubled when a single explanation can unilaterally describe so many diverse situations, but particularly so when it is based on the assumption of “natural” and enduring social boundaries.

To some extent I have already discussed issues of human identity, the malleability of social groupings, and the discursive use of terms like “tribalism” in my post on (fittingly) tribalism. Some of those arguments apply here as well. In short: human racial/ethnic/tribal groupings are historically contingent, ever-changing, and lack clear boundaries in practice; however, the image of these categories as eternal and “natural” social facts is strategically used to imply the inevitability of violence and poverty in certain regions of the world.

These same arguments apply to the case of national boundary creation and warring ethnic groups. Whether it’s Sudan/South Sudan, Iraq, Rwanda/Burundi or anywhere else for that matter, the following assumptions are incorrect: 1) The rival ethnic groups have always existed; and 2) Violence is inevitable because group loyalties are too strong.

Generally, violence, though fundamentally a matter of social structure, is also tied to distribution of resources, which plays out differently in different regions - though, in the modern world, almost always following the same capitalist principles. Thus, struggles in various parts of the world are based more on differential access to resources and wealth than on enduring group loyalties. Although it is true that social identities are continually evolving and reflect current as well as historical context, at the same time, the idea of timeless and natural group identities often exacerbates such conflict, and determines the particular shape that it might take in a given locale. This identity-based escalation of violence may be incidental or intentional (if identities are fostered by colonial powers for the purpose of engendering conflict). Either way, however, group identity, while playing a role, still cannot be held as the root cause of violence.

There is one additional implication of the “group identity” theory of violence. It obscures any awareness or understanding of actual material reality (especially with regard to distribution of resources) that is vitally important to really addressing these issues and, ultimately, transforming society.

The Superhero as the Ubermensch and the Trope of Good Vs Evil

With The Avengers movie out, I thought I would make a little time for reflection on pop culture. Though there is no dearth of analyses that isolate recurring themes and root them in certain aspects of the human experience, I hope that my own critical variation on this process will not seem too stale. I am not trying to expound some brilliant, novel take on the superhero genre, but rather trying to fit this phenomenon into my own societal narrative (which I have been detailing in this blog).

What strikes me most about the superhero genre is the particular role played by science and technological progress. Superheroes are often portrayed as either career scientists or brainy dilettantes, and the acquisition of superpowers generally occurs as a byproduct of experimentation (or in the case of some - Iron Man, Black Widow, Captain America etc. - through technological “enhancement” of the body and/or the use of advanced weaponry). It is the perfect narrative of Progress. Man is surpassed through science and technology. It is obvious how this derives from and feeds into the Ideology of Progress.

To that end, it is no coincidence that supervillains (e.g. Doctor Doom, Loki, etc.) sometimes practice sorcery (making them representatives of the horrors of pre-modern life). Yet, more often than not, supervillains are as much scientifically-inclined, technologically-enhanced supermen as their superhero counterparts (making them adequate rivals). In the comic book world, what separates Good from Evil is primarily a matter of individual psychology. Supervillians usually have some traumatizing back story that explains their psychological and moral impairment. Furthermore, since supervillians often represent, with varying degrees of subtlety, communists, Nazis, dictators, terrorists, industrialists, and psychopaths, comic book stories construct worlds in which the evils of society are in no way structural, but rather are completely personal. The only way to combat Evil in these worlds is by recourse to violence. The message is clear: it is hard to prevent people from developing psychopathic personalities; the only way to save society is to develop superior “weaponry” to use against these Evil-doers.

I have already written about violence: its seeming necessity within the bounds of the current system, its supposed naturalness, its strategic attribution to personal factors such as religious beliefs, ethnic identity, and even individual psychology. I noted that violence is fundamentally structural and, in other posts, I have argued that the enigmatic violence of Nazis, dictators, and terrorists must be understood in historic and political-economic context. It is clear what the comic book portrayal of Evil does: it obviates an understanding of history and social structure and justifies the use of violence. This tactic, in general, is very politically useful. For example, 10 years ago Saddam Hussein was described as an “evil-doer” and a member of the “Axis of Evil,” but rarely as a puppet of Western interests in the Middle East.

Now, that is not, of course, to say that the superhero genre is a creation of some base political interest. As I have argued before, ideologies may have an appeal all of their own – after all, they do tend to be totalizing narratives that can simplify and explain human experience (and that is satisfying). Questions of origin are rarely productive; it should be enough to say that the ideological realm and social reality are mutually sustaining. That is the idea of the dialectic. Of course, in Marxist tradition, the answer to the origin question is that material reality is ontologically prior to ideology. Still, ideology does have a life of its own that cannot be reduced to the relations of production. Here, though, is the Marxist trump card: one may still critique ideology for the view of social reality that it promotes. This is where I would say that the superhero genre, while innocent, is generally not helpful to the cause of social transformation.

I also have a kind of random question to throw out there: are all superheroes white? Just wondering…

The Limits of Law and Justice

Although I had no specific intention of commenting on the Trayvon Martin case, it just so happened that I was formulating my plan for a series on law around the same time that the story broke. Thus, it was hard for me not to think about the situation in terms of my theoretical analysis of law, and conversely, to outline my analysis of law without thinking about the implications of that case. In particular, some of the discourses surrounding the event of Trayvon’s murder highlight the nature of our sacred ideal of “justice.”

To start with this conception with justice. In a published conversation between Noam Chomsky and Michele Foucault, Foucault challenges our unquestioned embrace of “justice.” This is part of his larger critique of positively defined resistance – that is, in terms of particular ideas or ideals to work toward - which he eschews in favor of an oppositionally defined resistance, based on a full understanding and destruction of all that one is against. The problem, as Foucault sees it, is that our thought is so fundamentally shaped by the social structures in which we live that any ideas about what is possible and all the ideals that we uphold are pervaded by the very structures that we are trying to overthrow.  Positively defined resistance always leads, ultimately, to the reproduction of that system.

Enter justice. It sounds nice. Who could have a problem with justice? Most movements for change are founded upon some idea of justice, after all. Yet, Foucault insists that even justice is a bourgeois concept (much in the same way that I have also critiqued concepts of democracy and liberty). The modern concept of justice is, of course, a product of the modern world. It depends on concepts of rights and individual culpability, and is entwined with modern institutions, such as law.

Take the case of Trayvon Martin. Now, it goes without saying that the events leading up to and following his murder demonstrate the fundamental inequalities pervading the American social system – in particular, the vulnerability of young, African-American males to forces of systemic violence. It also serves as a good contrast to the case of Troy Davis, in which the murder of a white police officer yielded consequences on the other extreme. Regarding Trayvon, though, it is important to remember that the very fact of racism inherent to the system makes specific acts of violence more desirable or easy to perpetrate - even if the driving intention in any particular case is not race-based per se -as one will not expect the same sort of consequences to follow from one’s actions. In other words, the fact that law enforcement (and other) officials are able to use undue force (assuming, of course, that any force is ever “due”) on African-American males on a regular basis without suffering any consequences makes it all the more likely that one will resort to force in an encounter with an African-American male in the future. And that is regardless of one’s race (to that end, George Zimmerman’s racial/ethnic background is completely irrelevant). The system makes it easy, so it will happen. I would never argue that this is not a problem. The criminal justice system, like all American institutions, is severely inequitable.

Now, then, would "equality" entail that George Zimmerman be punished just as severely as Troy Davis... or at the very least be prosecuted? Certainly this seems just, and such a scenario is exactly what some groups have called for. The New Black Panthers put a bounty on George Zimmerman, and cheers went up when he was finally arrested.

Prosecuting George Zimmerman may very well satisfy our sense of justice. But that is a problem, in fact another victory for the system. Institutions of law, the legitimacy of violence and coercion – these things are part of the fabric of our social system. They allow it to function. These things must be dismantled if we are to truly transform our society. Sure, we could attempt to more fairly mete out arrests and punishments, but that would not change the fact that the system in which criminal justice is embedded still functions to maintain classes of people who do not control their own destinies.

By pinning our hopes and sense of “victory” on legal outcomes (particularly those involving the criminal justice system), we are sanctioning the system that oppresses us. We are saying that, yes, we approve of the social order, and sure, certain forms of violence (wielded by the dominant classes to the detriment of vulnerable populations) are a-okay!

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.

The Biopolitical Ramifications of Law

As I indicated at the end of my last post, I have yet to address the problem of what differentiates law from other modern social institutions. All modern institutions employ a complex of ideologies that include positivism, social contract ideology and the ideology of progress. All are bureaucratically organized and proliferate written records. All, in some way or another, operate according to a governmental-technocratic logic. What, then, makes law “law”?

I would say that, in this regard, the primary characteristic of law is its access to the means of “legitimate” state violence. What differentiates law from, say, the institutional domain of public health is that legal institutions can actually force payments, define citizenship, imprison, and in some cases, sentence to death. And to the extent that other institutions can do any of those things, they are already entwined with legal processes (e.g. the IRS). If modern social formations may be viewed as a network of overlapping and interacting institutional domains, then law is the nexus between these domains and the means of violence and coercion (the police, the prison system, etc.). This gives law the dual property of being governmental (bureaucratic/ideological) as well as coercive.

In the scheme that distinguishes sovereignty (as a primarily negative, destructive force) and government (as a positive, productive form of power), law is where the two meet. For this reason, law should be an extremely important topic for critical analysis, as it could potentially illuminate the relationship among different forms of power in the modern world. Yet, sadly, I believe the sort of analysis that is needed is sorely lacking. Foucault lent his deconstructive lens to this field, yet was unable to account adequately for the coercive power of sovereignty. Many Marxists, on the other hand, focus too exclusively on coercion, blinding themselves to the importance of governmentality. Giorgio Agamben made some attempt to bring the two together, with his elaboration of the concept of biopower. Yet, in the end, his arguments are more tautological than historical. In some cases they seem to be mere contorted regurgitations of Foucault.

The real question is, how do the utility of violence/coercion and the desire for progress/productivity intersect? Once again, capitalism may provide a theoretical underpinning. Productivity, under capitalism, depends on exploitation (a form of coercion). At the same time, it relies on human labor power and creativity (technological innovation). Thus, one of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism comes to play in (though, does not reductively give rise to) this tension: the tendency to objectify and restrain human beings in order to exploit their capabilities versus the tendency to look for economic advancement and technological progress in a healthy, skilled workforce by promoting those capabilities.

One lesson that law should teach us is that the “legitimacy” of violence requires a strong ideological foundation, which the ideologies of progress and social contract, and the positivistic rationality in which it is embedded, provides. The legitimacy of violence, and hence sovereignty, was erected on an entirely different ideological plane prior to the modern era (for instance, with recourse to the divine). Thus, one cannot say that sovereignty is merely historically prior to governmentality (as Foucault does), that governmentality was sort of “added on” and has become more important. Both, as they exist in the modern world, are fully modern, emerged together, and are interdependent.

Likewise, it is not the case, as Agamben suggests, that life itself (zoe) has come to be a political concern more than in the past. The meaning of life itself is completely different in the modern era. Life is the basis of profit, the vehicle of a consciousness that can create technology and cultural productions, the interchangeable units that fill bureaucratic roles, a thing that is sacred above everything else and yet may be sacrificed for the common good (be that the “spread of democracy” or science or medical progress) – in other words, another subject of cost-benefit analysis. Life is, above all, both the means of progress and the intended end result – the sort of circular reasoning that justifies the entire ideology.

In this way, it may be said that sovereignty and governmental in the modern era are mutually constituting (though this relationship needs to be fleshed out more fully).  Government provides the ideological rationale that legitimizes violence, while sovereignty gives governmental projects some teeth.  Both simultaneously serve their own, independent ends:  one restrictive and self-serving, the other positive and life-affirming.  But it is law that holds them in relation to each another.

Finally, the discourses of law and its coercive resources are used to define who may be involved in governmental and economic projects, and in what ways. That is not to say that reformist ventures are confined to target people with full citizenship status and rights. To the contrary, people who are attributed the status of "criminal" or "insane," or other types of social deviance, are functionally not full citizens (not enjoying all the rights of citizenship) yet are the subjects of much institutional reformist activity. Likewise, services are often extended to people of different types of immigrant and refugee status, but frequently the status of their citizenship itself is the basis of the governmental "care" that they receive. On the other hand, people who cannot acquire full citizenship status all too often "slip through the cracks" and become invisible to the governmental-technocratic systems that seek to cultivate health and happiness. Just as, ideologically, the ability to exercise rights depends on one's citizenship status in relation to particular nation states, so does one's integration into the governmental matrix follow from this legally defined status. Of course, at the extreme, coercive forces sanctioned by law may be used to deport or detain people on the basis of their citizenship status.

It is clear, then, that law is more than ideology, more than a set of rules, and more than a basic form inhering in commodity exchange relationships. It is a type of practice (or rather, set of practices, including both violence and rational administration) by which modern society is organized as well as the rational/philosophical justification for those practices.

Why Marx Is Not Radical

Finally, I get around to really explaining/justifying the title of my blog.

As I noted in my last post, “radical” is an example of a “loaded word.” It is used specifically to draw associations with historical communism, violence, plots to overthrow governments, anarchism, atheism, and thought that is in some way “nonrational.”

It is true that Marx’s philosophy is a threat to the status quo; and it is true that I have advocated complete systemic transformation in this blog. But when Marx or Marxists are attacked with the label “radical,” it is more than a comment about the social implications of their thought. It is a strategic means of discrediting Marxist thought: implying that it is inherently violent, obviously proven wrong, not worthy of simple consideration. And this is where I disagree and proclaim that Marx is not radical.

If someone professes to be Marxist, it does not mean that they are plotting the violent overthrow of any government. Many, to the contrary, are pacifists. They may think we have a broken and unjust system that needs to be changed, but how many people would truly disagree with that sentiment?

If someone professes to be Marxist, that does not mean they are Leninist, Trotskyist, or Maoist. Some obviously are/were. Some may point out that the Western portrayal of actually existing "communism" is markedly distorted, without trying to redeem all aspects of those regimes. It may bear repeating that many of the things that happened in the Soviet Union, China, and other places deviated quite widely from the actual writings of Marx. Furthermore, it is absolutely not true that the writings of Marx inevitably lead to the events in the USSR and China. It is an absurd argument, but I think I will have to devote an entire post to its refutation, nonetheless.

Finally, if someone professes to be Marxist, that does not mean they have lost their grip on reality, that their arguments are not logical or based on real evidence, or that there is automatically no merit to any of their thoughts. This one really gets me. How can so much well reasoned, well researched thinking be dismissed so quickly because of a label? No one should discount the ideas of any other person without examining what it is they are actually saying and evaluating their thought upon the arguments/evidence themselves.

That is why I hope anyone who happens to find this blog (who is not already Marxist), would at least take the time to look at what I am saying, to critically evaluate my arguments, at the very least to acknowledge that my thinking is in some way reasonable, without rushing to judgment based purely on labels. But I’m probably asking too much.

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.