Occupy New Delhi

I just finished reading Arundhati Roy's Broken Republic: Three Essays (Hamish Hamilton / Penguin, 2011), about the uprisings in India's forests against government-corporate depredations. The highest-profile rebels are led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), and though Roy discusses other groups, the Maoists are her focus in this new book. In the second essay she recounts a time she spent "Walking with the Comrades" in the forests, and it's a moving piece of work.

Of course Roy has come under attack for her sympathetic account of the Maoists and the poor farmers they are trying to organize. I trust her more than her critics, though, because she is critical of the Maoists, though not as critical as she is of state terror against the poor. Her sarcasm against respectable Indians can be withering (page 69):

Baba Amte, the well-known Gandhian, had opened his ashram and leprosy hospital in Warora in 1975. The Ramakrishna Mission and the Gayatri Samaj had been opening village schools in the remote forests of Abujhmad. In north Bastar, Baba Bihari Das had started an aggressive drive to 'bring tribals back into the Hindu folk', which involved a campaign to denigrate tribal culture, induce self-hatred, and introduce Hinduism's great gift -- caste.

(This reminds me of a friend many years ago who'd just watched Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth on PBS and told me how wonderful it was. Among the things she'd learned was that Judeo-Christianity was the only religion that was used as a means of social control. What about Hinduism? I asked her -- you know, the caste system? She hadn't thought of that. But it's easy to romanticize oppressive systems if you don't have to live under them.)

The important thing is that Roy asks the right questions, which must be answered by not only the Maoists but by other Indian Communist Parties, and by anyone else who says they want to help all Indians, not just the 100 Indian billionaires (210-211). (Compare the quotations from Raymond Williams in these posts.)

But let's take a brief look at the star attraction in the mining belt -- the several trillion dollars' worth of bauxite. There is no environmentally sustainable way of mining bauxite and processing it into aluminium. It's a highly toxic process that most Western countries have exported out of their own environments. To produce one tonne of aluminium, you need about six tonnes of bauxite, more than a thousand tonnes of water and a massive amount of electricity. For that amount of captive water and electricity, you need big dams, which, as we know, come with their own cycle of cataclysmic destruction. Last of all -- the big question -- what is the aluminium for? Where is it going? Aluminium is a principal ingredient in the weapons industry -- for other countries' weapons industries. Given this, what would a sane, 'sustainable' mining policy be? Suppose for the sake of argument, the CPI (Maoist) were given control of the so-called Red Corridor, the tribal homeland -- with its riches of uranium, bauxite, limestone, dolomite, coal, tin, granite, marble -- how would it go about the business of policy making and governance? Would it mine minerals to put on the market in order to create revenue, build infrastructure and expand its operations? Or would it mine only enough to meet people's basic needs? How would it define 'basic needs'? For instance, would nuclear weapons be a 'basic need' in a Maoist nation state?

Over the years I've asked questions like these to various politicos, all of whom brushed them aside impatiently, which probably means they don't want to think about them, or to admit that they've already thought about them, and see no problem with running the poor off their land to permit industrial development. This is a mindset shared by private-sector capitalists and public-sector capitalists alike, though "private-sector" is a misnomer since Western anti-communist capitalism still leans heavily on the state for support, defense, and subsidy. Roy is aware of this, for she immediately points to the record of industrialized societies on both sides of the ideological divide. For the nominally socialist countries no less than the 'capitalist' ones,

the ability to consume has become the yardstick by which progress is measured. For this kind of 'progress', you need industry. To feed the industry, you need a steady supply of raw material. For that you need mines, dams, domination, colonies, war. Old powers are waning, new ones rising ... [212].

Except that there's nothing new about this process. For Marx (as Roy acknowledges earlier in the book), revolution would come out of the smokestacks of factories; the reason why the Soviet Union rejected Maoism as an "infantile leftist disorder" was that Mao thought revolution could arise in a country of peasants, with no industrial base to speak of. Once that revolution succeeded, however, the industrial base followed in the Great Leap Forward, with great human cost. But industrial capitalism always exacts a great human cost, in the West, in the East, and what's now called the Global South.

That's important to remember, because apologists for the West have pointed to the human costs of Stalin's and Mao's "modernization" of their respective countries; the resultant debate rather resembles the Creationist / Evolutionist debates, in which sides assume that between them they cover all possible positions. Creationists assume that if they can find crucial flaws in Darwinism, Creationism will be the only option remaining. It isn't; but it also doesn't follow that if Creationism is false, Darwinism as it's now construed must be true. There are always other alternatives. Likewise, Capitalists assume that if Socialism fails, Capitalism is vindicated. Looking at the world today, it's hard to take that claim seriously.

Occupy New Delhi

I just finished reading Arundhati Roy's Broken Republic: Three Essays (Hamish Hamilton / Penguin, 2011), about the uprisings in India's forests against government-corporate depredations. The highest-profile rebels are led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), and though Roy discusses other groups, the Maoists are her focus in this new book. In the second essay she recounts a time she spent "Walking with the Comrades" in the forests, and it's a moving piece of work.

Of course Roy has come under attack for her sympathetic account of the Maoists and the poor farmers they are trying to organize. I trust her more than her critics, though, because she is critical of the Maoists, though not as critical as she is of state terror against the poor. Her sarcasm against respectable Indians can be withering (page 69):

Baba Amte, the well-known Gandhian, had opened his ashram and leprosy hospital in Warora in 1975. The Ramakrishna Mission and the Gayatri Samaj had been opening village schools in the remote forests of Abujhmad. In north Bastar, Baba Bihari Das had started an aggressive drive to 'bring tribals back into the Hindu folk', which involved a campaign to denigrate tribal culture, induce self-hatred, and introduce Hinduism's great gift -- caste.

(This reminds me of a friend many years ago who'd just watched Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth on PBS and told me how wonderful it was. Among the things she'd learned was that Judeo-Christianity was the only religion that was used as a means of social control. What about Hinduism? I asked her -- you know, the caste system? She hadn't thought of that. But it's easy to romanticize oppressive systems if you don't have to live under them.)

The important thing is that Roy asks the right questions, which must be answered by not only the Maoists but by other Indian Communist Parties, and by anyone else who says they want to help all Indians, not just the 100 Indian billionaires (210-211). (Compare the quotations from Raymond Williams in these posts.)

But let's take a brief look at the star attraction in the mining belt -- the several trillion dollars' worth of bauxite. There is no environmentally sustainable way of mining bauxite and processing it into aluminium. It's a highly toxic process that most Western countries have exported out of their own environments. To produce one tonne of aluminium, you need about six tonnes of bauxite, more than a thousand tonnes of water and a massive amount of electricity. For that amount of captive water and electricity, you need big dams, which, as we know, come with their own cycle of cataclysmic destruction. Last of all -- the big question -- what is the aluminium for? Where is it going? Aluminium is a principal ingredient in the weapons industry -- for other countries' weapons industries. Given this, what would a sane, 'sustainable' mining policy be? Suppose for the sake of argument, the CPI (Maoist) were given control of the so-called Red Corridor, the tribal homeland -- with its riches of uranium, bauxite, limestone, dolomite, coal, tin, granite, marble -- how would it go about the business of policy making and governance? Would it mine minerals to put on the market in order to create revenue, build infrastructure and expand its operations? Or would it mine only enough to meet people's basic needs? How would it define 'basic needs'? For instance, would nuclear weapons be a 'basic need' in a Maoist nation state?

Over the years I've asked questions like these to various politicos, all of whom brushed them aside impatiently, which probably means they don't want to think about them, or to admit that they've already thought about them, and see no problem with running the poor off their land to permit industrial development. This is a mindset shared by private-sector capitalists and public-sector capitalists alike, though "private-sector" is a misnomer since Western anti-communist capitalism still leans heavily on the state for support, defense, and subsidy. Roy is aware of this, for she immediately points to the record of industrialized societies on both sides of the ideological divide. For the nominally socialist countries no less than the 'capitalist' ones,

the ability to consume has become the yardstick by which progress is measured. For this kind of 'progress', you need industry. To feed the industry, you need a steady supply of raw material. For that you need mines, dams, domination, colonies, war. Old powers are waning, new ones rising ... [212].

Except that there's nothing new about this process. For Marx (as Roy acknowledges earlier in the book), revolution would come out of the smokestacks of factories; the reason why the Soviet Union rejected Maoism as an "infantile leftist disorder" was that Mao thought revolution could arise in a country of peasants, with no industrial base to speak of. Once that revolution succeeded, however, the industrial base followed in the Great Leap Forward, with great human cost. But industrial capitalism always exacts a great human cost, in the West, in the East, and what's now called the Global South.

That's important to remember, because apologists for the West have pointed to the human costs of Stalin's and Mao's "modernization" of their respective countries; the resultant debate rather resembles the Creationist / Evolutionist debates, in which sides assume that between them they cover all possible positions. Creationists assume that if they can find crucial flaws in Darwinism, Creationism will be the only option remaining. It isn't; but it also doesn't follow that if Creationism is false, Darwinism as it's now construed must be true. There are always other alternatives. Likewise, Capitalists assume that if Socialism fails, Capitalism is vindicated. Looking at the world today, it's hard to take that claim seriously.

Please Master

Richard Seymour (aka Lenin) posted this:

As public citizens we exercise a franchise, but in the private sphere we accept bondage: the discipline of the market compels us to accept it. For most of our waking hours, we cede executive control over our bodily and mental powers to someone else – in the vain hope of one day retiring with a decent pension. Whoops, that’s gone. You’ll just have to save more. But you’ll have to borrow more, because the economy needs you to spend. And we find that in all but the most mundane matters, when it comes to the activities and processes that constitute the major part of our lives, we have no autonomy. We do not govern ourselves.

Even our free time is not really ours. Much of it is spent commuting for a start - the average person's commute is equivalent to four weeks out of a working year. Four weeks - on that tube, that bus, that motorway lane. Think about what that's costing you psychically. Much of the rest is spent recuperating, essentially recovering our ability to labour so that we can go into work and do it all again the next day. And don't forget, of course, that even your free time isn't necessarily your own, because companies now want to organise your fun. Dress-down Friday - because Friday is funday; birthday parties, and office drinks, team-building outings, sporting days. Your fun, your enjoyment, your affection, often your time - on their orders. Awkward socialisation with middle and senior managers, stressful, moronic conversations, and long-winded explanations of what goes on in different departments that you didn't ask for, and you don't need. Then there's voluntary, unpaid overtime, worth £29bn a year to the employers - that's called flexibility, and what a good sport you are for doing that.

And so on; the entire post is worth reading.

"Voluntary, unpaid overtime" used to be one of the signs of the decadence of the Soviet Union. But it was always part of capitalism. That's not really surprising, when you think about it, because "capitalism" and "socialism" are not necessarily mutually exclusive opposites. What the Soviet Union instituted under Stalin was state capitalism, driven by the same logic of industrialization as capitalism in the US, Britain, and elsewhere: concentration, centralization, hierarchy, and mastery. As Raymond Williams pointed out in a 1982 essay, "Socialism and Ecology," (reprinted in Resources of Hope [Verso, 1989], socialists proved no less susceptible than capitalists to the dream of mastering nature:

Because of course these attitudes of mastering and conquering had from beginning been associated not just with mastering the earth, or natural substances, or making water do what you wanted, but with pushing other people around, with going wherever there were things which you wanted, and subjugating and conquering. That’s where the metaphors of conquest and mastery came from. They were a classic rationale of imperialism in just that expanding phase. They were from the whole internal ethic of an expanding capitalism: to master nature, to conquer it, to shift it around to do what you want with it. Engels went along with that and then suddenly remembered where the metaphor came from and said, quite correctly: we shall never understand this if we fail to remember that we are ourselves part of nature, and that what is involved in this mastery and conquest is going to going to have its effects on us; we can’t just arrive and depart as a foreign conqueror. But then he shifted back, under the influence of this very strong nineteenth-century triumphalism about nature, and took up the metaphors again. And still today we read these triumphalist arguments about production. They are a bit less confident now, but if you read the typical case for socialism, as it became standard between the wars in the dominant tendency, it is all in terms of mastering nature, setting new human horizons, creating plenty as the answer to poverty [214].

And:

It has always been a running argument within the Labour Party, especially since 1945, whether we’re going to get equality, and what are usually referred to as ‘the things we all want’ – schools and hospitals are usually the first to be named – when we’ve got the economy right, when we’ve produced enough, enlarged the national cake and so on; or whether equality and the priority of human needs require, as their first and necessary condition, fundamental changes in our social and economic institutions and relationships. I think we now have to see that argument as settled. The usual ‘national cake’ position, the soft political option, can be seen to rest on a basic fallacy, which the United States has demonstrated to the world – and no society is ever going to be relatively richer in gross indiscriminate production than that one – that by getting to a certain level of production you solve the problems of poverty and inequality. Tell them that in the slums, the inner cities, of rich America! All socialists are then forced to recognize that we have to intervene on quite a different basis [222].

I'd add that it isn't only "all socialists" who are "forced to recognize that we have to intervene on quite a different basis." "Socialism" encompasses many different programs and understandings anyway. I'm less attached to the label (though I'll accept it happily) than to the understanding that "gross indiscriminate production" is not going to give "us" equality and "the things we all want." Inequality has increased in the US as gross indiscriminate production has increased, and as capitalism has thrown off regulation and become more and more unrestrained. I'm not calling for the abolition of industrial production, as some will surely jump to assume, but for its control by human beings. As the example of the USSR and China shows, that will be no less necessary, and no less a problem, than it is in the West.

I should add too that I personally suffer less from the invasion of privacy by my workplace than many (most?) Americans. My daily "commute" is about 5 minutes each way. We don't have Casual Day. There are occasional attempts by upper management to encroach on our lives and feelings, but they are ineffectual at the level where I work; I suspect it's different in more white-collar departments. (Notice that the guy in the treadmill above is wearing a suit, not overalls.) One reason I've stayed in my job so long is because it leaves me considerable personal freedom, and when I come home I'm able to recuperate fairly quickly and attend to things that interest me. TV and other such commercial entertainments are the equivalent of junk food for people who don't have much time after the latest lap in the rat race and must unwind as quickly and efficiently as they can. When people have more leisure time for leisure, they'll use it more variously. This is not just a personal beef of mine, but something that affects many people, including people I know, more harshly than it affects me. One of the purposes of specifically "free-market" capitalist organization is to isolate people and make sure that they watch out only for themselves.

Please Master

Richard Seymour (aka Lenin) posted this:

As public citizens we exercise a franchise, but in the private sphere we accept bondage: the discipline of the market compels us to accept it. For most of our waking hours, we cede executive control over our bodily and mental powers to someone else – in the vain hope of one day retiring with a decent pension. Whoops, that’s gone. You’ll just have to save more. But you’ll have to borrow more, because the economy needs you to spend. And we find that in all but the most mundane matters, when it comes to the activities and processes that constitute the major part of our lives, we have no autonomy. We do not govern ourselves.

Even our free time is not really ours. Much of it is spent commuting for a start - the average person's commute is equivalent to four weeks out of a working year. Four weeks - on that tube, that bus, that motorway lane. Think about what that's costing you psychically. Much of the rest is spent recuperating, essentially recovering our ability to labour so that we can go into work and do it all again the next day. And don't forget, of course, that even your free time isn't necessarily your own, because companies now want to organise your fun. Dress-down Friday - because Friday is funday; birthday parties, and office drinks, team-building outings, sporting days. Your fun, your enjoyment, your affection, often your time - on their orders. Awkward socialisation with middle and senior managers, stressful, moronic conversations, and long-winded explanations of what goes on in different departments that you didn't ask for, and you don't need. Then there's voluntary, unpaid overtime, worth £29bn a year to the employers - that's called flexibility, and what a good sport you are for doing that.

And so on; the entire post is worth reading.

"Voluntary, unpaid overtime" used to be one of the signs of the decadence of the Soviet Union. But it was always part of capitalism. That's not really surprising, when you think about it, because "capitalism" and "socialism" are not necessarily mutually exclusive opposites. What the Soviet Union instituted under Stalin was state capitalism, driven by the same logic of industrialization as capitalism in the US, Britain, and elsewhere: concentration, centralization, hierarchy, and mastery. As Raymond Williams pointed out in a 1982 essay, "Socialism and Ecology," (reprinted in Resources of Hope [Verso, 1989], socialists proved no less susceptible than capitalists to the dream of mastering nature:

Because of course these attitudes of mastering and conquering had from beginning been associated not just with mastering the earth, or natural substances, or making water do what you wanted, but with pushing other people around, with going wherever there were things which you wanted, and subjugating and conquering. That’s where the metaphors of conquest and mastery came from. They were a classic rationale of imperialism in just that expanding phase. They were from the whole internal ethic of an expanding capitalism: to master nature, to conquer it, to shift it around to do what you want with it. Engels went along with that and then suddenly remembered where the metaphor came from and said, quite correctly: we shall never understand this if we fail to remember that we are ourselves part of nature, and that what is involved in this mastery and conquest is going to going to have its effects on us; we can’t just arrive and depart as a foreign conqueror. But then he shifted back, under the influence of this very strong nineteenth-century triumphalism about nature, and took up the metaphors again. And still today we read these triumphalist arguments about production. They are a bit less confident now, but if you read the typical case for socialism, as it became standard between the wars in the dominant tendency, it is all in terms of mastering nature, setting new human horizons, creating plenty as the answer to poverty [214].

And:

It has always been a running argument within the Labour Party, especially since 1945, whether we’re going to get equality, and what are usually referred to as ‘the things we all want’ – schools and hospitals are usually the first to be named – when we’ve got the economy right, when we’ve produced enough, enlarged the national cake and so on; or whether equality and the priority of human needs require, as their first and necessary condition, fundamental changes in our social and economic institutions and relationships. I think we now have to see that argument as settled. The usual ‘national cake’ position, the soft political option, can be seen to rest on a basic fallacy, which the United States has demonstrated to the world – and no society is ever going to be relatively richer in gross indiscriminate production than that one – that by getting to a certain level of production you solve the problems of poverty and inequality. Tell them that in the slums, the inner cities, of rich America! All socialists are then forced to recognize that we have to intervene on quite a different basis [222].

I'd add that it isn't only "all socialists" who are "forced to recognize that we have to intervene on quite a different basis." "Socialism" encompasses many different programs and understandings anyway. I'm less attached to the label (though I'll accept it happily) than to the understanding that "gross indiscriminate production" is not going to give "us" equality and "the things we all want." Inequality has increased in the US as gross indiscriminate production has increased, and as capitalism has thrown off regulation and become more and more unrestrained. I'm not calling for the abolition of industrial production, as some will surely jump to assume, but for its control by human beings. As the example of the USSR and China shows, that will be no less necessary, and no less a problem, than it is in the West.

I should add too that I personally suffer less from the invasion of privacy by my workplace than many (most?) Americans. My daily "commute" is about 5 minutes each way. We don't have Casual Day. There are occasional attempts by upper management to encroach on our lives and feelings, but they are ineffectual at the level where I work; I suspect it's different in more white-collar departments. (Notice that the guy in the treadmill above is wearing a suit, not overalls.) One reason I've stayed in my job so long is because it leaves me considerable personal freedom, and when I come home I'm able to recuperate fairly quickly and attend to things that interest me. TV and other such commercial entertainments are the equivalent of junk food for people who don't have much time after the latest lap in the rat race and must unwind as quickly and efficiently as they can. When people have more leisure time for leisure, they'll use it more variously. This is not just a personal beef of mine, but something that affects many people, including people I know, more harshly than it affects me. One of the purposes of specifically "free-market" capitalist organization is to isolate people and make sure that they watch out only for themselves.

Individualists of the World, Unite!

Now that the Heterosexual Oscars are over, many Colts fans are in deep mourning. Such is life -- you can't have a winner without a loser, or many losers. At alicublog Roy Edroso reports on rightbloggers' reactions to the big game, and quotes one Troy Nelson:

What happened to the days of pulling for organizations, teams, and players whom [sic!] best demonstrate the virtues of team work and heart and will power? Who overcome the challenges of a determined opponent on the level playing field of competition? Of blood, sweat, and tears? I guess in our coddled, emasculated, socialist society any overt demonstration or celebration of these qualities is offensive, too Darwinian, too Randian, too capitalistic.

Ah yes, professional sports are certainly capitalistic, with the heroic players working for the Ellsworth Tooheys of America. But "Darwinian"? I thought good conservatives repudiated Darwin. What the Creationist/Intelligent Design take on team sports would be I don't know. "Randian"? Ayneleh was apparently ambivalent at best about Darwin. I'm not sure what she would have thought of the Superbowl -- surely it would have been too corporate for her, though she never let herself be hobbled by consistency -- but one of her disciples assures the faithful that "no guilt is called for, because watching sports satisfies a vital human need." And this acolyte somehow manages to turn subordination and sacrifice in the service of the group into selfishness and self-glorification; that's fundamentalism for you, which manages to interpret a text until it means its opposite. (Not all Objectivists agree, however.)

That is why the economist John Kenneth Galbraith took on the subject years ago:

I once wrote a piece of which I was at the time very proud (I maybe shouldn't go back and read it again), arguing somewhat ironically that socialism in the United States was the result of organized sports. It takes people at a vulnerable age and makes teamwork, more than individual work, the thing. It subjects people to the authority of the team captain or the coach, and as I say, this is at an age where people are vulnerable. And therefore, team sports are the breeding grounds for socialism and must be watched very carefully. And I had an organization in the piece -- this ran in Harper's -- called "the CIA": the Congress for Individualist Athletics. It was written under a pseudonym because I was then an ambassador, I couldn't write under my own name. One day the postman struggled into my room at Harvard with a pile of letters this thick that had been sent on from Harper's from people who, well, they fell into three classes:

• people who wanted to know whether it was real or not;
• people who wanted to join; and
• people who demanded that I exclude baseball from the list because baseball is not, as they said, a "socialist" sport: when you're up at bat, you're on your own.

Well, it's an example of the dangers of using irony. Under the best of circumstances, many people are going to take it seriously.

Individualists of the World, Unite!

Now that the Heterosexual Oscars are over, many Colts fans are in deep mourning. Such is life -- you can't have a winner without a loser, or many losers. At alicublog Roy Edroso reports on rightbloggers' reactions to the big game, and quotes one Troy Nelson:

What happened to the days of pulling for organizations, teams, and players whom [sic!] best demonstrate the virtues of team work and heart and will power? Who overcome the challenges of a determined opponent on the level playing field of competition? Of blood, sweat, and tears? I guess in our coddled, emasculated, socialist society any overt demonstration or celebration of these qualities is offensive, too Darwinian, too Randian, too capitalistic.

Ah yes, professional sports are certainly capitalistic, with the heroic players working for the Ellsworth Tooheys of America. But "Darwinian"? I thought good conservatives repudiated Darwin. What the Creationist/Intelligent Design take on team sports would be I don't know. "Randian"? Ayneleh was apparently ambivalent at best about Darwin. I'm not sure what she would have thought of the Superbowl -- surely it would have been too corporate for her, though she never let herself be hobbled by consistency -- but one of her disciples assures the faithful that "no guilt is called for, because watching sports satisfies a vital human need." And this acolyte somehow manages to turn subordination and sacrifice in the service of the group into selfishness and self-glorification; that's fundamentalism for you, which manages to interpret a text until it means its opposite. (Not all Objectivists agree, however.)

That is why the economist John Kenneth Galbraith took on the subject years ago:

I once wrote a piece of which I was at the time very proud (I maybe shouldn't go back and read it again), arguing somewhat ironically that socialism in the United States was the result of organized sports. It takes people at a vulnerable age and makes teamwork, more than individual work, the thing. It subjects people to the authority of the team captain or the coach, and as I say, this is at an age where people are vulnerable. And therefore, team sports are the breeding grounds for socialism and must be watched very carefully. And I had an organization in the piece -- this ran in Harper's -- called "the CIA": the Congress for Individualist Athletics. It was written under a pseudonym because I was then an ambassador, I couldn't write under my own name. One day the postman struggled into my room at Harvard with a pile of letters this thick that had been sent on from Harper's from people who, well, they fell into three classes:

• people who wanted to know whether it was real or not;
• people who wanted to join; and
• people who demanded that I exclude baseball from the list because baseball is not, as they said, a "socialist" sport: when you're up at bat, you're on your own.

Well, it's an example of the dangers of using irony. Under the best of circumstances, many people are going to take it seriously.

Personal Responsibility for Thee But Not for Me

Men's rooms aren't the kind of place I associate with intellectual activity, so I was surprised today while using the facilities at the local Borders to find a debate about political economy written above one of the urinals. The only part of it I remember, aside from "SOCIALIST BULLSHIT!!" written after one contribution, was what followed:

WE DON'T MAKE PEOPLE POOR!!
WE CAN'T MAKE POOR PEOPLE HAPPY!
IT'S ABOUT PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!

(Those last two words were underlined twice.)

The words "personal responsibility" always make me pay attention, since they usually mean other people's personal responsibility, not the speaker/writer's. But I'll begin at the beginning.

Who's the "we," I wonder? It could refer to rich people, Republicans, capitalists, whatever. I'm going to be generous, though, and let it mean "human beings." That is, the graffitist was saying that poor people aren't poor because of what other people do to them, it's because of what they do, or perhaps because of natural law: some must be at the top of society, some must be at the bottom; there's only a limited amount of wealth in the world, so if I have more, you have less, but I have more because of my natural virtue, my ability to accumulate -- because, as I once read in an article by the philosopher Antony Flew, wealth just naturally concentrates in fewer and fewer hands over time.

It may be that I misunderstand social construction theory, but I always thought that its point was that phenomena which people consider Just Natural can often be shown to be the result of social forces, decisions and actions of people rather than impersonal nature. It's easy to see the appeal of passing all the blame off on Mother Nature, but it doesn't really matter whether poverty is natural or not. There are any number of natural phenomena that human beings refuse to accept: death, which we try to postpone as long as possible; the courses of rivers and tides, which we try to dam or divert; nudity, which most cultures cover to a greater or lesser extent; and so on. In the end, apologists for the status quo generally contradict themselves: on one hand, the poor are responsible for their poverty because they are inferior or make bad choices, while the rich are either not responsible for their wealth because they are naturally superior, or superior because they made good choices, but those choices have nothing to do with the kind of society in which they live.

Even if it is true that wealth naturally concentrates in fewer hands over time, there is no reason why we should let it do so. We might not succeed in stopping that process altogether, any more than we can stop the tides, but we don't have to let it continue unimpeded either. (Speaking of the tides, a proverb that was popularized by Ronald Reagan, "A rising tide lifts all boats," is commonly used to argue that making the rich richer will also enrich the poor. (Notice the fictional graphs in that post.) If true, it would work both ways -- help the poor and you'll help the rich -- but it isn't true. Looking around the Web, I see that Obama and numerous Obama supporters have invoked the phrase, which does none of them any credit.

As it happens, certain economic and business policies can make people poor. We've seen it up close in the past few years, after all. If irresponsible lending policies lead to a large number of mortgage foreclosures, for example, many people will lose their homes, their standard of living may drop, and there will be more poor people around. If "free trade" policies encourage employers to replace well-paid jobs with poorly-paid, no-benefits jobs, then the number of poor people will increase. If they had medical insurance but lose it because of job loss, not only is their quality of life degraded, they may have to bankrupt themselves to settle medical debts. If a country with a substantial social safety net eliminates those social programs under pressure from international financial bodies like the International Monetary Fund, then poverty increases; that is, people who previously had not been poor become poor. Not everyone is impoverished, of course; the scum continue to float to the top, like those supposedly rising boats.

True, there are adults who can't seem to manage their economic lives -- they can't hold jobs for long, can't manage their money, couldn't study for long enough to get a job that would pay them more. There is, however, no reason why children should be punished for their parents' incapacity or mistakes. This is why we have public education, public health care, aid to dependent children, and other programs which are meant to help children primarily or in large part.

This reminds me an anecdote Wendy Kaminer tells in the introduction to her book True Love Waits (Addison-Wesley, 1996). The editor of the National Review asked her to write a book review. She protested that she's "an old-fashioned liberal," and he reassured that it was okay, because she's "sensible."

"But you don't understand," I explained. "I believe in the welfare state. People think I'm conservative because there are messages about self-reliance in my work, and I value self-reliance, but I don't expect it of children." There was a long pause. He stopped reassuring me that I was sensible.

Of course, there still have to be jobs waiting for those children when they grow up and complete their schooling, and because of the choices that American leaders have made, such jobs can't be taken for granted nowadays, as in many periods of American history. But there's no reason to believe, thanks to past experience, that the supply of jobs can't be improved by human planning and effort.

"We can't make poor people happy"? I'll go along with that, but only because we can't make rich people happy either. We can make it easier for people to work on their happiness, and this too is not the work of Nature. Some people no doubt will be unhappy no matter what we do, but that doesn't mean we aren't responsible for making a society where people can seek it. Or, harking back to the Declaration of Independence, to pursue it. Many conservatives try to evade this phrase by saying that the Declaration doesn't guarantee happiness, only our right to pursue it; but such a right is meaningless in a society which blocks off the pathways to happiness to all but the elite. I'll settle for a society in which no one goes hungry, or lacks medical care or access to education; happiness is up to them. (See, I believe in "self-reliance" too.)

Which brings me back to personal responsibility. Again, in discussions of wealth and poverty that term is almost always thrown at those below the uppermost ranks. We hear very little from the bankers and financiers, the politicians who deregulated our financial system with such disastrous consequences, about their responsibility for the outcome. On the contrary, they demanded rescue from the deluge, and on their terms. Their companies must not be permitted to fail, the taxpayers must bail them out, but the taxpayers must not be permitted any control as a result. The financiers must not only not lose their jobs, they must keep the bonuses they were promised, even in the face of their failure. They must be allowed to continue the practices that brought about the collapse, with the likely outcome that there will be more collapses in the future. But it's not their fault, they insist: it's the inherent (that is, natural) risks of our economic system. No one is responsible, except perhaps the worthless, overpaid American workers whose labor costs them so unconscionably much. Indeed, the whole purpose of incorporation is to limit liability as much as possible. To use the words "personal responsibility" in the context of capitalism is completely ... well, irresponsible.

Personal Responsibility for Thee But Not for Me

Men's rooms aren't the kind of place I associate with intellectual activity, so I was surprised today while using the facilities at the local Borders to find a debate about political economy written above one of the urinals. The only part of it I remember, aside from "SOCIALIST BULLSHIT!!" written after one contribution, was what followed:

WE DON'T MAKE PEOPLE POOR!!
WE CAN'T MAKE POOR PEOPLE HAPPY!
IT'S ABOUT PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!

(Those last two words were underlined twice.)

The words "personal responsibility" always make me pay attention, since they usually mean other people's personal responsibility, not the speaker/writer's. But I'll begin at the beginning.

Who's the "we," I wonder? It could refer to rich people, Republicans, capitalists, whatever. I'm going to be generous, though, and let it mean "human beings." That is, the graffitist was saying that poor people aren't poor because of what other people do to them, it's because of what they do, or perhaps because of natural law: some must be at the top of society, some must be at the bottom; there's only a limited amount of wealth in the world, so if I have more, you have less, but I have more because of my natural virtue, my ability to accumulate -- because, as I once read in an article by the philosopher Antony Flew, wealth just naturally concentrates in fewer and fewer hands over time.

It may be that I misunderstand social construction theory, but I always thought that its point was that phenomena which people consider Just Natural can often be shown to be the result of social forces, decisions and actions of people rather than impersonal nature. It's easy to see the appeal of passing all the blame off on Mother Nature, but it doesn't really matter whether poverty is natural or not. There are any number of natural phenomena that human beings refuse to accept: death, which we try to postpone as long as possible; the courses of rivers and tides, which we try to dam or divert; nudity, which most cultures cover to a greater or lesser extent; and so on. In the end, apologists for the status quo generally contradict themselves: on one hand, the poor are responsible for their poverty because they are inferior or make bad choices, while the rich are either not responsible for their wealth because they are naturally superior, or superior because they made good choices, but those choices have nothing to do with the kind of society in which they live.

Even if it is true that wealth naturally concentrates in fewer hands over time, there is no reason why we should let it do so. We might not succeed in stopping that process altogether, any more than we can stop the tides, but we don't have to let it continue unimpeded either. (Speaking of the tides, a proverb that was popularized by Ronald Reagan, "A rising tide lifts all boats," is commonly used to argue that making the rich richer will also enrich the poor. (Notice the fictional graphs in that post.) If true, it would work both ways -- help the poor and you'll help the rich -- but it isn't true. Looking around the Web, I see that Obama and numerous Obama supporters have invoked the phrase, which does none of them any credit.

As it happens, certain economic and business policies can make people poor. We've seen it up close in the past few years, after all. If irresponsible lending policies lead to a large number of mortgage foreclosures, for example, many people will lose their homes, their standard of living may drop, and there will be more poor people around. If "free trade" policies encourage employers to replace well-paid jobs with poorly-paid, no-benefits jobs, then the number of poor people will increase. If they had medical insurance but lose it because of job loss, not only is their quality of life degraded, they may have to bankrupt themselves to settle medical debts. If a country with a substantial social safety net eliminates those social programs under pressure from international financial bodies like the International Monetary Fund, then poverty increases; that is, people who previously had not been poor become poor. Not everyone is impoverished, of course; the scum continue to float to the top, like those supposedly rising boats.

True, there are adults who can't seem to manage their economic lives -- they can't hold jobs for long, can't manage their money, couldn't study for long enough to get a job that would pay them more. There is, however, no reason why children should be punished for their parents' incapacity or mistakes. This is why we have public education, public health care, aid to dependent children, and other programs which are meant to help children primarily or in large part.

This reminds me an anecdote Wendy Kaminer tells in the introduction to her book True Love Waits (Addison-Wesley, 1996). The editor of the National Review asked her to write a book review. She protested that she's "an old-fashioned liberal," and he reassured that it was okay, because she's "sensible."

"But you don't understand," I explained. "I believe in the welfare state. People think I'm conservative because there are messages about self-reliance in my work, and I value self-reliance, but I don't expect it of children." There was a long pause. He stopped reassuring me that I was sensible.

Of course, there still have to be jobs waiting for those children when they grow up and complete their schooling, and because of the choices that American leaders have made, such jobs can't be taken for granted nowadays, as in many periods of American history. But there's no reason to believe, thanks to past experience, that the supply of jobs can't be improved by human planning and effort.

"We can't make poor people happy"? I'll go along with that, but only because we can't make rich people happy either. We can make it easier for people to work on their happiness, and this too is not the work of Nature. Some people no doubt will be unhappy no matter what we do, but that doesn't mean we aren't responsible for making a society where people can seek it. Or, harking back to the Declaration of Independence, to pursue it. Many conservatives try to evade this phrase by saying that the Declaration doesn't guarantee happiness, only our right to pursue it; but such a right is meaningless in a society which blocks off the pathways to happiness to all but the elite. I'll settle for a society in which no one goes hungry, or lacks medical care or access to education; happiness is up to them. (See, I believe in "self-reliance" too.)

Which brings me back to personal responsibility. Again, in discussions of wealth and poverty that term is almost always thrown at those below the uppermost ranks. We hear very little from the bankers and financiers, the politicians who deregulated our financial system with such disastrous consequences, about their responsibility for the outcome. On the contrary, they demanded rescue from the deluge, and on their terms. Their companies must not be permitted to fail, the taxpayers must bail them out, but the taxpayers must not be permitted any control as a result. The financiers must not only not lose their jobs, they must keep the bonuses they were promised, even in the face of their failure. They must be allowed to continue the practices that brought about the collapse, with the likely outcome that there will be more collapses in the future. But it's not their fault, they insist: it's the inherent (that is, natural) risks of our economic system. No one is responsible, except perhaps the worthless, overpaid American workers whose labor costs them so unconscionably much. Indeed, the whole purpose of incorporation is to limit liability as much as possible. To use the words "personal responsibility" in the context of capitalism is completely ... well, irresponsible.