Tag Archives: Marxism

I. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Maxim

In October of 1945, Jean-Paul Sartre gave a speech at the Club Maintenant. His remarks would become the basis of his next book, Existentialism and Humanism, published in 1946. In it, he establishes the idea of “existence precedes essence,” which would become the maxim of successive existentialist thought. This statement was a reversion of previous Christian arguments on existence, which argued God crafted an essence before one’s actual birth through a divine plan. Sartre recanted this idea and instead inverted it – rather than preceding existence, each individual is responsible for subjectively crafting one’s own essence, where he defines himself to his own liking. Thus, true “freedom” is the ability to authentically craft our own individual essence.

Sartre makes these claims of “defining our own essence” within a capitalist framework. In retrospect, our “essence” cannot be autonomously defined in an environment which manipulates desire. In other words, in order for our desires to be authentic, our environment must, too, be authentic. Capitalism maintains its hegemony through a production of desires which manifests itself through our consumption. Therefore, since consumers – which is all we are reduced to, consumers – exist in an artifice, their essence is also artificial. Sartre’s maxim would be unequivocally true if a coercive environment did not precede our existence. However, the truth in his statement is only partial. Rendered inauthentic by mass consumerist society, we are left with merely just existence without essence. As Oscar Wilde put it half a century beforehand, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all” [1].

II. Marx’s Conception of Alienation

Philosopher Karl Marx in the 19th century described a phenomenon known as proletarianization. It is a form of downward mobility, where the working class grows larger through increasing levels of capital accumulation. As a result, wealth becomes transferred to fewer and fewer hands as the individuals who were once employers now are demoted to mere workers with labor power. And with this transformation, more individuals are coerced into selling their work for a wage. It through proletarianization that an increasing number of individuals experience “subjectivity without essence” – in Marxist terms, alienation.

In modern late capitalist society, this idea has been pushed to its very extreme. Contemporary thinker Slavoj Zizek argues that the current historical situation should push us to radicalize the idea of proletarianization further, since its use has expanded far beyond the confines of the industrial setting [2]. Proletarianization is much more than a reference to a growing working class; it is a condition where an individual is ripped of his/her product, that which is naturally theirs. Therefore, Zizek argues, capitalism embraces this as an end far beyond the base of production. The current ecological crisis is yet another attempt to separate us from our environment. Similarly, intellectual property is a way to separate us from collective ownership, ripping us apart from our substance. In an effort to compartmentalize every aspect of life, capitalism detaches man from his surroundings and creates separation where there was previously none [3].

Thus, given these efforts to fundamentally alter human relations, can Sartre’s conception of essence truly exist in any authentic sense? If essence demands subjectivity than we cannot call anything contemporary “authentic” since our subjectivity is constantly being created for us rather than by us. As Zizek calls it, capitalism leaves us “subjectivity without substance,” in that it leaves us with constant displacement beyond our personal control.

III. Existing within the Simulacra

Artistic depiction of philosopher Jean Baudrillard.

Now, how does freedom fit into this end? It simply cannot. True freedom cannot coexist with institutions which subjugate, separate, and alienate individuals. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard in his treatise Simulacra and Simulation denounces contemporary society as merely an artifice masquerading as the Real by eliminating any alternatives to its hegemony. He writes, “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true” [4]. Therefore, contemporary capitalist society – the simulacrum – attempts to normalize exploitative relations in an effort to make them appear universal. Because of this, we oftentimes assume liberal conceptions of liberty are the only form of liberty. In retrospect, this is the only form of liberty that can exist within a capitalist framework. Since systemic forms of oppression are cyclical in capitalist systems, they become normalized and expected. Therefore, commonplace conceptions of “freedom” are skewed and limited to the current economic paradigm and fail to transcend it.

Because liberal freedom is mainstay, proletarianization is seen as complementary to liberty in contemporary Western society. It is not seen as a menace; rather, it simply is. It is this acceptance and rationalization of oppression which prevents freedom from expanding. Worse so, it makes individuals hesitant to even accept greater conceptions of freedom. Again, it all relates back to Baudrillard’s conception of the artifice – the simulation becomes the only reality, while the Real is nonexistent. And it is within this artificial framework that radical freedom, free of institutional oppression and real autonomy, cannot exist.

Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation derives much of its theories on artifice from the French Situationist school of thought, particularly Guy Debord. He writes in Society of the Spectacle, “… just as early industrial capitalism moved the focus of existence from being to having, post-industrial culture has moved that focus from having to appearing” [5]. Similarly, Baudrillard speaks of the artifice as symbols; these symbols reaffirm themselves and the existing artifice they create. Most importantly, such an environment induces individuals to uphold the artifice as if it were the Real. As Debord argues, “The more powerful the class, the more it claims it does not exist.” Because the Real can never be acknowledged, subtle censorship is crucial to maintaining its hegemony; and it is within this paradigm that freedom cannot exist in any complete context.

While we continue to exist in the artifice, individuals cannot achieve their essence. Hence, Sartre’s maxim is incomplete. Since human agents are victim to their circumstances, hierarchies of oppression hamper any realization of true freedom. These systemic imbalances in in class, race, sex, and gender maintain themselves by merely being viewed within liberal capitalism, rather than through the Real. Freedom is unable to be fully realized with this intact. In order for real freedom to be actualized, man has to transcend efforts of marginalization in order to complete the second half of Sartre’s phrase – and it begins by dismantling the institutions that constrict individual autonomy and liberty.

***

– Estranged Labor by a young Karl Marx discusses alienation as a concept. It is part of a greater collection called Economic Manuscripts of 1844.

Thomas Jefferson: The Leninist Patriot

March 2, 2013

History

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Usually when one mentions Thomas Jefferson, Vladimir Lenin isn’t particularly the first person to come to mind (nor the second, nor third). At a superficial initial glance, they have little in common: a conflicted slave-owner, president, and brilliant writer that planted the seeds of democratic republicanism versus a Bolshevik leader and the main theoretician behind 20th century revolutionary thinking and praxis. A comparative analysis of these two different men would seem rather absurd given the political climate of the United States — who would have the gall to compare one of, if not the, founder of the original constitutional republic to a dirty red?

After we take off our post-McCarthyist goggles, there are some genuine comparisons to be made that merit a closer look at Jefferson’s ideology through a Leninist perspective. When the American experiment was rearing its head in the international scene, it was the first of its kind. A struggling republic midst an onslaught of Western imperial powers — few expected it to last. However, Jefferson held a firm belief that the empires of Europe would succumb to their own violence, which he considered alien to the United States. He writes to James Monroe in 1823:

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people [1].

Calling for the complete separation from European politics, he writes to George Logan in 1801:

It ought to be the very first object of our pursuits to have nothing to do with the European interests and politics. Let them be free or slaves at will, navigators or agriculturists, swallowed into one government or divided into a thousand, we have nothing to fear from them in any form [2].

He would go on to exploit, what he viewed, European weaknesses during his time in diplomacy and terms as president. Realizing early that New Orleans was crucial for the development of the American experiment, he managed to properly balance his diplomatic talks with French powers to cheaply acquire Louisiana, while some Federalists were calling for war [3]. And he remarkably did so by using the Napoleonic wars in Europe to his advantage, since Napoleon was lacking the funds to fuel his imperialist ventures. Similarly, Lenin utilized the contradictions of European imperialism after World War One in his diplomacy and managed to retreat Russia from the war and marginally keep it secure.

Jefferson also took an internationalist approach to the American experience. “The Empire of Liberty,” as he called it, must spread its wings across the entire American continent and eventually the entire globe. He writes in 1795, commenting on the revolutions in France and Holland, in a letter to Tench Coxe:

This ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll round the globe, at least the enlightened part of it, for light & liberty go together. it is our glory that we first put it into motion [4].

Again he argues this point in a 1824 letter to William Ludlow Monticello:

And I have observed this march of civilization advancing from the sea coast, passing over us like a cloud of light, increasing our knowledge and improving our condition, insomuch as that we are at this time more advanced in civilization here than the seaports were when I was a boy. And where this progress will stop no one can say. Barbarism has, in the meantime, been receding before the steady step of amelioration; and will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth [5]

After the Revolution of 1917, Lenin expounded a similar view of the ultimate destruction of the bourgeois powers of Europe. He argues in his influential pamphlet, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, about the nature of “decaying capitalism” and how historical necessity will bring about the demise of capitalist powers. He writes:

That imperialism is leading to annexation, to increased national oppression, and, consequently, also to increasing resistance [6].

And then on the inevitability of the destruction of imperialist capitalism:

That private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period… but which will inevitably be removed [7].

Lenin’s thoughts on the ultimate collapse of Western capitalism and its predatory nature bears resemblance to Jefferson’s writing on the destruction of the empires of Europe. The difference being, they were analyzing completely different social epochs. Lenin was witnessing, or so he believed, the transition from capitalism to some form of socialism. Jefferson, on the hand, witnessed the development of fledgling democracies and the destruction of archaic monarchies. Both articulated an internationalist tone in their message, either for Jeffersonian democracy or for socialism, and preached the inevitability of such events — Lenin called for a “revolutionary vanguard” in his April Theses, Jefferson believed in an empire of liberty with which “this ball of liberty… will roll around the world.”

Objectively speaking, both Jefferson and Lenin were internationalist revolutionaries. They viewed the old order with disdain, inevitable in its collapse, and believed in securing the future through revolution and popular struggle. Jefferson was keen and uptight in his support for the French Revolution and its excesses. Although not particularly pleased with all the Terror, he still argued in favor of the French struggles. He writes to William Short in 1793:

But time and truth will rescue and embalm [the Jacobin Terror], while their posterity will be enjoying that very liberty for which they would never have hesitated to offer up their lives. The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated [8].

His dedication to the French revolution is unquestionable; he sees it a worthy endeavor to defend at all costs. As he puts it, most bluntly, he would rather see “half the earth desolated” than see his ideals in France wither and fail. And as for Lenin, the Red Terror was used under his rule to purge the countryside of dissenters in order to ready it for socialism. The point being, both these individuals viewed themselves as instruments of history. They viewed themselves as prime movers of a social development that was inevitable in the grand historical narrative of humankind. There is a hint of arrogance in both Jefferson and Lenin in their push for social transformation, much of it being dogmatic, which is likely the reason why their ideologies intersect so often. From their condoning of violence to their opinion of Western powers to their internationalist political demeanor, Lenin and Jefferson can both be considered eerily similar in their interpretations of history and their justification for its transformation. And oddly enough, at least in American politics, one is lamented as an American savior, while the other is considered the absolute worst scourge of the Earth — never compared, they hold completely different chairs in history, seldom discussed in conjunction. Perhaps this dynamic best illustrates how absurd historiography can become, and how easily it can be morphed into fitting a particular nationalistic narrative. Two sides of a similar coin, Jefferson and Lenin truly show this absurdity in full.

The Victorian Era: Sexuality and the Family

February 10, 2013

History, Religion

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I. The Rise of the Bourgeois Work Ethic

The Crystal Palace, home of the Great Exhibition of 1851, was the first World Fair where Britain showed its industrial might and astute culture.

The Victorian Era was a strange time of mystic sexual morality, distinct fashion, industrialization, and — above all — imperial conquest. It was Britain’s century, their colonialist high-point, and they likewise influenced lands far beyond their water-locked country. The “Victorian morality” was a strange development in the emergence of bourgeois society. It was hypocritical as much as it was limiting; the mantra was to better the human condition, while, at the same time, turning a blind eye to the plight of the child worker and the general laborer (There were exceptions, of course. A spare few were in fact unsettled by the plight of these poor folk, one of them being Karl Marx).

With the rise of industrialization in the British mainland came a downplaying of hedonism. Pleasure was seen as seemingly antithetical to the ideal Victorian, where hard-work was cherished as a means to religious salvation [1]. Max Weber spoke of this in his seminal work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, where he argues that the rise of Protestantism gave headway to new laborious expectations and allowed for further divisions of labor. In the Calvinist view, Martin Luther’s, and others of the Reformation, it was not enough to be devoted to supernatural salvation; one had to also be devoted to earthly labor and his craft. Because of the inability of individuals to influence God’s grace, given the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, they struggled to find signs of their destiny — which was either eternal damnation or salvation. A rigorous work ethic was preached as being a sign of “God’s grace,” and it became the epitome of the Calvinist tradition. Although only Scotland of Great Britain was largely Calvinist, due to the teachings of John Knox, the rest of the industrializing island also exemplified a similar outlook on labor. Religious individualism was crucial in any Protestant tradition that broke from the Catholic Church, even in the Anglican Church of England. In contrast, places such as Ireland (predominately Catholic), according to Weber, lacked this attitude due to the authoritarian nature of the Catholic Church and its overreaching doctrine, which limited individualism [2]. Coupled with the fact that “sloth” was considered a deadly sin in Christian doctrine, the development of bourgeois society fall hand-in-hand with the development of this new robust industrial individualism and the facilitation of Protestantism.

II. Demonizing Lust

Because of the development of a new work ethic, sexuality became an impediment to such ends. Such relations were relegated to private rooms, away from public sight. The majority of children, even among the poor, were sent to Sunday school where they were inculcated in a belief that one must abstain from sexual perversion. It was seen as an obstacle to God’s grace (let us not forget, “lust” is yet another deadly sin) [3]. Pleasure, as told by religious dogma, was merely a test of faith and should not be responded in kind. In part by this, sexuality become externalized — it became part of the object, rather than the self — and became regarded, seemingly, as a necessary evil.

Sexuality become a construct of public attention and scrutiny even in common language. It became impolite to bring up such topics in company and euphemisms emerged to describe them, need it be brought up [4]. Nearly every part of the body had a corresponding euphemism, with even the term “leg” being impolite and being replaced with “limb.’ The entire concept of procreation was made into fables that were nicely-worded to be avoided with children; such as the famous story of the “white stork” being the harbinger of small children that became popularized with the Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Storks [5]. Equally absurd, genitalia were seen as too explicit to be shown in any context, even in artistry, during Victorian times. Expurgation, the censorship of the “offensive,” become common. Perhaps the best known example is one of the “fig-leaf,” where Queen Victoria, as the story goes, was repulsed to see the genitalia of Michelangelo’s statue David. A proportional fig leaf was then made to cover the obscenity, so the figure could be tolerated [6]. Even classical literature was found guilty of obscenity — Dr. Thomas Bowdler omitted and rewrote Shakespearean plays to make it more “accessible to children and wives.” Called The Family Shakespeare, minor expletives were omitted and death was made gentler, among other things. With the gentry holding morality of society by the handles, these such moral impositions pervaded all facets of British life, from the top down. Consequently, these norms were brought to all dominions of British rule and, given its vast empire, its sexually-repressive influence was vast and lasting.

III. The Patriarchal Family

The standard Victorian family had many children.

Perhaps most striking, in contrast with late developments of the family, is the role of women in society. The structure was overtly patriarchal. In Victorian society, the woman was servile and sexually docile. She was bound to her domestic life, despite having some political and civil autonomy, and was given the unspoken task of functioning as the moral instruction for servants and children. Women were expected to give birth to many children and the standard was set by the Queen Victoria and her husband — i.e. the “Royal Family” — who, in total, had nine children. Standards of femininity were established in the higher rungs of Victorian society and were expressed actively in the arts. The great Victorian poet Lord Alfred Tennyson espoused such repressive virtues in his poem The Princess:

Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion [6].

One of the reasons for this gender polarity and rigidity is the development of the bourgeois middle-class during the Victorian era. The average Victorian male worked, unlike the gentry, and was able to afford at least three servants [7]. The household became a symbol of the male’s moral character and was regarded as a reflection of social class.. Thereby, it did not matter if the working man had to face obscene conditions and do monotonous labor to earn his living; as long as he had a respectable house to come back to, his social class was maintained. The paradox of experiencing a inferiority in the workplace induced a need to establish a superiority in the household, ultimately giving rise to patriarchal sentiments and female submission. This dynamic would establish two separate spheres of control in Victorian society — the private and the public, the workplace and the home, and the domestic and the business.

IV. Sexuality as an Object

The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction by Michel Foucault

In 1976, philosopher Michael Foucault published one of the first volumes to a three-volume series that would come to be known as one of his seminal works. His book, The History of Sexuality, analyzed the role of human sexuality in the Western world and its development. It aimed at questioning the presupposed “repression hypothesis” — that the current repressive elements of sexuality are a symptom of the Victorian era, which is when rigid restrictive norms were put in place. Although Foucault does not outright reject repressive Victorian morality as a major factor in the rise of modern Western sexuality, he turns the mainstream thesis on its head in arguing that sexuality was more discussed than ever before during the Victorian era.

The long rule of Queen Victoria has been characterized by sexual repression, censorship of the obscene, and domestication of the female; however, is there more to Victorian culture than merely superficial restrictions on discourse? Although there was relative silence on the topic between child and parent, teacher and pupil, or even master and house servant — was there not also, perhaps, a growing fascination with sexuality as a human condition? In 1841, the British state, for the first time, became instituting a full census of their population. This expansionary measure would include statistics on marriage, birth rates, and death rates [8]. The family was promoted as the building block of British life and marriage was superimposed as a guiding force in establishing such social harmony. Prostitution became an epidemic as poor female laborers struggled to find an income and were economically coerced to sell their bodies to usually wealthy upper-class gentry [9]. Priests became more interested in “confessions on the flesh” during the Christian practice of Penance, where individuals would confess to the priest their supposed “impurities.” Foucault writes:

But while language may have been refined, the scope of the confession — the confession of the flesh — continually increased. This was partly because the Counter Reformation busied itself with stepping up the rhythm of the yearly confession in the Catholic countries, and because it tried to impose meticulous rules of self-examination; but above all, because it attributed more and more importance in penance — and perhaps at the expense of other since — to all insinuations of flesh: thoughts, desire, voluptuous imaginings, delectations, combined movements of the body and soul; henceforth, all this had to enter, in detail, into the process of confession and guidance [The History of Sexuality Vol I, 19].

He goes on to argue how the establishment of Penance in Protestant (and Catholic) nations began deviating from actual confession of sins and became obsessed with the smallest of pleasures.

According to the new pastoral, sex must not be named imprudently, but all its aspects, its correlations, and its effects must be pursued down to their slenderest ramifications: a shadow in a daydream, an image too slowly dispelled, a badly exorcised complicity between the body’s mechanics and the mind’s complacency: everything had to be told [The History of Sexuality Vol I, 19].

Likewise, the Victorian era and the few decades prior to its development set a standard: Now, not only did one need to confess to acts that were against the law, they also had to tell all their pleasures and desires in church discourse, under the watchful eyes of the priest or minister. This set a new tone to sexuality in the Western world previously unheard of — it gave rise to innumerable euphemisms to describe acts or body parts previously taken as merely “being,” in an effort to describe this new sexual fascination. Sexuality was now externalized, treated as undesirable pleasure, and was to be repressed in public. And henceforth, the repression in Western culture took on a two-faced form; on the one hand, sexuality was to be beaten down from the public eye, but, on the other hand, was to be properly dissected under the guise of an authority that demands it.

Austro-German psychiatrist Richard von Kraft-Ebing, author of “Psychopathia Sexualis” (1886).

In academia, sexuality began to be added to the scientific lexicon. The Oxford English Dictionary began to add specific terms to their newly-printed releases; “sexual intercourse” (1799), “sexual function” (1803), “sexual organs” (1828), “sexual desire” (1836), “sexual instinct” (1861), “sexual impulse” (1863), “sexual act” (1888), and “sexual immorality” (1911). Moreover, sexual behavior became robustly studied as a field worthy of attention [10]. Sexuality was seen, in scientific circles, as a proper way to assess one’s personality and behavior. Who you slept with became, peculiarly, also an identity in the Western mindset. This became especially prevalent in psychiatry, before the Freudian revolution of thought, where sexual deviancy was seen as particularly problematic. And this phenomenon was present far beyond the bounds of Victorian England, since talks on sexuality were rising in the confession booths all across Christian Europe. Austro-German psychiatrist Richard von Kraft-Ebing published his work Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886 in which he outlined four sexual categories of, what he considered to be, symptoms of neurosis. They were titled: paradoxia (sexual desire at the wrong time), anesthesia (not enough sexual desire), hyperesthesia (too much sexual desire), and paraesthesia (sexual deviancy, i.e. queer and fetishism). He goes on to discuss the sexual “impassivity” of the female compared to the male, describing the male as having a “stronger sexual appetite” — only reaffirming the hypocritical sexual expectations of the male and female which is pervasive in Western culture to this very day.

V. Modern Victorian Sexuality

The ramifications of such repression, and private sexual objectification, has reared its ugly face even in contemporary society. The hysteria over discussion on sexuality is still pervasive and shied away in any public discourse. Archaic conceptions of sexual “immorality” are still being tossed around in the public arena and are commonly told to children. Rigid notions of femininity and masculinity are institutionally enforced and kept in check by popular disapproval once one steps outside the preconceived bounds. Perhaps, what is seen more vividly, is the persistent caricature that one’s sexuality is an indicator of one’s personality. The marginalization of sexuality continues to plague the Western mindset, always thrown to the back-burner of our minds, too frightening to be discussed. Such are the chains that have to be properly broken if we wish to actually articulate real “sexual liberation’ or any humanization of what, should be considered, natural human urges. To put it most bluntly, perhaps it is time to bring, first and foremost, such topics of sexuality to light. And all the while, let us give those that decry its discussion the proper response — ignore and pressure them to change their repressive ideas of sexuality, which have been shamefully penning individuals in a sexually-normative box ever since its adoption as a Western moral imperative. It is about time the discussion has been opened, rather than have sexuality continue to be an object of scrutiny.

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– The Victorians: Gender and Sexuality

The Falling Rate of Profit

January 27, 2013

Political Economy

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I. The Parable of the Broken Window

Frédéric Bastiat

In 1850, classical liberal theoretician Frédéric Bastiat published his landmark essay That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen (Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas). In it, he introduces his acclaimed scenario — the “parable of the broken window.” The story is a simple one: a shopkeeper’s son accidentally breaks a pane of glass and hire a glazier. And so it goes:

Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier’s trade – that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs – I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child.

But what if windows continue to be broken purposefully; what if the child is, by some oddity, conspiring with the glazier to reap the benefit of profit? In short, “destruction is not profit.” The issue of destruction, and its subsequent fixing, is that of which creates no real value. It merely moves moves money from one hand to another (in this case, from the shopkeeper to the glazier).

The opportunity cost of such an action, the repeated breaking of windows, is at the expense of other actions that could add more net benefit to the town. For one, the glacier may be distracted from other necessary tasks by fixing the shopkeeper’s window repeatedly, acting as a negative constraint on his labor, or the shopkeeper might have rather used the money spent on repairs on either investment or consumption. It best can be summed by Bastiat’s phrase: “society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed.”

What will you say, disciples of good M. F. Chamans [French politician], who has calculated with so much precision how much trade would gain by the burning of Paris, from the number of houses it would be necessary to rebuild?

Bastiat goes on to use his argument against protectionism (one which the Austrian school of thought uses often), which is, I feel, an incorrect application of the actual parable. Bastiat was functioning within the French colonial economy and he failed to address the difficulty of smaller firms lacking the economies of scale to compete with already-established firms. This is demonstrated by the Hamiltonian “infant industry argument,” and the adoption of protectionism in the United States, allowed for the development of American industry that would have been eaten up by British competitors had they not been protected. However, this is a separate issue entirely — Bastiat’s parable can be properly applied to the opportunity cost of war and those that claim it “brings growth.” Naturally, he actually applied his thinking to the “war economy” and wrote directly of it. He differentiates between what is “seen” and costs that are “not seen.”

A hundred thousand men, costing the tax-payers a hundred millions of money, live and bring to the purveyors as much as a hundred millions can supply. This is that which is seen.

But, a hundred millions taken from the pockets of the tax-payers, cease to maintain these taxpayers and the purveyors, as far as a hundred millions reach. This is that which is not seen. Now make your calculations. Cast up, and tell me what profit there is for the masses?

Therefore, a war-driven economy does not actually create sustained growth since it takes away necessary labor by enlisting them and deviates capital to military use rather than civilian use.

II. Rapid Growth in the Post-War Era

The Post-WW2 era brought with it a period of unprecedented economy growth. The process of rebuilding Europe was relatively quick and economies sprang back on their feet. Called the “Golden Age of Capitalism,” Western European nations experienced GDP growth rates never seen before in their history and some of the lowest unemployment rates ever recorded. To many, it appeared to be the triumph of capitalism in rebounding from the previous years of carnage and war. Titles were given for each nation’s “recovery miracle” — Wirtschaftswunder in Germany, the Trente Glorieuses in France, and others. However, when placed in context, it was a development consist with capitalism’s short but sporadic history.

Source: The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison

*Based on Table 1 found in Mark Harrison, The USSR and Total War: Why Didn’t the Soviet Economy Collapse in 1942? from Mark Harrison, “The Economics of World War II: an Overview,” in Mark Harrison, ed., The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison, Cambridge University Press (1998), 10.

The GDP during the war differed tremendously year by year. The UK economy began feeling the economic consequences of the war after 1943, France after 1939, Italy after 1942, Germany after 1944, and Japan also after 1944. Europe had to be rebuilt — the broken window had to be fixed.

And after the war, the war-torn nations called upon their glaziers: industry. Production soared and is perhaps best demonstrated in automobile production alone, which rose drastically after 1946.

Main sources: WMVD, SMMT, JAMA, IRF, CCFA, OICA

Military spending also increased as military armaments accumulated in the post-war period. In the years between 1950 to 1960, France doubled their military spending from 11 billion to 22 billion, West Germany from 0 to 22 billion, the United Kingdom from 23 to 29 billion, and the United States from 69 to 168 billion [1]. The need for a permanent armament reserve for potential war against the Soviet forces proved to be a constant in the Cold War economies that would arise in the years after World War 2. Likewise, this stirred production levels to meet these new demands. With the increases in production, fresh new labor was needed to sustain it. Luckily, many troops from the war provided such manpower necessary to sustain these new production levels. They were absorbed into the economy with relatively ease and Western Europe experienced unemployment levels that were at historical lows. Deputy Commissioner Robert J. Myers of the Bureau of Labor Statics writes in 1964:

From 1958 to 1962, when joblessness in [France, former West Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Sweden] was hovering around 1, 2, or 3 per cent, [the U.S.] rate never fell below 5 percent and averaged 6 percent.

However, the reason is quite clear — Europe had room to grow. After being devastated by war, its cities ravaged by bombings, it had to be rebuilt. Industry began to grow rapidly and profits accrued as large inflows of labor were coming into these nations from individuals that were once fighting in the front lines. The conditions were set and the growth was focused on repairs and war production with the help of the Marshall Plan put into effect by the United States. Thereby it can be said, had the war not occurred, GDP would be much higher in these Western nations since they would not forgo the opportunities that were missed in focusing on rebuilding repairs. Once again, Bastiat’s argument can be evoked — “society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed.”

III. The Inevitable Crisis

As was expected, the economic boom of the post-WW2 era would not last indefinitely. A conglomeration of issues arose with the advent of the 1970s: the end of the Breton Woods Agreement in 1971, the Oil Crisis of 1973, and the policies of liberalization that ensued. The crisis and murky economic future that followed can best be characterized by employing an analysis of the rate of profit of these Western powers. The fluctuations of the rate of profit can help us better understand the crises that set in and its ramifications in the years that followed. The rate of profit can be best explained by the following simple equation:

S / (C + V)

Whereas S is surplus value, C is constant capital, and V is variable capital. The surplus value can be thought of as undistributed profits, one which do not go towards the costs of the initial labor power and machinery needed to construct the commodity. The difference between constant capital and variable capital is relatively simple — constant capital is machinery, which is relatively constant in the short run, and variable capital is mainly manifested as fluctuating wages. This relationship is crucial because, in a capitalist economy, industrialists want to maximize efficiency in order to better compete. Consequently, the more commodities are produced, the more prices fall. This translates to capital rising and surplus value subsequently falling which causes, in the long run, a tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Granted, this is only a tendency, since there are counter measures to prevent such a phenomenon from occurring (as seen in the neoliberal years of the 1980s).

United States, index numbers: 1960-5 = 100; Source: The Spain-U.S Chamber of Commerce

A crisis was inevitable after the post-WW2 boom since production had exhausted itself. The all-too-common crisis of overproduction soon followed, with the rate of profit dropping sharping starting from 1965 in conjunction with the rise of more radical movements in labor and demands for wage increases and better conditions. The fact that the rate of profit plummeted likely caused the economic malaise and stagflation of the 1970s. And the response was one we are too familiar with today — outsourcing. In order to increase profits, corporate bodies began to move to the Third World to lower their labor costs (variable capital) thus increasing their rate of profit. This is represented by the neoliberal boom of the 1980s with the rise of Reaganomics and Thatcherism

The Rate of profit in the United States; Source: The Spain-U.S Chamber of Commerce

The graph above provides us with a different look of the same data. The average rate of profit fluctuates around 24.4% from the period of 1946-1973, drops down to 18.9% from 1974-1983, and finally rises 1.2% to 20.1% from 1984 to 2009. However, bear in mind, the rate of profit begins to drop at the 2006 mark, serving as a precursor to the Great Recession and the current crisis.

Point being — what does this necessarily have to do with the supposed “Golden Age of Capitalism?” Many Keynesian economists point to their policies and argue they spurred the growth of the post-WW2 era. However, with Europe broken and demolished, their economies could only grow. Growth had to follow since so much capital was required to rebuild post-war Europe. As efficiency increased exponentially and production soared, it was safe to assume another crisis would soon follow, since the inherent contradiction of overproduction always brings with it economy calamity. And to curtail these decreasing rate of profits a new economic ideology was introduced — neoliberal doctrine, which worked to cut taxes, deregulate, and cut labor costs through Third World exploitation. The shaky footing that the “Golden Age” brought gave individuals blissful optimism, as they hoped that the policies instated would continue growth indefinitely, however they failed to curtail the inherent contradiction of the profit accrued and capital needed, which would evoke the crisis that would follow in the 1970s.

***

– Rate of profit graphs were obtained from Short and Long-Term Dynamics of the U.S Profit Rate in the Context of the Current Crisis

– Capital Accumulation and Growth in Central Europe, 1920 – 2006

– The Post-World War II Golden Age of Capitalism and the Crisis of the 1970s

– The “Millennium Crisis” and the Profit Rate

– System Failure: The Falling Rate of Profit and Economic Crisis

Dissecting Racial Privilege and Class

January 17, 2013

Critical Theory

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In contemporary society, “whiteness” is more than a category of pigmented skin. It is a social construct, an advantageous societal badge, a cultural phenomenon — an implicit privilege ingrained in the Western psyche. Likewise, it has connotations that permeate culture, especially those of us who are part of the American variant. The United States has, arguably, experienced the most racial upheaval of any nation in its brief history as a republic. Therefore, it is easy to see the remnants of a past white-supremacist society still festering, albeit not as explicitly as it once was. Now, the issues are implicit rather than explicit, covert rather than overt — they poison our culture as hidden systemic issues, inculcated in the American experience, rather than with symbolic elements that we tend to associate racism with (i.e. the Klu Klux Klan, Jim Crow, etc). Perhaps this poses a greater problem than ever before, since many white Americans have washed their hands clean of the matter after the granting of legal rights in the 1960s. Before such events, racism was in full-view and exposed by movements calling for its destruction during the Civil Rights era and prior. Sadly, these mass-movements have now largely disappeared, since they were mostly in conjunction with Vietnam anti-war protests, and they have escaped the public eye, despite the same problems still persisting.

The reasons for racial complexes are, from my understanding, directly linked to an understanding of class and distributions of affluence. Any hegemonic group, be it cultural or racial, is granted its creation and subsequent dominance by controlling capital and concentrating power. White elitism was a direct product of such concentrations. During the time of the slave power, power was granted to rich white slave-owners by the state. The relationship shifted with the end of the “plantation elites” and the development of racist capitalism in the South, but the dichotomy of oppressor-oppressed in the black experience was little changed. They were barred from many employment opportunities and promptly stripped of political rights after the establishment of Jim Crow once the Union troops left the former Confederate states with the sham of a compromise in 1877.

Convict leasing was actively used in the building of railroads in the South.

In relation to class, it’s quite clear how Jim Crow acquired its luster among white working Americans living in the South. Although their wages were low, their conditions horrid, and their hours long — at least they were white. They found a racial scapegoat. Thus, white capitalists justified their expropriation through a racial lens and trapped freemen in contracts that essentially re-instated elements of slavery, with convict leasing that sold “criminals” to private parties for their bidding. Racism in the south functioned as a buffer to prevent conflict aimed at industrialists. It created a rift between laborers, deviating their attention from inequality and subsequent efforts at unionization.

The issue with class disparity is that it creates the illusion of superiority. The hegemonic status of certain groups corresponds with inequities in wealth; when a group of individuals (i.e. whites, Protestants, etc.) are mostly congregated to one rung of the social ladder, it grants them a higher worth. Rather than attribute their privilege to the lottery of birth, they psychologically justify their position with some innate characteristic — be it race, religion (which is oftentimes taken as birthright), or ethnicity. With centuries of rule by white moneyed interests in the United States, it seems likely that the racist undertones of contemporary society began with class inequality. Therefore, class disparities preceded racist justifications, rather than vice-verse, through the expansion of markets by imperialist forces and expansionism.

In contemporary American society, these same cards are at play, although the deck has been shuffled a bit. The use of “code language” fills the right-wing political arena, which still caters to affluence and power as it always did. The last election of 2012 perhaps signified the last potential “hoorah” for white America — what pundit Bill O’Reilly calls “the real America” — in continuing the hegemony that was once fully enjoyed. The issue is the fact that many white Americans, particularly those in conservative circles, are supposedly “outraged” by the government’s catering to minorities. Some go as far as calling it discriminatory, or reverse-racism, against whites. The severe delusion of these reactionary whites is that they see their marginal decrease in privilege as under-privilege. In retrospect, opportunities are merely equalizing (slowly), not absurdly flipping inversely from white to black. This white anger manifested itself in the past election, with the white vote rallying over Romney and the South vehemently against President Obama. To put it simply, racial politics are at play once again, despite the political right’s insistence that their criticisms are based purely on some disingenuous merited assessment.

Hence, given its elaborate history, privilege is an absurdly difficult topic to wrestle with due to it potentially being “offensive.” Some political commentators have wrongly grown wary of initiating such discussions and insist we live in a “post-racial” society. They believe firmly that if we ignore the race issue, it will simply disappear. Despite their, perhaps, benevolent intentions on the surface, this exasperates the problem rather than curing it. Yes, granted, I would thoroughly like to live in a post-racial society — but, point being, we don’t. Thereby, analyses in racial relations are still crucial in assessing current conditions because we, sadly, still live in a racist society. You can deny such claims, but you are under a grave misapprehension by personally muting the cries of racial injustice in contemporary American society. Out of ethical respect, we should listen and actively take note.

***

– Race, Class, and “Whiteness Theory”

A Brief Economic Analysis of Yugoslavia

January 4, 2013

History, Political Economy

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I. Nationalization and Reindustrialization

The port city of Zadar in Croatia after many bombings during the war.

The port city of Zadar in Croatia after many Allied bombings from 1943 to 1944.

The victory of the Yugoslav Partisan army in World War II created many hefty challenges for the newly-liberated Balkan region. After being occupied by the Ustaše from 1941-1945, the destruction was severe – “the human and material losses were the greatest in Europe after the USSR and Poland” [Simon, Jr. 5]. The former Kingdom of Yugoslavia was virtually left in ruins, being usurped of its raw materials and resources, and stripped of its transport infrastructure, mining, and manufacturing industries.

Being granted the honor of victors after World War II, the Partisans formed their own government, based on the ideology of Southern Pan-Slavism and a socialist economic philosophy in the Marxian tradition. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was established on the 29^th of November, 1945 and, after its creation, quickly allied itself with the Soviet Union. It immediately began to implement programs to rebuild its broken post-war state. Power became strongly centralized, based on the Soviet model of state socialism, and order firmly kept in place by Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s Communist Party. Six regions were then created, of relatively equal political power, in the newly drafted Constitution of 1946: Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Macedonia. Soon after, sweeping restructuring began to take root; property was transferred from its former private owners to the communist-run state, financial capital was expropriated from formerly being privatized, and the means of production was converted to public ownership. Firstly, large financial institutions, such as the banks, were nationalized to control the money supply and the flow of financial capital. After that was achieved, large industries were then overtaken by state control to promote industrialization in the war-crippled socialist republic. Then, finally, the smaller transport, commercial, and agricultural industries followed suit; they were also nationalized to increase production [Simon, Jr. 5].

II. Deterioration of Yugoslav-Soviet Relations

Edvard Kardelj, one of the creators of the Yugoslav model of socialism.

Although the initial recovery program enacted under Tito’s leadership was derived from Stalin’s 5-year plan model, significant splits shortly began to ferment between the Soviet leadership and the Yugoslav communists. Economic blockades were being placed on the young socialist state because of their alliance with the Soviet Union, and Tito’s independent stance on issues angered Stalin and his associates. Moreover, Yugoslav theoreticians began to formulate their own strains of Marxist thought and began to criticize the internal political and economic structure of the Soviet Union. Consequently, this gradually led to Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform by the end of the 1940s. It was at this point Yugoslavia began to economically develop differently than its socialist counterparts – creating a unique form of decentralized market socialism based on workers’ self-management [Simon, Jr. 6]. Frankly, the idea behind it was simple; the withering of bureaucratic state would only occur if innovative mass-participatory structures were created. Egalitarianism and populism became more of a principle rather than a political tool, contrary to the Soviet Union. Decentralized socialization of industry quickly followed Yugoslavia’s alienation from the Soviet Union. Led by the efforts of thinkers by the likes of Edvard Kardelj and Milovan Đilas, the original state-control of industry began to be broken down into localities and councils were created for respective industries. The profits were distributed amongst the workers in each individual firm, and some functions of state control were relinquished and allocation became more relied on the basic mechanisms of the market to ensure self-management and proper distribution [Frei, 45].

III. An Economic Revolution

Strictly speaking, this economic transformation can be described as taking place in three major stages: Firstly, in the 1950s, workers’ collectives were created but were restricted by the state’s regulation of capital construction. This was actually a remnant of the Soviet model of socialism. Secondly, the 1960s and 1970s were a radical shift from the aforementioned control that was present in the previous decade; rather than allow the state to control capital allocation and production, socialized markets began allocating it themselves with a self-managing structure using the labor involved. Thirdly and finally, liberalization reform followed until the ultimate collapse during the 1980s and late 1970s mainly caused by inflation and debt [Simon, Jr. 7].

Lunch break for Yugoslav workers, 1952.

The decentralized Yugoslav model mainly employed during the 60s and early 70s was localized, but complex and interconnected. Authorities in certain districts were authorized to oversee consumption and production services, to ensure each commune (the basic local government units) were working in each others interests. Moreover, each autonomous region in Yugoslavia was different; each had different legislative procedures for planning. However, it did still remain a federalist system of governance – most of executive power was exerted in creating land uses, the geographic location of large industries, traffic networking, and grandiose public service projects that required cooperation with different regions [Simmie, 272]. Most of power was derived from the legislative regions, but the localities were actually given little statutory powers. Rather, they were consulted and functioned as “pressure groups” to ensure local interests within the regions are met such as in the areas of housing, settlement, education, national defense, and the likewise [Simmie, 274]. It was a demonstration of a collective economy at work, absent of a real large-scale “free market,” where different elements of production were decided by long-term plans, medium-term plans, and annual action plans – while also being guided by the mechanisms of the supply and demand curves in a regular market, except profits were socialized as was production [Simmie, 276].

The economic growth seen during the period of decentralization was upward and dynamic. Comparatively speaking, Yugoslavia experienced the greatest per capita GDP growth out of all the Eastern Bloc economies [Groningen]. It also embraced a tight-controlled policy on imports from developed capitalist countries after the restoration of Soviet-Yugoslav relations in 1954-1955; foreign trade with socialist countries increased from 1.8% to about 28% in the decade following the return of good relations, while the share from Western capitalist nations dropped from 80.9% to 57.7% mostly due to the policies enacted by the Committee on Foreign Trade which was given extra power in 1956 to protect infant self-managing industries in developing Yugoslavia. Equally important, Yugoslavia enjoyed a balance of trade with the socialist nations during this period – amounting to $176 million of exports and $169 million of imports in 1962. Manufactured goods, machinery, and equipment were traded with the Eastern Bloc nations, while trade with developed capitalist countries consisted mainly of raw materials, food, and tobacco [Frei, 45, 46]. Banking was also heavily regulated, but broken down locally. In 1961, it consisted of eight large sub-national banks and over 380 communal banks, all overseen by the National Bank of Yugoslavia, the main credit institution of the country and giver-of-loans. The sub-national bank, granted on a regional basis, served as intermediaries between the National bank and the communal banks. The idea behind this was to encourage development by focusing giving loans to regions in need of aid, and they used communal banking institutions to do so [Frei, 48, 49].

IV. The Collapse of Yugoslavia

Despite strong economic growth and potential – experiencing an annual GDP growth of 6.1%, a life expectancy of 72 years, and literacy rate of 91% according to 1991 World Bank Statistics from 1960 to 1980 – the experimental Yugoslav system soon imploded on itself due to a variety of factors. Perhaps more importantly, the Oil Crisis of the 1970s had the greatest impact on Yugoslavia and was a precursor to the catastrophe that would unfold after Tito’s death in 1980, ultimately leading to the breakup of the federation in a bloody civil war. The recession in the developed nations in the West severely hurt Yugoslavia, and hindered the economic growth it was experiencing for 30 years. Massive shortages followed in electricity, fuel, and other necessities and unemployment reached 1 million by 1980 due to the energy crisis and the increasing economic embargos imposed by Western powers. Soon, structural economic issues came to light and richer regions became frustrated from over-subsidizing the poorer regions of southern Yugoslavia, called “economic black holes” [Asch, 26]. Production severely dropped, and conditions only worsened as the decade went on; GDP dropped -5.3% from 1980 to 1989, the regions of Kosovo and Montenegro being hit the hardest [Kelly]. Real earnings dropped 25% from 1975 to 1980, further crushing the poorest regions. In an effort to curb the domestic crisis, Yugoslavia began to take loans from the IMF to boost infrastructure development and bring back production levels to their pre-crisis levels. Soon, its debt skyrocketed – Yugoslavia incurred $19.9 billion in foreign debt by 1981 [Massey, Taylor, 159]. As a request for incurring so much IMF debt, the IMF demanded market liberalization and many regions began to implement economic shock therapy: cutting subsidies, privatizing, and quickly opening trade to allow foreign capital, which only worsened Yugoslavia’s economic crisis. Inflation rates soared and Yugoslavia entered a period of hyperinflation, unable to cope with the currency crisis because of its complex banking system – it soon began printing large amounts of Yugoslav dinar banknotes, created a new note of 2,000,000 Yugoslav dinars in 1989. As the broken nation spiraled into further calamity, the terrible war, which would be the bloodiest on European soil since World War 2, would soon begin to rear its dark head and finally put an end to the Yugoslav experiment that lasted little over just 40 years.

The Yugoslav Partisan Army marching through the city of Bitola, Macedonia.

V. Bibliography

– Simon, Jr., György. An Economic History of Socialist Yugoslavia. Rochester: Social Science Research Network, 2012. 1-129.

– Simmie, James. The Town Planning Review , Vol. 60, No. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 271-286

– The Groningen Growth and Development Centre, n.d. Web. 3 Jun 2012. http://www.rug.nl/feb/onderzoek/onderzoekscentra/ggdc/inde&xgt;

– Frei, L. The American Review of Soviet and Eastern European Foreign Trade , Vol. 1, No. 5 (Sep. – Oct., 1965), pp. 44-62

– Beth J. Asch, Courtland Reichmann, Rand Corporation. Emigration and Its Effects on the Sending Country. Rand Corporation, 1994. (pg. 26)

– Mills Kelly, “GDP in Yugoslavia: 1980-1989,” Making the History of 1989, Item #671, http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/items/show/671 (accessed June 03 2012, 10:32 pm).

– Douglas S. Massey, J. Edward Taylor. International Migration: Prospects and Policies in a Global Market. OxfordUniversity Press, 2004. (pg. 159)

– Government of the Republic of Croatia – Information on Croatian Economy http://www.vlada.hr/en/about_croatia/information/croatian_economy

– Ballinger, Pamela. “Selling Croatia or Selling Out Croatia?” Bowdoin College, 24 Oct. 2003. Web.

– Vojmir Franičević. Privatization in Croatia: Legacies and Context Eastern European Economics, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Mar. – Apr., 1999), pp. 5-54

Art with Purpose

September 15, 2012

Art, Older Posts, Philosophy

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“The Death of Marat” by Jacques-Louis David.

Art is a complex phenomenon that has frequented philosophic circles since the days of Socrates. Scrambling to pinpoint a concise definition, thinkers have attempted to encapsulate objective meanings of aesthetics in an effort to fully understand what constitutes ‘beauty.’

The issue is that art has no distinguishable intrinsic value of its own; it as good as the audience deems it to be. Whether the audience is a group of commoners or a collection of art critics, works of artistic value have to substantiate their worth through harsh criticism — only thereafter falling into the category of real praiseworthy ‘art.’ This interpretation of art is valid in many respects, but it must also be realized that art must serve a function. It is certainly not purely subjective, since it derives its status from collective admiration, and it must portray an universally relevant idea, to capture the audience.

My goal here is not to differentiate between what is ‘art,’ and what is not, as that is an exercise in futility, and entertaining that point is relatively useless. Rather, the question should be phrased: “What constitutes good or proper works of art?”

“Want it? Enter” by Vladimir Mayakovsky.

The struggle for humanization involves articulating our consciousness, our fears and dispositions, into a medium that is accessible and unifying. This medium is art. Art should portray an ecumenical sentiment and should be a statement on the environment we inhabit. Rather than uselessly capture the banality of alienated industrial life, its function is to distance ourselves from mechanization and uniformity. It should introduce spontaneity, commentary, and subtle discontent where our own lives do not. Art should function as a medium in which we use to escape alienation. By association, this means that art is, by definition, antithetical to restraint and modern conditioning. It seeks to escape it, to realize human potentiality outside the bounds of current mechanisms. By need rather than choice, it must function outside these bounds because it expresses, by its very nature, an ideal. A work that is produced within the confines of modern production would hardly be revealing, since it would be restricted to only portraying feelings that are already realized. The struggle is to bring out conditions that elevate these sentiments, which requires working outside the confines of modern alienated labor and life, to highlight the potential of bettering our current condition and status. It is by this token, true ‘art’ is not conservative — it is, by necessity, progressive in its idealism and commentary. The Greeks, perhaps the first real admirers of beauty, understood this quite well, creating sculptures and paintings of the ‘perfect’ form and physique. They were attempting to capture an ideal distant of their own lives, and thus were in the tradition of real artistry.

However, there are social means that pervert and downgrade art and bring it back into the restrictive confines of bourgeois industrial life. Profit, as a general rule, distorts its true function. Art cannot act as an escape if it crafted within the model of mass-production. It loses its individuality, the heart of its meaning, if it is created in bulk by groups driven by monetary gain. It also loses its ability to depict anything outside the contemporary, becoming a self-congratulatory trivial blanket statement that praises the lifestyle it is a part of, rather than criticizing and dissociating itself from it. The problems of artistry is heavily intertwined with the general struggle of humanization. It is a core component of reflection. The function it assumes, and how well it communicates it, is what differentiates the good from the bad, the masterworks from the mediocre. Serving as an escape from alienation, art takes on a crucial form in human development. Without it, out inner emotions would be bound to the present, with no way of articulating what we wish to become. It is in this way art is an important realization of what it means to be “human,” and a stimulus for progressive insight and change — be it in the mind or in action.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Part Two)

June 24, 2012

Education, Older Posts

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Of any movement, of any change, education is vital. It is the beginnings of new ideas, and it must be given special attention to ensure it is doing its proper purpose. However, the initial question is, what is the purpose of education? What does it mean to be educated?

Today we are in an age where measure of achievement are standardized — a “one size fits all” approach to teaching and assessments. Divergent thinking is disregarded, and replaced with single-solution scenarios that involve little thought outside the limitations that are given to the pupils in the classroom. It turns education into a chore rather than a passion.

Granted, there are many reasons for this, but its primary reasons lie in its creation during the age of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Fundamentally speaking, although the Enlightenment was a beautiful period of intellectual growth, it corresponded with the industrialization of much of the, then, “modern world.” Likewise, many of the concepts attributed to the industrial model were applied to education: standardization, divisions, and hierarchy. All of these functioned in the interests of industrialization, and in the image of it. Perhaps the most important externality that was brought the industrialized education, however, was a similar form of alienation. Specifically, the alienation of the pupil from the work he or she was creating in the classroom. It is this dilemma that cripples intuition and advancement, and rather makes students into pawns molded into a pre-manufactured consciousness. It is an impediment to growth. Even worse so, to think outside the realm of normal studies is downgraded and displeasing, because conformity and efficiency are key in an industrial model of practice.

Paulo Freire addresses these concerns in his masterwork “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” and attempts to properly describe the educational system and articulate its flaws. He starts by categorizing the teacher-student relationship in dialectic terms, with a lack of real struggle.

“A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students)…. education is suffering from narration sickness” [52].

Most importantly though, is the lack of significance in the teaching itself. The dialogue is hollow, and consists of “alienating verbosity.” It does little to motivate the students, and it furthermore categories them as objects ready to absorb what the instructor is telling them, without fruitful interaction; it teaches them little to nothing on the fluidity of history, making them cautious when witnessing change, and it does little to awaken the aspirations the pupils might have. The language lacks any transforming power, and learning becomes overly-mechanical rather than engaging.

“The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, status, compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to th existential experience of the students” [52].

It is based on these observations that Freire theorizes on what he calls “the banking concept of education.”

“Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits” [53].

Bearing this mind, education must first solve this crux before it can go any further. The teacher-student contradiction must be properly handled before a true libertarian education can take root, that would eliminate the ignorance and encompass true transformation and radical praxis. Freire than goes on to delve into this contradiction, and I feel the quote deserves to be posted in full:

“The solution is not (nor can it be) found in the banking concept. On the contrary, banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction through the following attitudes and practices which mirror oppressive society as a whole.

(a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught
(b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing
(c) the teachers thinks and the students are thought about
(d) the teacher talks and the students learn — meekly
(e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined
(f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply
(g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher(h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it
(i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students.
(j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects” [54].

This is the major issue, and the contradiction between the teacher-student relationship. For the commoners, education does little to change the condition which oppresses them, rather it only changes the consciousness of the oppressed. This is why the need for a radical new pedagogy is paramount — one that is free from the alienating aspects of industrialization, horizontal in its power structure, involving in its dialogue, and promoting of inquiry and understanding. In a proper educational setting, it is not only the student that learns; it is both the pupils and the teachers that intellectually grow. They expand on their knowledge through dialogue and conversation, thereby heightening their consciousness and crushing their once-held ignorance. This is the goal of radical education, of revolutionary pedagogy — the humanization and realization of one’s potential.

Mihailo Marković: What is Work?

June 16, 2012

Older Posts, Philosophy

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Work is difficult to define. In the modern mindset, it has become synonymous with economic productivity — a primary cornerstone to progressing society: a kind of necessary evil.

Fundamentally, however, work does not implicitly have a negative connotation. Contrary to its function in today’s modern context, work is not objectively a burden nor a pleasure; It simply is. Work is indeed a necessity, that much is true, but must work be pursued and viewed as solely a negative aspect of one’s lifestyle and be downgraded to the point of dissatisfaction, hatred, and dissuasion? Yugoslav Marxist-humanist Mihailo Marković, in his philosophical work titled “From Affluence to Praxis” addresses this dilemma:

“Work is a neutral concept. It refers to an activity which is a necessary condition of human survival and development in any type of society” [65].

The indispensable nature of “work” is crucial to the praxis of Marxism. The elimination of the “free rider” issue is a paramount dilemma, and has to be properly discussed before goods are allocated accordingly. Specifically speaking, this requires a clear correlation between work done and goods received to be able to function fairly; however, the proper criteria and definition of work must be defined for such concepts to be handled.

The initial question that must be answered is — what is work, and how is it different from labor? Marković makes a stark distinction:

“In labor the worker uses only those abilities and skills which he can sell, which are needed in the process of commodity production… [Work] is the permanent exchange of matter with nature” [63].

“[Work] is the self-realization and satisfaction of human needs… [labor] might be maximization of income, or increase of power” [66].

Perhaps most importantly, work is a natural concept. It is not, by nature, exploitative nor negative. Only in the current mechanisms of the market, is “work” (better said as labor) defined by its productive forces — by its potential to produce more capital and profit. Realistically speaking, virtually all action that progresses the social being is work once this chained view of labor is broken. Leisure, which is seen as an valueless in economic terms, is indeed a form of work. It is used as an outlet to break from the routine of labor that is a commonplace in today’s age of modernity; an attempt to free oneself from the objectification of what he does.

The largest obstacle to the realization of pure work, the fullest self-realization and satisfaction of human needs, is the alienating nature of today’s labor. Marković defines it quite well:

“Alienated labor is the activity in the process of which man fails to be what he is, that is, fails to actualize his potential capacities and to satisfy his basic needs. Marx distinguished the following four dimensions of this type of alienation: (a) One loses control over produced commodities. The blind forces of market enslave man isnterad of being ruled by him. (b) In his struggle for more property and power man becomes estranged from his fellow man. Exploitation, envy, mistrust, competition, and conflict cominuate relationships among individuals. (c) Instead of employing his capacities in creative, stimulating work, man becomes an appendage of the machine, a iving tool, a mere object. (d) As no opportunity has been offered to him to fulfill his potential abilities, to develop and satisfy various higher-level needs, his whole life remains poor, one-sided, animal-like, his existence remains far below the real possibilities of his being” [63].

Although poetic in its definition, it is fundamentally true. Is it not human to become more inclined to work, if one feels involved in the final product? Is one not more inclined to work if he feels it is necessary for the community, which he has clearly learned, through praxis, that it likewise benefits him as well? The struggle, then, is to liberate work from being a status of wealth and power. Rather, it should be seen as a necessity for human conditioning and improvement. “Work” is not simply a commodity to be used and exhausted, to be stripped of creative spirit; it is has definite aesthetic qualities. If one realizes the beauty in work, the individual is more inclined to work to reach the means that was once outside its productive sphere. Work would develop beyond being a collection of one-sided mundane tasks for indefinite periods of time; it would serve as a necessary form of expression of one’s abilities and talents.

***

Labor’s Struggle for Supremacy by Eugene V Debs.
The Right to be Lazy by Paul Lafargue